We are each prisoners of judgment, shame, guilt and fear. I sit and I watch the defensive postures of those around me in the café, each unaware of that very fact. Each believing the defensive mechanism they have chosen truly hides their insecure condition. The tattooed man with his armored ink believes he cannot be seen, the rabbit hidden within the bush holds stone still, but those of us skilled in sight spot the vulnerable creature nonetheless.

The fear that carries us daily propels us into the hardened world we continue to create. The one faced with deathly images of children, men and their mothers being raped, murdered and killed right next door to us and yet, nothing stops us long enough to feel their death upon our hands. We continue forth believing we are innocent because we are suffering too, but we do not stop long enough to accept this fact. Rather we move forward with our hard bodies, hard minds, hard breasts and ever growing hardened hearts.

Perhaps the ink on the next tattoo will actually penetrate the veins of life and pull blood from ourselves, a blood that within it’s vibrant red flow causes us to pause and feel the trickle of life it provides. We rush past and through our existence either praying it will end or believing we are invisible (I meant to write invincible, do you suppose that’s a glorious faux pas of the unconscious trying to teach its lesson?) and never really ever feeling the glory of God within.

The struggle runs so deep because we carry so many layers of pain of mis-belief. We store lies within our system of judgment. They feel like truths because they have logic and sense attached to them, or so we think. They make sense because they are true for us. The words we hear in our head we automatically accept as true. How often do we question the thoughts we carry. We see someone look at us and make an instant deduction of what the persons could be thinking and of course, whatever it is, it’s generally about us. About our good looks or fat body, about the bad hair we feel we have or the great sense of style we project. I wonder how many times that person we believe is thinking about us in that moment, is actually looking past us and wondering about what the person behind us is thinking about them!

How often do we have a thought that actually is incorrect? How often is our perception of why what another person does is actually being colored by your current mood ? Have you ever noticed that your mood actually is the determining factor of what someone is thinking? Have you ever noticed that your own guilt can provide the very reason that the person before you is being judged?

May want to visit the Byron Katie website for more info. on questioning thought patterns. She is genius.

As a parent, who has a child in middle school, I find that the favored techniques to gain information from our children to mimic that of a terrorist interrogation.  While I can appreciate the need to gain information, my bewilderment lies within the apparent belief that intimidation and lying are advantageous (and acceptable) when dealing with children.

As far as I can tell, from speaking with my daughter and her peers, when being questioned in the school offices, children are often screamed at, threatened and belittled. I ask you? How do you expect these young children to grow up to become successful self-reliant, self-trusting and healthy adults when their (supposed) role models are acting with less care than prison guards?

I’m curious to know why these children, who are in trouble for possibly being involved with the use of pot and ecstasy are considered villains rather than victims?

Why hasn’t anyone involved offered help and hope over threatening and adding to their already tenuous position in life; one, that ultimately may have been the culprit.  Experimental drug use is a lofty option over feeling lost, deadened or alone, one often glorified by the act of defiance alone. One that screams, “ I need help feeling better about myself” and what do we do? Scream at their hearts and minds more, expressing what vile, little creatures they are for making unwise choices. For shame, for shame!

How many adults can honestly say they’ve never taken a drug or a drink? How many of us have used that drug or drink as a form of escape under the guise of just needing to “unwind”? How many of us were using the same approach to dealing with stress and unhappiness as a child? Why does the ability to understand and empathize disappear when we are clearly being given signals from our children that they are struggling or in pain? Where is our capacity to teach, guide, nurture and love? It seems that when drugs come into the picture judgment immediately replaces caring.

I’ver heard it said, love doesn’t work. Only discipline (which easiy becomes bullying) gets “these kids” to listen, to straighten up, to what? Obey? Since when does obedience create happy individuals? From my personal family history, I’d say, never. It’s created an alcoholic mother, father and grandmother, each of whom were never allowed the freedom to be who they were, but rather were forced to conform to the rules of the house, to be respectful of those (adults) who did not respect them back and therefore lived desperate lives of cellular discordance and confusion. Why is it okay to do to our children what was done to us? Why do we ignore their individuality and treat them like they are criminal for simply trying to maneuver life?

Making children (or anyone for that matter) feel bad about themselves is never a successful approach to getting positive results.  Do you think rehab facilities are verbally beating the participants in order to help them heal? Perhaps it was the compassionless way in which life treated them that led them even further down their paths of despair and into addiction.

I would like to suggest that our educational system maintain a distinction between the board of corrections and the board of education; as it has the greatest influence on our children outside of the home environment and it’s influences will last a lifetime on our children (just as it has with most of us). Some of us were fortunate to be students of teachers who truly cared, but the majority of us were just hustled through like cattle, nameless, faceless and already labeled, “liar, loser, no good or useless”. I want my child to feel significant, not because she is special but because she is human. We each crave acknowledgement, to be seen and valued. We can start that process by choosing new methods of interacting. We have to be brave enough to feel vulnerable and helpless as we learn new ways of communicating. We have to be patient. We have to be willing and desiring of a world that sees the creative, the potential, the heart and humanity within the individual.

I have often observed persons who have a superior intellect apply it towards diminishing others self esteem rather then uplift and support. It’s the way  our whole male dominator paradigm has operated in the world for centuries and it’s my intention to challenge the way we use our minds (as does Gary Zukov, Eckhart Tolle, Carolyn Myss, Byron Katie and my current favorite, Marshall Rosenberg all do with such brilliance).

My hope is to get people to actually think about supportive dialog when interacting with others rather than the current unconscious training from which most of us speak, which is of the “divide and conquer” model.  As our society teaches, winning is right, and the most important goal to accomplish. Winning is the cause of righteous self- grandiosity with little regard for the well being or nurturing of the heart of self or others.

Wouldn’t it be a rosy (or maybe a real time slap in the face) world if we actually could hear/feel how our words affect those around us? I do include myself in this by the way; I know I am far from pure and clean. I do occasionally throw the verbal dagger on purpose, but mostly jab without even realizing (as most of us do). My success with this post would come if I can assist in creating that brief pause before a person speaks, a second to re-choose words that have an arc (as opposed to a piercing thrust) during the invisible path from mouth to ear, cause a softer landing and less damage to the heart of the other person. That being said, we can’t take responsibility for how one choose to hear us, but we can be as clear and clean as possible when we speak, knowing our intentions are purely for connecting, educating, uplifting, supporting, sharing and when necessary finding a way to get our needs met that won’t jeopardize the other persons self worth.

How do we unwittingly patronize, degrade or dismiss others?

We rationalize our approach in logic and fact and believe our perceptions. We do very little listening to how our facts or opinions may effect the other. Recently I watched, Burn After Reading. In it, the wife states to the husband (in reference to him being black mailed for his memoirs), “why in the world would anyone think they have value?” Yes, it causes a laugh from the outside, as the raw, blunt honesty of her thoughts slaps him mercilessly across his already self- loathing face. For her, the confusion was true, as her respect and care for him at this point diminished to nothing. Yet, would she have hurt him (chosen that approach) to this degree if she were aware of how devastating her words sounded to his ears let alone to the ears of a passerby? If nothing at all, merely due to the selfish and fearful thought of how others would perceive her? Perhaps that’s the one instance where grace and ego can actually serve each other.  If she thought for a moment her words were over heard by a stranger, would she have said them?

We’ve been taught that to hate upon the self  (or to give a cold honest opinion to others) is the key to self-awareness or “perfection”, if you will. Yet, I dare ask, how is it possible to pick on, belittle and criticize while never allowing the human attributes of compassion, gentle communication, loving connection and guidance be felt for the self  and others and yet expect the end result to equate to perfection? What an oxymoron. Isn’t “perfect” really an opinion anyway and a reflection of an individuals value system? What I deem as perfect for me, may be true (but really just a mind training I’ve bought) but to apply that to others is just a form of narcissism (an exaggerated sense of self importance) isn’t it?   I learned this with the most non-consequential of examples.

We are taught as women to wear our nail polish (and wear it we must if we are to be considered a woman of status) without chips, makes sense, right? The chipped and tattered nail is often associated with the unkempt and unclean, perhaps even the street -walker types. I agreed fervently. Until I met a girlfriend, an artistic old soul whose passion for God and beauty, whose sustained belief of man as beings of light, regardless of their unconscious actions, wore chipped nail polish… on purpose. She felt it was (quite simply put) cool. With this, I have grown exponentially in my judgment of what perfection really is anyway. One person’s or maybe one organization’s thought (generally with a self serving agenda) pushed upon the human race so strongly (via media, which generates peer pressure, yes, even upon the adult population, I mean, look at UGGS, could they have ever become “hip” otherwise?) that we’ve all slowly started to accept the views of others over (or as) our own.  Thankfully my girlfriend has maintained a strong connection to her artistic self and hasn’t fallen into the trap of the group mentality. Thankfully, I was wise enough to respect her own wisdom and allow it to chip away at my idea of what perfection really means.

To bring this to the basics, why do we want to be viewed as perfect? We believe that if we are perfect, we will get all the love and support, understanding and compassion we desire, yet without providing it to the self first, it will never be given by other’s. That’s what the mirror theory is all about, we teach others how to treat us.  How we talk to self, the vibration of who we are exudes out to those around us. They pick up on that self talk, on the invisible realm we have termed, someone’s “vibe”.

Hence the adage, you can’t truly love someone else until you love yourself. How we talk to the self is how we talk to others. Want to know what you think of yourself? Look and listen. Do you ridicule, complain and feel like a victim to the circumstances of your life or do you explore, seek to understand and view challenges and heartache as gifts from the universe that provide you with an opportunity to learn and grow?  Neither is wrong, but my guess is, one will provide you with a more enjoyable or in the very least, compassionate viewpoint of life. I was raised in an environment of great sorrow, repression and pain. It’s what I knew and spoke for the first forty years of my life. I write these words due to the trial and error of seeking inner peace. I am far from the “enlightened” status of the master and teachers before me but then again, perhaps my idea of enlightenment equates to perfection and if so…who am I to judge what that looks like and really what does that mean? Acceptance of self seems to be the key factor in achieving perfection.

this is a link to a podcast,  On this show, with host, Mark Christopher Nelson,  myself and friend and healer, David Elliott are being interviewed about the different elements of psychic and healing modalities.

I met with a man today who felt guilty because he’s turning twenty and believed it’s time to now grow up. HA, what does that mean? I asked. He didn’t know exactly. I pointed out the fact that he had a job (for the last 5 years with same establishment), was going to school, with an agenda. He had a goal. He wanted to be a counselor for high school kids. He wasn’t meandering about without purpose. He had a future vision of himself that he was making steps towards fulfilling. I then asked, do you feel like a child inside? Yes, was his reply. I asked do you suppose you’re still having fun and playing at life a bit? Yes! he said again. I said, GOOD. Keep playing and setting an example for the rest of us.
Life doesn’t have to mean struggle. He equated growing up with being serious. Is it necessary to be serious in order for life to have purpose or deep meaning? Can we learn through play? Isn’t that how it all begins for us as children? We use play and imagination to learn and grow. Why does that need to be eradicated as we age?

We as a society have standards that often repress and control our natural enthusiasm and subdue our approach to life. We then exchange play for the need to be seen as perfect. Perfect must mean powerful whereas play and making mistakes equates to disapproval. What’s sad about this is that we make disapproval MEAN SOMETHING. Generally it seems to mean, “I’m no good”. We use another persons lack of ability to play mean: were bad. How ironic. We take their serious approach to living mean they are better, more responsible and grown up. I think another perception could be, scared and inflexible…wanting to be seen as perfect!

If this young man carries courage to view himself from a lens of acceptance, he might just be able to play his entire life and that in of itself, seems like a successful life. Please, don’t grow up and become serious my dear friend, just continue doing what you’re doing, be brave and show us how to play, how to laugh, how to have fun living.
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” -Picasso
Peace.