Spiritual Journey

WELCOME 

to your spiritual journey...

an opportunity to question YOUR PATH in life 

as we muse along together in 

"finding ourselves, healing from abuse 

and learning to dream again". 

You have not stumbled across this blog by chance. YOUR DESIRE TO LIVE WILDLY, FULLY and FREELY and OVER THE TOP has led you here. This is a great time for YOU to take a few moments in your day to peruse over YOUR spiritual journey in life and ASK: 
IS THIS THE PATH THAT I REALLY WANT TO TAKE? 

Let's start at the beginning with our families. 

What "spirituality" did your family teach you? What was reinforced, allowed or encouraged? What holidays were celebrated? Were they "religious" or "spiritual" holidays or celebrated just because everyone else celebrated them??? What influence and benefit has your "family's faith" had upon your life? Has it been encouraging and OPEN or restrictive and CLOSED?

     Our families are our FIRST impressions of faith of any sort and my family; though morally decent was not specific on one faith view but just a "good" and decent family life and choices. I felt a void. A lack of spiritual guidance and unclear goals and very uncertain values and conflicting and some very obstructive, attitudes and prejudices by my father, mainly, which seemed to cause me to NOT just accept that our family's way of life was the best or that I would just automatically continue it into my own life.

How about culture and religious influences:

Did you or are you planning on choosing a different cultural or religious path than the one that you knew and were taught as a child? Are you "finding yourself" and your expression of faith in another expression of belief in God than the "one" that you have been taught. You know that it is VERY likely; that depending upon the area in which you were raised, you are VERY likely to learn and stay in the faith of the culture that you knew as a child, even if it does not serve to help you mature and develop spiritual. I find this to be a VERY sad FACT. 

     For me, I think that because I was NOT taught a certain faith; or trained to follow certain religious guidelines or was made to adhere to a religious tradition, that I SOUGHT many paths; I was curious about WHY certain cultures saw God in the ways that they did (do) and I read about so many other expressions of faith that the one that was (is) dominant in my residence. I lived in Ohio MOST of my life and only the past three years, here in my new home state of North Carolina.

Our choice of education and career:

Are you doing "what you love?" or have you chosen a career path that at least syncs with your values and your heartfelt dreams? Or do you "do what you do" for the money and have left your dreams on the shelf???

    Do you remember a class your had in high school or college; a career class, where you could explore your interests (perhaps complete a Strong Interest Inventory 

(The Strong Interest Inventory® assessment is one of the world’s most widely respected and frequently used career planning tools. It has helped both academic and business organizations develop the brightest talent and has guided thousands of individuals—from high school and college students to midcareer workers seeking a change—in their search for a rich and fulfilling career. ) to see what you really wanted to do fore a life career??? I remember my Human Relations class, Dr. Mac...that was his real name, he was a tall drink of water, a gentleman and had his Ph D. in Behavioral Studies/Psychology and was teaching High School. One assignment that he gave us to complete was most challenging; "Where do you see yourself in FIVE years"...I look back upon it and though my dissertation was somewhat vague for my 16 years of age, it was and has been very accurate in a general way of who I am and what I desired to spend during my revolutions around the Sun. Do you remember an assignment like this? If not, did you take the MPII in college or at University? I did...and it confirmed but added the field of Science as a great interest of mine; which still is to this day...

Choice of mate/life partner/family of our own: 

I found the most wonderful article on "falling in love" and that most people ONLY fall in love with 3 people in their lifetimes...Here is a wonderful, thought-provoking tool provided by http://thepowerofideas.ideapod.com/fall-love-3-people-lifetime-one-specific-reason/ 

We Only Fall in Love with 3 People in Our Lifetime—Each One for a Specific Reason   

By The Power of Ideas - January 27, 2017

It’s true. Philosophers and mystics have raved on for centuries about why we need 3 different lovers. Each one serves a different purpose and there’s no guarantee that all of us will make it to number three.But I bet you’re wondering: 

What the hell are these three different types of loves?

Well, the first one all begins when we’re young. It’s called the “idealistic love”. It’s kind of like a fairy tale. We believe we’re doing it for our family and society.You know, you find the one that is ‘just right’. Everyone will be jealous of you at parties because you’re the ‘perfect couple’. The major problem with this type of love? It relies purely on how other people see you, rather than how you actually feel.

The second type of love is when shit gets real. It’s called the “hard love”. This is where we delve deep into our sexuality, our desires and begin answering the question: Who am I? At times you’ll think that you’re both fated to be together forever. At other times, you’ll want to bite each other’s heads off. It’s passionate, it’s wrong and it’s heart-wrenching. You might break-up, get back together, then break up etc. Each time realizing that it just isn’t meant to be.The good news? You’ve learnt a TON about who you are and what you really want in life.

The third type of love comes out of nowhere. When you meet this person, you’d never consider that you’d end up with them. Perhaps you’re not looking for a relationship, or you think that you’re personalities would clash, but when the connection ignites, it will take off like a lightning strike that neither one of you are prepared for. When you start dating, it just fits. Your personalities bounce off each other like a trampoline. You compliment each other’s strengths and weakness and you both feel like you take on the world. It just feels right. And so it should. You’ve been through struggles, bad breakups, and people who have just plain tried to take advantage of you. But now, you know yourself better than ever, and most importantly, you know deep in your soul that you want to spend the rest of your life with this truly special person.

All of these loves have their reasons, and the lessons you learn through each phase will only help you grow. The people I really feel sorry for are those who never make it to number three.

     I had reviewed my "love lives" prior to reading this article and in my naivete, I deemed that though I had "3 loves" that I had not truly YET experience the "true and lasting" kind of love... They had, very neatly, fallen into the descriptions given in the above article. It has caused me to be thankful; I HAVE HAD 3 loves (two loves to many, I truly only desired to know, marry and love JUST ONE man for a lifetime: but that is not possible) I still am looking and waiting for the idealistic "true love" to find me or me, him. It was upon the FIRST love relationship and it's demise that I chose to begin "finding myself, healing from abuse and learning to dream again"...I did not know about his Borderline Personality Disorder at the time and returned to him...to experience a "dream come true" only to endure the heartbreak of it turning into a "BPD nightmare" complete with infidelity on his part, refusal to "let me have my things" that I brought into the relationship and a TON of broken promises.  I then married my first husband and learned about addictive behavior and abuse (and how NOT to be codependent) and religious dependency or identity that is fake or shallow at best. My second husband, which I thought would be my "last" is my son's father (some say "sperm donor") from whom I learned all about MALIGNANT NARCISSISM, misogynistic abuse and religious "control".   After healing and soul searching, I returned to my "first love" only to find gratitude in all the lessons that I had learned about myself and abuse through marriages with husbands #1 and #2.  

Thank you for reading and please feel free to SHARE this post with others who are needing to embark on their healing journey of "finding themselves, healing from abuse and learning to dream again". I know it may sound cliche, but it is not. It is not trivial, drivel or trite "sayings"...it is OUR life and we deserve to spend it JUST AS WE WOULD LIKE it to be...

I wish you peace dear one...may this posting find you WELL, HAPPY and WHOLE...

D 

Singing a New Song 

The Quiet Stillness of the Soul

She walks alone...
in the darkest of night, the rising fog swirls at her feet
as the sun peers through the clouds,
casting shadows along the path before her. 

There are times, many times in my life, where I have felt a deep peace, a stillness and quietness in my soul that seemed to pervade all the noise of the environment around me and overtake it. It totally fills my inner self with a great fullness; unlike the fullness of eating a large meal or a filling and overflowing of joy that comes after a family gathering, no, it is not like those at all. It seems that things like this are not usual subjects of conversation or interrogation. It is as though it only exists in the person who experiences it and cannot be brought out in the land of the living as other more common experiences can be.






Maybe the experience of deep inner peace is not so common. The quietness and stillness of the soul is a rare, perhaps even matchless or incomparable to any other human experience and emotional reality. Perhaps this stillness is reserved and even preserved for those who will give it the time and space that it needs to take residence. It is for and only seen by the patient soul; the one who is willing to set aside all the cares of the world and experience this deep inner knowing of peace.

I remember hearing both children as I was growing up and young women as I grew into adulthood complain of loneliness. I never really understood what loneliness was or why it was so aberrantly avoided and even shunned by people who just did not have someone to talk to for a moment. I have had to see that the term loneliness is really preferring to be with others who are not available “leaving us only to ourselves” and I could never understand how that is such a bad thing. How could anyone be lonely if they had themselves to entertain and hold company with? I just don't understand why anyone would not prefer being alone to having to spend time with a boorish uneducated and unimaginative “friend”. Why would I want to be with others when my mind would entertain me with the history and imagination of the ages instead? Sir Edward Dyer wrote a poem called “My mind to me a kingdom is”; the most profound and most celebratory statement for the concept and practice of “aloneness” that I have ever found. I guess that is what being a writer and “dreamer of dreams” is all about. How could I ever get bored or lonely when I have so much going on inside me?

Loneliness and being alone are two separate ideologies. Loneliness must imply a wanting for a specific person; to be in their presence and to experience their being and feeling a deep yearning to be with someone who is not able to be with us for whatever reason. We feel “lonely” for them. We yearn to be with them and in being with them, perhaps we are finding a part of ourselves or even communing with ourselves in the only way that we have learned how up to this point in our lives. I would imagine that loneliness under this definition would bring about great sadness and longing for another. What bothers me most about this concept is that it totally obliterates the sufficiency of the self; the enjoyment of our own uniqueness and the unequivocal imagination of having a real relationship with our “selves”. It is almost “self-denial” in its greatest or lowest form. This is what truly saddens me. Being alone on the other hand may imply the desire to spend time alone; solitude and introspective moments of deep peace and soul searching. Being alone acknowledges the separateness that makes each and every one of us human and special. Being alone affirms me as an individual and as a unique and wonderfully creative and productive person who has many heartfelt wishes and desires and hopes for my life and those whom I love; why would I NOT want to be alone?

When I think of quietness I think of a very undisturbed night where the breeze is tranquil or nonexistent. The birds and crickets are even asleep. They are miraculously stilled and hushed as if a blanket has been spread and the earth is giving vigil to the night. The quietness can be deafening. It is an eerie emptiness that transcends and exceeds our imaginative process of being possible. The quietness almost hurts our ears in its loudness of its presence where some would say that the lack of presence is what causes the quietness; I contend that the quietness overtakes the confusion and noise. 

When I think of stillness I can see a very serene pond or body of water that clearly and gently reflects the sky and all that is around it almost mirror like mockery that is a surreal picture of what does not exist. A paradox. Stillness is the absence of movement. Stillness of a body of water can reflect and reveal so much around it. It makes me wonder if a “still spirit” can do the same thing. Can a person with a “still and quiet spirit” reflect the world off of themselves for others to see? Just as “still waters run deep”, can a “still spirit” be deep with empowering quietness? There is something about the stillness and quietness that demands our respect and attention. Even louder than a scream for help, the stillness of the wind or water commands total honor. We are “stilled” in our tracks and must stop what we are doing and thinking in order to pay obeisance to the quietness; the stillness and the power of control whether it is revealed to us outwardly in nature or less obviously, in the heart of man.

There is much to say about the illusive qualities of quietness and stillness of the soul; but one only has to stop and listen; honor and respect the deep paradoxical full void of the self in its richest and most wonderful expression of life.

It is okay to yearn to be loved

As abuse survivors, we are most often SO hard on OURSELVES. We accept the weaknesses of others, allowing them to say hateful words and showing themselves to be unloving toward us. We are confused and TRY to make arguments that we are blamed for; make sense. We TRY to not do or say those things that seem to set off our loved one. They do not like for us to see them as being emotionally destructive or damaged but in all likelihood, a person who is unloving and SAYS that they love, is at least, self-deceived. We try to figure out "what we did wrong" when actually we are just loving them in our way. We are loving THEM at their worst. We may have learned or hoped that IF we love, we will be loved in return. This is not true with an emotionally damaged person who is abusive to us. They may deny that they have any problem in dealing (or loving) us. They may say that WE are crazy and need to be evaluated. They run from intimacy and fear abandonment but say that we are the ones who starts ALL the fights and we are ALWAYS wrong. These are behaviors that become known as ABUSE.

Listen to your heart

There have been so many times in my live, as I realize now, that I had turned away from hearing what my heart was trying to say to me. I callously responded to the "cry of my heart" with; "that is impossible", "it can't be done". I could not hear or maybe didn't want to hear what my heart really wanted me to know at least not until I realized just how beautifully made it was. It was only then, that I had to listen to what it had to tell me...

I was in my apartment as a "single again" christian woman as I looked at the beautiful Capodimonte red rose blossom that my mom had purchased for me at a gift shop while we were at lunch some months earlier. It was sitting on a table in my apartment. As I stopped and looked at it one day, I took a moment to ponder its beauty and as if I was talking to it, I said "You are so beautiful and crafted with such detail"...I heard God's voice say  to me:

"I love you more than this rose. 

You are MORE beautiful 

and 

I have fashioned the details of your life 

with MORE care than this piece of porcelain. 

You are more precious to me 

and more beautiful 

than ALL the roses in the world".

I cried with huge tears of gratefulness for FEELING so loved that God would "use" a Capodimonte porcelain rose to tell me of "how beautiful and loved" that I really am. I had identified my SELF as a "rose" being that it was my family name, my favorite flower and that I had decorated my first "single again" apartment in a rose motif, this touched my heart deeply. I was SEEN by God and deemed beautiful; my life and heart have been carefully crafted with delicate detail by the Master's hand. I was was beautiful and worthy of love.

My mind went back to the night BEFORE my marriage to my first husband; nearly 3 years after the beginning of the "Dark Ages", the time that G and I spent away from each other. I realized that this man I was about to marry "was not G" and had "not intellectually stimulated me as G. had done". My heart collapsed into despair. Not only was I resigning myself to a life without love but also a life without intellectual stimulation and challenge. A life without G. This would become the darkest day of my life.

As I stood before my rose on that day, I could then "hear my heart"...the heart that had cried out "to be loved" and it was then that I heard my heart say

"I have been loved" 

(line from the book Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte). I knew that I HAVE been loved. I knew that G loved me and that I had BEEN loved by him. I HAD loved this man and felt his love for me and LONGED for it.

A heart that has been abused and unloved finds itself sometimes unworthy of love. Even love that it had known before. Sometimes we need to be reminded that we are all "worthy of love" and it is ONLY then that we will "hear our hearts" and pursue the love that we had known before.