PTSD

Feels like all humans suffer on some level from PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.   I'm not talking about the sort of  PTSD caused by horrific events such as war or unimaginable personal tragedy, but the PTSD caused by events throughout our lives which leave damaging marks, but which we either aren't aware of or shrink away from.

Am a long-time acquaintance with PTSD, although we only started calling it that recently.  For most of my life, I tried to set it right by focusing all of my attention & energy on the very things that had inflicted the damage in the first place.  The fact is that nothing I do can "set it right."  But i can realize that focusing on it makes it worse, not better.  Can't fix it, can't deny it happened - what can I, or anyone, do?  By moving past it, by focusing attention & energy on the things that promote wholeness & healing, that result in joy!

Still, it helps to acknowledging that my entire family suffered from PTSD.  Ian, the 2nd youngest in the family, was killed when he was 11, shot during play at a friend's house.  If that doesn't qualify as trauma, not sure what would.

No idea the individual traumas different members of my family went through over their lifetimes, but I know they did.  I know of some damaging blows my parents were dealt, both as individuals - from childhood through elder years - and as a couple, but am clueless about most of the others.  I know some of my own, including the devastation of being emotionally abused & not having parents who could acknowledge let alone address it.  Praise be I had the grace of seeing it for what it was, instead of turning it against myself.  Pretty amazed by that kid & young adult.

And my present to that kid & young adult, the ones who managed to stay on relatively even keel even while braving uncharted, turbulent seas of every sort of upheaval, is to take my own advice.  To focus my attention & energies on all the things that will promote my personal sense of wholeness, of health, of fitness of every kind.  Beginning with increasing my focus on mindfulness practices.

Look at that last sentence for a moment.  Let it sink in.  Recognize what a HUGE step forward it represents.  Not, "Start increasing my focus..."  It says, correctly, "Beginning with increasing my focus on mindfulness practices."  I've already started, a first step that was DECADES in the making.  And I did it.

It's true that some part of me will always be at risk of being unhinged by PTSD.  Frankly, I had some truly horrific things happen in my life.  It's the rare person who hasn't.  So, being wounded makes me part of the greater human race, not a scarred, scared aberration.  And each of us who reaches a greater sense of wholeness makes it easier for everyone else to do the same.  

Life isn't about finding a place in any given group or community, in any sort of relationship with others or self, but about finding a sense of peace within it.  What better way to address & move beyond, with all the lessons it taught, the PTSD in my life!!

Different Versions

On Friday, I wrote about the reality that people aren't problems, situations are.


On Saturday, I heard Norman Lear mention a phrase that speaks to him - Just a different version of you.  


Almost pulled the car over to the side of the road to cheer with joy.  He spoke a truth I've known all of my life.  I am a different version of everyone around me.  


I've always known that and I've always gotten strange looks & people inching away from me whenever something I said sort of touched on it.


Maybe that's what was so different about John, from the first moment of our "He is mine/she is mine" meeting.  He got it, because he knew it, too.  Explains how, with all the friction & unhappiness caused by family dynamics, he's never ever criticized my sibs - how could he, why would he?  They're just different versions of us.  

I am SAM, Sam I AM

Quantum Leap  - a tv show - helped turn my life around.  It connected me with my inner Sam Becket.  And the final episode -  Mirror Mirror - basically sums up everything I've learned about life.

• We are responsible for our decisions, even the ones that seem the most distant from what we claim to our listening selves that we want.
• Life is paradox.  Live it with a smile & a kind word.
• You might not end up where you think you would or should, but it will be the right place.  Even if you never go home again.
• Believe deeply, but hold the reins lightly.

I am Sam, Sam I am - so are we all!!

GIANTS in the Land

Gee, I can relate to the scouts who checked out Canaan, reporting back to the Israelites how they'd found a land flowing with milk & honey - but there were giants in the land.  "They are of great size;  we looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes.  And they saw it, too."

How familiar that feels - I have seen my life's purpose & it is as every bit as wonderful as I could have hoped it would be.  But there are giants in the land, challenges too big for little itty bitty me to conquer.  It's easy to miss the old days, when I was aware that I wasn't where I wanted to be, but at least had the full comfort of the familiar, the known.  

Joshua & Caleb told the people, "The Lord is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, and give it to us.  Only do not rebel against the Lord.  And do not be afraid of the people of the land - the Lord is with us."  

But the people wanted to go back to where they'd been, back to the flesh pots & comfortable servitude of Egypt.  And the Lord was NOT happy.  He pledged that none who had grumbled against him would enter Canaan, that everyone 20 years or older would fall in the wilderness, Caleb only, and Joshua, being spared to lead the new generation to take what had been promised.  Not even Moses, who would die in sight of it, but never cross over Jordan.

Of course, once the Lord said they couldn't enter Canaan, it was the one thing they wanted to do!  Humans are soooo perverse.  Moses warned them that God was not with them, but over they went anyway - and were soundly defeated.  The Lord was not with them.  

Am I going to be Caleb & Joshua, or one of those who died in the wilderness having seen the Promised Land but turned away from all it offered rather than believe something new & unfamiliar yet true, or Moses, who saw  his people cross over Jordan into Canaan but could only watch, not be one of them?   

Every day, every moment, it's my choice.  

The life's work I've been shown is filled with every professional & personal blessing I could hope for - fulfillment, work that matters & makes a significant difference, that provides an excellent immediate income & which can be built into additional income streams.  It is, indeed, a promise flowing with milk & honey. 

It's human nature to feel like the challenges are overwhelming.  First & foremost, I have to get past my old self.  I have to believe in something bigger than I am, in something that believes in my ability to move forward, to cross the Jordan & enter the new land.  It feels unfamiliar, uncomfortable, alarming, in spite of the excellent reports of everything waiting for me.  

I've had my laptop for over 5 months.  I've never used it, not once.  It's not laziness, not self-sabotage.  It's fear of the unknown, which makes no sense yet is such a powerful deterrent to claiming my birth right.  

Be Caleb, be Joshua.  Get over it.  Seriously.  Know that the Lord is with me & cross over Jordan.  There will be challenges, there will be difficulties & things will rise up to strike me down.  Know that All That Is stands with me, believes in ME.  That is everything.  

Joshua provides the words of counsel I need most ~ "Fear not, nor be dismayed; be strong & of good courage."  

One of the most stunning, downright shocking things I've realized over the years is that I don't have the option to NOT make a choice - can't be done.  Even inaction is a choice.  

Again, Joshua has the words to face what feels like giants waiting to squish my dreams, my aspirations, keeping me rooted on the opposite side of my best life ~ "But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."

.  

Dual to the Death

Awoke with the realization that most - maybe from the very first word I could understand - if not all of my life has been done dirt by dualism.  Sensing/seeing one thing being done, while being told in no uncertain WORDS that what I was seeing/feeling simply wasn't so.  

Guess that's why it meant the world to me when my father held me to my own words, that I didn't care if I went out on Halloween or not, because he was honoring what I said, however rash & snotty it was.  Sure, it felt beyond rotten to miss trick or treating, but it also felt somehow welcome that someone expected my word & deed to be one & the same.  

My church reinforced the sense of dualism I experienced at home, albeit in a different way.  LOVE and WISDOM, GOOD and TRUTH were emphasized time & again, but I don't recall any special emphasis being placed & repeated on the actual end of a genuinely spiritual life  - drawing them together into a unique whole.  Oh, it was mentioned, but it still feels to me like the terms, rather than the concepts, were depicted as primary.

The life of faith is one of natural activity, rather than vocabulary.  It is learning enough about how best to help & heal ourselves & others that we can let go of the lessons & simply let it work through us.  The way that leads to heaven has nothing to do with living life IN ORDER to be with the Divine to eternity, but to - without thought of recompense - avoid doing things that harm & do things that help & heal.  

What an appropriate day - the 19th of June, New Church Day - to ponder how the church flag shouldn't be half red, half white, but all pink.  To ponder how spiritually deadly it is to think in staunchly dual terms, rather than from a core of conjunction.  

It's said that a true Zen master has learned all there is to know, then - having learned it - forgets it and just goes about living.  Makes sense to me.  Like typing, where it took me weeks, months to learn enough about where the keys were, which fingers to use, to type without looking.  If I'd stayed in the "dual" mode of information & mechanics, would still be hunting & pecking.  Or as Breton Blair said all those years ago in his Oratorical Contest (now "Event") presentation, we need to know when we've nailed our lines, mastered our blocking, then letting go & just let whatever it is roll out.  

Because if we hold onto all the dualism that wants to intrude into our lives, we'll end up dualed to spiritual death.

Consistency

So easy to write, so challenging to do.  But then - I'm beginning to get jazzed up at the thought of challenges!