A Jewel in the Clutter

I've been de-cluttering lately just because it feels so good to give away all our "extra stuff".  It used to feel like I was 'breaking up' with my stuff and it was hard to do...

 Click for song about breaking up
Above is a photo copied from the web (not my house), but sometimes it FEELS like I have this much clutter and a strong desire to just let it go.  I give this stuff to friends, family and charities.  It feels quite liberating; like a metaphor for letting go of the old and familiar and making room for the new, unfamiliar and unknown. This has been a fairly non-traumatic way to help myself 'step out of my comfort zone' in other areas of my life.  I don't know how it works, but it does.

Now, about that jewel I found.  It's a journal I was using in late 2008 when I received my second Stage IV diagnosis. This was after 7 years of total remission with the aid of an anti-estrogen drug, Arimidex.  It was quite a shock for me.  I just randomly opened the journal and am going to quote what I wrote at that time...

I've been wondering where the line is between denial and focusing only on what I really do want...NOT focusing on what I don't want.  I need to focus my attention and energy on promoting the health of this body and on promoting my new business (I had just opened my yoga studio). Focus on the good healing work I can do, NOT on things that happened in the past. I forgive myself and others for any hurt, whether intentional or unintentional, I caused to myself or others and any hurt they caused me. I am willing to let go of the patterns in me that created all that pain I have chosen to feel.  I am NOT a victim any longer. I am responsible for myself and everything that happens to me. I am choosing to respond with love and self-forgiveness. I am choosing life, prosperity, abundance, freedom and radiant, perfect health. I choose joy and light in every moment, every thought, word and action. I choose joy, love, compassion, understanding, forgiveness and light. I choose to rise above my circumstances and not allow them to weigh me down. I choose to dis-identify with this body and to understand and KNOW WHO I AM. I am Source energy - I am Spirit - I am Light - I am that - I am all that is.  I open the channel for communication from my soul and spirit to my personality - opening to soul-infusion. I have a soul-infused personality. My personality serves the will of my soul and the Divine. 

I have a mind, but I am not my mind. I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I have a personality, but I am not my personality. My personality is a perfect reflection of who I really am - and who I really want to be. I AM a teacher and a healer. I provide services that no one else can provide - in a way no one else does - I joyfully manifest the power of God.

Here is an excellent book on the topic of de-cluttering...
Click here for Amazon Link

Forgiveness-updated 5/31/13

addition on May 31, 2013...
Food for thought. New idea about forgiveness...if love is unconditional, there is NO JUDGMENT; therefore, there is no need for forgiveness.  As an act of loving acceptance, if we can let go of the judgment of the other person (or self), we can break out of the prison on UNforgiveness.

In forgiving, we are choosing to let go of:
* the judgment we have been holding onto
* the pain we have been inflicting on ourselves by feeling angry, hurt and/or victimized

* the indignation, guilt, embarrassment, helplessness, victim-consciousness, shame, or any other feelings  we may have buried under our 'righteous anger'
* holding someone else (or self) responsible for our own pain

IMAGINE:  If we all loved everyone unconditionally (including ourselves), the word forgiveness would not be in our vocabulary. :)

FORGIVENESS has been one of my major life lessons.  I've had this tendency to hold on to my wounds, or hurt feelings.   It seems that each time my can-can "came back", I was working on forgiving someone that was challenging me.  The first, and worst, was my mother.  I had been angry with her for as long as I could remember.

Click to enjoy Linda Ronstadt's HURT SO BAD on youtube

My mother offered me the opportunity to learn how to forgive when forgiveness seemed impossible. What helped me to learn it was actually based on some logical arguments. I was very much into my thinking in those days, 11 years ago. My can-can had metastacized and I was having a serious heart health issue (from chemo 4 years prior - or some other reason.)

* BELIEF: I believed that my lifelong negative feelings for my mother, as well as all the other negative feelings I totally repressed, were the root cause of my can-can

* DO IT FOR MYSELF: I heard someone say that forgiveness is for the benefit of the forgiver. It is a "decision to let go of the pain you are causing yourself" This made total logical sense to me.

* FEAR: (which I thought was a good motivator for me at the time) I feared that NOT forgiving her would surely result in my death - the anger and resentment I held in my heart would fuel the can-can, which was already threatening to kill me.

* KARMA: If she was the perpetrator and I was the victim in this lifetime, then chances were pretty good that our roles were reversed in another lifetime/dimension/reality

* GRATITUDE:  I began to feel grateful for recognizing that this was an opportunity for my spiritual growth

* BELIEF: I had built a brick wall around my heart and this was the key/sledge-hammer to knocking it down. My UNforgiveness had affected every relationship in my life and I had a strong desire to experience/feel unconditional love. Still, the logical approach to a heart issue.

* COMPASSION: I believe that everyone does the best they can possibly do in any given situation.  She made a lot of mistakes and that was still her very best.  She just didn't know any better.  Also, seeing her as a delicate-looking, fragile elderly woman dealing with a difficult life-situation made compassion come more easily.

I went into remission at this point (for 7 years) and thought that I had it all figured out.  On two occasions after that, I got stuck in a place of unforgiveness and more can-can appeared.  Thinking I had already learned this lesson, part of me was mad at the Universe for encountering it (state of UNforgiveness, obsessing over hurt feelings) again.  Forgiveness was still difficult for me, but I've learned to get rid of obsessive thoughts.

I now believe that LOVE is the answer/cure/resolution to everything as it is the very essence of everything.  Self-love is of primary importance and can eliminate the need for forgiveness.  With self-love, we tend to NOT take things personally.  We can look at the other person as a mirror with a message about ourselves.

Click to enjoy LOVE IS THE ANSWER on youtube

A Message To My Body

I know that this body is the vehicle my Self has chosen for her journey through this physical lifetime. Along with my recently realized need to love myself, accepting all of me, including my quirks and imperfections, I had been thinking in terms of my personality-self.  I did not include you, Dear Body, because I have found it very difficult to love you. I was taught as a young person that the body is the "temple of the Holy Spirit", so the Holy Spirit must be my Higher Self - the part of me that is a spark of the Divine. I've already talked to the cells inside of me, now I need to make peace with my body.  That's right, make peace.

While reading, feel free to click here to listen to JOHN LENNON'S GIVE PEACE A CHANCE  on youtube.

Dear Body-of-Mine,

I know that you were under a lot of stress for many years and that you spent lots of your precious energy keeping my emotions in check. You became very skilled as I insisted that you store and repress my emotions and memories, to hide them in your tissues, far away from my awareness so that I could behave well for others, always seeking to make them happy without any concern for myself. 

I did notice that you seemed to have difficulty holding on sometimes when I was experiencing PMS. There must be something about PMS energy that made it very difficult for you to keep holding down those emotions and they sometimes burst out in the form of anger, fury or rage. I have already given you permission to release those emotions and memories and have observed them exiting in many floods of tears over the past year or so. Thank you, dear body, I am feeling much lighter now.

Honestly, I felt betrayed by you, dear body - wounded and bleeding, first a victim of life, then a victim of a dreaded disease - again and again and again and again. I demanded that you endure the pain of countless mutilations, invasions, toxic chemicals, needles, radiation treatments, and medical tests, all mixed together with embarrassment, guilt, sorrow, blame, anger and fear. Part of me felt like I/you somehow deserved to suffer. I believed that:

LIVING MEANS SUFFERING, 

LOVING MEANS SACRIFICING  and

the more you're willing to sacrifice, the more loving you are

I learned as a child that Christian martyrs were the best kind of saints because they were willing to sacrifice their lives for a cause/God they believed in. And, they died the most gruesome deaths - with torture, eaten by lions, stoned, burned, hanged, crucified, tongues and eyes cut out - like a modern day horror movie. I was taught that the willingness to sacrifice one's life was the greatest act of love possible. I sometimes wonder if I am living that belief - die a gruesome death and God will be pleased with me??? yikes!!! I am choosing to let go of any beliefs that are in alignment with that one.

I had forgotten who I really was for many years, but can-can encouraged me to come back to my spirit, come back to God, but I did not come to a place of love for you, my dear body.  I took you for granted.  I expected you to heal, to bounce back, to endure all kinds of torture, to stop causing me so much trouble, to give me a freaking break! I felt like you teased me with two long-term remissions.  I said to you, "So, you DO know how to heal.  You proved it twice already. Why don't you do it NOW? What's WRONG with you, body? Why are you f**king with me?  I hate you - you don't deserve to be loved. Why don't you function perfectly when I don't love and nurture you?" 

I needed someone/someTHING to blame, so I blamed you for my unhappiness, for my can-can. I am a good person, so YOU must be the problem. I wanted you to just go away and leave me alone. What does it mean when you say that to your body? Go away and leave me alone? Is that a death wish? Perhaps it is. Okay, cancel that.  Take it back. I want you to be with me for a very long time, body, so I promise to take better care of you, to treat you with love (gosh, can I really do that?) I don't feel like my body is beautiful or lovable. It is my SLAVE and it will do exactly what I want it to do, because I AM THE BOSS! I AM IN CONTROL! What a ruse I have played on myself! One of the great can-can lessons is that I have NO CONTROL WHATSOEVER.

I know that I asked you, Dear Body, to work overtime and wouldn't let you rest when you were crying out for it. I know you've never felt truly loved, appreciated or cherished; mostly ignored, despised or simply tolerated. I am truly sorry I didn't honor you when you made your simple needs for rest, nutrition, hydration and PEACE known to me. Instead, I filled you with sugar, adrenalin, cortisol, judgment and criticism. I worked you well beyond the state of exhaustion and then insisted that you give even more when you had no more to give.  I wanted to LOOK GOOD in the eyes of others. I just kept pushing and pushing, expecting your top performance. I know you felt like you were alone, as if you weren't part of the larger whole, the oneness of my being - body, mind and spirit. I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I could demonstrate to the world that it's possible to fully recover from this terminal diagnosis by becoming a better person, by letting go of limiting beliefs, by practicing healing techniques, specialized diets, and a whole bunch of complementary therapies.

Dear Body, I never thought to fill you with the energy of Divine Healing Love and I did not appreciate all you have done for me. I have judged you and found you to be weak, ugly and a betrayer.  Because of you, body, I have had to walk around with a mostly-bald head, no eyelashes or eyebrows (but a few chin-whiskers), only one breast, an extremely weak upper-body, no estrogen, poor memory, watery eyes, bad teeth, difficult veins, and difficulty walking in a straight line.

IT'S TIME FOR A CHANGE.....BIG TIME...click this for an appropopriate song on youtube.........TIME FOR A COOL CHANGE

Now I  know that LOVE HEALS.  Love is ALL THAT IS.  LOVE is the answer to every question.  LOVE is the solution to every problem.  And, as the Beatles liked to say, "ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE".  That is one of the great truths of the Universe. The primary "stuff" of the Universe is LOVE, sweet LOVE.

 Click here to play that Beatles Song on Youtube.

I now promise to love you, Dear Body, with all of my heart, with all of my being, with appreciation and gratitude, with gentleness and grace.  With great love for you....and me.

Self-Love

I have come to believe that self-love is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to the process of healing. All other love grows from self-love. Without self-love, there is little motivation to heal, there is no impelling Will to Live.

Anita Moorjani (DYING TO BE ME), Louise Hay (YOU CAN HEAL YOUR LIFE), Barbra White (MAGNIFICENT YOU) and others have written about the importance of self-love, especially in healing. It can feel like an impossible task if the idea is foreign to you. I'm speaking from my own experience. I read about it years ago, I included it in presentations and in advising healing clients. I could not stress to them enough the magnitude of the importance of self-love. I facilitated a journaling group for a few years and we would always have the 'homework' of performing at least one act of loving self-care per week (and reporting back to the group). I started talking about (and even journaling about) self-love 16 years ago. I understood from a logical/mental standpoint that self-love was essential to healing; yet, somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought "It's okay. I can skip that part. It's not THAT important."  I could not have been more wrong!!!

I read Anita Moorjani's book the same week I watched Wayne Dyer on Oprah and I remember him saying something like "I am God. We all are. We DESERVE self-love." Those two events made the light bulb finally turn on - I really DO need to love myself if I expect to heal through this cancer experience. 

I started by opening my heart to everyone I knew and everyone I saw. I talked of love to myself in the mirror (I could never do this before). I gave suggestions of self-love in all my guided imagery sessions. Guided imagery, even when I'm the guide, is the best meditation I've ever experienced. I read Barbra White's MAGNIFICENT YOU and that really helped me to understand that it IS possible to love oneself. And, I experienced Self-Acceptance Healing with Barbra White. I had judged myself very harshly and believed that I did not deserve to be loved - by anyone, especially not by myself. I had no idea what love really feels like. LOVE is amazing and magical. LOVE is everyone and everything - and I am part of that. I AM love. We all are love. Wayne Dyer says there is a spark of the Divine in each of us.  We are at once totally Divine and totally human. The Divine part is who we REALLY are.  The human part is pretty much an illusion we have created to exist in the physical dimension.

Click here to experience a wonderful 3-minute experience in feeling loved.  It's a video called "A Love Letter to You From the Universe"  by Gisele Frederich.

Self-love is about allowing myself to be who I really am - the Universe currently expressing itself as a human being (I think Wayne Dyer said that). It's about accepting that I am also human with all my human eccentricities, imperfections and emotions - both negative and positive - with an attitude of compassion and love in place of judgment and criticism. It's about making sure that my needs are fulfilled, that my voice is heard, that I communicate my truth from my heart and that I AM LOVE in thought, word and action.  It's about "giving myself a break" from the stress of always striving for perfection. It's about believing that I am lovable just because I exist (thank you, Anita Moorjani). 

Self-love is about loving myself the way I would love my own child. I remember when my daughter, Erin, was little, and I had said something like, "I will always love you, no matter what."  She asked if I would still love her if she was mean to me.  I said, "yes".  Then, she asked if I would still love her if she was punching me and I again replied in the affirmative. Then she asked if I would still love her if she was stabbing me with a knife, trying to kill me.  After some thought, I realized that the answer was yes. That's what "no matter what" means.  I certainly wouldn't be happy or enjoy it, but I would still love her.  This is the kind of love I am giving to myself and it has totally changed who I am.

Here is a challenge for you: write in your journal (or just make a plan for) what you will do for yourself today or tomorrow that is an act of loving self-care, a demonstration of self-love. It's a great way to start on the path to totally unconditional self-love. With much love from my heart to yours ♥ Mellifluous Mega-Magnificent Maggie McDee ♥