MY VIRTUAL Standing Rock REALITY

THIS POST WAS INSPIRED BY A GROUP COMMITTED TO WATER, JUSTICE & PEACE
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

I am not christian but I could not overlook what appeared to me both inside and outside of the heart.

"The truth & irony is, I'm not sure how I came to be there, as a moderator, on the Standing Rock Protectors PP facebook page but I was in the wolfpack from Aug to Jan. I knew how to listen. How to hold space for a deep well in pain of loss & injustice."

       

Do you see what I saw revealed to me?
Intuitive Painting: paint, randomly. Let dry. Draw out what you see.

Painting is Prayerful. It clears me of emotional clutter so if this is our training then it is the awakening of not only our spirit, but the planets.

Without peace or know how to find it then we're left to spin with whatever chaos has been started. Without knowing it, we open ourselves to becoming a pawn to be used against the minds of others. When we begin pouring out our beautiful & caring hearts, our emotions are being played and drained so I am saying to all who don't know to be aware and to please remember that stress is connected to our central nervous systems, directly influences our immune systems, our moods, our health and the well being of us all. Every energy adds to the whole so don't feed the troll energies. How? Simply by not engaging. I'm not saying disconnect, I am saying detach from noise and find peace. Distract thyself. 

Now that the bloody media light is finally shining a light on broadcasting I can't believe any of it and neither should you. Back in September the rumours began of "provocateurs coming into camp and we saw the e-troll numbers growing among us. It is implied they are pushing ideas, dropping hints, underpinning darkness & creating an atmosphere of ill intent. What this does is plants tiny seeds of doubt in our minds. Then begin the manipulating of truths, distracting attention and worst of all in my opinion, pretending to be allies. Everything gets turned upside down until we begin judging our friends and loved ones. Pitting people against each other is a well known tactic to divide camps from uniting.

The truth is that only the Creator will ever know the truth and we're not to judge. I think the only way through this is to not fully trust our own mind. We have to spend prayerful time getting to know our sacred heartspeak which has been here the whole time and is our partner in this life. Like many people here our Souls are also fighting to be freed from a lifetime of oppression.

Stay Tuned ~ Shine ON! #synergyetc 

HUMILITY

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

After 25 years of studying complementary healing and 10 years of facilitating TRANSFORMATION workshops, I thought I knew what was needed. I thought I knew what it meant to evolve, to grow. But it wasn’t until my husband got sick with esophageal cancer in 2010 that I got hit in the face with a huge plate of humble pie. For all I knew about the topic, I found out quickly that I had a lot to learn about the practical application. “Where the rubber hits the road” was where I was forced to find stable ground in the midst of chaos. It was my openness to change that drove me to my deepest discovery. 

Transformation is a process with 3 stages: 1) The Ending – where my life encouraged me to make drastic changes; 2) The Chaos – where I learned to hold on and trust the process that Grace was offering me at this time; 3) The Beginning – where I found that the best of me had been waiting on the other side. For me, transformation took great strength and courage. In stage 1, I let go of everything in my life that distracted me from spending quality time with my family so that I could love my children through their teen years as an almost single parent and love my husband through his pain. I spent about 5 years in stage 2. Two weeks after his diagnosis he was undergoing a full esophagectomy and nothing prepared us for the aftermath and what it would mean to truly embrace the healing. 

Seeing the changes happening in our attitudes, diets, vices & virtues is only a portion of the experience that transformation brought to us. Watching for the gifts in the chaos, in itself was a powerfully transforming gift. I have only just entered stage 3 where he is 5 years cancer free and returning to work. In every way I trust that although the stages may find us thrown back into chaos, it will be okay. We will continue to love each other through it all and in my heart and mind, that is what transforming is all about. We are blessed to have a second chance, richer because of it, and finding all the layers of love is the greatest treasure.

Inspired by www.passionplanet.org

SINCERITY

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

What a great card to reboot my blogging discipline today. It is a beautiful virtue and quality to find and encourage within everyone. Imagine if every relationship was rooted in sincerity? What a wonderful world it would be! On the contrary, in the last few years I find that I am faced with a complete lack of sincerity from certain people. It is awkward  but since my mission is to lean into the shadows, I don't shy away easily.

There are productive and counterproductive outcomes of being sincere. In my opinion, the initial way to achieving sincerity is being humbly honest with myself. I focus on experiencing the gifts that come, like peace-of-mind and contentment. When my mind is content, I can just be myself. But outside of my comfort-circle of loved ones, how often does it really happen? Many factors contribute to the conditions that allow me to feel safe enough to be sincere. It's a catch 22 especially when my sincerity is compromised by others who reject, or use tactics to manipulate. Of course it influences how I perceive myself and since it's all about fixing me, then I turn away from challenging others to grow. "You can lead a horse to water..." right? 

I once gently wrote to a co-worker and asked her to be more thoughtful and caring in her email interactions. The energy of her emails was more dictator-like and demanding rather than united and cooperative. Rather than practicing responsibility in how she could adjust herself, she chose to retaliate. The mole-hill blew into a mountain of blame and shame shifting. Perhaps I could have overlooked it all but that is not me, I respectfully asked for what I need by trying to point out the harsh and hurtful things. In hindsight, I was not being helpful and it only served to further push buttons. Somehow it turned into a question of my "professionalism", and without debating skills or negotiating tactics, my opinion was muted and I silently retreated. I adjusted my own behaviour and tried to let it slide. Every email that came in the months to follow seemed more curt, rude and insensitive. To focus on my own spiritual work, I tried to put it down to a lesson in my patience. In fact, I swallowed my needs and denied my own sense of sincerity in order to "let it go". 

When we live in any degree of denial, we are not fully accepting the circumstances of our lives. The gift of this state is seeing how I have been living the lie. As a matter of fact, most people I know have convinced themselves that as long as they speak in terms of what they want, that they are entitled to treat others badly while they say they're being sincere. In an earlier blog, I wrote about LOVE and the same theory applies here: we are either working in-line with our hearts desire, or against it. When we deny our own needs, we are working against our hearts desire. Sincerity with oneself is the one place that truly matters most.

FORGIVENESS

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

This virtue hit me like a WHACK upside the head. I have spent the last 30 years thinking that the choice I made to surround myself with people who bring out the best in me was the healthiest one. In reality that choice may have left me quite un-finished. I have truly believed that I had no hidden resentments; no unresolved issues. I believed that my choice to protect myself was enough to equal the karma that forgiving can create. I believed I had nothing to hide from, nothing to deal with and nothing to mend. A few days ago when I picked this card, I discerned how wrong I was. I went into some deep, dark places with the light of forgiveness and I recognized that I have buried some pretty important nuggets. These nuggets are long forgotten and seemingly disregarded but when I reflect on the "climate" of my present life, this light clearly shows me that I have only managed to hide. 

What am I hiding from and how has it compromised my progress? These are the questions I have been focused on over the last 4 days. I have some answers and I still am open to the questions. I believe I have been unknowingly hiding in my belief that if I am not twisted up about an issue, then I must be okay. Wrong! It's called denial folks and it comes as a double edged sword. The immediate result is peaceful but deep down inside, it clouds my eyes, my capacity to believe. I have realized that denial can easily leave me in a false state of calm and regardless of how I rationalize it in my mind, my body is the one who has to manage the stress of the silent emotional hijacking. 

Now 30 years later, I see the problem with burying issues rather than practicing true forgiveness. You see: It is my silence, enveloped by untrue beliefs that manifest what lay in the very depth of my being and where that burden of denial manifests. I at 50, am experiencing a new phase of who I really am. Is this a midlife crisis, like menopause predicts? Today, I wonder if it is more about the need to practice forgiveness in some very specific areas that will allow me to release myself to choose a new path. Time will tell.

RESILIENCE

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

As I travel through the experiences of my life I see the lessons in everything. What jumps right off the page at me when I read the resilience card is "I find comfort in community." I feel truly blessed to have that comfort in The Virtues Project. What a gift it is to be part of a community that respects, loves and is compassionately focused on growth and healing. What freedom this brings to my heart and mind. It enables me to grow and explore the vastness of who I am. In contrast, the alternative creates a way of living in varying degrees of fear and denial. I live on both sides of this spectrum and I wish to encourage the world to consider adopting the family of virtues. 

As an example: awhile back, I mistakenly goofed something up I was responsible for. I held on tightly to worrying (fear based) and brewed about how I could possibly move beyond the mistake, how I could make amends. When fear began to really grip me, I decided to address my mistake and reap the consequences. As I prepared for the disclosure, I was met with giant butterflies, overwhelming anxiety that felt more like a desire to jump off a bridge, and the well-known all consuming dreaded unknown. What happened next was an amazing gift. As I confessed, I was greeted with compassion and curiosity. I was offered olive branches with each loving question that allowed me to delve deeper into the bigger truth. I was encouraged to find the gifts from the experience, embrace the wisdom within myself and allow OUR forgiveness' to make amends. The difference being, I entered the conversation in an exhausted state of self-inflicted anxiety preparing to flee and I left in a state of grace, resilience and openness. 

Every moment from the time I began my confession, I was loved. I was encouraged. I was honoured. I was gently and carefully taken (by my beautiful community) to the edge of reality and allowed to look beyond the entrapment of guilt, remorse and blame. I am encouraged to accept the gifts from the experience and set a course for the future. This awareness however comes as a double edged sword. Now I am increasingly aware of the actions of others in my life who do not subscribe to this "way of being." Today I am calling on courage to embrace resilience and the faith I need to face the experiences that appear, in contrast, like attacks.

LOVE

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

When John Lennon sang, "All we need is love." did he know how close to the truth he was? Or was he simply singing lyrics that were true to his heart at the time? Well my friends, Love is really what we truly need. Love is within us and love is around us. We can reject it, we can embrace it, we can grow in its presence and we can shrink from the lack of it. Love is perfect in it's design. It can be pregnant and empty. It's ethereal, in that it is not something you can touch or hold, it is subtle and intangible. It is pure and Heavenly but yet it can be Hell. We can hunger for it and consequently, be broken by it. We can move in and through love like miners, carefully inspecting, cracking open and pushing our way through the substance in order to determine it's purity, it's rarity, it's worth. Even then, we move from place to place not really knowing what we are searching for. Our hearts know though, don't they? Our heart knows when true love is present, or not. The heart knows. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, "You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience." I believe that if we pare a human down to the very essence, love will be all there is to measure. 

What is life for but to collect and distribute love through the maze that we call living? I believe that nothing else matters. We humans have created a whole system of distractions that can keep us so focused on the day to day dealings that we have little time to focus on love. Even though our hearts can become stressed through the haste & noisy confusion of just living - don't lose hope. We live in very exciting times and man is on the frontier of understanding how & why stress can rob us of our life, our health, our happiness. We're on the cutting edge of awareness & the theory that stress is caused when our heart goes against what LOVE wants us to do, or when we are faced with situations that are not (from love). Medical science knows that stress compromises our autonomic and central nervous systems, which powers our immune system, which can manifest imbalances in our body, and that means different problems for different people. 

At my job in a long term care facility, I have many conversations with residents about the measure of a man and what is really important. At the end of their days this question may be all that they want to reflect upon, or it may be what haunts them. It is a true & rare gift of the heart to realize the value of this message early. To die knowing the depth of our love and the positive effect of touching others love is a lesson I choose to carry with me every minute of every day. How I love is all that matters. The relationships I choose provide a stage for the lessons which I must love through. The issues in life that challenge and empower, serve me to acquire the ultimate lesson - which is about the whole process of loving each other and myself through the peaks and valleys of everyday living. A wise old man once told me, "When you get to the end of your life, it's not your social status, your job or what you acquired that matters -- it's how you moved through pain." When we trust, share and openly express the love we have for ourselves and one-another, we can face and move through anything. 

It's all about the love!

CHEERFULNESS

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

Recently I spent time with some wonderful women from the First Nations community and I heard that "women hold the emotional centre" in the family. I have considered this concept in relation to my own family and wonder, how long can I be the emotional barometer? How do I reflect the conditions of this dynamic? If I am the only one who sees a problem, where does that leave me? Well, it's not cheerfulness that I am reflecting that much I know, and I feel like I've been in a holding pattern. So, when this card picked me this morning, I even felt cheerful.

"What a great way to start my day", I thought. I relate and respond well to cheerfulness. Through-out my adult life I was chronically optimistic and cheerful which became a character trait that people admired in me. Now, at the turn of the half-century, I feel I am more at the opposite end of the spectrum. And now facing this page and the virtue of cheerfulness, I am truly haunted by the shadows and all of the barriers to cheerfulness that life has thrown my way. So, in considering the wisdom of the card, I ask myself, "What is on the bright side of my life?", "what does cheerfulness look like from my vantage point?" Reading what Cheerfulness means generates a mindfulness: to call upon the strength I need to look beyond the shadows; and it calls me to trust the process. 

This is a perfect pick for me today because as you may sense I am wrestling with my past, present and future. So what happened to switch my optimistic cheerfulness off? And more importantly, how do I turn it back on? The question, "How can I just get on with being cheerful?" makes me suddenly aware of how difficult it is to 'put on a brave face' in the company of cheerful people. I am truly grateful for this understanding as it serves as a mirror that reflects to me how un-cheerful I can be. That's a tough nugget to swallow in a modern world where the majority of folks face "unhappiness" issues with a prescription that perhaps helps them deal with the symptoms. For me, that solution is not an option. I just want to shine the light on what's lurking in the shadows and then either clear-up the path or create a new one. I look forward to expressing more cheerfulness in my life and in this blog. So for today, I begin a promise to bring cheerfulness into my life by doing something just for me; I will mindfully move around those shadows and honour my commitments; I will give service to do a simple task to make life easier for someone else and I will pray for joy!

STEADFASTNESS

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

In considering the list above I realize that I am doing a lot to support Steadfastness in my life. I'm not saying I am perfect or there isn't room for improvement, I'm saying it wasn't until I saw "I don't allow doubts or tests to blow me off course" that I recognized a place to really grow. The rest of the points I feel for the most part, I have a handle on. I am mindful about what I say yes to and I often say no when the task is not on my path; I remain true to my purpose which is at this point figuring out exactly what my purpose is, then making a plan and going for it; I pace myself with time to work, garden, rest, play, time for myself and time with family and friends. I am faithful to my relationships by being actively involved in cultivating the best for all; I take what comes and I persevere. Where I see a need for growth is in not allowing tests and doubts to blow me off course. This has been a recent challenge for me that I am aware of and working on. 

I have been reviewing my life-history in order to uncover any harmful beliefs I may have taken-on in my life and I found a couple of doozies. Let me talk about one in particular and make it clear that I hold no fault in my mother who was party to what may be the root of them all. I have a distinct recollection of being 2 or 3 years old, standing at my bedroom window, watching my mom driving away and crying my eyes out. My frame of mind was in panic and despair, my heart was breaking and my imagination was feeding me completely wrong information. You see in those moments, night after night I cried my eyes out watching my mother leave for work, believing she was leaving me. Over and over I knew in my heart that I would NEVER see her again. Through the rationale of my impressionable mind, I believed it and nothing, not even seeing her in the morning, would convince me otherwise. Day after day I would repeat this experience and although I don't know how long I carried on, it was long enough to leave a lasting impression. I recall being absolutely amazed that the depth of my love and my pain was not enough to turn her car around. I remember imagining that if she could see me and hear the pain in my cries, that I could bring her back to me. I saw her look up at me standing in the window... I thought she must have heard me, her window was down. She smiled and waved and drove away. This sealed the deal and I remember my knees going week and dropping in a heap on the floor -- I implanted the idea within myself that I was not important enough. 

The science of neuroplasticity is showing us that the "beliefs" we acquire (consciously and unconsciously) can lay claim in our hearts and act as the under-tone of what we consciously believe. Up until recently I had forgotten this experience and what is simply amazing to me is that my 2 year old irrational logic got trapped in the trauma and wrapped with all the sights, sounds and smells, reinforcing my beliefs of the experience. Our body remembers too.

So our beliefs are steadfast in nature too and designed to trigger our survival instincts. Whether true or untrue, they serve as the underpinning of who we really are. So, I have journeyed into the shadow here and discovered this untrue belief about myself and through steadfastness, I trust I will also find my way out of this place.

HONESTY

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

In light of my renewed commitment to blog every day, this card could not be more relevant. What purpose would it serve to be anything but honest at this time in my life? The reason I want to blog is two-fold: I want to condition myself to really see what's true and right in my world through the lens of virtues in action, and to hone in on what's not right; and I also want to explore how healing can happen from the inside, out. If I really admit it to myself, honestly, I am searching for the truth about who I really am. Discerning myself through the lens of this virtue helps me to see what the root of truth is... it begins with honesty. Truth to me is all about being honest with myself so that I can see through "unclouded eyes". I love that description... it feels so true. In thinking about times I have told a lie or embellished a story I can identify how difficult it is to actually look someone in the eye. It's harder still to pretend to be something or someone I'm not, without that mis-truth cloaking the true me. It's like having an invisible wet blanket thrown on, it clouds my eyes.

We begin life with our honesty muscles fully intact and we all know that children can be brutally honest. As we grow, we learn how and why to twist the truth to serve us. We see it happening all around us; we hear it from those we trust the most and it makes the 'little white lies' okay to tell. It is even used to describe some roles of authority. Did you believe the message, "if it doesn't hurt anyone..."? I grew up knowing that a lack of honesty, hurts me and everyone around me... but I am not going to delve into that. What I want to focus on is the upside of honesty. Being honest with myself is the first and most important step in my healing journey. It is also the trickiest because I have this other side of me that continuously lurks in the shadows waiting for opportunities to tell me it's okay to bend THAT truth, or it's better NOT to tell the whole story in this situation. Right? Right!

It is like the little red-guy sits on my shoulder throwing out the baited lines which can easily get camouflaged within all the other thoughts that flood in at any given moment. I have been hooked before but I am learning to tell the difference and that trickster may not know that I am on a mission of truth and honesty. My trickster lives in all the past lies that remain in the recesses of my heart and while I won't be displaying them for all the world to see, I must go on a truth fast in order to purify my eyes. Being honest will facilitate that process. I hear: "the truth will set you free." and I know it is time for me to "gently let them go." I finally GET that I am worth it. I really lost me over the years of lying to myself about my weight, my happiness, my health, my purpose here on earth. Now let me be clear and honest, I have a great life it's just my love for myself has been compromised as a result and the UN-true messages that I have told myself for the past half-century and I have fortified that suffering. So, with you as my witness, I am on a mission to bring my truest self back home to me -- honestly.


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