And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
REFLECTIONS
I am in a quiet place…at a loss for words. Or maybe I’ve used up my word allotment for this month! I feel as though I have to give some time to adjust to the shift that is occurring within my core. The internal driver that has raised me from the bed each day, for decades, has fizzled out. Some new source of power, a new sense of spirit, is coming to life.
During my road trip on March 17th and 18th, from Vancouver Island, through the Canadian Rockies, to Calgary, I had 12 hours to be silent. I scaled 2 mountain passes, and kept just ahead of the snowstorms. During this drive, I came to the realization that I no longer felt disappointed or dissatisfied in my life. I no longer felt lost, lonely or afraid. For the first time, I feel a part of my world, not apart from it and everyone.
Double Rainbow in Tsawwassen
Eagle in Boundary Bay
Off Kilter
Driving with the Truckers
Being in alignment with my soul and therefore the Unified Field/Cosmic Consciousness, I have purpose. I don’t feel I am marking time until my life REALLY begins or marking time until I die. My life is satisfying now, because I feel aligned with my soul, spirit and the Universe. The tricky part is trying to describe the experiential difference between living life in alignment with Cosmic Consciousness and living life from the material realm, the mind, alone. To an observer, I would seem exactly the same, doing similar activities….but if you could enter my experiential self, you too would be left speechless. Before I bid you adieux today, I will leave one example.
“Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question– ‘Is this all?” ― Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
When I read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, in the ’80s, I believed the road to happiness lay in balancing family and career…having it all. But ‘having it all’ felt as hollow as having nothing. I am only beginning to realize that the structures I imposed on myself, missed one essential ingredient…my heartfelt self. This is The Other Woman I have been searching for!
This is a picture of me, in my new life as The Other Woman, ready for take-off!
Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.
-Barbara De Angelis
REFLECTIONS
For decades I have been living a prosperous life…
Yesterday, I spent 10 hours writing 800 more words, which you will never read because I just deleted all but the above sentence without reading a word of it. 10 hours of writing, and I never once got into that place of bliss, the writer’s groove. Horribly frustrated I gave up writing at 8pm and escaped to a movie. In the previous 35 posts, I have never had this happen. Usually I get my premise together on Sundays and then on Mondays I edit, add photos and colours, hoping to ‘publish’ by 3pm. But not this week…UH-UH no way…there may not be a post at all…certainly not what I wrote yesterday…Select all, then hit Delete and poof! 800 words vanish into a cyber graveyard, where all bad writing spends eternity.
Cyber Graveyard
Today, Monday March 11, began with me waking up knowing I had to face the crap I wrote yesterday. Stalling, I drank 2 cups of coffee and then finished watching last evenings’s movie. By 8:30, I decided to ‘face the music’. I opened my WordPress Blog and began to re-read yesterday’s schlock!
Prosperous VS Preposterous
And it happened again, same as yesterday… each time I read the opening line …’For decades I have been living aprosperouslife’… I read instead…’For decades I have been living a preposterous life!’
Yesterday, I thought this constant error was due to momentary verbal dyslexia, but today, even with a freshly caffeinated brain, I made the same slip of the tongue. I read no further, but deleted everything else, without reading a word. I sat with that one sentence and decided to commune with God…my Higher Self… Cosmic Consciousness(I haven’t settled on a name).
“Okay God…what’s with the Freudian Slip? Huh? Why do I keep reading preposterous instead of prosperous?? What is my lesson this time?” And then it happened, a beauteous ‘aha’ moment…an ecstatic experience delivered upon me in a state of grace.
Ego Experiences Pain When Soul feels Bliss
I was humbled and brought to my knees yet again, as I acknowledged and surrendered to a force greater than my will. My EGO consciousness wanted to write about my prosperous life, while my COSMIC consciousness wanted me to acknowledge how preposterous my prosperous life had been…I spent 10 hours battling between these 2 forces yesterday. I love the above image of the hand. Bliss is juxtaposed with barbed wire, illustrating my experience. I got to a state of grace through the crucible of psychic pain.
My ego driven ‘self’ had a plan. I just put my mind to it. I yanked each and every word by the ear and demanded it stand exactly where I placed it. I closed my ears to any complaints of over-use or misuse and refused to acknowledge feelings of being misunderstood. I was writing about the most important of subjects, my burgeoning spirituality… and I had a deadline, so there would be no breaks. There would be no walk on the lovely beach in the warm sunlight with my friends – until my work was done.
Yesterday’s Writing
This writing experience is analogous to my entire approach to spirituality. Yesterday, as I was DOING my Blog on Spirituality, I got stuck in the pomposity of my words. I needed someone or something to break the stalemate I was experiencing in my writing. Enter the Cosmic Trickster. He kept introducing an energy that was the opposite of my self-righteousness, by having me mix up ‘prosperous life’ with ‘preposterous life’. When I finally stopped to ponder this, the standoff ended and I had an inspirational moment.
Blissful Consciousness
I have been trying to have a Spiritual Experience for 30 years. I earnestly read many of the well known Spiritual texts, practised Transcendental Meditation and Chi Kung regularly and visited sacred sites. This approach to Spirituality is what a materialistic consumer believes Spirituality to be. But when materialism dominates, the Spirit is quashed. This is why we need the Cosmic Trickster to bring mishap, misadventure and mayhem in to our perfect little lives. We need the creation of tension, unease or disaster to force us out of our materialistic complacency. I will speak for myself, rather than the ‘royal we’. It seems I would rather experience the temporary pleasures of a prosperous life than the eternal bliss of a Spiritual Life. Illustrating the need for Cosmic Tricksters creating chaos!
Cosmic Trickster – mishap, misadventure and mayhem
Cosmic Trickster
30 years ago I was instructed in Transcendental Meditation. I spent a weekend listening to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi videos. I’m embarrassed now, to admit that I spent the next years imitating his voice and message. In my humble and amenable state today, I remembered this and searched for a YouTube video of the Maharishi. He is gracing beautiful Lake Louise with his presence. Listening to him, I burst into tears, realizing I finally understood his message…
Aspirations for Week 36 of 52
Doing Versus Being Spiritual – The Humble Journey
I am 2/3 of the way through the year of The Other Woman Blog. To be honest, which is what I vowed to be, I am a little disappointed. I thought, through the process of transformation via The Other Woman Blog, I would ‘turn into’ a sultry, sexy woman, who would finally ‘get’ her illusive man. But ‘The Other Woman” seems to be more of a Spiritual entity than I had bargained for. Maybe sultry and spiritual are not mutually exclusive, but the Cosmic Trickster is not going to condone any more of my materialistic proclivities, and have me find sultry before I found spiritual!
So for Week 36 of 52, I will thank that force, which is greater than my will, for giving me a chance to experience the bliss of Cosmic Consciousness.
theotherwomanblog 