If what I am watching evaporated before my eyes, I would remain.  Anne Truitt – Day Book (1982)

Ways of Seeing 

Imagine that your eyes are like a highly sophisticated camera that can be fitted with many different lenses. The lens in use determines how and what you see.

The way that you focus your camera determines how distant or intimate you become with the world around you.

Many of us have become so familiar with our world, that we don’t see it anymore. Therefore, I want to invite you on a journey today that will allow you to shift in and out of different ways of seeing. The intent is to uncover and discover information that you can put to use to enhance your ability to consciously choose the most effective way to view your world.

The first lens we will gaze through is fear. To the fearful eye, everything is threatening. Take a moment to notice that when you look towards your present reality in a fearful way, all you can see and concentrate on are things that can potentially damage or threaten you.

The next lens we will apply is greed. To the greedy eye, everything can be grabbed and possessed. When greedy-eyed, we get stuck in loving things and using people. The greedy person tries to get joy from possessions, but nothing is ever enough. The greedy lens has an insatiable hunger and is always haunted and deflated by what it can’t possess. It can never show up fully in the presence of the present.

To the judgmental eye, everything is categorized, framed and defined. When the judgmental eye looks out, it sees things in terms of good, and bad, right, and wrong. It is always excluding, or separating, and therefore, it never sees in a compassionate or celebratory way. Sadly, the judgmental eye is always equally harsh with itself. It enjoys neither forgiveness, nor imagination to see deeper into the core of things, where truth becomes paradox. It misses the subtleties and nuances of life.

To the resentful eye, everything is seen begrudgingly. The resentful eyed can never enjoy who they are or what they have. They are always looking out toward others with resentment. They are resentful because they see others as more beautiful, more gifted, or richer, than themselves. The resentful eye lives out of its own poverty of spirit and forgets to see or acknowledge its own inner gifts and blessings.

To the indifferent eye, nothing speaks to them, or sparks their involvement. It is said that indifference is often used as a tool to hold control over others by being indifferent to the needs and vulnerabilities of those under their control. Therefore, indifference requires a great commitment to non-seeing. Indifference has the ability to sneak up on you and can place you out of touch with compassion, healing, and love. When you become indifferent, your imagination becomes frozen in the limbo of cynicism, and ultimately, despair.

To the inferior eye, everyone else is greater than you. Others are more brilliant, beautiful, and blessed than you. The inferior eye is always looking away from its own treasures. It can never celebrate its own presence, or potential. The inferior eye is blind to its own beauty.

Our eyes were never designed to look up in a way that inflates another to superiority, or to look down, reducing another to inferiority. When we look someone in the eye, it is a validation of truth, courage, expectation, and innocent curiosity. Each one stands on equal but different ground.

To the loving eye, everything is alive and real. This art of love is neither sentimental or naïve. The loving look creates a climate of connection, celebration, and an inclusive reality. Love is the light in which we see each thing in its true origin, nature, and destiny.

If we could look at the world in a loving way, then the world would have permission to rise up before us full of invitation, possibility, and depth.

The loving eye is bright because it is autonomous, authentic, and free. It can look lovingly upon anything. The look of love refuses to become entangled in the agenda of power or seduction. The loving eye sees through and beyond the superficial image and is fully and instantaneously capable of effecting deep change in how we view our world.

The lens through which you habitually see your world is central to both your presence and your creativity. To recognize how you see things can bring you increased self-knowledge, and can enable you to glimpse more of the wonderful treasures your present life secretly holds.

The eye is the mother of intimacy, bringing everything close to us. When you take the time to gaze lovingly at someone or something, you bring it inside you.

Therefore, there is spirituality, and holiness, available to us this very moment, when we adjust our eyes through the lens of love.

Take a deep breath in and then let it out and take a moment to focus your awareness on your eyes, especially those little muscles around your eyes. Simply tell them to relax and let go of their hyper-vigilance. Now, allow your vision to land on something that is pleasing to you. Take it in and allow it to become a part of you.

Notice that all it takes is a small, gentle shift in your perspective. Making this shift can yield an endless opportunity to drink from the well of vibrant, lively energy that is waiting patiently to fill you with renewed vitality and wellbeing.

Wisdom grows from life experiences. Own your pain and give up your long suffering. Keep your strengths and grit and court your softness and inner guidance through the grace of intuition.

The Land Beyond Intellect

I’ve been asked why I named my book beyond intellect instead of unleash the power of your intuition. That’s a fair question, so I thought I’d try to answer it.

We live in a task-oriented, skill-based society. After the question, “What is your name?” is answered; the next question is usually, “What do you do?” Normally our intellect is the designated driver, as we speed down the highway of life following the road signs that will lead us, as quickly as possible, to more and bigger accomplishments.

Intuition is not a skill. It is not one more way to establish how right we are and how much we know. Intuition is not a GPS navigation system to relieve us from having to stop and ask for directions or take the time out to assess where we are going and why so fast.

When we are willing to allow all aspects of ourselves to commune, we begin to form new and varied opportunities to receive specific and timely insights. When we allow our intellect to take the co-pilot position, it can finally rest from its never-ending problem solving, and daydream for a bit. When we encourage our intellect to relax, then our imaginative mind can be rekindled, rejuvenated, and renewed.

When we have amassed enough answers and are secure enough within, it becomes timely to ask ourselves the deeper questions that go beyond self-centered, or other-centered, to the place where soul-centered resides.

When our lives are moving at breakneck speeds, and our eyes are rigidly locked on future external goals, we miss the subtleties and nuances of life. We cannot connect with our inner guidance, or resources, because we have opted for life in the fast lane. We fast-forward through the labyrinth of our minds and hearts, and then we complain when we are stuck with lives that are unfulfilled, and colorless.

When we shift our focus from seeing our lives as a never-ending problem to be solved, and open to our unique life as a vibrant reality to be experienced, we begin to accept and flow with the shifts and changes that allow increased personal expansion of our understanding, knowledge, and peace of mind.

The journey into the wisdom of our intuitive mind requires that we make new choices that begin to connect us with the exquisite sensitivity within our deepest being.

Our inner wisdom houses our passionate longings and our emotion-laden and crippling criticisms that have been allowed to hold us hostage, tied to a treadmill of life-numbing mediocrity.

When we invite our intellect and our emotions to form a sacred partnership, we are forever touched and transformed by the beauty and bravery of what it means to be authentically human. It takes a strong and flexible intellect to be willing to hold the paradox of actively assessing who we are today, while also musing, visualizing and courting our highest and best vision of who we will become.

The benefit of going beyond what we already know is that we enter into the fertile field of imaginative perception. When we quiet our mind, we can begin to transform our lives away from endless striving for elusive perfection, and open to, and allow ourselves to shift towards life choices that enhance our sense of basic goodness and the basic goodness of our lives.

As we move beyond categorizing and locking our thoughts and feelings into compartments labeled good/bad, and right/wrong, we activate our higher intelligence. As we embark on the journey beyond intellect, our inner wisdom calls, beckoning us to enter and explore the doors marked soften, open, deepen, and strengthen. Here is where we discover new ways of seeing. Self-acceptance transforms our lives from striving to thriving, as we learn to make discerning choices that encourage us to enter into a fulfilling and enriching partnership with life.

I love you. These words carry potent power to impact our thoughts and feelings.

Love is thought to be the language of the heart. Love is the magic elixir that opens the door to involvement and the deeper realms leading to connection, commitment, vulnerability, and intimacy.

Some overuse the word, until it rolls off our tongue when declaring our preferences for everything from special people to potato chips.

Love you! Love you more! is a formula that freezes the healing power that is the essence of love, into superficial and stagnant ways of interacting with others, without the bothersome experience of true connection.

I see an epidemic of severe loneliness that is running rampant in our society today.

Maybe the topic is in the forefront of my mind lately because I have been highly involved with my mother, who is eighty-five and is now living in a nursing home. Her body is tired but her mind is strong. She is adjusting to the environment she finds herself in and has no real complaints about it. In her words, she is content and is getting her needs met. She feels safe and secure.

On one level, that gives me some peace of mind. It also sparks my curiosity about some of the terms that are used as a self-validation for what I see as a one-way ticket to isolation. My mother could be described as independent, task-oriented, self-contained, happy to pursue her own interests, disinterested in others, with a strong, traditional set of religious values that gives her a mind set that is unquestioned and rock-solid. She does not feel a need to interact with others very often because relationships seem to be “more trouble than they are worth.”

I am creating this fast personality sketch as a springboard to allow us to deepen our exploration into the topic of love, as in connections with others.

Right now, in my mother’s case, I am one of the people who are supplying connection and involvement energy and attention to her. I do it by phone. Her voice lightens when I call. We have good conversations. She tells people that I am her best friend. I am pleased that she feels that way because it is, at least, one thing I can give her.

I generate the calls. She receives them. This works for me because I am clear about what I am doing and why I am doing it. I am willing to stay in this relationship and accept it just the way it is.

However, what if all my relationships followed this same model? We could then describe relationships like this: “We have so much in common. I care about you and you care about you.” Put that way, this is a formula for interactions that are missing the magic, the spark that ignites true intimacy. It takes love and puts it in a straitjacket.

Nothing new happens. We each perform our prescribed roles and responsibilities. One gets to be the giver, the other the receiver. One is the generator and the other is the user. Once is dominant, the other is submissive. One is in control, the other is dependent.

These roles can be mixed and matched in many combinations so that it ‘appears’ that something is happening but the truth is that the vital energy that brings new life to stagnant situations is missing. Each person is operating solo. No surprises and no intrigues.

This kind of relating does deliver predictability and the illusion o f control. It keeps the participants safe and secure in their appointed roles. However, it turns love into a noun. It becomes a predetermined set o f things to do.

When love is executed as a consistent set of thoughts, words and behaviors, it becomes the enemy of intimacy. Love becomes hopelessly buried and burdened with shoulds and have to’s that create distance, resentment, or deep disappointment, in one or both parties.

When love is a noun, it operates like ownership. I “own” you so much; I just want you to be happy. You need to spend more time with me because I “own” you so much. Look how much I do for you, and it’s all because I “own” you.

When love turns into a task, it no longer lives at the hearth of the heart. Instead, it takes up residence in the attic of the mind, no longer respected or valued for its life-giving properties.

Perhaps it is high time to give love a new meaning and top priority by unlocking any tight holds on commands or demands that love must perform for us.

Imagine that your eyes decide to look at the world in a loving way. Feel your heart begin to generate flickers of feelings for the people around you. Allow your mind to let go of thinking you know anything about anyone else. Look at others as though you are seeing them for the first time. Retire you old, worn out definitions of yourself, in favor of uncovering and discovering some deeper longings of your heart.

Imagine that you are sitting in front of a warm and soothing hearth. Allow this warmth to easily and gently relax your feeling nature, soften your eyes and open your arms to renewed relationships full of invitation, possibility and depth.

Susan McNeal Velasquez teaches mentoring seminars  on the topic of how to Unleash The Power of Your Intuition. Her new book: BEYOND INTELLECT: Journey Into The Wisdom of Your Intuitive Mind is available on-line at: Amazon.com. Go to: www.beyondintellect.com.  For additional information or to sign up to receive weekly articles by e-mail go to: www.susanvelasquez.com. You can reach Susan at: (949) 494-7773 or SusanVelas@aol.com.

During times of outer instability in our economy, fear of the unknown begins to grab hold and contaminate our peace of mind with unsettling imaginings of the worst possible kind.

 These are times when the dragons and demons of fear take hold. Unrealistic expectations come calling and self-doubts increase. 

The chances of relationship explosions with family or friends during these stressful times are high because the currents of emotion, both positive and negative, are over-stimulated.

Heightened emotional stimulation sets the stage for drama. Every good drama has three main characters that must be present and engaged before the drama can begin.

There must be a victim. There must be a persecutor. There must be a rescuer.

These three positions interact to create intrigue, mystery, and mayhem on television, in books, or in the movies. Unfortunately, when the same dynamic plays out in our lives, it often causes us confusion and pain instead of bringing enjoyment and entertainment value.

As a matter of fact, you may be an unsuspecting player in a confusing drama of your own right now. If so, perhaps it would be helpful for you to know how this drama triangle, formally known at the Karpman Triangle works, and more importantly, how to get yourself out of its trap and back into personal sanity. Here is the setup.

You or someone close to you feels victimized. The game starts here with the victim. In order to be a victim, a persecutor must be identified. The season, the government, the weather, the abusive, mean, uncaring and unfeeling parent, husband, wife, boss, friend, or institution all qualifies for this position.

There are specific rules to this game of chaos.

Rule #1: Each player will eventually play all parts. This means that the players switch positions. Let’s use the rapidly changing economic situation as an example.

Misfit Mike is depressed about his fluctuating finances. He is single, has no family nearby and has been so busy with his career that he doesn’t have a social life that gives him a change of mental scenery or a place to let down. Mike is our designated victim.

Socialite Sally lives next door to Mike. She hardly ever sees Mike, but since his business has slowed to a trickle, he is home more often lately. She decides to try to cheer Mike up by including him in a social gathering that she is hosting at her home. Sally is the rescuer. The doomsday economy is the persecutor.

Mike comes to Sally’s party, drinks too much, has underdeveloped social skills, and tells inappropriate jokes at odd times, to cover up his discomfort with being in an intimate setting with strangers. Sally’s friends are appalled at his behavior and let Sally know it.

Mike is now the persecutor. Sally is the victim. Sally can’t bring herself to tell Mike to go home because she invited him. Besides, he lives right next door and she will have to face him again after the party. Frank, whose name fits his personality, comes to Sally’s rescue and tells Mike it is time for him to leave and unceremoniously pushes him out the door, while Mike protests loudly and abusively. The party comes to a screeching halt and everyone leaves shortly.

Socialite Sally is now depressed and makes a firm resolution that this is the last party she will ever have and the last time she will ever reach out to anyone. She started as the rescuer. She ended up as the victim.

See how simple it is to have well-meaning intentions turn into a dramatic nightmare?

Rule #2: The only way out of the drama game is to let go of trying to keep up an image of being the good, right or perfect person and to tell yourself the truth.

Now back to our drama. Sally got caught up in deciding to “make a difference” by trying to change Mike’s attitude. She was willing to extend herself to Mike, more out of the concept of caring and concern than her actual true feelings for him. Actually, Sally has an investment in keeping up an image of bright and bubbly and Mike’s long face was starting to bum her out.  She forgot that she has no control over other people’s behaviors. The real truth is that she doesn’t know him at all and probably made a bad judgment call by including him in a party for her close, intimate friends.

 Mike stayed an outsider with little hope of fitting in with an already established group of friends, so part of the deeper truth is that Sally helped set this disaster up.

The moral to this story? When dramas begin to build around you, revisit this information. Notice which part you are playing. Are you the victim, the persecutor or the rescuer? In what way are you invested in seeing yourself as “one of the good guys”?

Here is one more useful bit of information. In times of heightened stress, we are fully capable of activating this drama triangle all by ourselves within our own mind. We start thinking and feeling victimized. We then criticize and persecute ourselves for thinking and feeling that way. Next we try to rescue ourselves through various distractions, avoidances, denials or manipulations. Then we criticize ourselves for sinking down into all time lows and the inner explosions continue from there.

The antidote is the same, whether internal or external dramas are raging. Stop the cycle by taking a deep breath and settling down. Tap into your intuition by asking for higher guidance regarding what is right action. Let go of trying to be right. Admit that you are neither the Master nor the Mistress of the Universe.

A little humbleness and humor inserted here will go a long way to uncovering a workable perspective and will begin the process of inviting discernment back into your life. Tell yourself the truth.

Lighten up and notice that your self-respect will soon return and bring with it the ability to access, honor, and act on your wisdom, once your knowledge is based on a broader understanding and acceptance of the part you have played in the creation of the drama.

All things are perceived in the light of charity, and hence under the aspect of beauty: for beauty is simply Reality seen with the eyes of love. Evelyn Underhill – Mysticism (1955)

Subtlety 

In our fast moving, marketing and advertising driven world, subtlety is a dying art. Even the spelling of the word evokes a certain kind of curiosity.

I have always had an interest in advertising. I have noticed that the field is producing louder and more blatant messages that bombard our senses. The messages are filled with heavy-handed slogans with the intent to turn optional products into necessities that demand us to react, the faster and sooner, the better.

By the time I wade through the copious mail offers that promise an instant fix to problems I didn’t know I had, I am numb with exhaustion.

Years ago, during a water shortage, an ad that is a great example of the essence of subtlety appeared on billboards throughout the Southland. It depicted a person taking a shower and all it said was: “Sing shorter songs. “

When we approach ourselves and our lives as a problem to be solved, we put ourselves in danger of being assaulted by a never-ending influx of internal criticisms that increase our anxiety levels and flood our nervous system with static, until we lose contact with our innate ability to successfully manage our day to day affairs.

We begin to treat ourselves like a product instead of a process that is meant to unfold in communion with the subtle shifts and changes that come to us as opportunities for right action. When we overly identify with a perfectionist mind set, we lock our creative energy into a chokehold of commands, and demands, to perform and deliver outcomes that are driven by a frantic lusting after unattainable static results.

Reality becomes distorted with unexamined opinions, and judgments, that shine a harsh light on our accomplishments, as too insignificant to warrant any acceptance or acknowledgement of the rightness of our world, exactly as it is.

No wonder most of us are depleted and numb to the natural beauty that surrounds us.

When we approach our lives prefacing every action with an unconscious lead line that: “Things go better with more…money, love, attention, beauty, possessions, friends, vacations, clothes, etc., we become calibrated to a way of being that continually grasps, clings, commands, and demands that we stay ever-ready to pounce on every opportunity to elevate our image of ourselves, to new and glorious heights, for fear that if we let go of striving, fixing, and figuring out our next move, we will fall behind into oblivion.

There is another approach that, if embraced, brings an instant shift in our way of seeing. This new perception can only be utilized by developing a taste for the subtle side of reality.

When we approach our life situations as a reality to be experienced, rather than a problem to be solved, an interesting transformation takes place.

Imagine that you find yourself walking down a long hallway. There are many doors on either side. At the end of the hall are two doors. The one on the left has a sign on it that says: Problems to be Solved. The door on the right is marked with a sign stating: Reality to be Experienced. Out of habit, you are naturally drawn to the problem door. It is your normal way of approaching your life situations, so it feels more comfortable and familiar to you.

Go ahead and open the problem door. Enter in and take a moment to look around and make note of the most blatant problems that you are currently facing. Only stay for a short visit; just enough to assure yourself that everything is exactly as it was the last time you looked. Now come back into the hallway and place yourself in front of the second door. Don’t open it yet. Take a few gentle breaths and allow yourself to call on a deep sense of calmness. Feel yourself actually begin to settle, and still, your racing energy.

Remember that when you open this door, and enter in, there is nothing for you to do other than to allow yourself to be open, and receptive, to seeing yourself and your current life situations through more loving and accepting eyes. Now reach out, open the door, and step over the threshold.

Feel yourself subtlety, easily, gracefully, and quietly beginning to open to a fuller awareness and acceptance of the sense of rightness in the various aspects of your current life situations. Bring to mind people you love, experiences you cherish, and open to a deepening acceptance of your basic goodness, and the goodness of your life.

Trust this inner knowing, and feel it begin to permeate throughout your felt sense, as you gently breathe and feel yourself softening, surrendering, and opening your heart and mind, to allow the beginnings of delight to take root. As you stand, ready and willing, to widen your arms to encompass all aspects of your current reality just as it is, a new reality begins to dawn.

Perhaps, by courting subtlety, you will begin to discover and bring a new sense of lightness and ease to your handling of your life, as you realize that what you are seeking is also seeking you.

It is beauty that will save us in the end.

Imagine that your past occupies a place in the attic of your mind. As the years fly by, memories of past challenges, defeats, upsets, and delights brought to you through family and work experiences, friendships, loves, and losses, are packed away in boxes, taped shut, and placed into the storage space in the far-reaches of your mind.

Whether your daily life routines have stayed fairly constant or you have moved many times into brand new situations, the memories have come along as a consistent frame of reference and a testimony to where you have come from.

Today, I want to invite you to make a shift in your perceptions so that your past can be opened up to, dusted off, and activated as a valuable inheritance of experiential wisdom. Your memories, approached correctly, can help fund the creation of a vibrant future, grown from the fertile seeds of your unique past experiences.

Attics and basements were a staple of most houses on the East Coast, where I was brought up. The attic was often stifling hot, cramped and suffocating. You would ascend a steep, narrow stairway, a storage box held precariously in hand, and deposit it in the nearest empty space, relieved to get down the stairs as quickly as possible and back to fresh air.

The basement was a different experience but similar to the attic, in that you only visited it when you absolutely had to. The basement was dark and dank and had either cement or wooden steps that creaked, leading down into the land where spiders and other creepy-crawlers made their home. The temperature was usually quite a bit cooler than the living space above. Not the cool that spells refreshing, but the kind that chills your bones and sets your teeth on edge.

Luckily, today I am only asking you to court the contents of the attic. We will save the basement for another day.

Since attics tend to be used as a place to store things that we have no immediate use for and want out of sight and out of mind, we need to move your stored memories to a better location.

As a first step, I want you to use your imagination to conjure up in your mind’s eye, a temple, a sacred space, and put it in a location that is pleasing to you. It may take the form of a church or a temple that you have visited in real life, or a place that you have seen in a photograph, or a movie. Once the temple is formed, stand outside of the entranceway. Do not enter inside just yet.

Your stored memories will be transported to this new location without you needing to do anything at all, and they will arrange themselves inside your temple, in whatever way will be most beneficial for you.

From this moment on, your memories, whether you have held them as mistakes, heart-hurts, achievements, validations, or disappointments, will now be housed in this sacred space.

This means that whenever you visit your temple of memory, you will practice the art of Spiritual Non-Interference. You will treat yourself with great tenderness, kindness, and compassion, and will finally let certain aspects of your life alone, so that healing can take place.

Many of us can be compassionate with others but are far too harsh with ourselves. Moving your memories to this sacred temple will allow a new kind of light to permeate your soul.

Your past is not gone but it has been boxed, labeled, hidden, discarded, and abandoned in your memory. Relocating your memories in this sacred temple will allow the wounded places in you to experience incredible healing.

Begin to soften and open to newfound levels of warmth in your soul.

Stand in front of the entrance into your sacred temple.

Step through the doorway and position yourself in the center of the room. Take in all that surrounds you.

Know that at this very moment, you are surrounded by the multiplicity of all the directions you have traveled.

The circle of your life is being brought together, right at this moment.

You are standing in the presence of timelessness. From this sacred point of view, your past, your present and your future are here and now.

This present moment is pregnant with your freedom to choose. Choose to own all that is beautiful about your life. It is beauty that will save us in the end.

  For additional information or to sign up to receive weekly articles by e-mail go to: www.susanvelasquez.com. You can reach Susan at: (949) 494-7773.

For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.  Nathaniel Brandon

At the core of many of our troubles is the unconscious quest for the one decision that can be made once and for all. The one that will yield all benefits and no prices. 

They lived happily ever after. The perfect job. The perfect mate. The perfect children. The perfect house. The perfect body. The perfect person.

Of course, the perfect job runs into some snags. The exact qualities that attracted you to the perfect mate now drive you crazy. The perfect children rebel. The perfect house gets termites.  The perfect body breaks down. The perfect person lives in denial of reality.

“Denial? Not me. Why, I am standing up to all of my responsibilities and am diligently tackling each and every one of them to make them right. I shoulder my responsibilities.”

This is the ‘life is hard and then you die’ model of perfection. Life is a problem to be solved and you are going to do it, single-handedly, and make everyone else tow the line also. 

When I was a pre-teenager, my father, who was raised in an orphanage during the depression, took great pleasure in interviewing any of my friends that came to play on Saturday mornings. The ritual went like this.

My mother and father would be having breakfast, reading the paper and visiting. I would bring my friend in to introduce her to my parents. This was a manner’s requirement in my household. My father would look over his newspaper, take great pains to fold it neatly, cross his legs, light his pipe, all the while looking at my friend while she squirmed under his penetrating gaze. Then he would say: “Well, Nancy, it is very nice to meet you.”

Pause, pause. “Now tell me Nancy, what kind of work did you do today?”

Nancy would stutter and stammer through a litany of ‘I made my bed, cleaned my room, helped my mother, etc.’ Another long pause and my father would deliver his punch line. “So Nancy, you actually call that work?”

By this time, I would be rolling my eyes and dragging my stunned, humiliated friend by the arm and out the door, trying to explain that the third degree treatment was my father’s idea of fun.

My father, the most responsible person I have ever known, died at fifty-nine just at the point when he was starting to give himself permission to enjoy some of the privileges earned from all his hard work. His responsibility/privilege ratio was severely out of balance. 

Another perfection model goes something like this: “What, me worry? I just take life as it comes. I take the path of least resistance. I take whatever I can get. I am deserving because I am_____. Fill in the blank with beautiful, intelligent, handsome, charismatic, funny, from the right family, the right race, the right religion, the right neighborhood, the right college, etc. and therefore, the world owes me. Who I am is enough to qualify me for special privileges.”

This is the type of person that is never satisfied, has an insatiable need for attention, and is prone towards jealousy and resentment of other’s good fortune; stuck in the never-ending cycle of never being as good as they think they are, nor as bad as they think they are.

Sometimes it is difficult to uncover the underlying privileged premise when it comes packaged as a person who seems to be chronically victimized.

The key is consistency.

Consistent anything takes discipline and effort. No one is destined to have only bad breaks. It takes real brilliance to be a 100% loser/victim 100% of the time.

The total victim is a powerhouse of one. Superior in their inferiority.

This person refuses to take any responsibility for creating a happy, interesting, or worthwhile life. The ‘I am tired, sad, mad, depressed, broke, bothered, unhappy, irritated’ litany never ends. A special case. Privileged to wallow in pain and suffering and to side step true responsibility. After all, what can you expect from such a miserable, downtrodden person?

Every responsibility brings privileges. Every privilege brings responsibilities. 

Take some time to review your present life situations from the privilege/responsibility perspective. Balance this equation and you are on your way to creating a balanced and fulfilling life.

            Intuition is your soul voice speaking.

A Personality Profile 

Let’s imagine that intuition is a person. Here are some of her characteristics.

Intuition loves intimacy. She relishes making connections and building relationship bridges. She withholds, retreats, and withdraws her participation when faced with judgmental, isolating, harsh, or aggressively demanding people and situations.

She flourishes in environments where acceptance, curiosity, wondering, imagining, and musing are encouraged. Kindness and enthusiasm please her and she returns the gift in kind.

She loves to delve. Secrets intrigue her. She has eyes that see through pretense and she can be quite fierce and confrontational when lied to.

Intuition pries things open and pins things down, so she is not to be taken lightly. She has ears that hear beyond the mundane into the very heart and soul of issues.

She is self-preserving and if you invite her into your life, she will sense directions that will yield the most benefit for your soul growth. She can tell you where betrayals are brewing. When you are confused, she can penetrate past surface bad behaviors and actions to uncover the scared child within.

She can shift your path from a habitual attitude of “who cares?” to one of “let me sense, see, hear and know all that is available to me.”

Intuition is your soul voice speaking and all you have to do is listen.

Actually, listening will come to you fairly easily, right after you’ve made the decision to really hear. It is the hearing part that takes some effort and commitment.

Let me say this another way. Intuition detests apathy. She requires attention. Even before attention, she must have a clear intent from you to court her. Yes, court her. I can almost hear your response. “Oh no, this is starting to sound like work. A new relationship that is not one I can take for granted!”

Look on the bright side. When you intentionally set out to establish a relationship with your intuition, she will assist you in being more at ease in all your relationships. You may be thinking: “I don’t have the energy for this. I am exhausted as it is, trying to keep up with the relationships I already have, given my overloaded and demanding schedule.”

Let’s take another look at how we are currently using our energy. Most of us have been taught to approach our lives with determination. We set our goals. We strive to accomplish them. We use persistent, focused determination to achieve predetermined results.

There is another kind of energy available to us. I will call it the energy of enthusiasm. It is unbridled. Exuberant. Responsive. It lives in the moment. Intuition thrives in this environment.

The mistake we can easily make is to live our lives solely driven by determination, while secretly hoping that enthusiasm will miraculously show up. It doesn’t work that way.

When you find yourself losing vitality and therefore enthusiasm for your pursuits, stop for a moment and turn your attention inward. Put aside your long list of what you believe you have to do and what you should be doing, for just a moment. Ask yourself a different question. “If I had no restrictions, what would I love to do right now?” Close your eyes and allow your imaginative mind to whisk you away for a few moments. You may find yourself on a quiet beach, snuggled under your covers and primed for a leisurely nap, or you may simply be gifted with a moment of undisturbed quiet, alone time.

Your intuition can serve you by feeding up mental pictures that have the ability to soothe your soul.

Make a commitment to yourself to find your enthusiasm. What sparks your creativity? What ignites your enthusiasm? What feeds your soul? How do your regenerate your energy? Where is your zest for life? What touches your heart? What do you long for? Are you allowing yourself enough self-nurturance and self-care to keep your vitality high? These are the type of questions that open a genuine conversation with your inner wisdom.

Remember, intuition is your soul voice speaking. Turn your attention inward and take a few moments to really listen.  

Our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our conscious and unconscious losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety and the loss of our own younger self, the self that thought it would always be unwrinkled and invulnerable and immortal. Judith Viorst – Necessary Losses (1986)

The Dynamics of Loss

Some of the words assigned to loss are deprivation, forfeiture, destruction, failure to win, damage, defeat, injury, casualty and disadvantage. These words are mere window dressings that cover up the emotional experiences that are triggered by both major and minor losses that occur for all of us engaged in the business of living.

When loss comes visiting, it can arrive with so much force we are knocked to the ground and our life, as we have known it becomes missing in action.

Our familiar reality can no longer be found. It has wandered off, abandoning us to feelings of bewilderment, confusion, puzzlement and a certain kind of mental distraction. We become preoccupied, absent, absent-minded and suspended in a dreamy, cotton-filled surreal existence that exists out of place and out of time.

I believe this is a good thing. It is our built-in surge protector that monitors the amount of experiential voltage our system can integrate.

Sometimes we go on tilt with seemingly small life changes and sometimes we are able to stand in front of the big cannons and come through miraculously unscathed. Our mental and emotional stamina has less to do with outside events than the state of the union and communion between our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies.

Grief is an emotion that defies control. Sorrow, sadness, anguish and heartache sing their song with their own unique timing that is so often not convenient for our hectic, no-nonsense, over-scheduled lives.

High-minded concepts motivate our mental bodies. Good nutrition, exercise and pampering feed and support our physical bodies. Faith, hope and belief in a power bigger than ourselves brings a sense of peace and inner calmness to our spiritual bodies.

What is the self-healing mechanism for our emotional bodies? Tears. Laughter. Sleep. Openness and receptivity to the sensual world that comes to us through the kiss of warm sunlight on our skin. The soft caress of a gentle ocean breeze. Breathing deeply in and out. Quiet. Becoming still in our bodies and minds. Letting down. Letting go. Stopping the endless mind chatter that wants answers to unanswerable questions. Soothing music. Massage. Acknowledgement and acceptance of anything in our surroundings that is touching, heart stirring, heart opening, tender, beautiful and therefore renewing.

Emotions are messy. They are misunderstood because they don’t travel in a straight line. Like water, our feelings trickle down through cracks and crevices, seeking out the little pockets of pain and sorrow that need attention and have been neglected and kept under lock and key, hidden from public view.

Grieving is a legitimate response to loss. When we make a commitment to own, embrace and honor our orphaned emotions, we begin to assimilate our pain and suffering and through attention they transform into our unique wisdom base gained and earned by personal experience.

We lose the capacity to grieve as a child grieves or to rage as a child rages; hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. We grow up and become intent on being civilized, polite, appropriate and consistent and the price of these behaviors is overly managed emotions.

It takes courage to let down, let go and give voice to sadness and anger. We have all mastered the ability to force ourselves to smile even though we are filled with unexpressed and unacknowledged sorrow.

Though we fear that by opening the floodgates we might drown and be forever consumed by tumultuous torrents of runaway feeling, it simply isn’t so. When we don’t know how to weep with our whole heart, we never learn how to fully laugh either.

Endurance of loss is only the beginning. There must also be acceptance of what is, in order to continue on.