Wednesday

careful what you wish for...

this is my lifestyle visioning board:

it hangs in my bathroom.

i love it.

this is my love visioning board:
it's rolled up in a basket on a shelf in a closet.

i'm not into it.

i put it together quickly, half-heartedly (ironically, enough), after an obsessive four-day, five-visioning board hole up. i'd barely scratched the surface of my love visions when it was time to re-engage the world, so i nabbed a chunk of the intentions off of a mind movie that had been making the internet rounds, many of which didn't quite sit right with me:

i am in love with my soul mate.

kinda makes it sound like we're relegated to one soul mate, which i don't believe we are. it feels weird - stuck, corny, old.

he brings out the best in me.

i bring out the best in me. sure, our dynamic amplifies it, and still, to say he does it feels disempowering.

my heart is wide open.

so much space between me and that wide open heart. in saying "my heart," i'm suddenly separate from this heart to which i refer; and then this other that is my heart is itself wide open. it seems like such a long way to travel when, the truth is, i am my every intention now.

i am heart wide open now.

i dig the images, and still, truth be told, the whole thing felt very old paradigm. it hung on the backside of my bathroom door and i was semi-embarrassed whenever i looked at it.

within days of posting my visioning boards, the manifestations started rolling in - a large cocktail ring from a friend, a weekend retreat poolside in the hills, lavish meals, creative opportunities, superfoods, and men - a bunch of 'em.

within a week or so of seeing one, in particular, i was floored by the intensity of what came up for me. issues around commitment and expectation and social conventions. while i was calling in a real-deal, true-blue love thing, my actions belied an attachment to my freedom and a deep fear of being vulnerable and of getting hurt.

i took the vision board down. it never felt authentic, rather filtered through the dogma-encrusted lens of social convention. and having been confronted with the ferocity of my own stickiness around intimacy, i'm choosing to examine the murky places where i'm full of shit before calling in the real-deal, whatever that means. when i do, i'll choose my words much more carefully.

...........................

on a related note, i had lunch with my mother yesterday, who was telling me about a wedding shower she'd attended. i launched into an inspired diatribe on the ass-backwardness of these unchallenged social conventions that require us to shell out for presents because joe and sue are erecting a fence around their love. happily-ever-after is not a paradigm i play in, nor a paradigm i acknowledge or wish to feed.

that's selfish, my mom said. you're selfish.

i think it's selfish to expect me to fly to mexico to watch you sign your freedom away, and then to attend not one, but two pre-nupital showers, which i'm expected to attend bearing gifts. and, not the sort of gifts that are a heartfelt expressions of what i'd like to share, but crass and calculated pre-chosen registry items that i'm required to purchase at a corporate chain. it's disturbing on far too many levels to elucidate here over steamed vegetables in hen cum (we'd compromised on chinese).

what about celebrating your friends?, she challenged.

what about it? celebrating is one thing. expectation is another, and it's a relationship killer - romantic, platonic or otherwise.

fill your own cup and buy your own kitchen accessories, i say.

4 comments:

  1. I have a list of things I'm grateful for-- past present and future in our kitchen.

    and for the record, you are love and love is all around you...right now in total perfection.

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  2. i'm posting a comment i received, privately, from a friend because i love what he says and i love him for saying it:

    Loving your blog... for sure... Hooray! to you.

    resonance, with so much of what you say... and of course an occasional ping of discord.

    and since words matter so much to you, reflective I am in saying the frequency of cynicism and resignation in your relationship, love, marriage views... is STRONG.

    especially here:


    "i think it's selfish to expect me to fly to mexico to watch you sign your freedom away..."


    as Nelson Mandella Learned in prison...

    Freedom is an internal state of being, not an external condition.

    and as we have learned from physics our friend Nassim and matter itself... a boundary is needed for the infinite to exist at all. Only within a boundary can the TAO become manifest... otherwise it is as it always is... infinite, formless, perfect and without other. It becomes not one thing... because one thing is of course not two... it is not a thing or no-thing... because one implies itself and excludes the other... it
    is a non dualistic, all inclusive mystery, right?

    perhaps we could identify this perfect state as a place of pure freedom...

    that would make it so the only way for this state to know itself, experience itself, taste and touch itself is through the restriction of its freedom within a boundary...

    HENCE: MATTER. SPHERES OF REALITY.

    however at this point the Tao's infinite nature is not limited, because within that boundary it's capacity for infinite division, still remains and acts accordingly.

    Paradox: Without rules, man cannot truly be free.

    this always bothered me too, rules seem so externally imposed. Perhaps if we say it differently...

    Boundaries are not limits on freedom, they are a chance for freedom to know itself.

    just a thought

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  3. and paul, i hear you on the gratitude and on the i am all of it now, which i am, and thank you for reminding me. i think it's the expectation piece that feels strange. i love to give gifts when i'm organically inspired. it's the rote social convention that assumes i'm going to stock someone else's kitchen that i take issue with. rebel consciousness personified, eh? love, love, love you, luap. xod

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  4. love what you have to say... feel your pre-caution to the search for the right one... as if we are picking a fish at the fish market... how about another choice of words... like wow he arrived in a package with a ribon ... but i choose to not open the box... until I'm ready! Hooray for you dear Dani... I praise you for your courage to look within and wait until you've patched your loose strings before openning the box of change!!

    xx

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