ghost in the mirror

I had a conversation with a dear friend about the limiting views we have of ourselves and the voice in our heads that serves no purpose other than to perpetuate the past and our outmoded perceptions and beliefs.

I had obviously trespassed too far into bliss and the mind needed to assert itself with alacrity and gusto. I spent several days grappling with the unpredictability of this body and wrestling with the fierce demon of dysmorphia that assured me in no uncertain terms that I was horribly unattractive, flawed and therefore unlovable. I knew, as I often know, that the voice was just a symptom of pain arising and nothing more. The shadows don't need my stalwart efforts to shove them back into the recesses of unconsciousness, rather they are arising in order that they might meet with the full weight of my love and fade in the light of my awareness...but holy hell the ghosts in the mirror can be terrifying in all their pomp and circumstance. It's laughable when we get enough perspective and can look honestly at the whole show. Seriously, who let that voice in and why on earth do we devote so much energy trying to convince it that it's wrong? The nonsense our mental chatter churns out isn't something I would ever say aloud to anyone...ever. Honestly, I don't even identify with its verbiage. That's when the effort to fight it stops. It just doesn't warrant one more instant of attention. No matter how it catastrophizes, terrorizes, plans, worries, controls and projects...it's really not necessary... it's just background noise in the wide expanse of being that we are.

If I'm not beautiful... So what. If I'm flawed... So what. If I'm unlovable... So what. When the worst it has to offer is seen for what it is... ghosts parading as real... and it's fully realized that nothing can take from us the essence of what we are, then it has no more power to harness our attention and the ghosts in the mirror are gone.

Comments

mrpaul said…

wonderful post

i would say

as our essence is love

all else that says otherwise

cannot be so

November 13, 2015 at 2:13 PM

Angelina Lloyd said…

Yes. The Course in Miracles says, "Nothing real can be threatened, Nothing unreal exists, Herein lies the peace of God." When fully seen the only authentic answer to this moment, in all its terror or wonder, is YES...Yes...yes.

November 13, 2015 at 2:41 PM

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much. It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall. The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep. But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy. I am a woman who loves the spring. I nearly live for it. When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis. I gorge. This year has been hard. Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally. The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment. It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float. It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within. It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains. Eyes closed. Eyes opened. A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being. It takes courage.

the way of the sunflower

A few weeks ago, I sat holding a sunflower seed in my hand, just prior to the mouth popping, mastication phase, when it's perfect elegance floored me. I stared in awe at the tiny seed nestled in my palm and saw it, in all of it's possibility, for the first time. A flower, a million seeds, a million flowers. Each unique, each the same. And suddenly I was dumbfounded by the arrogance of human. A small seed, with no big beefy brain to catalogue, categorize, prioritize, conceptualize, quantify, qualify, justify and deify, had within it the flower it could become. Dissect the seed and there's no flower, nor any glimmer of the life that will unfold when the seed surrenders to soil, light, water. I wondered. What arrogant assuming is it, to think, with our over indulged brains and narcissistic lens of "self", that we need "do", "think", "struggle", "fight", "hustle", "cajole" and otherwise dance our way...

angelbirdflies

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