The Evolution of Perspective

So there's this trick that I noticed that people who "inform" perform. (I know because I've done it too.) First they find your sore spot or emotional wound. Next they present you with information that presses on the sore spot or reopens the emotional wound (or at least attempts to break it back open). Then they get you riled up and emotionally charged. You scream. You argue. You Facebook. You Tweet. You Blog. You converse amongst your friends about the situation. THEN WHAT? I've never been a fan of marching, petitioning, wearing ribbons, etc. I HAVE never been a fan. I don't knock how people choose to fight this way. I just don't fight that way. I recognize the effectiveness of creating awareness. People need to know what's going on in the world. But after they know, THEN WHAT? After you've marched then what? After you've signed the petition or worn the ribbon, then what? And I'm not being facetious, I really would like to know. Do you ...

Outside of the obvious, there is this underlying problem with self-deception. I remember when I would NOT accept who I was. I remember wanting to be so different that I refused to accept who I actually WAS. Every problem was one that was caused by someone else. Every situation was one that someone got me in to. Every ordeal was generated by something outside of me. Fast forward to the relationship that helped me to begin to change everything. I was in a relationship with my mirror. This man was who I was. He was a liar. He was a cheat. He was an addict. He was irresponsible. He was sweet. He was (somewhat) free. He loved to learn. He was creative. I embraced all the things about him that I embraced in myself. The things in me I didn't even acknowledge, I judged him so very harshly. I made excuses for who I was (and NONE for him). I was the way that I was because of how I was raised or because of something that had to do with someone else. None of this bull I shitted on people...

I realized today that I've never committed myself to a relationship before. I've been in a few yes. I've given myself the impression  tricked myself into believing that I was committed to the relationship yes. Thinking about it retrospectively though, I never was. I say this because I always walked into the relationship with an exit strategy. I've always had a plan of what (or WHO if I'm keeping it real) I was gonna do when things went sour. It wasn't until now that I realize that you can't hold on to a relationship with one foot outside the door. The door can't even be cracked. It has to be closed. The ability to open the door needs to remain but when a commitment is made to a relationship, the door cannot remain open. Having an open door means, to me, that the options for dealing with the inevitable trials and tribulations of the relationship are OUTSIDE of the relationship. When the door is closed, FOR ME, that means I have to use what's in the sp...

Excerpt from  Communion With God  by Neale Donald Walsch The idea that God's Will (assuming that God has one) could not be done runs counter to everything you thought you knew about God-namely, that God is all-powerful, ever-present, the Supreme Being, the Creator- but it is one that you nevertheless enthusiastically embraced. This produced the highly improbable but very powerful illusion that God can fail. God can desire something but not get it. God can wish for something but not receive it. God can need something but not have it. In short, God's Will can be thwarted. This illusion was quite a stretch, for even the limited perceptions of the human mind could spot the contradiction. Yet your species has a rich imagination and can stretch credibility to the limit with amazing ease. You have not only imagined a God with needs, you have imagined a God who can fail to have His needs met. How have you done this? Once again, through the use of projection. You have projected you...

poem written by akasha (gloria) hull My great-grandmother compacted all her grief until it festered as a life sore in her side. She huddled it close changed her pus-stained rags in secret. Nobody in the family knew about her shame until they smelled the cancer which ate her breath away My grandmother never found her proper nourishment. They said she ate "too much cornmeal". Pellagra, we call it today- a deficiency disease which killed my grandmother. Little quick woman who never stopped moving until she died. My mother lives out their lives of lack and limitation old pains, old wounds, old angers, resentment, grief, fear, and shame. Her milk soured in the mouth of my baby brother. Thirty-eight years later they cut the whole breast off. Lack of self-love, love-criticism hardening her joints she still holds on. Holds on. All this they willed to me. This freighted legacy I want to cast away. I say-to myself-repeat after me: Throw out those old clothes (Let the latest and ...

*disclaimer: When women begin to see that quality of our perceptions, decisions, and choices regarding men need to become healthier, women will begin to see our relationships with men get healthier* When I think about relationships, my mind gets stuck. I think about how nice it is to have a companion and a friend and someone to be close to. And then I think about not seeing eye-to-eye, giving up, and frustration. I'm not sure that I've ever witnessed a healthy relationship in action. I know I've never been a part of one. I watch the people close to me participate in relationships that are unhealthy physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I ask myself, "where is the love?" Over the weekend, I witnessed women accepting much less than what they deserve in relationships. I watched a friend cry for the first time because her boyfriend refuses to grow as an individual. He insists on rejecting acceptance of responsibility for his life. I wonder why she chos...

I've been thinking alot lately about men and women and relationships and relating. Anyone who comes here often enough knows that I relationship-watch. About 5 years ago or so, I read a book by a woman named Robin Norwood titled Women Who Love Too Much. The book is a self-help book for women who make bad choices when picking mates to engage in relationship activities. It was one of those things that came along and changed the course of my life. It deals with relationship addiction and offers women a very precise solution to managing the addiction (because anyone who knows anything about addiction knows that they can be treated but not cured). One of the core beliefs of women who love too much is that they can take a broke man and fix him up and make him shiny and good for her. There seems to be some kind of prize or reward in her mind for fixing a broken man. Kind of reminds me of taking a scrambled Rubix cube and restoring it back to its original state. You can sit back and look a...