It might just be all that I have

I am not feeling so great today.

I have a lovely rash unlike any I have ever
had the fortune to experience.

I am tired.

I am feeling a bit nauseous.

My throat feels funny.

I am feeling a bit disconnected.

I am enjoying the fall-like feeling to the day.

I am feeling anxious.

I have things I need to do, and yet I am feeling
a need to sit and write at the moment.

I was just reading about Dr Eben Alexander.
He is a neurosurgeon who apparently thought
he knew what near death experiences were
like, until he actually had one of his own.

I have seen people skeptical of his experience,
calling it a marketing ploy to sell books.

I have to admit I am curious about what he
relates.  There is a piece that says that he did
not remember his life when he was where he
was when he went to heaven.  I found that
interesting.  I also found that I wanted to
latch onto who and what I knew even more.

I suppose that response is one of the ego,
the part of me that makes me, me.  If there
is a more universal part of me it certainly
would not limit itself to this time and place
and space called Elizabeth Alraune.

So many questions and so much dialog about
what "IS."  How does anyone truly know what
is?  After all, our experiences in the here and
now vary, depending on our perspective.
Might it make sense that the interpretation of
any other reality could also vary?

I am not certain about this, but I think it was
Jung who said we all tie into the universal
consciousness bank.  To me that says we all
may have access to the same information, if
that is "true."  However any information can
be interpreted any which way, depending on
the interpreter.

It is no wonder that a culture determined to
control as much as possible would not be
interested in a conversation about death,
something as far out of the realm of control
as most anything could possibly be.

This makes me think that if we aren't going
to entertain something that we are intimidated
by, then we should do a bang up job
entertaining the thing we have attention on
which - of course? -  is life.

The thing is that I would suspect that many
don't entertain life as much as tolerate and
deal and cope with it.

In the last few days, my world has felt quite
surreal.  I look at things, and question them.
I feel them differently.  I experience them
differently.

I wish I could explain what I mean by that.

The best I could say is that it almost feels
like I am in a dream.  You know how some
things in a dream take your focus, whether
it "makes sense," or not?  Ever feel a pull
from an object or a situation in a dream?

If you have experienced this type of thing,
you may have a sense of how I have been
feeling.

At the same time, there are things that are
unresolved and hanging out there.  There
are people that I don't know how to talk to.

There is at least one situation I have had
some version of most of my life that I do
not know how to cope with.  Part of me
says leave it be, and another part knows
that it can't be left.

It involves another person who has very
strong ideas of how things should be, and
is very impatient with me and how I look
at things.  I can't seem to do right by her.
It is no fun being around someone who
awakens these uncomfortable feelings in
myself.

If I am supposed to be loving myself, the
last thing I need is for the discomfort of
someone else's judgment.  As usual, I
recognize that this person is doing the
best she can, and only wants the best for
me.  If only knowing that would make
everything right somehow, but it doesn't.

Lately I have no patience for anything.  If
anything goes off or wrong or isn't just the
way it needs to be for the moment, I get
irritable.  I can't deal with it.  It is difficult
to get any words out and I feel totally
stymied.

How does one deal with a situation that
isn't working without one's ability to deal?

It makes me think that I might tend to say
something I might later think about regretting.
It also makes me think that I might just be
more honest than maybe I would want to be.

How does one feel what they feel, and not
offend the person they feel it about?  There
is taking responsibility for one's self, and
one's perspective, but that is not the same
as filtering one's self to be responsible for
another's experience of me.

It is not that I want to be callous or blatantly
mean to anyone.  At the same time, I think
I have spent a lot of my life filtering myself,
as I cared what others thought of me and
what I said and what I did.  I have spent a
lot of time being intimidated by what would
be the result, and what would come back to
me, and how I would be affected by another's
reactions to how I was.

I think it is important that we think of others.
But there is a wavy line that we must ride
that balances what we do in relation to another,
and how it might relate to our experience of
ourself.

I have spent a lot of my life trying to be "good,"
and trying to be invisible, and not make any
waves.  I have always been the "good girl."
I have always been the "nice" one.  Often I
am even quite soft spoken.

I can't say I have always been good.  I think
there have been times that things have come
through the pressure of the cracks of trying to
be someone and something that I was forcing.

It was never anything conscious.  It is just what
has been a major part of my life experience to
date.

There was a time I was being coached, and it
was extremely uncomfortable.  Out of the
coaching came the idea that I was a "withholding,
controlling, manipulative bitch."

Are you kidding me?

I was so uncomfortable with that.  THAT wasn't
me.  It couldn't be me.

But the fact was, it was accurate that I could be
just that.  I would have to be sneaky about the
way I did things, so that the appearance of the
surface nice girl was never damaged.

Interestingly, since the time that I became aware
of that, I am less likely to be that.  I have also
learned to say things I feel in a more direct
manner.  I have to say the experience of learning
how to communicate was one that I wouldn't
trade for anything.  But it wasn't easy, and it
meant taking risks with people, and saying
things that might not give me the desired outcome.

If you have been reading this whole entry you
may find that I just contradicted myself.  On one
hand I say I learned to communicate, and on the
other, I say I am stymied.

Well...

I have said a lot of things, but I never said I
was perfect.  Sure wish I was by now.  But
it just hasn't happened.

What has happened is an evolution.  I have gone
from barely being able to communicate what I
feel to being able to, some of the time.

It is a sliding scale, not an on and off kind of thing.

I suspect many people think that we can get to a
point of being "fixed."  They seek out those who
appear fixed so they can be fixed themselves.  The
thing is, I suspect it is more an unrealistic appearance
that they interact with than a reality.

Is there any reality that is truly perfect?  Perhaps.
But then, I suspect that the perfection is defined in
a relative, rather than absolute, way.  I am not sure
that there is any one thing that is absolutely perfect
for every single person, at every single moment.

As I write this, I think about the idea of Love and
I wonder if Love could be that thing that says that
what I just said is incorrect.  Is Love perfect for
every person in every moment?  I could see the
answer potentially being a yes.  The thing is, though,
that in order to feel anything other than Love, our
focus needs to be on that thing.  And if we are to
learn about things, then we have to sometimes
learn about them in their absence.

So maybe Love isn't perfectly the answer in every
moment for every person.  Although it may depend
on what the question is.

It also is likely that Love is always present,
acknowledged, or not.  It is also possible that Love
makes the other things learned possible.  So maybe
in that way, Love IS the answer.

But the one thing that I could see in all of this, and
from what I "know," is that to tell someone who is
in a great deal of pain that Love is the answer isn't
always going to be welcome or helpful.  And if it
isn't welcome or helpful, is it the answer?

Sure seems like a circular conversation to me.

But it also seems to me to be a case for truly
respecting another's experience, even if we don't
fully understand or appreciate it.  We tend to look
at pieces of life with certain expectations and
shadings that seem "universal," but are more
likely just the current box that a majority think
things should be in.

Maybe there are parts of life that are just plain
ugly...and maybe we are supposed to love them
and ourselves any way.

In the meantime, though, going back to Dr
Alexander's experience, if I was going to
consider that his reality is "true," it would
seem to me that if I am not going to remember
any of this, I should just do the best I can and
enjoy all that is possible to enjoy here and now,
in this moment.

It might just be all that I have.