oh-we-should-have-told-you

in feb 2010, during my son’s visit from japan, we had made an appointment to have the muffler of my car checked during an oil change. my son drops me & the car off and walks to another errand.

i notice the owner/manager of the car repair place is like a butterfly, flitting around making a comment here, a comment there. from time to time he glances at me sitting in the waiting area corner, he makes comments in general, tho the occasional one somewhat directed at me and i respond in kind (general chit-chat).

i notice that the guy is becoming quite hyper and is beginning to use words like “out in the ethers” and other phrases, to the point where i think just tilt one more degree buddy and you’ll be speaking “spiritual lingo”.

then the my son arrives, the mechanic appears after having examined my car. suddenly there are several conversations taking place at once. the owner/manager is getting more worked up and intense. and is still directing his words in my direction. i basically tune out his words and just sit there breathing until i get this nudge to glance in my son’s direction. sure enough, my son has turned away from the mechanic that he was talking with and is looking at owner/manager. and my son’s whole body-language is saying, just tilt one more degree and i will need to say hey buddy that’s my mother you’re talking to. i just keep breathing and emanating calm.

the owner/manager’s words change and now instead of expressing anger that customers would question his suggestions or diagnosis, he’s expressing pain about how he takes pride in his work, puts his heart & soul into things and finds it quite painful that the majority of people think that he’s one step up from a snake.

i say yes i guess that’s true, many people see you right up there with used car salesmen and lawyers. at that point owner/manager grabs a notepad and comes to sit beside me and starts quoting from memory the suggestions and prices that the mechanic had given and basically ended up offering me a price of $600 for a $900 package.

during my sleep, i was asking or being asked, if i could see myself with a romantic partner. i felt a couple of my non-physical friends around, but they weren’t helping a lot. it was like a movie started in my head. a review of several romantic relationships i had been involved in and some new insights, not all of them favorable to me.  

i asked if i was integrating an aspect, because it didn’t really feel like an aspect, as usually aspects seem to come with some aha or knowing about what caused them. i guess their story. one of the non-physicals said aspects are or can be thought-forms and that’s what i had transmuted. a thought-form. 

at some point, it got to how one of my romantic attractions had actually been obsessive, and i also saw that it was that same obsessive energy, that was in my over-mothering of my son. 

i woke in the morning, so f’ing stiff especially my lower back, and more physical pain than i have felt in ages. i then spent 3 days unravelling or shedding more energy of obsessive attachment.

i was surprised to see how over-attachment in parent-child, sometimes shows up as obsessive in romantic or vice versa.

i belong to a facebook group that asks “what was your small win this week”

my small win this week is that i didn’t panic when i discovered my car keys missing while i was grocery shopping !!!

before i entered the grocery store, i stood next to my car and took off the extra shirt i was wearing, tossing the shirt on the back seat of my car.

15-20 minutes later i reached into my pocket where i always keep my keys and NO KEYS !!

i felt panic arising but managed to nip it in the bud, mostly because i carry an extra set of keys in my purse.

i DID consider the idea to make a quick exit from the store to look for my keys beside my parked car. then i thought i’m like 95% finished shopping so finish up before heading to the checkout.

once at my car there were no keys on the ground and none beside my discarded shirt on the backseat. i considered going into the store to ask if anybody had turned in missing keys but something guided me not to. i reassured myself that if the keys didn’t turn up, i could ask next time i was at the store.

when i got out of my car at home i discovered my keys lodged into a corner of the driver’s seat of my car.

i got a message which surprised me initially, then made perfect sense.

the message was, that it isn’t about taking up a cause on behalf of another culture or race.

that is a continuation of the thinking, that as a white person, i know best what’s in the best good of another culture or race.

i don’t.

in this lifetime i only know, how to be white.

but there are many variations of “being white”.

my responsibility is to become the best version of “being white” that i can, while also cheering on others to become the best version of their particular color or culture as they can be.

then we have only best versions of every color and culture.

for me, forgiviness started out with me blaming an ex-partner for his treatment of me.

that lasted until i saw the ways in which behavior of mine had also contributed to the downfall of our relationship.

next i explored my relationship with my parents.

first my mother whom i had turned my back on as a young adult determined to be nothing like her or her life.

decades later i realised she did the best she could given the circumstances of her life and the times she was living in and i developed compassion for her.

i thought my father had less impact on my live but as i went along with my healing, i recognised the impact that his emotional absence had on my life.

this also was a sign of the times he was living in and exposed to.

I see forgiveness as a combination of acceptance and compassion.

so for me, to see forgiveness as a way of me “dispensing a sacrament”, i’ll leave up to the churches.

yesterday morning i made a phone call that was hard for me to make.
all day an emotional program ran in the background of my mind, mostly unnoticeably, tho sometimes it felt like i was sad or i was grieving in some way.
when i was waking this morning, my awareness rested on a spot in my body that felt clogged and warm.
focusing my attention on the spot, i sensed it was a version of my inner child who said “you never said you were proud of me”

i woke thinking about being “in the in-between state” and remembering a few years ago also being “in the in-between state”

which may have been my first time there or at least the first time i was aware of being there

a few years ago the experience felt more elusive, like i was in a trance or slow-motion, i/it felt very tentative.

this year the experiences feel more full on, more intense. i see things more clearly, respond more quickly.

and once the dust settles i realise the situation has called on me to make a choice of going into fear or trusting i’ll be ok with the outcome.

when i want to do something but can’t bring myself to do it, i consciously sit and allow my 2 “sides” to have a conversation. my “i want” side and my “i don’t want” side.
eventually the 2 sides come to an agreement, sometimes a compromise, sometimes a totally different solution. and the good news is the “conversation” takes less time as we go along.
some of the early conversations are actually humorous to remember. for example one time i walked by a sink full of dirty dishes and thought i really should wash those but i didn’t want to. eventually one part of me said “we aren’t going to wash the dishes, we’re only going to stack them”. this involved taking the dishes out of the sink and sorting them into piles – plates, bowls, cutlery etc. then i sat for a while. then the part said “we aren’t going to wash the dishes, we’re only going to put them to soak”. that involved filling the sink with hot soapy water and putting in the dishes. step-by-step until eventually the dishes got washed without my i-don’t-want part rebelling.
(in answer to a question of Did you learn how to do it or did you just start to do it intuitively?) i started intuitively or it started intuitively thru me. i have since read of others’ experiences doing parts work but i haven’t taken any courses. my experience was that as i went along i wasn’t always able to differentiate my “parts”. maybe what happened is i got into deeper subjects than washing dishes. when i got into conversations about values or beliefs i sometimes forgot that only a part of me felt that way or believed that, because it sure felt like 100% of me.