I directed myself and not the situation 06/02/2011

It took me about 10 years to get at the point where I’m at today, not knowing if this is the final stage or if it needs more fine tuning. I tried it through manipulating, directing, being more than, spreading fear, apathy, but it all led back to more of the same status quo I was in. The reality I had co-created wasn’t meeting up to my expectations and desires. Big time future projecting within ignorance and playing out my mother-construct.

Since my daughter A. was able to help organize her toys after playing with it I taught her to be responsible for these belongings. Quite soon I was facing my reality of cleaning up after A., because she was too small or had no interest in cleaning up what so ever.   So I cleaned A.’s room every week and within an hour her room looked like there had been an explosion. I took it personal and ended up being frustrated and wasn’t to eager to start cleaning her room every week. I did so, but had to motivate myself in order to get it done. Then I came up with this capitalistic idea of offering A. a little amount of money when she cleaned up her room just before cleaning day. A plan that was to be doomed from the start since we learned A. that money wasn’t the highest form of happiness, the value of money represented within our world didn’t mean anything to her. I made up stories about dead and living insects in her room and initiated fear within A., this fear paralyzed her or wasn’t strong enough to act upon. I still do not know which of the two buttons I had pushed. At a certain point I felt that she was old enough and decided to give her the responsibility of cleaning up her room. Whenever the room was disentangled and the floor empty I would go in and vacuum and dust the room. This moment rarely arrived, maybe once in the 6 months. I pretended that it didn’t bother me as a mom or as a person. Obviously it did and I became quite apathetic to the whole situations and let it take it’s own path. I accepted and allowed this situation to continue and I wasn’t able to reach out to my child. I saw clearly that beside the mess in her room she also had a mess in her head which made life quite a challenge for her.

Now when I’m getting further in process I know that I can reach out to her, but only within equality. I saw one of Marlen’s video’s on how she had been able to clear this mess for herself, so I asked A. if she wanted to watch this video. She pertinently refused to watch this video. When possible I tried to open up this point together with A., but as long I was directing it, it didn’t work out. A few weeks ago I told A. that when she wanted to get rid of a lot of her fears and emotions she needs to clear her head and this can be done by physically  cleaning out the explosion of months in her room, she finally opened up and expressed that she resisted doing it all by herself. I told her that she only had to make an agreement with me and I would help her out organizing and clearing the fog. I was amazed but she asked me to help out, we scheduled yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s afternoon to get it done. I promised myself to not direct, manipulate or be more then A. I would take it within the moment breath by breath.

We went upstairs and I told A. that she was in charge of this mission and that we had to cooperate to get this done as equals. Normally I would announce my plans and order A. around as a mom. I said: “so where do we start what do we need?” Surprisingly A. summed up the things that she wanted, including a garbage bag. Throwing away anything has always been a hot issue. I first felt a bit strange almost suppressing myself to not direct the situation. After a while we’ve got the hang of it and we were happily eating ourselves through the mess. I was disentangling all the stuff on the floor and A. was sorting it out and throwing it in all the different boxes. The floor is clear now after day 2 and tomorrow we’ll sort out the drawers and get everything into place again. We had moments in which we were cold and didn’t want to continue anymore, but we pushed through. Already the first evening I noticed a clearness within A., she is happy and is asking herself why she hasn’t done this before.

I suggested A. to start writing on a regular basis and to create a blog for herself. She was really interested and my partner P. and I shared our experiences with blogging and how also writing can clear your head and see the things for what they are. Fears can be seen as fears and easily dismantled within self-honesty. Right now she is writing her first blog in English, her third language. I really enjoy my new way of sharing myself with A. and our new way of interacting with each other. I will not wander of in the future or get stuck in the past experiences we had.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to manipulate my daughter in order to get her to clean up her room.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to direct the situation of cleaning up A.’s room without directing myself in the best interest of all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel more than my child when it came to cleaning up her room.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to spread fear within my my child in order to manipulate her to clean up her room.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to manipulate my daughter with money so she would take the baite and clean up her room.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire an outcome through manipulating my environment and not being one and equal to my environment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to play out my mother-costruct.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel frustrated when my desired results within A. cleaning up her room were not met.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel apathetic about my self created situation within this cleaning issue.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to suppress myself in order not to direct the situation, instead of seeing that being equal isn’t about suppressing myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think or consider almost giving in to this feeling of giving up.

Living together 21/01/2011

It’s winter and it’s our fourth winter here in Italy. Our first winter wasn’t a cold winter, nevertheless the house was cold and we lived in a room temperature around 11 degrees Celsius. The wind blew through the walls and windows. We tried to heat the rooms which was a difficult task and basically meant that we were heating the inside and outside of the house. Our second winter started in this house and we decided to look for another place, the wood stove we used was an attack on our health and we were longing for a “normal” heated house.

 

Since we are living in Italy I’ve been really cold. In Holland I never bothered about the cold in winter as a grown up. It was as if the scale was blowing to the other side. In Holland I never wore really warm cloths in winter, now here in Italy I wear at least 5 different layers of clothing. As if it is a polarity that I’m  living out through which I’m now experiencing only the cold. Or when one grows older one becomes cold due to all that is accepted and allowed. In that case I can heat myself by doing SF and applying self corrective statements, just turning the process of ignorance and accepting and allowing. lol

 

We moved to an apartment, some sort of a barbi house. It was so small that half of our furniture had to be put away in the relatively big garage we had. That winter was a warm and cosy winter, cold outside while we were warm inside our little house. Due to lack of space and my business that was growing we had to find ourselves another home. We found a big house for a really low rent and decided to take it, it was spring and we didn’t think too much about winter. We knew that heating the house would be a problem, but we figured that it was better then our first home here in Italy. How wrong had we’ve been. The first year we literarily burnt our reserve money for a temperature of 16 degrees Celsius and we were still cold. This year we decided to approach things more in common sense.

 

Without a substantial job there was no money to heat the whole house. Last year we closed the big spacious living room due to the cold and not being able to raise the temperature above the 13 degrees Celsius. This year we looked at it again and we saw that when we took out the door between the living room and dining room, which is already connected to the kitchen, we had even more space than in our Barbi apartment. We decided to put a wood burning stove in the living room and with the fire place in the dining room we could maybe reach 18 degrees.

 

We were all used to having our own space/room to work or play. The most practical solution was to make a corner for all 4 of us and spend winter living close together. In the apartment although it was smaller we had different rooms to for a moment be able to separate one from the hectic of family life. My partner P. made his office in one corner, I installed my 3 sewing machines and my computer in another corner, my son J. took his desk and computer downstairs and my daughter A. who loves the couch and never works behind her desk decided to claim the big sofa to hibernate. The kids go to school only in the morning, 6 days a week and only very recently P. started to go to the office 3 times a week, so that gives me 3 mornings of total possession over the living room. Around Christmas we were all at home for about 14 days, but it worked well. We made certain rules and applied “what’s best for all” whenever there was a disagreement. It has been such a great experience, nobody can hide away, all is seen and all is in the open. When we as parents discuss things the kids discuss with us and we’ve been tackling a lot of topics due to the fact that we were together. We learned to function as a whole and frustrations were taken on right away. When spring arrives and we all will move back again in our own spaces we will probably miss each other’s presence. We already did visit each other regularly, but that will probably increase. Over all a nice experiment.

 

Our new fundamentalistic “faith” 09/01/2011

My day started off as a nice quite Sunday, the sun was shining outside. I did the things that had to be done in order to run my household. Then around noon my partner P. said: “I’ve got an e-mail from my dad”. This means usually assumptions, a lot of emotions and us being asked to justify ourselves. I felt some energy in my solar plexus, not so much fear, but more the feeling of I don’t want to go there anymore. I felt like hiding from the abusive words that were triggered by memories that came up. I didn’t want to participate within these feelings and memories, but this is a though one that always tickles my ego and seduces me to feel personally attacked. P. and I talked a lot today about it to see why we still react and to stop this. My parents-in-law and I do not connect anymore and we do not hear each other so any communication right now is useless and a waste of both our time. It had been so nice and calm and we hadn’t been hearing from them in a while.

 

The accusation this time was about P. his blogging and our new fundamentalistic “faith”. We haven’t been dealing with this kind of family construct yet, but we knew it was about to happen sometime. P. had been writing about his dad amongst many other things within self-honesty and hadn’t been twisting his experience/reality towards his dad at all. His dad took it personal and accused him of having no clue why he had done the things in life how he did them. The whole point of blogging is self reflection and within self reflection one can only write from the perspective of self. My father-in-law thinks that we do not understand the word honesty and he referred to an old saying that says: “Improve the world and start with yourself”. I have to say that for the first time in ages I do agree with him on that one, nevertheless it’s one thing to write it or say it, it’s another thing to apply it.

 

My father-in-law says about P.’s process that it’s a fundamentalistic and new belief/faith and it doesn’t leave any room for discussion and that P. is avoiding any confrontation about it. I can’t recall my father-in-law ever asking P. about it. He ends his e-mail with the statement that he and his wife have the feeling that they lost their son and grandchildren. Then he states  that he hopes that P.’s new faith is worth the price P. has to pay for it and that he has to carry the consequences for the rest of his life. As you can see I’m no longer mentioned within e-mails, only when it comes to brainwashing then I’m in the picture again. What bothers me the most is that for the umpteenth time assumptions are being used as facts. It triggers this polarity point of being more or less within me, on which I have been working within SRA. My father-in-law presents himself as the almighty Lord who doesn’t need to study about our “new faith” or verify his “facts” within reality. I will no longer participate in this emotional turmoil they time after time try to trick me in. I must stick to the facts and all that I see then is two sad people who feel victimized by their son while ignoring the fact that they’ve created and participated within their own reality.

 

Then after lunch we received an e-mail from my dad, who said that my brother-in-law had sent him an e-mail. These two men do normally not have any contact. My brother-in-law expressed his worries about P. and the kids and wanted to bring to my dad’s attention that P. has started blogging and gave him a link to the blog site. My dad read it and then sent a copy to my brother, because he wasn’t sure if he had understood the English articles well enough. My brother confirmed to my dad that there wasn’t anything disturbing or new written in the articles. Both my dad and brother expressed that they themselves would never start such a blog, because you never know who might read it and who will use it against you. The usual fears people have which we already dealt with through self-forgiveness. My dad then had an e-mail exchange with my brother-in-law in which my dad basically said that he didn’t see any disturbing fact within P.’s blog site and that he knew about our financial situation and would do anything to help us financially just as my brother does. I have no other word for my brother-in-laws actions then gossip. He also told my parents about an organisation in Africa that asks €1200,- for a course that we might be involved in. He sounded just like those “cultbusters” on You Tube. My dad asked my brother-in-law how his relationship with his parents was developing and why he had been talking about this with his parents. My brother-in-law said that his relationship with his parents is in good shape and that it was only out of concern he contacted his parents. We all know that the relationship between my brother-in-law and his parents never has been good.

It’s sad but my brother-in-law showed his true nature by gossiping behind our backs about us without asking P. what was really going on. So P. wrote an e-mail to both his brother and dad. My brother-in-law does not understand that in May this year we are 3 years involved within Desteni. Before today he didn’t see us as odd or different and now all of a sudden we are. How fantastic and reliable is the human mind.

 

P. and I and the kids were asking ourselves at a sudden point what this was all about anyways. How can one make such a fuss out of our normal and not at all special way of living. If they had studied what it is we’re involved in then they had found out that it’s about equality and living ones live in the best interest of all. Which doesn’t mean pleasing some one else’s ego. Don’t do onto another what you don’t want to be done onto you and love your neighbor as you love yourself, aren’t fundamentalist principles. Who sees equality for all as a fundamentalistic believe and sees that as leaving no room for discussion is partly right. Equality for all isn’t debatable.

 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel energy movement inside my solar plexus.

 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to let my ego be tickled by memories about nasty comments from my in-laws.

 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not connect with my in-laws and separate myself from them and label them as bullshitters.

 

 

Values 18/11/2010

Yesterday evening our daughter A. came up to us and asked us for help with her homework. Her whole class was asked to ask their parents what important values the parents would give to their children to go through live. The three of us smiled and A. didn’t react like a teenager as being ashamed of the things your parents do or say.  We gave her three values to bring to class and discuss. We said: “we want you to take responsibility for your own words and own deeds in life, we want you to consider everything equal as you and we want you to consider at all times what’s best for all. A. felt confident and wanted to talk about this in class, no reservations here.

When she came home today I asked her how it went in class with discussing the family values. Great she said, my classmates had no idea what I was talking about. My teacher, she said, understood what I was talking about. Her teacher is the teacher who claims to treat everybody equal, but favours constantly specific students. So that’s interesting to see that this teacher agrees and understand the values A. was talking about. What were the values the others wrote about, I asked? Me excluded said A., their parents wanted them to have respect for others. Well great, she said, as if that’s going to make a difference. Further there was one student who’s parents wanted her to be more motivated when it comes to school and her school career. So all that people could come up with, when asked what they wanted to pass on to their children, was having respect for others. Basically they are saying that they want their children to allow and accept the world as it is today and not to do anything about it. Isn’t that sad when you come to think of it?

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to blame the teacher for speaking words, but not living her words.

I forgive myself that I’ve not accepted and allowed myself to believe the tacher when she said that she understood our values. In this I clearly felt more than her.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to participate within the polarity of more and less.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to not live my words when I feel more than the teacher I’m not one and equal to her.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to blame myself for not living my words.