Soul Work
Finding the bottom of your heart, the barest essential you, beneath blood and bones, beyond pain and past, building upwards into who you truly are, is a profound journey that can take you to the greatest depths of hell. But if you keep going, it can take you into the beautiful spaces that lay between the pain, instead, into a place of joy and self-knowing... Ultimately opening your heart to an all encompassing love that fulfills your needs so you no longer have space for heartache.
©3/13/10 including photo by Danya Mosgofian
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Healing. Is. A. Slow. Process.
We're called patients: the people waiting to be well again. It's obvious after you deal with the medical establishment and spend a lot of time sick and waiting to be well why we're called that. I'm sure there is some other historical reason for calling Px, patients…but having to be the most patient you've even been for anything is what we end up being.
True to our namesake.
It's a game of faith being sick or healing. A challenge to test your faith in the world and in your own body to make it through these repeated physical let-downs that make us feel so utterly mortal and weak. A constant feeling of defeat upon the heart.
Being deeply broken and damaged requires even more patience and faith, knowing that you can heal again while simultaneously knowing it is one of the most difficult passages to ever journey through. On your day to day trials, sitting with your loss or grief, your hopelessness and pain, pulls at your soul, weakening the tiny fibers that keep you upright.
Knowing you can make it through that requires building faith out of nothing, from dust in fact. But how do we do that when we already feel so low and dark?
Sometimes making it through very dark moments require negotiating with your brain, conversing with your mind's chatter to give you one more minute, one more day of hope rather than fall down the slippery slope of cynicism and despair that is so easily remembered when things are not going well. It's easy to slip once we've been in the pits of despair, so you have to make sure you don't go there because that can literally eat up several days to get out of it again.
But whatever the length of the healing process, we must remember we are patients for a reason. To be patient, especially with ourselves and the healing process, for true deep healing takes time as I was told during my dark nights. I didn't understand why it had to take so long but now I do. Because you're rewriting code in your soul, your redesigning yourself from what didn't work to what you really want. And that is some deep shit to take on!
Believe in the notion that healing IS possible and it CAN be done. Believe in what you need as a legitimate pathway to healing.
Feel unduly entitled to seek that which your soul needs most of all, hope. And keep doing the soul work. It will take you there.
Originally written in 2011
Photo also by Danya Mosgofian©2011
'The Machinations of Green'-
Jealously. Yup, that thing we refer to so easily that resides in the darkest places of our souls. In our petty private thoughts that we dare to reveal to anyone but those we know aren't going anywhere, only to breathe out that putrid green smoke from our bodies like some cathartic confession in hopes that's all it takes to be rid of it. That horrible feeling that consumes one in a moment of insanity and complete lack of clarity reminding us how feeble and small we can be sometimes. It reminds us that we are human really. That we are not done working. And I had to address it anyway I could.
I've said it many times, I'm jealous of this, I'm jealous of that...but I wasn't really. Not truly jealous but simply desirous of something I didn't have. Believe me, there is a difference. Because before when I said that, I hadn't really truly felt it. Now I have.
And I had to purge it any way I could because it is that sickening.
It was never part of my character, my make up to be a jealous person and I was proud of this. I realize this more so because I've begun to experience real jealousy now a few times over the last few years and it kills me each time. Seeing and feeling this way causes a shock to my system because it is unfamiliar ground that I walk on. I just end up tripping the entire time. Although I fight hard not to let myself go to those truly ugly places and hang out, but catch it as it's making my way up my spine draining me of self-love and hope.
Now when I say jealousy, I mean the real deal. Bitter, resentful, sour, dark, sad, ugly and jealous. The word alone is enough to describe what the feeling connotes and should not be used casually I believe. It's too strong a word to throw around, kind of like love and hate. Moreover, jealousy is heartbreakingly honest and reveals a side of ourselves that is unable to speak freely in the light of day so it has to morph itself into some disfigured form to get attention.
Real jealousy is like an enteric coated pill that takes it's time to seep into your system as it erodes at your insides. THAT kind of jealousy. True jealously.
Despite this strange occurrence going on in me I know better than to let it run me down or drive me into walls of stupidity and despair. So I talk with it, so to speak. I listen. As there is something more to it. Something deeper that begs attention.
And I have no clue what to do about it other than to look at it with soft eyes.
Somewhere between loathing myself for having it, recognizing that it's just not something I want to live with and the bitter feeling in my stomach when it rears it's horrid head, I see something else. A vulnerability. A desire unfulfilled. Something resembling frailty that is living underneath all the armour, intellectual discourse and rhetoric is a body in need of something and an uncertainty of how to get it.
So even though I want to gouge my mind out with a cocktail fork when it pangs, I can't help but look at it more graphically, broadly to try and understand it a little better so that it doesn't have such a hold on me and I can move on to greener pastures. I couldn't resist ;)
This is something that is very new to me that has rarely happened and I have been truly grateful for this.
It wasn't that I didn't want things or people, or suffered from the ravages of insecurity, but I wasn't truly jealous. Not bitter at the object of desire and not angry or sad about it. Now that I have experienced real jealousy a couple of times, I understand it a little better and all it's complexities enmeshed in the psyche.
When it does happen, I am overwrought with confusion and humility knowing that I feel that way about something or someone because I am not there and am forced to ask myself pertinent questions.
Ugh....When I do, I feel so human. But I guess that's par for the course in being human, that you will feel the entire myriad of emotions that we are equipped to feel. If you don't, there are personality disorders you can get diagnosed with. Eventually if we live long enough, we feel everything.
As I age, perhaps it's the changing of form and function that evokes such a dark and sour feeling in me; Perhaps it's being smack dab in the middle of my own personal remodel, and knowing that I am in this 'remodel' mode, everything takes more patience and time. Neither of which I feel I have enough of as the acrid irony of aging sets in. Either way, it is here and coming to life. But I am not content to sit quietly with it while it grows into a behemoth of disproportion.
Since it takes me to such sad hollow places where I see myself in a shadowy reflection, it demands I view it with honesty. So I am. Painfully, bravely I am looking at this scaly monster poking through my ribs trying to get my attention and I'm giving it to her. But not without an explanation and an exit plan!
All I can do is own it and see it and work my tail off to clean it out of my system so that I am no longer held captive by it. I wonder if others go through this when they experience jealousy or other sickening emotions. Or do they just feel them and live with it?
I am cognisant of this form growing in me and driving me to this sick feeling in my gut but also aware that I won't stand for it. It's not me. Moreover it's bad for my soul. But it reminds me of the dark empty spaces that still live in me that may need attending to which is obviously why this feeling of jealously, has cropped up at all.
Worst of all it's makes me sick with jealousy. And that's enough to want to try something else.
Think about it.
8/24/14©DanyaMosgofian
'Humble As'-
There is something magical that happens when you are suddenly given an answer you are seeking in your life. Even if you are not seeking it, it can be a wake up call as it arrives with a grand thud into your life randomly. It's like something coming from completely out of nowhere and smacking you on the head, and it feels really good!
Sometimes we stumble over and over a particular issue or problem in our lives despite the number of times we think we've addressed it, repaired it and moved on; Somehow, like a parasite stuck to the side of your ribs draining you of life, it's still there and can rear it's ugly head without warning at the most inopportune times.
Hopefully, if we're lucky and paying attention, when a lesson that fits your problem perfectly appears out of nowhere, it's like the sky opening up and warm rain washing down everything else you were thinking about before, and you are clear.
Shazam! Yes.
Humility is one of those lessons. Often when a moment of humility happens, it's well… aptly humbling, even painful at times. BUT it is also quite gratifying. Humility has the ability to lift off the veil of self-delusions and defensive armour to show us how we really feel underneath all the mechanisms that we have created to protect ourselves from pain. It allows us to really see ourselves, how we walk in this world and the footsteps or gaping holes we are leaving behind.
This is where the magic can occur. For this is where change can unfold and where the real work can be done on healing old wounds, breaking old habits and rebuilding your life that way YOU want to see it instead of recycling the same dirty behavior over and over until you can't see straight. This is a moment of clarity, so be grateful.
If you're like me in any way, stumbling over and over the same roadblocks or warning signs or running into the same thorny bushes and brick walls I've been running into much of my life, until I no longer walk upright but in caveman-like-crawl-because I-may-as well-not-get-up-as-I'm-just-going-to-stumble-again-anyways fashion, then sometimes you need that sudden smack of a metaphorical 2x4 in the form of a life lesson thrust upon you out of the blue. And for this, I'm grateful.
This is humility. These are the moments when the sky of our minds cracks open and we realize who we have become, for better or worse and as a result we can then clearly see ourselves. We can see what is working and what is not working and go from there with an open heart and mind.
Be open, be ready for this and take advantage of the drop to your knees in a painful moment of humility. If you're in need of some clarity, pray for a really thick piece of wood to come swooping out of the air to land dead center on your brick forehead and lay you out. After you wake up, your eyes will see a bit brighter light and you may be able to walk a bit straighter into a different direction.
Peace. :)
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