Norman Vincent Peale's Positive Thinking

With the relinquishing of my role as target or victim of a man, my ex-spouse, existing somewhere on the continuum between narcissism and psychopathy, I have discovered the return of hopes and dreams.  The feeling is one of moving from a black-and-white film to one of color and shadings.  Faith has returned and although it is true that I am a very different presence in this universe than the one of "pre-encounter,"  I find life now full of promise.

Money serves as such a fascinating topic of life's leeway.  I was left for dead in the financial domain with all the pushing/pulling and promises of paying back of the entirety of my funds.  The pain for me was one of betrayal, surely, but also acknowledging my choice to go along with the strangely and absurdly, mentally disordered approach to a mono-dimensional lifestyle.  I comprehend why so many label subjects like me as co-dependent, but that's incorrect because I - and most of us, I believe - was trying to give generously for the larger picture in time.

It should be no surprise that Faith dropped into the gray zone, as well.  Interestingly, for me, faith has been so personal, that this occurrence ran parallel to the evaporation of the-me.  I remember a movie of some time ago about a female devil and the hero offering to lay his soul on the altar of sacrifice to save another.  In that  film, an angel explains to the hero that his soul was never "his to give."  It belonged all along to God and the Universe.

So it is for all of us who have survived the "Twilight Zone" encounter with these black-hole entities.  The media and social networking sites are jumbled with tales, helping blogs, and evaluations - both professional and lay.  But, "following" is not the key to living this life to its fullest potential.  And that, in my opinion, is the dawning of amazing awareness.  There exists a very tricky tight wire in giving of oneself and giving away oneself.  If we do not fall into the abyss of no-choice in following ideas of sacrifice for the good of others, and instead pursue the voice within that connects us to goodness and strength, we bestow energy to another from the core of us as individual creations, part of the God-force.

This primitive and most painful test of sharing has brought an immensely powerful cognizance of place and footing in this physical realm.  I find that I am able to acknowledge another without needing to comply with some molded concept of merging interplay with that other.  Unlike co-dependence, the decision to give too much and too freely was made from a post of genuine compassion.

For me at age 61, I am keenly aware of the laboriously powerful force of hormones that drove me when I opted to forge this particular path in the arena that now seems so "long, long ago and far away."  I have noted other folks on internet sites that go onward to find love and a more substantially happy situation.  I am not at all sure where my direction lies.  Without that magnetism toward co-creating on a one-to-one basis, I find that I might be like those monks of old who might just link their life-paths with the God energy.

Reading Peale's Positive Thinking, I find that I am viewing from a new perspective.  This belief of Peale's fully takes in one's connection through an individualized integrity.  One need not manipulate the purer form of positive thinking to bring the wish closer to what might be possible from one's ability to operate in a framework of reality now.  I am pretty darned poor in finances at this moment, but I am allowing myself to "see" that ranch I have wanted as becoming more real.  What will happen?  I don't know, but I do recognize that I am more than I ever before regarded as "true."  I suspect it's all part of planning the trek from A to C and re-evaluating when you reach B....do you still want to go to C or have your ideas and desires changed?

Optimism.  And hopeful expectation.  And Gratitude.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka,' but 'that's funny.'"  I think Asimov is onto something here.  Then, again, James Cabell may be right, "the optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true."

Oz the Great and Powerful

It's fascinating how we flesh-out our feelings and explain them to ourselves and others using story-lines that may be enjoyed.  There exists a sense of comfort in locating extraneous plots within the writings of others that highlight our own emotions and thoughts... when handling the series of events in our own lives.  They piece together a fabric of not-so-disjointed actions of cause and effect, just waiting for us to claim them as our own peculiarly tinted takes on this living work of art.

Watching "Oz the Great and Powerful" last night, I found myself enthralled by the film as a prequel with its twist on the original Oz tale as well as abruptly aware that it might not have been the continuation of Walt Disney's plans for the Oz books as suggested in the bonus segment about the film.  Even so, the exciting account moves the male lead, a carnival magician, from drifting in the waves of his life's happenings into a world of choice, consequence, and enlightenment.

 His definition of perception and the realization that making a purposeful stand in living not only grows the strength of character present, but increases his sense of compassion and accountability.  While performing his act before his trek into the land of Oz, our hero haphazardly and by rote tells the audience "to believe."  With his developing change and ownership of ethical traits as the wizard, he tells the Munchkins, "We have nothing to fear as long as we believe." And he regards this as truthful.  There will always be those we've touched in the wake of our interactions - some positively and others who must deal with their responses to our inability to conform with exactitude and precision to their framework of ideals.  The naive young and lovely dark-witch experiences hurt when she believes that the "wizard," as he is accepted to be from prophecy, has discarded her for the good witch Glinda.  Her self-attuned sister offers her an apple laced with magic to squelch the pain of feeling.  Biting into the fruit, the bad witch becomes forever changed and the upset flares into jealous rage and hatred.  Of course, the prejudiced hostility presents as irrational and no attempt is made to curb the execration of all that has produced upset along her historical timetable.

The apple's power to mask the pain of upset actually blotted the balance of the equation where another has free will and exploded the hatred of aggrievement  into ugliness.  In the story, the once beautiful dark-witch evolves into the pointed-chin, green woman as a quintessential black-magic  sorceress intent on destroying all who thwarted her happiness. The wizard in this presentation is the one who comes to understand his own failings and then to discover his personal sense of valor and risk.

The farther I move from my own discolored land of angst with a narcissistic spouse and his taker-clan, the more volitionally ready I am to believe in my accountability and sense that anything is possible.  For such a long time, I felt adrift and at a loss for the firm foundations of belief systems I once valued.  The "what if's" had disappeared from my thoughts and vocabulary and my dream-scape had become mundane.  Although I feel that my ex-spouse lay somewhere on the continuum between narcissism and psychopathy, it was I who allowed the persistently sustained sense of identity into which I had fallen.  I am getting off my broom and freely electing to drop not only any rose colored glasses, but blinders as well.

I have just read Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's The Amazing Results of Positive Thinking.  What I might well have deemed innocently credulous not long ago, I now embrace as amazingly dynamic in the navigation of the principles of the suppositional question on a higher tone of imagination.  What happens if one "just believes" - in the face of all the thoughts and energies to the contrary?

It's a doorway.  Not into Oz, but into the appearance of probabilities.

"Are you the great man we've been waiting for?"

"I think I could be."

     James Allen sums it very well:

"The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow.

Sow an act and you reap a habit.

Sow a habit and you reap a character.

Sow a character and you reap a Destiny."

Faith's Phoenix - Intermission

I have long been a fan of a terrific psychologist of this generation and his site of mind and soul awakening.  Peter Shepherd has probably shaken his head many a time over my wishy-washy "catch and release" wisdoms as I dealt with my own fun house of experiences in the last few years.  Robert O'Connor is another of my "heroes of this and other realities" in his presence and with his practice of psychology.

Choosing - whether or not totally conscious of my own part of that action - to take the jaunt into time with beings alien to my own personality, I now recognize that I not only sank into that quicksand, but stayed just enough above the ooze to remain alive.  Not thriving, but existing.

My belief systems took such a frenetic strike that the blitzkrieg of assault to my spirit-hood had me "give up the ship"...but only for awhile.  I will express that the short number of years seems like a lifetime as I "become aware" that I have awakened.  Years ago I watched the movie, "Jacob's Ladder," and the feel has been much the same.  In the movie the protagonist apparently skips threads and slips into an alternate reality.  Personally, I think the creators of that motion picture took a more readily acceptable route for the public when they laid the experiences of that artificially formed state-of-being at the door of drug and chemicals.  For me, my own "twinkling" of alternatives has been quite simply from within.

Over the last few weeks, I realized that not only have I felt no one-on-one connection to my sense and definition of God, but that I wanted to know this once more.  Emmet Fox writes of "taking a vacation from yourself."  It's as easy and yet, painstakingly difficult as blinking one's eye and then during that moment choosing to "see differently."  I won't attempt to comprehend the mind and spirit's workings from a therapeutic standpoint, but I do recognize that I have grasped a fresh view of living. The appraisal of this significance is that I took on my own closet full of "identities" in the casting of this role.

Was there experiential value to all of this?  I can explicitly respond, "yes."  That need which permeated my presentation of myself to temper communications has melted.  Fear exists as a perception of knowledge and no longer as the driving force for survival of my spirit.  For the first time in many years, I told "God and the Universe" that I didn't know what I believed, but WANTED to hold a firm conviction of goodness and the contact with an energy flow that reinforced this tenet.

A couple of days ago - with this prayer in the ethos - I rose early and ambled into the bathroom.  The cabinet shelf had fallen leaving the orderly set-up of items in disarray.  My immediate thought was wondering if we'd had a small earthquake.  As I worked to replace the bottles and boxes, it became apparent that the shelf was too long to fit properly.  I felt myself perplexed, but balanced the feeling with the idea that the wood might have swollen, so I took it to the garage and sawed off enough to make it fit inside the cabinet door.  The adjacent side also has a wooden platform made the same way and it remained upright, holding towels.  As I looked at that setup, I wondered....could that shelf actually fit in the first side?  AND, it did!  So, I swapped them.  All the while, I felt the most peculiar sense of "out of space and time" shift.

Could all this be explained within some framework of ordinary reason?  Maybe, but to me, it was AN ANSWER to my earnest request.  To underscore my newfound CHOICE to BELIEVE in goodness, I found two good films in the "spirituality" section of Netflix.  "Rust" dealing with the way Faith can slip during times of conflicting moments of dissonance and "Breaking Man" which handled the relationship issues of another minister and his loss of "self" and a resulting divorce.

As the pastor in "Breaking Man" takes time alone to rekindle his knowledge of who he is and his mutually interwoven ideological concepts, he recognizes that "you have to be who you were created to be."  So, too, does the priest in "Rust" as he returns home to regroup.  Seeing an old friend, the man says, "so what happened.  Did you wake up one day and say, Lord this dance is over?  Wow.  That's going to be one messy divorce."

I don't feel that I am alone in the discovery that the me-of-today isn't the same as yesterday and that I even miss that past arena of non-tinged operating field. Trauma has altered my thoughts on my place in the scheme of living.  But, I also know viscerally that it's OK.  I am not the same, I am actually more in the wave of cognition.  My life has a sense of Grace now.  I can be the totality of who I am without censoring that wholeness.  And I am also keenly aware that I will again laugh heartily and even cry, but the import of continuity plays gently against the backdrop of this particular lifetime.  Gabriel Marquez expresses it so well in Love in the Time of Cholera:  "He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers gave birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves."

"Now, there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, 'love your enemies.'

It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power

there that eventually transforms individuals... There is something about love

that builds up and is creative..." ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sharing ideas/ reinforcing strengths/ opening doors - Teaching

I have some of the most amazing contacts on Facebook.  The threads of conversation share outstanding as well as run-of-the-mill ideas...but, they are all creative aspects of ourselves and sharing with others.

This is a fantastic post: http://www.rebellesociety.com/2013/08/15/5-signs-youre-on-the-heros-journey/....

Although we all deal and respond to life's mundane aspects, many - maybe even most - of us are risking uncloaking ourselves to express our thoughts.  I almost, and with a bit of humor wrote, "brazenly uncloaking" but that wouldn't be accurate because most of us still operate within parameters of give-and-take while offering our tidbits in the open air.  It's true that we clarify our own inner selves when we share our creative streaks, but we also supply raw material to others in the ether.

I recently had some rehashing of the ordeal of handling bullying at my grandson's school last year.  Still receiving the cold shoulder from teachers, I felt such sadness for my inability to "fit in."  And yet, my grandson needed advocates to aid him.  My dad who was an adjunct English Professor and then entered the corporate realm of textbook publishing, always told me, "be ever so careful how you rock the boat with teachers because they will hold it against the child."  He was, of course, absolutely correct.  Even so, there are times when adults have to don that hero's armor to stand for helping another.

Then, the task becomes vigilance.

I have noted a return to hierarchy valuing of professionals in my area of life.  And, a fear of rocking the boat.  Succumbing to this, myself, I had thought I wouldn't go to my grandson's open houses to allow distancing.  I became angry about Hilary Clinton's thoughts that "it takes a village to raise a child."  As "proper" as I felt my following the chain-of-command to have been during this ordeal in seeking answers for my grandson, I saw many times where "tried and true" excuses were used and even the attempt to upset our small family unit's continuity and innate credit of the dependability of goodness between generations.

Remembering an episode from "Everybody Loves Raymond," where Ray gives the "it's all about editing" toast to his newly married brother, maybe it's also about focus.  It's not simply what one chooses to bring to mind, but deals with focus of intention.  My grandson must go on a bit of a diet - not withholding anything, but changing portions and attention.  Just perhaps this is the very core of choice.  It's the volition and purposeful course that is accented in living.

There may be no way to eradicate the negativity of some of the teachers who felt that the bullying would just follow a natural curve and that I was wrong and caused undue application of awareness to their profession and school system.  That may be.  To me, that kind of "turning away from the problems at hand" is not only unacceptable, but cowardly.  Trust is not built from acquiescence.  Assured reliance on character grows from communication linked to action of accountability.  Much like handling the situation of dieting.

I won't pretend it's not painful to experience the spotlight of being a pariah, but I can genuinely state that my own resolve of initiation to protect my grandson was without malice. So, I have decided to continue to be present in the school functions of my grandchildren.  I'll seek that piece of Chocolate cake along the way.

We are all teachers.  "The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with the sharp stick of 'truth.' " ~Dan Rather

Humanity's Quest: Setting the Tone

Humanity's Quest: Setting the Tone: It's a Sunday and "Begin the Beguine" is playing on my tiny CD machine.  I have the volume cranked up considerably.  With time...

Humanity's Quest: A Moment to Reflect

Humanity's Quest: A Moment to Reflect: My daughter and grandsons are away for the weekend and I have a moment to reflect on my life's path - especially since my last marriage ...

Setting the Tone - My Montana

It's a Sunday and "Begin the Beguine" is playing on my tiny CD machine.  I have the volume cranked up considerably.  With time alone I looked at the Facebook pages and saw that my new found love in an author, and his character, had posted a great photo of his pickup truck precariously perched on a one-lane mountain pass without any room to maneuver.  Craig Johnson writes with ease and intelligence, bringing Sheriff Walt Longmire to life.  Obviously, Johnson has many admirers and I dare say of both genders.  I enjoy getting a feel for a book before beginning to read and submerse myself in the texture of that creative reality.  Johnson's first of the series hosts a neat surprise package at the end, much like the "Easter Egg" following a movie: this proffers a readers'guide with an introduction, interview with the author, and questions for discussion.

Viewing that picture posted by Craig Johnson, I remembered my magnetic draw to this land of Montana.  "Longmire" exists in a Wyoming setting, much like that of my home.  Although I was born in Oregon, my parents were North Carolinians and we returned to their stomping grounds immediately following my brother's birth, when I was two.  They were of corporate stock and much more sophisticated than I.  Probably the reason I left North Carolina after living in various states and returning "home" when my mom became a widow and moved to be near her family.

Following the matriarch of our family's passing, my much loved aunt, I found myself lying in bed before starting the day with my two young daughters, just staring at one of my aunt's paintings of a bluff in the West.  Maybe I had to wait for most I loved to have left this plane of existence to decide to runaway and join the circus of this life.  I decided it was time to explore my connections to this land...to My life.  Literally, I threw a dart at the map and did some research, settling on a transition to Montana.

Partings can be tough - I'm a soft touch even when I returned my daughters to their dorm rooms, I cried as if there had been a death in the family.  But, in this case, the move was adventure!  My daughters and I climbed into the cab of the 27-foot  Uhaul with 90 pound dog at their feet, cat-in-carrier behind my seat, and car-in-tow and headed that-a-way.

The few years after my aunt's death left rifts in our extended family and upset bonds between my mother and me as we had worked as executrix to the estate.  The estrangements overflowed to that link between my brother and myself, too.  I decided it was time to see what there was to see; to let old hurts go; and to explore creating this grand undertaking of possible risks.

Settling into the cab of that Uhaul the first day, I thought, "oh, Lord, what have I done?"  My daughters each had CD's and headsets and scenery galore.  By the end of our fourth day, the interior seemed like a suite and we hired local fellows to unload the truck.  Adventure along the route?  There was some.  I pulled into a motel parking lot only to discover I was totally inept at backing the trailer.  The powers that be smiled and I hired a nice garage attendant to rescue us and we were off once more.  Storms hit our route with flooding and the guiding spirits offered alternate pathways.  Climbing onto the hood of the truck each morning, my daughters handed me oil and antifreeze to fortify this steadfast companion.

We arrived at our new home, just down the road from a feeder stockyard in the heat of June.  Aroma?  There is nothing quite as memory fixing.  The sky was as huge as the expanse of this wide Montana and the sky seemed to go on forever.  The altitude is so high that the clouds make shadows on the ground!  It was AND is glorious!

Working in Billings, the drive to Shepherd was relatively short.  Hiccups in the economy struck my agricultural lab and it closed.  We sold and I bought a place with a single-wide trailer, roomy hunting cabin, garage, outbuildings, and 25 acres in Roundup, still employed in Billings almost 60 miles away. The treacherously long mountain skidding to and from work had me rethinking locations in this state.  Neighbors are a huge blessing.  Once stranded in Billings with car trouble, they transported my daughters to the grocery store and offered a range of help.  Changes developed and we moved to Anaconda where I could buy a home outright.  I love Land, but going it alone with wells, frozen and high-centered roadways,automobile travail, and power outages in hip deep snow suggested a small town might just be an option.

Now both my daughters are adults and following their own adventures - my youngest married a terrific fellow this past New Year's Eve and my oldest has found a great guy a couple of hours away.  Once again I find myself free to "look newly." AND at the ripe old age of 60!

Following the utter heartache and anguish of being taken and left for dead by my ex and his clan, the journey of matrimony that I had believed would be my "last Tango" with romance just might have been such - but  romance with living is something else entirely.

For the first time in decades, I awoke to the realization that I want to be "Longmire."  No, not a sheriff, but a person of decency and integrity even as I seek new horizons from the stance of a loner-of-sorts.  So many of my months had centered focus on plain survival, aiding my family; and now my two dogs, cat, and I have our tiny house which holds love and memories.  Once again after many years, I listen to that inner voice reminding me that the "best may be yet to come."  I am honestly without a particular road map, but I surely am returning to life, just as the character, Longmire.  It's time to rebuild, to find that joie de vivre.

I had felt that the trek through the bowels of the Twilight Zone in my last marriage to a psychopath and his taker-clan might define me as a person. My months and years following, seemed consumed by the quest for answers and comprehending my own culpability.  I feel akin to this character of Longmire in this "return to the land of the living."  In a way, I, too, have scripted the "package at the end of my particular ordeal" and have just maybe seen what I needed to evaluate.  The new fleshing-out of my own character's texture allows for the memories while forever expanding with possibility.

Now I sit in a sphere of economic adjustment and no wherewithal to locate that "ranch" for myself.  Maybe it will come in the form of experience or a coloring of distinguishable vitality.   It's funny that my sense-of-humor has remained intact.  Without the physicality of a new excursion, I am looking from the me of now, that-a-way.

"A man's got to take a lot 

of punishment

to write a really

funny book." ~ Ernest Hemingway

A Moment to Reflect

My daughter and grandsons are away for the weekend and I have a moment to reflect on my life's path - especially since my last marriage to a man I believe to be a psychopath and his taker-clan.  Many writings on blog sites appear to come from rather lofty presences who don't struggle with the mundane activities of putting food on the table, taking care of health concerns, and dealing with money issues.  Or perhaps, if they are like me, we simply have distanced ourselves from these trials.  That may be an error because while in the midst of anguish and serious financial decay, I thought I was totally alone in this vortex.

My now ex-spouse, having left me at ground zero in the management of money, appeared to live WELL in capital letters.  His invalid mother, part of the taker-clan, was cared for and supplied with needs and extras by the ex-spouse.  She would let me know of their marvelous culinary expeditions - all while I struggled to pay for the barest minimum of groceries.  Moving back to my house which I refused to sell to fuel his clan's dreams, I was unable to ask for societal aid due to his income within our "married" state.

I chose - and it was my decision - to work for a pittance to aid my daughter by supplying child care as she, too, scrambled arduously to regain her footing in life after being abandoned by her spouse.  The feeling of sheer horror took new dimensions under the shame of naiveté in believing the promises of being reimbursed during the continual flow of crises.  The wake-up evaluation came from working pro-se to offer my side of the equation in the divorce proceedings.  The time in providing reasonable exhibits was honored by the clerk of court, but totally ignored by the judge's law clerk.  Because I had been left without transportation to make the trek to the courtroom of venue, the ex's word was accepted as truthful. It appeared under his testimony that our marriage had been short and without financial devastation to me. Much to my surprise, the paperwork showed that we had been "separated" for over a year.   I had found no attorney willing to work with me.  My economic plight could not have been appealing, nor was the fact that my now-ex was in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings.

Why in the world would I share that I had to go "on the dole" for a bit?  Because everywhere I looked, it appeared my situation was far from the norm.  Now, as I have climbed a frightening path toward visual acuity and returned to the land of joy and possibility, I see that my perception was askew.  I believe we are embarrassed by our predicament and we need to openly hold that "light at the end of the tunnel" to others who are just awaking to the Alice-in-Wonderland's dreadfully repugnant feel of this screwball turn in life's domain.

Other excursions may surprise us and even leave us urgently struggling with difficulties.  But this particular jaunt through the bowels of the Twilight Zone struck at the well of my psyche - hopes, dreams, belief systems, and even the personal description of myself.

Life, however, DOES grow finer, happier, more fulfilling, and even more honorable.  This has served as an unbelievable vaccination against a deficiency in worldly wisdom.  The credulity that there is goodness in all, for me, had to be examined.  This doesn't make the fun-house ride any longer terrifying.  Oddly enough, I now feel the "potentiality" of choice and discern deep within my connection to this grand universe of universes that  life is meant to be an exquisite quest.  Always to learn more about ourselves and boundaries.

Today I love to experience the giddy feel of New Age ok-ness, but I am now a show-me-the-proof kind of gal.  Show me the track record.  Permit the graph of life's lessons to come forward.  This ordeal with someone and his attachments on this eccentric continuum of narcissism-to-psychopathy has reshaped me.  Finally, perhaps, I am able to trust that inner voice.  It's no longer a whisper, but a siren blaring "look out, Will Robinson!"  At long last, I have come to look farther than the hood of my car while driving on that "yellow brick road."  Accountability...and for my own selections of option.

Emotions and chaos have indeed taken a rather hefty toll on this old body.  As I look at my teeth in a cup, ace bandage for banged-up knee from working as the clan's hired hand, and that ever present mirror's image of Aunt Bea, I am no longer the "wannabe" warrior hoping to make a difference. I AM  that legionnaire on the highway to Xanadu.  The humor arises in recognizing myself as this outwardly bedraggled specimen.  In the movie, "The Mirror Has Two Faces." the protagonist's mother says, "I look in the mirror and I'm old, but I still feel like a kid."  I do, too, and that's my soul speaking.

From "Star Trek" Captains, "Engage...left at the first star."

"I am so very proud of you.

Now, as you embark on this new journey,

I'd like to share this one piece of advice.

Always, always remember that adversity is not a detour.

It is part of the path."  ~ Richard Paul Evans

60 minutes an Hour

Ah, time.  Its passage is inevitable and toying with the concepts of reverse flow for visitation purposes may not really be desirable.

As an old gal, I noted with some disdain...and then humor that my arms now wave before my hands do. When did this transpire?  If I'm honest, I'll admit this to be the very reason I rarely take a gander at myself in the full length mirror of my bathroom.  Once upon a time I was svelte.

Now, and I say this with a deep, heavy sigh, I have become "buxom."  But not with the woo-hoo, I'm Barbie expression.  I AM Aunt Bea from the "Andy Griffith Show!"  Or, perhaps, I am my grandmother - in so many ways.  My mom and I surely had our differences.  She was elegantly trim and epitomized charm and grace; a lover of literature and always was a pianist.  Her marriage to my father would probably have provided a great backdrop to those damnable romance novels.  Those ditties have caused more than a fair share of angst in expectation.

However, my grandmother cherished great written works and music and still worked her farm with a hand-held plow behind her mule, Nell, well into her 80's.  Although I have no farm, I moved to Montana many a moon ago because the land and her culture's style of individualism drew me.

These ladies have provided amazing lessons that I am only now beginning to truly appreciate.  Granny loved deeply and this found expression through her country style cooking and open hearth to any guest.  Mom, too, offered love from a well spring of depth; and although not the open nurturer of my own thoughts on idealism and patterns I have worked to provide, she brought beauty and dignity to her table of living.

When my oldest daughter asked to accept my offer of moving herself and her two little men into my tiny home, there was adjustment.  I adore my grandsons and have seen all three of these amazing beings grow magnificently over this past year.  During this same trek of time, my youngest daughter married a terrific fellow.  All are gifted with intellect, humor, talents galore, and utter style - unique and uncanny as they navigate this plane of existence.

My oldest daughter has found a gentleman counterpart to her road of discovery and will be moving a couple of hours' drive in the months ahead.  At first I (and my youngest daughter) found ourselves in a bit of shock.  We tightened our family ties and battened down the hatches when our loved one and the children were abandoned by her ex-spouse whose biography is a litany of irresponsibility and grievance about his inability to make an accountable life.  The upset wasn't that we wanted her to remain stagnant.  For me, it was not only change, but now, altering my "identity."

With the passage of a small segment of chronological moments, my youngest adult daughter and I have pulled back into our own worlds - still including those we love.  Each being not only has a right to experiment with this grand fabric of experience, but to undertake amazing exploration.  I believe it defines us.

I forever remember the line from the movie, "The American President."  "It's ALL about Character."

I just located a marvelous presence from author Craig Johnson's books, Sheriff Walt Longmire.  The streaming TV miniseries, "Longmire" came into my awareness and I am in love.  Because "character" is the byword of this most unusual persona.  Human with frailties, baggage, trials and tribulations, but forever a host to a distinctly complex set of the attributes of decency and integrity.

Even the "old broad" I now am KNOWS that I want to be "Longmire" when I grow up.

"Talents are best nurtured in solitude.

Character is best formed in 

the stormy billows

of the world."

Johann Von Goethe

The Avengers...

I watched the action-packed and hero laden movie, "The Avengers," again.  It was a splendid ride to become one with the "best of the most human."  Those with failings, frailties, and most assuredly, feet of clay.
I believe that's what appeals to all of us who become enthralled by the action mixed with ethical questions and individuality along with the hope of combined camaraderie.  All of these characters hold personal pain and sense of failure.  Still, they strive to be "better than past moments have permitted."

Running into the psychopath in my life - and there was a mutuality about that where I exposed my less than healthy states and felt the draw and allure of the alien force of magnetic pull which promised an illusion of finding wholeness - I discovered something by looking at my own reflection at the bottom of the dark well.  Just as the heroes, their back up support systems of others, and the very philosophy of "right" let down the barriers to acknowledging all of themselves, so have I.

Trust in the flow of this and all universes has returned.  There may be incidents where "the piper must be paid," but there is a grand scheme of energy and we each and every one of us have a place.  The AMAZING joy comes with the discovery that there really IS choice - always of our own decision's prowess  and the mettle of our own souls.  Battles of all shapes, sizes, and fearful encounters exist and we all have the choice of using our sense of unparalleled consciousness of moral obligation.  Will the story have the applause of those within our realm of action?  Perhaps not, but we will know that we stood the ground of distinctions between right and wrong and cared for more than our individual selves.

Since emerging from the dark and hollow land of the survivors of a psychopathic encounter where our goodness was twisted, I am less afraid that I will not like the me that arises in unusual situations.  Surprise of surprises, I have discovered that it has never been my ego that stood to gain a foothold.  It has been that part of me connected to soul that always remains extant.

Will I know upset...fear...and even the judgemental kickback of others?  Maybe.  But after my inoculation within the ordeal, life is sweeter.  I have even discovered my great passion for the well being of children - to aid them in safety, survival, and to offer a glimmer of hopeful expectation.  Optimism is the key to creating the life that we can "sink our teeth into."  I used to feel that I could more easily recognize lessons in the flows of life others exhibited.  Now, I have been granted the gift of evaluating my own short comings and attempts at redemption.  Not only am I a humble offering of humanity, but privileged to be so.  As each of us lesser heroes in this energy of vital functionality faces our personal demons and questions over paths and selection preferences, we become greater than just our own stream of living on its own.

Purpose and aim of positive meaning give our moment in time significance.  No matter what our state - real life hero, advocate against bullying, care provider, spouse, conscientious employee, or any other title in which we invest the best of ourselves - we owe it to the existence of possibility to strive toward higher realms of comprehension and understanding.

There may always be those opposed to elevated energy and benefit to mankind and the spiritual domains.  It matters not.  For in the instant that we choose to be courageous and make a difference, all time becomes one moment.

"We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us.  We can analyze them 

out of existence, kill the, ban them, mock them,and still they return, patiently

reminding us of who we are...

and what we wish we could be."  ~Grant Morrison   

Optimism and "The Multiverse"

Coming through my anguish with a psychopath and his nutter/taker clan, coupled with the upheavals in dealing with the bullying 5-month episode of my young grandson, and witnessing the repercussions of the abusively browbeating workplace to both of my adult daughters, I found myself wondering what could the answer for "humanity's quest" truly be.

I read a marvelous book, How Children Succeed  - grit, curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough.  In this wondrous evaluation of studies, the author reveals his belief that optimism has died in most of our cultural experience.  Is that what have felt?  I spoke with my daughters and to my utter surprise, they were unaware of a time of upbeat optimism.  For me, I remember the Space Race and my fascination with physics and quantum mechanics.  This led me to question my sense of "nothing changes" that I had developed from my direct observation and participation of events over the last few years.

Watching some older TV shows such as "Quincy, Medical Examiner," I noted the exhilarating energy of "fighting the good fight" against all odds.  I began to ponder the effect of New Age type "let it all just flow" ideals and why I felt bereft of vigorously active purpose.

Just as I have been toying with the thoughts about optimism, I came across a Nova TV documentary called "The Fabric of the Cosmos - Multiverse."  In this production, a delightfully communicative physicist, Brian Greene, ushers us along a journey of "what if" the mathematics are correct that we are living in but one universe.  A host of ground breaking physicists such as Alan Guth and Michio Kaku along with numerous others of different nationalities offer reasons for the validity of this hypothesis.  The cosmos is filled with ever expanding dark energy which houses limitless numbers of universes and within this dark matter exist dimensions of hyperspace where higher dimensions exist between the universes - the number being 11 where stability is maintained.

Scientists cannot yet prove the "truth" of this assumption made from mathematical evaluations, but it answers many questions regarding inspections of this reality. Why does this strike me as movingly hopeful?  Because there exists endless possibility and even within that boundless offering, the concept that we and all of creation is not unique.  There may be others-of-ourselves" out there beyond the boundaries of our universe who are like us or like us with variations. Duplicates would be inevitable with the mathematical probabilities.  Evolution for these players may have taken an infinite number of turns.  Also, existences may not be anything similar to ours and life may not be matter related.  We have not made contact with these other universes because light cannot reach our own with the infinitely expanding dark matter pushing universes apart in eternally expanding multiverses.  Professor Kaku enjoys describing this as the "Mind of God where Cosmic music resonates between universes and dimensions of hyperspace."

Dr. Kaku's study of the String Theory states that all potential particles are made of these vibrating strings and that these strings take on the properties of these loops depending on how they vibrate.  The extra dimensions   are circular shapes wrapped around the quivering strands, forming DNA of the universe.

What occurred to me is that the cosmic dimensions around the cables remind me of  emotions where the possibilities of our existence are created and changed by these energies.  This leads to an amazingly rich tapestry of deeper understanding of reality.

So, optimism appears to be a heightened dimension where we can affect with unbelievable results to our personal lives and spiritual expectations.  The New Age thinkers may not have been totally off the mark any more than religious followers.  We have the playing card of choosing our emotional state and this in turn alters the energy text of the strings which make up our particles and thus reality.

Surviving ordeals may leave one with a sense of being "stuck." This, however, is only a "sense"...a temporary and changeable state.  WOW!...

                               "There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for." ~Tolkien

As Kenau Reeves' character, Shane in The Replacements, put it with succinct eloquence: "I wish I could say something classy and inspirational, but that just wouldn't be our style."  That is the me today after my self-publishing of Romance Stew, Life in the Aftermath of a Narcissist, Humanity's Reluctant Connoisseur, and Humanity's Beaming Countenance from a once Reluctant Connoisseur.

The science fiction appreciator in me so loves the drama of the novel by Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes.  Having been trounced by a psychopath - and yes, I'm quite sure that characterization fits - and his insane asylum clan, I have found a thread extant with the hubbub in the Scientology news sector.  So many critics are now standing up, facing onslaught of negativity to air their experiences.

Something happened in the '50's.  The comparison to this group works well for me because of the original doctrine of being the best hope for humanity. All of us who have come through the flames on this one sought to be a part of something bigger, greater, and meaningful. We relinquished much ego in the quest for benefiting others with a genuine benevolence.  I believe all of us who have survived the presence-of-another on the narcissism-to-psychopathy-continuum  had felt the same way, but discovered the intrinsic goodness of ourselves was twisted into a dysfunctional aberration of our soul's directive which was and is the normal state of the human psyche's link to something heady in unifying power.

We who are creating our lives and the "we" who are observing this evolutionary tapestry are connected by a "prime directive" that has been reshaped into some nebulous ether.  But, we DO remember who we are.  Surprise, surprise.  I still am working on what the damnable shift in reality truly was...and why did it take so long to "awaken."

All that might make some fascinating investigation, but that just might detour one from his path.  Just grabbing that glimmer of cognition may be the stimulus for righting one's purpose.  It's an alluring account to look at the  connection of the knowing mind to external reality.  I watched a stage hypnotist - exceptional in his expertise - work his magic on the volunteers onstage.  The amazing "feeling" within the auditorium was one of overwhelming affinity - perhaps so much so that we not only gave our agreement, but became one with the essence of the game.

Now THERE'S a great idea for one of Rod Serling's episodes of "The Twilight Zone."  I'm not at all sure by any standard of measure what I am beginning to "see."  I do hope it won't be like Stephen King's The Stand.

Here's to the next leg of this brilliantly exhilarating journey.  "Quest is at the heart of what I do - the Holy Grail, and the terror that you'll never find it, seemed a perfect metaphor for life." ~Jeanette Winterson