Spiritual Endeavor

Somaly Man and Sheryl Sandberg by Fortune Live Media

I was inspired to write after a meditation session and asking the question of why suffering even the mundane trails many of us feel on the day to day or extreme suffering. I was led to read an awesome article by Mariane Pearl in Glamor Magazine circa 2006.

Somaly Mam is a former child sex slave and an a front line fighter and global advocate with her foundation to fight Monday Slavery and Sex Trafficking. In 2006, retaliation for her fight to protect women and children came in a most deplorable way. Mam’ s 14 year old her daughter was kidnapped and raped. She was found but it did not deter Somaly even though scary and frightening it made her more determined. Somaly after they found her daughter and she comforted her she spoke these words “You’ve suffered what you’ve suffered,” she told her. “Now you take that pain and you help others.”

Suffering a universal phenomenon and yes we all have suffered and the past be changed, but pain unused eats you alive. It is your job to use your pain to help others and in turn you will be healed.

When I read those words and knowing their is a semi luxury to chose to feel pain over a long period of time I realized how selfish I was. Chemical imbalances aside you do have control over your thoughts with practice. I say this when context is one is no longer in the trenches of the horrible or inconvenient. This is so true for mindfulness transformation if you are not seeing every blessing ever bestowed on you then you suffer and triumph is when you are directed to make a difference and not wallowing in my own shit.

Nowadays my “shit” hasn’t bubbled up much, except when I feel vile contempt for other drivers or maybe my lack of smile with strangers or general feeling of avoidance. But really what we all do from time to time is we sit and cuddle with our shit for far too long. Like being bosom buddies and bffs with the bad girl in school, this friendship with our own woe is me stuff is what keeps us from doing good. Even the business of daily life is a part of the woe is me martyrdom syndrome or can’t take time for me or you but we have to be everywhere like yesterday so sorry can’t talk, hug, engage or even look you in the eye right now.

My understanding of suffering now to change it to gratitude and love expressed or not and how can I use what ever nugget of pain big or small, perceived or real for the good of all. Service, help, and being awake to what is happening in the Now and not so distant past. To be present when someone wants to engage with you, to connect to another in a small way so both of you feel less alone. Almost always reason why you are here is to shine your light in your own UNIQUE way to help the world with your smile, laughter, financial assistance, skills, love or other treasures.

How do you use your pain?

If you are depressed help  anyone else, be of service in any area you feel a difference almost instantly. If you felt victimized in some way become an advocate, a voice for those who have been what you have been through, be it sexual abuse, homelessness, poverty, addiction, in physical pain- be an healer in word or deed. If you dislike people, animals or the Earth could use your services instead. 

I believe in miracles but world wide suffering is a different ballgame. I find the idea that we need a savior that will change the way things are is comical and removes the responsibility of each of us. We are called by Source be a participant to save others by easing suffering; being there for those who have been through a storm or giving a stranger your attention for a few minutes. That is the nature of love that will transform the world.  We are invited by our own wounds and if we were blessed not to have any wounds, then we are called to what touches us makes us cry or shake in empathy for another.

My call to action is so simple it seems childish. Children are the ones who have the brightest light shinning with radiant joy and laughter and a knowing what true love is.  I hope you will feel through experimentation that your suffering can be eased by being of service to another. It doesn’t mean you have to save the world just start by being a little more open to smiling at people on the street or in cars, donating money or time to those who need you.

Much love and gratitude,

Jen

If you want to make a donation to one of my favorite causes please visit the Somaly Mam Foundation.

Flat Stanley Can Bring Us Together!

I was at Starbucks today to write, read and get my usual drug and while there I was socializing with another customer and her little girl who was getting a treat from Starbucks and just came back from the salon cause she had a great report card. I also socialized with a Barista cause he look like he was gonna cry when he saw the line that was not yet on his drink making side. I realized this socializing or general mass need for coffee was like various species at a watering hole in the Serengeti. Not necessarily all would get along or would normally meet in the real world we all get to be together in NATURE so to speak our modern day nature like malls, grocery stores and coffee shops. Its a way we get our needs filled of being around others but in a non threatening way. Also a way to bond with others I am not sure the lion and the elephant are bonding but at Starbucks there is some common goal or commiserating. Like when many will wait online on Black Friday there is a sense of camaraderie that you can not find in the same way online. We as humans even if slight interaction occurs need a community or group we feel connected to even if its on the peripheral. Hence, the mass love of Apple products or Starbucks or Dunkin‘ Donuts. These are ways we feel like we are together. In a sense maybe there is some of this in the Occupy Movement and like all of us that go home after something we feel apart of we feel we want something to bring us together again. Not like we want catastrophe or natural disasters but we almost crave that community after then when its all over we feel a bit empty or less than and need a meet-up, book club, mommy and me groups to make us feel we belong to something bigger than ourselves.
Here’s to making a concerted effort to come together in fun, love, and coffee if it serves our well-being.

Much love, hugs, and many thanks the Pre-Thanksgiving Day!
Jen

by h.koppdelaney

Ok I mock but I am also serious. Healing on an emotional level is never easy and rarely overnight but just like loosing weight it takes, time and effort and a desire to let go of baggage. An old story or a story you reminded yourself consistently like being poor. Or one you are just starting to remember abuse takes more than ninja moves to concur. But I found in my self the major turning point in healing is realizing that just being here and alive *poke poke* I am here that survival of anything challenging that we go through took strength, maybe determination, an ability to laugh, cry, and get up the next day.
Not to be simplistic but after a certain point a person can not be helped to poo for themselves. Well minus heavy medical machinery. The point is, at a certain point of an circumstance even if you have family or friends they can’t give you the will or the desire for getting through it. You have to do it yourself. Mind you wanting to be there for them or  your love and hope can help get you to survive a plane crash, kidnapping ,or abuse but you are the one that pulls your through out the other side. Your inner strength (God?) or your highest self has a purpose to live and live brightly after any experience where pain was the default setting.

No cliches just pure questioning after you have survived -What is next for you tough one? Who can you become now that you survived bullies, losing your job, or a parent with an overbearing nature? Well with your spirit becoming whole and complete again you can accomplish anything you are willing to work hard for and deem worthy of your devotion of time and love.

Really what else is there to life?
Love and Hugs,
Jen

My socks on the floor ready to be purged!

Over the past few months I have been staying with a friend with her two children. Since I am still looking for full time employment she lets me stay in exchange of dropping off and picking up her kids at school and occasional babysitting with additional house chores I feel compelled to do. Living in a space no bigger than 10×14 I had to leave most of my belonging at my ex’s familie’s house. They all are amazing for being so patient with me as I gain order over my life again. I am due to move in with another girlfriend July 1st. During this time since October I have lived with very few personal items: clothes, computer, books, and a few random items like journals, too many pens to really need and holy water. (A recovering Catholic loves her holy water.)
This sock drawer enhanced my realization that there is a need to replace things that don’t fit or are damaged but I have obviously have more than enough in the world and thinking about reducing what I have to really the bare essentials. I do my laundry every week and like the 80/20 ware much of my clothing on a continuous loop. In part because I don’t have much and or who needs all these socks. Even if I work out everyday and get my feet wet due to snow or rain…some of this I don’t need. So my first duty is to get rid of the ones with holes or ones that have been stretched to mars and back.

I will be doing this for undergarments and then clothes. Then products and medicines. I only want things around that are useful and make me happy. If that means I wear the same pants three days this week so be it.

Wish me luck and please let me know if you have given up any of the extra stuff in your life and how it made you feel.

Love and Hugs,
Jen

My life is a complete blessing even during the times that totally suck. My thanksgiving has been a process. My previous life, as I would call it, was one without always being thankful for the hard and the ugly. I am generally optimistic but when I have had major depressive episodes I can’t say that I felt that life was worth living and I felt good about being me. Those were the days that made me not want to get up in the morning. Those times when I felt I didn’t have a voice, those times when I didn’t “see” or feel that people cared for me and I didn’t care for myself. Man was I on the wrong thinking train! Honestly I am blessed by those trials by fire. The beauty of it all is that I know how strong I am because of my so called “troubles,” They’re the occasional times when I wished for the perfect parent, the perfect “Leave it to Beaver” existence. Times I wished for the ease of a love life were I never got hurt or have money falling down upon me without hard work. I am kidding myself to think I really want it that easy. My poetry mostly drawn from pain or joy of loves I have had in my life, in romance, life and death. I would probably be totally bored and not very wise if I went along without any strife. I know my present and future is full of light as I will make sure of it with my optimism and thought training. I am sure challenges will come up but I know that due to my past darkness I am closer to the light now and will get through the challenges with strength. Freedom is knowing what the bottom looks like. Fears tend to dissipate if you have been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt. Freedom is walking toward the happier thought on a cloudy day and knowing you can survive pretty much anything. Human are special creatures, we can survive shark attacks, emotional pains of child abuse. A great example: Dave Pelzer or someone who survived burns and then later became a quadriplegic, the honorable life of W Mitchelle. These humans are extraordinary not for their traumas but for their brains, and strength of thought on how they overcame limits. If they had suffered darkness they didn’t stay long. They live with no fear and I am sure feel freer than most suburban depressives.

I hope you gain freedom without challenges of life. If challenged, I encourage you to be grateful for the lessons or skills learned and to know you are strong and can conquer your inner world.

Love and Hugs,
Jen

Next time I will have a lighter topic but I was floored moments ago as my friend on myspace and his fascination with death and my own morbid curiosity about a story on the gardian.co.uk about Life before Death called to me. The fact my mom has been “dead” for 3 years this summer brought my need to emote what is going on in my heart now. This is one of the most poetic, poignant and heart wrenching photo collections I have seen. My friend blogged about this site and it inspired tears. To see the pain, loneliness and sadness of a life cut short, a life not fully lived and life full of disappointment. It pains me to say that my own experiences with death were dealt with as if something to move on from or circumstance and faith that all is ok for them. Yet I am haunted of my Mom, Nana and others close to my heart on their journey Home and their own feelings that they may have had. Then the realization that you too will be inevitably be one of them and hopefully with more expressed love, less loneliness and more life fully lived at least this go around. Amazed and grateful for the truth of death. This place beyond, so scary for most of us who can not see beyond the darkness. A place where one wishes for butterflies and rainbows and love of unimaginable possibility. To be able to hold and fully take in the person whom you love who has gone over the rainbow bridge would be incredible. Yet even with undying faith and a knowing that there is “something” beyond it never takes the stinging bitters out of the place where love lies inside.

Death is inspiring but will be pitiful if I don’t do all, be all and love all as if everyday was my last breathing moment. Randy Pausch whom I adore and is living and dying of Pancreatic Cancer. Really opitimizes the bittersweetness of life. Unfair or not, purpose from God or cruel joke this man lives and breathes like he means it. This professor of life even before his diagnosis, I believe lived with the grace of life’s truth of living to the fullest. Having great parents and people who molded him into someone that never stopped believing in his life or dreams. For one second to think we have the luxury for self pity or self absorption we are sorely missing the point on why we are here on Earth at all. I feel so much for his wife and children as they even with the beauty of his life will feel that tang of pain that comes with such a loss. I pray that they don’t have to endure the pain but alas even with his survival there there will come a time when they and all of us will be touched by the sharpness of the moment when a loved one passes on. If we are lucky we will have inspired such anguish as a testament and reward of having given all of our love out by the time we leave.

Love always,
Jen

The Divine, Source, God, The Universe, The highest form of energy in existence, Love are all my definitions of God. Bigger than everything that humans can imagine or fathom. I know that God loves everything ever created, larger like a Universe and smaller than a quarks and leptons for all those physics lovers. Love as a bigger concept, not only human love, romantic or even mother/child love but that of the highest vibrational energy within the Universe. This love at a practical and smaller frame of reference is how we treat ourselves, (manifestations of God), and how we treat others (other manifestations of God, People, Things, Matter, Earth, Plants) For our purposes lets keep this discussion around the planet known as Earth. Save the Empire! LOL

To label God limits the Truth of ALL THAT IS. As Kierkegaard stated “If you label me you negate me.” The label emits an idea that gets fixed in the mind as if God HAS TO BE a certain way. In that sense when we label God, Man or Mother/Father we miss all the parts of God we aren’t seeing. This concept is so much more than a man named Jesus if you are so inclined, or a man in the sky that looks at us with love, IT is so much more than a humanistic view. God can not be contained nor should IT. Every person on Earth even those whom people call evil have a piece of God or Spirit in them. Most times those who harm others are just living their ego needs and not seeing the bigger picture where everything one does, thinks, feels effects every person and thing vibrationally. If they really had true knowledge on how Awesome their power to effect is, they might think twice about doing harm.

Perfection is not the goal here or else life would get pretty boring. However, learning and growing not to be in ego and to think from a HIGHER Loving perspective is. By trying to see how we create in the broad and small in our world we can move more into a God-Like existence.

Taking this another step further to self love. I can speak for the many times I do not honor my own self and how I have treated myself poorly. I have treated myself like someone I didn’t like. This is in fact crazy, but many of us do it all the time. Sometimes without a thought and sometimes with intent to harm ourselves. My own journey has taken me from care taker of others, binge eater, self loather and not owning my emotions and likes for fear of rejection. This life is a process and although I am more well adjusted and “healthy” than I have been, life still tests my self love everyday.

As my transformation continutes I hope to inspire or let others know they are never alone!

Love and Hugs,
Jen

I have struggled with my weight from the time I was in 5th or 6th grade. I guess I was 11 or 12 as puberty was rearing its ugly head. I noticed I had a problem in 6th grade. During much of my childhood there was a lot of instability, countless moves, poverty and a short time being homeless. When me and my Mom landed where my 20 year old brother was living I learned to cope with the constant changes with food. I would tell myself that I could eat a whole bag of BBQ potato chips without gaining weight. Needless to say I was lying to myself. As I got older I never really put together the idea that I was eating for comfort, to satiate stability, to push down pain, anger, or sadness. It is amazing when you aren’t being truthful to yourself how much can slip away from you in your life. In high school, after I met some very active older friends I lost quite a lot of weight. I became thinner and maybe a tad healthier however MickyD’s after a night of dancing doesn’t seem healthy now! LOL

I have made excuses and with not dealing with myself and my emotions from the past I still continue to struggle with getting to a healthy state of being in mind and body. I am doing better in the mental health department but the body, old patterns and making the final decision to be healthy is still an on going process. I am a work in progress that is for sure! I found a blog today that was inspiring to me. It is called Secrets of a Former Fat Girl.

It is about a real woman who lost 70lbs and kept it off for more than 20 years. She realized it wasn’t just about what she ate or how much she exercised, even though that was a huge part. It was about breaking through fear of change, getting out of her comfort zone, changing emotional habits and recognizing the healing she needed to do within herself.

To me this is true spiritual growth, being able to move out of ones comfort zone into healing of personal fears, judgments and behaviors. I urge anyone who feels unhealthy in body to check out her blog and to check in with yourself to see how you deal with your emotions. It could be any way you self medicate-cigarettes, food, drugs, alcohol, starvation and many others. We all can learn to love ourselves more by being more thoughtful on why we do what we do and learning to take baby steps towards any goal we chose.

I wish you all love, success and support in all the areas of your life.

Love and Hugs,

Jennifer