Someone who, when informed that you are experiencing your first pain-free day in over two weeks, knows enough to clarify that you are, in fact, referring to, “the kind of pain-free that a normal human being would recognize.”
This Week: A Look Back
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I think my past week can be summed up pretty well in the following two vignettes.
1. I have had my CPAP machine for almost a year now, and I am STILL excited every day about the fact that I can now actually sleep through the night without multiple episodes of near-suffocation.
Sadly, my poor little machine started having trouble over Christmas, and ever since it has been making noises not unlike those of a water buffalo attempting to squeeze itself into an extra-small bikini.
In what I can only describe as the cruelest of ironies, I was once again kicked out of our bedroom by my husband, this time due to the horrendous noises made by the machine I specifically got in order to stop being kicked out of the bedroom because of my snoring.
2. Ever since last Sunday night I have had a mysterious, and fairly excruciating, pain in my right side. I kept hoping that it would eventually go away, but of course it didn’t, and by the time I finally decided to get some help it was Thursday night. And my doctor doesn’t work on Fridays.
So I went to the urgent care center by my house, if only to be reassured that I was not seconds away from dying due to Spontaneous Explosion Of Your Internal Organs Syndrome.
After a thorough questioning regarding my symptoms the doctor moved on to the physical examination, tapping and poking away to see exactly where I hurt. Then she checked to see whether or not I was bloated.
“Oh my god, you’re like a drum!” she exclaimed. “I could play music on you!”
And then, for just a little bit-she did.
(So happily (not to mention embarrassingly), the pain turned out to be nothing that approximately 75,000 Gas-X dissolvable strips and a couple of bottles of Mylanta couldn’t help.)
An Offering To The Gods Of Canned Food
Revolutions: They’re Not All They’re Cracked Up To Be
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Over the past couple of months, we here in this little piece of Georgia have been experiencing what I can only describe as a bizarre attempt at a coup d’etat. I could totally understand someone attempting to grab power if the end result involved something big, like, say, uncovering buried pirate treasure, or, I don’t know, the chance to become the despotic ruler of your own entire nation. But no, this power struggle-which has now escalated to the level of lawyers, and judges, and mass mailings of PR “spin”-is all about our garbage collection. People are fighting to the death over who has the right to pick up our trash.
I’m not clear on all the details (which probably means that I’m flunking conscious citizenship), but as far as I can tell from my exhaustive reading of 3 whole paragraphs on the Internet, one group of people apparently believed that they had the right to entertain bidding for new contracts, and then awarded a contract to a second group, but then a third group sought a legal injunction on the grounds of, who exactly did that first group think they were, foolishly believing they had the right to exercise control over our solid waste disposal, and now we, the citizens, are very confused. And also, having to spend WAY more time thinking about garbage than we would really like.
All we here in the Ryan household know is that we were happily discarding away, trusting in the services of the company who has faithfully removed our trash every week for the past nine-and-a-half years, when suddenly we received a letter informing us that this service would now be performed by someone entirely new. Someone we hadn’t chosen. Someone who hadn’t consulted with us before making this decision. And, by the way, could we please send them money RIGHT NOW.
[Read more…] about Revolutions: They’re Not All They’re Cracked Up To Be
The Leading Edge
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A lot of New Thought material (things like “The Secret”) talks about us, as human beings, “being on the leading edge of thought.” Meaning that as we stand here now, in this moment, in this self, and form new desires and new questions about the nature of existence, that we actually push forward the whole of human experience.
Sometimes that’s a hard concept to grasp in theory, so I like it when I can see practical examples of how this works in everyday life. Like this story my friend told me the other day.
She was going in to get some outpatient surgery done, and she called the nurse the day before to check on some last-minute details.
After double-checking her payment arrangements she then told the nurse, “I got my navel pierced about 6 weeks ago, and I’m supposed to leave it in for another 6 weeks to make sure that it heals completely. So I was wondering whether or not I have to take it out before my surgery.”
There was silence for a few moments, and then the nurse replied slowly, “I’m not sure. I’ll have to check with the doctor, because no one’s ever asked me that question before.”
“Well I do like to be unique”, replied my friend.
Now that‘s the kind of leading edge thinking I can get on board with.
Our Own Little Circle Of Life
Enough
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Recently I was introduced to a great new site called White Hot Truth: because self-realization rocks.
I wanted to share something Danielle posted today-a portion of a poem by Rumi-because it reminded me that I can relax, that who I am and what I do is enough. This is from a poem entitled “Forget your life. Say God is Great…”
You can read the entire poem at her site, but I wanted to post the part that really stood out to me-the second to last stanza.
“If you are here unfaithfully with us,
you’re causing terrible damage.
If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love
you’re helping people you don’t know and have never seen.”
– Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks
A Course In Miracles says, “The Holy Spirit responds fully to your slightest invitation.”
Choose to be open. Offer my willingness. That is enough.
I can do that.
Crazy Cat Lady Alert
Today
This is a cool exercise that my awesome friend and coach, Lynne taught me. We call it, “Both/And”.
Today…
-The car broke down because I forgot to get gas, AND a wonderful Good Samaritan stopped, help me get the car out of traffic, and brought me back some gas.
-I have had a migraine off and on for the past five days, AND today the sun returned.
-I have been having a flare-up of my fibro pain, AND I found out my CPAP machine is still under warranty, so they will fix the motor and give me a temporary replacement.
-I am really, really tired, AND my husband bought me DVDs of “Top Gear” for Christmas, so I can watch Jeremy, Richard and James make asses out of themselves to my heart’s content.
-I have been feeling some sort of pain for many days in a row now, AND the word “ass” still makes me laugh.
-The cats now spend all their time harassing me for canned cat food, AND my husband is totally fine with being the one to shove Bailey’s thyroid medicine down her throat twice a day.
-I have felt like breaking up with my blog again, AND I have gotten a number of really nice comments from readers about how they are enjoying it.
Our Work
The real work of this life is not what we do every day from nine to five. The real work is to disidentify from self-images that were formed lifetimes ago, and from which we still construct our daily lives. The real work is to allow ourselves to be who we already are, and to have what we already have. The real work is to be passionate, be holy, be wild, be irreverent, to laugh and cry until you awaken the sleeping spirits, until the ground of your being cleaves and the universe comes flooding in….our work is to discover, and then inhabit, our own lives.
-Geneen Roth, Appetites: On The Search For True Nourishment
