Waking up

The neighbor’s lamp is lit all day, and stands in dark, cool tree shade.                               Maybe evening exists all day under the shade of just this tree.

The world is full of poetry, especially when I go on walks in my neighborhood and see magical stuff like the above stretch of yard and sidewalk. While I was out walking the other afternoon,  I was thinking about how we view ourselves. Someone mentioned to me the other day that the world just wants you to love yourself, but that is such a selfish thing to do. My ears perked up at such a concept. Hmmm.

The way I see it, the more in love you are with yourself, the more giving, generous, selfless and loving you are to others. The more you dislike yourself, the more egocentric, selfish and uncompassionate you will be.

So, yeah! Look in the mirror and tell yourself that you are beautiful, gorgeous, handsome, you name it! Believe in your self worth. When someone compliments you, accept it fully! They are right. Tell yourself when you wake up in the morning how amazing you are, and how much you love yourself.

As I’m writing even now, these concepts I speak of are new to me. For most of my life, I believed lies about myself and assumed I was lesser than most people, quite worthless in fact. Thankfully, I went through an awakening a half year ago where I woke up to the truth.

And yet, every now and then, I slip back into old ways of thinking and don’t realize it until I’ve already allowed myself into harmful situations. The awesome part here, though, is that now that I know the truth, these moments of forgetting are temporary. Since I’m now aware of my subconscious thoughts’ past autopilot mode, and since I know these thoughts are not true, that simple knowledge helps me get back into alignment. I have a true north now that is steady and sure, whereas in the past I had no true north.

An example of me temporarily acting like I was still in my past has been happening this past month. Some of you all know I’m on an HTMA mineral analysis program that is helping me regain my health. I’ve been on the program for almost 6 months, and I’ve made progress. Recently, though, a new supplement I was recommended to take has been giving me trouble, and I had to back off from taking it. I started falling backwards and experiencing old flare ups for weeks on end. I was quite disappointed, then angry. Then I just accepted it as my lot and numbly decided to just go on with the program, accepting that I was just an oddity who wasn’t worthy of health, and who even the program couldn’t help. I started entertaining ideas that had been normal for me for as long as I can remember. Thoughts like, “This is your lot in life, you aren’t meant to have any better. Accept your failings, you don’t deserve any better. Keep quiet and just accept the awfulness of the situation, it’s all you’re meant to have. Just give up and accept your defeat. Your practitioner doesn’t want to hear your whining, it’s your fault the program isn’t working. You aren’t worth her time and effort or anybody’s time and effort, so don’t even waste your time or energy looking for alternatives. You are stuck in this rut, and you deserve no better.”

I went on in a fog for weeks on end like this, and just realized yesterday morning that those were lies. I actually jumped up from where I was sitting at my kitchen table and told myself, “Wait. No, you ARE worth it! There is a solution here, a creative way out of this. I am worth it, just like everybody else out there. I accept that there is an alternate path here, and it is an amazing alternative. Because I’m amazing, and I’m worth this. I’m now a sponge for the good that is coming my way. I accept it.”

And just like that, an alternative came to me out of the fog. The supplement that I was taking came in a tablet form which didn’t agree with me. But there was another more gentle tablet form, as well as a transdermal spray where you could soak it up in your skin and not get the side effects that the tablet would give you. Problem solved. So I ordered both, and I’m now just waiting for UPS to ring the doorbell.

I guess I never knew how transformational it could be to have a healthy sense of self. Back when I was 24 or so, one of my friends who was studying to be a chiropractor took me to see one of his chiropractic doctor friends. The chiropractor took a look at me because I had been having headaches since I fell off a bike at age 5. I still remember the look that doctor gave me. It was as if he could see right through me, when his eyes looked at mine. The look was of genuine compassion and sadness. He told me the condyle in my jaw was not in it’s socket right, and that effected my whole jaw and bite. That was before I got braces, but he told me that braces alone would not fix the issue. He asked if I was in pain. He also said that some kind of T1 or T2, or was it C1 or C2 was out of alignment as well. But back to his look. It was more real and full of genuine emotion than any look I’d ever experienced in my life, except one other time. It stayed with me.

And yet, I let go what he said to me. I knew it might help to get some work done at a chiropractor to help me ease the headaches. But I felt like I deserved the ongoing pain of daily headaches. I was so used to being whooped by circumstances, and thought that pain was my lot in life. In the Bill Gothard religion that I was brainwashed and brought up in, I was encouraged to embrace pain and physical deformity. For example, if you had crooked teeth, TMJ, migraines, or a misaligned condyle in your jaw, it was God’s plan for you that you remain this way, and you’d better take it or else risk his judgement for trying to go outside of his will. To try to correct it was to anger your Creator, who made you like that on purpose. Also, things like scoliosis… it is just how you were born, and God designed you this way. It was your thorn in the flesh to keep you humble. To voice to your family or father that you wanted relief and help was to incur incalculable anger because

 

1) you expressed your feelings, and your feelings are not worth bringing into the light of day

2) you are not worth a mere fraction of the expense of correcting the problem

2) it would anger God.

 

To try to change a deformity would be pretentious, you would be thinking too highly of yourself. It was divine and heaven sent, and to try to ease your pain was to try to escape the refining fire of God. To try to relieve deformity or pain was to try to escape God’s judgement, which would only bring upon me further judgement and further isolation from God. Truly a twisted way of thinking. Something you could believe only if you were also brainwashed to believe in your innate lack of worth.

 

I used to believe all of this because I so wanted my father to love me. Alas, he didn’t, and my strict, full time efforts to constantly fall in line and obey blindly like he wanted only caused him to focus his ire on me, hate me more and impress on me my deep worthlessness in his eyes and my Creator’s eyes.

That was then, but this is now. I made an appointment for this Friday to go see a chiropractor. Well, actually it’s someone certified in the Rolfing technique who does myofascial release and structural integration. I’m so ready to invest in myself now, and to treat myself in the best possible ways.

This is only the beginning. I really laugh at the meager, spartan way I’ve treated myself my whole life. The relaxing things I’ve always wanted to experience but denied myself: swimming, hot tubs, dance lessons, long baths, riding horses, travelling, indulging in buying books, shopping, buying art supplies, going to a spa, facials, getting massages. Letting myself luxuriate. Enjoying who I am in this body. Making peace with myself.

I’m so glad I know the truth about myself. After all these years. It is so refreshing to have  a true north, and to know it will always be there. It always was. I just had a prolonged but temporary bout of amnesia. Which I’m ecstatic to be awakened from. Here’s to waking up!