Clearing Out

[mandyjw]

Who can be muddled yet desist

In stillness gradually become clear?

Who can be serene yet persist

In motion gradually come alive? -tao te ching

Made a video today out on a hike and instead of following a process, that assumes beginning, middle, end, desired result and therefore possibility of a result that's not desired, I tried to dissect my assumptions that don't feel good about the process. I want the entire process to be enjoyable... to flow.  Because my channel is growing, I want it to grow more and I also feel more prone to feeling unworthy and see a tendency to judge the results more. I see now that you can only get what you're up to speed with, feelingwise. It's not about results and talents, and trying to make those judgments destroys the creativity that is the pleasure AND the purpose. Very War of Art by Steven Pressfield realizations coming into play. 

You only get what you give. There's no delay, you only came for joy. 

It hit me how ridiculous I thought woo woo spiritual stuff was in the past, and how our of fear and avoidant it was. And I have in my head the assumption that other people see what I see now as just as ridiculous, which creates another cycle of fear and avoidance. And it hit me how in a time of fear, the clarity is so strong that you're on the right path and having the guts to say the things you really want to say, to create what you REALLY want to create is all you ever came to do anyway. 

The magic I felt from nature, the passion I felt for life and the idea of judgmental God (my own creation of judgement) were so at odds, all in my own psyche. 

Live your life like there's no catholic nun standing over your shoulder. 

 

Edited March 28, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

A friend posted on Facebook about her dog and how he was rescued from the puppy mill and has such an amazing life now. It made me think about how people love narratives like that, true or not. I did with the last dog I rescued. Like the beginning of the Harry Potter series, with Harry living a miserable existence sleeping in a cupboard under the stairs. We love contrast.

When you (I) look at Leo's journey, the story, where it is now, what do we see? What do we want to happen? Where do we want it to go? 

One of the scenes that came to me when I got the idea for the novel right after I found Leo's videos, was one of watching lightning from a cliff under trees, over the water. I knew exactly where the story would take place, modeled after a recently discovered place that grabbed at my heart and imagination like nothing else ever had. But there was no cliff over the water, anywhere near there than I knew of. 

Last year I discovered an island hike accidentally when my daughter tore up an 100 year old family record piece of paper that was in an old Bible, and I had the impulse to google the name on the tiny torn up slip of paper, and found the record of this trail. It ends in a cliff over the water. Today during the video, the scene came back to me in analogy and I had never made the connection between the island cliff and the fact that I had imagined this pivotal dramatic, scene with no actual place for it to take place. And there I was, exactly there, having never made the connection of it before the analogy came out of my mouth. 

 

 

[SilentTears]

Loving your journal.  

I noticed that on your YouTube channel you got rid of a lot of your content and seem to be more focusing on spirituality. I felt kinda sad since I usually resonated deeply with the stuff you hid. 

Really loving your work! Proud of you Mandy! 

[mandyjw]

@SilentTears Thank you! Was there something in particular you miss? I still have access to the videos. 

[mandyjw]

How do we actually ignore something? It doesn't mean we're not thinking about it because we are, a lot. "I'm ignoring my responsibilities"...but what I mean to say is that I feel shitty because I feel like I should be doing something and I'm doing something else, meaning I'm splitting my energy, I'm unfocused. 

I feel like this is a really big question, storms a brewing but that's all I've got to say about that.

 

[SilentTears]

I had the impulse to share this with you yesterday, however you are gunna get it “now”. 

Oh, something I really enjoyed watching was your story part 1. I never got around to watching part 2, however the insight in part one that you shared  “All I can give is love” and the content you put it in was really nice to hear. 

Edited March 29, 2020 by SilentTears

[mandyjw]

@SilentTears Ha! That's awesome, thank you. The word joy keeps coming up. Her youtube name and the tattoo I just noticed on Teal Swan's arm. Also I listed to an Abraham Hicks recording where they play the super corny song that goes, "Joy, joy, JOY! Joy is the key!" and ever since I've been singing it randomly.  

I used to HATE the word "enjoy", until a few years ago. Something felt weird and disgusting about it. It became a joke with my friend. The other word that used to make me stabby? Pamper. Sense a theme here? 

 

Edited March 29, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

Ok, here's the other piece of it, I want to know about. My friend sent me a funny thing on Facebook and I laughed and looked at it and said....

*just got distracted for 20 minutes on Facebook*

UNTIL I found a post of someone posting a design I had made years ago that I had forgotten about. After commenting I'd forgotten about those!  I remembered. 

JESUS.

What is forgetting and remembering? What is focus and ignoring? 

Anyway my friend sent me a funny thing about school horses, and the crap they do and I made a comment saying I think the horse I had was all of those. Then I realized that she had sent me a screen shot of posting it 8 years ago right after we actually went riding, and I had said, in a comment under it "I think mine was all but the last." I felt... silly. 

And it illustrated to me how awfully fucked up memory is. There's a lot of stress at home. I have to homeschool an autistic kid that got several different services, all of which have stopped, with my daughter in the mix, on top of make every single meal for everyone, except we are lucky to still get school lunches delivered twice a week. What helps is that I don't carry the burden, but take every moment as it comes, knowing that it was all that ever... ever. ever. ever. Going in the direction of love and connection. There's been lots of joking and laughter lately. 

In a thread I posted in today someone hit me with the "would you say that to someone who has trauma?" thing and it made me think of my sister and the last conversation we had before life started going to hell in a hand basket with corona virus. I was shocked that she had trauma. It made me connect with her and at the same time... I don't know. It blasted through some protective layers. Today she sent me a message. She has been teaching tai chi remotely and she said that she had a surreal experience in which she was watching herself on the screen and she became me in looks and sound. 

My son asked what my favorite game was when I was a kid, and today I found a version of it online and he played it. And the names of creators came up and one is the name of the town I live in now, and the other the word "crow". Yesterday when I made the video on the island, a crow was cawing in the background distracting me, but when I made the final video it was silent. 

It feels like insights are remembered and forgotten. It feels like spiritual "knowledge" happens this way and it's a little... unsettling. My dad used to make fun of my mom constantly for conveniently forgetting things in her past. As if one must remember everything perfectly to be whole. 

It feels like there's no progression, but I'm just bailing furniture and heavy shit over the edge of the ship, cause I know it'll sink if I don't lighten the load. 

Edited March 30, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

I won an art contest once with a linograph print. I didn't like the medium at first, so it was strange that I won with it. I used to really love deserts, even though I'd never and still have never seen a real desert. I made a desert scene reduction linograph, with the moon and stars and I named it "Light in the Desert". The meaning was deeply spiritual to me, but i knew that no one would think anything of it. I learned at a young age that art really comes alive only after you give it a name. 

 

[mandyjw]

The sun is a sphere, yet the rays of light create angles, rays. A pyramid is made of angles, made to represent a ray of light and ends in a point. Angels angles, angles of a pyramid, angels peer amid.

My parents house where I grew up was surrounded by trees and didn't get much light. When I bought this house I realized that lots of old homes were built to fully utilize light. I love farmhouses, how dramatically sloped the roofs are and how almost all have two windows at the top that stare out at you like eyes, or do you stare within or without? Accidentally wrote star, not stare. That's a word connection I hadn't thought of before.   

Working on youtube video about Jesus, which is a subject I've researched all my life but am still ironically doing the most research on for the video. Reading the gospel of Thomas again. 

Jesus said, "If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels.

Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty." 

Every time I read this I draw a different conclusion, see if from a different angle. Maddening, magical.

 

[mandyjw]

Light on Earth

 

[mandyjw]

The human body looks and feels like a pyramid shape in meditation.

Words have feelings attached with their sounds, ear, hear, earth, heal, feel.  

[mandyjw]

Why is April 1 called April Fools day? BECAUSE THERE'S ONLY ONE FOOL. 

 

The word comes from the Latin “aprilis” which is derived from “aperire” meaning 'to open'. This is obviously apropos since April is when trees and flowers 'open' and bloom.

[mandyjw]

Last night I dreamed I was at some event and hadn't gone in the right entrance (cheated in a way) and was trying to make it right. It brought up a memory of being in English class and having a sub one day. She gave us our quiz, and allowed us to use our books, which we weren't supposed to do. The class sat there and happily cheated on their quiz, my best friend wouldn't and did her quiz without the book. I couldn't handle watching this. Instead of doing my own quiz I felt responsible for the entire scenario, and felt awful about it. The next day I told the teacher what had happened. I don't know or remember what she did but some of the other kids weren't happy. I always HATED rules that were unclear. I hated a lot of rules that were clear too, especially if they seemed unnecessary, or to benefit someone else at the expense of creativity and freedom. I felt like they asked for them to be broken and then create guilt itself. I have spent most of my life trying to avoid guilt and feeling unworthy. I got up today groggy and brushed my teeth. I grabbed my toothpaste and something told me to look closer. Maybe I should have picked the other toothpaste. Which toothpaste should I use? The black charcoal one or the white one? 

Then I saw it was about contrast, and the awakening insight I am the Devil seemed quite clear, and hazy dreams and toothpaste options had served as a refresher course. 

Lately it amazes me how I sought the truth in thought, thinking there was a right and a wrong, smart and foolish, needing to be on the right side and therefore always doubting and fearful. 

During meditation the sensation in my stomach kept pulling me to it, and it felt good but not entirely, more like getting an invitation to a party than the party itself. I imagined it to feel good, anticipated it to feel good, as if there was a story behind it. I realized and felt that feeling fully, self love, feeling the energy field of my body, presence where all those things come together was the desire behind all my suffering. THIS, THIS is what I always really wanted. I created others and rules themselves to disallow myself from what was always mine, thinking that other's love was the key to my own love, feeling but not knowing that I'd given the love away in the assumption. 

I cut myself off from that feeling in my stomach, from that deep knowing, thinking it was in the service of others. 

I canceled my daughter's checkup, which was unfortunately scheduled for next week. I thought it would be traumatic for her to be locked at home, banned from daycare and seeing grandparents and friends and then having one outing to go get her 4 year old series of shots, let alone the risk of us picking up the virus there. They said they are separating patients but I know that it's bullshit that it isn't risky. I also realize how much scheduling trouble they are going to be having. My kids have gotten sick at least 2 or 3 times just from visiting the office. I canceled and felt awful, and asked my husband why. He had a good explanation, but the main thing I got was that I don't need to explain myself, just ask for what I want. I explain myself because I want forgiveness, I look to other people to say "you're ok". Care killed the cat. I seek connection. I seek forgiveness. I seek connection through words and thought where it can't be found. I seek forgiveness for something I never did. I seek approval and praise for something I never did and never will do. 

Edited April 2, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

 

[mandyjw]

 

I've thought about reading Women Who Run with the Wolves for a while now.

It came up lately, I bought my daughter sidewalk chalk, and was playing with her and grabbed the gray color and it colored PINK. So I looked at the color name and it said "timberwolf". And it colored pink for a while and then turned gray. And I was and have been contemplating the color pink, and the headless woman that got posted here in the pink bikini and how I still react to the color pink. And then I thought more about the book and the wolf connection and when I looked it up, I saw that the author's middle name is Pinkola.

The story about Dr.P and the wolves hit me. There is a stretch of road, lonely and so beautiful that goes through deep forest that has a legend attached to it about a female hitchhiker. I have always deeply loved the area, and been slightly scared of it, we traveled it every so often at least yearly all my life. When I read his book, he talked about being a teenager and ending up walking through this stretch of woods. At the time there were still wolves and he not realizing how long the stretch of deep forest would be, ended up spending the night there terrified encircled by wolves. When he reached a town the next day they told him that the wolves had killed people in wagons in the daytime and they were amazed that they had spared him.

When I was 12 I became obsessed with Siberian Huskies and spent a year researching them, I found my first female mentor and she emailed me back and forth. Eventually I convinced my parents to let me get a dog, but I wanted a breed that would be easier to care for and ended up getting a doberman instead. My best friend and I connected over our love of dogs. She was absolutely obsessed with animals, and still is.

Lots of synchronicity about wolves and dogs today. I bought the book and started it. I'm resonating with it a lot. My sister's partner posted this on facebook this morning, it's a quarantine child interview with my four year old niece.  

1. What’s your name?
Wes Equarity the Coyote, because I am a princess coyote
2. How old are you?
4
3. How old is Papa?
64 (He's in his 30's)
4. What’s your favorite color?
Pink

So far I'm amazed by the book. 

 

 

[mandyjw]

nowhere now here I didn't see this one, my son was watching me type nowhere and laughed and said "Now here!"

Last night I dreamed that there was all kinds of work being done in the basement of my house, which in the dream was much larger and more involved than the actual basement. My dad was there, there were plumbers and carpenters and each treated me like I had some important project that I really wanted done and was going to be expensive but I didn't see the purpose of what they were trying to do at all as necessary. Yet I gave them the authority they assumed and didn't question it. At one point I was talking with my father and I yelled "Jesus!" which recently I have been using in place of the F word. And they reacted like I shouldn't have done that.

Then the urgency of the project was suddenly dropped and they all played video games and the video games merged with real life in the dream. 

I woke up and was analyzing this dream, how it's not the fault of men or any man that I give away my authority and depend on them for feeling safe. 

I went down to meditate sat down and remembered that I forgot the reclined pigeon stretch that I've had really good results doing before I meditate so I can sit without shifting position. And while I was doing it I remembered the other part of the dream which first came back in the memory of an old woman. 

Yesterday reading Women Who Run With Wolves definitely made the ground fertile for this dream. 

I was walking with my mother and this familiar old woman passed by. There have been many moments in my life when I've been at an event and (almost always an older woman) came by who knew me and started talking to me but I couldn't place her or remember her name. Because our community is so small and so tightly knit, yet my parents were well known yet retreated from people the community as much as they could, it set me up for this sort of thing all the time. The feeling of panic and feeling like a jerk came up.

In the dream the woman who's face I recognized targeted me. And instead of being forgiving and sensitive about it like the women in real life have been, she shamelessly and boldly challenged me to remember her name. "Have you forgotten me?" My mom was curious about it too as if she were looking for me to know, so i figured she must be from in inlaw's family. 

Eventually whether I got or she told me, I remembered her name was Vesta. 

Stretching this morning that all came back to me. Vesta? I've never heard that name. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesta_(mythology)

 

 

Edited April 3, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

"The cellar, dungeon and cave symbols are all related to one another. They are ancient initiatory environs; places to or through which a woman descends to the murdered one(s), breaks taboos to find the truth, and through wit and/or travail triumphs by banishing, transforming, or exterminating the assassin of the psyche. The bluebeard tale lays out the work for us with clear instructions,; track the bodies, follow instincts, see what you see, call up psychic muscle, dismantle to destructive energy.

If a woman does not look into these issues of her own deadness and murder, she remains obedient to the dictates of the predator. Once she opens to room of the psyche that shows how dead, how slaughtered she is, she sees how various parts of her feminine nature and instinctual psyche have been killed off and died a lowly death behind a facade of wealth. Now that she sees this, now that she registered how captured she is and how much psychic life is at stake, now she can assert herself in an even more powerful manner. " - Clarissa Pinkola Estes

My house as a metaphor, and the dreams about it, are all coming together as are many other things. 

 

[mandyjw]

In the bluebeard story, the youngest sister marries him and he leaves and gives her the keys to the castle but tells her she can look in all rooms but one. She calls her sister over and they look in all the rooms. This strikes me as the same story as the garden of Eden, you can eat from all the trees, but one. 

The author basically says that the desire to look is Good.

Once my parents took us to the beach. My sister and I were older, her a young teen. We walked and walked and walked. We came to a large wooden box on the beach and written across it were the words, "Do not open". I was more inclined to follow directions but she opened it, and inside we were horrified to find that it was full of blood worms, huge dark crawling red worm/centipede over every inch of the dark wood crate. We didn't know that they even existed until then. They were used for bait by fishermen. 

Edited April 3, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

I have a troll on youtube with the profile picture of a lion. Making comments that awakening is for men not women, that he sees alterior motives in my eyes, that I'm a fraud.

He's not wrong. 

There was another less aggressive one, with the profile picture of the pyramid eye of providence on the dollar bill, but tilted slightly to the side.