Who Would I Be Without My "Story"?

This is the question that replays over and over in my head these days… Thanks to Byron Katie and The Work..

Who would I be without the story that I chose the wrong men in my past? That men I cared about and even loved didn’t value me? That I attract narcissistic men? That no man will be all that I want.. and stay? That I’m lonely? That no man I love will “see/get” me.

Who am I without all those stories to tell? Without these “descriptions” of me, and my life?

What if…. What if I just… dropped them. You know, just…didn’t believe them… tell them…What if I questioned the thoughts behind the beliefs?

I mean, do I know for sure that the men I loved didn’t value me? Just because they didn’t behave the way I thought they should?

Do I know for sure that no man will be all I want and stay?

Do I know for sure that I am lonely?...  ah that is trickier…Well.. no there are people in my life.. Just no man to share it with me in the “way” I think I’d like.. You know, winking at me across the dinner table, or over homework. Sharing his thoughts and dreams with me... snuggling up against me every night in my bed.

Do I know for sure I need a man to do that with me… well no.. I don’t.

Do I know for SURE I WANT a man to do that with me.. well YES.. the right man..

Who am I.. or better yet.. what do I get from those stories of how what is is not what is supposed to be? Well… pain, sadness, regret, hopelessness…

Who would I be if I just dropped those beliefs.. thoughts… stories?

Seriously?

I've come to believe that when we feel pain, we are believing an untrue thought... telling ourselves an untrue story...

It's not about rose colored glasses.. it's about the stories we tell...

If my lover says "I love you and I'll never leave you"  I say "good"... Then he turns and walks out the door.. If I tell myself "he's taking out the trash".. I feel good... If I tell myself "he's gone forever" I'm in pain...

Someone can take their body somewhere else, but saying we are separate from each other is like saying waves in the ocean are separate from each other...or the ocean..

Your wave may just be on a shore far away from mine... but we are all still connected.. That’s one of the side effects of being spiritual beings having a human experience…

Sometimes it's not the way we wish it would be, but reality is that it is as it should be.. Reality is God.. argue with reality and you lose…True story…pun intended.

I tell the story. YOU tell the story.

What if I just relaxed into being… here.. in the reality of what is.

Well… I would be without the pain, and angst of regret. I’d be without the fear of fucking up my future.

What if I let it be okay to be… pain free..

It’s like walking with a rock in my shoe. I’m used to the pain. I don’t know what it would feel like to take it out, so I don’t..

A woman I knew in Los Angeles who was a member of every Anonymous program known to man.. or woman… She told me once “we know how to do misery… pain…loss… but we don’t really know that we could handle happy.. What if we got happy, and then… lost it? It might be safer to stay in pain”.

But… I don’t want to stay in pain… I’m developing a real aversion to it, and a REAL taste for peace. Peace trumps even “happy” because happy can be fickle… but peace?.  Ahhh peace is bliss.

So how do I love “what is”?... Well.. I guess I start by loving me… as is… where is..

This is harder than you would imagine… Not because I suffer from low self-esteem, or doubts about my talents or abilities… I do not.. But loving myself smacks up against EVERYTHING we’re told as children..

“Don’t get above your raisin” Well, no one actually said THAT one to me.. but …how about.

“Don’t get too big for your britches now”. “Don’t getting all big headed –full of yourself- thinkin’ you’re better than everyone else”.

So how foreign it’s felt the past couple weeks to tell myself the things I would like to hear… Things like…

“I love you, and *I’ll* never leave you”.

“I love how you chose to learn and grow all the time and  the way you are willing to share all you’ve learned, even your supposed failures, with anyone and everyone”.

“I love what a good mother you are..I love how brave you are.. How you never give up on love or anything else for that matter”…

Any love song I hear on the radio, instead of hearing it and wishing a man would feel that way about me.. I let myself really feel that way about me…

It feels weird.. hokey even… and I feel a little embarrassed to tell it to you here… but the truth is loving myself/thinking to myself/talking to myself in that way does feel … like love…and amazingly… it brings the peace…

It’s also brought me a new wave of men… better men, kinder men, “step up” men…. Interesting, but no longer the goal, merely the side effect of the experiment.. the lesson if you will.

It’s still curious what can knock me off my stilettos.. but I now think I know the path to crawl back up onto them.. the way to get back to peace.

I do not know what is coming next in my adventure.. I do know that life is interesting.

Speaking of stilettos, mine will be making their stage debut over the next 3 days…. True story…I got the part of a white trash, southern floozy in the community theater play up town.. oh my God she is so much fun!…

My business is booming.. The most quilts I ever had on my waiting list before coming to Oklahoma is 8, I now have 17.

But I am learning that gratitude, while powerful, is not enough to bring peace and keep it. These good things -“ground appearing when I stepped into thin air” all happened… and yet I was still in pain…it was not until I learned to question my story..my thoughts…that I learned pain management ….and peace.

I’m learning it’s NOT about what I allow INTO my thoughts.. thoughts are like clouds they pass and do no good or harm.. not until they are latched onto and given meaning… power… belief…

We then go out and look for evidence to support our belief… A belief that is in reality a passing ball of fluff…

It’s not about what I allow to pass through my air space, it’s about what I do NOT question while it’s there.

Recently I even experimented with one of my oldest “stories”.. The one about sex that says I can’t lay my body down on a bed without leaving my heart behind… what a boring story..

I’m changing it to “any orgasm I don’t have to give myself is a good thing”.. Or how about this one “I can have sex when I want it, whether I need it or not… kinda like a bath”…Those are way more fun than either swearing off sex OR becoming heartbroken or attached after having it…and just for the record… so far so good… the new stories are working…

I’ll post more soon, but the Spirit Guides will be home soon… meaning “class time”… they are my BEST teachers… Oh how they can throw a monkey wrench into everything I think I know, leaving me sputtering and muttering on the floor… Wish me luck…

Please be advised these ramblings are just my current travel log and may have no real use for human consumption… I am aware that I may be completely full of shit… My eyes ARE brown you know… just sayin’…

Angels on your bodies.

Prairie Girl