Scarcity complex?

“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.” 

― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

I accompany this post with this one of my paintings of apple trees. To me apple trees symbolize abundance. 

Actually fruit in general feels like that to me..

The concept that stuck with me most today while studying all of the 'Woman is a River' material is that we are taught to think in terms of lack of what we want and think we need instead of what recourses we do have available to us.  Today I am ashamed to admit I have started to ask myself for the 1^st time in my life in a real and honest way ‘why do I focus on the things that aren’t there’? What is the root of that way of looking at the world I am part of and surrounded with?  I am among the people that are the most lucky ones in the world, simply because I live in the West where there is no war, where there is freedom and where there is still all we really need, like food and water and roofs over our heads. Today one of the co-participants of this Woman is a River adventure brought to our attention this very interesting blog article that i will copy entirely in to this blog post. I do that because its angle towards the scarcity of abundance issue i think we who live in the western world (almost) all have is a very important one i think. Her theory sheds another light on this issue. I think that this is too a very  inspiring angle to look at it.

But fact remains that I am very well aware that we can only think or talk about this subject because we live in this abundant part of the world where we can afford to spend time thinking and writing blog-posts about this.

Is it scarcity complex, or a call to adventure?

If you tell someone with a bent toward the spiritual and/or self-help that you feel a sense of lack in your life, she might look at you with a faint hint of disapproval. She might tell you that what you put your attention on, grows, and we become what we think about most.

So don’t focus on the lack, she might tell you. Focus on abundance. Focus on enough. You have everything you need. You are exactly where you are supposed to be. This moment is perfect. You are perfect.

But what if that lack isn’t the symptom of a scarcity complex, but something else?

What if it’s your call to adventure? The beginning of your hero’s journey?

What if it’s your way into a richer, deeper, more meaningful life?

According to mythologist Joseph Campbell and depth psychologist Jean Houston, inside all of us is a longing for more. This isn’t the voice of the void but the cry of your soul, driving you toward wholeness and self-actualization.

Houston explains in this interview that The Call might start off as bland and generic: I want to get married, or, I want a new career. The “usual things”. But at some point there’s what Houston terms a second genesis, when another level of possibility starts to rise and you realize there’s so much more to you than you knew or suspected.

That’s when your life’s adventure begins.

And by the way, you are perfect. You are exactly where you are supposed to be – until life keeps whacking you with hints and reminders that you should really be on your way to somewhere else. (In storyteller’s parlance, this is known as ‘resisting the call’, and the hero will continue to stagnate, to live out a death-in-life, and life will keep poking and frustrating and disrupting her, until she’s willing to leave her ordinary world and strike out for the territories.)

Moving into your yearning is different from trying to fill the void through a hard or soft addiction. The latter leaves you worse off than before, wanting more but requiring ever more to achieve the same effect. What is addiction, in the end, but a spiritual quest pulled inside out?

To move into your yearning is to recognize and honor your needs. It is to move to the other side of lack, where you can start to remember who you are.

This piece comes from here

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What People Really Look Like

Picture source here

Okay, i admit i am getting really distracted from my Pixie, 'Woman is a River' tapes now now, but this article was really inspiring too and i could not, NOT post it :-)

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What People Really Look Like

Women have cellulite, men have silly buttocks.

I’ve been a massage therapist for many years, now. I know what people look like. People have been undressing for me for a long time. I know what you look like: a glance at you, and I can picture pretty well what you’d look like on my table. 

Let’s start here with what nobody looks like: nobody looks like the people in magazines or movies. Not even models. Nobody. Lean people have a kind of rawboned, unfinished look about them that is very appealing. But they don’t have plump round breasts and plump round asses. You have plump round breasts and a plump round ass, you have a plump round belly and plump round thighs as well. That’s how it works. (And that’s very appealing too.)

Woman have cellulite. All of them. It’s dimply and cute. It’s not a defect. It’s not a health problem. It’s the natural consequence of not consisting of photoshopped pixels, and not having emerged from an airbrush.

Men have silly buttocks. Well, if most of your clients are women, anyway. You come to male buttocks and you say -- what, this is it? They’re kind of scrawny and the tissue is jumpy because it’s unpadded; you have to dial back the pressure, or they’ll yelp.

Adults sag. It doesn’t matter how fit they are. Every decade, an adult sags a little more. All of the tissue hangs a little looser. They wrinkle, too. I don’t know who put about the rumor that just old people wrinkle. You start wrinkling when you start sagging, as soon as you’re all grown up, and the process goes its merry way as long as you live. Which is hopefully a long, long time, right?

Everybody on a massage table is beautiful. There are really no exceptions to this rule. At that first long sigh, at that first thought that “I can stop hanging on now, I’m safe” – a luminosity, a glow, begins. Within a few minutes the whole body is radiant with it. It suffuses the room: it suffuses the massage therapist too. People talk about massage therapists being caretakers, and I suppose we are: we like to look after people, and we’re easily moved to tenderness. But to let you in on a secret: I’m in it for the glow. 

I’ll tell you what people look like, really: they look like flames. Or like the stars, on a clear night in the wilderness.

~Dale favier, masseur 

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One of my dreams..

                      Respond to every call that excites your spirit. ~ Rumi

                                                 
Today i have time to catch up with my long list of 'things to see' and to research online. No kiddies running around until later today :-)

So on my list is to take all the time i need to listen to all the recordings Pixie made for the 'Woman is a River' e-course that begun last week and i am so so happy to be participating in right now.
On the one hand i did not have time to listen to all the wonderful things she recorded during the week, but i also recognize it wasn't merely a lack of time, it was more a fear of what i would be hearing. My relationship with money and abundance is a tight, a tense and fearful one..As i wrote in this post a few days ago. So to be fully present and fully participating in 'Woman is a River', is an experience for which i need solitude and room for my emotions to run where they need to run while listening to what Pixie has to say. So evidently that requires a day without kids :-) So i saved them all up for today. Sitting here by the computer with my cup of coffee enjoying Pixies words..What she has to say is so profound and immediately hits me home right it the core of my heart. She is a great teacher!!! And i am so blessed and happy to be able to call her 'my' teacher too..

But occasionally today i am distracted by other inspiring peoples work while i listen to Pixie..Like the work of Jen Lee. And when i get inspired like this i feel a calling to share my inspiration with you here right away..

This trailer gives an idea of what the film Indie Kindred is about. I love the theme, 'Creative work and connection'. Let them come together. I too have been experiencing the lonely feeling of making the things i make and feeling deep need of connecting with other makers. But when allowing myself to feel that need of finding kindred spirits i feel very alone at the same time i admit this need. Because it brings to the surface the anxiety of nobody speaking my language being there to connect with, or a bigger fear i have, that the ones i would want to connect with aren't interested in connecting with me. Life is all about connection, i believe for all of us. And one of the richest feelings of abundance is when you find the people that make you feel you and that make you feel part of a larger whole.

What i love most about the film is that Jen Lee is not only making the film, she is also doing something about connecting creative people actively. She travels through the US right now with the movie, while creating small screenings. At those small screenings creative people come to see the movie. They are people directly from that particular city, village or area. People that come to see the movie will feel drawn to the theme of it.

And boom! As a bonus to seeing a great movie they will meet and recognize each other at the same time. This way they are enabled to see each other as the creative people from that geographical area, and can create a togetherness and a community (if they want to) after such a screening.. I just love these kinds of beautiful initiatives.. so inspiring.

I would like to become someone who comes up with good ideas to do just this, connect creative people from a certain place in the world and form a community.. One of my dreams!!!

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Dreaming my big dreams

For the story i am about to post tonight i feel i need some of this music, some relaxing, calming me down music..

“The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.” 
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Okay, here i go. But first let me post some introduction:

This place, my blog is supposed to be a safe place to vent all sorts of things, also the ‘hard’ stuff,  to the world. I do that because in the 1^stplace it helps me to get real with my struggles. Seeing them back here written down in black in white,  and the scary part, being readable to everyone that like to visit my blog. This makes that all I write should feel like the truth to me, and there for I need to be very conscientiousness of what I write and how I write. That conscientiousness helps me to stray clear and truthful to myself, well as truthful as I can anyway way. And no I am not naive, I know this is an open space and therefore can be entered by everyone, even someone who does not care about this being a safe place. But I’ll take my chances for such person can be touched with beauty of truth telling too.

This is kind of a big one for me, as it is my deep deep dream,  to be together with a (large) group of people and help each other heal our old, new, deep, shallow, sharp, bloody and nasty wounds. Help each other heal by truth telling. As someone else described these kind of spaces,  and I can’t say it better than she did, so I echo her words of beauty:

“This is a place of beauty. Each of us have to learn discernment.. How to see through the fog of untruths we keep telling ourselves. This is a place where you are all my witnesses. May this be a place be a safe steppingstone to leave the shadows behind”.

Namaste xxxD

So now i will tell the truth about a very hard topic for me, MONEY!  I will talk now about my (screwed up) relationship with money..

Money is an incredible hard topic for me, has been so for as long as I can remember. Coming from a one parent household, my mother never worked, and thus there was no money, just welfare, and that was very little. I’ve been angry with her for as long as I can remember that she did not make a ‘real’ living, but mostly for the fact that she did not model for me and my sister how to do it. So I grew up incredibly insecure of being able to make a living in any kind of job, let alone trying to monetize on my dreams and where my heart lies, which is art. I have done millions of different jobs until now,  none of which I ever loved or liked. I now know why I was running so hard without even taking time to breathe, I tried to prove to myself I could do it! That I could take care of myself, that I could work hard, that I could hold on to a job, that I could make a living on my own strength. But I also can see now that almost all the jobs I have had these past 30 years have all made me feel like grabbing me by the throat, like being chocked. And it did literally, because living my life this way has gotten me to the point of being ill, so severe, and so often, that I could not work anymore and lost my job.  Which then again lead me into welfare, which is my current status. How ironically, me being on welfare, I never wanted to become my mom, but I have...I am now a mom myself of two little kids and on welfare. What’s the  message? Whatever it is I haven’t been strong enough yet to listen to it yet.. And most of all it makes me feel ashamed to be on welfare.

I have been a (big)dreamer all my life, and have kept failing to make a living out of those. It has gotten me to the point of giving up on my dreams and focus my life on the motto ‘just do the job that pays the bills’ and exhaust myself.

Right now that I am on welfare it’s a blessing in disguise. Since June I have been granted the welfare and thus been granted time, time to think about what it is I really want and how to achieve it, or better said take baby steps to go forward. But as good as this may sound I often find myself in a paralyzing state. I just know that I don’t want to leave this earth and never have tried my absolute best to achieve to live the life I dreamt to live. Even if it’s just a tiny percentage that i will be able to achieve of what I originally dreamt up. I just don’t know how?!?!  I feel some of the dreams are coming back, but still very faintly. The scare of me never being able to amount to anything let alone materialize my dreams is so huge, so humongous, it clouds all I do and think. It's the feeling of me never being able to attain the dream i dream for myself...

So I did it, shared my money fear story..this is very scary but I hope I will be okay after posting this..

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Women is a river, an inspiration!!!

Woman is a river

Beautiful Fearless Soft Endurance

Courageous Loving Determined

Flowing Truthful Wisdom Magical

Pictures and their sources can be found here

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Woman is a River

Woman is a River, (Pixie Campbell)

I love this analogy! We are like a river, a flow. But things don’t work for us. Why? We tend to block that flow from taking its natural course. It’s important to really think about what we block the river with, so we can repair the flow.  

Remove the blocks, which can be so many J . How? I agree with Pixie, the only way to remove them is taking responsibility, seeing we have been putting the block there ourselves.

We don’t  need to look so hard for our life’s purpose. We don’t need to look so hard for abundance. We need to open the flow of our river to allow in what is already waiting to come in.

Here you can listen to Pixie speak about this subject a little deeper...

In September Pixie Campbell leads an e-course with this title. Subscribing to it can be done here...

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