KateThoughts

A general FYI and a note about upcoming stuff

I'm still on a pet-job and haven't been on my own computer in a week. And on Monday, we leave on our road trip to Florida. We'll be gone at least 3 weeks, I think. Dates are tentative, return a sure thing but unscheduled.

I'm WAY far behind on my Google Reader subscriptions, so if you're counting me among the missing, just know that I will be back one day...  : )  (Wanna meet me on the beach?)

Now, just in case any of you followed some of my links to posts by Laura regarding her work on death & dying...OR...if you are interested in that subject for any reason, I want to point you that way again.

Her blog site is here.

Some of her latest ideas are in this particular blog post.

Without going on too much, I will tell you that Laura was my business coach for awhile, and we bacame good friends after that. She has excellent credentials for her next steps - which seem likely to be workshops on the themes of conscious living, and on conscious death & dying - both for oneself, posssibly, and certainly for living through this process for those you love.

I've gotta go; the dogs are ready for their walk, and they mean NOW! But I wanted to do this in case I don't get back here for a few days.

TTFN
and May all be well with you.

An Important Message About Bullying

This is making the rounds of Facebook, so it is quite possible that you've seen it, already.

But it IS Very IMPORTANT, so a little repetition won't hurt - and the bullying does hurt. Help spread this around, please.

Hearts and Hockey Players

Haven't been here for awhile. Lots of stuff – and nothing going on.  thought I'd say so, so you stop wondering...if you are.

Things are blue around here. My best friend of the heart is moving to Florida in 4 days. I’ve been in her house here for 12 days, taking care of her dog and packing stuff. Practicing not thinking about it. I can do the denial part because Joel and I will be traveling to see her in mid-October. So I’ve put off the tears, mostly, except now & then…now.
And with Skype, we can still have our weekly coffee klatches. It just will be different. Oh, well…

On the 10^th, my friend, Michael Schwass died. He is/was an amazing person who took a major life-changing event and turned it into inspiration, hope, incentive, courage, and even joy for hundreds – maybe thousands – of others. You can read one of the obituaries here. But there is no real reason to do so…they don’t really give you any sense of the man.
(adding a link to the obit from the Chicago Sun-Times)

I met him through my friend Laura, who has been one of his best friends for umpteen years, and was a my business, then life coach and now a friend of the heart. My sense of Michael grew out of Laura’s writings about her relationship with Michael, and with the prep work they were both doing around his ultimate death.
You see, Michael was a quadraplegic. He lived longer than most with that condition because of his drive, his huge heart, and his determination that paraplegia would be something from which he learned and taught, not some curse that just happened. Laura explored much of that, and wrote about it as part of her own preparation for his leaving this physical plane, and also because she is so totally committed to living consciously – which, of course, includes dying consciously. This is one little thing she wrote recently about all of this:

“[I am] VERY aware of what a gift it is to only ONLY be sad.
Nothing was left unsaid or undone.
That is an extraordinary feeling and a gift I will cherish the rest of my days.”

(if you’re interested, here is a link to a post Laura wrote a few days ago; and this is a link to a whole bunch of posts about Michael and consciousness – including one called “Giggling at the Cemetery”)

So much of my present work around consciousness was nurtured by her writings and by reading about and, finally, meeting Michael.

And to all of this, I’ll say that Joel and I are looking at some possible changes of the ‘big’ sort. While we are in Florida, we will explore the possibilities of moving there or acquiring a ‘vacation’ home of some sort. Maybe just something we can rent frequently or … I have no idea what we will see, decide, think… much of this bumps up against some of my ‘issues’ if you will. J It’s funny, really, and more stressful than I imagined.

Joel is about to be 70. We’re going to the beach for her birthday.

And I am claiming our former guest room as my sanctuary. In the midst of rearranging, decluttering, and deciding how to turn this tiny space into a cloister.

Life’s a ride, isn’t it?!
…speaking of which, this last weekend has been a motorcycle festival – the noise was phenomenal!

So, blog friends, I am both here and absent. And way behind on most of your writings, too. I’ll catch up one day.

Blessings to you all from a very full heart.

The Lady and the Reaper

This one cracks me up on SO many levels!

Enjoy

Thanks for sharing, Ronni.

The Ongoing Saga of the Battle Between Ego & Spirit

There may be more rambling than saga here, but... it's a blog after all - not a thesis.
(I looked thesis up, and it is that, actually: 3. A hypothetical proposition, especially one put forth without proof.)   :)

As some of you may know, raising my consciousness/awareness is a value I hold. It's one that often conflicts with other things going on in my (moderately compulsive) brain.

Increasing my awareness about the food I consume is one of the ways I advance this ideal of mine. Lately, that has been fueled by Michael Pollan and his books. And also by the film Food, Inc. and stuff I'm reading around the web, such as articles by my friend Laura. Moving my body a bit is another way. This manifests as continuing lessons in T'ai Chi but has not yet presented as a regular daily practice.

So, what's the battle?

Well, I was watching a trainer speaking to a group of women the other day (TV). He was teaching them this mantra: "Exercise is not negotiable," and suggesting (strongly) some very drastic (to me) changes in their eating habits. He seemed to want them to believe that they truly had NO choice. Basically, his message was exercise and eat right or DIE. And his absolute, in the 'not negotiable' sentence raised all my hackles and fired up my ego and compelled me to yell at the screen: "Oh, yeah! Of course, it is negotiable, you idiot."
I can choose dying.

And there is the dilemma.

I think that it may be a responsibility of mine to get off this planet as soon as the trip takes me to that point. It's not about suicide; it's about too many people. It's not about me; it's about the planet. It's not about health, per se, it's about consequences.

It's balancing my food addiction and my real love of all things food, with my increasing spirituality and consciousness. I suspect that it's mostly denial, as in that river in which so many of us are floundering.

My addiction is quite active. If I am not eating (or maybe while I'm eating), I'm planning the next food opportunity: recipe search, shopping, prepping, cooking, serving, and back to eating again. I love cooking for other people. And while all my choices for guests consider their own food issues or goals or tastes, I'm drawn, still, to all those old comfort-foods that continue to work for me.
(What fun I am already having preparing the Super Bowl Party food! I could care less about the game.)

So, I have a long way to go here.

I'm sure I will continue to evolve. I think I could not really stop evolving, even if I tried. And I'm fairly sure that spirit/god understands the 'thing' I have with food even though I clearly do not, as  yet.

Balance is the only way I can think of these matters at the moment. And I don't pretend for a moment that I am actually IN balance. (Work-in-progress...hold that thought.)

Some of what feeds the confusion or inability (or unwillingness) to move in one direction or the other is what I see when I look around me at stuff on TV; at some of the people I know; at national and world politics; at the way we teach each other and our kids to value score-keeping over consciousness.

Gotta go play with someone else's computer... I'll be back to this.

Aging Well ~ the Quest

Somehow this morning (cosmically led, perhaps?), I came upon this old post of Ronni Bennett's from several years ago. Her post is about May-December romances. Mine is other...

I was struck by this excerpt:

"Carolyn Heilbrun, in her book, Writing a Woman’s Life, acknowledges the well-known invisibility that envelops most women at middle age, but she goes on in a manner I find encouraging:

“We will move invisibly for a time, to relearn seeing and to forget being seen. As we grow slowly visible, we will be heard more and seen less. Our voices will ramify, our bodies will become a house for our new spirit.”.

And there are younger men who find that spirit more attractive than mere youth.

I'm particularly struck by the phrase, "to relearn seeing and to forget being seen". I have spent so much of my life aware of, concerned about, and afraid of what others think of me that, at times, I've been almost paralyzed. (Wonderful to have moved from that place!)

"To relearn seeing"    
When I was living that fear, what was I seeing? What do I need to relearn? I think it is not so much a re-learning process as it is a new learning process. I thought I was seeing - looking at - but, I was really only seeing myself, and so concerned with 'what' people saw when they looked at me that I could give no thought at all for the 'who' they might have seen. And the 'who' - the real me - was invisible, largely because I was so outwardly focused.

As I'm aging, (thank you, god) the rest of that quote is becoming true. Again, Thank God.
I am becoming more visible - to myself - than I have ever been. I'm more clear on the 'who' that I am, more brave, and my body is becoming the "house for my spirit".

I had to look up ramified, and I find that that is true for me, too. I am more complex; and my spirit, my interests, indeed, my own voice are multifaceted and much more powerful.

"To forget being seen"
In some ways, this seemed easier for me for many years. What that ease turned out to be was, at first, just an amazing ability to avoid mirrors. It started with cameras and other people's photos of me. I just got tired of that coy, "oh, no, my hair looks terrible" type of BS and came to realize that I would never have to look at them; could forget that they existed. What a relief it was to say, 'Sure, go ahead". and just smile.  

Now, I can consider the thought that I am truly blind if I am too much concerned with 'being seen'. I don't really see other people, or the truth of a situation if I am concerned with how I look or what others think.

Now, I know that looking in is for my meditation or prayer. I can forget that anyone is looking. My years and my path have brought a perspective that we only gain by growing older. With a bit of open-mindedness I might even be(come) wise. As for being seen; the only opinion that really matters is my own. I'm concerned with how closely I stand by my values. When I remember these things, I am in great shape: happy, content, integrous.

"Heard more, seen less"
I can't say that I am seen less. What do I know of what another really sees? I do know that I care less. And this blog attests to the fact that I have stuff to say. Do you hear me?   :)
Guess what...even that matters less to me, and ultimately matters not at all.

It seems a bit curious to me.
As I age, I seem to look inward much more in some respects (usually related to self-knowledge), and to become more self-centered. I think it is in some relationship to my interest in dying well. I'll continue that exploration the rest of my life, I suppose. And I can see that I also see others much better, or with thinner blinders. Perspective again, I'm sure.

As Bette says, "From a distance..."

PBS's FrontLine: exploring "Living Old"

This link is a great jumping off place for articles, stories, videos and even a video stream of the complete show. The cut line of this home page says,

"A powerful and intimate journey into the uncharted territory of Americans living longer than ever -- and what it means for them, their loved ones and our society."

Worth some time, I think.

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view,
and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.
Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
even a stranger, when in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people and grovel to none.
When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.
If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.
Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools
and robs the spirit of its vision.
When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled
with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep
and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

Chief Tecumseh (Crouching Tiger) Shawnee Nation 1768-1813

Thanks, Nancy   ; >D