Just checking in here

There must be something i want to say! Something i want to write about!
Guess not.
Must go make spagetti for dinner.
OH.... where you live... is 'dinner' a noon meal or evening meal ? Where i grew up... or at least in our home, dinner was the evening meal. Here , dinner is the noon meal. (not for me, though)
Remember when it was never breakfast, lunch or dinner.. but "PRASADAM?" I miss Prasadam.
Well.... must go now.
I do like my new gas stove! Have had it for a few months now.

BLySs Art

This one was done with markers, pencils and acrylic paints.

PS

If you know why i get these lines running through my posts, please let me know. THank you.

Looking at my past posts

After reading my few scanty posts.. i decided i would take a moment to express that my life is going so well at this point! I would have to say that at least half of the improvement is due to Clay's becoming quite wonderful with me! The other half is my own growth, mental stability, spiritual maturing (about time, huh? ) ... and these changes are at least partly due to medicine, counseling, prayers and my own self determination. YES! I am becoming more and more ME nearly every day! We all are, right?
There is still something i would like to overcome, and that is my reluctance to leave the house. What is THAT about? Yet it , I, have been like this for years now. I do not even want to go out into my own yard! Sick, huh... ?... I used the word "reluctance" because i did not want to say 'fear'... but it really is a kind of fear. Obviously still have work to do.
That said through, there is a magnificent sunset going on right now!
This is not from now but it is nearly exactly what i am seeing out the window!

learning something new

I would like to register my art work name which is unofficially BLySs Art... for Barbara Lynn Sheets.  Cute, HUH?

This is the one hanging at the local cupcake shop. I think i titled it "The Traveler" but would have to look at the note on it. 

The maddness

Just can not consentrate on anything. Stopped the gabapentin to stop the edema, to help speed up my metabolism.. but now can not hardly move. Have found myself sitting and staring as if paralyzed , a few times today.. yesterday.. Can not get out of my head. No one to talk to. Isolated.

So, this is what has happened so much of my life and i did not even know it was a 'thing'.. a type of 'maddness'... a 'chemicle imbalance'...

Not staying asleep... Panic hits in the strangest ways..

gotta go

Mother Nature changes our lives..

Well, the Missouri is rising and affecting the lives of all who reside along her banks.  I can not write about all of those folks We happen to live up on a hilltop so our home itself will not be affected by the rising waters of the Big Muddy. But that said, i have never experienced what is said to be headed our way. Ever so slowly the riverbanks are being breeched. Will there be one day when we awaken and all shout "OH SH...T! When did THAT happen?"
We have gathered together some canned goods and gallons of drinking water. Oh yes.. candles and batteries.  Anyhow.. I think i will close. Maybe I will write about this regularly.
I really do not want this to become a strange focus., an obcession.

Be-er...

Yesterday while talking with my counselor, as always sifting through the pieces of my life, the topic of my being "a giver" came up.  In the hours following our session, I thought that while being 'a giver' may be seem a good thing, at least better than the opposit,  i am thinking possibly not ! I recalled something said by a women running an eating disorder inpatient place, whose process and clients are beinging filmed for Oprah's network , OWN.  This woman said that hers is the only such place where folks with eating disorders from overeating to anorexia and bulimia were treated side by side, "... because these conditions are just flip sides of the same coin." Both of these conditions damage the body and the mind and the lives of others. So... what about this condition of 'giving' ? My dear counselor said there are three types of people : the givers, the takers and the gakers. LOL...  (Gakers are givers with hidden strings, hidden agendas, and i have no place for them in the following example... but HAD to mention them... )
   Ok... so after carefully thinking about what was shared in session, I concluded that maybe being "a giver" or "a taker" is just the flip side of the smae coin, each as detrimental as the other , just in different ways. In that case, what if a more liberating goal for me is to become a "be-er". YES! To just "be" rather than giving or taking. If i am a 'giver' because it makes me feel good (as my counselor notes) how about i give that motive up and just try to "be" and allow situations , rather than motivations, guide my giving and my taking.

Paraphernalia .....

In the top of my private closet I have sacred books, pictures and bins of paraphernalia. There is a fabric i wanted to get to that was in the bottom bin on the top shelf. After carefully unstacking framed pictures and books, and then the first bin, i was able to get the desired bin down and set on the bed. When i opened the first bin, the one stored on the top, the strong fragrance of incense filled my head. There were small sacred pictures, aratike tray, bells, ghee lamp, camphor lamp, boxes of various incenses, a tiny sandalwood elephant.. some framed prayers to Srimate Tulasi, Lord Nrsimhadeva... a picture of my granddaughter at age 8 or so,  standing in front of my altar with Lord Jaganatha, Lord Balarama and Lady Subhadra... head and shoulders gracefully wrapped in a yellow and red Harinam chaddar. If you, my reader, know what i am talking about here then you will understand my next statement... I miss being a devotee... a devotee of Krsna... In the next bin I found the cloth I was looking for, a beautiful piece of embroidered Indian fabric, meant to be a wrap around skirt but saved from that when i found it on the 'new' rack at the local thrift store some years ago. I had used it to wrap more sacred pictures.. Srila Prabhupada and the Parampara... Srimati Tulasi Devi.. the Yamuna River as it runs through Vrndavan... Krsna and Balarama.. Radha Krsna... Srila Prabhupada's Samadhi... Then a piece of clay from Vrndavan for tilak... and then leaves from a sacred tree in Jaganathapuri... More and more layers of items that did not even feel like matter in my hands... but like something so far beyond this material energy... Now i will return to the task at hand, carefully rewrapping all the paraphernalia and once again placing it up on that high shelf... Maybe one day what is at this moment a memory shrouded in ..something... Yes.. shrouded in something .. maya... Or is it that I am shrouded in maya ? Yes.. it has to be that... So, maybe one day i will wake up enough to hold each sacred item or paraphernalia to my real heart...

Assertive Bill of Rights

While weeding through old files in my office today, i came across a list of 'rights' that i had not read in 20 years or so. I do not know who wrote this but i am glad to find it today. So, I now, once again, embrace these :

Assertive Bill of Rights

I have the right…..

• To be responsible for my own life.

• To accept and respect myself and others.

• To feel happy, satisfied, and to allow inner peace.

• To take good care of my whole being : my body, my mind, and my spirit.

• To be imperfect.

• To be aware of and fulfill my own needs.

• To have dreams, goals and ideals, and to make them happen.

• To have and express all my emotions.

• To tell others how I want to be treated.

• To allow people to help me without feeling guilty, unworthy, or dependent.

• To set my own priorities about my use of time, money, space, and energy.

• To get what I pay for.

• To have healthy, life-enhancing relationships, where clear communication is valued, and to make conscious decisions to change relationships.

• To change, emerge, and expand in new directions.

• To have my own beliefs, ideas, and values without apology.

• To live in the present moment, free of guilt in the past and worry for the future.

• To relax, to let go, and to ‘do’ nothing!



What is Compassion ?

Awhile back I met a woman who is trained in the ancient art of accupuncture. Although i could not tolerate the treatment , I was moved by our conversation. At one point she said, I recently heard that "Compassion is the refusal to engage in another's illusion. " This is a mystery to me. I have tried and tried to see this in my life. While i have concluded it will take a lifetime to understand this, I did see this lack of compassion in my self over the last 2 days.

    This brings me to racism and politics and religion and causes. All these things came up recently with the visiting of folks I know and have not spoken with in a few years. I was surprised at one guest making a racist comment to which i certainly must have looked shocked, but to which i did not reply as i should have. But i guess it was clear to all present how i felt about the comment. The next day, though, another remark was made, just as the person was leaving.. and it was more pointedly racist than the one from the day before. At that time, I did reply but not as well as i could have.
   Maybe it was the person being older than I. Maybe it was because of gender. Maybe it was because of my lack of compassion. I did not refuse to engage in this person's illusion.

Time to become a wise woman

Time to become wise...
To be conscious...
To be deliberate...
To pay attention...
To be full of balanced thoughts....

There is change in the air...