True love-

I wonder some days at moments in time...
What mysteries await
That will unfold
Just when the moment is right-

Personal Legend

...to thine own self be true...

Life is a constant struggle between trying to follow your own interests- or as Coelho describes it, one's "personal legend"... and one's "love interests". Often times they are in conflict but they don't have to be...

A true love will never hold you back from pursuing your personal legend. A true love will recognize that to be truly happy one must first be true to themselves. In that state and in that state only does one return to complete unity with one's own self. It is only when we have ourselves that we can share ourselves with another.

Intimacy and love also, are born out of this sharing...

I long for love and intimacy
the real kind...
when they happen
I shall have found 'my true love'

Eid ul Adha... aka Bakr Eid

Dear friends-

I wish you all a very happy eid!
The fortunate among you will be raan recipients.
The less desirable will probably get mixed gosht
Some may even end up with gurday kalajay
But to the ojhri recipients- you seriously fucked up this year didn't you!!!

Better luck next time :)

Love you guys
XOXO

LYM

Lym...

"Love you more..."

Bug and I argue about this one constantly. It's our thing. We bicker about who loves the other more. If this is the extent of our conflict for life, I am content as a mom (pre teen hormones notwithstanding! not to mention "my" pms ones sigh...)

But I digress-

I saw a really cool tattoo yesterday. For those in the know- 2012 is the year I get my tattoo. It is to be a skull. Getting back to point, however, I noticed this really cool tattoo yesterday. Said person told me it stands for love you madly... and it's what his mom signed off with every time.

That made me smile and tear up.

It was too much like bug's and my- love you more-
Or the other often used -love you muchly-
JT Cardwell- my dear old friend and mentor uses- lovedtrulymadlydeeply-
Gandalf used-love your presence- (I miss Gandalf!)
David Llewellyn just uses-love-
Bob Richardson uses- love you-
Manan just says-love-
TC says- still lovin' u-

So many ways to convey the only TRUTH in life!

love...
such a beautiful thing :)

Monday's are for laughing...

 

Monday and I have had a love/hate relationship through the years...

While it's great to wake up and jump into the week because I love my job! (yay!!) today was a tad interesting. TC called last night and this morning I couldn't remember if I dreamed that or not. Either way it was great to hear the voice of a friend I haven't spoken with since last Christmas! (there were tears involved...)

Later my protein smoothie exploded in my face...which just means Monday will be, shall we say... interesting...(I have strawberry and vanilla flavored hair today!) (It's okay.... It'll just get lost in there with everything else. I should seriously think about going back to dreads) But in the grand scheme of things-Hehehehehe!
I decided that Mondays are for laughing!

So I have a few berries in my hair :) it smells good in my opinion! Sophie won't care- (She btw, is my fountain friend. I'll have to give you all the scoop on her). She's an ice cream place water fountain (see what I just did there...scoop... ice cream....!) okay fine then!

I said Mondays were for laughing! (Hence the jokes). I didn't say the jokes would be very good. Sheesh- tough crowd and what with me being a complete dork and all....

Happy laughter!

Eternal Sunshine

I have not painted in over a year and  half. It was with a rush of joy that this one hit me out of the ether. I.Q had asked me once what inspired a painting in me. I had responded, "They are already there- the paintings. They already exist. I just find a canvas for them." It was so with this one too. It just came to me yesterday and I LOVE it!

I call it "eternal sunshine".

I did not have all the materials and color that I wanted, but I always finish a painting in one shot. I have to or I lose the emotion. This one is very significant to me. It is a wounded heart. It's my wounded heart. Over time and heartbreaks it has hardened into a lava rock. I don't like that...at all. I am not a hard person. And it wounds me that I have become that way. That the carelessness of people who have scuffed up my heart has changed my essence. It is brought to my attention when people make the observation to me. I break a little on the inside whenever someone points out how hard I appear to be. I stop in my tracks most days when I realize it myself. I dress in combat gear every fucking day! It's as if I am at war. And I have been for close to three years now.

But my determination is stronger than those that seek to break and conquer me. It has been a journey indeed. This year I traveled to the very depths of my own despair and looked it in the eye. I toyed with destruction. Self and external. I pushed that button many times. I tempted fate, challenged the devil himself to mess with me. I was beaten down and got a few good blows in myself. In the process I gauged my own strength. I learned what my limits are and I was taught to respect them. Nature taught me that. I learned the strength of my arms, became familiar with it, harnessed it, made it mine! In the process, however,  so consumed was I by strength that I lost some of my softness.

eternal sunshine is my heart. Wounds turn our hearts dark and black. We harden them against the cruelties of the world. In time the heart hardens to a solid block. Stoic. Solid. Immovable. Invulnerable. But, ironically, breakable still.... Even a hard heart can break. When a hard heart breaks- it shatters! Been there. Done that too. And.... I...am....done...., with that. I am tired. I want to feel again. Be soft again. I want strong arms that can still hug soft.

eternal sunshine is about transformation.

A return to self. A coming home. Home that exists within me. eternal sunshine is about that hardened heart melting. While it's still dark it's melting and the life blood starts to pump through it again. The hurts pour out in dark rivulets of anguish. They must... To heal one must face the pain fearlessly. There is fresh tenderness too. New life. New love. New joy. New red blood...mixing with painful dark blood. It is scarred and wounded but there is light all around it. Eternal light. Eternal sunshine. Divine light. And there is a spark of divinity in each of us. My faith is firm and my own divine spark renders me resilient. It is the divine spark inside of me that rends apart the hardness, screaming for life. Fighting for it. And this time around, I am fighting for, fighting with, and not against it! It is a glorious joy- to feel again. To offer love and receive it in return. It is as Michael Naylor said...

"It is my heart cracking open..."
And it is a beautiful feeling
eternal sunshine...

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-

It's quite remarkable exactly how much of ourselves we can lose when we are in toxic relationships. I say this with quite a bit of emotion. I have been there and done that- bought the T-shirt and even wrote the book! And in the process, for a long while there- I completely lost who and what I am. I lost sight of everything. I did not even know me anymore and what is worse I forgot who I used to be, so the possibility of returning to me became a distant, elusive dream. One that I yearned for with every fiber of my being- but one to which the map was lost.

It does not happen overnight. This loss of self. It is an insidious disease- an eating away of the very cellular structure of one. It occurs in the most subtle of ways. Under the guise of love and caring, the self is snatched up and torn apart by the significant other. It is a torment I would not wish upon my worst enemy. By the time awareness happens, we are but a hollow shell of who we used to be once. The grief at the death of spirit is a silent wail. A sound that remains forever caught in the throat, for how does one weep the loss when there is no body of evidence? Oh but the knowledge is all encompassing- something has died!! And we are keenly aware of this fact.

I recall watching "Eternal Sunshine...". for the first time ever. It captured my heart. The emotions so delicate and so well portrayed that I gasped in understanding. I watched it a second time and a third and many times more. And each time I learned from the movie. I learned about love. I learned about me.

I LONG FOR THAT. That passionate love that you cannot let go. I long for that. The crazy antics, and yet despite it all, the understanding between the two. I long for that. That throbbing, aching pain of LOVE!

I thought I had it. I might have come close a time or two... But I truly have never had that LOVE that will let me be ME! Completely me. Without demanding, manipulating, extracting change. I will give in if that happens. I always do. I will change if I must. I always do. I am foolish that way. I am a fool in love. But I would not be any other way. I love that about me. That I CAN love that hard. That for my beloved, I will do anything. I love that about me. All that remains is finding one that will do the same- for ME.

I do not ask change of people. It would only alter what I fell in love with at the start. I want them to be true only to their self. It is the only way they can remain happy. And the happiness of one's beloved is a sight to behold.

I was at a training recently and I met a man. He had the image from the movie tattooed on his arm. I asked about it and he told me that his wife was a lot like Kate Winslet's character in the movie and that he was like  Jim Carrey's character. It was their favorite movie and reminded them a lot of themselves so on one of their anniversaries they had gotten themselves matching tattoos. My heart cracked just a little bit. I felt a yearning start to grow within me. "I want that", I thought. "And it is real. It does exist! I want that so bad!"

Later that week, as I listened to a friend talk of his heartbreak I mentioned this to him. I told him how much I believed in the existence of crazy, passionate love. And that I would NOT settle for anything less. I would keep looking until I found it. If not I'd rather be alone than lonely with someone.

I am like that girl in the movie too- Crazy, frenzied, scattered...unable to bear the pain of memories. I always try to get rid of tormenting memories and reminders of people. It is just easier to be without them. Life is less burdensome. But one cannot in reality erase...

That is a gift from the heavens. Amnesia just happens one day.

And that is a moment of bliss-
The heavens open up. The song of angels is heard. We breathe a sigh of relief as the heart aches no more for the one that was lost, and thus at last we are freed! It is a beautiful place. A sweet, delectable moment in time. One feels a TON lighter and like a gentle, soft breeze the heart is released.

Free at last to go, to move on, to LOVE again.
It is so with me at last....
It is the moment of the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind-

I fight to find peace-

Fighting teaches us about WHO we are...

I'd heard that but never quite knew what that meant. I discovered that this week. I was in my Muay Thai fight class, being a terror beast as always feeling the blood throbbing in my head, adrenaline pumping through my veins- in my element. I'd do my kicks and knee my partner in the side and then I'd "attempt" to anticipate my partner's move and control the outcome. I kept at it this way until Graeme- my instructor, came up and stated, "Just go with what he does Shahnaz..."

It struck me for the first time ever- that is what I try to do in life! I attempt to control everything. Much as I'd like to believe that I am spontaneous, I attempt to control the outcome of everything. Sure I am spontaneous in my action when it comes to fun, but in most other events I attempt control.

I try to control events when I am afraid and in an unfamiliar situation. It is difficult for me to just go with the flow because.... well, because I might lose- get hurt. And yet all the joy of living is lost when I do that. Because I am not really there, present in the situation any more. I have retracted to a place in my head. It is under those circumstances when my stuck points happen. It is there that I get trapped into patterns. I get trapped because I am simply stuck on repeat, in an endless loop in my own head. A prisoner of my own habit and mind. I retreat to my head because it is familiar. But then truthfully no learning and growth can happen in familiarity. We already know the familiar. It is the new and unknown that teaches us...

I wondered too about Graeme, as I continued to throw punches and kicks. From what I have known of him he is very contained and controlled in his life outside of fighting. On the mats though, he is a sight to behold. He moves like poetry in motion. Like a fluid part of the universe, unfettered he glides across the mats- lightning quick and lethal! I remember the first time I saw him move. It took my breath away. He is one with what he does. 'He LOVES this,' I secretly thought to myself.... 'He moves across the mats like my hands move across the canvas when I paint, or my mind when it conjures up words.' It occurred to me- 'He has no fear on the mats. It is in life that his fear kicks in. That is why in life he is contained and controlled.'

Fear traps us into endless patterns of mistakes and repeats- more of the same moments! To truly learn and change, one must be fearless. One has to be willing to lose it all to gain all. That is when growth happens.

I think back to events in my life. It is when I have gambled everything I had and owned that I have GAINED and GROWN the most.

Kate Matista sat with me as I plotted my big move, ready to give up everything to be with the man I loved. She did not reprimand or try to convince otherwise. She merely sat by and let me do- be me, completely. In that effort of loss was my big gain. I saw truth for what it was... futility. And so I grew and I gained. Acceptance happened and then the tears...

Michael Naylor drew my attention to myself this past weekend when he said,
"Are you so unaware of your own light and how brightly you shine?"
"I shine?" I thought to myself...
I did not know I even had a light.
I took a risk and believed him. I stepped out of my head for a moment and closed my eyes and took in his reflection of me. Scared he might be wrong and even more scared that he might be right...
Then what?
What if he is right.
Sometimes the pain of love, acceptance and happiness is just as great as the pain of hurt and sorrow.
"I want to believe you..." I told him. But it hurts and I am afraid.
"It hurts because your heart is cracking open to receive my love..."
"It feels a lot like my heart breaking." I gasped as my eyes filled with tears...
"It is merely stretching and opening to receive what it deserves. Breathe..."
And I breathed and felt the tears wet my face as something snapped and feeling returned to an icy coldness.

Russ Hudson said to me once- Every moment of your life should feel like stepping off a cliff Shahnaz...
I am reminded also of the moment when I asked him,
"How can a 7 transcend to enlightenment?"
"Embrace your sorrow, Shahnaz."
My eyes had filled with tears then too, because he could see into the depths of my soul and see the hurt that resides within. I have been afraid of my own pain. That is why I have been stuck in endless patterns in life. The minute I became unafraid of my pain I was able to transcend my pattern and get over a toxic love I have been wounded and tormented by. I have been on a journey this year. I begin to see at last that I am "getting somewhere". For a while back there it felt like I was driving in circles...and I was... and each circle took me lower- so low that I went into the very edge of despair... and deeper- so deep that I was terrified I would be swallowed up, lose myself completely and lose my mind... closer- so close to my own self that it appeared that the universe existed in me a part of me closer and closer to  my own essence! Which is merely an extension of universal essence. I am, simply put, a small spark of divinity. As is any other soul- just such a spark. It is in my own essence that my truth is revealed. All I will ever need exists within me. At which point I am freed.

I am free to simply BE...
And then peace happens.

The more present I am in reality, the easier come the tears. Of late my eyes fill often. My daughters face, the beauty of an autumn sky, Sophie's gurgling voice, the sun on my skin, a warm embrace- all fill my heart with an indescribable joy.

I  am grateful to all the teachers that have brought me to this place of knowingness...
Russ, Kate, Michael, Graeme...
I am grateful and eternally blessed for your presence.

Yes I fight.
I fight so that I may find peace...