Celebrating our Imperfections

 

Today I received an email from my friend Yvonne and it really touched a sensitive spot. The photo that I have posted on my blog is as I was in my early to mid-twenties. Is it vanity that made me publish that photo? Perhaps… but I’m not so sure. A lifetime of feeling less for being more is hard to let go of. This photo was taken for my passport when I was going to France to join my fiancé in Marseille. I also had a visa for the Congo to go visit my sister. I did go to Marseille for a few months. Never made it to Brazzaville.

To make a long story a bit shorter, after a few years of living together, I realized that my fiancé was never going to get married, at least to me. He kept saying how beautiful the girls on the Riviera were with their incredible bodies being flaunted on the beach in Nice and Cannes. How did it make me feel? Ugly, unworthy, and unlovable. I wasn’t slim enough. . . even though I had starved myself for weeks living on grapefruit and boiled eggs. I got slim ok… but still, it wasn’t enough. Finally I got sick to my soul of feeling rejected for who I was. So after 5 years, I left him despite his assurance of his deep love for me.

On the rebound, with my family condemning me for my leaving him, I met with a man who wanted me as I was. . . or so I thought. By then, my health was not at a peak… but I was slim! After four painful miscarriages, I was able to conceive and gave him a daughter and a son. My body felt these assaults and, as if in an attempt to cushion me from pain, I got  f a t. Oh the F..  word, it isn’t the four letter word that is an insult to our spirit. It is a much shorter one but how much deeper it goes, slicing through your heart and your essential being and the last vestiges of any measure of self-worth.

Are we children of God? I think so. I do believe in a Supreme Creator who must love all of us in our imperfections, for why would he/she/it keep on making that many of us falling any distance from perfection?  Far too many beautiful young girls go through anorexia, bulimia, self-flagellation in this search for a goal that may never be achieved. Why are we so engaged in a short body life when eternity will eventually greet us as beautiful, powerful, incredibly loved spiritual beings, a reflection of our Creator? And here, I DO mean a genderless parent, all loving, all accepting. When we make these harsh judgements on ourselves, we are doing violence to our essential spirit. I did.

I can’t speak for men. But at some level, I think that, if they fall under the supreme judgement of the media, they must feel of lesser worth for having a slight paunch, for hair missing above their forehead, yet having so much more unwanted coming out of their ears and nostrils. Does it affect their sense of self-worth? I can’t say. We are ALL so judgemental. And judging is so far away from loving genuinely, isn’t it? 

When Yvonne sent me this quote from Einstein, it plunged me in old unresolved pain and deep hurts. If we are NOT the body, how did we get so far away from acknowledging our true essence, which is spirit?

Anyway, here it is:

There are many models of us, two-legged creatures. When we limit our vision to that of a perfect body, an engaging smile, or clear blue eyes, we are SHORT-CHANGING who we really are. If an acknowledged genius says this, perhaps we can take note.

LiveJournal Tags: The F word,Judging,Loving truly,Quest for Perfection,Self-acceptance

Leaving Comments

After checking back and forth from one blog to another, I have discovered that when I choose to embed the comment box, there is a glitch in my Boondocking blog that happens and in the section Archiving, the Post Pages becomes disabled by some glitch, which prevents the comment box from appearing. Why this doesn’t happen in Metaphysical Musings, I’m at a loss to explain. Things that go bump or dumb in the dark…

So to avoid any difficulty for readers and myself, I have chosen to have a pop-up window to leave comments; this way, my Post Pages in Archiving does not change itself contrary to my setup.

I hope that this will solve the problem. Please let me know by posting a comment.

LiveJournal Tags: Leaving Comments,Glitch in Archiving on blog

Blogs AdSense–Google Help and More…

 

A heartfelt hello to all. You will notice that ads now appear on both my blogs. For the past 2 years I’d given up on posting ads, which even for a few bucks per year, would have helped me in my construction endeavours.

I began boondocking a number of years ago but kept notes in a journal. Then I was urged to start a blog, which I did in 2009. Owing to a stupid move on my innocent part, my blog got hijacked. (Yes, I was stupid!) Fortunately, Google finally saw through the operation that had started from South Africa and I got my blog back. Whew…

Still I could not fix my AdSense with Google. The problem had begun when I was boondocking at the LTVA at Imperial Dam. Arizona on one side of the Colorado River, California on the other side. While at the LTVA everything that mattered was available in Yuma, AZ but the site was geopolitically located on the California side. The site offered a mail service and I used it. However this was a seasonal address and I had not opened a bank account in Yuma because of that reason. Everything hinged on that and I had no idea how to fix it.

I posted my question on the Google Help and was informed that my bank account had to be in my country of residence. I had none, really. So for the past few years, in a total funk about how to fix that problem, I had given up. A word of warning to full-timers. If you start any activity while trekking all over God’s little green acre, keep it simple—I repeat KISS. (Forget the last S-it was for me). Just one address, just one telephone number, just one bank account.

Then I moved to Mexico. There was so much to learn—a new language, new customs, new rules and government regulations, official papers, the list could on. My last concern was AdSense, even though it irked me that I had been too dumb to figure it out. I kept checking the help section but going through thousands of answers wore me out and I kept giving up in total frustration. All the while until this day, my Account had been Suspended and I had no idea how to unsuspend it.

Now, don’t ask me how I got around this, but I did. I finally connected with a REAL FLESH AND BLOOD PERSON AT GOOGLE!!!!! Yippee!!! And she or he helped me to reinstate my account with a proper country of residence and an official address, even though it is only an Apartado Postal. I really live in the boonies and there is no mail service. A bit annoying this, but I don’t even have a street number. We’re only two houses on my dirt “street”. Still, I wouldn’t change anything. Have you ever felt totally helpless and dumb? Well I have for all those months.

My goodness, how could it be that I couldn’t figure this one out? Here I am learning a 4th language, designing a house and delving in construction and construction terms in a new language while I’m no architect (although my workers believe that I am…) and adapting to a new country, new customs at 72! What the heck was wrong with me? A truly humbling experience that one was… No matter, it’s fixed now and I hope that the ads will not annoy anyone.

So, please refrain from clicking on an ad just to generate pennies for me. Click only when you are genuinely interested or I’ll be in deep doodoo with Google.

I thank all of you for your interest and send my love to all. If you don’t care for any of the ads, just ignore them.

LiveJournal Tags: Google,AdSense,my Ageing Brain,Getting Help,Rulltime RV'ing,RV'ing in Different Countries

Making One’s Days Count–cont’d

 

I was a foster parent for almost 10 years, from age 56 to retirement at 65. I will not go into details, but please believe me when I state that there are horrible things done to children. Before that, my professional life had been in administration and translation. After I’d moved to Calgary, I was reluctant to return to serve “the establishment”; I had a desire to serve in my community and in a way, make my days count for something more than help an already replete rich employer make even more money. Fostering was it.

In an effort to prepare myself, I read copiously accounts of adults who had been in foster care as children. As well there were many seminars organized for foster parents. They dealt with relevant topics and were very informative.

Through all these experiences, I was struck by how nature will help a child undergoing severe trauma to phase completely out of the experience while it lasts. It’s as if the essential part of the self opted out of the body to minimize the pain, in many cases, atrocious.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have read hundreds of accounts of people dying, then being resuscitated. In cases when the suffering is extreme such as during a criminal attack or through drowning, particularly for children, the soul, for lack of a better word, is released from the body to alleviate or sometimes completely eradicate the pain.

The following links are stories of adults and children who underwent such experiences:

http://www.nderf.org/donna_nde.htm

http://www.nderf.org/charmaine_m_ndes.htm

http://www.nderf.org/darlene_k_nde.htm

http://www.nderf.org/richard_l's_nde.htm

http://www.near-death.com/children.html

I hope this can help anyone coping with learning of a friend’s death resulting from a violent attack. As the saying goes, “God in his infinite wisdom, will not give you more than you can bear”, or something of the sort. I recall the story of a man, at least middle aged, who appeared on Oprah. He had been on a plane when it  burst into flames. He describes what he saw as Dante’s inferno yet there was something truly transcendental about the event. I’ll let Oprah describe the interview in the next link.

http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/What-Oprah-Knows-for-Sure-Close-Calls

As I mentioned a few times, I believe that we are powerful spiritual beings having a temporal life. The goal seems to be that we should learn as much as we can and spread love, after which we go home.

LiveJournal Tags: NDERF,Crossing Over

Making One’s Days Count…

 

“Death in Teheran”

A rich and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who had threatened him. He begged his master to give him his fastest horse so that he could make haste and flee to Teheran, which he could reach that same evening. The master consented and the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning to his house the master himself met Death, and questioned him, “Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?” “I did not threaten him; I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Teheran,” said Death. (An old Persian tale)

In 1963, at age 24, I had been a travel consultant for a few years, working in a travel agency that handled a commercial account for a large aluminum company, one of the largest in the world at that time. It was close to the end of November when earlier in the week, I’d been asked to reserve a seat on Trans-Canada Airlines (now Air Canada)—on any flight close to the end of the day Friday November 29th for, Mr. Mac….., an executive engineer wishing to return home to Toronto. That made him one of very many who wanted to be on one of the hard-to-get flights from Montreal to Toronto at that time of the week. After checking ANY available flight, I called Executive Services and begged for special consideration, given that his company was such an important customer, blah…blah…blah. Finally, on Wednesday, I managed to get him booked on TCA flight 831 leaving around 6 PM on Friday November 29th. Friday morning, I got a call asking me to cancel Mr. Mac….’s reservation as he would stay in Montreal a bit longer. After all my hard work to get him on that flight, I was a bit mystified since he had been so insistent on leaving on Friday.

Later that night, it came on the news that TCA flight 831 en route to Toronto had crashed a few minutes after take-off near Ste-Thérèse-de-Blainville, killing all 118 on board. The crash was the worst in Canadian history at that time. My thought immediately went to Mr. Mac….. who had escaped death by a few hours.

Monday morning back to work, I was thrilled to mention to my co-workers how Mr. Mac….. had probably had a premonition and cancelled just in time. Around 10 AM, the secretary who had worked so diligently to get him on that flight called me. Those dates and times, I can never forget. She explained that the executive had been invited by some friends--it was the hunting season and game was abundant in the Laurentians--and he’d decided to try his luck. Unfortunately, he’d been killed in the wee hours on Saturday morning by a stray bullet… could I arrange for his body to be transported to Toronto.

I was chilled to the bone and remained in a daze all day long. I had never met the client, but his fate impressed me for the rest of my life. Are our days counted? By mere hours? His flight had left without him around 6 PM on Friday and the bullet had hit him around 5 AM on Saturday…

Later in life, I was struck by similar odd timings. My dad had died on April 22nd, 4 days short of his birthday on April 26th. The same happened to my mom who passed away on January 17th, three days before her birthdate of January 20th. Through the years, I took notice of how often this would prove to be true. That we were allotted a number of years of physical life even if it meant shaving it by a short number of days, even hours. No more. I could hardly reach any other conclusion.

(…to be continued on a later post)

LiveJournal Tags: The Length of a Life