Leaps of faith

I happened to mention to a friend that I often think back to Indianna Jones and his 'leap of faith' when I have to make a decision that might launch me into unknown territory. I was hinting at the fact that I wouldn't mind his opinion. Nothing.

I mentioned the Knight and how Indianna had got a little help from him, a nudge in the right direction...

"Choose wisely"

"Remember?" I hinted.

Of course, Indianna had first to make his 'Leap of Faith' before he got to the Cup, but I was rolling them into one sequence in the hope of making a convincing point.

Of course, this strategy did not pay off. He is far too much of a film buff to let me away with that, telling me to watch the scene again.

But, just before he dashed off he did, in fact, give me a great big hint.

"This was one step  in a long journey. Don't overthink it."

Perhaps, we make too much out of leaps of faith.

"You must believe."

More challenge

Having been 'offered' a new challenge lately and finding it extremely difficult I was searching around the Internet for inspiration when I found myself wondering if I might have written about challenge before. Indeed I had written about challenge before. I read the words and everything I felt but was finding hard to process and express were in that post. Hmmm. I'm not as dumdum as I thought.

Down the winding road

Restlessness follows me wherever I go right now, leaving me contemplative, with everything and nothing to say, all at the one moment. There is a sense of arousal and an indomitable spirit to make it down this winding road, but I am being blown about by feelings that I cannot quite catch or tame.

You just need some time.

This was the sage advice given to me. But, how long before I can tap into these feelings and then have a chance at conquering them? If I cannot even name them, where am I to go; what direction should I take?

The past six months or more have taken their toll. Perhaps the lesson I have learned is that I have no control over the winds of time. I do not know what is coming around the next corner and I will never know. Perhaps I needed to learn to surrender to time; to watch and wait and see what comes to me.

It is not my way. Something deep inside me tells me that I must make some running. I must demonstrate who I am and what I am made of. I must make and then seize opportunities. I must not be inert.

I want to understand what happened in the past year and yet words fail me.  I do know that I tapped into extraordinary strength and acceptance. My meditations took me to the highest mountains, to valleys and springs and caves that gave me a great deal of succour. On one memorable guided meditation I held onto that person that had guided me and sustained me, knowing that in a few moments I would need to set him free. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I searched for the strength to let him go and with every fibre of will, I let go.

I set you free.

And from an enormous and beautiful tree a huge flock of colourful birds burst free, guiding his spirit on the journey away from me. It had taken everything I had but I had done the right thing; the only thing to do.  No wonder ‘The Tree of Life’ meant so much to me.

Dolls are not meant to be alone. They survive but do they do not thrive under such conditions.  Like a toy with batteries, their energy depletes and sometimes they just stop and stare at nothing in particular; waiting, waiting for the day when their batteries are recharged. They have a plentiful supply of faith and quietly, they wait; hope; believe.

Is it really over?

I have asked this question a few times in my life. Sometimes, it is over when you least expect it. And yet, the desire to breathe a sigh of relief is held back. Emotions must catch up to the events.

Give it time.

But already, I can feel a stirring; a sense that this too shall pass and that there are very good days ahead. Life’s like that.

Faith

I can rarely catch my dreams. Sometimes, I can catch a feeling; perhaps fright or concern or confusion. If I am really lucky I can capture a scene, but on the whole I don’t know what I dream, other than I feel sure that I do dream.

This morning I woke up feeling quite rested but again: nothing. No dream was remembered. However, Psalm 23 was running through my head: 

“Though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me.”

I lay there on my side with the words of the psalm running through my head over and over and the words conjured a memory.

It was rather a long time ago. My children were little; one of them not yet born. I was living in the United States but I had returned to Australia to spend some time with my family: a little holiday for me and the children over the American summer. I’d put the children to bed and my very sick father was asleep. My mother and I were sitting by the fire and the night was very still. Out of nowhere she said to me that she knew that something was wrong. She could feel it, she said and she wanted to know what was troubling me.

I remember feeling that the issue was so buried inside me that no words would rise to the surface that  would enable me to share my sorrow with anyone, but as we sat in silence I heard words coming from my mouth; not my voice in the slightest, but my words emanating from somewhere very deep within me.

She listened and she said to me that I had been through something that must have nearly torn me in two but she was glad that she knew; that she could understand my failure to engage with her completely now. She told me that I was very strong and that she knew that I would be all right.

Although nothing had really changed and my situation was still exactly as it had been half an hour before, I felt much better. Perhaps it was the sharing that made a difference; that I had “unburdened myself”, as they say.

When I was back in my home in the United States, I received a letter from my mother and in the letter was a cutting from the newspaper. It was this poem:

I Had a Dream

One night I had a dream
I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene I noticed two sets
of footprints in the sand,
one belonging to me
and the other to my Lord.
When the last scene of my life shot before me
I looked back at the footprints in the sand.
There was only one set of footprints.
I realized that this was at the lowest
and saddest times in my life.
This always bothered me
and I questioned the Lord
about my dilemma.
"Lord, you told me when I decided to follow You,
You would walk and talk with me all the way.
But I'm aware that during the most troublesome
times of my life there is only one set of footprints.
I don't understand why, when I needed You most,
you leave me."
He whispered,”My precious, precious child,
I love you and will never leave you
never, ever during your times of trial and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints
It was then that I carried you."

Margaret Fishback Powers.

The gesture meant a great deal to me; not only that she had thought of me and felt the words would help but because the words were exactly right. I had been to the beaches close to where she lived all my life and the image of there being only one set of footprints because I had been carried by ‘the Lord’ in my hour of need, truly resonated with me. I kept the cutting close; referred to it often. (I think to myself at this moment, that I never told her...never told her how much the little gift meant to me...)

When it was time to pack and return to my homeland, the cutting came with me. And, when something happened where I again needed a great deal of strength and faith that this too shall pass, that I was again walking through the shadow of the valley of death, I retrieved my cutting, taped it all over for fear it would disintegrate and kept it beside me on my desk.

One day, my husband saw the little cutting and asked about it and I simply said without fanfare that my mother had sent it to me years ago. My relationship with the poem was just too private to say any more.

This morning I realized that I have not only walked through the shadow of the valley of death but I have come out the other side intact. Perhaps, this is what I had dreamt...

I would not say that I am a particularly religious person. I don’t attend church regularly although I love it when I do; get a great deal from it. I was brought up Church of England even though my mother was Catholic because when my father heard the stories of how terrified the priests had made my mother during confessions, he said he didn’t want his children going through that.

That I am not particularly religious in any organized way makes my sense of faith all the more intriguing, I think. For it is faith that has sustained me in my hour of need; faith that I am not alone and that I have the inner reserves to walk through as many shadows of the valley of death that I may need to traverse.

A few years ago, I received a call that my aunt was dying and my mother and my sister were on their way to the hospital. I dropped everything to go to be with them but I was too late and when I arrived at the hospital they told me she had passed away.

We went for coffee. To be honest, my mother and aunt were not close to their sister but I had always found she touched me in some way. On the other end of politics, a trade union person through and through, she signified for me “the battler”; that person who doesn’t have an easy life but keeps on going. My mother and aunt told me that in her final moments on this earth she had sat up from a deep sleep, thrust her arms into the air and said, “Take me”. I have thought of her often since and what her inner world must have been like.

I cannot put into words; this sense of things that one is not alone; that there is someone walking beside me. I feel it; feel it sustaining me.

It is said often, on tumblr sites and the like that if someone chooses not to be in your life, you should forget him or her. I get the point but I am not prepared to be so rigid about absence. The spirit lives on sometimes; connections are felt; nothing is over until it is over, unless you choose to end it in your heart.

Greetings of the Season

It is once again that time of year when I would like to wish all readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday season. Most importantly, stay safe and play nice and don't eat too much pudding!

It has been an incredibly full year over at Vesta's house. The end of the year festivities are still keeping us on our toes, entertaining the masses and surrounded by children and their partners and friends. It has a feel about it that we have entered a new phase of our lives. Half-jokingly, my husband suggested to me as we lay in bed thinking about all these young adults and their respective partners and where their lives are heading that perhaps we could get a little one bedroom place in Paris; that it could be our escape hatch. When we proposed it to the group last night, they said there were always sleeping bags!!

And so, our lives will remain filled with people and busy with activity, which is what makes my explorations into the world of BDSM so important to me: an opportunity to experience life in a way that has to do with us as a couple and with me as a quirky, loving person who wants to experience and interact with life in certain ways that make me abundantly happy.

I have been very grateful and honoured to experience what I have in this space and I end the year with a very positive spirit; with a sense (and a hope) that very good things are yet to come. Dreams really do come true, if you believe.

Enlightenment

One of the challenges of being a parent is to accept that your children are not little miniatures of yourself; that any child you produce for the world may be very much like you or not like you at all. All my four children are very unique beings, quite different to one another in most ways except to say that they are all good people and all quite soft and caring sort of people.

Their upbringing is very different to mine and of course, the world has moved on since I was growing up and being, say, 23 years old now is rather different to being 23 years old 25 years ago, I think. What people of that age want out of life could well be vastly different than what we wanted back then at that age. Contemporary culture and childhood experiences are going to shape us in ways we don't quite know and the challenge is not to judge and to understand that we all have our separate journeys through life; that no one can really hurry someone along; that maturity and knowledge and wisdom and fulfilment will come when the time is ready. As my boss used to say when I wouldn't heed his advice, "I guess you have to make your own mistakes."

One of the experiences I knew I wanted to have in London was to go to a Church service at Westminster Abbey. I was happy to go alone but my daughter insisted she was happy to come along. Plans with young people change minute by minute I find, and Saturday evening had her having drinks with a man friend whilst Sunday morning found them both hung over. Nevertheless, both of them agreed to come along and so off we went to Westminster Abbey.

I love churches. Something happens to me when I walk into any church, but to walk into Westminster after a period of 30 years since I have last been there was truly profound. It is such a beautiful church and the service this morning which focused on the death of Christ was a very beautiful one with a great deal of divine choral singing. The sound emanating through the Cathedral was so intensely beautiful that I found tears pouring down my face. I was deeply moved to hear such beauty amongst the splendour of the Abbey. It was one of those moments when you feel very close to your maker and when the reason for being here on this earth seems very clear. It was a coming together of the person from my past and the person who I am now - both of those people always in search of beauty, of grace and of deep meaning but in somewhat different ways.

It saddened me then and it saddens me now as I write to recognize that my daughter got so little out of the experience. Yet, I could be wrong about that. Perhaps one day on reflection it will mean a great deal - one day when she is ready to look at life with a bit more contemplative thought. I guess you would be right if you thought that I was missing my husband at that moment. He would have adored the Abbey and the service and completely understood my tears and my sense of being overwhelmed by the spectacular beauty.

Since I was often alone as a child, my world was of my own making and perhaps it is the reason why I have a strong and vivid inner life. My imagination always keeps me company. I read a lot and I have a hunger to see the places I have read about. It is why I find such wonder in being in London. Perhaps, it is why I can enter into the world of cindi with such ease and why I embrace her so completely. I see nothing wrong with, and never have, creating alternate realities. I've read on other peoples' blogs comments about that recently and of course I agree that it is entirely healthy to radiate in the pleasure and relaxation of creating an alternate experience other than just the "real world".

Yet as much as I can relate to creating alternate realities (my eldest son had two imaginary friends that we refer to to this day), I seek much more. Constantly, I await those rare but very precious moments when I may be transported higher; lifted spiritually off the ground and into the space of mind that can only be described as "the divine". I wait and wait for those moments and when they come, I feel a radiance and a sense of being filled with purity that is like no other feeling in the world. Sometimes, every so often, my submissive response takes me to that spiritual lightness of being. I was most certainly there today in the Abbey.

If I could give my daughter, my sons but one gift in life it would be to experience the sense of completeness that I felt today and that I have experienced in moments of submission and love. Whether they will ever know what I know, I cannot say. Perhaps it is not my job to be concerned about this and on their own personal journeys through life they will come to know things that I will never know. Such is life. I continue to hope that they may experience moments of being transported to a higher realm as I am just as I wish it for you; for everyone. My goodness, but it radiates beauty up there!

Words

My husband was having a telephone conversation with his sister this morning. It wasn't about me but about something I needed to do and he was trying to protect me. I heard him say, "Look, she is as soft as butter and I'm not going to have her go through this again..."

My sister-in-law, who can be as kind as she can be cruel was having none of it and her sensibilities were offended, as they so often are, until she said something so awful and so vicious, I'm sure we will forgive, but we'll be unlikely to forget. Although she considers herself a 'Christian' it does nothing to assuage her sense of righteousness and indignation if people have a different view to hers. Her sense of self means that she must lash out when feeling at all anxious and it takes quite a bit of sensitivity on the other person's part to want to hang around and accept the assault.

What she in fact did was say the most hurtful and confronting thing she could to her brother - the statement that would offend him the most; the statement that would rile him and challenge his ability to stay calm with her. And, when she said that, she knew full well what the result of saying it would be.

My husband has a dominant character. When he makes a call he means to be heard - not necessarily to get his way but for there to be resolution of a situation. He is more than willing to negotiate and sort things out. His sister, knowing full well that he can be forceful and direct when not happy about something tends, nearly always, to go on the attack. This has them at loggerheads and most particularly when she turned viciously against their sister and he had to mediate on her behalf. His sense of how to treat a family member would not allow the behaviour to stand.

One the great outcomes of my mentoring - a mentoring that involves words and words alone - is that I have had excellent practice in paying attention to my words. Like my sister-in-law, I have been guilty of allowing my emotions to run and take me over. I have felt anger and instead of slowing down and working through that fact (oh yeah, there's that false ego controlling me again) I've let the words fly on email. It isn't nice and it isn't good. In fact, it was very wrong.

The truth is that things done in anger are invariably done badly and often with false 'facts'. It is no co-incidence I think that when I act in anger, minutes, hours or days later, I am apologizing. What does that tell you? The last time it happened, I was called on it. It caused a breach between us and we both suffered for that. We've made a wonderful team and my false ego put a blot on that.

I do feel that I have grown a great deal as a person over the past year in many ways and it is what makes me continue to challenge myself in this space. We all use words like 'trust' and 'communication' and recognize the importance of these words, but it is perhaps not until there is a breach of trust or communication that we fully understand the huge significance of those words in a power exchange. Communication is vital and trust is paramount. I failed on both counts.

I've talked privately, and somewhat publicly here, I think, that I do well about 98% of the time, and isn't that good enough?! But, it is not and I know that now. We need to put thought into our words; not just bleed onto the page. We need to consider what impact those words will have on the person receiving those words. It has been a salutary lesson.

I've taken a few days here in my everyday life to slow myself right down - to really absorb the importance of words in communication and most especially in terms of the power exchange. And, I rather doubt I'll make this mistake again. It was a lack of faith that implied a desire to control. And, that is what perturbed him the most - my persistence at seizing control at the very same time as I strive to relinquish it.

My words about ego (the last post) are pertinent here and I feel more self-assured to carry on with my goals. The extraordinary thing is that, I believe, the more self assured and self realized one is - the more one can snuff off that false ego and just connect with the self -the more one can relinquish the desire for control.

My goal has always been to seek the divine - that sense of complete peace and harmony in life - and I feel closer to it with each step. This is what it is about for me.