Tag Archives: separation

Heart and Mind, Two Paths

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We sometimes go through short periods when we feel distanced from the world and everything in it. Some people feel this distancing in their relationships. They feel as if they are separate form their family members and others around them.

Other people feel distant in their beliefs. They feel as if they have been abandoned or neglected. God is in the lives of others, but for some unknown reason has abandoned them. Other still feel distanced from the human race and all the earth. They feel as if they live in a universe of one which is themselves, and everyone else lives in a different universe.

All these feelings are common at different times in peoples lives. This distancing happens for different reasons, but generally it happens because we forget we should live our lives through our heart and not our mind. When this distancing lasts longer than a few days, something else is going on, and we need to get ourselves right again.

When we live our life through our mind, everything in our world is processed through our ego, and sent to our conscious self. What happens when we live our life this way is our life is processed and controlled through our ego. Our emotions become dulled and our sense of belonging dwindles away.

Our ego unfortunately is the Supreme Being of our mind. Nothing surpasses our ego, and our ego serves only one master, itself. When our ego is not satisfied or feels threatened, our ego starts generating feelings of distancing from those around us. Other people are not giving our ego what it wants, so it is separating us from those around us. This helps ego retain its feeling of self importance.

If we do not fix ourselves when feeling this way, this feeling continues and we feel more and more distant. For some people this distancing is perplexing, for others it is depressing, and for a few it leads to thoughts of suicide. No matter where it leads or how we feel, distancing is something that needs to be addressed and fixed so we can feel a part of the world around us as we should.

What needs to be done is we need to take charge, and change the way we interact with the world. Everyone knows a bubbly always happy person. They can step outside in a thunderstorm, get soaked, look at the sky and have a clap of thunder drown out themselves saying, “Isn’t it a wonderful day?”, and really mean it. Usually, we look and wonder what is wrong with them that they can find something magical on this kind of day.

What these people do that some of us have forgotten how to do is they are living their life through their heart, and not their mind. When we live our lives through our heart there is no disconnection from the world and those around us. Everything around us is magical, wonderful, and absolutely perfect. We are one with the world, and the world is one with us.

Living life through our heart makes us one with everything whereas living life through our mind creates feelings of being separate from everything around us. Living life through our heart melds us with the world around us. From the smallest insect to all that is, we are one with the whole.

It is easy to tell where we are living our life from once we see we can live our life through our mind, or through our heart. If from waking up in the morning to the time we go to bed all we see is misery, and all we feel is pain, sometimes both physical and emotional, we are living our life through our head. Somewhere in our past, our ego was threatened and it took measures to prop itself up to the status it thinks it deserves.

If we wake to a wonderful day, and the magic happens around us everywhere we look, and we go to bed thankful for the experience of another day of life, we are living our life totally through our heart. We can actually feel joy and happiness flowing through our heart, out into the world, and throughout our body.

Thinking everyone can live their life completely and unselfishly through their heart is a wonderful thought, and a fantasy at best. Believing that we can change the mixture of what body part we choose to live our life through is not only reasonable it is easy if you truly want to.

Let your heart guide your path throughout your day for one complete day, and let your mind run the next day. Compare each day with the day previous. Which day do you want to live over?

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The last bus left, and I was not on it…..

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Well, Christmas is almost over. Rather the holiday itself, though Christmas lights and feelings will go on for a few more days. It really raced up on me this year. I have been so busy enjoying life, I was not really paying attention to those other things that matter in life.

Because I was not paying attention to my own life something snuck up on me this year. I was struck by the anger that comes from being left behind. It is kind of hard to explain, and that not really be what it is, but it feels that way to me.

My closest family members who are older than I am are either gone, or somewhere where they can not easily be called on the telephone. For the one that can be called, they may not be in a state to contribute much to any conversation any way, so it really matters little because they are in essence gone.

Another family member has the cough. Not just any cough, but THE COUGH. The kind you get when your lungs can not repair themselves from smoking any longer. The first few times I heard the cough through the phone, I asked if they had a cold. The third time, they had been to the doctor and told me a few months ago what the doctor said. Tick, tick, the clock is on for them and time is running a very mortal path.

Most of the time I accept these things as part of the cycle of life. I know my turn is coming, and all they have done is what their parents and close family did before them, and so on, back for as far as I can imagine.

Of course the spiritual side of me knows that everything is perfect just as it is. But on days like today, it is my emotions that rule the proverbial roost. I miss them today. I miss them badly. I miss them in such a way it makes me angry today that they are gone.

Once I hit the angry state, every sad and hurting relationship in my life starts floating up to the surface reminding me of other hurts and pains, and losses that have occurred over my lifetime. Why this, why that, why did this have to happen, and why didn’t this work out. Why do I feel so separated from all these people I have held so close to my heart all these years of my life? Why can’t I just let it go, and let it be?

On almost any day other than a few days either side of today, I know there are no answers or somewhere I can point to and say this is the reason, this is why, this is what I need to learn and I haven’t and that is why it continues. Except when I feel this way, almost any day does not matter. Only this moment does. So now what do I do?

I do the only things I know how to do. I feel the pain and the hurt of all the times when any relationship with someone I hold near and dear has gone south and it hurts like hell. I swim in the anger and the hurt. I wallow in the despair. I feel the anger of what feels like being shut out. I pretend it has never happened in anyone’s life but mine.

While I am feeling these things, and feeling quite sorry for myself, I also wait. I abide. I accept. Because I know there is no other recourse. Either accept or float in a pool of self pity. Eventually night falls, and bedtime arrives. I have burned so much energy letting these feelings absorb my all, I am tired. I go to bed, seethe a few more minutes, and eventually fall asleep.

If it is a special night I meet with all of them, or my guide, and and we talk and laugh about how I feel. If is a normal night, I sleep a hard sleep, and the morning comes. Along with the morning are new feelings, and new drives. Little by little as the morning flows, I am back to my normal self, and the world is a wonderful place, and didn’t I take a long ride on the pity train yesterday?

As much as I would like it to be, it is not all about me all the time. We spend an incredible amount of our lifetime playing parts in other peoples lives, and helping them learn what they need to know. Other people do the same for us, and sometimes they find pain in the pausing of a relationship too.

Better perhaps is a thought from, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. If I remember correctly, “The more it hurts, the more important they were to us…”

And life goes on

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Death and saying goodbye in extended families

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There was a death in my extended family. This one a thousand miles away. He lived a long life, and had just about anything any man could want in his life. It was his time to pass on and he did. There is not a lot else to say about him.

There is an understanding with them, and those in his position, or at least it seems. We both know that this time when we see each other may be the last. When we last said goodbye we both knew it would likely be the last time we may ever speak, hug, or shake hands. In situations like this when we live so far apart, usually on the last hours of visiting, there comes a unspoken acknowledgment that  the next time I see one of them it may as they lay in their coffin.

I don’t know if these last hours of every visit become more real, take on more meaning or just happen on a more mature level. Maybe it is all these things happening together. If anything is between us or there is anything that needs to be said, it has to be said in those last few hours. After that, as is the situation now, anything being said is a one way conversation.

My end of the conversation has always been quite open. In any conversation there are always levels of closeness that we can approach. Usually in those last time I may see you conversations, we end up trading feelings over our lives and about each other. Perhaps the conversation is a little stylized, or formal, but it seems everything that can be said, is said.

I do not know how I will be when I am one the one who will be leaving first, but the generation of those going now in my family are tough people. They had a hard childhood, and they had a hard life, even when life was easy, it is hard for them. They did not have a lot of the support systems we enjoy. They are not comfortable with their feelings, much of the time unless those feelings are in the realm of anger. Anger was always the easiest feeling for them to express. I think if someone was not initiated into their world, would not know, that many times anger is their highest expression of love for one another. It was all they have, or all they can comfortably express.

Conversations are usually pretty straight forward. They will say something to make me know they may never see me again. I say something acknowledging that I too know I may never see them again alive. Then they something about something in their life, and how I must have felt about it. That is the catch in the conversation. It puts both our feelings at a time and place of something that happened probably years earlier. My answer for whatever they have brought up as an example, is my expression of how I really feel about them, their life, and I how I feel about how they lived their life.

This repeats usually two or three times, each time a different event of the time we spent a part of our lives together. I get to live in their life for those seconds, and they are giving me an opportunity to let hem know how I really feel about how they lived their life. Usually they soften up for a few minutes, and remind me of special times they remember about me, which is their way of letting me know how they really feel, as if I didn’t know already.

That is usually all there is, as there is not much more to be said. Everything is right between us, and we both know that if we never see each other again, that it is okay. We each have said our piece. I bring my bags out to the car, say my final goodbyes, hug them goodbye, and head down the street.

Usually up until now I see them again. But as in all things, that time passes, and these days it seems saying goodbye is really saying goodbye.

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Military Christmas overseas

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This is a military story, Air Force, overseas…years ago. I think often of the men and women serving overseas, because I spent three years serving outside the United States, and I remember how quickly during the holidays I started missing home, especially Christmas at home.

Starting about this time of the month radio stations would start playing Christmas music along with regular songs. It was nice to hear Christmas music playing on the radio just like I would at home. Of course the DJ running that segment had his own comments about the season, and what his family was doing for Christmas. That part was okay, because with a little remembering, I could guess what my family was doing each day.

I would remember they would like to get together as a group and shop on this day. Christmas meal planning would usually be coordinated over the phone for the Christmas feast. They would meet at one of their homes, bake cookies this day, and maybe the next day too. Then there was the individual family baking. Those little treats that one family may enjoy, that were too time consuming, or costly to share with everyone.

So it really was not too hard to be home for the holidays in my imagination. I could keep track between the calendar and my imagination what was going on at home. I think we all did this. Unfortunately being in security, and guarding something in the middle of the night with my M16 rifle, flak jacket, helmet, and flashlight for company, it was a little hard to keep the holiday spirit going. Some of the other guys in my Flight would get care packages, which would be sometimes shared at work, so that helped some.

When television was less than spectacular, and I was not working, I would occasionally listen to the radio. As I mentioned there were the regular Christmas songs, so it was easy to pretend I was close to home, but off doing something, so no family, or friends were around at the moment.

When the date moved around to about the fifteenth, it seemed one Christmas song in particular managed to be played what seemed like four times an hour. Care to guess the name of the song before you read on?

If you guessed, “I’ll be home for Christmas”, give yourself a pat on the shoulder for a good guess! It seemed that every other Christmas song played was, I’ll be home for Christmas! After about a week of it, I could hear it in the back of my head while doing other things. I could even hear it in my sleep, or so it seemed!

Every December, since I came back to ‘The World’ (as it is was called then), portions of some days, and some nights only part of me is here, and sleeping in my own bed. Another part of me, is standing next to some nineteen year old who is out in the rain, or cold, with no light, heat, or company, thinking about what his or her family is doing for Christmas, and how he or she would really like to be there too, even for a few hours.

Before I spent my time in the military, I never gave the people serving a second thought. Since then, I am very aware of how even the ‘safe’ folks overseas are sacrificing for me, so I can have a happy fun filled holiday season. I won’t even attempt to account for how the folks in combat zones are fairing. I know none of them will be home for Christmas this year, but when they do get home for Christmas, it will not be the same for them either. So when I seem a little preoccupied, it is probably because I am thinking about what Christmas means to those who are not here to enjoy it. It is hard to know what it is like serving overseas during an important holiday, unless you have been there. Lots of fun, is not one the phrases generally used to describe the Christmas season.

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