Love

Finding our way in this world can sometimes be tricky. For most of us we seem to wander around looking for our way stumbling through the dark. And at some point we get tired and maybe we decide to give up and just sit this life out but that's when it happens. That's when we see the light, or hear the voice or get the feeling and we start to remember. We start to remember why we came here. Why we came to this life. Most of us in the western world have this idea that we were just dropped into this world because two people had sex and well there we were naked with no choices and no way out.  But here on the other side of the world, in the East, they know that we come time and time again and that we wanted to come to this beautiful life to experience this physical world. They know that this world is an illusion filled with anything we desire because we create our own experience. Life does not happen to us, we are the life we have. We have the power to create anything, to turn darkness into light. How do we find this light? we look into our darkness and see that it is not darkness but rather it is the lack of light. And when we shine the light into our hearts we see the beauty that we are and that beauty radiates onto all beings. We remember that we came here to help one another and to inspire one another and to forgive one another. For if you are my friend in this life, perhaps you were my mother in another and have I shown you the same respect that I would my mother? For aren't you the same person?  And that stranger that pushed in front of me that I  have such contempt for maybe that was my child in another life. If I had know would I be so angry? For how could you have such anger for your child? We are all connected and we are all one. All we need to do is stop and feel the love for that is the only truth. Forget for a minute who you think you are and look into your heart and remember who you really are and there you have found your way.

A Washing Machine

Today as I woke up I could feel something was different. Normally Sami, my two year old, is the one who wakes me up. She reaches over to me and presses her hand across my face with her eyes still shut. Once she can feel the touch of my cheek she slowly opens her eyes and either sticks her fingers in my eyes to get me to wake up or she gently puts her arm around my neck and cuddles closer. But today it was I that awoke first and not with that feeling I usually have that if the girls are still sleeping that that's my cue to take another doze, but rather with a sense of my own today. I looked out the window and and felt the sun on my skin. it's amazing how sunny days can give you such a sense of power. Down the stairs to be greeted by my loving husband making breakfast. Now this day was really going great. Wait!... No coffee! No worries, I'll just jump on my motorbike and away I went. I was feeling so good that I went to the local Starbucks (yes even in Thailand they have Starbucks) with an agenda. I was going to treat myself to an Italian espresso maker. The one we had, had been broken for ages and today I was feeling good about spending money. So I walked in grabbed my coffee maker and with no feeling of worry, slapped down my money and took my Italian coffee maker home with me.  Now back home with a fresh coffee in hand it was time to admire my major purchase from the day before. Now this was no small feat my purchase, it took a lot of strength. But after 4 months of doing our laundry down the street in the laundry machines on the road that barely wash and only have cold water it was time to and make the purchase. I had just done another wash and there was food still on the clothes. OK that was it. I had had it. I grabbed Aiko and went across the moat to the massive electrical store Siam TV. There in the super store filled with  air conditioning, I sat Aiko in front of the flat screen t.v.s and away I went to washing machine section. Without a clue about these things, I decided to throw caution to the wind. Whoever helped me first would get my business. I figured no machine could be so bad. They had to get us through at least a year or so. Without a girlfriend to confer with I made the purchase. I signed off on the credit card and grabbed Aiko. I was now the proud owner of a washing machine. I am sure there are others who will read this who will feel the same. Big appliances, cars and homes are landmark life phases. As I left the building, I heard the voice. The worry voice. "How will you pay for this? Where will you find the money?" I was worried but I was a big girl now I had to just get on with it instead of worrying about the money I had to put my energy into making something happen to bring in the money. Its just a shift in consciousness. 

So this morning Aiko, Sami and I watched the clothes go round and round. The sense of accomplishment was incredible. My clothes would now be clean and I could do my laundry any time of day and without the pressure to be there when the cycle was finished. No one would take my clothes out and leave them on the machine. But best of all, I had taken one step closer to taking care of me. I'm a great traveler but when it comes to taking care of me, I usually fall pretty short to basic survival. But today, today was a new day and a new sense of me.

Forgivness

I think forgiveness must be the hardest thing in life to do. There is not a person in the world who is not effected by forgiveness. As I watch my own children and other children they seem to have a much easier time with forgiveness. I see very small children whack each other and graciously accept the others apology and then move on with what they were doing. They do no hold a grudge or get caught up in the after drama. They seem to be able to express their anger in one way or another like getting sick, or creating some sort of drama, throwing a temper tantrum or with cool reserve and then they move on to the next moment. But in adults it seems so much harder. We say that we forgive but when the same hurt happens again we don't concentrate on the hurt of that particular moment but rather add it on to a series of past hurts.

 I recently forgave my father for the intense pain he had caused me while he was alive. I choose to see the pain as a great kindness because it had taught me so much about what I could do on my own in this life and that if he had been kind to me in a way that I had wanted that maybe I would have never done as many things as I have. He used tell me that I was nothing without him and I used the feelings that those words had on me to achieve great things in this life just to show him. But really in the end what I realized is that he had given me a great gift. I had not shown him but rather I had shown myself what I was capable of. But even as I say this, I think, maybe it is so easy to forgive him now that he is dead. I mean sure, I am secure in the fact that he can not hurt me again. So if he were still alive would I have such forgiveness for him and cross the bridge into love and understanding. I struggle with this forgiveness. Especially with myself. I feel that if I could find that deep forgiveness for myself I could be kinder and more loving with others. I mean I truly believe that we are all loving and beautiful human beings at the core but the one thing I seem to forget is that we are all just human and that when we fall that, that is all it is, just  a fall. I heard a beautiful story of a boy who had lost his eyesight when another boy shot a BB gun at him. Later in his life the boy sought out the other boy who had done this and befriended him. He had felt that through his blindness that he had learned so much and had truly forgiven the boy who had done this and wanted to know him as a friend. I do not think of this boy as a saint but rather at the core of who we all really are. I hope one day to be as gracious and loving as this inspiring soul.

Back to school

I have to say, there are some people in life who just love school. That can't seem to get enough of it. They go to primary school, then secondary school, University and then that doesn't isn't enough so they do for their masters and then their doctorate and then a new degree and then another masters and so on and so on and so on. For me I think if I could have left around the 7th grade that would have been perfect. I mean its not to say that I don't like learning because I do. I thrive on it. I eat information for breakfast and want more. What I don't like is the actual classroom. The minute I step inside I feel completely uneasy and lost. I try to find a seat where I can hide from the teacher and other classmates. I especially like to stay away from the really smart people hoping that the teacher will spend all her time talking to them and forget I'm in the room. But, sometimes in life, the places you hate the most are the places you must come back to in order to make peace with the uneasiness in your being. So here I am again back in the classroom. This time studying Thai. Now if you don't know too much about the language let me tell you. There are 44 letters and 5 tones. They don't use a roman alphabet so we are only learning to speak. To speak Thai you must speak the tone of the word. If you get the tone wrong you might tell someone that they are unlucky rather then what you were trying to say that they are beautiful. You can see how the tone is important in thai. I was in the grocery store the other day and was asking where the popcorn was and they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about because I said it in the wrong tone and they use the English word popcorn. They just say it in their own tonal language.

So back in the classroom... I've been learning for one week now and by the end of the class I am exhausted just trying to focus on what is going on and trying to take it all in. I am extremely lucky to have my husband there with me to remind me to stay clam. Every once in a while he looks over and calmly tells me to come back into the room and just focus. He tells me that I am not the only one who does not understand because it is all new and that I will get it but to just breath and stay calm. He's right. I do leave the room. I go into the sad and lonely place of "I'm such a loser. Why can't I get this?". Before this week, I would have never realized that I do that, go to another palce. I wish I would have know him back when I was in school, it would have saved me years of pain and I would have done a lot better in my grades. I mean I know I'm not stupid but those thoughts inside the classroom can throw me down like a snow ball gathering speed and size down a mountain and begin permeating into everything I do. It made me think about how powerless we all feel at one time of another and thinking that, everyone is getting it but us. I wish we all had someone like my husband to remind us to stay in the room, breath and know we will get it and like all new information it takes a while for it to process. Its the same when we walk into a room of people we don't know, or a new job or a new relationship or a new living situation. We get nervous of what other people that we don't know might be thinking of us or nervous that we don't know what to do. But of course we don't know what to do we are just learning something new and if we knew it already we wouldn't be learning. We  just need to breath, stay in the room mentally and enjoy the new information. Nobody ever falls down, we are just learning how to walk and when we can see this the learning is much easier and much more fun. Like children learning to walk, they never get nervous or upset about it they just fall down and while they are there they notice something wonderful on the ground that they didn't see before.
 I'm glad I have this opportunity to be back in the classroom. I feel like its a chance for me to revise my feelings about my early school experiences and learn that learning is all about allowing yourself to be where you are in the moment and enjoying. So to all of you who are trying something new, breath, stay in the room and enjoy the newness of the moment.