420: 10 Things Not to Say or Do When I am Sad

10 Things Not to Say or Do When I am Sad

1. Don’t ask me to explain or reason my way out. When I am sad I have already evaluated everything ‘to death.’ I have looked at the pros and cons of my own life and my own suffering. I am no dummy. In fact, part of the problem I am so sad, is because I am so dang smart. I am my worst criticizer and have evaluated all the benefits of not being sad verses being happy a thousand times, and the worst part is that I cannot reason myself out of the sadness and feel happy.

2. Don’t tell me I need a pharmaceutical drug. Chances are, I’ve done my research or tried the drug before. My body is so very sensitive that any chemicals I put into my body cause adverse reactions. I get the so called ‘side effects.’ I am that less than 1%. I am the canary in the coalmine. I am the one you read about that gets the suicidal thoughts from anti-depressants and the one that has bizarre things happening to her body when I ingest foreign substances. I am already affected by the environmental pollutants, the toxins in our water and food, the hormones injected into products, and the chemicals that seep out of most homes. Truth is, I likely would be far happier if I lived in a world that didn’t reek of destruction.

3. Don’t tell me you know the reason for my sadness. More than likely, if it’s not my PMS or PMDD, or the result of an auto-immune disorder, or a variant enzyme, an allergic reaction, a virus or illness, or something or another that is deficient or out of whack, perhaps in my intestines or stomach, then it is situational. And not just the typical situations, like a bad day at work or a letdown. I have learned not to let ‘bad’ days affect me. I have ‘bad’ moments, each and every hour, I have ‘bad’ moments, and I choose to spend my day grasping onto the light and the goodness of the day. Only sometimes, I get tired of reaching and trying. My life is a struggle to fit in, to appear ‘normal,’ to follow the ‘rules,’ to even understand the ‘rules.’ I am exhausted. I am a warrior who wakes up every day with the past day erased, all the previous trials conquered gone, all the accomplishes vanished, and I have to start from square one to try to make sense of a world in which I do not feel I belong.

4. Don’t give me advice. You have no advice I have not heard, read, seen, felt, or experienced. One way or another I have studied what you will say. I have studied emotions and reactions in films, in music, in literature, even in nonsensical jokes and in animal behavior. I understand emotions and I understand my sadness. I read to understand myself and I even study you to understand myself. I know more than you think. I may not know the root cause, but I know that there isn’t an answer you have that I don’t have within myself. Your suggestions of correct verbiage, positive thoughts, rest, fresh air, exercise, meditation, visualization, diet, supplements, and the lot, do nothing more than boggle my brain and make me think you care more about your role as a want-to-be helper than you do about my pain. I can’t be the object of your fixing. I don’t want to be and refuse to take on that role. I am not less than you in my sadness and you do not have the secret key I need. I did not express I was sad because I look to you for answers. I told you of my sorrow because I just long to feel less alone.

5. Don’t tell me what I have to be grateful for. Don’t suggest I make a list. That is crap. To me I am grateful for the tiniest of thoughts, gifts, and actions that most people take advantage of. The near site of the dew of the grass, the soft smell of the fire-painted lily, the brilliance of a child’s laugh, the comfort of my favorite blanket, or favorite song..all these lift me. So much of the world lifts me. Many moments I travel in a world so extraordinary and filled with magic that I thank life for just my essence, to just to be in the midst of such glory. My list of gratefulness is not divided by good things or bad things. I stopped judging the right from wrong, and the just from the unjust, a long time ago. I live in the space in between the extremes of yes and no, and laugh at the ones who think their view is the only view. I can’t see making a list of all that is good without classifying at the same time in invisible ink what is bad, or worse, what others are lacking. I am no less and no more grateful than the homeless man on the street. If he is happy, I am happy. If he is sad, I am sad. To even make a list seems to me pompous and unjust, to single out how lucky I am in such a world of misfortune makes no sense, unless I hold greed as a virtue. Unless I see myself as dutifully worthy based on my profiting and others’ lacking. Unless I single out what is entirely missing from another to satisfy my own growing need for satisfaction. And anything of material I would attempt to scribe as benefit, I would rather break apart into a thousand pieces and feed the world. I don’t believe I can classify what happens in my life as good, bad, tragic, ugly, or beautiful. I only know it happens, and is happening. And for what reason is still to be seen. I know to let go and let my higher source lead. But when I am very, very sad, sometimes I forget how to release; I forget how to let go of the clinging of suffering. I forget I am not alone onto myself.

6. Don’t tell me how wonderful I am. I know who I am. I know through and through. I know I am kind, gentle, sweet, generous, forgiving, genuine, giving, smart, keen, and many other positive attributes. I am not sad because I have lost sight of why I am enough. I know I am enough. I am sad because the world has lost sight of me. Because I long to reach out and connect but when I do, I often feel nothing reaching back. To touch another fully, is all I want. To touch in full extreme, without pretention, want, need, expectation, goal, or outcome. To just touch. I, as I wait in my own self-created exile, as I wait without the sense of feeling another, grow in sadness.

7. Don’t tell me ‘this too shall pass.’ I know the sayings and tons of other random words collected to form reprieve. I am an avid reader and collector of quotes. I am a philosopher, an artist, a creator. I have the heart of a lover, the mind of a composer, and the spirit of a warrior. I am brilliant in my creation, and I understand the ebbs and flows of life. I move like the sea with the moon. I move like the willow with the wind. I am affected by the give and take of the world, by nature, by weather, by other people, events, and tragedy. I dream things. I see things. I experience emotions in extremes, and sometimes cannot tell if I am carrying my own pain or the pain of another. People find me. I don’t know how, but they do. And I am a vessel of sorts, harboring the lonely through the storm. They crawl in with their tears and woes, and their aches leak through me, crushing me to the core. I know everything will pass. And I know still that life is a cycle, and like the seasons, my sorrow will come again. Do not attempt to help me to look forward to the end of my pain, help me to go through my pain.

8. Don’t criticize or mock me. I cannot help how I am. Do not call me ‘overboard,’ ‘too much,’ ‘too intense,’ or the like. I cannot help that I am the way I am. I can often control my behaviors and be the best person I can be, and I do this daily. But my emotions sometimes take over. I don’t know how or why, beyond conjecture, but they do. And the more I fight the wave of pain, the more the pain comes. Sometimes I need to submit. To be in the turmoil, so that the tunnel evaporates and the light comes again. I fret over the tiniest of perceived imperfections in the way I treat others. I judge myself for not being caring enough, attentive enough, or loving enough. I cannot lie without deep remorse. I cannot have enemies. I cannot even hate. I know not this emotion hate beyond the emotion of anger turned deep sadness. All is huge to me. There isn’t a small suffering. I hurt for the tiny spider as much as the buffalo. I long for the rescue of the persecuted innocent as much as the child without parent. I feel and take in such extreme happenings, and know not where to lay my burden down. Just as I spend all day, moment to moment, contemplating how to maneuver in a world that remains unfamiliar, I spend my inches of time trying to figure out how to again release my burden, where this time to bury my woe. Shall it be in words, in rhythm, in rhyme, in the deep wilderness real or the serenity of my imaginations? Will I get lost again in my escaping? Where shall I take this misery and when will I have my fill? Do not criticize me and do not tease me. Do not laugh or giggle your way into a stream of mockery aimed at me. I do not do what I do for attention or purpose. I do not do what I do because I want to. I do not do what I do because I am confused or made wrong. I am perfect in my being. I am just sad. I am sad. I am sad.

9. Don’t abandon me. Do not leave my side, if I need you there. Do not hang up the phone, if I am crying. Do not say you will return, and then not call. Don’t say something, and not mean it. Don’t lie to try to make me feel better. Tell me straight what you think. You covering up only makes things worse. The world is already unsafe with its lies and trickery. I need you to be safe. I need your word to be strong. I need your integrity, your honesty, your truth. I need you to be that light that I am, to prove to me again you are here and I am not alone. If you do this, if you are loyal and true, when my sadness goes, when it is lifted, I shall be at your side with the beauty I am, pleasing you in your times of suffering, and holding your hand in your deepest need.

10. Don’t perceive me as something I am not. Try not to label me. To find the answer that brings you closure. It is not my job in life to fit neatly in a box for your comfort. My moods are my moods, my pain, my pain. My emotion is not a reflection of you, nor a product of you, any more than my happiness. I don’t expect anything of you in your pain and sorrow, so please don’t expect anything of me. Don’t make me your martyr, your angel, or your giving-spirit. Don’t make me the melancholic one or the hopeless creature. I am what I am, and what you create of me is neither here nor there, no less truth than what I create. I need you to try to not see me through the eyes of fear, but through the eyes of love. To bathe me in acceptance and forgiveness. To love me enough in my completion that you in turn love yourself in completion. If you can do that, if you can look past my ‘flaws,’ past the definition and existence of ‘flaws,’ and see into my suffering the very spirit reborn into darkness, soon to be sprung into light, then I shall have hope. If I can see me as hope, I will be hope. If you can hold me as hope, I shall be the very essence that you perceive in your grasp. And we can meet there, in that space between the suffering and hope, and merge, per chance, in that shimmer of a second, as one.

419: Passion, Creation, and Acceptance

(My oldest son in the video.)

I am one of the strongest people I know. And I don’t say that lightly. I have endured many trials and challenges. I cry a lot. But I don’t see tears as weakness, and don’t think I ever shall. I feel a lot, but I don’t think emotions are weakness either. In fact, I am not sure what weakness is anymore, beyond the giving up of self to take in the dictation of a world that is full of destruction and mayhem.

I have integrity. This is clear. By integrity, I don’t mean following manmade laws or rules, or upholding some established truth or way; by integrity, I mean honoring myself by speaking my inner truth.

It’s not an inner truth I could readily find before, nor do I think it’s an inner truth I would have found without great soul-searching and desire. It’s ironic to me, that the very things that spiritual entrepreneurs eventually long to dismiss, that being the emotions of anger and longing, are the very activators that motivate the self to seek to awaken the sleeping soul.

Recently, and for many years in my childhood, I had no choice but to be me. For when I am not; when I try to pretend, hide, deny, or create an illusion that is neither what I see or choose to see, I diminish my very light and openness to truth. I suffer. I suffer physically and spiritually, entirely twist myself in every portion.

By truths, I do not mean my truths of how things should be, or what people should do. I do not mean spiritual proclamation, and particularly not the spectator sport of religious dogma. What I mean by my truth, is my current understanding and perception of what is transpiring with me at a deep inner level.

This openness, this speaking of truth, this reality I reveal, even when I know that it is not the ‘whole’ truth, even when I know that it is only a limited, self-biased, environmental-, and social-influenced truth, a truth combined with biological factors, faith, and other past, future, and present influences, allows me to feel free. When I am my true self, it is if some dark prisoner within has been released and no longer made to suffer. It isn’t that I need to be heard, not even seen; it isn’t that I need to be understood, and I have no want to influence—it’s that I must purge the part of what is that lingers within.

It is confusion. It is murkiness. It is ugly. It is imaginative. It is fear. It is love. It is illusion. Or it is fact. Whatever it is makes not a difference. For this ‘what’ in whatever form, still is in the cell, still locked behind the iron bars of captivity. And until I dispel of the trapped essence, I feel trapped in myself.

This needing to dislodge of the ‘truth,’ of my inner workings, of my thoughts, I see not as a flaw, a disorder, or a burden. It is simply how I am made. And in this unencumbered, soul-filled sharing, I become unhindered onto myself and filled with a light of passion. In my sharing, whatever the sharing, however it is taken in by another, or even evaluated by self, the relief comes, and the once-standing suffering, the boil that was causing the distracting internal ache, bursts.

People mistake me as someone I am not. Not that I claim to be anything in particular. And, in full honesty, likely I am nothing beyond the interpretation of others; I’d still like to think I am not the negative spin people perpetuate me to be. Yet, in this world, there isn’t much to base a person’s worth on, beyond words, self-collected materialistic goods, appearance, mannerism, actions, and deeds. I suppose deeds is what I would prefer to be my legacy—my fruit…what I reap, what I leave.

Still, I know enough to know that what is said affects the bystander as much as any other attribute. I reason, I was judged, particularly in the past, on things that were beyond my understanding at the time.

I gather, and am quite frankly certain, I was judged by others by:

My tone of voice, my elation, my in-depth analysis, my passion, my ramblings, my obsessive interest in a topic, my need to dig deep in inquiry, my rapture of delight in the simplest of things, my uncommon queries, my quizzical expressions, my apparent disinterest, aloofness, or lack of attention, my inability to stay focused on the current topic, my want to review, repeat, and enlighten, my lack of gaps or pauses in thought and expression, my interrupting, my unyielding desire to solve through discourse and dialogue, my re-centering and refocusing on topic filtered through understanding and scaffolding of self and past experience, my intensity, my compassionate movements, my sighs, my large shocking eyes, my gestures of comical silliness, and on and on.

I imagine I was much like a tsunami in my youth: some bucket poured out and turned quickly into a gargantuan of pubescent demise and uproar.

In looking back now, I understand. I understand that I honestly thought everyone thought like me. I thought everyone had a million ideas in their head, endless creativity, the want to explode out the ‘whats’ and the ‘truths,’ and harbored that prisoner that yearned for release and badgered the master until unchained. I can’t imagine, still, what it would be like to not be this way. To not have the need to express what is inside.

Now, I know how to balance myself in conversation, at least usually. Actually, as of recent, I have grown rather submissive, quiet, and somewhat more of an introspective recluse. Perhaps even a bit physically aloof in my stature and demeanor. But my behavior isn’t a form of repression, or oppression, or trying to fit in, anymore. My way of being is a natural balance.

I am finding peace in expressing myself through written words and visual arts now, more so than trying to spew out through verbal processing aloud. Talking doesn’t soothe me like it used to. Certainly at times a conversation with a close friend uplifts my spirit and helps me find my balance, let’s me know I am not alone in my thoughts. Yet, for the most part, I no longer have a need to spew and spin and loop most days.

However, I am finding through creation I am able to explode bit by bit, piece by piece, and find refuge. I am finding solace in silence, more and more. The opportunity for analysis and deeper understanding, if it arises, seems to happen more with my spiritual discourse with my higher source, in my ability, shall I say ‘gift,’ to directly connect to something beyond me.

Creation has been my outlet at last.

I was born an artist, but the world didn’t let me know that. The world did little but try to tear the artist out of me. To dig right into my chest and tear the heart right smack out. To leave me with a hole filled with rules and regulations. And how I was made wrong.

Even in creation, once in a while the ‘ways’ try to sneak in. The ‘how to’s,’ ‘the when’s,’ ‘the where’s.’ I am working more eagerly and happily to dismiss the lingering worldly voices of the ‘right way.’

I never went through a period of my life where I allowed myself to be rebellious or free. I quickly slipped from youthful innocence to a shell of protection, the shell primarily built on good deeds and goodness. I think I have finally reached the ‘bullshit’ phase of my adult years. When I can at last say ‘bullshit’ to the guidelines of who I am supposed to be.

I am recognizing slowly a rebalancing of self: a merging of the spiritual-wise self with the earth-bound warrior. I am recognizing I can be fierce in my kindness. I can allow moments of fleeting anger and disappointment. I can be all of my emotions and all of me. And in this I am finding a greater degree of freedom. I am coming full circle, back to this me I was long ago, and forward to the me I am yet to become.

And I am finding all of the aspects of self right here in the moment, in the realization that all of me, every part of me, is beautiful. The lust, the love, the angst, the anger, the desire, the letting go, the release, the needing to connect….all of me is splendid, and continues to be so. Ever so gently I am becoming my potential, when all along I was already there.

418: Carved Out

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To read about this image, visit my other blog Belly of a Star.

A spiral of question upon question. Answers seeping out and morphing into more queries. Butterflies that burst, each birthing from a singular, a thousand more flutters; and my mind, this tiny hook to stringed-wing, traveling into a symphony of thoughts.

How I long to be understood. To be held under the stars, in a world, where as hard as I try, I cannot connect. In a world where to be loved fully, is to lose my sense of self in the process.

To live in anguish of ever-present disappointment, pleasure turned agony, and extreme isolation or to give up this sense of self, love the All, and dedicate my life to service.

There appears no middle road.

Abandoned, let down onto myself, and then lifted up above myself. Loving bliss or extreme suffering; while the rest, in form or belief, seem to sleep in a twisted agony of their own.

The one dedicating herself to help the other, when her own self remains in dismal suffering. The one dedicating himself to a cause, when his own ability to feel and be is sacrificed.

If I am not a ‘self,’ then why would I want to be what I am not? And if I am not, then what am I to be?

The souls thinking themselves following or leading; thinking too, the sign shall come. Stepping untied alone into an illusion of nowhere, hoping to find the no one.

To sacrifice my very humanness, the quest dismissed, for universal peace. To circumvent my hollowed out self of sadness and fill it with a layering of illusion undone. Poured into the divine, into God and Goddess form, and perpetually served, sacrificed. All desire dissipated for the All.

Momentarily safe, momentarily comforted, momentarily brought out of self and back through self, and afforded the moments to blend in with the universe. The trees alive. Angel kisses. As walking ghost, carved, in this mystery undone and hidden before the finish.

I am a foreshadowing of future chapters. The ones in which I turn the pages to discover I am back on some island onto myself; victim of nothingness, grander within the nothingness of am, than the world appears in the everything of naught.

Lost in the exact canvas of eternity created through the concept and thoughts of eternity. No self creating no self, until self emerges and claims self again. Spinning in recognition of circle, defined within circle. Parts dismissed and whole returned, and whole dissected into pieces.

Onto my self, I awaken as the dreamer, and then fall asleep twice over, to awaken to the un-free one; cycling through.

Longing for the flesh and flesh alone, the timeless one to fill me complete in his coming. Longing for the one star that can see me.

To bring another one to the one I am not.

Split and made. Two becoming the unified. Split into the two again. The one splattered across the other; neither satisfied and both smothered.

How I long for rescue, as two lay clasped and connected, gasping for the breath of wisdom.

How I long for a hand to be the hand. How I long to know, to no longer be in this me. To hear the whispers behind another soul, a very spirit split open and dispersed and fed to me. No pretty fool. No ugly beast, yet secretly tucked away in between the points of eternity.

To move is to cause the other to shift. To sit is to risk falling, again and again, into the deep of nowhere.

To suffer in this humanness perchance to create the one hand I reach for that is reaching for me.

To suffer in the aftermath of bliss to connect in the river of pain.

Or to bleed out every last sense of me, and become blended in the peace of nothingness.

417: First Self-portrait & My Emotional Road Trip

Yesterday’s painting: My Kingdom for Your Heart. Poem to match can be found at my spiritual/art blog: Belly of a Star.

The day before yesterday’s painting: Paisley Three

Last night my husband dreamt I sold a painting for a lot of money. I told him I will not sell my soul. However, I will consider photographing my soul and making prints for greeting cards.

I am craving pizza.

Painting all day is like having ‘relations’ all day. That means sex. And no, I haven’t had sex all day in decades. (oops, am I over-sharing?)

Now I am craving chocolate…dark.

I have been super good to myself about accepting my various stages of ‘moods’ and ‘needs.’ I love me very much, and know that when I am sick or when someone I know dies, I might sink myself into creation of some sort. Someone did die, I’m not just throwing that in there for effect. That would be odd.

The project of the week is painting! I loveeeeee painting. For the first time in my life I understand faces! Although, when I paint, it looks nothing like in my imagination. Except today. Today I came super close.

This is how I used to see bodies and faces:

It definitely feels like a calling to carve out all the agape love inside of me. The paintings kind of look like dead people to me though. Dead people alone, or dead people with someone trying to wake them up. I know this has to do with my own spiritual journey. In fact in looking back at my paintings over the last few months, it is fascinating to see in my art at times: no body, white space for body, body with closed eyes, body with one figure with closed eyes and one figure with opened eyes, etc. The paintings’ faces follow my own insight into self and later into the All.

Yep, you are part of the All, too. Which means… you are me… I will give you a moment to process that and catch your breath. Scary thought, indeed. Here is a paintbrush and a canvas, so you can soothe your pitter-pattering heart.

My husband doesn’t appreciate when I talk about most people being in a state of sleep, kind of like they’re dead. I tell him not to worry that when he wakes up, he’ll understand. Did I mention that I just finished Jesus and the Lost Goddess, and finally have found the linear connection between Buddhism, Gnostic Christians, and Islam! So that’s a bonus. Seems lots of spiritual belief systems think lots of people are sound asleep.

I’d like to be asleep right about now. The passion to create has been outstanding for weeks. Unbelievable really. I painted for seven hours today, and still have a lot of angst and love in me. The energy of the painting bellow is STILL off. I’d like to bring back their faces and wipe out the green line.

I have a huge pile of laundry, like seven loads of clean clothes staring me down. I really want to erase that green line and paint.

charcoal sketching

trying to steal a heart

Heart not stolen

Me (in my 20s)

a few hours after this post….and I think I am done as done can be. <3

416: How I would free my daughter with Aspergers

Sophia

How I would free my daughter with Aspergers

1. I would learn everything I could about the spectrum conditions through reputable, well-honored sources; and then readily forget everything I knew and recognize my daughter is a unique individual with exact perfection and a glorious light.

2. I would acknowledge each and every way my daughter’s actions reflect a behavior that in some way makes me believe that I am affected. What is it that she is doing that is causing discomfort to me, would be a question I would demolish, and whole-heartedly embrace the conclusion that I am the only one choosing to be in a state of discomfort based on someone else’s reactions and actions. And in truth my reactions have a direct effect on everyone about me. My ‘job’ as a parent, if I were to assign an exact ‘role’ and ‘duty,’ would be to reflect back to my daughter her beauty and nothing more.

3. I would concentrate on the definitions of imperfection, flawed, wrong, and normal. I’d understand all words are manmade and invented, that even the deepest of spiritual beliefs and psychology have been spoon-fed from man to man, and thusly infected and created into something man-based. With man comes fear. I would readily announce the fear in me, and the fear related to my daughter’s ‘condition.’ I would see that all my discomfort is based primarily on two things: Fear and not living in the present.

4. In seeing I am nothing but the present moment, and that my daughter is thusly only in the present, I would establish a way in which I could practice moment-by-moment being there in a state of grace for my daughter and the rest of family, friends, and society. I would grow, as a role model for my daughter, a person of inner-security, unconditional love and acceptance. I would discard robes of non-authenticity, fear-based projection of self onto others, the selfish feeding that society dictates from mass media, big business, politics, and dogma-based religion. I would embrace the light of my child as my divine teacher and establisher of the breaking of norms to set my own soul free.

5. I would ask her to teach me what she knows, and try to experience the world through her eyes and senses, while recognizing her way is not right or wrong, and just is. I would understand she needs no fixing or alterations, and that in healing my own spirit and aches and longings, and by being in a state of centeredness and balance, she, as I to her, can grow into a reflection of me.

6. I would stop taking her to professionals who are not heart-mind centered and well-established in their own inner-awareness, growth, love and beauty. I would expose her to people that resonate at a high-vibration of acceptance. I would break up with all relations that fed off of her energy, ‘goodness,’ innocence and purity. Recognizing, she, like me, is born in beauty in perfection, I would establish an environment in which she could be the best of who she is: authentic in all ways and degrees.

7. If I ever felt embarrassed or ashamed, I would recognize I have bought into the illusion of normalcy and the ‘right’ way to be. I would declare there is no ‘right’ way to myself and to my child, and celebrate not what is good in her—for to do so would be to automatically judge and establish bad. Instead I would celebrate her in completion, for the gift of her in my life, for the way she has helped me to transition and grow as a person.

8. I would immerse her in her pleasures and passions; knowing her interest are the only means of escaping the chaos of a delusional world that breeds off of profit, greed, lies, and game-playing. I would understand that she sees through the veil of illusion, and is entirely awoken to the process transpiring before her. That to her the world is scary because the people are scary in their attempts to be loved through fear and imaginings. I would recognize until I see the world as safe, she will perceive the world as danger. In order to heal my own wounds, I would dive deep within and embrace my authentic being, risking like I never have and dying a thousand upon a thousand deaths. And through my own dark night of the soul, reestablished in my own profound light and knowing of All, I would return the light upon my daughter. Her established and well-pruned light of goodness. I would return not what was taken, but smothered by my own misjudgment and yearnings. I would thank her repeatedly for her gift of self.

9. I would expose her to life. I would not keep her safe from anything or anyone. I would teach her all is okay. But I would not take her where she chose not to go. If she was demolished in spirit in a social environment, I would not expose her over and over again. She is not lacking in her ability to associate with others and be in ‘public’ places. She knows the rules, she knows the game. What she is ‘lacking’ is the blindfold to pretend she is someone she is not in order to be falsely accepted by others pretending to be someone they are not. She recognizes the soul-eyes of the ones weeping and the bleeding pierced hearts. The sorrow is everywhere, and the heart-songs are locked away in over-burdened spirits, so lost upon self their suffering seizes the very encasement of my seeing daughter. And here she is rocked in so much confusion and pain, she longs for escape and safety. Returning her again and again to a place of non-awareness and imaginary games does nothing to lift her or gather her from one skill-level to another; it only reminds her, the over-exposure to the ways of the world, how very different, lost and alone she feels.

10. I would connect her to all awakened souls, so deemed awakened by her, more so than me. Whether this be the towering trees, the preacher on the street, the homeless man, the priest, or the Buddhist on the corner, or the birds in the garden, I would take her there. I would take her into the deep philosophical teachings of ancient scriptures of all denominations and let her find the interwoven connections. I would teach her through example to love all unconditionally, to accept all unconditionally, to erase dogma and the illusion of how things have to be. I would teach her through my very being that she is such a joy and gift to the world and that to let her fly through the removal of my own blinders is to me my own greatest gift to all. I would recognize I can never accept my daughter until I accept the completeness of my self, and in turn, accept the completion in her. Once accepted, my own perception of the world shall grant my daughter the freedom she brought upon me. The release of the self-afflicted self to the service of all. Here I would teach her, through my own being, that her gift shall serve the world, and in so serving the world, she shall be eternally free.