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Romancing the Double


For those who are exploring Toltec Wisdom.

Toltec teachings provide a collection of tools to further a Path to self and personal freedom: lucid dreaming,
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  GypsyLadee : Toltec Warrior

Life as a Mirror

GypsyLadee said Nov 17, 2006, 4:40 PM:
 

Using the tools that Toltec provides us is only one set of many available to us. There are several others that I use personally to great effect, one of the best being: I use Life - the people and events in it - as my internal reflection. My life is a Mirror to my growth.

If I accept, as part of another tool that There Are No Accidents, whoever and whatever happens in my life is there for a reason. Often, they act as a reflection for me to view my inner self, if I take the opportunity to look and assess. Bear used a great example in a story of one of her students in Let's start at the beginning. The student, in a state of confusion, met with expanded external confusion. Often the reflection, in order to get our attention, is heightened or exaggerated. Later, when we become more astute in our Path, the reflections are more subtle.

These days, for instance, most of my reflections include people on a spiritual quest or heightened awareness, others with generosity and grace and events that help me to move forward with my dreams and Pathwork. I still get the occasion wap! up against the head, reminding me that there are areas needed attention, but they come fewer and farther between.

What have your experiences with the Mirror been like? How has it effected your life? Are you new to the concept?

Ladee
  GypsyLadee : Toltec Warrior

The Choices We Make

GypsyLadee said Jun 26, 2007, 11:26 AM:
 

Recently my father underwent open heart surgery. This is an excerpt from my journal that I thought might spark some interesting conversation ….
_______________________________

Years ago, I learned that each moment in our lives is some kind of Choice Point. We're making decisions all the time … do I do this or that? Sometimes, the decision seems minute and unimportant and other times it's a profound, apparent life-changing decision. We are not always aware of how profoundly our decisions can effect others.

My Dad's not perfect. I've been aware of this most of my life (as a kid, I worshiped him). After my Mom died, Dad married one of the women with whom he'd had an affair. At the time, it made a warped kind of sense. He'd confided in me that he'd never been alone, and didn't want to figure out, that late in life, how to do it (he was in his 60's), and here was this woman who claimed to want him, and she was a familiar place to be. Dad rather got the shock of his life when she cut him off from sex right after the marriage, claiming she'd only said she enjoyed it, to win him. Dad, being who he is, didn't take long before he started to stray. To keep her man, my dad's wife took measures …. I won't detail them here … to assure he didn't succeed. Fast forward thirteen years.

The end result of the steps to ensure my dad's fidelity, created a slowly developed, vast rift between Dad and his kids. By the time he was in the hospital what this looked like was: his wife (I have a very hard time calling her a step-mother) treated all us kids rather like obligatory, secondary citizens. It wasn't until I was in the same hospital room with her and Dad that I really *got* how vast was that gulf between us, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Again, no need for details, but it ended with us kids having the feeling of being excluded (whether intentionally or not), with very hurt feelings as a bonus. And a couple of very ugly scenes.

All this has caused us siblings to rally 'round each other and support each other in a way we haven't done since our mom's death nearly fifteen years ago. It's pretty amazing to see how we've all set aside some of the differences between us to see the common ground. We've worked through the worst of things and now I/we have a very odd sense of peace over the whole thing. At first, I was concerned that I was “detaching” or being in denial. But, all the feelings are there, just softened by an (almost enforced) acceptance of what is. After we all got through the resentment, the love took over. It's nearly epiphanous.

And, I'm sitting here, looking back and realizing how deeply one choice can impact so many. When my Dad decided to accept the “call” of this woman, he chose her over his children. Even at the time, we all kind of looked at him and said, “Dad! What're you doin'!!??” And because she's a caustic presence (and trust me when I say I'm being polite with that term), most of us pulled away to some extent, and he drifted more toward those people who met a different standard. Okay. His choice. He's allowed to make those kinds of decisions in his life. I don't, for a minute, think he did so consciously, with an awareness of how it would look and feel fifteen years down the road. And, yet, those decisions ended up hurting those he loved. And we, in turn, nearly hurt each other … very much.

I am VERY proud of his children. We have all chosen to not reciprocate in kind … instead, we're loving him through this hard time and treating his wife with a deference she doesn't afford us, and if/when he survives this … and if it still seems worth the effort … we'll let him in on our epiphanies. That his choice to remain married to her pushed us away - and it hurt. Deeply. And we love him, anyway.

'Course … he already knows what that feels like, I'm sure. It's not like some of the choices we kids have made, made sense to him … and he loved us, anyway.
  Remedy : MindTraveler

Re: Life as a Mirror

Remedy said Jul 19, 2007, 9:40 AM:
 

that's really a beautiful and interesting thought. you are sparking it for me here.

best of luck with your family and the situations you find yourself in.

  GypsyLadee : Toltec Warrior

Re: Life as a Mirror

GypsyLadee said Jul 19, 2007, 7:49 PM:
 

I'd be interested in knowing what kinds of sparks it set off for you.

Care to share?
Ladee
  GypsyLadee : Toltec Warrior

Movin' on ...

GypsyLadee said Aug 13, 2007, 12:38 PM:
 

Sometimes the answers to my questions come flying out of my mouth - if I'll only hear them. I write to clear my head and actually hear … this here is a process, incomplete …

There are a great bunch of folks who work and run the other stores in the strip where the Quantum Shaman™ (the gift store where I work, part time) is located. Over the last several months we've gotten to know each other a bit more than the casual wave, 'hello.' There's a tattoo place with some really interesting characters, an adult/head shop with the enigmatic lady and a “rails” store at the far end run by a woman and her husband. Because of the nature of the shop (the name really gets their attention) people come in asking all kinds of questions. Yesterday, for instance, one of the teenagers looked around and said, “This is all witchy stuff, isn't it?” I looked at the clothing, then picked up one of the faerie statues and looked at her quizically and said, “Uh, not really.” People come in with questions about dreams and dreaming, asking how to read Tarot, or what to buy their friend who's pagan (but is a xtrian, so has no idea).

Last night, after I'd closed up and was heading to the car, one of the guys from the tattoo shop stopped me and asked, “Do you know anything about succubus'?” “Uh, a little,” I replied, and he launched into some tale about his friend's car being taken over and influencing him and wanted to know where to find an exorcist or what could he do. The words that came flying out of my mouth, I credit to Tesse, “What you know is true.” I made a couple of suggestions for shifting the perception around the “possession,” but when it was obvious I wasn't getting through, I shrugged my shoulders and moved on.

“What you know is true” reverberated in my head for the next 15 miles of long desert stretch home. Most of which I spent slack-jawed and on autopilot. One of the things I'd asked myself was “what DO I know?” and kept coming up with answers like, “I love my home. I love the life I've carved out. I'm poor. I can't find work. I'm confused about what to do next.” And wondered how I shift my perception/AP to know something different. “What you know is true.”

“What you know is true.” I make and create my reality by knowing its truth. By creating the truth.

What if I didn't know anything? How would life look and feel and be different. To not know anything. There's an essence here to this concept that I don't know (heh, there's that word again) how to put into words. Years ago, at a seminar in personal growth, the presenter showed us a chart:

    I know that I know
    I know
    I think I know
    I think I don't know
    I know that I don't know
    I don't know
    What the f*ck, go for it anyway!
This feels a little like that, but more … profound. To listen between the silence. To surrender to the unknown. To just experience the now.

The question that keeps coming up against all that is … how do I pay the effing rent? Or do I? Letting go. Surrender to the now.

I wonder.

This a work in progress.