Seeing things crystal clear...

"The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little." ---Thomas Merton

"What heals old traumas is a willingness to feel the old pain and breathe through it, and to take responsibility now for issues and experiences that couldn't be resolved in the past. Many well intentioned spiritual people make a crucial error: They pray or meditate to transcend or avoid feeling. If you use prayer or meditation in this way, you deny and suppress body experience that needs to be felt, celebrated, and welcomed into the wholeness of yourself. When you love your whole-body experience and accept what has happened in the past, then you can consciously decide how to design a life the way you want it now. When you develop a set of goals that stands in the present rather than in the past, you are pulled toward them rather than being pushed by the past."
p. 252-253, The conscious heart: seven soul-choices that inspire creative partnership, Kathlyn Hendricks and Gay Hendricks

"If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. We'll that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down." ---Ray Bradbury

"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power."
---Margaret Stortz

Somewhere along the "yellow brick road"we often "forget" to live our lives to the fullest. I am someone who has the ability to visualize goals that span very far and wide. By the same token, I have to stick my nose to the grind stone in order to make the visualizations manifest in the physical. And to boot, I, also, have a health disorder that creates a lot of tension between my visions and the steps I have to take; but, I do know how to set and achieve goals nevertheless.

Years ago I led a very regimented lifestyle involving my spirituality. During that time, I was continually blown away by my ability to "see" something in my future and then to subsequently make the vision manifest physically . I was surrounded by ripening fruit and I attributed everything to my faith. I would feel and see a dream in my mind's eye, and then I would step by step draw upon my inner strength to overcome any obstacles to create what I needed to create in order to make my life happen as I desired it to. I believed in the impossible and the impossible soon became the possible.

Many naysayers walked along my path. People often said things like, "Forget it! You'll never get there," "You'll never be offered a position in Hong Kong without overseas experience," and on and on... Well, I did get overseas to Hong Kong, and it didn't matter what they said. I did live my dreams to the fullest until I became ill and had to return home.

Upon return, I lost my strength bit by bit. I am not sure why. I definitely know how. But one day I woke up and all my dreams were gone. I lived in tremendous fear and hardship. I wandered around for a long period of time trying to re-find my Way. I tried this and that, and eventually I opened a "door" that I could step through and not stumble.

As time moved on, so did I. I experienced many challenges to overcome and most of them were not very easy to deal with. I call(ed) the challenges the "God Olympics!"
Many times in the last few years I have had conversations with friends about their hopes and dreams---their wants and desires---their needs; which, also, translated to my hopes, dreams, wants, desires and needs via projection of one sort or another. And too often I witnessed a poorly discerned plan of action. [Here is the trick! I can see my friends achieving their highest desires in my mind's eye; I can even see a plan to accomplish their best. But, my friends often cannot see past their front doorstep.] All at once life hatches a conundrum! "Who am I to tell them I know a Way for them???"

So as the conundrum grows, I, then, go about trying to convince my friend(s) of the Truth of the situation. And most of the time I fail miserably. Both of us end up flabbergasted or something.
My life reflects so little productivity of its own. How can I attain "gold" for my friends? [Actually...it is easier for all of us to "coach" rather than to employ our own life purposes. We have a sort of ariel view for others' paths. We can see rights and wrongs very simply---minus great amounts of indecision and emotion.]

Yet, sometime awhile back, I determined that it was time for me to execute my own plans and purposes, again; and to forgo my friends' paths unless they asked for assistance.
I began to listen to my own words that I spoke as 'wisdom' into my friends' lives. And then I began to write down the widsom and organize it. In a few short months, I changed a number of issues in my life. I was beginning to succeed, again. I was making new friends by joining some social organizations, I was creating works of art, and I was feeling better about myself. One foot in front of the other, I was beginning to make progress. Progress! How exciting!!!

I was struck by a thought from two or so years ago when I spoke to my friend, Brenda. The thought felt like lightening when I said it aloud the first time. She and I were discussing men. And I said something like, "If you do not find something acceptable in a friend, why would you find it acceptable in a potential mate? The bar is to have a friendship with a man like you have a friendship with woman." Men and women are not the same; but certainly, it must be possible to have some sort of congruent relationship. I believe it is plausible and feasible. I tire of people who say it is not.

As the seasons have passed, I haven't let go of my conversation with my friend, Brenda. I have held onto it for dear life and I have been steadily planting my feet upon the ground using my practices involving the chakra system so that I could manifest the fruit of what I believed.
As Thomas Merton said, our biggest "crunch" in life is that we are altogether too frequently drawn to the lowest denominator of what we can have and/or achieve. We have the ability to reach the heavens as God resides inside our heart. If we settle for anything less than our best, then we are failing to see our highest Truth. We are failing to be all that we can be. We are failing to allow God to be all that He IS.

I dig my feet in the dirt so that I experience the power from which I came---Mother Earth. I refuse to believe that men are incapable of deep relationships! As far as I am concerned, I believe I have seen my brothers and their friends active in strength, loyalty, and love for one another. I, also, once knew my childhood boy friends and the joyful and complete relationships we shared. Furthermore, my former love,Chris, was one of the most heartfelt men I have ever known.

Men can hit the bar. In fact, they can supersede women's shallow expectations for them and go far beyond the bar. I have seen men in movies about war brave death itself for the love of their people and their brethren next to them. American history is loaded with real examples of such valor. Men are not cold and brutal and without cause. Their blood courses with passion and life!
I wait to know those that will choose to supersede the lowest common denominator. I choose to know and accept that God, too, lives in the heart of men. I see glimpses of such beauty nearly every day. It serves no one to shoot for rock-bottom. It may feel easier at first, but in the end, it brings tremoring and pain.