Emotional sobriety

Artist GERHARD RICHTER -ENGADIN

Consider this. In what area of your emotional life is handled entirely by your inner child, who sees only in absolutes?

“I create chaos when I’m the actor trying to run the show, my own show or someone else’s. For me, abstinence starts with true reliance and trust in God, rather than trying to win approval, change an outcome, run from feelings, etc.”

-Emotional sobriety

We can hear

Cathy Josefowitz ca. 1992

Most of us still need to learn how to take care of our physical body. We need to learn how to relax and how to sleep. We need to learn how to eat and consume in such a way that our body can be healthy, light, and at ease. If we listen carefully, we can hear our body telling us all the time what it does and does not need.

- THICH NHAT HANH

Thinking and emotions addiction

VERENA LOEWENSBERG

KIND OF BLUE

Deprivational States

Struggle-a-holic

Less-Thanner

Crumbaholic

 

Anxiety/Fear states

Angst Glutton

Eggshell Walker

Edgemeister

Worrier

Misery Maven

Gloom & Doomer

Undecider or 2nd Guesser*

 

Shame-based states

Mr. or Mrs. “Gill T”

Super Human

Perfectionist

People Pleaser

 

Numbed Out or Victim states

Helpless Helen/Harry (Victim)*

Betty / Bob Bumbler*

Fog-a-holic*

Invisible Man or Woman*

 

Aggressive States

Rage-a-holic

The Prosecutor*

The Judge*

Superior Sally or Sam*

Andrew

Pay attention

TAKESADA MATSUTANI /

KATE VAN HOUTEN

PARIS PRINTS 1967-1978

Observe the relationships around you. Pay attention to:

Which ones lift and which ones lean?

Which ones encourage and which ones discourage?

Which ones are on a path of growth uphill and which ones are just going downhill? When you leave certain people, do you feel better or feel worse?

Which ones always have drama or don't really understand, know and appreciate you and the gift the gift that lies within you?

Look there

Artist Pat Steir Garden 2022 - 23

Begin to free yourself from the shackles of magic by first noticing, then questioning, then challenging any beliefs you hold that some external force or source is doing it to you or for you. Does a doctor heal you, or do you make the choice to be healed? Does a certain balance in your bank account provide security, or are you safe no matter how many dollars to your name? How many educational degrees does it take for you to be credible? Who must agree with you in order for you to feel validated? Do you need a partner to experience love, or is love already where you stand? Few people in our culture question magic. Fewer move beyond it. If you are reading these words, you are being called to walk through the veil of illusion that keeps the world but a miniature of its true potential. Buddha asked,

"If you do not get it from yourself, where will you go for it?" All the authority you will ever need is seeded within your soul. Look there and nowhere else.

I Want to Age Like Sea Glass

Artist Paul Cupido

I Want to Age Like Sea Glass
by
Bernadette Noll

I want to age like sea glass, smoothed by tides, not broken.
I want the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up
And leave me feeling washed clean. I want my hard edges to
soften as the years pass – made not weak, but supple.
I want to ride the waves, go with flow, feel the impact of the
surging tides rolling in and out.

When I am thrown against the shore and caught between the rocks
I want to rest there until I can find the strength to do what is next.
Not stuck – just waiting, pondering, feeling what it feels like to pause.
And when I am ready, I will catch a wave and let it carry me along to
the next place that I am supposed to be.

I want to age like sea glass. When people see the old woman I’ll become,
They’ll embrace all that I am. They’ll marvel at my exquisite nature,
hold me gently in their hands and be awed by my well-earned patina –
neither flashy nor dull – but just the right luster. And we’ll both feel lucky
to realize, once again, that we have landed in the perfectly right place
at just the right moment.

I want to age like sea glass. I want to enjoy the journey and let my
preciousness be, not in spite of the impacts of life, but because of them

Metabolism

Artist Sarah Verardo

Metabolism is vibrational response to your moment in time. Metabolism is the way the Energy is moving through your body. And so, everything is in response to the way you feel - everything is. Everything is mind over matter.

Every disease is mental first. Everything is about thought. Everything is about vibration.

Everything is about the way you feel. Practice scenarios that feel good—and never mind reality.

Reality is only a brief moment in time that you keep repeating.

# abrahamhicks

Prayer: For Beauty in the Mundane

Artist Alexis Herman

Prayer: For Beauty in the Mundane

 

In Cole Arthur Riley’s book Black Liturgies, she prays for our capacity to hold together the extraordinary and the ordinary:

God of every beautiful thing,

Make us people of wonder. Show us how to hold on to nuance and vision when our souls become addicted to pain, to the unlovely.

It is far easier to see the gloom and decay; so often it sings a louder song. Attune our hearts to the good still stirring in our midst, not that we would give ourselves to toxic positivity or neglect the pain of the world, but that we would be people capable of existing in the tension.

Grant us habits of sacred pause. Let us marvel not just at the grand or majestic, but beauty’s name etched into every ordinary moment. Let the mundane swell with a mystery that makes us breathe deeper still. And by this, may we be sustained and kept from despair. Amen.