Friday, January 29, 2010

When the Student is Ready....

Over the years I've often thought of the old adage "when the student is ready the teacher will appear" but it's only been in the last two years when I really hoped I was ready. I've needed that wise person to come into my life and help me to advance positively forward. Some people get where they know they should be with no assistance. God bless them. I wish I were one of them. I'm not.

In a previous post I mentioned that I made a "positive mind" audio tape that I listen to every night as I drift off to sleep. In that tape there are a few lines that specifically relate to me getting the teacher to appear. For instance, I say, "Amazing, wise and encouraging people come into my life to help me attain my hearts desire."

But when I've thought of the wise people who might come to me to impart their wisdom, I always pictured them in three dimensional form standing right in front me. I have definitely had my share of smart and helpful people aid me at various times, for various reasons, but outside of my father, who died over four years ago, I've had very few really
wise ones. Where was this wise teacher? I was ready. Why weren't they here already?

And then I realized, profoundly, that these wise teachers are coming to me and they are coming to me in ways I never could have imagined. At least their words are. Some of their wisdom is reaching me through the time of a thousand years (like
this mentioned in my "How Exactly" post) and some of it is coming to me from hearing conversations unintended for my ears.

The other day in the waiting room of my
accupuncturist I overheard the last part of a conversation between the doctor and another patient who was just leaving. The patient said to the doctor, "There was a guy in our small town who always went around saying, 'When I win the lottery I'll do this, and when I win the lottery I'll do that' and everybody just shook their heads saying, 'Well, that's ol' Tom talking his big talk' But do you know that one day came and Tom won a bunch of money in that lottery."

To almost anyone else overhearing that idle conversation it would really be nothing much to remember but to someone like myself, in need of wise counsel, it was if I was the student and my teacher was saying, "Miracles happen all the time to people who
truly believe, so keep believing!"

Also, all of the sudden, out of the blue,
Joesph Campbell has been popping up everywhere I turn. First, just a couple of weeks ago, I found The Power of Myth in my mom's bookcase and pulled it out to read (I had seen segments of the PBS series several times over the years, but it was great to be able to read the book, which is the transcript of the series, slowly and deliberatively). Then once I began reading the book it seemed as if every time I turned around there he was again. I read a newspaper article and there was a reference to a book that was based on the work of Campbell. Soon after, I googled a favored phrase of mine, "there are no coincidences in life" which led me here and I saw a link to the name of a myth that Joseph Campbell often talked of. Finally, because I got such good insight from The Power Of Myth I went out and bought Campbell's, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which I have just started reading.

When the student is ready the teacher will appear. I think the Universe (God) is telling me I'm ready for my adventure, my quest, by allowing my eyes to see a book on a shelf and my ears to hear a passerby's conversation. Nothing apparently momentous in that but
I can feel the shift.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Hmmm......

I woke up this morning and per my usual daily ritual got my breakfast and checked out what was going on in Facebookland. Sometimes, when I click on Facebook and the home page opens up, I glance over to see if I've gotten any new friend requests, hoping that maybe today is the day that someone interesting from my past is seeking me out. Well, today was a day when that small hope was realized. Although it wasn't a friend request per se, because it came via a message in my inbox, I'll count it just the same. Here is the message I received, "last time i saw you, you were in my... whats up...when are you coming home for a visit, we should pick up where we..." T.

I'll fill in the missing parts. First off, this message is from a guy, T., that I went to high school with almost 30 years ago (2011 will be 30th reunion!) and I last saw him at my high school class's 20th reunion. My freshman year I had
the biggest crush on him. He played tennis and pulled off preppy in an avant-garde way (although I'm sure he wasn't trying and didn't know it, which is why it worked for me). When he writes: last time I saw you, you were in my... the next word would be: bed. Yep, I went to drop him off at his home after a late night (early morning) of partying with friends at my place. He invited me in. Kissing on the couch led to cuddling in the bedroom. And that's it. Nothing happened.

For a couple of reasons. One, we were both completely tired from the night's events, and two, I had another guy back at my house! Yep, I had my 8th grade boyfriend, G., whom I had drifted away from during high school, back there waiting for me to return. It's not that I was neccessarily more interested in getting back to G. rather than staying with T., but when you've left someone back at your parent's house (they were out of town! and yes, it is too high school for words!) you kind of have a responsibility to not just leave them hanging.

Anyway, long story, barely shorter, I left T. sleeping, went back to my place, found G. sleeping, and decided that's what I needed to be doing too. So, I went into another bedroom climbed into a single bed and fell fast asleep. However, shortly thereafter, G. found me, crawled into bed with me and fun started to ensue. But if you can go back and remember the last time you tried to get-down-and-get-back-up-again in a single bed (if you ever did) then you know that it's not conducive to the kind of fun that might be FUN! So we went back to my parent's king size bed (again, I know, so high school) and let the games* begin!

So, getting back to today's message from T. about, "...we should pick up where we..." I finished reading and thought, ya know, I think we should! Unfortunately, my second thought was that I've gained a few pounds since then. But hey, he's probably lost a few more strands of hair on his head!

And as for making progress toward dreaming miracles and manifesting my desires I'd say this is exactly the kind of thing that W.H. Murray meant from the quote I wrote of in my previous post. Not to say that this one little thing is "it" but that these are the kind of messages (literally and symbolically) that tell me to keep
BELIEVING.

*Fun times but not the "whole-nine-yards." Yeah, I know, lame, but that was me then...

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Pain

Sometime in the fall of 2007, just before my 44th birthday, my headaches came back with a vengeance. I ended up in the emergency room. The pain was so bad I was vomiting. In the ER they gave me a morphine drip that didn't even put a dent in the pain. Finally they dripped enough to knock me out.

In the month between the onset of the headaches and getting in to see a neurologist and getting the right meds prescribed I was laid up in my bed. If I lifted my head I had excruciating pain so I didn't lift it. My 44th birthday cake was brought to me in bed and somehow I enjoyed it from a prone position.

But during that month of being bed-ridden and watching the fall days drift by my window I started to change in some small, but perceptible way. And to my amazement I was able to thank my pain for being there. I said that. "Thank you headaches. Thank you pain. I know that you are serving a purpose, one that is going to teach me something that I need to learn, and so I thank you!"

I re-read some of the self-help books that had been on my bookshelves for the past 25 years. My mom lovingly gave me
this for my birthday. I bought this book which I thought was really helpful in keeping me focused and dreaming big. I made kind of a guided imagery audio tape for what I wanted my life to be and I listened to it religiously each night as I drifted off to sleep.

I valued the following passage from W.H. Murray's The Scottish Himalayan Expedition:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way.

I had spent so many years listening to the voice inside of me just berating me about so much in my life: what I did or didn't do, what I said or didn't say, why I was or wasn't this way or that, finally I said back, "Enough is enough!" And I took control.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Pre-2007

Prior to the Fall of 2007 I was, according to the psychiatrist I visited to get my rx for anti-depressants, a glass-is-half-empty kinda girl. This kindly old Cuban immigrant doctor (whose wife of 55 years was loosing her fight to Alzheimer's) would practically implore me to see my life as being a glass half full. I would breakdown and cry. How could I see my life positively when I was so broken-hearted over being alone and over 40 with no prospects for the things I wanted most: a husband and children of my own?

It didn't help that I was working at a job that gave me little satisfaction and even less money. In addition, I was plagued on and off with debilitating headaches. I wanted desperately to change my way of thinking; to believe in the possibility that I could be happy, but at 43 years old I felt only hopelessness.

I mean marriage, of course, could happen at any age; there is no "biological clock" that tells your body that you can not be joined in wedded bliss, but in our current realm of scientific knowledge, there is a very loud clanging, that reverberates loudly, telling a woman over 40 that her child-bearing years may be down to days, if not already completed. It was a devastating feeling, one that anti-depressants didn't seem to help.

My counselor would try to tell me that there still was hope, that it could all work out, and as much as I wanted to believe him, I whined back, "I'm 43 years old!" He encouraged me to find out more, to learn whether or not someone 43 could get pregnant and that led me
here and here which I found to be very informative, but more importantly, hopeful.
But the best article I came across was this
one. I loved it. I love that she didn't even get married until she was 45!

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

How Exactly?

So, how exactly do I make the life I’ve dreamed of for over 40 years appear out of thin air?

First, I have to know that I am a creator. And I get this idea through reading
Genesis chapter one .

So my thinking goes like this: if I believe in God, and that He created this world and everything in it from nothing but His desire, and I am told that I am created in His image, then it follows that I too am a creator with magnificent ability. I too can create into existence, purely from my desire, something from nothing. Or at least that’s my plan. I’m believing (before seeing!) as it was explained to me
here, here, and here

At this time in my life I can’t say I’m very religious, but I can say that I am extremely faith-filled (a new development of which I will write more on later). And one thing that creators
must have is faith in their ability.

Friday, January 8, 2010

In the Beginning

“Homemaker is the ultimate career.  All other careers exist for one purpose only — to support the ultimate career!”~ C.S. Lewis

Okay, this is the deal, the likelihood of marriage for me is 26% according to Calculators Live Hmm.... that's actually higher statistical odds (in my favor!) than I thought I was up against - cool! So right off the bat I'm in a better position of attaining my dream of being married than I thought I was less than five minutes ago. I guess I thought that my odds of finding love and getting married at my age would be around 5%.

I am 46, female, never married, with no children. Ugh. I hate even writing that because it is so NOT the way I wanted my life to be. I was one of those little girls who played "house," was a momma to four or five baby dolls, and at age four planned my wedding with Henry*, the boy next door. I dreamed of being a homemaker. Yes, you read that right, a homemaker! I never wanted to have any other career but that of staying home and taking care of my husband and children.

I was on the cusp of that time, in the 70's and early 80's when we were leaving behind one societal expectation, the notion that a girl would, for the most part, be going off to college to attain her MRS degree, and heading swiftly toward a new expectation that she would be going to college to earn a degree in order to advance her own career objectives. For woman who needed to be liberated I'm sure it was liberating, for the few of us hold-outs, just dreaming of living the lives our mothers lived, it was nothing but a scary disappointment.

So at sixteen I was at odds with myself and my world. I was a beneficiary of 
Title IX which liberated, and continues to liberate, millions of women by providing opportunities (college athletic scholarship in my case) they otherwise might not have had.

But I was against women's liberation, or what I thought it was, because it seemed to me it was so much about not wanting the things I did. It seemed like it was about not wanting a husband, and not wanting to be taken care of, and not wanting a bunch of kids that would get in the way. I just wanted a family. I wanted to cook (and clean?) and provide a beautiful home life for my husband and kids. I just knew that that is what I would be good at - it was my perfect job.

If I want to give myself a positive spin (and I do!) about why I'm not married at the age of 46 I'd say that I'm just a 
late bloomer.

And now my life is going to change. Writing this post is a statement (A VERY BOLD ONE!). Why? Because I have begun the journey of dreaming miracles! I am dreaming into reality the miracle of not only meeting, falling in love, and marrying a guy who is in love with me as much as I am with him, but I am also dreaming into my life, getting pregnant by my as-yet-to-materialize husband and having a healthy baby (or babies!).

Today at the age of 46 I have no boyfriend. I believe that I truly only had the "title" of girlfriend once in my life when I was 25 years old (and that for only half a year). And yet, 
my past is not my future. My future is being created presently. It took me many years and many falls to stand and meet this moment in time. And though statistically I am up against long odds, it is my intention to beat them.

This is my journey. Let the dreaming of miracles commence!



*name changed