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anita

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  • in reply to: A Personal Reckoning #451438
    anita
    Participant

    In regard to a corrective exercise.. Strange, I don’t feel like it.

    I feel that I am over my mother.

    Feels like she’s neither a Mother, nor a Monster.. not anymore.

    Because I’m not there with her anymore.

    It is over, the whole nightmare:

    The endless shaming, guilt-tripping, beating.. histrionic, borderline, paranoid episodes..

    These are all over, a thing safely in the past.

    I am already safe from her.

    And soon to die, and so far, far away.. She’s no danger to me.

    The Dream that she will truly love me, that’s past due, a thing of the past.

    That Dream.. ahh.. What a dream!

    Something to never happen in this ocean called life.

    A dream, a fantasy.

    I love myself for having this dream, a good little-girl Anita dreaming, how sweet, how precious.

    May this dream fuel my love for people, for all people waiting out there to be loved.

    Anita

    in reply to: A Personal Reckoning #451437
    anita
    Participant

    Thinking about you, Tee ❤️

    in reply to: When the Beloved knocked, I found the house empty #451436
    anita
    Participant

    Dear James:

    I am the wave AND the ocean, am I not?

    I mean, the ocean (the Source, Love) is many little waves, all temporary, but still.. waves (individual people like me and you).

    We are the ocean and we are waves, James-wave, Anita-wave, Peter-wave. This is why we sound different: different styles of expressing, different intensities.. different waves..?

    🌊 and 🌅 Anita

    in reply to: bad timing or patterns? #451431
    anita
    Participant

    Dear Peace:

    I just completed 2 hours of re-reading our past communication, including Tee’s (under a bit different screen name) valuable communication with you over the years.

    You wrote today: “Now that I am here from last 1.5 months and want to stay here till December and I have met my siblings, I am feeling very heavy inside. I regret thinking so negatively about them — believing they only cared about money and not about me. I don’t know how much they care, but the idea that they were only interested in money kept torturing me, and now I feel full of regret for having those thoughts…

    “I realize how much pain and hardship they are living with. Now I feel my assumptions were wrong. I shouldn’t have thought like that. I feel extremely heavy inside, as if I became the worst version of myself. I feel like I disappointed myself, because that wasn’t who I am in my heart. I don’t know how I became so harsh. They did come to me for help, but I refused to support them financially because I thought they were using me like an ATM. Now the guilt is eating me.”-

    The first time you talked about Guilt may have been Feb 2018 (under a different account, screen name: Princess123): “I am guilty because I know (boyfriend at the time) is very sensitive.. I just think how he is doing.. if he is hurting from this break up? I don’t want to hurt anyone”. 

    On May 6, 2020, in this account, you titled your first thread: “Guilty or not?” (the very first word in this account was “Guilty”).

    You wrote in your first post as “Peace”:

    “He (boyfriend at the time) made me feel so guilty I just wanted to cry at that moment.. I felt I’m the cruel person on this earth for doing this to him.. Now, I m just stressing out… Sometimes I just want to break up but then, the guilt start killing me..”

    Fast forward five years, five months and 25 days (fast forward a marriage and a child), back to India, the place where you were born, where you grew up- and here’s the Guilt, back big time, eating you (“Now the guilt is eating me.”)

    (I just read your most recent post, asking me to take my time).

    Well, I am quite tired, peace, so, I’ll get straight to the point:

    You are a good person, you care about doing the right thing by people. You are conscientious. You care about people: your family members and non-family. You care about me taking my time.

    * You are not a bad person for having any of the thoughts that go through your mind, nor for the feelings that come and go.

    There is a saying: “Hurt people hurt people” (I think I got the wording right, not sure).

    Your mother, your sisters, cousins.. hurt themselves, proceeded to either neglect you or hurt you with critical comments and judgments.

    They were so hurt/ neglected themselves.. they proceeded to neglect or hurt you.

    And in al that going-on, all that massive neglect and abuse that you suffered growing up and onward, how could you have possibly turn out to be a perfect specimen of some kind, an unaffected human (thinking and feeling perfect thoughts and perfect feelings, not to mention choosing perfect action all the time). It’s impossible!

    First, you are not responsible for the conditions you were born into, the prejudices, the poverty, the neglect and abuse that people suffered before you were even born.

    Whatever you chose wrong in your past: forgive yourself, let go of regret and hold yourself accountable only for today, only for what you say and do today (not for yesterday).

    This is what I do.

    I suffered from more guilt than I can express in words. Much of it was for things and people I was born into (a baby is not responsible.. right, Peace?)

    The fact that your sisters, or a few of them suffer, does not mean that they did not cause you unnecessary suffering, or that they will not do so in the future. Like I said: hurt people hurt people (until they hold themselves accountable each and every day).

    I am sorry to read about your sister with the severely autistic child who is unsupported and mistreated by her husband, or your sister who wants to get pregnant but can’t, or the other abroad.

    But remember, you are not responsible for their misfortunes or for their choices.

    Be there for them, listen to them (if you can), be present for them. Don’t try to fix their problems, just be there for them, listening, empathetic. That’s all that you can do.. and it can make a positive difference, however small.

    The Serenity Prayer says: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference”.

    I hope this helps.. a bit?

    🤍🌿 Anita

    in reply to: bad timing or patterns? #451429
    anita
    Participant

    Dear Peace: I read your post and see how distressed you are. I want to reread parts of our communication in regard to your family and get back to you within the next hour or two.

    in reply to: İf anyone says spirituality is… #451428
    anita
    Participant

    Dear James:

    Thank you for your comment. You are welcome to join any conversation that I’m having.

    You submitted the above six minutes after I submitted my new post to Peter, so I am guessing you didn’t read it. I think that it is really happening, me dropping Anita as a separate wave, one separated from the ocean (the Source, the Presence), and seeing others as separate waves as well. I think it’s happening.

    “BE the LOVE. MUCH LOVE, Best Regards”-

    Much love and best regards back to you 🙂

    Anita

    in reply to: İf anyone says spirituality is… #451426
    anita
    Participant

    Dear Peter:

    I will process your post from yesterday (quoting your words, responding, then reading the next part, responding, etc.), and then your post from today.

    “I read your message slowly, as if we were sitting together in the quiet of early morning, letting the words rise and return.”-

    I am sensing the difference between hearing or reading people’s words and seeing them as fixed, often threatening AND letting them “rise and return”. It’s a softening, a relaxing of the Fight or Flight response to perceived danger, danger perceived even in typed words.

    “Presence.. (is) an experience that arises when thought returns to silence and stillness. This Presence doesn’t intervene or shield. It doesn’t rescue. It holds. Not with indifference, but with a stillness that remains even when everything else falls away.”-

    Presence= Silence & Stillness (S&S).

    When distressed, to not rush to intervene or shield or rescue (outward action), but to rest in S&S.

    My inner monk is always meditating.”- one with Presence, silent, still.

    “You asked if I would retroactively suggest transcending the ego to your younger self. No. I wouldn’t offer advice to her. I would sit beside her. I would listen. I would let her know her cry was heard.”-

    Not rushing to intervene, shield, or rescue, but offer her your presence, showing/ modeling S&S.

    “I want to pause and acknowledge something: I hear how deeply you’ve wrestled with silence, especially in moments of pain. I understand how that silence can feel like absence. And I’m not asking you to forget those moments, or to bypass them with spiritual language. They matter. You matter.

    “When I speak of Presence, I’m not offering a solution or a fix. I’m pointing to something that doesn’t make it not so, but that holds what is. It’s not a God who intervenes in some magical way, but a stillness that remains. Not indifferent, but spacious. Not absent if quiet.

    “It is in this space that something new might be born.. perhaps a something that transcends the past..”-

    I want this Silence, this kind of silence.

    “It’s not meant to be grasped by the mind, but remembered by the heart. And only when the heart is ready.”-

    Ready to transcend the Fight or Flight lifestyle (ways of thinking, ways of reacting), to transcend that inside running in my brain/ body.. running and running with nowhere to go (thoughts, tics)

    “… All I can offer is to sit beside you, in silence, and say: I hear you. And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough for now. Warmly, Peter

    “I will not fix, nor mend the ache, but sit beside it, as morning breaks.

    No answers come, no rescue calls, just breath between what stands and falls.

    A silence not of absence made, but presence deep, where pain is laid.

    So let the heart, when it is ready, remember what was always steady.

    And if no words can ease the now, then let this hush be enough somehow.”-

    My newly found inner nun is meditating on this.

    I see now why you’ve been emphasizing going inward in many of your posts (different threads). That’s where you become one with Presence, Silence, Stillness, Source.. the ocean.

    Today’s message:

    “That was quite beautiful, Anita. A gentle rhythm of arising and return.”- Thank you. Gentle rhythm is new to me.

    “Non-duality isn’t something to understand, it’s just a word pointing to what you’ve already felt. You surrendered not to an idea, but to the truth that the wave is never apart from the ocean. In that softening, there’s no need to define or divide. There’s only presence. Only flow. And in that flow, you can rest.”-

    Resisting the flow.. the frenzied activity of the mind afraid, seeking solutions, offering solutions/ advice that wasn’t asked.. that’s the wave thinking it’s all there is, sad and alone and desperate.

    “Your words yesterday stirred an image that visited me again last night: a memory, like yours, only of a young boy walking alone beneath the stars, whispering into the vastness, ‘Help me. PLEASE help me!’ And the silence answered with nothing. An old song that has never quite left.

    “It wasn’t an ego’s plea, but the raw ache of loneliness and grief. That little boy had been taught that God was a noun, a fixed point, separate and distant, which only deepened the grief.

    “But now, when such sorrow rises like the tide the prayer has softened. ‘G_d’ has become a verb, a rhythm I’m learning to move with. Not separate or distant, but a motion — present.

    “Isn’t it strange how a shift so small, from noun to verb, can change everything. Language doesn’t just describe; it builds the walls and windows we look through. And most days, we don’t notice.

    “Today, when the wave reaches shore or when it crashes into the rocks, I remember the invitation to return, again and again, to the ocean. A flow that has become home and prayer: Let me move with the rhythm, not grasping, not resisting. Let me be held, even when I forget the Ocean.

    “And I rest, not as God, not as Devil but as a wave returning.

    “Warmly, Peter”-

    The old me would rush to fix the sorrow that rises like the tide, when it does, to fix the young boy walking alone beneath the stars.. perceiving the boy to be a separate wave out there and myself a wave a distance away.

    The new me (the becoming part), all I can offer is to sit beside you, in silence, and say: I hear you. And you matter 🌅.

    “PS – You were and are never an ‘only’ this or that. 🙂 The Sphinx spoke only once, and the Sphinx said, ‘A grain of sand is a desert, and a desert is a grain of sand; and now let us all be silent again’. – Kahlil Gibran”-

    The inner nun is meditating on this 🙂. Thank you so much, Peter 🙏 🙏 🙏

    Warmly, Anita

    in reply to: What will my life be now? #451425
    anita
    Participant

    Hi Nichole 🙂

    I just read a bit about Florida’s cold fronts, they follow the rainy season (May to October), begins in late October or early November, and continuing through winter, each typically lasting a few days, after which temperatures rebound to more typical Florida warmth.

    Yes, it’s not good for any social animal, including humans, to be isolated. We are like a song says, “People who Need People”.

    Interacting with people right here, in the forums, is part of it, as long as the interaction is sincere and quite spontaneous, like right here, as I type.. this is part of my social life.

    If you’re living in or near Orlando, the weather forecast is clear skies and warming trend into the weekend, reaching highs in the upper 70s by Sunday 🙂

    Anita

    in reply to: İf anyone says spirituality is… #451414
    anita
    Participant

    “The separate self is like a wave forgetting it’s part of the ocean.”-

    And the Ocean/ Source/ Presence/ Canvas is a no-label place, no good or bad.. it just flows

    And in that flow.. in that flow, there is place for compassion, only it’s held loosely, allowing flow- not blocking it with definitions, rules & regulations

    Softening, relaxing, surrendering to the ocean.

    A surrender.. I feel the bit of it.

    I am only a wave, I am not, not God = Ego.

    Only a wave.. a relief. I can rest now..?

    Not God, not Devil.. Just a wave.. Am I understanding non-duality, your non-duality, Peter?

    in reply to: İf anyone says spirituality is… #451413
    anita
    Participant

    Dear Peter:

    Thank you for your thoughtful, kind and patient response. I will process and reply tomorrow.

    For now, I just read this (elsewhere) and it resonates:

    “Non-dual teachers say the separate self is like a wave forgetting it’s part of the ocean.”

    Back to you Fri morning.

    🌊 Anita

    in reply to: A Personal Reckoning #451407
    anita
    Participant

    Dear Alessa:

    “A dysfunction of imagination”- fascinating!

    “rewriting the memory and protecting yourself.”- I will think- feel about it later, and I think it will make it part of the exercise, thank you!

    ❤️

    in reply to: A Personal Reckoning #451405
    anita
    Participant

    Dear Alessa:

    Thank you for your suggestions and for caring to share them with me ❤️

    I would never want to confront her, not in real-life and not in my imagination.

    I figure I can do a corrective exercise, but not one where I am in close proximity to her, just like the one I shared 2 posts ago in this thread (a bit more than 5 hours ago). You can read it, if you’d like.

    In the exercise, I will be a safe distance away from her, and then I will be removed from her altogether.

    I appreciate your thoughts and your caring to share them!

    ❤️ Anita

    in reply to: A Personal Reckoning #451402
    anita
    Participant

    Thinking about you, Tee. Two days ago, you were waiting for the imaging to be done, and after that- the doctor appointment. I wonder where you’re at with that and how you’re feeling.

    Also, 2 days ago, you liked this quote: “The important thing is not to think much, but to love much; do, then, whatever most arouses you to love.”-

    Do whatever most arouses you to love right now.. to love Tee, to love others.

    I love you!

    Anita

    in reply to: Struggling to settle in new role #451401
    anita
    Participant

    How are you, Tom???

    in reply to: Seeking clarity about a relationship #451400
    anita
    Participant

    How is Going Through Life feeling/ doing these days?

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