The Resurrection if Jaymie

The celebration of Easter, from a metaphysical stand point, is a celebration of a metaphorical death and rebirth, the act of letting go of all of those things that do not serve us and turning over a new leaf. Its a wonderful time to explore those things in our life that we want to do differently and those things that we want to accomplish. As you know, I am myself going though quite the life transformation, and this has been heavy on my mind. I will use this weekend as a spring board to jump into the Jaymie that I want to be, instead of continuing to be the Jaymie I used to THINK I was.

Here are my tasks:

1. Stop belittling myself and see myself for who I REALLY am.

I am a divine creation, just like everything else in the universe. I have spent WAY too much time (too many years) letting other people's opinions affect my own view of myself. I apologize too much. I worry too much. I look to other people to validate me. F that! I know that I am a beautiful human being, and I don't need anyone to tell me that. I have a plethora of wonderful qualities that I need to tout instead of living in fear and worrying about what other people think of me. And the same goes for you, too. :) Opinions are subjective, and not worth a damn. On the flip side, I won't seek approval from others, either. I will simply KNOW in my own heart that I am the shiz! I will treat myself the way that I want to be treated. And if someone says something bad about me, I will let it roll of my back and keep walking forward, and thank them for challenging me to be better (as Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith said today at Agape). I will remain determined to accomplish what I want to accomplish on my own terms.

2. Stop using crutches and abusing myself physically.

Will I ever stop drinking all together? I don't know...maybe not. I'm not going to put that pressure on myself. But I can say that I will no longer come home and kill a bottle of wine myself in 30 minutes. I will not use alcohol to dull my mind and feel more at ease. If I cannot learn to feel at ease on my own, then CLEARLY I need to learn how. I need to learn how to have 1 or 2 glasses of wine and call it a night.

And the smoking? Gross. It doesn't do my any good. I THINK that I need it when I'm stressed, but it doesn't help. It hurts my lungs, damages my liver, makes my skin nasty, makes me smell, makes my teeth yellow, makes my breath stink....gross.

And the junk food? Well, let's take it one step at a time. :) But I WILL exercise! I've already lost about 10 pounds!

3. I will tell all of those that I love that I love them. I will live in gratitude and generosity.

Gratitude creates good feelings and good feelings lead to more good feelings. We all like to live in a manner that makes us feel good. Appreciate those around you. Live abundantly, and not from a place of lack. The more you give, the more you shall receive. Not only that, but it just feels so good to help put a smile on someone's face! I think that is the best feeling of all.

4. Stop judging.

I have touched on this in a previous post...there is no room for negative opinions, or opinions in general, really. My opinion differs from yours anyway, and all we can do is take a chance looking at something from someone else's perspective. I know that I don't like it when people judge me, so why should I judge others? Besides, eliminating that bit of negativity in my life will only make space for more positivity.

5. Ignore the fear. Move forward.

This is a big one. A hard one. I read recently that (and I paraphrase) "courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to move forward despite it." I can't tell you how often I have held myself back because of fear. Often, I'm not even aware that I am afraid! Fear comes in the form of excuses for why I can't do something or accomplish something. Imagine all of the things I could have accomplished had I just forgotten the fear and done it anyway...and I mean do things with 100% effort. Sometimes I want to feel sad for those things that I have missed out on...but there is no use for that. I must forget it and move forward, and recognize that I have so much time let on this planet to accomplish so many things!

There is an excellent book that a friend recommended to me, which I recommend to you: Mindset by Carol S. Dweck. It discusses how some of us come to challenges and we back away from them, or make excuses based on a lack of talent or skills, whereas other come to a challenge and they learn from their mistakes and they grow from what they learn and push forward. It's a great book and has helped me grow.

6. Stop the blame game, and learn to forgive.

Just like opinions, blame doesn't help either. It's so easy to fall into the blame game...to be honest, I'm still playing it a bit myself. Rev. Michael also said today, that there will always be someone who betrays us. That helps us grow and become stronger and move forward. We can not escape hurt, but we can learn from our experiences. So we must not place blame...again, try to see the perspective coming from the other side, acknowledge what we want to blame ourselves for and turn to look forward. Blaming and not taking time to forgive ourselves will keep us spinning forever in the same place, never moving forward. I think, once we learn to forgive ourselves, we can learn to forgive others. It seems to be a hard thing to do for most of us, but those of us who can are much more at ease.

I hope that you find my experiences helpful to you in some way. I want to do my part to help in whatever way I can. I've grown tremendously over the past 5 years, and I think that if I can do it, anyway can do it. :)

Cleansing/Clarity

I decided to start a detox today, particularly to ease myself of my addiction to smoking and eating too much (craving large amounts of fats and sugars). I find that the detox hits the "reset" button in my system - I purge all of those things which are not good for me, allowing an open gateway to replace those things with healthier choices. While eliminating the nicotine from my system, I also get rid of the toxins from all of the processed food that I eat (and I LOVE me some processed food), and if I hold out long enough, I can curb my sugar cravings.

AND...it clears the mind.

The detox is by no means comfortable. In fact, while reading this you may find it choppy or find spelling or grammatical errors...I haven't eaten much today. But what I found throughout the day was that I was not feeling miserable because I was hungry, rather I was feeling miserable because I was going through withdrawals. For the first half of the day I felt miserable. I tried to avoid feeling wasted by drinking more and more juice, more water, I made some tea...when it got really bad I had a little hummus with cucumber slices, then went back to strictly juice. Then I did something I have never done before (and I don't recommend it)...I went to my bi-weekly spin class.

I knew this was, logically, not a good idea. But spiritually, I had to do it. I couldn't allow myself to miss an entire week, and I had already missed monday. I figured I could take it easy, and if I got light-headed or felt ill I would stop and go home. And I did. The first 10 minutes I felt tired and slow, and then I noticed that I felt a little bit of a chill in my body, something a kin to fever chills but not so intense or uncomfortable. Imagining that my nervous system was going through the process of "resetting," I pedaled on, aware of the movement of my body but feeling more like I was floating above the bike than attached to to. When the shivering stopped (it maybe lasted 10 minutes), I just felt GOOD. Slow, but GOOD. I didn't feel hungry, I didn't feel ill, I didn't feel pain. I just felt GOOD. And most importantly, I stopped thinking. The chatter in my brain stopped, the anxiety stopped, the self-deprecation stopped. I had the most wonderful moments of JUST BEING. Being all that is me and not what I THINK is me, completely in the moment...free. And free feels good. :)

I think that this is what I gain the most out of my detox sessions, which I admittedly don't do very often, but when I feel the need to "reset." And I will push through for the next day or two until I feel that I have accomplished what I needed to accomplish, then I will move forward with my best foot, setting intentions for myself, continuing to be the best me that I can be. It's a starting point for change. As Jennifer put it tonight in class, a "resurrection." Letting go of the old, the unnecessary the destructive, and coming to life in the new, healthy life that I want to live.

More to come on this...