My weekly ritual for looking at my the week that was.

Last week I made it to the “other side” of abandoning hope.
This week I got to experience what it’s like to live in this land of “no hope” for good.
Guess what I found: peace.

Yes, peace. Who would have thunk it? Who would have known that all you had to do to be at peace was to let go?
(First person to say “Mary, *everyone* knows that” will get a very unfriendly look from Imo)

I haven’t achieved “enlightenment” (haha, wouldn’t that be nice!) but I am definitely calmer around… Well, around things I can’t change.
I am calmer around “The Dream”. Because I’ve let it go. Kind of.

Frankly, people talk a lot of crap about “letting go”, about how it’s the answer to everything.
And they conveniently leave out how “letting go” is a process akin to death.
So yes, there are advantages to being “on the other side”. I do like peace.
But darn it, it was seriously challenging.

OK. Let’s log.

• Return from the “not-holiday”. Grateful for smooth transition.

• I met someone. A pretty cool person! Grateful for meeting someone new and not screwing up completely.

• Catching up with friend. Grateful for friend and for friend being in a good place.

• Possibility. A whiff of possibility. Grateful, just for that.

• Work! Actual money will be coming in! Grateful for it.

• Hanging out with people and not completely falling apart! Grateful for this, again.

• I’m sprouting beans. Mung beans. Yay for discovering a new way of having food. And grateful for my first sprouting going well.

• Doing well at something completely unexpected. And the doing well being completely unexpected, since I was heading to it in a rather dark mood. Really grateful for this.

• Quiet in my head and my heart. Grateful for peace. And for my ability to acknowledge sorrow still.

• Growing up. This is what it’s all about. A breath for the challenges that come from living.

Moments of Insight

Ahm… Did I mention “peace”?
Yes, of course I had already heard of “letting go is the way to peace”, but there’s a Universe of difference between “knowing” and “living it”.

For what it’s worth, I never thought I would be able to let go of “The Dream”, not even slightly.
And yet… some of the “emotional charge” is gone. Just like that.

Here’s a bonus insight:
I am positive this has been said before by someone, somewhere, but this high sensitivity and tendency towards “negativity” and “depression” can be a seriously powerful superpower for finding Truth.

In other words: there is nothing wrong with being highly sensitive and having a tendency towards “negativity” and “depression”. Yes, it’s painful, regularly, but there is nothing “wrong” with being like this.

And if you ask me, recognising that “there is nothing wrong with us” is the first step towards healing.

Things of Considerable Worth (Un-missables!)

• What a shaman sees in a mental hospital.

This article is blowing my mind. Like… woah.

I mean, I am familiar with the idea that Western medicine’s approach to mental illness is evil and misguided. But this interpretation? That “mental illness” signals the “birth of a healer”?
Woah.

And yes, I do realise that it might very well apply to me, as someone who wants to help people with mental illness heal.

Yay! I’m logging like a pro!
Grateful for this as well :)