From May 10 – 19, I will be participating in Momalom‘s Five for Ten.  The next ten days will provide  an opportunity for bloggers to connect in a meaningful way by writing about the same topics and having discussions across a number of blogs.

I am really excited to participate (and you can too; just click the button for more details).  Courage is the first of five topics and I have written a Letter to Q.

___________________________________

Dear Q,

Have the courage of your convictions. Remember that what you know to be true is more important than what you have been taught to believe.  Know your worth and have the courage to trust it.

This world will try to convince you of your inadequacy.  It will condition you to respond to and crave praise, validation, and recognition.   It wants you to conform to its expectations because that makes you more predictable and manageable.  It wields incredible power and seeks control.

You are powerful beyond measure.  You have the power of your self, your mind, and your feelings.  You have power over your reactions, your choices, and your expectations.

This world I know will teach you to believe that you need others to prove your worth and that you need others to define your success.  You hold that power.  You define your success; your worth is intrinsic.

Don’t be afraid of rejection.  It’s subjective and relative and never about you.  Choose courage.  Put yourself out there; follow your passions, your dreams and your heart.  Believe in the power of you and have the courage to be your best.

In Illusions, Richard Bach wrote “I am tired of clinging.  Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going.”

What you are clinging to?  Why are you clinging?  Why are you afraid to let go?  Trust the current, for the current is your immeasurable power.  It will take you to your true desire if you have the courage to let it.  It will set you free if you believe in it.  It will give you peace if you release yourself from the fear of rejection.

Choose courage and allow your self the freedom to be.

Love always,
Mom

The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born?  Where is your home?
Where are you going? What are you doing?
Think about these once in awhile, and
watch your answers change.

That is from one of my favourite books, Illusions by Richard Bach. I love that book.  No matter how many times I read it, it makes me think.

There are so many answers to each of those questions, simple as they seem.  The ones I am currently preoccupied with are What are you doing?  Where are you going?

What am I doing?  Where am I going?  And, maybe the bigger question is does it matter? Does it matter what I am doing or where I am going?  Does it matter if I don’t know the answers?

The trajectory of my life is changing with every moment that passes – every choice I make.  Some of the most mundane choices can influence the most profound changes.

So, I wonder – what am I doing?  What choices will I make today and where will they take me?

I had a conversation with a lab rat in my dream last night.  I was also the rat.  The lab rat was voluntarily subjecting herself to experiments.  She wore a lab coat and being an experimental  rat was her job.

Me: Why do you let them do this to you?

Rat: Do humans not volunteer their bodies to science experiments?

Me: Well, yes… but usually for money

Rat: I am compensated

Me: You are?

Rat: Yes.  Every morning, I wake up and realise that the new day has requested my presence in it.

Me: Would you not get that anyway?

Rat: The work that I do makes it all the more significant.

Is that not weird?  I am not one to analyse my own dreams, but what do you make of this?

Dear Q,

Perspective: get it and keep it.

It is so easy for our lives to swallow us up.  We become so immersed in our lives and our ways of doing things that it becomes easy to forget, or not even realise that other people do things differently.

Step back.  Step out of your life bubble and look at your life and those around you with as much objectivity as possible.  Get some perspective.  The more you can see, the more perspective you will have.  Keep that perspective – visit that vantage point often.

Remember that there is no right way to live; the way you live your life is right for you, and the way others live theirs is right for them.  If you are open to how other people live, you can learn a lot from them.

Love always,
Mommy

Dear Q,

If anything is absolute, it’s love.  It’s existence is not relational or relative to anything else.  It requires nothing else to exist.

Love is not bound by time or space.  It has no memory and knows not race, gender, religion or language.

Love is all around you and within you – it is everywhere and it is immediate.  It is not an action or a reaction; it simply is.  Always.

When this world encourages you to be to greedy, resentful, vengeful, or cruel, let yourself feel love.  Be love.  Show love.

When in doubt, love.

Love,
Mommy

I have always loved dreaming.  Sometimes, I go to sleep just so I can dream – and often, to finish a dream.  Yes, finish my dreams.  I have always had very vivid dreams and lucid recollections of them. At the risk of sounded cliché or crazy, I will say that my dreams are so real that it seems like they transport me.  Arguably, they feel as real when I am in them as my perceived reality feels when I am in it.

When I was kid, I pictured a TV in my head as I was falling asleep (no wonder my parents took our TV away for a few years).  As I fell asleep, I would ‘flip through the channels’ and choose what I wanted to dream about.  I would skip through the scary ones and settle on the the ones that made me feel good.  It wasn’t until much later in life that I realized that this was uncommon. It served me well.  Though, I don’t have to do it anymore, I sometimes will for fun and nostalgia.

Now, I can fall asleep to finish a dream from the night (or nap) earlier.  Usually, I see where the dreams take me and go along for the ride, but when I know I am dreaming, I can dictate what happens next, when it ends, or who will appear in it.

As a result of my connections to my dreams, sometimes the distinctions between my perceived reality and my dreams blur.  I often do things in my dreams that I need to do in my reality and then I think they have actually been done.

Recently, I read the following passage in Mysticism and the New Physics by Michael Talbot (page 6 in my copy)

“I may dream that I am sitting at a table having breakfast and talking with my friends, but when I wake, I know that both I and my friends are part of the continuum of the dream. To say that there are many ‘consciousnesses’ in the dream is merely a semantic distinction. All the people in the dream are illusions. They …are constructions of consciousness”

Interesting and provocative.

What does that say about reality and consciousness?  Could it be. . . that saying there are many consciousnesses in reality is also a semantic distinction and that people in reality are constructions of one consciousness?  Illusions. . .?

Not long ago, I watched Horton Hears a Who (which is a cute movie, by the way).  Dr. Seuss is deep and Whoville always gets me thinking.

In Horton Hears a Who, Whoville – an entire world – is in a speck of dust atop a clover flower and the Whos had no idea that there was anything bigger beyond them. . . much less many, many MUCH bigger things – like Horton who is an elephant!

So, it got me thinking. . .

How do we know that our world isn’t in a speck of dust atop a clover flower?

. . .and what if it is?

Dear Q,

In a momentary lapse of judgement, clarity . . .sanity, I surrendered my happiness to the expectations of someone else. Actually, it wasn’t even that person’s expectations that I surrendered to, but my assumption of what those expectations were.

There are many lessons to be learned from this about assumptions, expectations, happiness, and sacrifice.  I am going to focus on expectations.

In this world, there are few things more powerful than expectations. They govern our emotions, our actions, and our reactions.  If they are not met, we feel fear, anger, disappointment, frustration, sadness, and sometimes. . . relief.  When they are met, we feel elated, satisfied, happy, relieved, and sometimes. . . disappointed.  The emotional reaction is relative to the expectations.

Expectations are complicated and more powerful than this world would have you believe.  Society expects specific behaviour of people who belong to any given collective, including racial identity, gender identity, sex, ability status, economic status, education level, age, religion, etc.  Failure to meet these expectations is often met with fear and persecution.   The expectations form the box within which each person is (awkwardly) placed.  The boxes, built with expectations, are all labeled and neatly stacked with others that are presumably the same – in nice homogeneous stacks.  At least, that is what this would would have you believe.

Society also expects things of individuals.  Individuals expect things of individuals.  These expectations vary relative to the individual for whom they are created.  Parents have expectations of their children – from cleaning up, to getting married.  Teachers have expectations of their individual students.  Children have expectations of their parents and their teachers.  The general public has expectations of public figures, athletes, politicians, artists, musicians.  Bosses have expectations of their employees.  Employees have expectations of their bosses – respect, money.  Customers have expectations of service providers, etc.  The list is endless.

They say that money makes the world go ’round, but no one tells you that the structure that money flows within is built on expectations.  It’s deep and it’s complex and it’s powerful.

If this sounds confusing, that is because it is; it’s supposed to be.

Manage your expectations – check them.  Where do they come from?

Of whom do you expect things? Why?
Who expects things of you? Why?

Are your expectations reasonable? Are they just?  Assess your reactions to unmet expectations of other people.  Are they reasonable?  Are they just?

I will tell you that meeting expectations, or at least appearing to, is far easier than not.  It is difficult and sometimes dangerous to defy them – it can lead to jail, death, but also freedom.

We are bound by expectations.  They keep us in our boxes and make us safe and predictable.  But in so doing, they leave us crumpled, trapped, and gasping for air.

Be aware of what is expected of you.  As often as possible, manage the expectations others have of you as an individual.  Don’t imply that you will when you won’t.   Don’t suggest you won’t if you intend to.

If this seems daunting, it’s because it is.  Expectations are hard to navigate and this world will condition you to not even realise that they are there.

Be strong.  Be you.  Be free to seek your true happiness based on what you know to be true, not on what someone else expects you to believe.  Above all, be.

Love always,
Mom

After years of reading, pondering, and reflecting, I have discovered a very interesting thing about myself… an underlying belief that has not only made me question most everything that anyone has tried to teach me, but that has influenced my interactions, perceptions, and assumptions.

I don’t believe in fundamental absolute truths.

I’ll let that sink in.  It’s pretty radical, I know.

I believe that everything is relative.  Quantum physicists refer to a ‘contingent universe’ where there are liklihoods and probabilities, but nothing is absolute.

It’s a counter-intuitive concept, as it conflicts with most of what I have been taught to believe – like, the grass is green.  Not only is the grass not always green (often it’s a bleached brown colour), who says my green is your green?  The sky is not always blue, either – at the moment, it a light grey, a few hours ago it was black, and a few hours before that, it was a mixture of pink and red.  The colours are relative to the time of year, the time of day, the location of the person perceiving them… etc, etc.  These are simple examples, I admit.  But, the relative nature of ‘truth’ remains.

I have written before about the restrictive nature of  what I have been taught to believe in this world.   I can only hope that as my life goes on, I can release myself from some of the bindings of belief and free my mind to open up to the possibilities that abound when absolute truths are neither absolute, nor truth.

Dear Q,

Human identity is almost  entirely based upon the physical form – the body.  Our gender, our race, our ability status, our age, our sexual orientation, our sexuality, etc, are attributes of our physical selves.  Everything except what we know is attached to our physical form.  Our physical form determines our worth.  Right or wrong, that is what I know about the world in which we live.

Our physical form embodies us.  It makes us visible and gives us shape.  Our bodies enable us, and they limit us.  You will not be able to escape the labels that people put upon you based upon your physical form, but remember that it does not represent the essence of you.  It is temporary and when you leave Earth, it will stay here.  You will still exist.

Love,
Mom