From Impure Thoughts to Thoughts of Self-Acceptance

Growing up Catholic, going to confession was a regular ritual in my family.  Once a month, my mom would drag my siblings and me to a church three towns away so we could tell a priest our sins.  Truth be told, it was equal parts humiliating, cathartic, and simply a task that was part of my Catholic upbringing.  Nevertheless, I always felt better afterward, because (a) I felt that for the 15 seconds while I did my penance in the church pew I was devoid of all human sin; and/or (b) the whole thing was over until the next month; and/or (c) we typically went out to eat afterward.

The problem with confession as I saw it was that I typically wound up confessing the same slew of sins each month, particularly the personal biggie: "impure thoughts."  When I was old enough to realize that having such impure thoughts was even a sin, I asked my mother how to confess such a thing.  My mother, being the cradle Catholic/enlightened woman that she was, had the apropos response for her precocious child:  "In that case, you say that you've had 'impure thoughts.'"  I was thankful to her for giving me the perfect catch-all for such a complex-to-me-at-the-time-kind-of-sin.

Now that I'm all grown up, I know that these "impure thoughts" are simply a fact of life that can't be erased from my mind no matter how much I try.  After all, I'm a human being with a fully functioning brain and body that are intended for making babies but which serve so many other purposes.   Now I'm not ashamed for such impure thoughts that enter my mind because it reminds me that I'm alive and thriving, and that my body is as engaged as my mind, which is a beautiful, biological thing.  

Furthermore, trying to erase thoughts of any kind only increases the potential for such thoughts to squirm back in, because that's just how the mind works.  We have an uncanny way of rebelling against ourselves, don't we?  (Well, at least I do.)  While I've evolved to know that impure thoughts are natural and acceptable, there are always other things I'm working on or striving to improve, different spiritual philosophies have taught me that self-judgment does not an enlightened mind make (a Buddhist philosphy instead of a Catholic one), which in my adulthood seem so much more logical and practicable. 

Only until we accept ourselves for our various shortcomings, weaknesses, and transgressions, et al. are we more likely to find success in changing and overcoming them, because it is upon self-acceptance that achievement in overcoming shortcomings suddenly becomes wholly and truly attainable. 

Feeling guilty about our weaknesses or failings only consumes energy that could be applied to more positive areas of our life that could by default reshape our focus away from our weak areas.  Since our bodies and minds only have so much energy, as it releases from the negative to the positive these thoughts/actions happen less often or, if you're truly a saint, not at all.  (Though who wants to have no "impure thoughts" at all?  Isn't that what makes us perhaps a little more interesting and endearing? I like to think so.)

Finding Home

Why I've only gotten into the Dexter series now that it is in its final season is beyond me, but in picking Season 7 up (via Netflix) midstream I have belatedly realized all that I've been missing out on for the past seven years.  Oh, well.  Better late than never, right? 

What distinguishes the show from others is that it is both plot AND character driven, revealing a complicated protagonist, Dexter, who happens to be a symphathetic killer, since he "only" kills the bad guys.  One of my favorite aspects of the show is that we get to hear Dexter's inner monologue, at times wry and sadistic, and other times tender and thought-provoking.  According to those in the know, Dexter's emotional capacity has evolved throughout the seasons, with him revealing in Season 7 the ability to experience the depth of love in a way that he never has before.

In "Argentina," the show's aptly titled Episode 8 of Season 7, Dexter makes a poignant declaration at the end of the show about the idea of finding your own version of home in the world, where he says:

          No matter where we go, we take ourselves and our damage with us. So is
          home the place we run to or is it the place we run from? Only to hide out
          in places where we are accepted unconditionally, places that feel more like
          home to us. Because we can finally be who we are.

The statement struck a chord in me because it was not only beautifully stated, but because it rings so true.  Whether we have it, had it, or are continually searching for it, we are all always longing for that place -- whether physically or mentally -- that we can call home, that place where we can just be. 

It's a place where we are not always understood, perhaps, but where we are completely accepted, where we are free to be our sometimes silly, oddball selves, so much so that our quirks -- those so-called issues/isms/little things that we may be ashamed to share with some people -- are not only openly received, but are cherished, nurtured, and loved.  Sadly, for some, that place may never be found, but for those who've stumbled upon it, it is truly the ultimate of all places to find and to be, if you are so lucky.

And that's all for tonight. 

The Power of Now: Who knew being present could feel so good?

I’m reticent to say a particular book has changed my life to avoid sounding overly dramatic and impressionable, but let’s just be honest here: The Power of Now blew my effing mind away. 

I have read other books that have transformed my thinking:  The War of Art, The Power of Habit, The Secret, and The Four Agreements.  And while I don’t want to discount their value, particularly since they all likewise had lasting impressions on me, The Power of Now took things to the next level for me.

With a Buddhist bent, though with no particular religious affiliation, the book deals with such themes as time (past, present, future), the true self, peace vs. pleasure, and consciousness vs. unconsciousness.  As someone who often grapples with worrying and sometimes anxiety, particularly about the unknown future, Eckhart Tolle’s words spoke to me in an extremely profound way, in a way that I’ve never heard them before – or perhaps have been open to hearing them before.  “You can always cope with the Now, but you can never cope with the future – nor do you have to.  The answer, the strength, the right action or the resource will be there when you need it, before, not after,” Tolle writes. 

While I pride myself on being a pretty good communicator (I thank my Moms for that one), I find myself in my head a lot – thinking, processing, analyzing.  (Maybe it's my INFJ/Piscean combination, who knows.)  Only until reading Pema Chodron’s teachings and then reading this book, did I realize how counterproductive that is, how unnecessary that constant thinking, processing, and analyzing actually IS to making good decisions and attaining the best, most meaningful life possible, which is what we're all striving toward, right?  While Pema Chodron’s words in her beautiful simplicity made complete sense to me, I wasn’t quite sure how to DO it, how to even begin stepping outside my mind.  Tolle put it this way:   

You are cut off from Being as long as your mind takes up all your attention.  When this happens – and it happens continuously for most people – you are not in your body. . . .  To become conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from the mind. . . . It will free vast amounts of consciousness that previously have been trapped in useless and compulsive thinking.  A very effective way of doing this is simply to take the focus of your attention away from thinking and direct it into the body, where Being can be felt in the first instance as the invisible energy field that gives life to what you perceive as the physical body. 

Since reading this one little paragraph have I been able to reduce my overthinking, by focusing what is going on at the given moment.  Here I am typing on this keyboard/sipping my tea/my legs are extended and crossed at my ankles/a cold draft is hitting my calves.  In other words, I am in the complete present – not feeling bad about some stupid comment I made to a coworker the other day, not regretting the ice cream I had last night, not worrying about making sure I work out today.  I am completely and utterly in the present, because that’s all there is – not the past, not the future, but the present. 

Even in our present lives, though, there are circumstances or situations that make us unhappy or dissatisfied.  These may be where we live, our jobs, friendships or relationships, certain addictive behaviors, and even our daily routines.  Tolle suggests that “[w]herever you are, be there totally”, but “[i]f you find you’re here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally.”  Being in the present is the knowing you have the power to change the situation and that the situation does not have power over you.   That is such a freeing concept to me:  the idea that we are as much in control of our life situation as we are our life destiny.

There’s so much more, but as with everything it's much better experienced firsthand.  Just read the book, and if you're as taken by it as I was, they even have The Power of Now Inspiration Cards!  (Totally worth it, in my humble opinion.)  I may not have it all figured out, but so long as I have the tools I’m at least partway there, right?  That's what I tell myself anyway.

"What You Won't Do For Love"

I am utterly obsessed with Jessie Ware these days. 

Her voice, her style, her essence and soul -- to me, she represents everything that I love about music.  Needless to say, if you haven't heard about her, you're missing out.  Tonight I discovered a cover she did of one of my very favorite songs of the 1970s, Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do For Love", and it's so disgustingly beautiful I can't stop listening to it. 

Even though the original is one of my favorite songs of all time, I am honestly not sure whether the original or Jessie's remake is better.  (As a sidenote, 2Pac and Gwen McCrae also have some pretty fine renditions of the tune as well.)  Alas, without any further adieu, here's a side by side of Jessie's version and Bobby's version.

 

Overwhelmed by TMI

I have been feeling overwhelmed by too much information lately. Not in the “I’m-all-offended-because you’re-telling-me-too-much-information” kind of way, but more in the “I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-all-this-information-overload-in-the-world” kind of way. 

And the Internet is in large part to blame.

It has become so fundamental to us for so many things – for researching, for communicating, for creating, which is why I freaking love it. Practically everything you need to or want to know is on there, at your fingertips at any given time. But because of this kind of access, the Internet has produced a kind of live information feed of EVERYTHING that you either WANT or DON'T WANT to hear or read about.  And it all has become incredibly overwhelming.

I am admittedly a full participant in what the web has to offer: I’ve got my various social networking accounts and profiles (Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, you name it); I keep most of my favorite websites on Google Reader, except for the stragglers that I have bookmarked on various computers, the lack of organization of which is, quite honestly, driving me bananas these days; and I have my various favorite go-to news sites (in particular, the Daily Beast and Huffington Post). 

While I like to feel connected and informed on current matters, there is an undesirable byproduct of this all, which is as true and as cliched as it sounds: information overload.  For this reason, I admire my good friend Elizabeth who up and quit Facebook cold turkey several months ago. She finds herself more content and at peace, not to mention the fact that she doesn't even miss it.  She has also found herself making more of an effort to initiate contact with her friends and family the old-fashioned way:  via telephone or email. While I admire that, I know that quitting Facebook is not the answer.

Because for me, it’s a bigger issue.  This was revealed to me as I was driving home last night clicking through all my SiriusXM presets and feeling overwhelmed by that too. I love the liberty of being able to choose, but what good is choice when it becomes so limitless that we continually feel unsettled in our decision(s)?

Technology is supposed to streamline things – and it does in many ways – but if the side effects are stress, dissatisfaction, and feelings of being overwhelmed, something ain’t right, right? While I want to find a way to scale back my reliance and the pressure I feel from it, I know that giving it up completely is not realistic or something that would be beneficial to me, since it is very much a fabric of our/my contemporary existence.  And, besides, I like a lot of what technology has to offer.

I am a believer in self-awareness, especially as it relates to being the first step toward addressing anything.  So, for now I'm going to sit tight and think about it for a bit, but my hunch is that I might need to simplify my life or tweak my perspective.  But if you have any tips or pearls of wisdom in the meantime, I’m all ears, and eyes, AND fingertips. (Oh, you know it's true.) 

Week-end Lessons Learned

At my job, “Lessons Learned” are what we assess, discuss, and analyze at the end of a project. By looking at a completed project as something that can be learned from, rather than something that simply goes away when the project is complete, the team is forced to look at a completed project as a series of potential lessons that can be applied to future projects or tasks.

I like to think of life this way, too. As we navigate through life, we know only what we know at the time, but if we’re continually open to learning from our experiences (which consist of a combination of both mistakes and successes) we become better, more evolved people.

My personal Lessons Learned from this week are as follows:

1. When in doubt always carry flats in your bag. Heels are necessary with certain outfits – dresses, skirts, slacks – but they are inappropriate and uncomfortable for walking around a city. With heels on your feet and flats in your bag, you can have the best of both worlds.

 2. Strip clubs are really just bars with naked chicks in them. The dancers do not necessarily have better bodies than you do and some even have small tatas. Also, they carry shiny pink wristlets to collect their dollar bills, which they’re not afraid to count in public.

3. When you’re traveling, the only thing you can count on is a healthy breakfast. So pay for that $7 oatmeal. It may be the only chance you get for a healthy meal and it’s likely not much more expensive than the cardboard-tasting cereal bar at the hotel store.

 4. The “Little Burger” at Five Guys might possibly be better than sex and is completely worth breaking your predominantly plant-based diet for.  The fries are great too -- don't get me wrong -- but the Little Burger is truly something special.

 5. When a man at a bar says to you,“You’re gorgeous/Can I get your number?/Are you married?/What do you do? I’m a lawyer” and then sticks out his limp-like-spaghetti hand, go ahead and believe it when he says you’re gorgeous (because - why the heck not?), but don’t believe that he’s a lawyer.  Also, when someone of the opposite sex comes up to you and asks you if you are a particular nationality, such as Scandinavian or Norwegian, apparently that’s a come-on. Take it as a compliment and tell him/her you’re American.

 6. The music at W Hotels is always sexy and intoxicating and is the inspiration for my obsession with iTunes playlists.  Why I like music that makes me feel sexy and intoxicating is no matter, but you can score the soundtrack here.

7. Jazz-soul artist Alice Smith is back with a vengeance, and her new album, She, includes Cee-Lo Green's cover of "Fool For You," which is just sick. The entire album is raw, soulful, and classy, just the way I like it.

8. There are these Asian noodles called "Pasta Zero Plus" that have only 20 calories per serving. But don't get too excited. They're actually kind of disgusting, contain no nutritional value, don't fill you up (duh, right?), and are just not worth the $3.

Five TGIF Thoughts

1. Just because I have an English degree doesn’t mean that other people’s pronunciations don’t sometimes make me second guess what I previously believed to be grammatically or phoentically correct. For example, I’ve been hearing smart people pronouncing breakfasts as breakfastses lately and it’s gotten me all confused and paranoid.  It's breakfasts, right?  Same goes for the word suppose used in the following manner: “It was suppose to be fun.” It’s supposed, right? Right?  Please tell me I'm right.  (But if I'm not, please don't say I'm right just to be nice.)

2. If you’re in the market for a Rolls Royce sports bra (and as a lass who wants to keep her girls “high and tight” I think you should be), this is the one. For the past couple years, I’ve been wearing this Cadillac-level sports bra, and it’s been extremely supportive, albeit a bit of a failure in the comfort department (think lots of digging in the ribcage during crunches).  The Panache bra is a much smoother ride. A little flashy and a little pricy, maybe, but no one said taking good care of your goods is cheap.  Editor's Note: this recent French study just released suggests that bras don't prevent sagging; however, study results are "preliminary."  Until then, I'm going to continue to support mine, especially during l'exercice.

3. I have always always written off country music as honky-tonk hunky dory, rhythmless, and BORE-ing.  Even in the past several years with the whole country-cum-pop movement did I refuse to jump on that train. But last weekend I heard Taylor Swift’s “Fifteen” on the radio and it made me feel like I was 15 again, and I kinda liked it. You know the way Ben Folds Five's Whatever and Ever Amen makes you feel? Yeah, that's what I mean. Of course, as soon as got home I had to download the song, which was shortly followed by a download of the entire album. Now I’m a fan of The Band Perry too. What the hell is wrong with me? (Seriously, what the hell is wrong with me?)

4. I read this quote from Portia de Rossi today and it captured the essence [of those who are choosing not to have children] beautifully:

       There comes some pressure in your mid-30s, and you think, Am I  
       going to have kids so I don’t miss out on something that other people
       really seem to love? Or is it that I really genuinely want to do this with my
      whole heart? I didn’t feel that my response was ‘yes’ to the latter. You have
      to really want to have kids, and neither of us did. So it’s just going to be me
      and Ellen and no babies -- but we’re the best of friends and married life is
      blissful, it really is. I’ve never been happier than I am right now.

5. A spray tan has the power to make you feel super sexy (not to mention, tight and toned in all the right places), especially in April if your skin hasn’t seen the light of day since September.  Who cares if you're not going to be wearing a bikini anytime soon?  Plus, with a spray tan, you can elect to get a subtle tan line here and there, because let's just be real: tan lines are pretty hot.