2016 New Year's Letter to Myself

It's been awhile since I've visited this space, shared in this space, and shared this space with others. I miss writing about what matters to me in a space intended for just that, a brave space. One of my intentions this year is to write more, write consistently, and write beyond my required and academic writing projects. To begin this intention, I'll share my 2016 New Year's Letter to Myself. As always, I would love to hear your responses and comments. I'm looking at this space as a place to grow, learn and listen compassionately, listen to myself as well as listen to my readers. 

Letter to Myself

Three things that worked for me were, 1) attending conferences in August and October with the Contemplative Mind in Society where I was surrounded by like-minded academicians passionate about social justice, specifically focusing on racism, and discovering and sharing ways to bring contemplative practices into higher education in the service of social justice work, 2) serving as a graduate assistant in a womanist spiritual activism class where I learned a lot about myself through contemplative practices, a lot about my students and my beloved community, and about many spiritual activists contributing to positive personal and social transformation on a local and global level and, 3) taking the time to locate and visit nature and hiking trails conveniently located and possessing the energy I am looking for in creating a contemplative practice inclusive of spending time in nature.

After contemplating on these and many other things that worked for me, I commit to continuing these practices and possibly adding a few more as time and energy allow.

Three things that didn’t work so well for me in 2015 would be, 1) the negative self-talk or hyper vigilance to my inability to overcome depression at times as well as lack of motivation, 2) my lack of self-care in regards to honoring my body and energy level and taking time to rest and do things that energize me and fill my tank before I’m on empty and, 3) my lack of consistently practicing compassionate listening.

On this day, January 1, 2016, I make a commitment to working on changing these things that didn’t work so well for me in 2015. I will pay attention to my self-talk, listen to my body and heed it’s needs and, listen with compassion to others in need of a space to be heard.

There were so many good things about 2015 so I’ll just limit it to a few. I travelled a lot and fed my spirit and senses. I welcomed my granddaughter Reverie Hope Rangel into the family, the world and specifically into Los Angeles, California. I met a few new friends that I hope to get to know deeper in the coming year. I began practicing mindfulness in more ways on more days. I became a vegetarian and not one of those that preaches or condemns meat eaters. I’ve visited my daughter twice in Houston and went on a road trip to Atlanta with her over the Christmas holiday. I presented at several women’s studies conferences, both local and nationally on subjects near and dear to my heart. I submitted something I wrote, didn’t get accepted but submitted nonetheless, which is a huge endeavor on an emotional level. There is so much more...

The hard parts of 2015 include my insecurity in my work and in my personal life in regards to relationships, friendship and otherwise. Depression, mild as it is, has and will probably always have some effect on me, and thus my perspective on life and love and loneliness. I found myself isolating quite a bit. I push people away, usually unconsciously, when I need solitude instead of asking or expressing my needs, as I fear being stigmatized. I guess I would have to say a sense of loneliness and not belonging would be the hardest parts of 2015.

My hopes for 2016 include working on these hard parts listed above, listening to my body, mind, and spirit as well as others in order to learn about myself as well as others. I also hope that I can celebrate the strides I attempt to make in these challenges as well as others that may arise. I wish to remember to have fun along the way, to not take everything so serious that I lose enchantment with all that is magic and miraculous in the world and in my life.

My focus for 2016 is on compassion, for self, others and all things. I also want to focus on listening with compassion, to self, others, and everything in the universe and beyond.

Thank you for reading and may peace be in you, surround you, and may this year be filled with positive transformations on all levels. 

~ Carla

Learning How to Float

Reading from The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have by Mark Nepo every morning has been and continues to be a positive way to start my mornings. I'll admit that sometimes the daily reading doesn't resonate with me so I'll skim to another day and find something that does. This morning the July 20th reading spoke to me and I smiled as July 20th is my mom's birthday so that makes it even more special to me. I want to quote some of what today's reading says verbatim as he says it in such a prolific way that I wouldn't want to lose its essence.

I've come to understand that this is the struggle we all replay between

doubt and faith. When thrust into any situation over our head, our reflex is to

fight with all our might the terrible feeling that we are sinking.

Yet the more we resist, the more we feel our own weight and wear ourselves out.

At times like this, I remember learning to float. Mysteriously, it required

letting almost all of me rest below the surface before the deep would

hold me up. It seems to me, almost forty years later, that the

practice of finding our faith is very much like that - we need to rest

enough of ourselves below the surface of things until we find ourselves upheld.

This is very hard to do. But the essence of trust is believing you will be held up if you let go.

And though we can practice relaxing our fear and meeting the deep, there is no real way to prepare

for letting go other than to just let go.

Once immersed, once below the surface, it is not by chance that things slow down, go clear,

feel weightless. Perhaps faith is nothing more than taking the risk to rest below the surface.

That we can't stay there only affirms that we must choose the deep again and again in order to live fully. That we must move through the sense of sinking before being upheld is what trusting

the Universe is all about.



I'm feeling some words that describe what this reading brings to mind for me: lack of control, surrendering, letting go, trusting, releasing, allowing.....

It's almost like until we trust and let go in a situation, we'll never have the experience of floating or being held up and therefore stay stuck in the fear and anxiety of non-trust. It's sort of a catch 22.  I must trust in the universe and let go of trying to control a situation in order to see that I'll float and develop trust yet how do I do this starting from a lack of trust. I guess it involves starting where I'm at even if that involves fear and doubt and anxiety. I guess it involves putting one toe in the water slowly but surely or does it involve diving in head first and throwing caution to the wind?

I like how he says, "we need to rest enough of ourselves below the surface of things until we find ourselves upheld" because it reminds me of putting one toe in, resting enough of ourselves....once I see I won't drown, I won't die from the experience even if it involves pain and suffering and disappointment. Then again I like the saying  "you're either in or out" and this makes me think there is no such thing as putting a toe in the water, testing the waters, I'm either in or out.

I really like "we must choose the deep again and again in order to live fully" because it is a gentle reminder that I must continue to take risks, face my fears, find trust and faith in the universe that I will float.

May you walk to the edge of your water (or comfort zone) and see it as an opportunity to sink or swim or in this case FLOAT......and may you feel the universe support you in your ability to trust that you will be upheld....







Reverse

What a New Year message!!

Thursday I came home from San Diego, California after attending the birth of my first grandchild, Sebastian Lyric Rangel; which I will be blogging about soon, trust me. For now, this message needed to be put out there because it has been on my mind all morning once I saw the symbolism in this experience.

I walked home from the Marta station after a 12 hour day of travelling home from California via 2 flights and a long layover in Houston. I unloaded my baggage and proceeded to drive my car after it sat for over 2 weeks in the street on the side of my house. After starting it and pulling out, it almost felt like I had a flat tire and some smell like oil or fluid of sorts was burning. The engine light flickered and I immediately thought "oh no, just what I need, car issues" when I can barely keep my head above water with graduate school expenses.

Upon pulling into a parking spot and realizing it was too small, I attempted to go into reverse only to discover the stick shift wouldn't go, no matter what. I thought oh well, I must really be tired so somehow I was lucky enough to have left room enough to get out of the spot without using reverse.

The next morning, I get into the car and try once again to reverse it out of the parking spot. Seriously, no reverse, this time I'm not tired, a little distressed, but not so tired that I couldn't manage to drive my car. I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out what to do to get my car out of this spot. I put the car in nuetral and released the parking brake and tried to push the car backward, in my pajamas to say the least, nothing but a few short feet and it would roll back to its original place. I'm not sure where I got the strength but I did and managed to push it far enough to run and jump back in and pull the brake up so I could start it and drive it forward out of the lot.

For the next 4 days, I set about getting an appointment with my mechanic to find out what the issue was. I was puzzled as my car was perfectly fine when I left, you'd think if it were a clutch or transmission issue, I'd have had some type of symptom before I left. I drove to an auto parts store only to be sent to the dealer to get transmission fluid per my mechanic's advice. He was going to call me Monday, today, to set up an appointment for a Tuesday drop off. I dreaded this as its money I really don't have to spend right now but I have to have a car so would have to deal with it somehow. Mind you I also spent a lot of time and worry trying to avoid parking that I couldn't get out of without a "Reverse" gear. Let me tell you, we take things as simple as this for granted. I didn't realize how many times I went to use my reverse without thinking just like turning on the light switch when the electricity is out numerous times forgetting that, duh, the electricity is out.

While laying in bed this morning, it dawned on me that my VW 5 speed stick shift is different than my son's Honda and I'd been driving his for the past 2 weeks. Then it hit me, what's different is that with my car, I have to push down the stick shift and go to the left and up for reverse. Oh my, did I really forget to push down on my stick shift, the one I'd been driving for 9 years, like it is a part of me??? So I jumped out of bed and ran out to see if this was the case and lo and behold, it was, human error, my inability to remember how to drive my car after 2 short weeks, wow...

So this is good news, no bad clutch or transmission. Good news in that after thinking about the symbolism of the issue with "going in reverse" I like to analyze my dreams so what's the difference between waking and sleeping symbolism, why couldn't something that happens while awake have just as much meaning as when we are deep in sleep. If we pay attention to our lives, minute to minute, there are messages everywhere.

So thinking about "Reverse" and the lack of being able to go into "Reverse" for these past 4 days
I've come up with 2 major themes I can learn from this experience.

1) What we believe, we experience. Since I thought I didn't have a reverse gear, I believed it and completely changed my way of doing things to compensate for not having this reverse. My belief that I didn't have the ability to reverse my direction in my car, made it real to me, no question about it, I was parking differently, choosing to avoid certain places if there wasn't adequate parking, not going somewhere because I didn't want to make the issue worse until it could be fixed, worry over money I'd need to spend to repair this issue....all of this time and energy put toward thinking and believing I didn't have the ability to use my reverse when in all actuality I did have it all along.

2) Also, that there might be something about how we really can't go in reverse, we can't go backwards. Once we have knowledge or experience, we can only move forward or stay where we are. There is no going back to a prior time. We are constantly evolving whether we know it or not, each moment that passes, brings change, change in the weather, change in the temperature, change in our mood, change in our perceptions, change in our experiences and the list goes on. There is no going back...

Though our thoughts and beliefs are extremely powerful and often feel like facts, they are changeable. We create our experiences based on our thoughts and beliefs. It might be too late to go back in time and re-create the past, but it's never too late to work on paying attention to our experiences and shifting our thoughts and beliefs to create the life we choose intentionally.

May 2012 be filled with rich experiences that challenge you to question your current beliefs and thoughts and most of all may you be aware and open and accept them. Here's to being aware, open and willing to evolve.....Happy New Year!

First day of school, grad school that is. Brand new back pack, brand new books, brand new perspective on life. I love beginnings. I love when I don't know what to expect but yet still have this feeling that whatever may come will be good, will be exciting, will be challenging yet energizing. One of the biggest challenges I've had to overcome in my life is setting unrealistic expectations only to be disappointed with reality once it sets in. I've worked hard at not having expectations because for awhile there I went from high expectations to low expectations which is not much better because it gave me a pessimistic view. No expectations or at least being open to "whatever happens" seems to be the best for me.

I had no expectations that riding Marta to GSU would be eventful at all and guess what? It was anything but uneventful. Buying my roundtrip Marta pass was easy enough. Stepping onto the train was easy enough. 30 minutes left before my meeting with my professor so all was good on time, until, the train stopped in the middle of the Inman Park and King Memorial station. Just stopped in the air on the track and didn't move for about 10 minutes until a conductor came barreling through our car saying "i'm gonna have to take yall back to Inman Park".

That is when the 20 something year old disturbed looking kid directly across from me began dialing on his cell phone. I'd noticed this guy from the time I sat down because he had his backpack at his feet and was reading a geography book but his eyebrows were furrowed and he looked a little off somehow. He just had this negative energy about him like he was irritated with the world or had a chip on his shoulder. I know I'm usually really perceptive when it comes to people's energy and soon found out that it was no different in this case. He proceeded to explain in a loud voice so everyone could hear that the train had broken down, "we're going to have to be cherry picked out of this thing with a firetruck" "we're 50 feet above ground mom, yes, I'm a little pissed off, everyone on here is pissed off and yelling" Wow, I looked around and everyone I saw was calm and minding their own business besides a young woman on her cell phone talking to HUD about her roach infested apartment and how she could break her lease without paying any penalties.

His anger and anxiety continued to escalate and everything his mother said to calm him down only pissed him off more. "Don't tell me it will all work out, that only pisses me off more mom" and "If they don't get this train moving fast, I'm going to have to kill someone, I'm stuck on here 50 feet above ground with a bunch of trained monkeys" All the while I'm looking around wondering if anyone else is worried about this timebomb going off. I chuckle to myself, "just my luck, headlines will read, 43 year old woman fulfills a dream by returning to school and is killed on the Marta train on the first day" reminded me of the Alanis Morrisette song "Isn't it Ironic?"

After 20 minutes the train begins to creep until we reach King Memorial and we are told to unload and catch the next train. We get off and I think to myself, God, please get that creep away from me and let me get to GSU on time or at least within 15 minutes of my appointment. Luckily I'd called Sasha from the train and asked her to get on my GSU account and email my prof about the situation so I felt some relief that she wouldn't think I was flaking out without contacting her, great first impression.

The next train came and we all rush to get on, it's full by the way so everyone is basically huddled standing in the middle holding on. The crazy guy is on my car but at least a few people away from me but still on his cell phone bitching to his mom. All of a sudden the guy in the picture with a book got annoyed, as I'm sure we all were, with this kid's whining to his mother and basically screaming into the phone so we all could hear. He screamed at the dude, "Shut the fuck up dude, we are all sick of hearing your whining to your mom, grow up and hang up the phone" and the dude got pissed and started screaming "you're going to jail" and the other guy said "why?" and the dude said "for assault" and everyone started laughing and chiding him right along with the man. One woman was screaming "This is too early for this shit, I haven't even had my coffee, shut up" and the more people were talking and raising their voices, the crazier it got as if all anyone needed was permission to get pissed at this dude. I was laughing but at the same time thinking this could turn into a riot and wondering if this is how riots begin, one person after another raising the bar on angry outbursts. We needed crowd control of some sort. I started looking for places I could duck and hide if someone pulled out a gun.

So that was my great start to my first day of grad school. Nothing else that day could compare to the excitement, fear, astonishment, unexpectedness of that Marta ride.

Walking into my prof's office having never met her before, I immediately apologized to her and to the other writing consultant that will be working with her in her other writing intensive class and briefly explained the Marta experience. I went on to say how you never know what to expect in life and I guess that was a prime example, I never thought the 30 minute Marta commute that morning would be all that it was and my prof said, "well, it really doesn't surprise me, anything can happen on Marta" good to know I thought, can't wait until tomorrow's commute.

May your day be filled with exciting experiences yet safe ones. At least safe in the sense of your physical well being but not safe from learning something new, being challenged to think outside of the box and gain a new perspective.

Kindness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

I've always loved this poem and may have even posted about it before but today really needed and wanted to read it again and share it with the universe. It amazes me how at times people can choose to be other than kind to one another. Life is hard enough without the added stress of unkindness but alas through loss and we begin to feel how connected we really are to every other living being.

"What we reject out there is only, after all, what we reject in ourselves; and the most numbing pain comes from the protected heart." Roger Housden in "Ten Poems to Open Your Heart"

May you see your connection to every thing you come into contact with and may you not only show kindness to those people or things, may they recipricate in kindness.

Peace

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

To me, this poem is about change. Everything is temporary. Happiness. Sadness. Alert. Asleep. Excited. Bored. Restless. Fulfilled.

When I feel something uncomfortable, it's often difficult to remember that "this too shall pass" as it is also difficult to accept that when things are good and I'm happy, "this too shall pass".

I try to remember to be grateful for all that I have experienced as it has brought me to the place I'm at now. Sometimes that is hard to remember when the place I'm at "now" isn't necessarily the place that I want to be either emotionally or physically. I keep reminding myself that there is a reason for everything. I may not and most likely will not see the reason while I'm in the experience however remembering that when I get through it I'll often see the benefit of it.

At times I wish I had the ability to see into the future if only to console my restless spirit or my suffering because then I think I could relax into the experience knowing it would pass and I'll be better for it. Then I realize that part of life is not knowing, it makes it interesting and worth living. I think I've decided that by paying attention and being aware as much as possible and by living intentionally, I'm right where I need to be for my highest good. I must be patient and live in this moment no matter how uncomfortable it may be as it too shall pass.

May you live each moment as it were your last or maybe your first. May you stay awake and aware and live with intention so that you can shine like the star you are meant to be.

Innocence

Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-------

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot ------
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart---
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

I'm feeling a bit Plathish today if that makes sense. I do adore Ms. Plath, Sylvia that is. Her deep, introspective thoughts and questions never cease to amaze me and to think she was this way from childhood really makes me admire her more. I often think it's no wonder she wasn't long for this world. Her heaviness, her feelings of isolation, her struggle to understand her surroundings and make sense of the chaos inside and outside of her head was too much. I often feel at times I can relate to her feelings of "otherness" her feelings of either being misunderstood or not understood at all.

Everytime I read this poem, something different speaks to me. This morning it is the verse,
"Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well."
Not to worry, I'm not relating to the literal physical dying but the dying of something inside such as loss; the loss of a dream, the loss of desire, the loss of hope, the loss of an idea, the loss of a sense of who I am, the loss of innocence and the list goes on.

I do seem to have a gift for the melancholy, a gift is a term I use loosely as others would view this as a curse. I choose to view this as a gift because it is so much a part of how I see the world that to not claim it and somehow make use of it would be unnatural for me. I do love life and do want to live it to the fullest so this melancholy, this introspective way of thinking, of seeing, of smelling, of tasting, of touching the world, is with me everywhere I go. My son told me one day, "Mom, I had this dream of you going away. You were sad and you were walking around touching things that meant something to you as if to say goodbye. I didn't know where you were going, only that you weren't coming back."

His dream does capture a bit of how I am, a bit of how I walk this earth. I do often walk through the rooms of my apartment looking at the things I've collected and carried with me through the years. Not much outside of books but a lot of inspirational quotes, pictures, art, a small shrine in my room....Lately I've returned again and again to a picture of myself at the age of one or two, sitting in a highchair, chubby legs and cheeks, anticipating all that life has to offer and most likely a chicken leg to chew on that given day. But the point is that I look at her, me, and wonder if I've given her the life she deserved. Have I let her down? Did I sell out? Did I settle? Where have I quit when I should have kept going? Is she disappointed in me?

I say I have no regrets, I like to believe that. I keep seeing a quote lately that speaks to me "Never have regrets because what you did was exactly what you wanted to do" or something along those lines. It is true although it doesn't take away the fear that I might have done things differently had I put this little girl's needs and wants first at times. If I had allowed her to come out and play more often, to not take care of everyone else's needs before I let her discover her own. My mom said I was always a serious child so it's no wonder I'm a serious adult. I do know how to have fun and lately this little girl in the picture has been calling to me from my dresser, from her high chair. She's telling me that it's not too late to choose "living fully" and learn to do it exceptionally well.

May you get in touch with your little girl or boy inside and ask her or him what it is that has been neglected in your spirit. May you discover what you can do today, tomorrow and for the rest of your life to bring out that child inside, to rediscover innocence and playfullness and life in every corner of your world.