HEALING JOURNEY: OPEN YOUR HEART AND STAY PRESENT!

Every once in a while I think I have written far

too many words for my own

GOOD.

I’ll be browsing through the computer searching for this or that

and I'll happen on an old scribble and it will surprise

or maybe even upset me.

Dear God, why the hell did I write that?

A friend of mine once said that she had a dream

that I got swamped (or was it drowned?)

by all the millions of words I have written.

No.  I reject that notion.

I still stand by the idea that writing unclogs your heart and starts you understanding the mysteries of your own mind.

Writing is healing me at this very moment as I do the free writing that well respected researcher James Pennebaker claims heals college students and all kinds of other groups of people. Just write freely about your feelings two or three or four times a week, make sure to attend in depth to what's bothering you, such as right now the frozen feeling within when I gaze out at the lawn and the icy bare trees and the white sky and the grey rock. If I just keep writing and writing and letting my feelings go down on paper and unlock my heart and let it flow, if I do that, my immune system will work better and I will have fewer trips to the doctor.

I have a therapist named Mary M and there is no therapist like her. She is a Jungian psychologist which means in part that she can analyze dreams.

(Last night I had one of my old recurrent dreams about finding my high school boyfriend. Dear God how can I keep dreaming the same old same old _____ for 50 years?)

Anyway, what Mary has done for me in the years we've worked together is mind boggling or heart stopping or popping or something even more profound.

She relies deeply on keeping your heart open, on spirituality on BEING PRESENT WITH YOUR FEELINGS. She works with EFT otherwise known as tapping on meridean points, a very simple technique with profound results.

But to say that's how she's helped to heal me is way too simplistic. Better to say that she has taught me that LOVE IS EVERYTHING LOVE IS AS IMPORTANT AS BREATHING which may explain my fixation of late with hearts in my painting.

Suddenly I feel a flood of fear right here write here about the fear that somebody will come along and read this and decide I'm not mentally stable which of course is a crock of 

(Why do I have trouble saying the word shit?)

Instead, write the word LOVE. 

It happens to be February 7th - one week away from Valentine's Day.

How many trillions expressions of love will there be in the next seven days? 

How many different ways can a person say, I LOVE YOU?

The other day I listened to a Sounds True podcast with clinical psychologist Shauna Shapiro who has a Ted Talk about mindfulness that has been viewed more than1.5 million times on Ted Talks. Basically Shapiro says that it's not just mindfulness (the paying of attention to the present moment without judgment) that we need to practice. We have to practice mindfulness with a LOVING INTENTION.

She talks about how important -- AND HOW DIFFICULT -- it was for her to learn how to say "Good Morning, I love you Shauna." (She has a new book out called Good Morning I Love You.)

AFTER I LISTENED TO THAT PODCAST ON SUNDAY I DECIDED TO SAY "I LOVE YOU CLAUDIA" IN ITALIAN:

"TE VOGLIO BENE, CLAUDIA." It rolls off my tongue so lovingly.

And perhaps it's that achievement that has helped to bring me to this essay today.

I want to say that on Wednesday I had a breakthrough, I wrote a piece of fiction called "LEAH ON THE FROZEN LAWN" and it went deep into the heart of me.

But the real awakening happened a few weeks ago when I finally understood that I can LIVE IN THE PRESENT MOMENT AND NO MATTER WHAT I FEEL I CAN FEEL MY FEELINGS IF I SIMPLY FOLLOW Eckert Tolle's advice. Tolle is the brilliant spiritual teacher who wrote quite a profound tome, THE POWER OF NOW. I pick up the book with all its wisdom frequently during the day. And every time the least negative thought arises 

Bam, I turn to page 192:

"So whenever you feel negativity arising within you, whether caused by an external factor, a thought, or even nothing in particular...look on it as a voice saying "Attention. Here and Now. Wake Up."

Tolle's profound teaching is that the PRESENT MOMENT offers us immediate access to the BEING, the sacred, or whatever word you'd like to use for

GOD.

He also guides us to "offer no resistance" to whatever you are feeling in the moment.

I first read Tolle's book in 2008 or so but it has taken me all these years to really absorb his teachings and honestly if it weren't for Mary constantly reminding me to feel my feelings I don't think I would grasp The Power of Now right NOW.

So that's my schpeil for today. MAY YOU JUST KEEP OPENING YOUR HEART which is the phrase I wrote over and over again in my journal on Wednesday when I suddenly had a breakthrough in writing about a character named Leah.

Writing about Leah has helped me realize that I can write about my healing journey of the last seven years. Heaven knows there are a gazillionpeopleouttherewritingabout their healing journeys. Does the world really need one more?

Yes. The world needs one more because I was frozen before. And now my heart

and mind are open and flowing.

So be it. 

SO BE

PRESENT.

It is ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING.