Nice

My mom's name is Eunice.

I always thought it was a nice name,

and that it fit her, because she is, well, quite a nice person.

Plus she's a Minnesotan, and you know what they say about them...

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

Recently someone who doesn't know anyone else in my family except me,

made a comment about my 'you-ness'.

I thought that was such a sweet thing to say and it kept rolling around in my head.

Then it hit me for the first time in my 37 years I've known my mother...

my Eu-nice!

It has been an enlightening journey discovering, honoring, and claiming

the parts of me that have the essence of her in them too.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

Another friend speaks of all of what we receive from our birth parents as

fertile soil from which to grow.

I believe that to be true

whatever our current, past, or future relationship may be with them,

and that it's much larger than what the relationship is/was in the physical.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

Oh what joy is to be found in simply witnessing our collective you-ness!

Instrumental

By chance, during a poetry festival recently, I had an enlightening chat about communication with an acquaintance's husband, who just happens to also administer the Myers-Briggs personality test.

INFP! I said,

and he proceeded to share this story of an exchange between he (also an INFP)

and his wife (not so much of an INFP)... 

"The path from your brain to your mouth," she said to him after a particularly frustrating communication process, "is like a french horn. Except sometimes something coherent comes out the other end, and sometimes it doesn't!"

... to which he replied:

"And your path from your brain to your mouth is like a well-greased trombone slide!"

With this welcomed lighthearted, insightful new way of see-ing each other,

they both laughed at themselves and haven't taken communication so seriously since.

With that in mind, did you know that 90% of communication is

non-verbal?

 Understanding my self, yet not attaching to who I am as a personality only,

so that I can stretch and grow outside of my perceived container(s),

as well as understand, inter-act, and respond with other beings,

rather than react to them,

this knowledge of my inherent nature is helpful information

in order to access the courage to joyfully practice my part in the musical of life.

In the same vein as music, the ocean as a metaphor for navigating life moves me deeply as well.

One of my favorite quotes from Sogyal Rinpoche:

"A wave in the sea, seen in one way, seems to have a distinct identity, an end and a beginning, a birth and a death. Seen in another way, the wave itself doesn't really exist but is just the behavior of water, 'empty' of any separate identity but 'full' of water. So when you really think about the wave, you come to realize that it is something that has been made temporarily possible by wind and water, and is dependent on a set of constantly changing circumstances. You also realize that every wave is related to every other wave."

~ ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

What instrument(s) do you practice playing?

If you're interested in your own exploration of the Jung-inspired Myers-Briggs test:

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

Also a good book I have read, which includes the test, is

'Please Understand Me II' by David Keirsey

It's not about the destination

Have you experienced how the anticipation of something can be so

much sweeter

than the actual something when/if it happens?

I've come to realize that this is so because the time leading up to something is what's actually happening, what's real.

Yes, I'm speaking of the trappings of expectation.

I was reminded of this with a recent experience with

the workshop that never was...

After signing up for a 2-hour workshop on Finding Balance, offered by two life coaches, one of whom is also a nutritionist, it was a sweet surprise when one of the workshop leaders invited a connection to self well before, through a question I was asked to answer 'for them'. In pondering this question, I had already begun to enjoy the class, and felt it was going to be $15 (I love Maine) well spent. It's a simple question about what would be most helpful for me to take away from the class, but what it did is became the medium for me to clarify my intention and bring me more conscious about my feelings around the topic of Balance.

After working through my semantic issue with 'finding' balance (for me, the word finding implies searching/looking for something outside of ourselves, something that we 'lost', whereas discovering implies becoming aware of something that has been there all along, but we forgot we knew. They both relate to awareness, so it really wasn't a deal breaker that they titled like they did),

I responded: I'm happy you asked. At this time I have two areas to share about that would be most helpful for me to take away from this class. First, I would like to take away memories of a good time spent connecting and sharing with others, in a healing space grounded in compassion and possibility. Second would be having the opportunity to come to a deeper awareness of how I interact with what I choose to put into my body, how I take care of/honor and listen to my body, and how this relates to the balance of my overall health and well being, as well as to my intention of living in harmony with all parts of my self ...

this or something greater ... !

Well, the class was canceled due to not enough people signing up. 

But as I reflected on what I had hoped to explore in the workshop, I remembered my ideas about the process around finding and discovering (housed in my initial resistance), and how we hold the answers inside of ourselves. A good teacher or class will reflect them back to us, but we have all the tools we need to at least begin.

My style of eating is on the healthy side and I am practicing tuning in to what I am really hungry for at times when I habitually reach for something to put in my mouth.

And since my style of eating has been doing wonders for my husband,

I began to wonder if what keeps me in the same place might be other things that I

put into my body,

that I 'digest',

that may not be nourishing it, or in fact depleting it of its good energy.

I started questioning what other unconscious beliefs might be blocking me.

No concrete answers yet, but I found a clue when I became teary-eyed

hearing how a dear friend put an affirmation on her young daughters' bathroom mirror

that reminded them of how beautiful their body is, inside and out.

I thought I had made friends with my body, but this

seems like a good place to (re)start.