{"id":5633,"date":"2017-11-06T07:42:44","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T12:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=5633"},"modified":"2017-11-06T07:42:44","modified_gmt":"2017-11-06T12:42:44","slug":"big-life-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=5633","title":{"rendered":"Big Life Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first step was feeling totally helpless and needing to have someone come rescue me, but then being able to just witness that I was \u201cat the end of my resources<\/a>,\u201d without trying to figure out what I could do about it. \u00a0I’ve been here many times before. \u00a0At one point in my life I called it “shipwreck.” \u00a0Now I realize it is also AA’s first step: \u00a0Admitted that my life was unmanageable. \u00a0Calling it “the end of my resources” makes a big change somehow, a way of accepting it differently.<\/p>\n

Then I stood up for myself, saying \u201cNo<\/a>\u201d to people\u2019s suggestions for what I could do. \u00a0When people told me that was \u201ccourageous\u201d I had to recognize that my old pattern of making myself wrong for saying no to an assignment was dysfunctional.<\/p>\n

Next I went to the interviews at Kendal.\u00a0 They are a requirement for getting in.\u00a0 At least that\u2019s what I thought, that they were going to see if I was \u201cgood enough\u201d for Kendal.\u00a0 Instead it was more like a welcoming.\u00a0 They were trying to make sure I would be happy at Kendal.\u00a0 I showed one of them the brochure for my Audio-visual Presentation: Sacred Sites of Ancient Keltia<\/a>, and she said \u201cThey\u2019ll want you to do it here!\u201d\u00a0 The last woman I talked to asked what was my life\u2019s work.\u00a0 I talked about Neskaya, then started to explain about Circle Dance.\u00a0 When I said it was rooted in International Folk Dance, she said \u201cYou\u2019ll have a whole group of eager people waiting for you.\u201d\u00a0 I felt wanted<\/span>, a new experience for me.<\/p>\n

For a while I continued to feel sad about the things I was leaving.\u00a0 But I also thought about the work I did in the Francis Weller workshop, in particular feeling and expressing my grief for \u201cthe career that didn\u2019t happen.\u201d\u00a0 Now suddenly I\u2019m seeing that some of that career will be able to happen when I\u2019m at Kendal.<\/p>\n

Sorting and downsizing, burning the original notebooks from the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s, made me question why I keep writing<\/a>.\u00a0 I came to a place of seeing that it is satisfying in itself. \u00a0The blog in particular.\u00a0 I\u2019m putting my ideas and experiences out there and people can read them or not, that doesn\u2019t seem to matter, putting them out there is what counts.<\/p>\n

The next thing was looking at the New Story Hub<\/a> and seeing an article by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee<\/a>. \u00a0A friend had sent me a link to one of his talks on YouTube, and I liked what he had to say a lot.\u00a0 He\u2019s a psychic and a Sufi.\u00a0 So I read this piece which is titled \u201cDarkening: A Four-Point Plan.\u201d\u00a0 His four actions are:<\/p>\n

1) Witness.\u00a0 Looking at what is going on, without wanting to change what you see.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been witnessing the pain in the world but also feeling my helplessness to change it, so I\u2019ve been in a lot of pain.\u00a0 But if I let go of my need to do something about it, then I can witness purely, and I don\u2019t get disabled by depression.<\/p>\n

2) Grieve.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been doing a grief practice since the Weller workshop<\/a>.\u00a0 It would be better if I had a group to grieve with.\u00a0 Makes me think of the Truth Mandala<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3) Pray.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been doing the loving-kindness prayer for all beings, since it seemed to make the most sense.\u00a0 I\u2019m not asking some higher being that I don\u2019t trust to do what I want.\u00a0 I\u2019m just saying what I want.\u00a0 I can also sincerely ask for help for the earth from whoever\/whatever can do it.\u00a0 I\u2019m comforted, as I recite the words of the prayer without any felt sense, but with the belief that repetition of the proper forms can be counted as prayer.\u00a0 And also feeling supported by knowing that people all around the world are saying that prayer.<\/p>\n

4) Act.\u00a0 Vaughan-Lee reminds us of Mother Teresa\u2019s words: \u201cWe can do no great things, only small things with great love.\u201d \u00a0I also thought of something I learned in DMA<\/a>, a course in creating what you want, about the value of a “symbolic gesture.” \u00a0You do some small act to indicate that you are willing to do what it takes to have what you want. \u00a0So signing a petition, sending a small sum of money to support a cause, are “good enough.”<\/p>\n

The most important thing for me was that reading this convinced me that I\u2019m already doing what he\u2019s talking about.\u00a0 It\u00a0 validated me on a very deep level, and gave me a tremendous boost in self-confidence, and a sense of the total dissolving of the belief that I had to \u201cprove that I deserve to live.\u201d\u00a0 Since then I\u2019ve been able to feel my love for things, to have a felt sense of loving and being loved, to feel excitement about the future.\u00a0 It\u2019s so amazing!<\/p>\n

I suspect that part of this is knowing I am moving to Kendal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first step was feeling totally helpless and needing to have someone come rescue me, but then being able to just witness that I was \u201cat the end of my resources,\u201d without trying to figure out what I could do … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-present-day","category-spirit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}