Joyfully Bea Healing Arts

Beandrea Terese

woManifest :: we got this, we got this, we got this

Posted: Tue 30, Mar 2010

woManifest fertile
more berries imagination
you got this
you got this
you got this
-poem from my Full Moon Dreamboard, 28 March 2010

My friend, acclaimed filmmaker and cultural worker Aishah Simmons, introduced me to the term “woManifest.” I wrote it across my Dreamboard next to a drawing of a tree that contains Aishah’s cursive, a cutout from a birthday card she gave me four years ago.

What does it mean to woManifest? To wombManifest? To be powerful from within and have it be so without? To be constantly pregnant and giving birth to new ideas, projects, commitments that leave behind a body of work?

I’ve heard it said that the only thing you get to keep is what you give away. Since I was ten, I’ve been documenting my world inside the pages of journals everyday. I remember sitting in bed in my room with yellow walls tucking myself in with writing.

As I look at my Full Moon Dreamboard, I see four quadrants of color. I see dazzling women artists: Esperanza Spalding, a Native American woman hooking up solar power on the reservation, Anna Julia Cooper, Judith Jamison.

I see lightning. I see fruit. I see my craypas-scrawled notes to self: “Womanifest. You got this, you got this, you got this.”

I’ve been convinced lately that I’ll never figure Right Livelihood out.

How do I generate income doing things that I love? I have always known that I am here to be a writer. How does this translate into making a living that enables me to thrive? How do I move from surviving, barely, to thriving actually and completely? Is writing my bridge? It is doing restaurant work? Is it temping? Is it being a consultant? Is it teaching? How do I get paid for being, my favorite activity of all?

I’ve been acting as if the challenges I’m facing will always be with me, as if there are no answers slowly but surely on their way.

But in creating this Dreamboard, it came to me like a flash of light: I am powerful. I can do this. I can find solutions that work. I do not need to be saved. I am doing it now. I am saving myself. I am asking for help. I do not need to be saved from anything except the belief that I am helpless, alone, or incapable.

Above all else I see through this Dreamboard an artist reflected through the faces of other artists – a bassist creating new genres of music for the people, an elder sculpting clay, a manual camera capturing the visual ideas she wants to let out. I see myself wrestling with these images as both affirmation and a standard to reach toward.

Tonight as the first drops of spring rain trickle down in a fluid orchestra of sound, I am reclaiming and remembering my power. My power to woManifest. My power to create. My power to simply be.

May we have the courage to persist, insist, and allow.

We got this.
We got this.
We got this.

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Relationship myths :: Mirrors, not basins - mythbusting postlude

Posted: Thu 25, Mar 2010

I did not demand that he become my Great Emancipator or my Source of All Life, nor did I immediately vanish into that man’s chest cavity like a twisted, unrecognizable, parasitical homunculus.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

We are taught to fill up our emptiness with the marrow of other people. For me, a hopeless romantic, that premise has mostly started with hope and ended with disappointment.

Perhaps I am a tortured artist-introvert debunking relationship myths with the same gusto as Nietzsche when he said “God is dead.”

I’ll tell you who is dead – that childish part of me who believes people are just like characters in romantic comedies.

People are people. We are not Zeus and Athena. We are broken and wounded, whole and loveable. We are fascinating, mysterious creatures imbued with the right to live in inside our own worlds and allow others to live inside theirs.

The most we can expect is that we would be mirrors for each other, not vast basins we can pour ourselves into or that we ought to allow to be poured into us.

We must come to our relationships from a strong self and not confuse the emotions we feel, for the person who mirrors them back to us. We do this remembering that each self is ultimately part of a whole, an intricate and luminous garment.

We are born alone and we die alone. We belong to ourselves and we belong to each other. We see and we are blind. Don’t expect to merge. Occupy the planet of your Self, rotate around those who help you feel like the sun, and feel yourself to be ever in divine orbit.

Meditation: Let’s take a breath together. Aaaahhh…Take a quiet moment to notice what your internal response is right now. Simply feel and notice the body sensations and thoughts coming through you as you continue to breathe. Then take out your writing materials and go for 10 minutes using a word or a phrase that you noticed from checking in just now.

If you feel inspired by this post, I would love to hear what moves you! If you have suggestions for future blog post topics, I welcome that too.

Your support matters ::

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Relationship myths :: Clean slate?

Posted: Thu 18, Mar 2010

Myth 3 :: It’s safe to assume that if I do something “for” someone, then eventually s/he will do something for me “in return.”

I have learned – mostly through disappointment and resentment – that I don’t like basing my relationships on unexpressed quid pro quo, which translates as ‘this for that’ in Latin. How many times have I thought, “If I do xyz for someone, someone will do xyz for me,” but failed to speak aloud the assumption.”

When we agree to helping someone meet their human needs because that meets needs of our own – it is important to do it because, in that moment, we actually want to do it.

It is dangerous when we take actions based on the unexpressed hope of gaining something from someone in the future or paying someone back for something done “for” us in the past.

I seek to live an obligation-free life; one where I tell myself the truth about what I want and seek to do the things out of authentic desire. It means being creative in reframing the seemingly undesirable.

It means being in touch with what I need, what others need, and being open to a variety of approaches to seeing those needs met. It means having some spaciousness inside with myself, with others. It means being willing to stretch beyond what feels comfortable as a routine practice.

When we are present in the moment and more able to trust that our needs will be provided for at exactly the right time, we can respond authentically to the things that are asked of us by ourselves and by others. We can be complete right then and free of the residue that accumulates creating blockages in the heart.

We can turn to a more stable basis for relationship: a slate wiped clean, an open heart.

Relationship myths :: 'Making' others feel…

Posted: Thu 04, Mar 2010

Myth 2 :: No one can ‘make’ anyone else feel a certain way

“I hope I’m not driving you crazy,” an extroverted housemate said to me as she babbled about her life.

“I was crazy a long time before we met,” I said staring out the kitchen window laughing at myself, an introvert.

People, circumstances, and events often stimulate the memory of similar occurrences in the past that are unresolved and still oozing with unprocessed pain. Having the quirky personality I was born with, I truly was already my own brand of ‘crazy.’ My housemate didn’t “make” me anything; she was simply a mirror of something already inside me.

Most of the time we are not current. We live in the past replaying it constantly, projecting it onto the present and the future. When we are not present we are lost in what has already happened and what might happen in the future.

There is so much clutter inside – trauma put in storage, languishing in the dusty corners of our saturated bodymindspirits. We clear the clutter each time we allow ourselves to acknowledge in the moment what gets triggered by another person or situation. We get to actually experience our feelings in real-time, rather than stuffing them until the ‘right time’ that never comes.

Only when we become current can we start fresh with new possibilities available to us. It is not complicated, although in a distracting world that hinges upon the denial of what we do not like, it is a challenge.

When an emotion comes up, I often take a moment to simply feel it, label it in my mind, and investigate the body sensations and onslaught of stories associated with it. This usually lessens the charge, and I feel myself become calmer.

I am responsible for dealing with the undealtwith feelings I carry inside. I can (and increasingly do) let people know when they have triggered me without making them responsible for the root of the pain I feel.

When I share my vulnerabilities with trusted friends, it invites connection and sounds a reminder bell in my body to embrace my whole self moment by moment. I do this knowing that as I embrace my own healing, I can more easily hold a larger vision of collective transformation.

Freedom is a deep desire of living beings. We can practice and experience freedom everyday by freeing ourselves, and our relationships, from delusion.

Meditation: Let’s take a breath together. (aaaaahhhh….) Think back to a moment earlier today or this week where something happened that you didn’t like. (It’s okay to pick something ‘small.’) Take a quiet moment to simply feel and notice the body sensations and thoughts associated with this experience. Keep breathing. Then, take out your writing materials, dancing shoes, or collage materials, and go for 10 minutes on what’s alive in you now. If it would inspire you, write to me and tell me what happens!

If you feel inspired by this post, I invite you to email me and say what moves you! If you have suggestions for future blog post topics, I welcome that too.

This is the second of a three-part series on Relationship myths.

Relationship myths :: Doing 'for' others

Posted: Thu 11, Feb 2010

Don’t look for it outside yourself.
You are the source of milk. Don’t milk others!
There is a milk-fountain inside you.
Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.
You have a channel into the Ocean, and yet
you ask for water from a little pool.
Beg for that love-expansion. Meditate only
on that. -Jelaluddin Rumi

I watched a lot of television and movies growing up. In the world portrayed on the screen it seemed that pleasing and loving others was the absolute best and most important thing to do in life.

My life is deeply enriched by the relationships I have with my loved ones. My relationships with others compliment my inner life – my relationship with self, nature, and the unseen, without which there would be nothing to enrich.

With Valentine’s Day drawing near, I want to clear up a few persistent and often unquestioned inaccuracies about human relationships. I want to scrutinize language because I believe the subtleties of words speak worlds about the beliefs upon which society hinges.

Maybe with things in their proper place, we can all connect more profoundly with each other, at last, inside an ocean of clarity.

Myth 1 :: We do things solely “for” or “because of” other people

We do things because of our own needs. (A great needs list here.) It is not possible to do anything “for” someone else unless that doing is somehow related to something we need.

When I reach out to my dear friends and they are busy with little time to call right back, I ask them to acknowledge my calls with a smiley face text message. I request this because I want to know they got my call. Underneath that though, I really want to feel seen and heard and know that I matter to my loved ones.

When my friends agree to this request it is because they are willing to help me get my needs met and want to contribute to me. They also want to know they are living life in alignment with their spiritual beliefs, and are meeting our collective needs for self-care, efficiency, and trust.

Even when we do things begrudgingly with a chip on the shoulder, it is often driven by our needs for acceptance, ease, and safety.

Everything we do is to meet some need we have inside even when it looks like the stimulus, the external cue for an inner state, is the reason. Don’t confuse stimulus with root cause.

Ultimately, whatever we do for others, we also do for ourselves. Interdependence is a fundamental reality of relationship.

***

Body-centered Writing Prompt: Shake out your legs, arms, and whatever you’re sitting on. Take slow deep breaths, close your eyes, and feel what is alive in you, notice how you feel, what you are thinking, the sensations in your body. Then take out a pen, paper, and go for 10 minutes starting with “I need…”

Are you moved by this post? I would love to hear if these words have been a contribution. If you have suggestions for future blog post topics, I welcome that too.

This is the first of a three-part series on Relationship Myths.

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