The Blue Vinyl Purse, Expectation and Shame

My last post was August of this year, 2020. Much has moved and transformed in me and for me since then, most of it in surrender, in letting go of what has been, as I have allowed myself to relax into the great chaos of ever-shattering, internal constructs where certainty, as a given, no longer prevails, relative to an old reality. As I said in the August post, ‘the only thing I find predictable in this world we are living in is its unpredictability.’ And, I am good with it all.

We all have a story, let’s say multiple stories - all with recurrent themes that frame our experience. When we are able to put aside the content of these stories in full appreciation of a much greater context for living our lives on our own terms, we are always faced with some pretty hard truths about our choices, historically. What comes up so often, I believe, is our own motivation to move away from what we have so often experienced as shame and the fear of shame, a ‘thing’ we have made real, rising out of experiences of having felt deeply humiliated in the presence of others, time and time again. We don’t want others to know about our perceived failures, so we turn away from those others and those perceived failures, both, such that we don’t have to face ourselves. We insulate and we isolate, so we don’t have to know. And, STILL, we know. That incongruence becomes progressive and cumulative, gradually building results (consequences) over time. We know we have become imposters to ourselves, yet we persist, ‘cause we have no idea what else could be possible for us and where to find it… even that there could be another possibility. For many, that incongruence has already become a hidden and latent killer inside, where they live. So, I ask you this: When has insulating and isolating ourselves and the truth of our own experience away from the familiar (expected) architecture that is the status quo ever served to protect ourselves? The only way through is IN.

We like to believe that it is eclipsing the big traumas in our lives that ignites transformation. Yet for me, it is the subtleties of the seemingly smaller life events that so often ignite the greatest change. One such event for me was celebrating my birthday at age 8. My aunt who lived with us arrived home late from work when the birthday dinner was over. I remember sitting on the couch and looking up at her as she entered through the front door to our home and asking her, Hi. Did you get me a present? She did not smile. Instead, irritation appeared on her face. Her response was, ‘NO, I did not.’ In that moment, I knew immediate rejection and felt that I had done something really wrong by asking the question. I curled in on myself and withdrew. A while later, my aunt called me into the kitchen and presented me with a present along with the declaration that I should not , I should never expect to receive. The feeling I had was, How dare I? Expect nothing and you’ll be on your best behaviour. I learned that I was expected to not expect. I also learned the receiving came with expectations (strings) to not expect attached.

I know now that my aunt was seeking to educate me to her expectations for her world. Still, the movie of that experience in my mind has run a trailer in my awareness every so often over the course of my life. Funny, just how that works! And, it was only a couple of days ago when It showed up again and, this time, I finally got the message: It is my birthright to expect. It is my birthright to always be pregnant with mySelf and my ideas. It is my birthright to be expectant. However, what I swallowed down as a command at that young age - i.e. Do not expect; expecting is wrong - set up a very different resonance of attraction for my life. Believing that I was undeserving and underserving are two outcomes I am now aware of.

Thank the godForce that I AM, I finally got the message! It has only taken 66 years to finally awaken to and ‘grok’ what had been a vibrational truth - completely our of my awareness - in the creation of my own outcomes that have, in the sheer brilliance of it all, served to interrupt and thwart the fruition of my own desires. You might say, Struggle R us. This is not to say that I have had desires which have not been realized; however, it is to say, that so often the realization came with huge strain and strife.

You know, that birthday present was a navy blue, vinyl purse with a shoulder strap and a curved flap that hung over the front of it to keep the purse closed. The flap had a yellow reindeer on it. At 8 years old, it was a ‘find’ and I could have loved it had it not been presented with the expectation (now presented as an admonition) that I should never expect; good behaviour demands that. Somehow, that message got reinforced - every time I picked up the purse into my hands; I was wearing and living the expectation to not expect. Furthermore, my aunt could do no wrong in my opinion; she was what success looked like to me. The polarity to that was my own failure in not having measured up to her expectation. No wonder the pride and fun of wearing the purse eluded me. I never felt right when I wore it. And I never understood why. I felt guilt and I felt shame. Such crazy making stuff!

I could go on and on about the power of neurological anchors and their resulting double binds to reinforce choice and results, outside of conscious awareness. To not expect seeded my future, in that one event.

Bottom line? It is never too late for discovery of Self AND it is only time when it is time. Our lives transform when we are willing to reach high and capture a lone string buoyantly riding the winds of possibility, revealing a powerful tapestry of awareness, now fully revealed from behind the clouds of not knowing.

Evolution of Self for its own sake. This is the ride of my embodied lifetime that I am committed to living. There is no greater education in honour of a life worth living than turning within for the answer to this salient question: How does the godForce that I AM choose to live my life, today? When you can invite and allow the depth of that question to rumble deeply though your body, you can’t not but consider the impact of what this question presupposes. That consideration will start to uncreate and deconstruct the very architecture that has, over time, become the cumulatively reinforced structure for life and living as you have known it.

A new cornerstone for living life is at hand in every breath. The illusion of shame as once true has no traction in my new architecture of Self expectancy.

Likened to a hungry parasite looking for a host upon which to feed, shame can no longer feast upon my new and sacred awakening. I once lived a mythology that demanded that I must not expect. So much shame attached to that. As an 8 year old, following that dictum would have likely been a safer choice, given my family circumstances. At age 74, not so much, LOL!

I can say this: Everything in my life is an anchor and everything in my life is a metaphor for everything else… including the body I have chosen to live in. Every word is a a prayer, every word casts a spell. And every word carries the power to carve out and shape a world, to expand it, to contract it, to imprison life and to free it. The great adventure of my life is to organically ride the wave of my breathing in the intention to decode it all.

What have you swallowed down as truths that were never yours to own, to foster? How has that all been working for you? What was the great genius at the time of choosing to live another’s tenets for life in that moment? What could changing your mind mean to your life, now? Remember that none of it has anything to do with good, bad, right and wrong. It has everything to do with giving yourself permission to consider your life differently. So, please be easy with yourself. It is never too late!

So: When will you choose? What will you choose? Whom will you choose to become?

Breathing is good!

Thanks for reading,

Sheila