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Friday, December 16, 2016.  Musing today:  What is listening?  To me it is an interaction that really cannot take place without the “feeling felt” experience being present.

I sure in no way believe it’s limited to humans interacting with humans!  That makes listening, in my “cosmological” thinking, something that directly involves spirit!

Listening.  A transmission of experience – very much in the NOW moment when it is in action – therefore it is LIFE itself – in motion.  Hence, it’s connection to emotion = energy in motion.  The life force itself being exchanged.

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I am exceedingly grateful for having been able to spend the bulk of my childhood ensconced in the wilderness upon the mountainside of our Alaskan homestead.  I had so little consciousness of anything back then due to the terrible and bizarre situation of my human family madness.  Yet I did have relationship with fundamental nature.  Looking back I understand that I was in perpetual relationship with Life Spirit.

Human relationships were forbidden to me by Mother’s unique version of psychotic madness.  No matter what was done to me while we were on the mountain, my essential self was OK – because I was essentially connected.  Although on human level I was alone, on the level of spirit I was continually near an infinite source of comfort.

During the times we were living off of the mountain my life was much more difficult.  At those times the prison she created for me was itself trapped within another prison – the one created by “civilization” – which I can simply translate as being degrees of absence from the pure spirit of nature.

Yet even then Alaska itself exuded (pre-oil boom, pre-satellites and drones….) its own force so that it permeated most people who walked upon its land, drank its water, breathed its so-sweet air.  I know this factor assisted my survival.  Survival that continues because it is directly linked to the power-of-place.

Sustaining place.  Which seems to be different for different people.  (I have a dear friend raised on a North Dakota farm who moved to Manhattan as soon as she could do so after completing her art degree – and LOVES it there.  A total mystery to me.)

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At least I look out my window here and see outlines of forest covered mountains in the near distant north.  Rolling hills surrounding this small New Mexico town I have moved to seeming to be warm and holding arms surrounding me.  Dappled light, leaves free now to turn their favorite shade of red or gold, free to travel in the light or blustering breezes.

I have hopes once I am more settled here that I will be able to travel around to see the land here, to visit the wilderness – although my definition of wilderness will always inherently mean WAY NORTH – but this area is protected, designated wilderness.  I am glad it is near to me and that I am near to it.

I feel sustained in ways that North Dakota could never afford me.  There’s an inner assurance for me that I will be OK.

On the human range?  Gradually I wander the hills of town, visiting shops, approaching people, casually chatting, trying to learn/remember names, hearing stories….

This is all tied to the organization and orientation of a person in one’s life.  Listening within to what feels comfortable, lends to senses of safety and security, of resonance that says “Where I am comes closer to mirroring to me who I essentially am that other places possibly can.”

Coming home.  Coming home to self.  Finding others to listen to as I listen to the wind, the area, the place – and being human, the stories and lived degrees of drama of others who live here – many from families who have been here for hundreds of years – I will feel more felt – hopefully lighting up places within where joy resides – rather than hides.

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The fight to survive.  To endure.

The fight to feel OK.

Then the fight to find the glimmerings of joy – and then maybe some floods of it?

And – to somehow be connected not only to the spirit of land and climate and animals – but also to someone else – even if only once in a while.

Contributions of goodness.  Acts of service to the world we are a part of.  Not always easy.  Certainly.  But along the continuum of possibilities – the art of finding ways to genuinely feel better is a really, really good ‘thing’.

One moment at a time is fine.  When we connect to any fundamental place within us so that our essential self can feel at rest (as we listen within to what this sounds/feels like) – when there is no immediate threat present that needs to be responded to by our body’s survival stress responses (not even in our thoughts at these moments) – I think we are feeling-felt by our own self-within-the-flow-of-ongoing-life – the way we are all SUPPOSED to feel it.

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Meanwhile……

All this trauma?  Not in our own lifespan – but it is coming, that time when humanity will mature greatly so that all this human-caused trauma will end everywhere on this earth.  We are all a part of humanity’s maturation process, this healing.  And sometimes — we can feel the upside right here — within us.

And when we do — I think it is important to notice!  Notice “all the way around” and within us.  There’s a context here.  Lots of important information exists in these moments of (relative) peace we can notice, listen to, experience, value, learn from.

Maybe these are moments when order has been (briefly?) established within a chaotic world.  Oh, how I know how tiring it is to have to work so hard to reach these moments!  Yet sometimes they come as gifts of grace.  I don’t want to miss noticing and cherishing them — no matter what — I am listening.

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Here is my first book out in ebook format as it provides an outline of the conditions of my malevolent childhood.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

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Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame