Here’s another piece I rediscovered. It’s taken from the online journal of Jan Arden:
Keep Asking
09-Sep-2005 11:58 am
How do you learn to love yourself without reservation, without hesitation? How do you truly and honestly learn how to forgive the things you have done, or furthermore, the things that have just “happened” to you? How do you come to terms with your own body and your own thoughts? Time…time…time…a wise healer and a wiser teacher. You cannot know until you face the demons that lurk just under your beating heart. There will always be part of your ego that wants to bring you down; you just have to keep it at bay with your spirit. The spirit is bigger and braver and smarter, it’s just not always as loud. It’s a whisper that takes time and attention to hear. You have to spend time with yourself and not always bask in other’s company.
How do you learn to just be? I still keep going back, time and time again, to the delicate art of the “thought” – the way in which we communicate essentially, with what and who we are. We are infinite. We are omnipotent. We are here now – and always “were” here. We are all here together trying to finds bits of ourselves among the others we know; that’s why we are always seeking a soul mate, endlessly seeking to retrieve a particle of where we came from. Sometimes I do believe another soul can hold that part and is waiting to give it to back to you.
I was talking to someone about attraction and the laws in which it seems to work. (Who knows what they are, I don’t know.) Why do we like certain people? What makes us want to be with them, no matter what the outcome, or the conflictions – when we want something so badly that we care not what the consequences may in fact be? Is it chemical, spiritual, circumstantial? Is it Godly? Is it just plain and simply the recognition of seeing them for the first time and recognizing that you “know” them. You know them so intricately, from another time all together. You don’t hesitate, you just walk into them body, mind, lungs and all. When you see someone for that first moment and say to yourself, ahh, there he is…or there she is….or there YOU are. The mystery of who you are reflected in someone’s eyes and when they look at you, you see for a second everything all at once.
Most of the people that I have met as an adult have those mysterious qualities about them; they have that thing that pulls me in. I feel like I know them and my comfort is instant, my comfort is immediate. There is no reluctance on my part to stay close to them…I want to run toward them. I want to know them and be with them and think about them most of the day. It’s different meeting new people when you’re older; you have a built in “caution” in all that you do. You realize that hurt is shaking hands with anything unfamiliar. You avoid being hurt, so consequently, you miss out on some wonderful souls. You will always risk being hurt as you take on a new friend. You will always risk being let down or being rejected. But risk you must. Once in a great while, things turn out. If you set your thoughts to the task of getting what you want, you most certainly will have things go your way. I have “thought” my way this far and shall continue to do so until I am no longer in this body.
The body…one’s great foil, one’s certain enemy. With age comes true acceptance. It’s hard being young, it’s hard facing a mirror and not liking who you see. As corny as it sounds, if you tell yourself horrible things, your body will react by giving you horrible images of itself. It can twist itself up into a heap of mutant cells and bone if you let it. Kindness towards one’s self must become a part of your day; a part set aside to just talk to yourself…to say good things, to pick yourself up. Darkness is only the absence of light, the light is there, you just have to really look for it…it will find you. (I tried to be kind…I tired to be good…..I think that was in a song of mine.) It’s harder than anything in this world to do – that’s to be honest with yourself – to actually sit in a chair in the sun and tell yourself the truth. Ask yourself questions that you’re afraid of and you won’t be afraid anymore. Ask yourself what you like, what you want, who you want? Don’t stop asking yourself everything you want to know; it’s a conversation you won’t ever regret having.
jann
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