Do I Feel Beautiful?

When I was six or seven, I remember going to ballet class.  I remember this one particular class, three or four of the girls were huddled around having a conversation about eye and hair color.  One little girl said to the other, "My eyes are sparkly blue, and I have beautiful blonde hair.  You have doody-brown eyes and doody-brown hair."  The other little girl started to argue with her, and insisted that her mom told her that her hair was dirty blonde, NOT doody-brown.  I was the shy, quiet kid, so I stayed out of the conversation, especially since I DID have doody-brown eyes AND doody-brown hair.

For some reason this conversation stuck in my head.  Stuck for a long time.  From that day forward, I didn't think brown eyes and brown hair could be pretty.   I didn't get hung up on the fact of it.  I just knew they could never be pretty, ignored them, and focused on other things about myself that still had a chance to be pretty. Throughout my entire life, if anyone every complimented my eyes or my hair color, I never believed them, and passed it off as them just trying to be nice.  Doody-brown eyes can't be pretty.  They weren't even that pretty hazel-y brown color, or even black.  Black eyes would be cool. They were just doody-brown, and I ignored them.

Then my daughter was born.  She got her daddy's eyes in shape, but they weren't hazel like his, they were doody-brown like mine.  She got so many compliments on her eyes, and I dismissed them all.  Brown eyes can't be pretty, I still told myself.

When my daughter began to talk, I began to see the power of my words over her. I could never tell her that her eyes weren't pretty, even if they were doody-brown. I began imagining her coming home from school one day upset because her eyes weren't sparkly blue like a classmate of hers. What would I tell her then? That brown eyes can't be pretty?  It was at that moment that those voices silenced. Those little six year old girls from my ballet class finally stopped talking in my head and telling me that brown eyes can't be pretty.  I looked into my little girl's eyes, and I finally realized how beautiful brown eyes really could be.

Did that change how I viewed myself though? Not a bit.  Brown eyes could be pretty, but mine still weren't.  I wasn't hung up on it. I wasn't insecure about it.  It was just a fact that this part of me could never be pretty.

Then, just like in the movie Inception, an idea began to take hold in my head.  A simple idea, that was introduced to me by a talk by Rev. Carlton Pearson.  The idea was that you have created this moment for yourself right now. You agreed to be here, doing this, in this circumstance right now at some point in your past, you just might not remember.

This idea spread to different aspects of my life, and then one day when I looked in the mirror, I felt like I saw my eyes for the first time. I saw them for what they truly were.  They were something I had agreed upon, long ago, before I was born.  For those who don't believe in reincarnation, this is a crazy notion. But to me, it all suddenly made sense. I looked at my eyes, and I saw my father's eyes.  Before I was born I chose these eyes because I loved my father's eyes. Then I looked at my nose, it was my mother's nose.  I chose this nose because I loved my mother's nose.  I chose every part of myself with an intention of full and complete total love, and I agreed upon every aspect of this body.  What a beautiful work of art we all are.

It's only when we get caught up in society's notion of what is beautiful, that we begin to forget how beautiful and chosen with love every part of us truly is.  We chose each part of ourselves without any preconceived notions or ideas about what "beauty" should be. You didn't choose your eyes because you thought other people would think they were beautiful. You chose your eyes because YOU thought they were beautiful. Your body shape, your hair, your personality, were all picked because YOU loved them.  We need to get back to that place.  A place where YOU LOVE YOU each and every piece.  It's not a competition because each "beauty" is different in each of us, and each one is beautiful.

Now bodies change, people age, we get fatter, wrinkly, droopier, but the concept doesn't change.  Love you for you.  Love the journey you've traveled, and how your body has supported that.  Start loving those places that are the hardest for you to love, and you will begin to see why they show up that way.  Get rid of the guilt, the judgement, the voices we've carried in our head, and begin to love your body like you did in the beginning.

Life in the "Fast" Lane

Ok, maybe I'll back track a tiny bit.  I wrote this on February 28, 2012 in my journal, and I feel compelled to share it as my first post.  On this day I had to fast for a routine medical test. That small change in my routine brought awareness to how much food or rather the lack of food could affect my mood.  I was a bitch to say the least. I stepped back, realizing this wasn't really me, and dismissed my bad mood as just a side effect of the fasting. As I did that, a small shift happened inside of me. I started writing and here is what came out...

We are just vessels for the Spirit. Just vessels. Our wants, needs, fears, every human emotion is just the ego.  This is a hard concept to grasp because if I'm not my feelings, emotions, needs, then what am I??  Nothing?  Yes and No.  There is no "I" only "us" -- collective, total "us".  "Us" is everyone, everything, every energy, God. 


There is no reason to ever miss any person in your life because they are always with you.  Fully, completely, totally.


Then why do I want to hold someone, hug them, touch them?  That desire goes back to our root desire to touch as an infant.  We were all taught to feel love mainly through our physical senses.  If a baby doesn't see, touch, hear, smell her mama, then her mama is completely and totally gone to her. Disappeared.  As the baby grows, she begins to learn that even if her mama isn't in the room with her, then she is still in the world somewhere.  The next step, which we don't automatically understand and that some people never understand, is that our mama isn't just in the world somewhere, she is inside of us, all the time.


Root desires are VERY strong.  They were our first lessons, but we must get to the next step. We aren't our bodies at all.   Yes, we need to fulfill our bodies' basic needs.  Feed it, wash it. Give it warmth, shelter, sex.  Sex has many levels. Basic root fulfillment, soul and spirit levels as well.  The root aspect of it involves the physical touch of the act and the continuation of the species.  This is very strong.  This desire.  But this is not what satisfies a person sexually.  This physical plane satisfies only that root desire.  The deeper levels is what brings us wholeness, true soul fulfillment. This can be done without the physical touching.  Separate yourself from those root desires.  You have evolved to where those are just secondary to what can truly be experienced.


I know now why people fast.  To see and know the difference within themselves without physical nourishment. But you can fast anything important, not just food, and then see how you react. See what is you and what is the hunger.

The start of my blogging journey...

For the past five months or so, I've started what I like to call "my spiritual awakening". I've been writing in my journal about different aspects of my life that have come up and needed clearing, but yesterday I had the idea that maybe my spiritual rantings could help other people on their spiritual path too. Maybe not, but it's worth a shot. I'm not going to go into too much on how I got to this place, I'm just going to start where I am, so here it is...