Letter to a Friend

Hello my friend, I hope you are having a good day! I thought I would have written you this hours ago, but now is the time!

I have been trying to think of the best way to use your help. I want you to help keep me accountable, and there are so many areas in my life that could benefit from that. I know myself to be very resistant to accountability. This is a lifelong pattern, and I think Matt Kahn is right, I am going to need to love myself more in order to shift it. I have already started using Matt's advice particularly directed to the areas where I procrastinate. This is bringing up a lot of my old stuff so it is a very fruitful area of inquiry.

Last night I watched Matt's YouTube video about Twin Flames and Soulmates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2da2CQEyy0 It was very good, although I recognize twin flame energy in myself and in the past would've felt bad about it. Matt doesn't exactly address that, but I am using his general advice to love myself more no matter what the issue. I think there is a little bit of idealism in there as well, because one of the ways we learn in relationship is by facing our own stuff that comes up, and everyone has stuff no matter how evolved they may be. In the past people have called me insecure and I have taken it as a criticism. Now I am feeling quite a bit of compassion toward the person feeling insecure, me or someone else. In the past I have also been impatient and annoyed with people who acted insecure.

I am enjoying my Enneagram reading so much right now! I am almost halfway through Sandra Maitri's Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram. I think maybe I loaned it to you one time? I have read parts of it over and over but never have read it from the beginning straight through. Again, I don't think I would've been able to benefit from it until I could take a really compassionate and loving attitude toward myself, really greenlighting myself for being that way. I am resonating strongly with many of the attributes of the "three" type. I can't wait to get to the explanation of "Wings" since at this rate I think I am either a four with a three wing or three with a four wing! Ha!

I just remembered something – that when I first heard about greenlighting, teachers said to go ahead and greenlight ourselves to keep doing what we're doing until we're ready to stop. That's a little bit different than the way I understand it now – it's more like Matt says, when you really love the one (that is, yourself) doing that thing you hate, you stop having to do it compulsively. At least I think the behavior loosens and I have more space around it and more awareness.

When my kids were little I used a book called Totally Organized and I really liked it. I found it again in the move and read the first chapter this morning. I felt inspired to use one of the methods in the book, which is to take a stopwatch and allow five minutes for clearing clutter from each room. When the five minutes is over, move to the next room. The clutter is not completely cleared but it is so much better and I was able to keep up the momentum and not get stuck.

I am not yet ready to ask for accountability to do this every day though! I don't know why, except that in the past I have failed even with accountability, and I don't want to fail again.

I feel that I am going at a very slow pace, but somehow the slowness and deliberateness seems to be very rich and it actually feels like a practice to notice the discomfort and shame that comes up.

The other thing that I noticed that was really interesting to me was that I have been toying with the idea that in order to add something in, one has to subtract something. I am always adding more things in, but never subtracting anything. So yesterday, Corwin was gone all day until very late at night and my felt-sense was that my day was completely empty! There was not even anything to subtract! Of course there were a lot of things I could've done, but nothing was very interesting or compelling to me and I noticed boredom. That was really surprising. I think I usually just fill my time with one thing after another, getting involved in the details rather than taking a big picture. When I stepped back it looked very empty. That is so interesting to me and I think by sitting with that I may get some insights. Of course I have the automatic response to fill it up, but at least for today I have gone slow again and have noticed a depth and richness to the experience.

You know what my friend? I think that in writing you, I have written a blog post! It has been so long since I have posted anything to my blog, and I really need to love that person who hasn't blogged and who feels bad about it.

Much love to you,

Laura