Goodbye Facebook...for now.

I deleted my Facebook page almost two weeks ago. I had been wanting to do this for awhile but always had an excuse:
 "What about my contacts?"
 "I just made some new friends!"
 "What will I be missing out on?

  The reality was Facebook was no longer serving me anymore. I felt pressure to have my Facebook account represent all that I was and should be. That it should be the "home base" for all that was "me". But it all felt very shallow. The depth of my relationships were something that couldn't be shared in this format.

  I still sometimes catch myself thinking "Oh, I should post that on Facebook!" but I stop and think, "Who am I posting this for? What exactly do I want from this?" The answers were shallow and had to do with feeding the very ego I wanted to kill in the first place, instead of creating an authentic connection.

      I have also learned how much Facebook can be used to hide and distort reality.  For example, my boyfriend got out of a relationship where he felt like his entire life was on Facebook for everyone to see. Well... the part of life his ex wanted people to see. A well constructed lie to hide a seriously broken and unhealthy relationship. I was friends with him on Facebook and I believed the lie... for the most part. Things felt "off" about the whole thing but I couldn't put my finger on it, and it wasn't any of my business. Then, exactly one year ago today, fate pushed us together and I later learned the truth. The way this other person portrayed the relationship on Facebook was...disturbing compared to the ugly reality of what was happening. Sure, relationship problems should not be posted, but this was more of a desperate attempt to make the "world" believe she was living a magical love story, when, in fact, he felt trapped in a nightmare.

   The disconnect of what was really happening and what was being posted really upset me. I asked myself, why? I have finally come to the conclusion that constructing a fake Facebook life was a big fear of mine. One I was afraid could easily happen to me. I don't want that. I want REAL life. I want to find my truth. I don't want a "wall" full of pictures featuring well rehearsed poses.  I want memories. Memories of smells and tastes and textures and colors. Of happy days and passion filled nights.

   My boyfriend and I have been together a few months short of a year. By together I don't mean boyfriend and girlfriend, but by companions helping each other heal and find our way. We have already had many wonderful adventures and memories. Many happy days spent with friends and family. Many passion filled nights who's details will remain between us... and his unfortunate neighbor with the thin walls. Sorry, dude. So for now I'll continue to create memories with my loved ones. Without Facebook.

Yeah... no thank you. 

 

Cross Stitch and Chakras: Muladhara

   A couple of weeks ago I attended a baby shower for my boyfriend's friends.  As a gift I made them a customized cross stitch piece featuring the parents and the baby. That sparked a conversation with one his friends about the different things I cross stitched. Some how the conversation turned to chakras and I excitedly mentioned one of my ideas was to cross stitch the different lotuses and symbols for each one. She also got excited and mentioned that if I did do that, she could see about displaying them at the yoga studio she works at.

   So I started making the patterns. I had looked up various lotuses and thought to myself "this should be easy". I had already made a handful of custom cross stitch portraits so how hard would it be to create these patterns.

  Like the head strong fool I am, I tried starting off with the crown chakra or Saharsana, which translates into thousand petal. I had decided to start off this daunting task with the freakin' thousand petal lotus. I had bitten off more than I could chew. But when meditating you don't start off by focusing on the crown chakra, you start with the root chakra or Muladhara, which translates into root support. That grounding helps support all the other chakras as you move your up (think back to the butterfly of light visualization in the last post). Already I had learned my first lesson, if I was going to complete this task I needed to build a solid foundation. So I started from the bottom with the root chakra.

  The pattern I created was not perfect but I did learn A LOT from it. Because I had decided to use one single color, it made it that much harder to keep track of where I was on the pattern. I kept getting lost in all the red. I spent a lot of time taking out rows and rows of stitches, and adjusting the pattern as I went.  This meant that when making the pattern for the next chakra, I was really careful to make sure that I paid close attention to the number of stitches in each row. By making sure the pattern was correct before stitching, I would be spending less time taking out stitches due to pattern error.

  The finished product is not perfect and I can see all the mistakes. But I don't think perfection is what this is all about. While working on this piece I started to learn more and more about chakras. About two years ago I got a basic understanding but I never went into depth. I had felt a couple of my chakras where closed or blocked, but didn't have the tools to really do anything about it. Now I feel like I'm building my own spiritual root support. I'm still a long way away from unleashing the true power of my crown chakra, and I'm still a long way from making that pattern, but I've made the first step/stitch and that's what counts.

Here it is in all it's imperfection. 

A New Beginning

   I'm starting this blog to help with my journey, and most likely because I am in the Visuddha cycle of my life journey and feel the need to share my truth (more on those cycles in a later post). To be honest I'm still looking for my truth (also part of this particular circle).

   Recently I found out my spirit animal is a butterfly. Now I need to explain why this was very shocking to me. I grew up as a Tom boy.  I hated the color pink and getting me into a dress or skirt required bribery at the very least. Even as an adult I've never really been much of a girly girl, so to speak. I am very much a woman but I have a very strong masculine energy. I was hoping my spirit animal would reflect that. I wanted a wolf or a shark, some sort of apex predator. But a butterfly? This was the EXACT opposite of what I wanted, but it was EXACTLY what I needed. Upon learning more I realized that the butterfly was the perfect sprit animal for me and it had many lessons to teach me. Those lessons will be what this blog is mostly about, I hope.

   I've chosen the name Morpho peleides because it is my favorite species of butterfly, and I once had an amazing encounter with it in the wild. I was hiking on the trails next to Volcan Arenal in Costa Rica. I had gone ahead of the group since their talking would insure that ALL the wild life would run and hide and I would not get to see any of it. Now, one of my favorite things about this butterfly is the change in pattern and color on the front and back of it's wings.  This change is where the name Morpho comes from. As you can see in the picture below when the wings are folded up, it looks like a moth.

 


  So, when the butterfly is sitting like this, it's very hard to see. Which is why I walked right by one without seeing her. That is until she took off and flew right in front of me and "morphed" into something like this:

 All of a sudden I saw the most brilliant flash of iridescent blue. She fluttered in front of me for a few seconds before disappearing into the rain forest. I felt like I had just ran into a unicorn. And for few brief seconds I was completely in the moment.

    As for the title of the blog, you can already guess the butterfly represents me. The Flower...well...I heard it described that our chakras resemble trumpet-like flowers, and I love that image. A visualization exercise that I now like to use when "meditating" (that shit is hard) is picturing a butterfly made of light, fluttering from one flower/chakra to the next, opening and balancing them until the butterfly reaches the crown chakra and disappears upward. I thought it fitting to name my blog about my spiritual awakening after that image. So for those of you reading (if anyone) thank you for coming along on this journey. I have learned so much from the blogs I have read and I hope I can teach something as well.