eXpress Yourself newZletter Vol 2001 No. 3CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
Message From A Mean Mom
--- A special Mother's Day tribute to all mean moms
Drum Roll For Some XYZ News
--- We moved, had snafus and now are ready for votes
Love Is In The Air ... And Something Smells Fishy
---- Is your relationship built out of love or fear?
You Were Born Again To Be Together
--- A wedding homily of unconditional love
Getting Creatively Crazy
--- Sometimes a little lunacy is all that's needed
Hello!
Welcome to our growing family of eXpress Yourself newZletter subscribers.
The XYZ newsletter was created as an interactive platform for the exchange of ideas and experiences on how to recover, reclaim and release the creative power of our own silenced voices of authentic self expression.
Remember, its mission is to build stronger, more compassionate human relationships around a new critical consciousness grounded in genuine dialogue, rising above the prejudice of closed minds, and honoring the integrity and dignity of each person's true voice of self expression.
Together, I sincerely believe we can heal our badly bruised planet, one authentic voice at a time.
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MESSAGE FROM A MEAN MOM
Someday, when my children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates a parent, I will tell them ....
I loved you enough to ask where you were going, with whom and what time you would be home.
I loved you enough to insist you save your money and buy a bike for yourself even though we could afford to buy one for you.
I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover that your best friend was a creep.
I loved you enough to make you go pay for the bubble gum you had taken and tell the clerk, "I stole this yesterday and want to pay for it."
I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your room, a job that should have taken 15 minutes.
I loved you enough to let you see anger, disappointment and tears in my eyes so you would learn parents are not perfect.
I loved you enough to let you assume the responsibility for your actions even when the penalties were so harsh they almost broke my heart.
But most of all, I loved you enough to say NO when I knew you would hate me for it. Those were the most difficult battles of all. I'm glad I won them because, in the end, you won too.
Someday, when your children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates parents, when they ask, Was your mom mean?, you can tell them you had the meanest mother in the whole wide world.
When other kids ate candy for breakfast, you had to have oatmeal, eggs and toast. When other kids had pop and cookies for lunch, you had to eat sandwiches.
Your mother insisted on knowing where you were at all times. She had to know who your friends were and what you were doing with
them. She insisted that if you said you'd be gone for an hour, you'd be gone for an hour ... or less.
Your mom broke all Child Labor Laws by making you work. You had to wash dishes, make beds, learn to cook, vacuum the carpets, do laundry, empty trash and all sorts of cruel jobs. You were sure she lay awake at night thinking of more things for you to do.
Mom always insisted you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. By the time you were a teenager, she could read your mind.
Mother never allowed your friends to drive up to the house honking the car horn. They had to come to the door so she could meet them.
When everyone else was dating at age 12 or 13, you had to wait until you were 16.
Because of your Mom, you missed out on lots of things other kids experienced. You never were caught shoplifting or vandalizing other people's property. You were never arrested for any crime. You never got hooked on drugs, never shirked responsibility for your own decisions, reaped the rewards of hard work and learned the difference between a true friend and a sunshine patriot.
Now you have children of your own and you're doing your best to be a mean parent just like Mom.
Perhaps that's what is wrong with our society today. There just aren't enough mean Moms anymore.
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DRUM ROLL FOR SOME XYZ NEWS
The Hole in the Garden Wall site --- http://www.withinwithout.com --
moved to a new web host and the eXpress Yourself newZletter has a new service provider. Even with the best planning, we still suffered some glitches that needed to be smoothed out before reaching our maximum operating efficiency.If you know someone who tried to subscribe to the XYZ newsletter during our move and was unable to get through, please tell them to try again. Everything is working fine now and all subscription requests should be handled smoothly with no further delays!
But glitches in this well-oiled system happen without advanced notice, so we really need your help. Should you refer folks to our newsletter web site page and they discover the subscribe button isn't working, please tell them to go to the site's Contact Us page and write their subscription request in the message space. I'll personally see to it they receive the most current issue as quickly as possible.
Even with our best efforts, things break in cyberspace, more often than we like to admit! Your assistance in redirecting those interested in the XYZ newsletter will be deeply appreciated.
MORE NEWS! We are excited about the new rating system now available for the eXpress Yourself NewZletter. Needless to say, we think this newsletter is pretty terrific. But more important is what you think. Now you have a chance to express your opinion by rating this newsletter at the following link:
http://www.withinwithout.com/newsletter.html
[If the above address does not show as an active link, highlight it with your mouse, copy it and paste it into your browser's URL location or address box.]
Go to the bottom of the page and you will see a green box marked The Ezine Directory. Pull down the menu under RATE THIS EZINE and register your vote. Don't forget to click the RATE IT button.
The few moments it takes to register your rating will be much appreciated. Express your opinion by rating this newsletter from 1 - 10 on the scale provided through the link above. Ten is the highest rating, one the lowest. Your rating will help attract new subscribers to this newsletter, bringing its mission and content to the attention of more people who share our passion about building more dynamic and compassionate human relationships.
Again, thank you for taking the time to express your opinion. It really matters in shaping the direction and content of future issues.
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LOVE IS IN THE AIR ... AND SOMETHING SMELLS FISHY
Ahhh, June ... the month of brides, grooms, weddings and romantic illusions! LOVE. LOVE. LOVE. LOVE.
LOVE. Hmmm .... in my humble opinion, no word in the language of the human soul is more overworked and misunderstood than "love."
Ask single, never-married men and women for their first spontaneous response when they hear the word "love," and you will get answers like these: happiness ... safety ... security ... passion ... ecstasy ... perfection ... excitement.
According to a Gallup poll released by the National Marriage Project, 94 percent of single people in their 20s say that, first and foremost, they want their future spouse to be their "soul mate." But as Iris Krasnow, author of "Surrendering to Marriage," points out, this concept of soul mates and the quest for perfection are what get couples into trouble. "You don't get sustained happiness from marriage, so if you expect this [kind of] fantasy happiness, you're always going to be disappointed," Krasnow says.
Krasnow goes on to explain that the travails and messiness of everyday life ultimately deflate the balloon of romantic illusion causing most partners to run in opposite directions, often toward another elusive soul mate, this time created out of middle-aged fantasies.
Several entrenched cultural myths have severely distorted our perceptions about love and marriage. At the root of these myths is an even more crippling cultural myth about relationships which is:
THE GREATER THE NEED BETWEEN TWO PEOPLE,
THE GREATER THE LOVE.In fact, precisely the opposite is true. Any relationship based on need and the expectations of others is doomed from the start. Such a relationship is not built upon a foundation of love but one of fear.
Let me share with you a different viewing point on relationships.
Human actions are motivated at their primal level by one of two emotions: love or fear. These are the great opposites of the Universe ... the two extreme poles in the arena of human experience. Believe it or not, every human action begins either as a thought of love or one of fear. All other emotions -- such as happiness, joy, jealousy, envy, anger, hate -- are variations on love or fear.
This polarity between love and fear is one universal reality about human existence. We can't change this abiding truth, but we can choose whether our actions come from love or fear. How and what we THINK becomes the INTENT which dictates our ACTIONS. So the root question regarding how we respond to the world around us is: will we choose to act out of love or fear?
Fear is constrictive and controlling. It hides behind masks. Fear continually thwarts our inner desire to reach for something greater than who we are at the moment. It is our most damning internal censor. Fear corrals our innate curiosity and prevents us for taking calculated risks. Fear is smothering.
Love is expansive, releasing. It opens us to experience and growth. It sends us out to meet life. It heals all wounds. Love shares all it is, not just what it has. It always speaks the truth for it does not know how to lie. Love knows no restrictions or limitations. It is completely unconditional ... giving and receiving with no strings attached.
Unfortunately, most of us have never known unconditional love. Our life experiences have taught us something quite different. Our exposure to love has been landscaped by the expectations, prejudices, beliefs, values and fears of our parents and extended families. We grow up in a fear-based society to become adults who fear we will not be loved, or worse, believe we are not worthy of being loved.
When efforts to relate to others are contaminated by fears of loss, rejection, wothlessness, loneliness, or abandonment, connecting to another human being often becomes an act of desperation. We enter into relationships for all the wrong reasons. We look for someone to complete the emptiness we feel inside. We expect someone else to give us what we cannot give ourselves ... true dignity and genuine self worth.
In America, most first marriages occur among those age 21 - 30. Young adults in their 20s are magnificent works in progress. But they have a long way to go before they attain the wisdom of many life experiences that is the hallmark of a true spiritual human being, That kind of all-embracing wisdom takes many years of loving, learning and living.
Still, the inexperienced find it difficult to walk their journeys alone, so they come to a relationship as a half circle ... half full, half complete ... aware of their physical and intellectual potentials, but fearfully inexperienced in knowing how to express deep feelings or heal the limiting emotional imprints implanted during childhood.
Whether aware of it or not, each seeks another whose personal attributes fill what is missing within. It's rather like a jig-saw puzzle. After years of frustration trying to complete the picture on our own, we discover someone who supplies the missing pieces.
EUREKA! WE'RE IN LOVE! Ego boundaries collapse, time stops, and the heavenly host descends to bless everything we touch.
Our infatuation is made all the more intense with the discovery that our jig-saw partner is a half circle, too, and has found within us all the missing pieces that complete his or her own puzzle. Hallelujah!! A perfect match. There is no need to work through the fears that have left holes in the fabric of our inner lives because we bequeath to our partners the full responsibility for providing what we lack. We simply breeze along believing two halves not only make a whole, but the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts.
However, there is a flaw in this "perfect" match, one that will lead to its disintegration.
This whole created from two halves will never be greater than the sum of its parts. Quite the opposite. It is less because each person has given up something of themselves to preserve the feeling of belonging they get from the relationship. Therefore, preserving the relationship at any cost becomes more important than either of the two people in the relationship.
Neither person is complete unto him/herself. They enter into a relationship based on what each can get out of it, not what each can put into it. Each desperately needs what the other can provide. Each must capture and hold what the other has to give or the very reason for being together crumbles.
Needing someone to continually provide you with what you are afraid to give to yourself is not love. Needing someone to constantly reinforce your sense of worth is not love. Making someone the object of your full attention at the expense of your own growth and spiritual development is not love.
It is obsession. And obsession is another word for fear.
If you don't see your Self as blessed ---
if you don't see your Self as worthy ---
if you don't see your Self as love ---
how can you truly bless and love another?It's impossible. Your thoughts, therefore your actions, spring from either love or fear. If your thoughts toward your Self are not from love, then they are from fear and all your actions within any relationship will be fearful ones, either consciously and subconsciously.
It's very romantic to say you "feel complete" now that special someone has entered your life. YET THE PURPOSE OF A RELATIONSHIP IS NOT TO HAVE ANOTHER COMPLETE YOU, BUT TO HAVE ANOTHER WITH WHOM YOU MIGHT SHARE YOUR COMPLETENESS. Which implies an order -- a process -- that begins with the awareness of one's completeness, then a journey toward that state of being called unconditional love, and ultimately marriage out of that state of being.
I have always identified the order of this process as four essential questions we need to ask ourselves at all the crossroads in our lives:
1. Who am I?
2. What do I believe in?
3. Where am I going?
4. Who will travel with me?In most Western cultures, certainly in the United States, this process is reversed. We marry first and expect another to show us the way back to who we are in essence. We expect to love outwardly before we understand that love begins inside, with our first thoughts which shape our intentions and finally our actions.
Desperate to hang on and control the one who fills the vacancies in our being, we enter into a marriage ceremony that reinforces our fears. Afraid the object of our affection will eventually fall out of love with us, we shape wedding vows around a promise or guarantee. Marriage vows are an attempt to create security by governing each other's behavior. Many traditional wedding vows include a litany of restrictions intended to guarantee that what two people feel at the moment they exchange vows will remain unchanged forever.
Romantic double talk is not limited just to the wedding ceremony. Telling our partners we were "nothing" until they came along (or any variation on this pillow talk) puts incredible pressure on our partners to be all sorts of things they think we want them to be in order to sustain the euphoria we feel in their presence.
Not wanting to let us down, they try to measure up to our spoken or implied expectations until they simply cannot perform the illusions any longer. They can't fill the role we've cast for them in the drama of our lives. As resentment builds, bitterness and anger are sure to follow, even if they are not openly expressed.
Somewhere along the way, between the wedding day and daily reality, we give up the dreams and passions that once animated our souls and settle for our lowest expectations, or nothing at all.
There is a way to prevent the inevitable disintegration of relationships founded on romantic myths. Begin by changing your viewing point. If you will change your perceptions, you can alter your experiences.
I'll offer you a starting point. Absorb the following fresh point of view:
ACT OUT OF LOVE FOR THE HIGHEST GOOD OF YOU, AND YOU CANNOT BE ANYTHING BUT LOVE FOR ANOTHER.
Relationships are sacred because, with another person, you have the greatest opportunity to realize your own highest potential. In such relationships, each partner asks not what can they do for each other, but what can they BE with each other ... and what can we BECOME together.
Relationships fail when we see them as the greatest opportunity to realize the other person's greatest potential. It's a noble thought, placing another person's good before your own, but it is a serious distortion of a universal spiritual truth. It's that kind of distortion that creates relationships that become fortresses of fear.
Unconditional love does not demand, it declares. It liberates and releases. It receives as unconditionally as it gives. It owns nothing and no one. It expects nothing and makes no judgments.
If you think this is a lot of sissy hogwash or psychobabble, consider this: It is much more difficult to free someone than to control them. When you control someone, you get what you want. When you free someone, they get what they want.
It takes tremendous heart to be the custodian of another's person's spiritual freedom. Indeed, it takes unconditional love.
In closing, I offer the following as perhaps the only declaration one needs to make to one's beloved. Consider it my declaration of unconditional love:
I will love you forever and free you for everything. My gift to you is to be a custodian of your freedom to live the life you were born to live and be who you are. There is no greater gift I can give.
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YOU WERE BORN AGAIN TO BE TOGETHER
Many years ago, I wrote a homily to be read it at my wedding ceremony. At the time, I didn't know the words would become a touchstone for our growth and abiding love. But I now realize how prophetic and enlightening these words were at that time. They still are. So I share them with everyone who has chosen to live their lives as an unbroken expression of unconditional love.
Know ye gathered here today
That two people from opposite worlds
One day, out of darkness,
Shall find each other
Stand before each other
And see a soul reflection in each other's eyes.Know ye that two persons
Inspired by the same ideals
Animated by the same important tasks
Fully sharing their joys and sorrows
And giving their best to one another
Can only become one in perfect harmony.Today, two people take a few words
And in a way unknown to humankind,
The words become a legacy.
They speak not a sentence, but a song,
A revelation, a new creation,
A joy forever.Prudence and Gary,
Know that in all your thoughts,
In all your acts,
In every hope and in every fear,
Whether you soar to the sun or fall to the earth,
Always you are holding each other's hand.To have someone believe in you -
Even if you fail to reach the stars -
Is the most blessed and creative force in the universe.Therefore, let it never be said of the two of you,
Having heard a voice begging bread you made denial,
Having come to an open door you closed it,
Having come to a lighted candle you put it out.
He who comes to do good knocks at the gate
But he who loves finds the door open.There is no difficulty enough love cannot resolve,
No wound enough love cannot heal,
No gulf enough love cannot bridge.
No wall enough love cannot throw down.It makes no difference how deep the trouble,
How hopeless the outlook,
How great the mistake,
A sufficient realization of love will conquer all.Believe in love.
Be love
And you will be one with all that is heaven and earth.
You will be one within your Self.
You will be one within two.For surely you were born again to be together in love.
~~~~ the wedding homily by prudence kohl~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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GETTING CREATIVELY CRAZY!
Sometimes we take life too seriously and play not seriously enough. The same is true in relationships. Too often we forget how a fresh viewpoint, a little spontaneity, or one act of pure lunacy can spice up our lives and lighten the load.
So here are some suggestions that came across my desk that should add a few chuckles to your day. However, I absolutely will not be responsible for the results you get from these suggestions. I will not bail you out of jail. And I will not be your witness in court. In other words, you are entirely on your own. (What a refreshing and creative idea!)
1. At lunch time, sit in your parked car and point your blow dryer at passing cars to see if they slow down.
2. Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want fries with that.
3. Encourage your colleagues to join you in a rousing session of mid-afternoon competition of musical chairs.
4. Write "for sexual favors" in the memo field of your checks.
5. Skip rather than walk.
6. Finish all your sentences with "... in accordance with the prophecy."
7. Sing along at the opera.
8. Wear your pajamas to the grocery store.
9. Reply to everything you hear with, "That's what you think."
10. Ask people what sex they are.
11. dontuseanypunctuationorspaces
12. Kiss a cop.
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Thus ends this edition of your eXpress Yourself newZletter. I trust I've given you lots to think about. Better yet, don't think, feel. Feel the ideas I presented. Feel how you might strengthen your relationships by changing your viewing points as I suggested. And if you are bold enough to share your thoughts and feelings, I'd be honored if you'd dash off an email to me at: <imagineer@blueridge.net>
I wish all our readers love, joy and full expression. Thanks for sharing these moments with me.
Prudence Kohl
Author & Photographer, "Hole in the Garden Wall"
http://www.withinwithout.comKohlQuest Associates
3271 Polk County Line Road
Rutherfordton, NC 28139PLEASE NOTE: KohlQuest does not rent or sell lists of e-mail addresses.
We honor and respect the privacy of each and every one of our subscribers.The eXpress Yourself newZletter is copyrighted © 2001 by KohlQuest. All rights reserved. This document may not be copied in part or full without express written permission from the publisher. All violations will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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