Never Settle

I want to get down on my hands and knees
and put my head to the earth
Crying happy tears,
Crying thank you, and please!!
For in all of my searching no man has seen my worth

But you

You do
-


For all I have given
I have never been seen
I've been sought, taken and forsaken
One too many times
And I refused to abide

I didn't make the rules to game
But I took the reigns
And sent them away
-I no longer wanted to play


Worthless sentiments
And condescending compliments
Walking on eggshells
Men with no honor
Patting me on the head
Empty heads, lights out,
Checked out, soul hidden behind a wall
Doesn't matter what that soul looks like
If they choose to bury it behind brick and mortar
In a basement, dingy dark and stairs steep
It's they who choose to sleep
Refuse to keep
Integrity

They made me sick
They made me tired
But I forced myself at the worst of times
To never abandon my desire..
For what I deserve

I may have stayed longer than I should've
But I did know how to let it go

I fought with everything to preserve
My sanctity
My faith
In my own heart
And in life

And I have won
-

So to you all
I say

When you are the most sick and tired,
When you no longer wish to play

Walk away.
And hold on...

Not to the users, the abusers
Weak-willed & hypocritical
Living in hypotheticals
Taking
Draining you

Love is not love
That suffocates

Do not negate
Your value
For a half-manifestation
Close but no cigar
You've come too far
In your life
To resign to tolerate
Horrible treatment
Don't settle.

Walk away
And hold on.

Never settle.

I'd rather sleep alone
Than with a poser or a prick
People pretending to be so conscious
Afraid to look in the mirror
They make me sick

Don't waste your time
With one who refuses to grow
And you had better face the mirror
Face the music
Do the work
Walk your talk

Strive to uphold your integrity
Live your life, follow your inspirations
And don't worry

And never settle..
And your day will come..

One
Worthy
Of
Your love.

Adventure Out Of Your Comfort Zone to Stand Firmly in Your Strength

Life works best when we love ourselves.

That truth used to slap me in the face when I chronically had low self-esteem.. (ages 7-25)..

..but it is true.. if it angers you to read that, reflect for a moment on why.. is it because you have a hard time loving yourself?.... and why??.....

My mom gave up her career in her early twenties to take care of my dad, who wasn't bed-ridden, but not fully independent anyways. She lived a hard, sheltered, and lonely childhood... had a few years of freedom, and then met daddy, and loved him with her whole heart, and gave her whole life to caring for him. But she denied herself full independence. She didn't learn to drive. She didn't go on adventures. She stayed sheltered. With daddy being sick, this all has become apparent to me.. my mom's nervousness and self-consciousness makes this brilliant and charming woman scared or anxious whenever she leaves the house, worried about what others think of her and feeling wierd about trusting herself.. no freedom. I remember when I used to be that way.. its such constriction of the life energy, it's such debilitating anxiousness.. and we all have this at moments, or have battled with it more then we have ever admitted.

How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.  Anais Nin


It makes me thank God that I was presented the opportunities to adventure outside of my comfort zone, and that I TOOK them! We all have opportunites presented to us.. but we don't allow ourselves to rise to them.. I'm too tired, I can't do that, that's OK, no... all the excuses to stay tightly closed in our buds, we refuse to blossom until the self-hating fatigue, until the tragedy, until the natural disaster, that FORCES us to open to life and start saying YES!

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.   Anais Nin

The new and unfamiliar is uncomfortable, but is an inherent experience in learning.. if we stop learning, growing, or changing, we stagnate, and to stagnate is to begin dying. I think all the adventures, as I call them, that I have experienced over the years.

Currently, I have made a giant hospital feel like my home, instead of clinging fearfully to the known areas, I explored, and made a new mental map.. met new wonderful people, developed new understanding, and reinforced and grew my own sense of strength, independence, and confidence. This has helped me to have the fearlessness needed to hear and follow my own inner-rightness. In following inner-rightness (or heart, or intuition, or inner-truth, as I also refer to it interchangably as) I feel my connection to the Whole very strongly. It is amazing, how developing a strong, but unselfish, sense of independence, is the greatest link to connect to oneness.

Be brave, explore your world. Try new things. Ask questions. Make eye contact. Don't let yourself freeze up. Take that trip alone, learn that new skill, visit, offer, dance, live, love, love, love!

This is your life.

Foster your own strength and indepence, it's like connecting your energetic roots to the earth.. strong legs, healthy base chakra, so that the rest of your being can bloom! Stand tall, breathe, feel, respond intuitively, don't waste time overthinking. Respond from your inner-rightness.

Get out of your comfot zone for a few minutes a day to grow your self-esteem. You will start to experience the greatest miracles and blessings in your world.

Once you become strong in you life, you love yourself.. you are in love with your Self and your life.. and you won't make the mistake of compromising your Self and Truth to pander for love.. you will have the strength and delight that breathes patience into your heart to give and receive love freely and not cling, but await greater and greater levels of love and intimacy. They are coming. Magic is happening. 

with Great Love.. Laura

Sometimes It's Lonely To Be Extraordinary

I am probably one of the most cheerful people you'll ever meet. I am quick to laugh and even quicker to smile. And it's all genuine, baby. I have joy in my life, even when I don't have immediate happiness, but most moments or most days I have happiness and joy. The difference being that happiness is all pervasive and in response to the total experience in the moment, joy is a deeper satisfaction that can be there like the sun in your heart even when you are less then thrilled about external or internal circumstances- like a stomachache or migraine or a break-up or car accident or your music being inadvertently and irrevocably lost.

I wear my heart on my sleeve, it has always been a quality of mine, and I think at times like this its clear function is to be useful to others, should they be able to see anything of their own experience within mine. I hope this is useful in some way to bring ease to others... This is about the down-side of living fully, which actually is like a pebble in the ocean of bliss. However, when you step on the pebble or stub your toe pretty badly on it, its easy to feel pretty sorry for yourself. I'm here to say, first of all, there there, it sucks and I know because I have been there. Secondly, don't linger there more then a moment, because everything else is so amazing and it beakons you forward to ever expanding states of wonderment, so really, self-pity is a waste of your precious time and energy.

Being an individual, while I hold to this day that it is THE path to the greatest happiness, highs, adventures, satisfaction and fulfillment in life, isn't always easy. I can easily see why people choose to hide into the shadows and conform at all costs, if no other reason then to feel like that aren't alone. Ahhhhh... the oxymorons that fill reality. If we duck underneath the blankets of conformity and hide our true extraordinary identity to fit in, we'll never still quite feel like we do fit. When we finally say screw it and throw off the pretentious masks, we will feel free, and find greater fulfillment. But there are some tough things that happen when we do this.. once we pass through them, we become even happier and feel connected to others in new, more real and deeper ways then we ever imagined...

THE EARLY CRANKY STAGES OF CONSCIOUSNESS:

I remember getting very pissed off, getting on a soap box. Hell, I can get up on that soap box at any moment if I don't watch it, if I am in the right company. Seriously, anyone who is conscious knows that, no shit, politics, bureaucracy, our food system, TV, our whole culcture has a lot loop holes and none of it is designed or functions to do anything that it is supposed to do for whomever it is supposed to be doing it. This was what happened, when I started to wake up, become more conscious, get informed and make empowered choices for my liffestyle and health. You may have gone through an angry phase too, you may be pretty pissed at "the man" right now. I recall time that feels so far away from who I am now because it is common. I was a bitter and militant little vegan warrior, man was I pissed. I am still not okay with the attrocities of the factory farming industry. But instead of being bitchy and turning everyone away like a barking dog, I choose to opt out, I believe in the boycott, man. I live sweetly and happily, healthfully, and without supporting that cruelty. I have inspired more vegans since I stopped being pissed off and started just living in line with my truth. In fact, I never inspired one before, now, several, who in turn inspire others. That's a huge impact! Instead of pissing and moaning about how you hate Walmart and then turning around and shopping there, put your money where your mouth is. The only color "the man" sees in America's heartless capitalistic system is green, baby. So vote with your buck. Don't whine about having too few bucks, because if you only have a few votes, then you had better use them even more thoughtfully!!

So hopefully you will learn to turn the fire of your anger into joyous passion for the wise, compassionate and conscious choices you decide to make. In your passionate joy, you WILL catch more flies with honey then your piss and vinegar, I assure you!

WHEN YOU DISCOVER WHO YOU ARE, THOSE WHO WANTED YOU TO BE WHO YOU AREN'T WILL GET BITTER AND RUN:

Family and friends alike with which you had bonds over habits that fall by the wayside as you move forward and become more self-aware, will either attack your new ways of seeing the world, accuse you of being a punk or hippie, or simply stop being part of your life. This is a difficult experience, but neccessary. The truth is that we have to learn that nothing is solid and permanent. We aren't a solid object, we are a constantly changing river. So as we change, our energy changes.. think of it as frequency, or as a color or a chord. As our texture changes, the textures we will be attracte to will change. It makes good sense, of course, but it is hard to let go. Letting go of people we thought we'd always have a deep bond with is very painful, but here is the lovely part- we let go of the connections that are keeping us stuck in the mud and not mutually beneficial, and we will find that new, deeper, more inspiring connections will have room to arise. This is really satisfying and amazing. This isn't just something that happens when you first commit to being completely uncompromised in who you are, oh no! It keeps happening over and over, but generally gets easier to handle and relatively painless in most circumstances. As much as you lose, you will gain so much more love and connection then you ever really had.

YOU HAVE TO SEE YOURSELF EXACTLY AS YOU ARE, IN ALL YOUR BEAUTY AND FULLNESS, IN ALL YOUR VULNERABILITY AND SHAME:

As you become more awakened to who you are and who you aren't, you will see more nakedly the underlying emotions that motivate and motivated your choices. You see fatigue, disappointment, loneliness, lack of self-esteem where they raggedly poke and jab you. You see your desire for acknowledgement, attention, connectedness, love, respect. You see yourself in the  past and may feel pretty foolish about your actions and motivations. You may see yourself right now and feel  pretty foolish about the motivations of your actions. And sometimes you will still choose those actions. And sometimes you just won't. You'll begin to see that we are all in similar boats and that every action has a motivation, maybe its pretty simple and pure, maybe its pretty selfish and screwed. We are all motivated somehow, or else no one would do a damn thing! We want happiness, fulfillment, to love and be loved. That comes with being alive, if you don't want that stuff, are you going to care about living..? Perhaps, if you are REALLY conscious, but for the rest of us, we shoudln't feel stupid for wanting to love and be loved, or wanting genuine connections with other beings, or wanting to be known and appreciated for who we truly are instead of who we think we should be or who others want us to be.

EXTRAORDINARY BEINGS NEED EXTRAORDINARY EQUALS, WHICH MEANS YOU NEED TO FIND RARE GEMS AND NEEDLES IN HAYSTACKS:

I'm not the only person dealing with the realization that finding people to really deeply connect with is like winning a miraculous lottery. But the universe specializes in this sort of thing. It is hard not to feel discouraged at times, but the truth is all things are possible. Trust, I am sooooooo incredibly thrilled and ready to be blown away by meeting my amazing equal, I am ready for an extraordinary man to sweep me off of my feet. Under no circumstances should we ever compromise or feign interest or true connection where it doesn't exist just to numb the loneliness. Swami Nirmalananda always said that deep happiness with just a touch of melancholy is the perfect recipe for fast spiritual evolution. There is something powerful about longing. So worry not. Without self-pity, but with strong longing, we do attract the kind of beings we want to know and be near, that want to know and be near us. Patience is a bitch of a lesson, at least for me, when it comes to passion and finding real love...

IT IS ALWAYS WORTH BEING YOUR EXTRAORDINARY SELF:

" If you’re not aware that what you put out
 Is what you get back
 That you make the world through the way you act
 You can’t harness the awesome power of that fact"  ~Ani Difranco  (If Yr Not)

We have to be ourselves. If we fight it, we fight the truth, and the truth has a funny way of resurfacing over and over, no matter how hard we try to swallow it down, bury it, burn it, disconnect from it, kill it... it can't be destroyed. The little bit of difficulty or pain we have to face is nothing compared to the indescribable freedom of finally being fully alive without all the heavy-ass baggage of inhibitions and other junk hanging around our necks.

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." ~Anais Nin

"And honesty is the hardest part
Yeah honesty is the highest art
And honestly i myself just started
And eureka I'm less broken hearted" ~ Ani Difranco, (Promiscuity)

Even when you are lonely you are never alone. And by being yourself you will find more people you truly connect to. And you will inspire people around you to live more passionately everyday. You will brighten lives with your very existence. Smile to the moon, breathe the fresh air in like love itself, see the trees at dusk silently witnessing you with total compassion. All of nature bends around you in tender loving embrace. You have loved ones, you have friends, and you will have all you deserve. Everything will come in its perfect timing, like the changing of the seasons, and the broader your perspective, the more you see how all the pieces fit and why you couldn't have what you wanted at the time. You will get better then what you wished for. Better then you could have created is what the universe will meld into place for you. Just believe in the beauty of life and it will come to be.

"What comes is better then what came before" ~Cat Power (I Found a Reason)

1 + 1 = 2 ... We aren't halves, but we can be complimentary colors

Many people think that they need another person to complete them. I think this is a well-intentioned, but slightly unhealthy way of viewing the kind of connection most, if not all, of us long for.

As long as we look outside ourselves, towards our material circumstances or other people, for our satisfaction, we won't have lasting peace. The Buddha discovered that human beings automatically become dissatisfied regardless of their external circumstances. He realized that our happiness has to come from remaining present and dynamic. As soon as we look to something to remain exactly the same, we are certain to become disappointed because no one and nothing remains constant. It is as simple as that.

I do think the urge to find a partner is very strong and leads to beautiful experiences, but it will never be fruitful if we are looking to become completed by the other being. I do believe in rare and amazing connections between people and that these are very sacred and special, but we cannot look toward the future and demand that they shine unchanging forever. Instead we have to honor that these connections may grow together and apart as we both move on. Connections disconnect and new ones appear. Some connections are re-connected down the road as paths converge again, only to diverge when they diverge. That is what is so special about a genuine connection that lasts for many decades, to truly have that soul connection last that long requires the ability to remain honest and present as individuals, and a lot of grace and luck as well.

So if we aren't two halves that fix each other, can we be two wholes that blossom incredibly in each others' presence? Like complementary colors, side by side, each being completely ourselves, uncompromised, we can be our happiest, healthiest, and brightest with each other.

As soon as that ceases to be so, as soon as we begin to compromise our path, our individuality, in an unhealthy way, we get mixed up. When you mix complementary colors they become muddy and bland and disappear from their true brilliance. Sadly, out of obligatory courtesy or desire to conform or fear of the unknown, too many people settle to be muddy and unsatisfied, married or not. Marriage has little to do with happiness, by the way, happiness in a relationship comes from the honesty both show themselves and each other, when both people can be honestly themselves and honest with themselves and each other, and are joyous to be together, then nothing else is needed- no approval from others, no jewelry or certificate or tax break or labels.

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