Lisa Tilson

Today is day 4 of having a job, making yesterday day 3. Yesterday was also the largest order yet, my brother came over to visit and it was date night with my hubby AND not-to-mention my period coming on saturday. So, by the end of the night I was in the break down zone, my subconscious looking for something, anything to cry about. It was the carrots, that ended up coming from california for my so-called “local” spud order that broke the proverbial camels back. Yup, I stood in the kitchen with Justin inocently going over the miles that things on our grocery list traveled. By the time he got to the carrots that traveled more than 1000 kms to get to my plate I was blubbering.

This is an interesting position I find myself in when I am bound and determined to go from doing nothing, to doing everything in one week. I can recall a few other times since I was injured where I found myself going to the gym 5 times per week, working a new full time job and trying to maintain a social life only to end up with a kidney infection, lying on the couch on my first day off with a fever and a headache. This time, luckily, I am more aware of my body than to just run it into the ground.

So I took a glass of water and drank the whole thing (I don’t think I drank anything yesterday?) I cried, really hard for a good five minutes and looked at my expectations. Expectations are what lead to frustration and dissapointment - not insinuating that realistic expectations are a negative thing.

1. I expected perfection, speed and excellent coordination at my new job.
2. I expected to be as above AND get the kitchen cleaned up, make dinners, do laundry etc. without missing a beat.
3. I thought I should have had some time to knit on The Justin Sweater.
4. I epected that I should work all day with nothing but a rushed 15 minute lunch break.

NOPE. Once I decided that not only were these expectations unrealistic, but prevented me from listing to my body (ie: drink some water, do some reiki, sleep), I felt a lot better about myself. I am working on changing the way I work, against societies opinions of me, and against my own habits, I thought, this is going to take some time, some work and a little bit of falling down.

Inhale.

Exhale.

So, expectations in check, I went to meditate, then to bed. I slept in a little this morning, and woke up feeling ready to tackle my short work day.

Well, I got the job! Lorraine of Red Fish Kids Clothing has given me some samples to work on and present to her on monday, when I will be receiving some work! I am so happy to be working for this company. Lorraine is above all a very inspiring woman, a mother and an entrepaneur. She created a wonderful children’s clothing company that boasts preshrunk clothing made here in vancouver in a sweatshop free environment! Her designs are super cute, unique and practical.

The most fabulous part about the job, besides the karma free-ness of her vision is that I can work when I want, at home and do things that I enjoy. My creativity is encouraged! Not to mention that it pays well and leaves time for reading and writing.

As for the upcoming podcast, I have begun planning its formation and I will begin playing with the audio equipment early this week. I am planning to have it online sometime in the afternoon on Saturday the 24th of November, the full moon. I will write a post this week to give a bit of an outline.

I am also working on the reviews page. There should be at least one up by the end of the evening, possibly more!

I worked for a few hours this afternoon on the Justin Sweater. I’m rather excited about the progress and I hope to get it wrapped up by the end of November… or at least the first week in December!

The yarn: Silky Wool by Elsebeth Lavolde

The sleeves (which ended up being a couple millimetres different, something I could have avoided by knitting them at the same time on one long circular!)

The body - both pieces together on one long circular to avoid the problem described above.

Five months ago I began to erase the word “should” from my vocabulary. This is one of the first things I think I ever heard when I started looking at my own consciousness, but it wasn’t until five months ago that I began to realize just how deeply it is ingrained in almost every aspect of my life. I found it lurking in my education, work, career, vocation, love, family, social situations … pretty much any circumstances that depend on other people for their existence. Most noticably I found “should” tangled in the primal definition I had of myself and my purpose in this lifetime.

I had downloaded my definition of self from where I came from. More is better, more for less is even better. Save for a rainy day. Work is hard. You need a bachelors degree to succeed. Success looks like being able to manage it all in the new modern woman’s skin - career, kids and family, no problem. These phrases make me entirely uncomfortable. I didn’t want to do any of it - and I won’t do any of it anymore. I don’t want any part in poverty consciousness, mass consumption and commercialism, martyrdom or looking the part. What then? How do I throw out all of these things? What do I use to fill my life?

Luckily, I fell in love with and committed to a man with the same beliefs, which is a blessing. Next, I emptied it all out. I quit school, I quit working, I quit cleaning too much and I didn’t go out when it was sunny out. Any time I came accross a should, I didn’t do it. And that space was empty for a while… a long while. I was patient and slowly noticed that I have some demands.

1. I don’t work during my period. I do nothing, especially the first day, I just do what I want, and if I get cramps, then I find something I want to do more and they go away. (My period has synchronized with the full moon, my cramps are gone and the length has gone from 7 days to 5 - I’m aiming for 3)
2. My spritual practice comes before everyone.
3. Right now everything is on my terms. I have no responsibilities to anyone else (I cook and do laundry, as one can’t do nothing) unless my stipulations are met.
4. No guilt. I am not going to feel guilty for doing what I need to do.
5. The most important: This is a consious process, not an excuse for self indulgence and laziness. I must remain awake and listen to the insites of those that I trust.

As I started to listen to my demands, I noticed two simple truths: I need to survive and I need to fulfill my pupose. Its so basic and I LOVE it! It leaves room for fun (something I felt guilty about if I didn’t do enough “work”), time for learning and growing and enough space for listening to my voice.

These five months have been a slow excavation of everything that I didn’t feel was intrinsic to my being. I’ve given myself a voice, and now I can try things out and see if they contiribute to my purpose and my survival without the fogginess of other peoples ideals. Lately, I have begon to feel a little antsy, like my life doesn’t need to be so empty for me to hear my voice. Its time to bring some activity in. So, just like that, like I had spoke to the cosmos, I manifested a job interview for tomorrow. A perfect job where I can pick my hours, and how much work, that I’m doing something I like and I am good at, and that supports my environmental ideals. Perhaps this work can even contribute to my purpose?

Measure of success - I can always hear my voice.

Last year, a spiritual teacher prompted me to do the exercise: “How do I stay separate?” It was a fascinating experience for me because I had never considered what it meant to be separate or what effect staying separate might have on my life. Today, the exercise popped into my head again, and I thought it would make for an interesting post.

How I stay separate:

1. I try to appear like I have my life together
2. I judge others (”They are better than me”, “They aren’t as spiritual as I am”, “They don’t eat organic food and thus clearly care less about their bodies that I do about mine” etc.)
3. I observe others without opening myself up right away
4. I decide that I don’t want to be friends with certain people.
5. At school I stuck mainly to myself, convinced that I don’t need to make friends because no one was “on my level”.

The list could go on. One thing that my teacher pointed out after the exercise is how similar staying separate is to arrogance. Arrogance is the ego’s way of keeping a person separate, be it spiritual arrogance, intelligence arrogance or fill-in-the-blank arrogance, it is giving yourself permission to judge someone esles process so that you don’t have to see that we are all the same ore more precisely, so that you don’t have to see that you are the same as the person you are judging. The same works within the self: if you are constantly judging yourself as less than others, you are staying separate from yourself!

So, this week I havne’t written a post. I have thought about writing a post, I have started posts and deleted them, in fact, I have a post draft sitting there, unsent, because I couldn’t seem to get my ideas clearly lined up. I also avoided connecting with my reiki group - everyone else seemed to be having these amazing experiences after the training, and I couldn’t even bring myself to try reiki on my own.

Why did I spend my week like this?  The truth is, I don’t want others to think I’m not clever or to see that my thoughts don’t come out clearly right away.  I don’t want others to know that it takes me a lot of hands on experience to learn something and I especially don’t want others to judge me or disagree with what I write.

In my opinion, a perfect example of both staying separate from myself and from others! Its an interesting complex that I think a lot of people have developed, so here’s my ten cents: look for when you are being separate, and possibly arrogant then, open up a little, maybe share something with someone you feel you can trust (or you could blog to the entire internet population!). Within the self is a little bit more tricky. What I have found works is to look at that thing you judge and find the positive polarity of it. In my case: I dont’ want others to not like what I have to say, which means that I care about what I write and I don’t want to have something I care about rejected. However, if I never share it, no one else will ever have the chance to relate to what I think, bad or good and honestly, that’s worse than someone not agreeing with what I write.

Thanks to my ego, for without it there would be no need for this earth school.

Hello, I thought I would write and let you all know that I am still alive. I had a reiki training (level 1) this weekend that has monopolized my brain/energy and time this weekend. I feel amazing and I can’t wait to write tomorrow.