Being true to YOu!!

mask of the collage by Mark


I am an outside advisor to the Board of Directors of Heaven
and I see that vegetarians, people who meditate,
joggers and the faithful all die. Some of them are quite bitter
when they realize how much time and effort they put into trying to avoid death.
The message is to live fully your unique and authentic life
and then you will live your longest, fullest life.
Remember, he who seeks to save his life will lose it,
but he who is willing to lose his life will save it.
I see many people recover from life threatening illnesses
when they learn they have a short time left to live.
It is at that moment of reckoning that they begin to live their true life -
what is in their hearts. Then, they feel so good they don't die.
-Bernie Seigel

The Human Stain

Anyone ever see the movie called "The Human Stain"? I watched it over the weekend. I had never heard of it before. It was a very powerful movie....about embracing our shadows.....being able to be "real" and risk being vulnerable. Below is a really good review of it.

Have a great day!!
-Michele

"The Human Stain tallies up the pain, the suffering, and the loss that come into our lives when we refuse to acknowledge the shadow part of ourselves. To live a lie about freedom is terrible whether one is a person or a nation."

Film Review

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

The Human Stain
Directed by Robert Benton
Buena Vista Home Entertainment 10/03 DVD/VHS Feature Film
R - language, sexuality, nudity

Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins) is the former dean of Athena College where he teaches classics. The year is 1989, and the media is obsessed with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. When Silk notices that two students are still missing from his class several weeks into the semester, he asks, "Do they exist or are they spooks?" The faculty gather and inform him that the two students are African Americans who were deeply offended by his racial slur. Silk, of course, argues that he was referring to a phantom or ghost since he'd never even seen the students. Shamed by the faculty, many of whom he hired, the professor flees to his home where he and his wife (Phyllis Newman) plan a campaign to clear his name of the racism charge. But she dies of a heart attack after a brilliant burst of invective. Silk retires, still nursing the resentment he feels for being a victim of political correctness.

When the former professor learns that Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), a writer, has become a recluse in a cabin in the woods, he decides to pay a visit. He wants Zuckerman to write a book about the incident but soon realizes that the younger man, who is licking the wounds from two divorces and is at loose ends, is not up to it. The two men become friends, playing gin rummy and listening to big bands from the 1940s. In one scene, Silk convinces Zuckerman to dance with him to Fred Astaire singing "Cheek to Cheek." Silk is completely uninhibited since he has no reputation to protect anymore. Zuckerman tries to go with the flow, even though he feels a bit uncomfortable. The moment bonds the two cerebral men together in a way that all their talking has not been able to do.

Silk confesses that he is feeling so fine thanks to an affair he's having with Faunia Farely (Nicole Kidman), a sexy 34-year-old who works as a janitor at the university. She seduces him during their first encounter and as their relationship continues, Silk surprises himself with his passion, thanks to a little help from Viagra. Asking her what it's like to have sex with an old man, she promptly replies without batting an eyelash, "Perfect, no surprises."

Faunia travels light and has been moving around the country since she left home at 14 to get away from her stepfather's sexual advances. Now she's in a state of constant fear over the violent outbursts of Lester (Ed Harris), her ex-husband who blames her for the death of their two children in a fire. This Vietnam vet, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, is not happy when he learns of her affair with an elderly man.

When Silk goes to see a lawyer about what can be done about Lester and an anonymous letter that accuses him of exploiting an abused illiterate woman half his age, he is told to give up his affair with Faunia because she is not in his league and not in his world. He gets the same advice from Zuckerman, who is worried about the safety of his friend. Silk tells him in simple and crystal clear words: "This is not my first love, it's not my great love, but it's my last love." Zuckerman is left speechless.

The Human Stain is based on Philip Roth's novel of the same title published in 2000. Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer) directs from a screenplay by Nicholas Meyer (Sommersby, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution). The drama begins as an indictment of political correctness and a slam on how one word could trash the career of a dedicated professor. But the theme that emerges as the main one is the human stain we all leave on the world with our ambition, fantasies, lies, and rages. These marks are made by our propensity to put ourselves above others, to disregard limits, and to take all we can get.

Faunia has plenty of secrets that she slowly shares with Silk as she unclenches her fists and opens to the tenderness of someone who truly loves her. In one scene in the kitchen, she apologizes for a tirade against him. When he says how glad he is to see her, she melts emotionally and glides across the room on a fresh surge of feeling. Nicole Kidman conveys a whole range of emotions effectively here, but none so well as relieved vulnerability.

Silk has the biggest secret of all, one that he has carried his entire adult life as a burden. It is something so shocking that in flashback scenes, it sends Steena (Jacinda Barrett) fleeing from the young Silk (Wentworth Miller). It later completely estranged him from his mother (Anna Deavere Smith). Both actors portraying Silk are convincing in their depictions of a repressed soul.

One of the most poignant moments in this sophisticated screenplay is when Silk tells Faunia, "I don't think that you can measure sorrow." True enough. But unlike any recent movie, The Human Stain tallies up the pain, the suffering, and the loss that come into our lives when we refuse to acknowledge the shadow part of ourselves. To live a lie about freedom is terrible whether one is a person or a nation.

---

Authenticity






Identity Theft
by Alan Cohen

Identity theft is a very hot topic these days. Nasty hackers are stealing other folks' credit card numbers and posing as the owners to illicitly buy goods. Quite uncool.

There is an even more dangerous form of identity theft that you are already a victim of, one which runs far deeper than your credit card. You have been taught to believe that you are someone other than who you are. I know this is sobering, since you think you are someone. But you are not who you have been told you are. You are someone better.

Grand theft identity begins soon after you arrive on earth, and intensifies with age. A participant in one of my seminars paid an unexpected visit to her son's religious school and found him sitting in a hallway garbage can. "What are you doing here?" she asked him. "I talked out in class and the teacher made me sit here as a punishment," the child answered. With that, the mother removed her son from the trash and the school. The school was guilty of identity theft.

A 21-year-old fellow at another seminar had been diagnosed with cancer at age 17. One day when Charles was scheduled for chemotherapy he learned there was a Grateful Dead concert in his town that night, and he decided that the concert would be more fun to attend. Charles' parents and doctor pleaded with him not to go to the concert, but he went. That night he started to feel better, and within a few months his cancer disappeared. Charles reclaimed his identity as a healthy kid.

During last year's summer Olympics, U.S. gymnast Paul Hamm was favored to win the men's all-around, a series of five events. During the vault competition, Hamm slipped on his dismount and fell onto the judges' table. He was penalized severely and instantly dropped from 1st to 13th place. The television announcer grimly noted, "Paul Hamm will remember this error for the rest of his life."

With two events left in the competition, U.S. observers hoped he could miraculously work his way back to a bronze medal. Then, in the rings event, Hamm turned in a stellar performance. To everyone's amazement, Hamm emerged with the gold medal by a margin of 13/1000th of a point - the slimmest margin in Olympic history.

When the TV commentator noted that Hamm would remember his error for a lifetime, he attempted to perform on-the-air identity theft. Yet Hamm did not let the announcer steal his identity as a champion. Indeed he will always remember that night - not for his disgrace, but his triumph.

Take care that no one robs your identity as a whole, innocent, powerful, brilliant, creative being. Take special care not to speak of yourself as a loser, or do desperate things. The world can't afford another hacker.

Alan Cohen

Website: [ www.alancohen.com ]

Happy Valentines Day!!!!!!!!

The archetype of marriage was designed to assist physical survival...The archetype of marriage is no longer functional.

- Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul (1989)

Is it the end of marriage as we know it???-m


Gary Zukav on the Illusion of Romantic Love
According to Gary Zukav, romance has nothing to do with love. It is not real. Romance is your desire to make yourself complete through another person rather than through your own inner work.

Gary gives us this analogy: We all attend a university — Gary calls it the Universe. There are particular campuses on this university. One is called the Earth School.

All of the courses offered at the Earth School have one objective — to teach us how to obtain authentic power. Authentic power, Gary tells us, is the alignment of the personality with the soul.

One of the classes offered at the Earth School is called Romantic Love.

Gary says romantic love is like a drug. It produces euphoria, energy and vitality. You think you've found someone to complete your life — it's a high. But when that drug wears off, everything you felt before you took the drug returns. That is the moment of disillusionment. You think love is gone, but the illusion is gone.

This is the time that most people go back and take the romance class again. They look for someone else to provide this feeling of euphoria. But Gary says, you will eventually see this person for who they really are, and the feeling of romance will again fade.

Searching for What's Missing in Your Life
When you find someone you think is completing you, Gary suggests making a list of the things you love about that person. Those traits are qualities that you have the capability of cultivating within yourself. Another person can never give you those things.

The disintegration of romantic love, Gary reminds us, is not a tragic loss. Rather, it is the beginning of the possibility of real growth within you. No one else can "rescue" or "save" you. If you're searching for Mr. Right, Gary says you're looking in the wrong direction. Instead, you must do the inner work and become Ms. Right. Until you intend to make yourself whole, Gary says, you will not be able to experience true love.

Spiritual Partnership
The only way love lasts is if it continues to grow into something deeper. Gary says that true love has to do with giving, and caring for someone else. He defines Spiritual Partnership as a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth. It's not possible to have a spiritual partnership with someone you think will "complete you".

This came from Oprah.com

GARY ZUKAV'S GUIDELINES FOR SPIRITUAL PARTNERSHIP:

SPIRITUAL PARTNERSHIP is partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth.

It requires:

• COMMITMENT – TO CREATE AUTHENTIC POWER (ALIGN MY PERSONALITY WITH MY SOUL).
• Focus on what I can learn about myself all the time, especially from my reactions (such as anger, fear, jealousy, resentment, and impatience) instead of judging or blaming others or myself.
• Notice my emotions (by feeling the physical sensations in my energy centers).
• Notice my thoughts (such as planning my reply, judging, analyzing, comparing, day-dreaming, etc.)
• Notice my intention (such as blaming, judging, needing to be right, wanting admiration, escaping into thoughts (intellectualizing), trying to convince, etc.)
  
  
• COURAGE – TO STRETCH MYSELF BEYOND THE LIMITED PERSPECTIVES OF THE FRIGHTENED PARTS OF MY PERSONALITY.
• Take responsibility for my feelings, experiences, and actions (no blaming)
• Practice integrity at all times (often requires action, such as speaking when frightened parts of my personality don’t want to speak and not speaking when they feel compelled to speak).
• Say or do what is most difficult (sharing what I notice, if appropriate, when someone speaks or acts from a frightened part of her personality; sharing about myself what I am frightened to say and know that I need to say.)
  

• COMPASSION – TO SEE MYSELF AND OTHERS AS SOULS WHO SOMETIMES HAVE FRIGHTENED PARTS OF THEIR PERSONALITIES ACTIVE.
• Change my perspective from fearful to loving (choose to see myself and others in a loving or appreciative way).
• Release any distance I feel from anyone.
• Be present while others are speaking (not preparing replies, judging, etc.)
  


• CONSCIOUS COMMUNICATION AND ACTION – TO BRING ALL OF THE ABOVE INTO MY INTERACTIONS.
• Consult my intuition.
• Choose my intention before I speak or act.
• Act from the healthiest part of my personality that I can find (rather than caretaking, fixing, teaching, judging, blaming, gossiping, etc.)
• Speak personally and specifically rather than generally and abstractly (use “I” statements rather than “we” or “you” statements).
• Release attachment to the outcome (trust the Universe). If I find myself attached, begin again with Commitment, Courage, Compassion.

Love is all there is.

When I jog, I love to run through cemeteries, and sometimes I stop to read the headstones. I saw one on Cape Cod recently at the grave of a man who died at twenty-eight – so young! The message read, "His life taught us how to live, his death, how to die." That's what ought to be on every headstone – I'd say this boy accomplished whatever he needed to accomplish in twenty-eight years. Now, other people had on their headstones that they went to Yale or Harvard, that they were lawyers or manufacturers. But I don't think God cares where we were graduated or what we did for a living. God wants to know who we are. Discovering this is the work of the soul – it is our true life's work. As a matter of fact, over God's desk are two plaques. One says, "God forgets everything you remember and God remembers everything you forgot." And the other says, "Don't feel totally, eternally, irrevocably responsible for everything. That's my job. – God."

From Bernie Siegel, MD, Love: The Work of the Soul, from Handbook for the Soul, pages 43-44,

Recently Macy's fellow 4Th grade classmate lost his mom. His mom, Sue, was such a beautiful person.
She was a year ahead of me in high school. I loved her obituary....it did not say she was a cheerleader and on the homecoming court and dated the captain of the football team and had a big-ass house. It did not talk about her grade point average or her college degree..her volunteer positions. It did not talk about what religion or political party she followed....It instead talked about her love. That is what she was about... read her obituary below and see what I mean. She will be remembered for her hugs and her love not her posessions or positions. She was all about Love.
Peace and love to you, Michele


I like to read the wisdom of the words on some stones and also notice the egotistical craziness of some people's last words. What would you share with the world with your last breath and what words do you want on your headstone? (bernie wrote this too.)

Suzanne Hughes Green

Suzanne Hughes Green, 42, passed away Friday, Jan. 26, 2007.

She was born Feb. 11, 1964, in Bryn Mawr, Pa., to William H. Hughes and Nancy Berry Hughes.

Sue left us all with countless gifts. At her very core she was unconditionally kind and loving. She greeted us all with a bearish hug. If still for any length of time, you were at risk for another one. Even recently, while under significant physical distress, Sue would lift her arms to greet each of us like it was for the first time. Her kindness was magically partnered with her passion, intellect, commitment and grace under fire. She was loving yet courageously strong. After three years of living with her illness, we never once heard a complaint. All of this was a gift to us.

More than anything, Sue loved her family, another gift. Children were at the center of her universe. Some of our favorite memories of Sue will be of her with a room full of kids — hers and others'. She had a self-actualized glow in their presence. They, in turn, looked at her with rapt attention, soaking up whatever she was offering that day. Her three kids will deeply miss her, but they will be repeatedly reminded that a lot of her lives in each one of them. You see it in their eyes and feel it in their soul.

Sue recently received a letter from a friend that touched her very much. In it, the friend said: "You, Sue, are all we hope our kids to become." No truer words were ever spoken.

Sue, we miss you already. We miss those hugs, those heavenly cookies, the little chocolate turkey on our plate at Thanksgiving, your dutiful laughing at our bad humor, your soft pat on our back when things weren't going as we expected, your support in the face of adversity and your understanding when we didn't even understand ourselves.

We would like to unconditionally thank all of you who reached out to us during this difficult time. Sometimes that was with a ride for the kids, food for the family, direct care given for Sue or even a rotten joke trying to cheer us up. Those were also gifts to us.

Mrs. Green will be deeply missed by the countless people whose lives she has touched. She leaves behind her husband, Tracy; her wonderful children, Ryan Fitzgerald, Halley Berry and Jack Carter Green; father, William Hughes; brothers, Glendon (Brenda) Hughes; stepbrothers, Charles (Erina) Calder, James (Karen) Calder and Davis (Ann) Calder; father-in-law, Paul C. Green; brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Kelly and Vicki Green; sister-in-law, Ann Calder; nephews, Jon, K.C., Matt, Judah and Jim; and nieces, Samantha, Margaret, Kathryn, Jane, Ellie, Tori and Hannah.

She was preceded in death by her mother, Nancy Berry Hughes; stepmother, Susan Calder Hughes; and mother-in-law, Patricia B. Green.

Service: 11 a.m. Tuesday at United Church of Christ Congregational, 217 E. Liberty St., Medina. The Rev. Sharon Kiesel will officiate.

Burial: Medina Center Cemetery.

Visiting hours: 2 to 4 and 6 to 9 p.m. today at Waite & Son Funeral Homes, Medina Chapel, 765 N. Court St.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Cleve-land Clinic Foundation, Horvitz Center for Palliative Care, P.O. Box 931517, Cleveland, 44193-1655.

The Dance

The Dance
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

I have sent you my invitation,
the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living.
Don't jump up and shout, "Yes, this is what I want! Let's do it!"
Just stand up quietly and dance with me.

Show me how you follow your deepest desires,
spiralling down into the ache within the ache.
And I will show you how I reach inward and open outward
to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, everyday.

Don't tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart.
Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.

Tell me a story of who you are,
And see who I am in the stories I am living.
And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.

Don't tell me how wonderful things will be . . . some day.
Show me you can risk being completely at peace,
truly OK with the way things are right now in this moment,
and again in the next and the next and the next. . .

I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring.
Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall,
the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will.
What carries you to the other side of that wall,
to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?

And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the clear, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving those we once loved out loud.

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart.
And I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

Show me how you take care of business
without letting business determine who you are.
When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us shout that soul's desires have too high a price,
let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

Show me how you offer to your people and the world
the stories and the songs you want our children's children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle
not to change the world, but to love it.

Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude,
knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging. Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day.

And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest
intentions has died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

Don't say, "Yes!"
Just take my hand and dance with me.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer



By the author of the book THE INVITATION. Excerpted with permission from THE DANCE (to be published September 2001). Copyright (c) 2001 by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in whole or in part without the permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 10 E. 53 St., New York NY 10022