About Me:

Someone who has come back from the dead to live; reeaalllly live in Love. I am glad I’m gay in that it has taught me that perceived supremacy is not something to honor.

_________

For 34 years, I felt alone, at school, at home, at work, everywhere. Once I accepted who I was AND was able to allow others to see me, I was no longer alone.

It took me 34 years to reclaim myself. What I’ve come to realize: We are all a victim when reliving things past — I too was a victim while not wanting to be a “THEM”, playing like I was someone else –AND– Mental health is like any other health – sometimes we get sick and sometimes we get over it.

"...unloved in the universe."
"It is not the threat of death, illness, hardship, or poverty that crushes the human spirit; it is the fear of being alone and unloved in the universe."
------ Anthony Welsh

From Jim Wooten's Book "We Are All The Same"

"...for generation after generation, millions upon millions...were penalized and persecuted simply for their genes, for their biological heritage, for their involuntary membership in one particular component of the human race - as a routine part of their penalty, they were robbed of their individual identities."

I spent too long hating myself for my mistakes. You can't change the past, but you can change your future by letting go of it.

BEFOREHAND -

A snippet from Robert Fulghum's book "It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It" preface best describes what's expressed within: "…here is not a collection of well-crafted essays, but the ongoing minutes from a one-man committee meeting…. An amateur's job. ...
There are contradictions in here. It's just that I seem to hold in my head some mutually exclusive notions. I haven't made up my mind about everything yet."

I've uploaded many disjointed items which I am in the process of categorizing.
This BLOG allows family/friends to catch-up on pieces they've missed while allowing me to compile & organize for the eventual book.

If you choose to read them, BE WARNED; some are quite HEAVY; and some come from a different mindset than I hold now.

learn to live LOVE here and now

REFLECTION

Perspective - I've found that sometimes when I step back and say, "This is the poison playpen," I am led to other situations that feel less toxic, even enjoyable. When I insist on staying in there and "working this out" or "working this through." I end up getting all worked up and to no positive avail. - In each day's march, we encounter events that loom large and may feel overwhelming. Yet, looking back a few months later, we find ourselves saying, "What was the big deal about that?" In other words, we have gained a more balanced perspective. This is what is really meant by detachment. ("God Is No Laughing Matter" - Julia Cameron)

MY FAVORITE Quotes

When people are blocked creatively, they avoid fun. Why? Because FUN LEADS STRAIGHT TO CREATIVITY. Fun leads to healthy anachy, to festive rebellion, to sensing our own strength and power. -- Julia Cameron
He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. -- Aeschylus
Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear but around in awareness. -- James Thurber
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. -- Mark Twain
The next message you need is always right where you are. -- Ram Das
The man with a new idea is a crank, until the idea succeeds. -- Mark Twain
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. -- Albert Einstein
SURVIVING MEANS BEING BORN OVER AND OVER. -- Erica Jong
Always frame conflict as a clash of ideas, NOT persons. -- Robert Kegan
Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty. -- Galileo
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come! -- Victor Hugo __ "Full acceptance of the diverse nature of humanity." ELM
THE CURIOUS PARADOX IS THAT WHEN I ACCEPT MYSELF JUST AS I AM, THEN I CAN CHANGE. -- Carl Rogers
He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened. -- LaoTzu
No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit. -- Helen Keller
The only completely consistent people are the dead. -- Aldous Huxley
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. -- Oscar Wilde
NO ONE CAN MAKE YOU FEEL INFERIOR WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT. -- Eleanor Roosevelt
Loyalty to PETRIFIED OPINION never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. -- Mark Twain
I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion. -- Billie Jean King
Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. NOW. -- Joan Baez
Experience is the toughest teacher BECAUSE she gives the test first, and then the lesson. -- Unknown
Love truth, but pardon error. -- Voltaire
What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows. -- Epictetus
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects. -- Herman Melville
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived. -- Thomas Merton
There are two kinds of adventurers: those who go truly hoping to find adventures, and those who go secretly hoping they won't. -- William Least Heat Moon
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones. -- John Cage
My Past: Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
In all chaos there is a cosmos; in all disorder a secret order. -- Carl Jung
Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. -- Tao Te Ching
Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn't just a fiction; it's part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space, and is inside us, like the teeth in our mouth. It can't be forever violated with impunity. -- Boris Pasternak
Over time defenses often mature and allow the "mentally ill" to evolve into the mentally well. -- George Vaillant
What if we smashed the mirrors and saw our true face? -- Elsa Gidlow
The soft overcomes the hard. The slow overcomes the fast. Let your workings remain a mystery. Just show people the results. -- Tao Te Ching
God gives us the nuts, but he does not crack them. -- German Proverb
Where there is great Love, there are always miracles. -- Willa Cather
Before you seek revenge you should first dig two graves. -- Chinese Proverb
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny mutters, compared to what lies within us. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Well begun is half done. -- Aristotle
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know _ What I was walling in or out. -- Robert Frost
It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of the voyage. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They are absolutely free - and worth a fortune. -- Sam Walton
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. -- Oscar Wilde
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind. -- Somerset Maugham
Something we were withholding made us weak _ Until we found it was ourselves. -- Robert Frost
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler. -- Henry David Thoreau
Success isn't permanent and FAILURE ISN'T FATAL. -- Mike Ditka
Trouble will come soon enough, and when he does...receive him as pleasantly as possible. ...the more amiably you greet him the sooner he will go away. -- Artemus Ward
There is strong shadow where there is much light. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Action will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve. -- Tehyi Hsieh
To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium. -- Eric Hoffer
Real learning comes when the competitive spirit has ceased. -- J. Krishnamurti
Learn to see in another's calamity the ills which you should avoid. -- Publilius Syrus
It is a painful thing / To look at your own trouble and know / That you yourself and no one else has made it. -- Sophocles
The awareness of the ambiguity of one's highest achievements (as well as one's deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity. -- Paul Tillich

ThatWasTheACT

Gary Larson Depicted IT So Well...

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Saturday, November 13, 2010

At 52

Vanishing Act >podcast< ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)