Posted on Mar 12th, 2008
by 
Ellen
I have a talent that is both a blessing and a curse: I am very sensitive to energy, and I know immediately when someone is lying to me.
It's not in their words or in their talent level regarding lying. It's more subtle than that, so much so that I can't always explain how I know. I just do, and it makes it difficult sometimes, especially the closer the person is to the real me. There's a palpable shift in the energy surrounding us, and I feel it.
Sometimes it's a gift, because it's helped me keep from giving my trust to untrustworthly and potentially harmful people. However, with the little lies that mean not much and which come from people closer in, I kind of wonder if ignorance would really be bliss.
Because how do you open up when these little untruths surface? The untruths kindly meant or told out of concern for how I'd feel/think/react...the ones told or performed with best intentions but which plant doubt into my own mind. As in, if he or she cannot be truthful about this, than how would they react if I was completely truthful about my experiences? The person who judges his or her own experiences and decides for me how I will react and therefore rewrites the truth would logically do the same with anything I'd share, right?
So what do I do? The same thing...out of fear, out of a need to hold myself apart. And we continue to pretend together and never fully let go and just trust.
I wonder sometimes what would happen if I just called bullshit sometimes or spoke the truth, even the truth that might be difficult for the other person to hear. If we're all waiting for the other person to jump first, aren't we all standing on the side of the pool together? Waiting for someone to show us it's safe?
Let me be clear that I do not see boogeymen all around me. I think most people are trustworthy and made out of good stuff. It's just that the more authentic I become, the more willing I am to get closer to others, the more I see that there are actually levels of what I'm willing to risk with anyone...and as I master one level, I see that there's another and another, all a little closer and scarier than the one before.
At some point you get down to the stuff that is at the core of who you are, the soft underbelly, the Achilles' heel. And the question is, do you trust someone who lies to you, who judges his or her own experiences and withholds their truth because they believe you'll judge as well?
I don't know.
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Posted on Jan 19th, 2008
by Ellen
Ever have a sensitive tooth or a sore on the inside of your mouth? Do you remember how, whenever your tongue touched that place or you drank something too cold/hot/acidic it would activate the pain associated with it while the remainder of the time it was as if it didn't exist? Did you ever poke around with your tongue to check to see if, indeed, it still hurt?
This is the way it is with the emotions associated with past experiences. Months and years go by, we grow, we change, we mature, and yet...when we think of that event, we get that pang of emotion in rememberance.
Intellectually we might have processed it, cleaned it up, and asserted that we were soooo over that. But are we? Until we can think of that event with no pang, aren't we still holding that vibration in our bodies? And in some way, continuing to attract that particular flavor into our lives unconsciously?
I think about things like being a teenager in my mom's house. She had no respect for my privacy, and would regularly root through my drawers and read my notes and concoct wild stories in her head about the badness I must be up to. My mom's primary viewpoint came from fear...and all of her actions towards me arose from that mentality.
Mind you, I am not blaming my mother. I believe she did the best she could with what she had available to her at the time. This is not a call to shift responsibility.
But there I am, and when I'm having conversations with friends or my husband and we talk about our experiences growing up, I so clearly reconnect with the feeling of having no privacy, not being trusted, being angry and hurt, that I know it's still living within me. I feel the resistance...I remember how the more my mom pushed to crawl inside every damn nook and cranny the more I learned how to keep pushing her out of my life and away from me in order to preserve some small space for my Self.
I see how this particular vibration continues to attract some of the same things into my life, now 20+ years later. I see how I developed a belief that the only way to preserve and protect myself was to keep people out. I see how the attempt at forced, irreverent, disrespectful intimacy helped me create a titanium boundary to keep people out. I see how I learned how to give up my voice to play the "home game" and try to be the "good girl" (though I have always, always, thought of myself as the "bad" one in every relationship I've ever had...I can't measure up) and just hold that true part of me for myself alone where no one (except me) could judge me.
And Intellectually I get it. I see it. But I most definately don't feel it, and that makes all the difference.
It's clear we have to change the way we feel about a situation in order to let it go completely. But how do we do that? I don't have the answer to that question at all, but I'm searching for it.
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Posted on Jan 10th, 2008
by Ellen
I went off tonight by myself to sort some things out and put a needed pause into my life. While I was out, I turned my iPod on shuffle, interested to see what would come up on the playlist.
There's never been a time that I've done this that songs geared to my particular questions and meditations haven't come up. There is always a message.
Tonight was no different. "For You," a song by the Barenaked Ladies, began to play, and as I listened to the words, it all sunk in. Following are a portion of the lyrics:
In a book in a box high upon a shelf
In a locked and guarded vault
Are the things I keep only for myself
It's your fate but it's not your fault
[CHORUS:]
And for every useless reason I know
There's a reason not to care
If I hide myself wherever I go
Am I ever really there?
My questions, meditations, thoughts, lessons, and "gifts" of the last little while have all been around the demand by the Universe in my evolving self to be authentic. Speak my truth, be who I am at my core, stop hiding. Tonight, my reason for going off by myself was about this same idea, with a contemplation of the question, "Can I really risk trusting? Really? Can I really?"
The part of the song that struck me so hard was the bit about, "If I hide myself wherever I go/Am I ever really there?"
I've gone through my life with only the tiniest sliver of myself available or exposed to others. They got the Ellen "flavor," but not the essential Ellen. I've played a good role based on what I thought others wanted or needed from me out of fear most of my life. Now that I've exposed more of a sliver, now that I know how good and powerful I feel on those occasions that I've risked exposing myself, my higher self demands more. The risks I've taken lately feel much better than the fear and false comfort of protection feel, the contrast is there, and my higher self is pushing for nothing less than full disclosure.
It's clear I need to be present, there. It scares the hell out of me. But, at the same time, there's also a feeling of hope, joy, and excitement. How much better will it feel to stop pretending?
I don't know yet, but it's my intention to find out. I'll keep you posted.
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Posted on Jan 3rd, 2008
by Ellen
Trust. It seems simple enough; either you trust someone or you don't. They are worthy or they're not. If you're smart, you'll be just fine.
Except it isn't that simple.
I don't trust easily if at all. For a good portion of my life, I thought it was because there were too many untrustworthy people. I've always trusted (there's that damn word again!) my intuition about people, and I've rarely been wrong.
But there it is: I expected certain things from people, and I got exactly what I expected. I vibrated certain expectations, and they delivered. Now, that doesn't mean that we would have ever been best buddies or that they wouldn't provide a "contrast" for me.
So then, what is trust? Ultimately, it's about trusting ME. It's about trusting that no matter what, I can handle whatever comes my way and use it as a lesson, a gift, to move me closer to what I desire.
One of my intentions for this year is to work on trusting myself because I know my lack of trust is holding me apart from what I want. It's what keeps me from speaking out, it's what keeps me from letting others close to me, it's what keeps me from going as far as I'd like in taking risks.
I have to know that no matter what, I'm okay, and then expect it all to be okay.
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Posted on Dec 28th, 2007
by Ellen
All feelings are a gift to us to let us know if we're heading in the right direction. Negative feelings come when I'm not aligned with source, when I'm being inauthentic. Positive feelings come when I'm headed downstream, when I'm not struggling but allowing my authentic self to make the decisions.
When I experience a feeling I do not like, it is a gift. It is a reminder to pay attention, to take a look at what I'm doing, to learn a lesson about myself and my life. I recently received such a gift when I withheld my true feelings from someone about a choice they were making that had an impact on me. Instead of being authentic, instead of expressing how I really felt, I softened my opinion so I would seem like a "good" person, someone who was above letting others hurt me, etc. In the end, I hurt myself because I just wasn't completely truthful.
Mind you, this person might have still made the choice they made, and that's their choice to make. However, I would have at least respected my own feelings and needs. As a result, I was hurt and angry, and I ended up sick, all indicators that I was severely out of alignment.
Thankfully, I've learned enough that I didn't blame the other person but accepted the responsibility for my actions. I looked for the gift of those unpleasant feelings, and the gift for me was to remember to true to myself, to always speak my truth (compassionately!) instead of worrying about how it might appear.
There *is* one thing I do to keep my joy up, however, and that is writing my appreciation and gratitude daily. Even on the worst of days, there are things to appreciate and be grateful for. On a particularly bad day, it might be that I was able to get out of bed and feed myself, but there are always positives if you look for them. Since I want to attract more positives into my experience, it makes sense for me to put my attention on what I want more of in my life.
Is this easy? Not always, but it gets easier the more I practice.
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Posted on Dec 2nd, 2007
by Ellen
I *love* being alone. I love the silence, the freedom to energetically let it all hang out. I like being able to meditate, to set my intentions, or to just *be* without dealing with anyone else's expectations.
Alone I can write, meditate, listen to music, read, nap, cook or create in any other way. Alone, I can remember who I am and to whom I am most responsible. It's only when I find my way back to me and remember that I alone am responsible for my own happiness that I can truly be happy and enjoy and support others.
I make time to sit in solitude every day, and that makes all the difference in my life.
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Posted on Nov 28th, 2007
by Ellen
As a teacher, I believe a good education provides a spark and the tools to make that spark grow into a fire. Without a spark, there is no fire; no reason to gather and stack the wood, no reason for kindling or firestarter.
Our focus in education today is on the materials to make a fire, and we keep forgetting the spark that starts it in the first place.
As a teacher of 8th graders (English and history), my first job is to engage my students, to show them all the millions of ways learning is cool, relevant, and not outside what they do already. My job is to help them find their passion within what we do and to trust that they can do it. Once that spark is lit, the fire pretty much lights itself.
Let me take writing for an example. The way I was taught was backwards. My teachers started with the rules: the spelling and grammar and punctuation; the topic sentences and transition words; the rights and wrongs of writing. But, why would I care to write when I don't think I have something important to say?
As a teacher, I start with teaching my kids that spelling can be wrong but writing, the message that comes from within them, the soul of any piece is NEVER wrong. I teach them they have something important to say that only they can say. I spend weeks setting up an environment where it is safe to write and share and just glory in the beauty and power of the written word. There are no red pens hiding around the corner from them, just appreciation for sharing their raw pieces.
It's once they have something they want to say and believe in that we address all the technical aspects of writing, but at that point my kids are engaged and eager to learn. Does it take time? Yes, but I've seen how this approach has given life and power and, yes, measureable skill and knowlege to my students.
A good education creates that spark, that passion, that "want to" in students in a way that inspires them to continue down the path of learning for life. It puts them in control of their own learning and creates that desire to know more. Because the truth is, we'll never, ever know it all, no matter how many education initiatives come down the pike.
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July 2008 
