E is for Essence

Essence is a peculiar word. You really do not hear it used often. I am tainted by my first experience with the word essence in the movie The Dark Crystal. I cannot think of the word essence without thinking of gelfling's and the vital essence that is drained from them. I was going to post a link but that scene in the movie still gives me the creeps.

My second encounter with the word via my teacher and mentor, Jennie Marlow, has been much more enlightening. The essence of any activity or thing is the feeling experience you would like to have. It is important to distinguish essence from form. A form may hold a desired essence and it may not.

In the book Personal Magic, Spotted Eagle says, "The focus on essence is one of the most transforming shifts that you can make in your thinking. When you focus on form, what you are really doing is trying to control the outcome. You close the doors on the Creator's spontaneity, and you do not leave room for Spirit to co-create with you. When you focus on the essence of what you want to create, you open up limitless possibilities by allowing Spirit to bring you that essence in forms you may never have imagined. If you want to change what you are creating in your life, then you must cleave to the truth that life is a feeling experience, and the essence of what you want should be foremost in your thoughts."

I keep a list of the essence words that are most important to me on my computer. It amazes me how this subtle reminder that I look at daily changes my perceptions and choices. Mostly, I see this in my interactions with my children. It is easy to get caught up in my own chores, thoughts, and my own ideas about what should happen next or how we should resolve a conflict. When I take a deep breath and remind myself that the essence of connection is much more important to me than any outcome, I can relax into a conversation with the girls about my needs and theirs and how to meet them all. Sometimes, I realize my "need" was not a need at all but an attachment to an idea or outcome I wanted.

Another important essence for our family is joy. My husband said recently that, "Joy is our religion." and indeed we are constantly looking at our choices from the perspective of whether or not what we are choosing is making our lives more joyful.

I have found that when you boil decisions down to essence, things become very clear. there is no longer a nagging idea that I need to force my kids to do things or make a situation what I want it to be. Spotted Eagle says it this way, "Essence clarifies for you what it is you want in your heart. "The mind speaks in urges, appetites, and attachments. The soul speaks in desires of the heart. "

D is for Do Nothing Days

I woke up reaaaalllly early today, well early for me. The girls are generally up pretty late and therefore I am up with them. This usually allows me to get up at a reasonable time and have a couple hours to myself. I think I was out of bed around maybe 6. But I could defiantly feel that I wanted to be back in bed and that my physical equilibrium was just a little off.

Being up early gave me an unusual chance to talk to John before he went to work. Any lost sleep was well worth the treat of his company without kids. I headed back to bed after he left.

When I finally did wake up I was sure today was a "Do nothing day" I like to use the term "do nothing" but it is so misleading. It is kind of like "Learn Nothing Day" which is on July 24th every year. I cannot conceive of a single day not doing or learning anything. A "Do Nothing Day" is more of a day where I let go of my ideas about what I need to do or get done. Honestly, I want to do that every day but on "Do Nothing Day's" I usually achieve it.

Mina's first order of business was to look at the voo doo doll.


Isn't she lovely? John brought her home from work last night. She was a gift from a co-worker. The girls and I took turns looking at her last night and laughing at the advertisement on her attached card that suggested your voo doo would be more powerful if you bought special pins from a certain company.

The voo doo doll somehow reminded Mina of the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas so we started to watch it, but never finished. At one point Mina told me she was still tired and would I come lay down with her. We went to lay down and accidentally woke- up Ari. It seems this is exactly what the little one had in mind, she missed her sister and wanted to play with her.

I took a shower and put on my favorite socks- yes I have favorite socks. You want to see them? sure you d0.


Here they arrrrrrrr.
And sweats and my fluffy pink bathrobe and the day proceeded in lovely "Do nothing" flow.

The girls have vacillated back and forth between computer games, make believe, GameCube, and role playing with their stuffed Sonic, Shadow the Hedgehog, and Amy Rose figures.
This is Shadow the Hedgehog with Mina for those who are not in to Sonic.

I read bits of Scientific American the magazine, bits of Flow, parts of at least two TED talks, only bits and parts of everything, why I have no idea.

I would call today a highly successful "Do Nothing Day".

C is for Coolest Cat in the Country

No this was not a one time thing. Yes, Little Whisker lets the girls push him around in the stroller. He also allows Ari to take him on walks and sleeps belly up in her arms.

B is for Bodega

The little one (Mina who is 4) and I both have a love for odd words. There was a month or so where Mina would say the word Ming over and over. Ming is kind of an odd word but it is also the name of her cousins cat. Bodega is not a word you hear in Utah very often. My first real experience with common use of the word bodega was when I went to visit my sister in law in New York. There, of course, a bodega is a small market. It was of course no surprise to me that the word bodega was originally Spanish.

Upon my return from New York, Mina and I would use the word bodega randomly and excessively, much to the annoyance of our housemates. The usage faded over time until I took another trip to California.

On my way to San Francisco, I drove a road in the middle of nowhere that led to the middle of nowhere. Only the second middle of nowhere happened to be on the coastline of California. While traveling down the coast I happened upon a town called Bodega Bay. Wow, the combination of Bodega and Bay was even more lovely to say. I noticed in the shops in Bodega Bay that there were a lot of t-shirts and other items with the movie The Birds on them. It turns out Bodega Bay was the filming location of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller.

Funny enough, I spent a good share of my tween years in an old run down theater in a town not far from the one I grew up in watching black and white Hitchcock movies. There was Rear Window and Vertigo, along with The Man Who Knew Too Much and To Catch a Thief. I had not thought about watching these movies or the old theater in years. It was a wonderful bit of nostalgia for me.

When I told my husband about this memory he said, "God, no wonder you were such an anxious kid." To which I then pointed out that movies are not real and I was an anxious kid because my childhood home was real and almost as scary as things Hitchcock could imagine. Then we both laughed cause we are kind of deranged like that.

A is for Awesomesauce

(A could have been for Ari. She is my first born and I love her. I love her so much that I know her need for privacy would not allow an entire blogpost devoted to her and I respect that fully. )


I think I am embracing the idea of doing a Niedermeyer Family alphabet, so where better to start than with awesomesauce? Awesomesauce is a word my hubby uses a lot. I have no idea where he got it, probably from a movie as we tend to watch a lot of movies.

Awesomesauce is how it feels to pull nasty, smelly carpet out of a room that had water damage, even though it means the floor is now concrete.

My husband and I have very different personalities. At first he was not convinced that the room smelled terribly. I wanted to have his olfactory checked. It was BAD. Then he realized it was smelly and on Saturday while the girls and I were at a birthday party he tried steam cleaning the carpet. Then he was absolutely convinced that the smell was gone. I on the other hand was absolutely sure that his sense of smell had completely left him. Instead of pointing that out, however, I waited to see what would happen.


Yesterday, Mina asked her daddy to come to the smelly room to watch her walk on the treadmill. She loves to walk on it but we like to be near, just in case. So John and Mina went downstairs and when I went down to throw in some laundry I stopped to say hello. As soon as I walked in to the room, John said, "This room stinks." In my head I did backflips and little fireworks went off, oh thank god. So we spent the rest of the morning pulling out the carpet and pad and scraping off glue from the concrete. Now the room does not smell and that my friends is awesomesauce.

Mina is Always Up to Something

Chicken feet
Fingers can be friends.
Old t-shirt mummification
"Look mom, I am an old lady."
The yoga mat that handily doubles as a skirt.

"But how do I feel this good sober?" P!nk

Note to self: Always view blog post before publishing :)

"The power of faith in the now moment is what allows us to embrace the uncertainty of the now, and to embrace it with non-resistance that allows for pain to coexist with joy. We can do this because we recognize that discomfort is always an opportunity to evolve something." Spotted Eagle

This last week or so with all the things I was experiencing, life did not stop. There was still so much joy intertwined with the sobering truths I was facing. The word sober is interesting. In our culture it is generally related to being free from drugs and alcohol. I have thought about this word a lot in the past week.

Sober:

–adjective

1.

not intoxicated or drunk.

2.

habitually temperate, especially in the use of liquor.

3.

quiet or sedate in demeanor, as persons.

4.

marked by seriousness, gravity, solemnity, etc., as of demeanor, speech, etc.: a sober occasion.

5.

subdued in tone, as color; not gay or showy, as clothes.

6.

free from excess, extravagance, or exaggeration: sober facts.

7.

showing self-control: sober restraint.

8.

sane or rational: a sober solution to the problem.

Definition 2 refers to temperate.

Temperate:
Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English temperat < Latin temperātus, past participle of temperāre to exercise restraint, control–

I had pondered the words above for a couple days when I received an unexpected phone call. The person calling I have not spoken to for some time. She called to let me know that some one important to me that has had lifelong issues with drugs and alcohol had now been sober for 52 days. She then went on to tell me about her own struggles with addictive behavior. It was a refreshing, eye opening, totally authentic exchange. I left that phone call with so much new knowledge about what it means to be human and what it takes to walk away from the things that hold us back from lives of joy and authenticity.


I believe that almost everyone has some sort of addiction to something. I know for me the only way to walk away from the things that rob me of essence is to be sober and temperate. Not the sober and temperate involving alcohol, but sober and temperate in using my unique make-up to make the decisions that are best for me, no matter what the consequences. A moment to moment connection with what is intangible and forever and therefore most real.


At the same time, sober and temperate do not mean devoid of laughing and happiness as so many in our culture believe. They mean finding happiness that is real. It means finding humor wherever you find it, for some of us that is almost everywhere. Sober and temperate mean knowing where the middle road is and constantly returning to your connection to spirit, especially when circumstances are pulling you from that connection.