A Question of NOW

Dear Eckhart,

If you only live in the now, what would stop someone who is in a relationship or marriage from resisting the temptation to have sex with anyone who is attractive but who is not his/her partner? After all, if you are in the now and see someone attractive, you want to have sex with them now.

From,
Anonymous


Answer: Does living in the Now mean giving in to every impulse that arises? Then all those people who chase one sexual partner after another must be enlightened.

As long as you want something from another (such as sex), are you present? Or are you seeking to reach some point in the future that promises fulfillment? (And thereby making the present moment as well as the other person into a means to an end.) All wanting implies that the future is more desirable than the present, does it not?

It is inevitable that physical attraction towards another person will sometimes occur. That’s no more than part of nature. When you identify with that impulse, it becomes “you” and turns into wanting. The other person then becomes a means to an end – the end being sex, the attainment of the object of your desire.
When you are present, you can observe the attraction or the sexual feeling within yourself, recognize it as natural, accept it, even enjoy it without needing to act it out. After all, it may be totally inappropriate to do so within the totality of the situation. When you recognize yourself as the space of consciousness in which the impulse arises, you don’t become the impulse; you don’t lose yourself in it. Being present is being the space, rather than what happens.

Copied and pasted from: Eckhart Tolle Newsletter: "Dear Eckhart": Questions answered by Eckhart

Very Lonely Little Pieces

Subject: not sure


all week i've been ill.

my nerves have been a mess. my sleep horrible. been trying to make myself eat no matter what, but my stomach has really been a total mess since the day i packed up your things and put them in the boxes.

in the process of "breaking up" with you, I didn't go and find comfort in the arms of a fuck. I haven't done that the entire time I have been with you. i knew i, for me alone, needed to do things differently in order to see my PROBLEM(S) with men, that past the line of being "just friends." I still feel I need to do that.

the changes i made to be different for me, supported you well. i am glad my ways helped you to feel what your kind of attention helped within me.

but that gal is on her way out, for the most part. now I don't want to see me do her again, now i feel the need to be different from her. and once again, she is all i have ever known how to be. the spotlight holder.
in not fucking anyone else i learned a great deal about me. which is what I wanted.

i think having the "other man" gave me the support i thought i needed because i wasn't getting it from the main man. in actuality, i wasn't giving the main man much of me. and the fuck was getting the real me. because i didn't feel threatened by the opening up processes. he was just a fuck, so who cared - attitude.

but i also felt very alone in all my main guy relationships. i didn't know it was a dance. that one thing ran after the other. that not giving myself to the main man, led me to the fuck, and that led me to my overall feeling of utter loneliness, which led me to get a fuck or go back to an old fuck. which then led me to find a main man, and around and around i went.
Each of those relationships, no one got much of anything out of it. The fuck did probably did get most out of me.

ONLY because it had been ten years since I'd fucked anyone, other than my week's worth with MarcStBer, was it "easy" for me to keep not fucking someone else in our relationship. you had that advantage, as did i.

the support you showed me was healing to my very soul, and if i had been fucking another, i might have missed it. and just kept going, to this day, as i had so many times before. never having gotten involved, never having taken the chance for me to open up, all would be as it has always been, and all would just have stayed the same even now.


because of what my Mother said in her last letter to me, i now understand further and i am feeling no more guilt associated with me having gone to others for the support that I felt I needed. Because she wasn't, hasn't, isn't giving it to me. And in many ways, never has. So I have ALWAYS gone to another for the intimacy I did not find with the main person. PATTERN.

I have been RIDDLED with guilt ALL my life, because I went to others for what I could not find with my parents. NO MORE.

I went to others because it was NOT at home. So that is what I did with my men.

I just did what I knew.

The main man, didn't give me what I needed or so I thought. So I went elsewhere for it. went to someone safe, where I could be me and let go, and probably have the real relationship, except that was empty and many more times than not, equally intensely lonely as well.

so much of my time with my own men, i have felt more like a dog running after her own tale.


so i am sitting here with three members of my immediate family alive. and i feel more lonely right now than anything else.

i don't want to run to just a fuck. it's useless. fucking is good, and it's good with anyone. after a while I couldn't just fuck anyone any more. the act of doing it had no meaning anymore. i got nothing, really, out of it. and for the most part, i felt more lonely after doing it, then before i'd even taken my cloths off. so i sure as hell don't want any of that NOW.

nothing intimate there.

now i know there is no one in my family that I can talk to about who i am, because it's just all about them, for real.

nothing intimate there.

and the support i am getting from the people around me is almost as nurturing as what i felt from you alone.

but it isn't intimate.

so i feel like i have none now.
but i probably never really have. maybe, not even from me to me. how could I, i wasn't taught how to do it!


so now i am beginning to see, that i have not really had very much intimacy. i shut myself up within my family because i didn't get it any and had to get safe in some way or other. one of them was going outside the family to get what i was not getting at home.
but i longed for what was missing and have always been.

and here i sit. an adult. with no intimacy in my life. and i am very lonely.


i think i am here because this is the pay off of having made the many choices i have made to keep myself safe. once you told me about The Power of NOW, and I heard it and hear it all the time (4-support), it's words propelled me into this space. I so can not do things that truly hurt me anymore. because i am now accountable for my well being. And because now I feel each of my choices made. Every place inside me that used to be numb, is ALIVE NOW, and I SO feel the pains of my choices. I am also trying to teach me to feel the goods of them as well.

i miss the Biker i met. i miss the one that gave me that certain kind of support i found to be totally missing out of my life. I'm very afraid of getting it now, while you are involved with another and another and any other. that seems so old to me. i am so torn about what to do, and not. leaving me feeling sooooo lonely and alone.

i lived in this space for many many years before ever having sex. but i got my needs met by adopting other peoples families and their lives. then i went out into the world and just recreated what i knew. on a grander scale, but the same situation over and over again.

everything always leaving me alone and lonely.

so here i am in my NOW. it is very quiet. i can hear Earth. i can feel Body. i can hear silence. and i can feel my sadness and loneliness..... and lately, for the first time in my entire life, i sometimes think of having a drink.

drinking and drugs have always scared me. but sex, sex gave me comfort. i felt wanted, even desired to have around. i didn't have to say not one word, and i got supported. but then they always left. going back to their real lives, and me i went home alone.

everything feels so old right now.
I'm in a ton of pain from all of it.
the truth hurts, that's all there is to it. and apart of me just doesn't want to be feeling and dealing with any of this. but i am. and i know i must in order for real changes to take place.

i don't know where any of my family members fit. and i don't know where you do either.

without holding the spotlight on any of you, I DON'T KNOW WHO I AM.


HOLDING the spotlight for you right now would be me acting as if i had none of the feelings that i do for you.
talking to you, happy go lucky like, while you are with another woman or any other woman.
acting as if everything was cool with me.
acting as if i was over you.
acting.

HOLDING the spotlight for my mother would be feeling riddled with guilt for having made her feel frantic to the point of having her call Shrink to find out how i am, for something she said, but me feeling guilty and taking the blame for her choices made.

HOLDING the spotlight for my dad, would be me just staying good and quiet little church mouse.

HOLDING the spotlight for my sister, would be me acting as if i really have no life, no feelings nothing really to share with her, making the phone conversations all about her and talking to her as if I were talking to a guy at the bus stop.


The other main thing that I don't get with any of these positions, is intimacy.
ALL these positions mean that I have NO feelings, NO wants, and NO needs of my own.


so i know you are all out there, but i can't go or come to any of you...... right now. i just don't know how to do it, without being the super supportive one. The SpotLight Holder.


all this said:

I have been struggling with Who am I?

I have been fighting old demons. Old habits that kept me stuck and put me in the position of remaining Buddies with my ex men, and staying in the Super Supportive role after and in many cases, YEARS & YEARS after we ourselves were done.


I have right now the added pains of old, with the situation i find myself in right now with my family.


I just feel incredibly stuck and do not know what to do next, with or about any of you.

this feeling does not change the fact that i love you and them. i love all of them and you.
doing my work has brought me to this space, and right now i feel much loss and loneliness. ALL the covers that were ever all over me, have now been tossed off, and I am bare and cold and hurting. but deep within me i also know, that i need to be in this space. i will find me with in it.
but it hurts, deeply so.

I'm NOT going to go have drinks.
I'm NOT going to go have non-intimate sex.
I am trying not to do much of any of the things i've done in the past to numb myself from what i am feeling right now.
I am trying to own it, feel it, and hopefully find change from within it.


I do believe that from this sheer pain, is coming, finally to me, at the very least, my art.


I have gotten online twice this week, including this morning, while writing this letter out of me, to you. Trying to get myself to even say Hi to you. But i have been and still am stumped. And have just sat here in silence. Feeling paralyzed as to what to do, how to feel. I feel nothing new coming in me as to what to do, so i just have sat here, feeling numb and alone.


I am now literally doing what I do not at all know how to do. And doing my best while being within it.


i just wanted you to know.

love you,
Pieces of Parts

p.s.: sorry if i have repeated myself over and over again in here. i am just too upset to edit and make it all nice nice for you. this is how i feel, and need to let it(me) be SEEN as is.

A Mother's Chosen Behavior?

From: My Mom
Subject: hello
Date: January 6, 2006 12:40:05 PM EST
To: Pieces of Parts


Time to say hello.
M

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From me, after I'd calmed down, and found my NOW feelings.


Mom,

Your e-mail above, had some serious timing to it.


The way you wrote this message, sounds more to me like a demand on your part, for me to do something that would please you. Regardless of whether or not I felt like doing it out of pure, respectful choice on my end.

This is old in my opinion, and something different, something more healthy needs to be found between the two of us, so that both of us get our own personal needs met.

I understand that you find my long sweeps of time in silence frustrating. But I have a hard time sharing my life with you. I don't want to get into many of our unhealthy patterns, that lead us both into game plays that are old and out dated, and have no real value anymore.

I know that you have been trying and making efforts on your part to do differently. But demanding of me to do something, is not the way. You do not, and will not get out of me, whatever it is that you want. I will forever react to such "demands" for connection, in the opposite ways. Mainly because I resent being ordered to do something I don't feel.

I have been working on how to have good friendships for years now. I have read books and see Shrink. From where I am sitting, you are still doing the same habits, just changing their positions a bit. But in the end they are the same. It would be of great help to both of us, if you would pick up a new book or two on the subject of personal growth. The Games People Play only one, and although it pointed out what the games are and how people play them, I found that book to be very impersonal. It's more like a medical documentary of sorts. And as far as I know, from what you have shared with me, it's the only self help book you've ever read and touted. I personally, would very much like to see you, try to let in some new ideas.

There are some very powerful reads out there these days. I personally would recommend one of the ones I hold dear, go back to all the time for support, and that is Living in the Light by Shakti Gawain. Here is a link to it on Amazon.

Another one that I am still reading, that Biker suggested. Although it speaks about male/female relationships, I also learned a lot about me as a woman, from it. It is called Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, by John Gary. Here is a link to it on Amazon.



I want a far more healthy, clear boundaries and respectful filled, loving relationship with you. I am personally exhausted from the same old dance that exist between us. Neither of us getting our own personal needs met, or boundaries respected. And certainly not sharing any love that does exist between us, for each other. Whatever worked at one time, it does not now, and they won't in the future. New insights, and lessons really need to be allowed in, for real and healthy growth to start to take place. And it just can't come from me, working in Shrink's office and then sharing with you what I have learned. I will not do that. I really need you, to do your own personal self-help growth, in whatever form you so choose to do it in. I want a healthy relationship with you, with both parties doing their parts to allow it to be so.


I love you dearly.
Pieces of Parts
"We must be the change we wish to see."
- Gandhi
Dictionary

Relationship |riˈlā sh ənˌ sh ip| noun
the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected : the study will assess the relationship between unemployment and political attitudes.
• the state of being connected by blood or marriage : they can trace their relationship to a common ancestor.
• the way in which two or more people or organizations regard and behave toward each other : the landlord–tenant relationship | she was proud of her good relationship with the household staff.
• an emotional and sexual association between two people : she has a daughter from a previous relationship.

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From my Mom:

Dear Pieces: I have thought a great deal about your letter and I thank you for it and all the information it contains. I just want to say that, however you react to the things I say, I love you dearly and I love you the way you are. I hope some day you also will accept me the way I am; I'm afraid I'm a bit too old, and too preoccupied, to do fundamental changing now.
Meanwhile, we are coming to Washington on Thursday for a big speech/prize that RichWoman is receiving. Can you image she's getting $25,000. She'll talk from 6:30 to 8. There is also an exhibition that we want to see. We would love it if you join us for some or all of this.
Kisses, MOM

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I felt devastated. And really deeply and fundamentally hurt. After talking to Shrink and then being able to face head-on the feelings I needed to face in order step thru this door that has been ajar for some time now, and when I felt once again okay about my own life, I sent this:

Dear Mom,

I am very sad to hear that these are your feelings.
But I thank you for your truth.

Love,
Pieces of Parts
"We must be the change we wish to see."
- Gandhi

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I NOW feel a slight sense of relief in some ways. I've ALWAYS known that she felt this way. It has shown up in her movements, comments made, games played. She's never come right out with it, like this.
Her own response to having done this, and not hearing from me right after sending her feelings, was to make a big splash and call my Shrink. Asking him if I was all right, and needing him to call her back to say so.
This put him in a very odd space indeed.

I saw this as a once again insinuation on her part, that I could not handle such a true statement as she shared with me. That once again, I was the sick one. That because she felt that way, she couldn't try to contact me in the many ways she has available to her to get to me.
I went down into the ruins I've been trying to pull my own self out of, and thru doing so, found my NOW feelings. They are, this was ALL ABOUT HER. A big grand GAME. And had nothing to do with me or who I am NOW. Which only shows me further, that she too also does NOT SEE Me.

I myself, feel, that it was about time she told me her truth. From this space on, I truly KNOW not to keep trying to go to her for such things. I have been going to other women for emotional support and loving connections, as far back as i can remember. She's shown me jealousy for that fact. But here sits before me, her truth. And my needs, for me, are and have been more important and therefore I have been trying my best to get met. It's called Survival.
I WISH I could go to her for them, but it is and has never really been, truly possible. NOW I have confirmation that the feelings, I've been feeling coming from her, have been real. And once again, I AM NOT CRAZY!

NOW with the truth in my hands, I'll find some other way to find & allow other sorts of connections to be made with her. It will happen. But I MUST do for me right now, in order for the healthy boundaries to show themselves, so that love has a chance to flow thru and beyond all the anger that I hold.

The true irony is that SHE is the one that insisted that every where we ever lived, I was to go to see a Shrink. I have been going to see one since at least 2 or 3 years of age. For most of the time no one else in my family ever really went. SHE did, for a short time, until very hard work got started in the sessions, concerning her relationship with her Father and the parts that got transfered to my father. At that point, she was told she couldn't go anymore - I'm sure wrapped in a nice pretty silk bow of "I'll divorce you if you do." So she stopped. And within there got stuck in a time-warp. Her Shrink and all the people going to said Shrink, were all reading the famous book at the time, Games People Play. She has been shoving it's written know-hows down my throat when ever someone else did something that she saw as being explained in the book. I KNOW THE BOOK BY HEART FOLKS. But turn it all around and let her know she too is playing one of it's games, and YOU ARE BAD and not spoken to, and deemed A PROBLEM.

Soooooo, it is pretty ironic to think, that after all this time of being in a Shrink's office, doing what I was "told to do" and doing it well enough to NOW be able to ask for healthy approaches to what she's been saying she's been wanting, that I am literally being turned down. I can only do one thing right now, and that is shake my head and cry for the loss, and walk thru this door that is presenting it's self to me right now.

Resignation being handed in...... from another SpotLight holding job.



The tears are coming from the small Child within me, that thought She would get a prize in the end of all this hard work. That Her Mother was out there, out in Healthy World waiting for Her to get better from ALL her illnesses, waiting so that She could do Her part in allowing the two of them to start having a working and healthy relationship. And as a grand bonus, I would get my entire family the way I've always longed to have them.


Only true prize here, that I am just beginning to see, but more so feel, is that I have done the work for Me. And here I am in this space meeting Me. Finding out how I feel about Me, and the world around Me and especially the one within Me. Parenting myself. Hearing and listening to my own needs and hurts and deep down pains. And allowing them to be felt and more importantly to be honored as TRUE. Which only by doing so, is helping me to find much color in the dark gloomy grey spaces that I called my ill-faded life, which I am also just beginning to see and feel has been taught to me to be my truth. I am really just at the very beginning stages of feeling that intricate part.
Doing the best I can, doing more as I learn more, Being in my NOW. And saying Hi Pieces, WOW you really have been really doing a heck of a lot of work here!!


Tea time ...... with a good home made cookie, please?!!
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Pieces of Parts

HE's NOT a Monster either!!

Thank you Biker...

Thank you for coming into the yarn shop that September day.
Thank you for letting me touch your hand.

Thank you for teaching me how to get a skein ready for winding.
Thank you for showing me a Biker that spins roving into yarn.
Thank you for letting me photograph you, when you felt uncomfortable having anyone do that with you, while hiding.

Thank you for supporting me, for listening, for asking me to talk, over and over and one thousand times over again.

Thank you for showing to me, that I can have a healthy relationship with a man.
Thank you for showing me that I can let someone in.
Thank you for showing me that there is much room for compromising, in any given situation, with an intimate man.
Thank you for showing me, that indeed, pages really can be turned, between a man and a woman.

Thank you for the microwave.
Thank you for having used them before, enough to know which would be the best one for me to have as my very first one.

Thank you for showing me how to save my plants.

Thank you for listening to how important and long time searching for came up with no finding the puppet I wanted. Thank you for giving Zoe to me.

Thank you for the poems, stories, and e-mail’s and text messages, filled with your creative writing, ways of expressing yourself, from eloquent wordings to street slang and your versions of Shakespeare, filling up your responses of honesty and truth.
Thank you for enjoying technology as much as you do.
Thank you for sharing with me, your reconnection to your own photographic eye, and your own love of singing.

Thank you for your non condescending way of sharing with me the meanings of words, and how to learn how to use something, (digital camera) etc.

Thank you for showing me and teaching me all the parts of a Harley Bike.
Thank you for stains and all the grease.
Thank you for the bike rides across the Bay Bridge. One in a seas breeze, and one in mists of rain.
Thank you for my very first vacation trip with a man, who knew how to do just those things.

Thank you for my first ever roses on Valentine's day.
Thank you for my first flowers of Just Because.

Thank you for switching to a Mac, even if just for the lifetime of your iBook.

Thank you for being such a strong, and crystal clear mirror to and for me. I needed ALL that you gave to me. I needed to be real about everything I haven’t been able to be or get real about cause I had no real source for it.

I knew when I was deeply depressed, that the rest of my answers would only come
if I let myself out enough, to let someone in. Thank you for being that source, that person.

Thank you for loving me for who I am.
Thank you for being there, here and everywhere.
Thank you for telling me about Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus - it brought to me understanding about Men and My Father.
Thank you for telling me about The Wheel of Time - it is bringing to me something to think and ponder.
Thank you for telling me about The Power of NOW - it has brought together ALL that I have been working on, from every direction, and all the different layers. It is equally saving my life, as Louise L. Hay did for me so many years ago.

Thank you for giving to me, all of my firsts.
And Thank you for giving to me, all of my lasts.

Love you always my one & only Oilie BikerBoy, Pieces of Parts


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From Him:

Thank you so much 4 all the effort and care you put into everything you've done4 me. Im quite sure that is the nicest letter anyones evr written me.
Biker

Crazy. Shut Out. Alone. Monster.

"In order to start be-ing in the moment in a healthy, age-appropriate way it is necessary to heal our "inner child." The inner child we need to heal is actually our "inner children" who have been running our lives because we have been unconsciously reacting to life out of the emotional wounds and attitudes, the old tapes, of our childhoods."

(Quotation Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney)