Confusing Confessions

I was born an educator. The first ten years, I taught by repeating; the next ten years, I taught from knowledge; the following ten years, I taught from experience. Now, I teach from my errors.

Nothing brings us closer as humans, than our shared foibles and vulnerabilities.  The old aphorism states that “Errare humanum est” (it is human to err)…and yet, I think it is errors that make us human. Behind every deed there is an attitude, our outlook on life. But behind that, there is a mental pattern of associations that we create from our beliefs. So behind every error, we must look for the faulty thought-sequence we believe to be true.

These are some of my errors, which I share, not with the false expectation that they will help you avoid repeating yours, because somehow we each have to live our own mistakes, but in the hope that my boldness will encourage you to seek and reset your own false belief systems.

The hardest thing in my life has not been: becoming a doctor or a master in public health, or my field training in epidemiology, or my training as a military; nor running a national program against AIDS or spiking risk among adolescents to build resilient, life-driven pathways from death to health, but rather- having been born a girl.

I was the first-born of a Mexican patriarch, and not being  a boy, I was born a disappointment. Perhaps to appease such grievance, my father named me after his first mistress and as a child I became his girlfriend; he called me:  “novia mia”. That was my first confusion. He used to give me money, while keeping it from my mother. I embedded rivalry, guilt and carried shame and misgivings.

Now, he would have had me become a lady, since he inscribed me to Vogue magazine when I was fourteen – but oops! second disappointment. When I became ‘of-age’ for the ‘sex-talk’, he insisted I shun all male relationships, lest I become a whore. Little did he know I was no longer a virgin and his lecture was only branding me: ‘disgraced’.

Now my Mom taught me that to love was to suffer. And boy, she suffered enough: being an American single daughter, who ran after her love from the first-world, to live in the third-world was in itself a sacrifice. But then having five children, each 10 months apart, epitomized it.

I also lived ten years with our British tutor with whom we sang as a family quintet, songs that set the tune and rhythm to my life: the Impossible Dream, the Quijote of the Mancha and Sound of Music.

So my guilt came from my father; my self-sacrifice came from my mother; and my idyllic fantasy, from my tutor. These became my belief systems.
When my prince charming appeared, a stalwart Catholic believer, and asked me to marry him, I felt unworthy. And of all things, out of love for him, I self-sacrificed becoming a nun; a cloistered nun at that! Of course, I was fully equipped to enter the monastery: I was a whore in disgrace, who needed penance, to love;  a “problem to be solved”-like Maria in Sound of Music.  I even remember singing to the St. Joseph’s Carmelite nuns, from a ladder, as I enacted the theme song : “The hills are alive”. Little did I know it was the first scene to the screen-play that I would play-out throughout my entire life.
Now, my monastic experience was heart- wrenching but glorifying. Away from TV, radio, computer, newspaper or even books, with a vow of silence, poverty and obedience, I learned to wash, clean, mend and soothe my soul. My past Harvard aggrandizement of self-worth, mopped away. My years as a postulant, as a novice, and as a nun committed by marriage to God (in my Mother´s wedding dress) confronted me with the inner battle between my higher and lower selves. Everything became a metaphor: medieval ceremonies such as laying in meditation in a coffin, as a symbol for the need to die to the body in order to be reborn in spirit; old nuns in brown and black coiffures singing rocking songs to an enamel representation of Jesus, throughout the night; the intention of saving souls with every spot, obsessively cleaned…are memories that have rescued me from turmoil later in life. The grounding experience would have been enough to save me had I left, from my own free will. But my belief system (and cowardice to face life) was wired to have me play out the shame of having been ‘put out’. My restlessness could not be acquitted with self-flagellation; too much of a free thinker, too much of a dreamer.  Imagine the disgrace and drama of having been rejected not only by nuns but by God himself. ..paradise lost…and with it, the hope of being ‘good’. It just ratified that I was unworthy; painfully defeated as I witnessed my prince-charming’s marriage to someone better, when I returned.
Now these are examples of how we thread the canvas of our lives into self-built dramas; the threads of thought and their color are set by our beliefs and attitudes.
I won´t abound on the same dramatic pattern I have relived over and over again: my marriage to an older, wonderful man, defeated unto death by the guilt of his son’s suicide; my remarriage to a problem drinker, damaged by resentment against a mother who let her lover abuse his sister…
On and on… I have continued playing out the Impossible Dream, fighting ‘the unbeatable foe’ of AIDS, trying to ‘ right the un-rightable wrong’ even unto court, in an international white-collar scandal that deviated AIDS funds and unjustly blamed me ; fighting for women´s rights among sex-workers, and dignifying the right to love beyond color, race, sex, social institutions and even personal judgment. Love should not be erased by contract or divorce. Love is eternal and we should strive to strengthen its bonds, networking with good will. And yet, we are what we believe.

Now, none of this is true. Its a product of my own thought formation. We build associations with what we believe.

Check your own belief patterns. Which ones have molded your lives?

Be selective. Not all beliefs are bad. My heavenly husband still walks with me and despite my unworthiness, even gave me a late child born on Christmas Day.

Some beliefs do come true.

Learning to LOve: Families

Families are containers for re-latedness. To relate (lat.: re-again; latio-side/beat) is to re-establish contact from a different side; to re-establish timing to a re- newed  ‘beat’. Both acceptions require the containing framework of an encompassing family. Thus, I can break away from my personal ego-centered stance and shift to the perspective of a loved one within the safety-grounds of a trusted environment. Change and ‘development’  is easier within this ‘envelopment’.

While in the Mexican Association of Sexology, we did a research on ‘families’, establishing up to 29 different structures: nuclear families, extended families, divorced…with ‘your’ children; ‘my’ children; ‘our’ children; adopted children; grandparents, uncles, aunts etc .It included indigenous structuring of families, where twins share wives;  where father and son share wives; even villages with a shared ‘wife’. They all hold love. ‘upholding strongholds as holdings’ held together by relatedness.

This Spring I invited my ex-husband to our family town house. I did it for him to get away and have a break from the hardships of everyday life (and aging), he started the year with. I was surprised, however at everyone’s reaction. Despite our having dinner together once a week, for over the 11 years we’ve been divorced, my daughter’s reaction and that of my step-children and sisters was one of ‘shock’. No, we are not planning on getting back together, again, but what is  wrong with ‘caring’ for each other, beyond the marriage vows? As Western society would have it, love is only allowed in marriage. We like to believe we divorced out of love. If we had wanted to hurt each other we would have stayed married to continue making our lives miserable!!!!

The experience was interesting. My parents shared mutual enjoyment with his presence, perhaps from the wisdom, borne of time, that values everyday as if it were the last. No strings attached; no false expectations; just ‘living the moment’ gratefully. I enjoyed the old comfort of knowing each other well, making it all, relaxing and easy-going. However, there too, were surprising changes. He opened the car door for me! And even thanked me for making his bed. ’Change’ is ‘strange’…both, with a hidden ‘angel’ within.

 In my understanding it confirms that love can be extended beyond what is socially acceptable. But it needs family.

 

Learning to Love: Change

Yesterday, we had a memorable dinner to celebrate my parents’ sixtieth wedding anniversary!!! (…talk about learning to overcome everyday hardships, to distill love, borne from patience).
Anthropologists argue that man is, by ‘’nature, monogamous, but only for an approximate seven years at a time (corresponding to those, needed by children to develop to the point of no longer needing taking-care-of). Anyone aspiring to a marriage “till death do us part”, requires ‘supernatural’ help, hence marriages, before God. My parents thusly, learned to muscle virtue and have lasted sixty years together! Of course it hasn´t been easy. Challenges, worth overcoming, never are. However, it is these daily conflicts that give us opportunities for growth. To wrestle with them we have to ‘change’.
The debate about ‘change’, whether it be ‘immanent’, ‘permanent’ or just ‘potential unfolding’, has been going on since Aristotle through Hegel, Kant...to the present day. Do we actually ‘change’ or is it just the unraveling of personal development? Can we ‘change’ our essence? Does ‘change’ depend on free will or is it conditioned by ‘nature’? Can a loved one actually ‘change’ to overcome his innate shortcomings and transcend his ‘natural’ imperfection? Can we trust that our giving second and third chances to those who have let us down, will actually make a difference? What does ‘change’ depend on?

We all have loved ones who have collapsed the inflated expectations we had of them, through disillusion. Can we ever expect them to ‘change’? If so, how much longer must we wait? (I would like to believe God would say “Forever. That´s why I made eternity”…but it may just be wishful thinking).

I was impressed with the number of people asking these same questions, at a workshop in self-growth, I gave, recently. Their main concern was not about themselves, but about loved ones caught up in mediocrity, ignorance and self-deprecation (or should I say ‘de-prickation’!). These innate ‘care-takers’ have been trying, over and over again, to love loved- ones who feel unworthy of ‘ being loved’ and just end up rejecting  help. It is this dejection that seems to have them ‘give up’ and harden to loving, cynically responding to it with sneers of disbelief (I know, because I have been there!)
My parents have mutually let each other down, over and over again, but have both held tight to their ‘ideal’, confident of change. It is this ‘unwitting trust’ that Love is made of. It’s about ‘believing ’patiently, over and beyond evidence, in the potential of our Higher Selves. It is about trusting ‘change’.
My tendency to ‘doubt’, till Science and evidence proves ‘otherwise’ , strongly objects to such belief in ‘change’. People ‘are’ as they ‘are’ and their acts speak for themselves. Such doubting renders  anything else, a ‘wishful projection’.  However, having myself, been one of those loved ones who rejected loving, for whatever reasons  and ‘changed’, I now stand up for the silent dis-believers, confident that they too, will ‘change’. My parents’ example is my avowal and evidence that proves change is possible.

 

Learning to Love: Loopholes

Gloria Ornelas Hall-

Complexity, as its name implies is opportunity unraveled, flexed over, plicated, folded upon itself. It is potential to be unfolded. That’s what I tell myself when things get tough and uncertainty and loss of control make for chaos in my life. Inevitably, epiphanies let the light in and shine with sudden understanding, opening portholes that seem to loop through time. Then, Einstein’s notion of time as warped unfolding, seems to make sense.

I had one of these ‘eureka’ moments the other day, as I had coffee with my dear High School teacher. In itself, our meeting after so many years is a loop in time, with a sudden gushing in of forgotten memories that refreshed ‘my today’. I presently understood the simultaneity of things related to the soul. Loving is made of such things.

Re-creating reality with the awareness of parallel synchronicity opens a network of channels giving us opportunities of simultaneous input and output in all directions. (A bit like this blog, that opens portholes to other lives, tapping into parallel realities that share same interests). Consciousness itself, expands with such bizarre notions as the possibility of understanding human behavior in two or more dimensions. As if the physical reactions of chemical and electrical stimulation, now uncovered by scientific probing into the brain, were connected to one’s own ‘integrating soul’ at another plane. This would explain that consciousness is not limited to the brain but is integrated and given meaning, by a parallel mind. Plato’s description of reality as mere shadows reflected on a cave wall, and Freud’s description of consciousness as being an ‘iceberg’ where part of reality is seen while the other goes unperceived, comes to mind with such a possibility. Man could then, be described metaphorically as a lipid protruding through a cell membrane, on both the inside and the outside of the cell. Meaning then has expansive qualities that readjust understanding to a re-newed concept of self and others.

In the light of time, as having these ‘trans-membranic qualities’, with simultaneous contact between this reality and another a-temporal space, the injunction of past and future within today’s every moment becomes onerous. Imagine yourself, fixed on the limited self-concept of being a mere finger, and suddenly expanding awareness to realize that you are also the hand, the arm and the whole ‘being’ of life.

In love, such expansive awareness comes when we broaden conscious integration of our ego-self, to include another; and another; and another till we realize we are all one. Such an epiphany includes new ways of loving: forgiving; accepting; understanding or not; letting go and trusting that ‘it’ll be alright’. We are all interconnected by this matrix of loopholes to and from each other, not only today, but from the past and the future, simultaneously!

So, ‘what the hell!!!!!’ Stop trying to control, holding on to fixed ways that only limit our way of loving. Open up and let go.. Flow with the gush of love.

Learning to Love: Transmutaion

L´earning to Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

 Transmutation

Life’s a bugger (that´s an understatement!). Nobody ever teaches us to handle the hardships we encounter, so we are ill-prepared for difficulty. Yet, it is unavoidable.
By nature, everything tends towards disorder, dissolution and disintegration. This is called ‘enthropy’, a basic principle of Physics. To revert it, we must dispense effort and energy. In life, this process of continual re-creation stems from Love. The very desire to change this destructive principle and transform it into order and re-construction requires loving. This is transmutation (lat: trans-through; mutare- change). The cost is self-sacrifice. We must counteract egoism and selfishness to re-construct life and love.
Mothers are perfect examples of this. Take pregnancy. They gain 11 kgs, and duplicate bodily functions, pumping up to 40% more blood, to have a baby. They normally postpone personal satisfaction till their caring for others is done and often, are willing to give their lives up, for their loved ones.

Approximately, a third of the population has this intrinsic selflessness, with a natural tendency to care and help others. Their protective factors give them a resilience that makes them resistant to risk. As Salvador Diaz Mirón says, in his poem ‘A Gloria’,  “They fly over swamps without soiling their plumage”. It is they who carry, not only the responsibility of their own personal welfare, but the weight of those who damage themselves and others. So some of us come to learn and try to ‘get it right’, while others come to help. Having been helped, myself, over, and over again, I know the need we all have for each other.

Chaos cannot be re-created with dependability without this help.
Transmuting dis-order into order requires the desire to help others, a basic principle of love. Caring enough to be there for others, at the cost of dispensing one´s own selfishness is the first step. Feeling their pain and keeping them company as we walk alongside others, sharing their lives’ path, is a second step. Holding their hand when asked for help, is the third. Thus, the pain of living becomes an opportunity to hurt together in love.
Transmutation is not about changing or resisting reality. It is about transforming the experience of pain into love.

 

Learning to love: Laughter

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Laughter

Laughter is contagious and is therefore a wonderful way to share happiness. It is kind to smile, laugh and find humor in senseless contradictions and self-importance so as to make others laugh. It releases tension. You don´t have to explain it for it is an expression in itself. It makes thoughts real, as they physically unchain the chemical release of endorphins and their analgesic qualities. MRI’s have proved that a smile stimulates the centers of happiness and enjoyment in the brain, even if it is done un-wantingly!

Laughter is a universal expression as Charles Darwin reported in “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals” in 1872, recognized by humans all over the globe. The zygomaticus muscle pulls the corners of the mouth, across the cheeks, from the eyes with a contraction that makes a smile.The best face-lift we can have is a smile! Scientists initiated the study of this human response in Stanford University under William Fry, in Gelotology (Gr.: gelos-laughter), being a therapeutic complement for Medicine. Paul Ekman, world expert on expressions, says there are eighteen different types of smiles. True smiles of enjoyment are symmetrical, with genuine spontaneity and a sparkle in the eyes. The ‘laugh lines’ that crinkle the skin around the eyes are definite signs of authenticity. It´s a shame we pay to have them removed!

Humor is cultural, dependent of levels of education. Subtle associations may differ from comedy to cynicism, depending on the outlook of life. Bitterness and pain may ridicule innocence and folly. So what someone may find amusing may offend someone else. But it’s still funny! We have to be able to laugh at ourselves first, and shift the frame from which we observe and judge ourselves and others, to minimize self-importance.  Take for example, an “opinionated” blogger who uses black comedy to make difficult or prohibited subjects lighter, in his blog Harsh Reality, http://aopinionatedman.com/. Humor ranges from innocence to cynicism, but in all cases it must start from being able to laugh at ourselves. It diverts seriousness to a ‘here and now’ response.

Loving is made fun when you can laugh together (not laughing at each other, unless you laugh at yourself, first). Difficulties in a relationship are smoothened with a smile. Even love-making, that often entails nervousness and fear of being ridiculous, can be made lighter if you can laugh at yourself as you try awkward positions, or gasp for breath or are unable to get out from under him!!!

When in doubt, laugh. When in problems, laugh. When stressed, laugh. When worried, laugh. When in love, laugh. Life can only be explained through humor!

Babies remind us that laughing is loving.

 

Learing to Love. Reparation

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Lesson 24: Reparation

Man has always punished vice, crime and sin, be it as retaliation from he who was wronged, as correction from the family, as justice from the State, or as penance from the Church. However, underlying excessive punishment is always vengeance and retrieval.

With the New testament, the old Mosaic injunction “thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” was reverted with a new law, the law of forgiveness. In His sermon on the mount Christ said, “Ye shall resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also”. The new law is about loving and forgiving our enemies. Princess Mary says to Prince Andrew in War and Peace, “Forget it and forgive! We have no right to punish”.

Saint Augustine said that God rightly punished the sins he committed for “every disorder in the soul is its own punishment”. Hobbes describes it with a theory that “intemperance is naturally punished with dis-ease; injustice with the violence on enemies; cowardice with oppression”. Freud said that seeking punishment was the psyche´s way to find relief from guilt.

In an unjust society, we may have to bear the injustice of punishment for resisting the state, in refusing to obey laws that go against our conscience as did Socrates, Gandhi, Thoreau, Oscar Wilde and so many self-governing leaders.

My plight with sin, whether real, fancied, or karmic, lead me to the Monastery, a sinner in penance; to becoming a social fighter, for meritorious indulgence; to co-dependent relationships, for joint reparation. This self-assigned injunction from love, held me restrained from inner joy. Here, the underlying wrong was the pride of making my sin larger that God´s forgiveness and rejecting Love. With the recent avowal of love from my fiancé 30 years ago, I vindicated my innocence and my right to accept love and for the first time experienced inner joy. It took me almost 60 years!

Reparation (from the Latin re-parare- standing up again) is not only for the wrong-doer but for he who allowed it. It is about conscious awareness of wrong-doing and the conscious decision to re-dignify our Higher Selves. We have to repair the damage done, not to benefit others, but to get ourselves back on our feet and hold our heads up high.

When I was young one of my teachers slapped me in front of the class. Smugly, I turned the other cheek and she hit me again!!!! My classmates were shocked and called me ‘stupid’ for my reaction and for letting it go without sanction. Forty years later, out of the blue, she contacted me and after exchanging life experiences, she said she was sorry.
What other way of loving is there?

L'earning to Love. Forgiveness

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Lesson Forgiveness

To forgive is to love, anyway. Through forgiveness we love over and beyond the pain and damage others may have caused.
Before giving, we have to ‘fore-give’, let go, so as to open up again, to the flow of love. It comes from the humility of recognizing we are just as capable of wrong-doing as those who hurt us. Forgiving is taking in the pain, as described before, and making it sacred through ‘sacrifice’. It is not about vengeance, forgetting, or denying the damage done. Rather, forgiving requires reparation and rectification from the perpetrator, to enable him to re-establish his personal dignity and self-worth.

Before forgiving others, we have to forgive ourselves. It took me a long time to feel the pain of regret for my wrong-doing. I had effaced all restrictions that limited my rights and feelings from those that bound others. My compass had gone hay-wire unable to recognize love itself. I had mistaken love for sin, avoiding it at all cost. My ego-centric self-justification had wrapped me up in self-deluded self-worth. I became the lie I believed and hurt those around me, trying to love me. The first one I required forgiveness from was myself. I had wronged my Higher Self, by rejecting Love.

The aggrandizement of my pride had blown my sins up to the point of believing they were ‘un-forgivable’. My sins became greater that God’s mercy!!! I went around moping for being ‘un-lovable’, ‘un-worthy’, ‘miserere’- miserable. Such was my lamentation and self-commiseration that I closed down all possibility of loving; both giving and receiving love. My pride had elevated me to such subjective heights, that I my fall was devastating. Once fallen, I was stepped upon by those still running the ‘fast-track’ to reach the finish line. Face-down I knew humility (lat: ‘humus’ – soil)…and for the first time, I observed and admired a growing flower. I turned around and saw the sky. I had shifted my axis 180°, from linear cause-and–effect, to the depth and breadth of a new vertical perspective of life. It took my touching bottom, for me to crack my egocentric heart and let God´s loving in. Forgiveness engulfed me, healing my self-inflicted wounds with overflowing Love.

With such overwhelming Love how could I not forgive others?