Good morning friends!

I’ve been slack in my blogging the past few days.  No real reason other than I’ve been so focused on my work with Ghost Walk’s magazine, Haunted Path, that I’ve left myself time for little else.  Notice how I’m throwing in links to this stuff?  Pretty sneaky huh?  Hope you all check ’em out – Ghost Walk does good work!  Oh, and just FYI – I am the Acting Editor-in-Chief of our magazine so if you have a good ghost story you’d like to share & possibly have published, hit me up!  You can send me an email to lsummerlin@ghostwalkproductions.com.

Ok, enough of that.  Let’s get down to the reason for this blog…

I’ve mentioned in previous blogs how I often find inspiration when reading the White Bison Elder’s Meditation emails I get daily.  Today is no different.  Here it is…

“If people are going to get back into balance, one of the things they have to do is seek the truth. They have to start really speaking the truth themselves, and that’s a difficult thing to do. The way it is now in the world, we don’t mind lying.” ~John Peters (Slow Turtle), WAMPANOAG

Oh wait…this is actually yesterday’s Meditation, but the date is insignificant.  It’s the message I want to talk about.

How many of us do this?  I could not be more guilty of it if my name were Guilty Guilterson.  Seriously.  To clarify, I don’t spend my time lying to others because it is a trait I despise, but I do lie to myself.  Which leads me to wonder – why is it wrong to lie to others but okay to lie to ourselves?  It’s not.  Not even a little.  If we’re going to live our lives being honest we might as well go whole hog with it and face up to it when we’re dishonest with ourselves.

There are things about me, about my life, about my habits that I don’t like.  And to be REALLY honest, I’m horrible about living in that great state of Denial.  I spend ridiculous amounts of time there and I think it’s because I just expect, somewhere in the back of my brain, that things will just fix themselves by some miraculous Divine Intervention and then I have to do nothing at all.  WRONG.  See, we can pray all day and night for our Higher Power to fix things for us but if we’re not willing to do the work and we’re not prepared to go through what it takes to get us to what we’ve prayed for then we can’t really expect a damn thing and part of that means telling ourselves the truth.

For example:  one of the things I do not like about myself is my lack of time management.  It’s a simple thing really and could technically be easily changed.  I’ve found myself so busy these days and I’m just going through life, whistlin’ a little tune (not really – I can’t whistle), thinking “Oh, it’ll all work out.  I’ll get done what I can.  Tomorrow is a new day. I’ve got lots of time.”  BIG FAT LIE.  We have no idea how much time we actually do have and since I’m no “Seer of the Future” what the hell do I know?  The answer to that is nothing.  So when I have those lucid moments of realizing I am lying to myself about being gripped, I go through this long mental debate about what I need to do to make the change and balance my time more wisely.  See, I’m a terrible procrastinator.  I’ve turned it into an art form, seriously.  If there were a degree for it, I’d  have a Master’s.  Probably even a Doctorate.  Lisa Summerlin, PhD of Procrastination.  That’s me.  What does all of this mean?  It means I need to STOP lying to myself about things magically getting done on time and I need to GET A GRIP.  I can sit here and look all kickass in this blog about how I’m facing the truth about myself right here, right now, but the actual act of not lying to myself about my terrible habit on a daily basis?  That’s the real kicker. 

My point in all of this is if there is something you don’t love about yourself or your situation, wouldn’t it be easier if we all just faced it, dealt with it, and moved on?  It’s not fun to live life not being honest with ourselves.  It’s a tremendous stressor, at least it is for me, so I wonder if it gets to everyone else the same way.  I’ve got heavy duty issues I’m dealing with right now as well that I am not facing up to like my divorce and this one is killing me. 

My husband left my daughter and me about three years ago.  No warning and no reason.  Just left.  I spent a long time convincing myself he would come back home.  He’d had a heart attack and he was just going through some of his own personal crap and when he felt better, he’d be back.  The truth of that is I still, to this day, have no idea why he really left.  I never will.  Only he knows that and because he’s a compulsive liar, I’ll likely never really know what went on in his head.  He and I talk often and he says he regrets it, but I’m looking around and I don’t see him here so…he must not regret it too damn much.  Yet, I am STILL struggling to make myself file the divorce.  Part of it is a money issue in the sense that I don’t have any and attorneys don’t work for free.  But then I find excuses like I’ll wait just a bit longer because he might come home for our daughter, or he still loves me because he says it so I’ll try and hang on to that.  LIES, LIES, LIES.  The hardest part of all of this is admitting to myself that I just don’t love him anymore.  I’m not sure when I came to that realization and it wasn’t some kind of mind-blowing, stop me in my tracks moment, but I know now that I don’t love him.  I know I can never trust him again and if we want to go a step further, I know now I could never really trust him to begin with.  So see, I’m facing up to some of it.  I’m being honest with myself about parts of this, but not all of it.  That’s what I mean about going “whole hog” with this honesty thing.  Trust me when I say I have NO trouble at all being honest with him about how I feel and what I think.  I’ve got a mouth on me that won’t quit, but when it comes to being honest with myself, I don’t quite have it all together.  Anyway, this year is my year.  I’ll figure out someway to get the divorce done and I’ll FINALLY move on with that part of my life.  No doubt when it is over and done with, I’ll feel a huge burden has been lifted off of me.

So, that’s my biggy.  What’s yours?  What is one thing you have been lying to yourself about that requires your immediate attention?  To be a tad cliche’, it’s a new year so it’s a time for new beginnings right?  Let’s all make a deal that we’ll figure out the one thing we’ve spent the most time lying to ourselves about and let’s just stop doing it.  Let’s face that Monster in our Mental Closet, unleash that beast and let him go!  Or her…you could be a dude and your Closet Monster could be a her.  Whichever – let’s conquer that thing!

Today is a new day so take a bit of time to reflect on whatever it is you’ve not been honest to yourself about and decide to face up to it.  We’ve all got something we must deal with so let’s buck up and deal with it!

Have a great Tuesday!