In the mind of the one who has the opportunity and gift of being allowed to forgive another, lies the choice of freedom that every human being must someday come to recognize and receive. It is in forgiving others that we allow our ego to be calmed enough to realize it too may be forgiven.

It is interesting, as I review my life and experiences with makeup, just how closely it walks with my spiritual journey in this life. My hormones as a young girl and teen walked hand in hand with all these things as well, and continue to do so. And even through my marriages and rearing of my children makeup played its part and symbolized to me a lot of how I hid from the world and/or went with the flow. It symbolized how I was able to make believe that I was living the life that people said was there to live.

I could share with you particulars of temptations and searching for truth, belonging, and connection but they are not so far different from your experiences I am sure, in principle at least. And they are still only my projections of what I thought life could do to me. In that light lets look at some of the things that I held dear in my belief system through my upper teens, 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. The cliff notes are that I went through 4 marriages and divorces (including one sealing in the temple, which has since been removed in anticipation of a second sealing that never occurred), had 6 children and one miscarriage and basically depleted my emotional resources by the time I reached 49, so much so that I created an entirely new name and focus for myself. That will be discussed in the next entry of this series.

• I believed people could use each other and walk away. Leaving no real clue or reason as to what was going on.
• I believed the body of a woman was to stimulate sex, period. Likewise the male, meaning this must be its main purpose, that is certainly what everybody I came in contact with seemed to say.
• I believed your body was to be used to give your children, your boss, your husband, the rest of humanity what they desired, but you had no right to exist of you own accord and it was not meant for your enjoyment.
• I believed I would not be able to play the role I had been given to witness to the children of men, because I could not become the robot they wanted me to be.
• I believed that I needed to take up the physical habits of others to get along in this world.
• I believed your psyche is not yours and you are not to live by your own conscience or truth. you were to live by the standards of a cult-ture created for you by the society, family, neighborhood you lived in.
• I believed that when two people get together in the name of their egos a cult-ture is created and that I would may or may not be privileged to be a part of and thus, exclusion was a possibility.
• I also believed, when two or more are gathered in His name there He is….where one is remembering Him, there He is. I believed that most of the time it was just the Lord and me and that there must be something wrong with that.
• I believed that people could take over your life or steal your life and the stewardship that God had given you as a daughter, friend, parent, spouse, grandma, etc.
• I believed that looks had something to do with you “fitting” in this world.
• I believed that life continues to have nothing but competition up to and through death, with grandchildren and the continued circle of extended family, etc.
• I believed that you live to provide something for someone else and give life to children, who may in turn use you to manifest their own interpretation of reality and stuff you into a box, emotionally and mentally, and psychologically, like your parents and early caregivers did.
• I believed outside influences should determine how I feel about myself and decide who I truly am.
• I believed that groups of individuals with similar characteristics could group together and claim that they are the only ones discriminated against or that get the short end of the stick and that this is not simply a fact of life in this sphere of confusion and illusion.
• I believed that other groups could rally and convince others that they are better by virtue of property, status, family connections, looks, color, gender, height, weight, fashion, protocol, behavior, righteousness, acceptance of others like themselves, and incredible diversion and separation was possible to unlimited extents.
• I believed that there were any number of experiences and things to learn and places to see and situations and that I was able to somehow not experience each and every one of them due to time, circumstance, position, era, etc.
• I believed that life is somehow only 3 dimensional.
• I believed that all that is holy or decent can be attacked by our media, our schools and teachers, as early as pre-school age.
• I believed I had to meet the social norms of society to be a good mom.
• I believed that my failings were what gave my children their challenges in life and their problems. Thus I was the one to be held accountable and guilty.
• I believed that even our religious organizations and families (parents in particular) will practice cover-up tactics instead of being truthful with what is going on.
• I believed that phony social/religious/esteem fantasies can be created in societies to strip ones ability to discern what is right/wrong and false/true.

I found it interesting that I still had a sense that there could be a real caring family somewhere when it seemed I was living in an environment where people wanted to have anything but that. The standard works gave me a foundation in the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints gave me the place to practice those principles and grow by experience. Reading The Miracle of Forgiveness multiple times and learning how to not justify my behavior or that of others was a huge help. A Course In Miracles has helped me put the final pieces together, at least on a psychological level, and given me additional witness of what the Holy Ghost has been teaching me.

One might think that I would be angry or bitter but the opposite is quite true. The peace of knowing the truth releases the guilt and the desire or need to attack. I have to admit that I still find myself doing it at times in my thoughts and my words but it is sinking in to my being and I am changing to become aligned with the forgiveness of truth and not the forgiveness of guilt that feels justified in feeling victimized. I am finding a love inside me that is free of judgment, while at the same time, I am able to understand the need of the framework and structure that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints gives to mankind. At least the understanding is beginning and I can feel that there is a lot more to come.

What has this to do with makeup you may say. Well, makeup helped me stay in the social culture of the world around me for one thing and symbolized the ability to be able to say I was in the world when I really had no clue what was going on.

Next I will discuss the last 8 years of my life where phenomenal growth has occurred and how the makeup finally came off and 4 years later went back on.

This has not been an easy journey to pull this out of myself. Thank you for you patience, prayers, and understanding.

Namaste

PS

I just read Part Two of this series and thought about how I set the stage with what others did to me in that one but do not state my sins here. My children may feel this is unfair. They can write their story as they saw it, I leave that to them and will NOT seek to justify any harm from me they perceived. I am seeking to alter my inner voices and clear out the trash. I will say for their benefit I was not the perfect mom. I do not wish to burden you with the details. I believe four marriages and divorces suggests that I must have had some significant issues.