22 Nov Exclusive: The Other Beth Writes for RAISING CLARITY’s Readers
Last week, you read about our first-ever guest post on another blog. It was published by West Beth, whose beautiful picture is below. In our blog, we’ve quoted her self-defining luxury. Now it’s time for you to meet her yourself, in the first post we’ve ever published by another author.
Hi! This is Beth……Crittenden.
Color me pleased to share Beth Raps’ space in the first Mingling of the Beths Wordworlds.
I’ll get right to it.
Why am I writing this?
Because Raising Clarity is part of my life’s purpose, as well.
Why do I care if complete strangers get their clarity raised?
Oh ho ho, why do you assume we are complete strangers? We are of the same stuff, you and me, whoever is sentient enough to read this.
Also, selfishly, I love living in a world with higher vibration. I experience it as more delicious and spacious when clarity increases. Thanks for playing along.
What do you mean by higher vibration?
I find that my mind gets clearer when I tell more truth to myself and others. The spinning thoughts tend to settle down when I need to rationalize and justify less. I feel calmer and more at peace when I am acknowledging what seems to be most true–whether I like that truth or not. I breathe easier when I am showing up honorably for my life. I like how my body feels when I am conscious about what I put in it, and how.
And I have observed these results in others who handle their business of life well.
What’s your angle?
Well, relationship with money, specifically. That personal, one-on-one, on your deepest insides relating with money. Earning it–spending it–saving it–wanting more of it–your opinion on your tax bracket–giving it away–asking others for it–ad infinitum.
When Beth cooked up this great idea for our blogshare, my proverbial radar gun was out to see where my attention was drawn. What am I supposed to say to this new crowd? (That’s you.) What would be of excellent service to them? (I hope I find it!)
It happened in the pro shop of my tennis club.
Now, that last one is not a sentence I ever thought I would utter. I spent years having an Avoidant relationship with Money. I thought I would be MORE spiritual and show God MORE love, if I had LESS money. It wasn’t that I wanted to suffer more. It was that I wanted to create the conditions where other LESS spiritual people than me might suffer, and then prove my faith by not suffering in insufferable conditions. Yes, that was the Heaven I dreamed up.
Then a money mentor found me, bless his heart, and helped me out of the money rubble pile I had created for myself. I really started to get the message that you can indeed “have” money and also live with Spiritual Alignment as your #1 role.
So my latest test of this theory has been to join a tennis club that I’ve secretly wanted to for two years now but kept telling myself I couldn’t afford it. That I wouldn’t belong. That my quirky queery self would not be welcome there.
So far–not the case! Yay! Isn’t it delicious when that Fear Voice is exposed as a big ol’ lying meany?!
The experience that led me to share itself with you happened in this club. I forgot to throw socks in my tennis bag the day that Beth’s idea for this blogshare came together. So I went to the pro shop to pick up another pair of socks. (MUCH better plan than the time I just played without them and could barely walk afterwards from the blisters! At least I eventually learn my lesson!)
I noticed a girl in there; she looked maybe 11 or 12 years old. I don’t know her age for sure. I’m not a mom-type so that guesstimate may be off. She was a small person, how about that. A small person who looked like someone else fed her but didn’t have to watch her during many of the waking hours anymore.
I noticed that she had an expression of mild discontent on her face. For a pre-teen, I’m just assuming that was the cover of a storm going on inside of her. I do know that about many small teenish people–that to give away their real anguish is too threatening and so they (as I did) will go to great lengths to try and disguise this discontent with neutral facial expressions.
She didn’t look bored, though I expected a kid looking through a small adult tennis shop by themselves would potentially be bored. She looked….uncomfortable, as if it had been that way since birth. She put different tennis shirts between her body and the mirror, and was so disengaged with the process that it seems she forgot to look at the mirror sometimes, even though she was standing right in front of it. It was like a person speaking a foreign language and saying the words but having no idea what the words actually mean. There was no substance or purpose in the action – and no joy whatsoever that I could detect.
I started chatting with the guy behind the counter and she peeked at me suspiciously. I think she feared the life that was vibrating out. And let’s hope that some will emanate out of her, as well, one day, too.
But alas, that life was not to emanate out of her in the pro shop in that moment. I attempted to briefly engage her and she quickly stopped looking at me, and pretended as if she didn’t hear me. Aww, bug, Little One.
After I thanked the counter guy for his help, I walked towards the door to don my new socks and play my beloved sport. The Little One was almost tearing through her small coin purse trying to count the money in there without taking it out of the little space it was in. I wondered what she was going through. Fear? A message that if you take your money out someone will steal it? Wanting to hide what was in there? Generating a rush where there was none to try and take the edge off the discomfort?
I assume she wanted to know if she could afford something in the store. I felt her near-panic. I so much wanted to hug her and tell her it’s going to be ok! But I don’t know, actually, if it will be ok for her or not. I absolutely don’t know what goes on in her home. I don’t know if she gets bullied at school. I don’t know if she is treated as invisible by anyone important to her. I don’t know how developed her soul came in to this world this time around. I don’t know if she already has an eating disorder or not. I don’t know where that money in her little change purse came from.
I don’t know.
I do know the feeling of wanting money, or my control of it, to make life seem…nicer. I do know that I demonized money because of the bloody ways it’s been used and defiled. I do know that it can be damn hard to be a little woman in a usually Big Man’s world.
So many feelings over a medium that was designed merely to help us avoid having to exchange our chickens’ eggs for our farming neighbors’ potatoes!
So I wanted to share that moment with you, as maybe you could catch yourself, the next time you frantically dig through your version of her change purse, and ask yourself:
What am I feeling?
What does my Little One inside actually want?
Is this purchase going to get me closer to or further away from that goal?
Have I tried this type of purchase before, and did it garner me the success I hoped for?
Five years from now, what will I *wish* I would have done in this moment?
I wish you much mindfulness and awareness as we Raise Clarity together.
Thanks for reading. I would love to hear your comments.
Pingback:3 Essential Habits to Cultivate for Peaceful Money Management - RAISING CLARITY
Posted at 09:36h, 30 August[…] Second, make it part of your personal care practices to write down each month how much money you owe, how much you are owed, and how much you have left. Yes, this means you have to write down what you spent and receive every time you spend or receive money. This is cultivating a habit. I do it, and it is amazing, a practice I am so grateful for. Thank you West Beth. […]
Bobbie Rohn
Posted at 00:48h, 30 NovemberWe have all been there – going through our change purse or billfold looking to see if we had “enough”.
Really enjoyed your article as it makes one pause and think and remember!! Thankfully now realizing abundance, in all it’s forms, is to be embraced and celebrated. Always grateful, Bobbie