gakked from several friends

[sabrinamari]

I haven't been able to answer my friend's posts in waaaay too long, but now, I should be able to do so again, especially if I am successful in setting up my laptop at home in the next few days so I can use the internet for more than a few moments a day on weekdays only. Since the diss is actually filed, I am hoping that my life is really, truly, on its way back to something like "normal" now. So to start things off, I thought I'd steal and re-post this:

******

Honesty Trope

Ask me 4 questions. Any 4 no matter how personal, private or random.

I must answer them honestly & answer them all.

In return you must post this message in your own journal & you must answer the questions that are asked to you.

Comments

[sligoe.livejournal.com]

Good to see you again!

1. What do you think is your greatest strength?
2. What do you think is your greatest asset?
3. What goals do you have for yourself?
4. If you could live anywhere and do anything, where would you go and what would you do?

Many hugs!

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

1. Unbelievable persistence in the face of adversity.
2. Genuine compassion and the desire to use my powers for good.
3. I would like to make progress towards becoming a pagan bodhisattva
over the course of the next few lifetimes. I would like to become
as strong, powerful, compassionate and self-loving as is possible for
me. I would love to become capable of, and a participant in, a deeply
positive, loving, exciting, happy long-term romantic and erotic
partnership. I would like to mold my body into my prefered style of
physicality: muscular, strong, supple and graceful. I would like to
assist those people around me that I can actually help to become their
most powerful, compassionate, strong and beautiful selves.
4. I don't know yet. I hope to discover the answers to these questions
over the next year and a half.

Returned hugs---

[dawningday.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm not posting this trope in my journal until tomorrow, but I have some questions.

1) What made you decide that you needed to pursue a PhD?
2) How has your intense academic study affected your spiritual work?
3) How has your intense spiritual work affected your academic study?
4) How were your initiations interspersed with your degrees?

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

1. I did not choose it so much as my family of origin chose it for me: my mother has 2 master's degrees and a Ph.D., my dad has a master's, my paternal grandmother had a Ph.D in Home Econmics and both maternal grandparents had the equivalents of advanced degrees in the Costa Rican educational system. I never had a chance to escape it. This is not a good reason to get an advanced degree, but I did it, and now, I will use it to my utmost advantage.

2. and 3. My intense academic study has both fed and foiled my spiritual work. Because I did both at once over the long haul (working towards Third while working towards a Ph.D.) I slowed my progress down in both areas considerably. But at the same time, it became very clear and easy to see how my academic goals and interests were deeply entwined and in fact inseparable from my spiritual interests and goals.

4. My initiations all came during the course of my graduate work. My First degree came around the time of my masters'. My Second and Third came during the course of the long, long Ph.D work. Work towards each degree intertwined with my spiritual growth and my growth as a teacher, mentor and leader.

When I joined Blue Star, I heard Tziporah say that she had never seen anyone successfully go for Third while working on a Ph.D. I think the reason for this is that it's damn fucking hard to do both at once. While I did choose this path, I might choose differently if I could do it over, adopting a more sequential approach and throwing all my energy at the Ph.D in order to get in completed as quickly as possible---then actively tackling Second and Third afterwards.

still, this path, though very hard, yielded a scary amount of growth for me, I must admit.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

1. What do you most have to offer as a spiritual guide and mentor?
2. What's the most important challenge in your near future?
3. What do you wish you had done as an adult man that you have not yet done?
4. Who do you want to be in 20 years?

[jlhlinnell.livejournal.com]

What grade-school teachers of yours still come to your memory as having had a real effect on the person you are today?

What is the one gift you most enjoyed being able to give another person?

What song makes you cry?

Where were you and what were you doing when you first realized you were making an adult decision?

[jlhlinnell.livejournal.com]

PS: Come ask me questions in MY journal. Nobody's bit on my little query meme.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

1. My third grade math teacher helped me become and stay very scared of math. many wonderful English teachers encouraged me to explore my talents as a writer, reader and thinker. Mrs. Calahan, another math teacher, was both a dear friend and mentor and an inadvertent betrayer of my faith. Teachers were very, very important to me while I was growing up.

2. Helping them to re-discover and own their own power.

3. The Cure's "Just Like Heaven"--it was the song my husband crooned to me sweetly and seductively while courting me, and it represents a happier time between us, a time of hope and promise and love, a time I have hoped to recapture for over a decade. Sadly, those dreams were ill-formed and unrealistic, and now, in order to grow and become the woman I want and need to be, I must let them go.

4. I don't know. This is a great question, and I really have to explore this one. maybe it's this....I remember the first moment in which I was totally enmeshed in intense pain, feeling it deeply that I felt I was going to die----in which I realized that it was possible for me to feel this pain while choosing *not to strike out* at the person who inspired it in me. That may have been my first truly adult decision in this lifetime. I was about 34 or 35 at the time.

OK

[elphaba-of-oz.livejournal.com]

What does the job of your dreams look like?

What are you doing to make that dream job real?

Which BTVS character are you and why? (I have my own ideas. I want to know yours.)

Which BTVS character would you want to be romantically involved with and why?

Re: OK

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

1. Teaching workshops and classes to people who want to be there and who can help me grow as a teacher through their active participation----while traveling and speaking in public, and occasionally writing books.

2. Great question! i finished my dissertation and I'm extricating myself from my current job, which will never get me where I want to be, by exploring two possible jobs that are stepping stones to that end goal. I'm also pushing hard to heal my emotional and mental dysfunctions, because they are preventing me for reaching out enough to manifest that dream job.

3.OK, this *really, really* hard! I've thought of this often, for both me and all of my friends, and I always end up thinking that each of us is a composite of all the Scoobies. But if pressed, I think I'm most like Tara, or at least, I most want to be like her. Of all the Scoobies, she is among the most ethical/moral, the one other than xander who most prizes compassion, and adecent witch, although not a really gifted one. She also has self esteem issues, which I do. xander probably comes in second, for similar reasons.

Sometimes, I wish I were Buffy---lots of times, because I want her physical strength and power. And hey, who wouldn't want to have willow's brain and her magical skill? But probably, I'd say Tara.

4. It's a tie between Tara and late sixth season with-a-soul Spike. for similar reasons: both are incredibly sexy and incredibly honorable/heroic individuals.

Everything is Buffy in my universe

[elphaba-of-oz.livejournal.com]

1) Is there a research component in your dream job or is it all about the teaching?

3) I would have said you were like Tara because of her gentle spirit and the courage she showed when she broke away from Willow.

4) Sorry. You can't have soulful Spike. He's all mine!

I regret not asking which BTVS character I remind you of most.

Re: Everything is Buffy in my universe

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

1. Yes, there is a research component---that's where I get the stuff that I teach about. Good call!

3. wow. I am so honored. Also surpised.

4) laughing...

5) One of my goals for this year is to spend actual face-to-face time with you. In truth, I do not know ho you are, today, yet. I have clues, but I want actual experience of your person. I can tell that you have changed dramatically---and I want to explore that change. For today, my pictures from the past combined with clues from the prsent remind me of Buffy.

[skyefyr.livejournal.com]

1. Who is your role model?

2. If you could go back in time to any point in your life and relive part of it over, when would you go back to? (And would you want to remember all the lessons you've learned to date or not?)

3. If you could relieve the world of one problem/disease, what would it be (answer can be political, economic, social or health related)?

4. What does the home of your dreams look like?

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

1. Pema Chodron

2. The months leading up to my marriage. I would instead: move out of my apartment with my old boyfriend and into my own place. THEN start seeing Ken. See him for at least two years, and discover that we are not compatible, but learn the lessons that I needed to learn from him a whole lot faster. (I wish!) And yes---I would keep all my lessons.

3.Probably either female genital circumcision or HIV

4.I don't know yet. I'm changing so fast that this is morphing along with everything else. I'll tell you when I know more about it...

[stephandcurtis.livejournal.com]

Hi sweetie - Here goes:

1. When was the last time you stepped out into the night to gaze in wonder and awe at the universe above?

2. What new skill would you like to master in the next year?

3. What hobby do you most wish you had time for?

4. When will I get to see you?

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

1. I don't remember. maybe...tonight?

2. Self love and self acceptance

3. Exercise and fitness

4. maybe this year? I hope....