Mindy's Gateway to the Unknown

It is important to have people in your life to look up to. There was no one during my childhood except my oldest sister. She made me laugh. We'd get so gigly. The family moved when I was 9 and we left her behind as she was sick and tired of moving all the time.

But heroes aren't just for children, they are for adults as well. Who is my hero now? Lance Armstrong. I watched the Tour de France in 2005, his last tour. I am so disappointed that I didn't really get to know him or pay attention to him before that. He is really something! I believe in Lance. Forget what they say, the accusations of doping. They couldn't be true. A champion doesn't need to dope, and Lance is a real champion. He has this raw talent. You can see it as he manuevers his bike, and also in his pedaling. He has the smarts as well as the talent. And he had Chris Carmichael and Johan Bruyneel on his side. He always had a very large support system. We should all have a large strong support system like he did!

I look up to Chris and Johan as well. I believe in them. They are very very good at what they do as well. I am at a loss since Lance retired. I worry that the Discovery team will be no more after Discovery is no longer the title sponsor. Everything clicked with Lance and Chris and Johan and the rest of the team. Now Lance is gone.

I always dreamed about getting into racing since I was into my twenties. I was in my twenties when I discovered the sport of cycling. I was a recreational cyclist. But I was never strong enough or good enough to be an amateur racer. It was just a dream. I was carrying too much emotional baggage. Everything was hard back then. Things now are much easier and less heavy. I need more heroes I think.

What do I believe in? By the time I was twenty, I thought of myself as an agnostic because I didn’t follow any organized religion, yet I couldn’t say for sure that there was a god. And I didn’t see myself as an atheist. But now, I see myself as neither agnostic nor atheist. Labeling like that is, for me anyway, like trying to fit into a mold that has already been created for me, like religion. I see myself as a seeker of the truth. My world is uniquely my own. I am writing today to get a feel for how I understand or believe.

Heaven and Hell? In my mind, heaven and hell are not the places we go to when we die, I believe that it exists in the here and now experientially. I’ve experienced heaven and I’ve been through hell.

Life after life?I do not know if there is something after we die. I won't be closed minded about it though. I'd like to think there was something after this life. Childhood prepares you for life and then does life prepare you for something else? I have had serious problems in adulthood because of childhood traumas. Childhood did not prepare me for life. It took my young adult life to overcome my childhood. Now I am okay. I am 46 years of age. I'd like to think I'd get another chance, but I just do not know. There is so much we don't know about this world.

To be spiritual. I am spiritual. It is true much of the time but not all the time. It is experiential. Interactions with others make me feel good. I strive to be fair, honest. I’d like to think that I am a good person; good for people. To be spiritual is to be true to yourself and others. To be spiritual is to experience love. To be spiritual is something I experience from time to time, like being on a natural high or feeling a strong sense of good well-being.

Intuition; a sixth sense. My world is based not only on empirical evidence, but what comes out of intuition. I am very intuitive. Empirical evidence relies only on the 5 senses. I take it a step further. Intuition, or a sixth sense, brings about experiential types of evidence that cannot be relied upon through the 5 senses. Without being intuitive my life would not be as it is: spiritual, open minded, seeking, believing.

Angels, from my Christianity days. The idea of angels makes me feel good. I don’t really believe in angel beings with wings. What might be beyond this world is inconceivable. How angels make me feel (the ceramic decorative type) stands for all that is good.

A sense of presence?? Sometimes I get a feeling or a sense of a presence or something. It makes me feel really good, comforted, and not so alone. For example, when I had my car accident in January of 2006, I totaled my car. I was really hurt and it hurt to move or stand up or sit down or breathe, etc. I didn’t see how I could go on. It overwhelmed me because there were things I needed to do and just wasn’t well. I bought a new car a couple of weeks later with the help of my father. And I found a pewter guardian angel to hang off of my rear view mirror of my new car. Then as I was sitting in my new car, I felt this presence, not actually here in the physical world, yet at the same time it was with me. I felt like everything was going to be okay and not to worry about anything; just to get well and let life fall back into place. It is unexplainable. It was temporary. Most of the time I don’t feel this presence.

In 2001 when I was dealing with my sister’s death, I sensed her presence many times in my apartment. I would sense her at an approximate place but I couldn’t see her. I sensed my mother’s presence many times after she died. Unexplainable.

Miracles? I don’t believe in the concept of miracles; I believe there is a way to learn how to do something. Once you learn then there is no mystery. I believe in doctors. They know how to do things that I couldn’t possibly do. But how to do this or that is documented in many places in this world, and is in the minds of many, just not my mind.

I believe in having a good moral value system and to follow principals that make living more of a joy, and they provide security for self and others.

I am so frustrated! I can't get the picture to show up in my journal for the entry. I choose one but it just isn't there. But when I want to edit an entry it is there! Does anyone know what is going on here?

Thx,
Mindy

Well today I opened an account on LiveJournal. I hope to meet folks interested in the same things I am. I truly enjoy writing and hope to do a lot of it in the future. Thank goodness I can type at the speed of thought. Well almost. ;)

It's a beautiful spring day here in my town, not a cloud in sight. The temperatures cool. Very unusual for Houston!

Well that's it for now...

Mindy