DEEPLY AWAKE – ALL GOOD THINGS
So, here goes, letting me, and you, know that I see a pattern emerging with all the inner work I find myself compelled to do.
But before I tell you how I see the waves breaking, I wanted to tell you of a few miracles and observations.
Last Thursday, things shifted for me rather dramatically. On Wednesday night I had gone to bed not discouraged, but ready for a change. I felt that my work around fear and money had come to an end. I was beginning to imagine that it might be possible for me to have some relief in. I felt complete with the whole thing, and I felt done with stuff. But, I know far too well from my slog through 2012 that when littlemind thinks I am complete, I am sometimes just being set up for a big lesson of clearing.
On Thursday morning, I felt fantastic, and knew that this was the day that things were to resolve. I was ready. We cleaned the house last week, and I removed every ill-fitting thing I own. All my fat clothes are gone. My clothing is clean and hanging on hangers. The kitchen is clean. So is the front room. So I woke up Thursday feeling like a world champion.
And then, as I was exiting my bed to begin my day, something shiny glinted from my sheet. There, where my shins had been, was a gold dollar coin.
What?!
Of course, I took it in my hand, and I laughed and I laughed and I laughed. I understood that I had, now, tangible proof, a miracle, that money would now be coming to me in unexpected ways, and I would finally start feeling, really feeling supported. I could expect support. I could expect ease. I could expect fun.
It is such a treat to have a moment to piece this together, because it is a rather exquisite construct. Let me continue.
Thursday I made a decision. It was a simple one, and an obvious one, and a sainted one. I was inspired to consider the possibility that I could now help people with Tarot. I got my coffee and went to my newly fixed desk, and I cam up with a very nice business card.
Nearly thirty years ago I learned divination through simple playing cards, from Diane. I then studied Tarot daily for two years under a master numerologist and astrologer, who was a whiz at the cards. Until the early nineties, my friend and I would do readings for strangers at restaurants, because we'd come with our cars, to read for ourselves, but we'd always wind up with a crowd.
Finally, on Thursday, it dawned on me that I could make actual money reading Tarot, and I'd be expected to be paid by actually speaking my very own language!
I pick up my business cards this Wednesday. I have decided to sprinkle cards all over town, for Deeply Awake Tarot.
This is the beginning of all good things.
Here is why.
This sainted energy followed me into Friday, and I had a great night. I went to my favorite metaphysical bookstore and bought a great book on numerology, two on tarot, and some more Kryon.
Then Saturday happened.
I worked with someone who was so full of sadness, resentment and hatred. She walked around with murder in her eyes, and she sabotaged me again and again and again, and I just had a miserable shift. Every old thought I ever had about how stupid and unacceptable and awful I am, yes me, not the creep, came back to cut me and bruise me.
I think I cried more Saturday and Sunday than I have in months. I was so miserable, so uncomfortable that shift, and so ashamed that I got mad, that I was affected, oh, I had such pain. Such pain. Ugh. I was ashamed that I couldn't transmute that junk in the moment, angry that I was feeling anything at all.
And now, things have cleared. I say that like no work got done. Ha!
But there are many gifts from that turbulent shift. So many I cannot count them all. But here is the thing. I appreciate their elusive reality. Identifying these things, these constructs or feeling states, that is so necessary. Identifying the place where the blossom was planted, that is important too.
I know that I will test myself again with this energy. It is the energy of resentment and hatred, the vibration of fear and being small. It poisons everything.
So I have decided that I need to set the intention, and speak the truth at the start of each shift, even if it is just internally. The gift I have been given is the courage and the wisdom to have a different awareness toward the aides.
This is what I will say from now on that the beginning of the shift to the aides who work as my subordinates:
I think it is a telling thing that the people here at this hospital tonight, of all the people here, the ones who will actually touch the patient, who will give the most eye contact and who will have the most face time, are the aides. And it is sick, but the reality is that the ones who do the most intimate work with the patient we, as a society, have decided to pay the least respect and money to. I want you to know how false I know this to be. And all the things I am responsible for and can get in trouble for, none of it really even matters if the star of our show, the reason we've shown up, the patient, is riding his bed discouraged, neglected, sad, wanting something simple and not having it. See? That is how I see it. And I cannot and will not answer as many call lights as you tonight, because we have different masters, different expectations, but I want to start this shift by telling you that I see you. I honor you and I respect you and I see you. I will act in a way that shows this honor and respect and trust. And although I do not know if you can return these things, all I ask is that you assume I am on your side. That is all. Assume I am a friend and not your enemy.
So, that is the miracle from working with that horribly sad person.
Let me just pause to tell you something. I just took a break to go get some coffee from the kitchen, and I walked away from this piece you are reading wanting to bag it and start over, because it is not clear and I am not getting to the meat of it. It feels chaotic, this telling, although it really is not. The thing is, all of these miracles are intertwined, and I know that now, and so I will show that I love the integrity of this beauty by telling it as whole but as enjoyably as I can.
So much of this pain, this original pain I have, was there on display of Saturday night. I had a subordinate who was completely out of control. She was checking up on my work, (that would be like me approaching a doctor and openly criticizing him for an omission. Not as a partner, but as someone with a sharp stick I then proceed to stick in the doctor's eye. It is not done nurse on doctor, but it is done ALL THE TIME aide to nurse. All the time.)
See, here is the thing. I have lived my whole, whole, whole life programmed with this weirdness: If you are uncomfortable, it is my fault. The fault is organic, so it cannot be fixed. The situation is: one with the fault fucks things up and can be punished in ANY way seen fit, and the one who finds the fault gets to act superior and hatefully condescending.
That's it. That was what my childhood WAS, and that is how nursing has been for me.
If someone does not like me or my behavior, it is simply because I am flawed. I am the reason. And I cannot undo what is broken. I just have to live with it.
This is why I have always tried to be so damned good! Because I understood that if there is a disturbance in the field, it's because of me, and I can't help it, but I am hated for it.
Um, can I just say, that sentence pretty much explains my social and interpersonal posture for the last 52 years of my life?!
And now we are drilling deep, team, and now we are mining the big nuggets, the ones that surprise your arm with their weight and heft. Now comes the good stuff.
How about being placed in an automatic posture of a soul apology for 52 years? How would that be? What might I learn about myself if I set it up that there is no warmth, or very very little warmth between me and others for a very very long time, almost like an isolation tank that I wear.
I have talked about it before, my lack of compassion.
And I want to really discuss this because I think at some level this is my soul lesson.
I have always been in love with nature, with living things. I would have been very happy on a farm. I know who I am and how and where I belong when I been think about nature. It is an instant, instant head clearer. I can think about moss on a rock, or a slab of granite buried into the side of a mountain, or a pine tree, and I am fine. Set. Clear once again. It is weird how easy that is. I just did it.
But I have never, ever, not even once, felt that around a human. No human. Never. Sorry. Not ever. Not even once.
It's like I have this sheath around me, and the palette of feelings is not available to me. And I have really been mean to myself about this. I know I am weird, because I can love someone so very completely, and be so utterly moved, just moved to beyond words, by someone, but not always and usually at great price.
It is not that I don't like people, it's just that I really do not understand their motivations, a lot of them. I don't like how they think, what they say, what they focus on. I find most people really absent of spark and life. Most people are very very afraid, and in their terror they smash anyone who isn't.
Please know that this writing is as close to stream of consciousness as I have ever done online, so forgive the lack of structure. What I find with these things is that in the middle of such seeming chaos, a pattern emerges, a theme, a message. I am not feeling it yet, so I will continue.
So here we are, with a bitchy woman-child at work set off gongs in me. I wept and I wept and I wept. In the bathroom. In the hallway. In the car. In my bed. Weeping. Can't really tell the specifics because I don't remember them. But it had to do with being hated. Being hated. Being hated.
How do I reconcile this? How do I find peace with this? How do I do that? And why oh why must this be an issue?
It's because I had asked for, begged and demanded GENTLENESS.
That's the cosmic joke, my love.
I had decided that my weekend would be one practicing, living, knowing gentleness. I had been shown that gentleness in action and thought leads to compassion and that this mechanism is under the auspices of knowing peace.
Seemed real simple.
I can be gentle. I can do that.
Except that is not my way. Never has been. Never has been.
I gravitate toward chaos. My head clears when I am in crisis. I think it speaks to the end-times portion of me, the extreme portion of me who came in to just DO THIS THING. I am not particularly gentle. I love change. Chaos. Upset. I thrive on it. I don't like creating it, although I am good at that, but I just find I enjoy extremes. There truly is nothing else like having someone try to die on you, someone who has told you that they would prefer that particular thing not happen. It is a peaceful, tranquil, loving, beautiful energy, that extreme. I love it. It's like being in a cathedral in the woods, being at the bedside as someone is dying, or trying to. And it is within the extreme, within the chaos, that everything becomes so easy, so clear, so simple.
So, no, gentleness, assuming a posture of gentleness this lifetime would have made it impossible for me to live to this age. I had to develop ways to cope. And losing that sweetness, that vulnerability, that was job one. I was not raised in a gentle home. I did not have gentle formative experiences. Gentleness has not been the walk of The Others I contracted with.
It still comes out, and does so more now than ever before. But gentleness, that is a state of grace, something to work toward, as far as I am concerned.
See, I realized after that meditation that gentleness is not such a strong attribute with me. I got through the first part of my life really knowing, utterly believing the following:
I am born in alone. I will die alone. Each of us is a universe unknowable between birth and death. Lying creates pain. Honesty creates isolation. No one comes close to me, but when they try, inevitably, something really shitty happens, and they reject me because I am not good enough. No one has ever really loved me, and I really doubt anyone can, in the end, honestly love anyone else, because everyone is so dishonest with themselves and each other. No one wants to be real, no one wants to be exposed, and no one wants to talk. And if I break this rule of silence, I am punished even worse than if I am just seen as a dolt.
Yeah. That's pretty much it. In a nutshell.
But although that has been my interpersonal reality for 52 years, I think it can change now. Because I see now that it is based on a false premise! A number of them actually.
Now, understand, that statement above, that was my manifesto. But it is built on the false notion that we come in alone. That we die alone. That is such nonsense.
And then there is the other stuff, a lot of which is true.
I think the sheath thing is real. I think it is my protection. It stops me from feeling any interest whatsoever in most of the nonsense that could knock me off my path. Maybe it was a help at one time, and I do feel that it was a gift given to me to help me cope. But it has caused a rift, a chasm, that I want to cross now.
I saw The Other as more powerful than me. Literally able, with a glance, a word, an edict, to dismiss me as offal.
If you do not approve of something about me, maybe it's my clothes or my weight or my posture or my words or my face, my soul purpose, my dinner selection, anything, if you disliked it even mildly, then I would feel pain. Really. I hate to admit this shit, but it's true. Between two people, there is a space that is afforded when someone creates something new, a coffee or a break or a radio dial change. And in that moment when something new is introduced, that is indeed a good moment. Because The Other has an opportunity to then comment on the new addition to the construct.
And when that happens, if the person shows displeasure or discomfort, then that is when I take the ball and run with it.
Oh my, what fun I have had then!
This is my jumping off point, into the abyss of self loathing. It is a choice. It is always there. If in the space of having introduced something new, an idea or a suggestion or a treat, the other person must then decide if it is good or bad for them, right? “Would you like some treats?” In that moment, The Other makes a decision.
Now, if I am The Other, I really need my companion to be strong, and to deal with the fact that I may or may not want a treat. If I say no, I am hoping The Other will understand I am rejecting the treat and not him or her. But most are not strong, and most, when rejected, start feeling like they themselves are rejected. Come on, when you get right down to it, when I say “no “ to an offer, I am rejecting the energy of that other person, a probability they are offering. I have the right and responsibility to say yes or no.
And here is the kicker.
Here is the love, the gratitude, the grace and the gentleness.
I understand now that the mechanics will always be fascinating to a girl like me. I love that I am so analytical on this interpersonal stuff. I don't really have a choice, since this is how I was built, but still, I like that I examine everything so much.
But I had been missing a key ingredient. That is why I allowed that girl at work to treat me so awfully and why we did that horrible lurching dance for twelve truly macabre hours on Saturday. She was a master teacher. She was also a stone cold bitch.
I had been thinking “Ooh I want gentleness. I want to be the sage who dances through her shift. I want peace and lightness and gentleness and love.”
Yeah, great to aim high, but how is it possible to radiate something that I refuse to bathe in myself?
So let me return to the timeline.
An aside, if you will allow it, about my boy. I told him, very briefly, about the first dispensation, that of peace through compassion via gentleness. And that sage sat on his couch, smiled and said, “Yeah, mom, you aren't very gentle. You need more of that.”
Yeah.
I will now say, just for the record, that if you do not live with my son, you are not in a good position to judge him. He's bullet proof and wiser than most, good humored, self-assured and completely honest. Yikes.
So, on Sunday afternoon, I woke up after having cried bucketfuls, and I felt pretty good. The air was clearer, that is for sure.
Sam and I, we gave each other ease that day. We did things that were sure to give us peace and joy. One of them was to go to a movie. He decided to go to a werewolf or zombie thing, and I decided to go see Silver Linings Playbook.
That movie is a gem. It is about ascension, guys. I needed to know what I was missing, I needed to crack this koan. And then came that movie. It demonstrated a thickness of love that nearly made my throat close up. It was so THICK with THICK love. It was a sparkly movie. I cried through it too.
And then, Sunday night, I realize something, as I was clearing the dishes from the sink.
There is a moment in the movie when Bradley Cooper's character has just had it, and declares “You know, maybe Tiffany and I are on to something! Maybe we aren't like you but that isn't a bad thing! Maybe you should pay attention to how we are doing this, because we aren't doing it 'wrong'!” (I'm paraphrasing. Forgive me, please.)
You see, I have walked around feeling like The Other, being put down and misunderstood my whole life. I am seen as awkward, too open, too deep, and I have a hard time modulating my frequency, or at least I did. I was lost most of the time, and I made stupid choices. I painted with all the colors available to me, and I did it in a way that seemed to guarantee raised eyebrows and judgment. And I am SICK OF IT.
I am sick of all the judgment.
And here came that movie, right there, of two ascending masters, loving on each other creatively, with abandon and with great precision, with love thick and straight and true, and it was delicate and moving and right.
At the sink, I laughed out loud, because the voices finally are back, and what they said was that I had got it, finally. The missing ingredient is not love for The Other. Often The Other is not appreciative. And yes, I know that everyone travels with big angels and a higher self they are beginning to tap into, but come on, we are all NOT there yet, ans some people are pretty fucked up still.
So, here's the thing I learned at the sink. Gentleness is not to be given to others without first being run through my own body. See? It is not possible to give it unless I have it. Of course, it is available, because I have dreamed up the possibility.
Gentleness is compassion. And it is to be given first to myself, then to others. See? See how it works? The people in the movie, they understood, in the end, and they had gentleness. But first they had to realize it internally.
In the movie, this realization occurred when the characters allowed themselves to be loved and supported by others. There it is. The willingness to see something as a loving act. Something that could be seen as an act of betrayal, or selfishness or manipulation. All through that movie, folks made good choices. They made choices biased in LOVE.
There was always love there, but there was pain and unhappiness too. These peoples' issues were not mine, their stories not mine, but their struggle was as real as it gets, and I have to tell you, it was a very powerful thing, seeing two people like me on that movie screen. Two people who were not understood, not appreciated, two individuals who were wrestling particularly mean monsters, but in the end, the monsters only had one name, at that name was fear.
And everyone was, in the beginning, bouncing off everyone else's fear. Quite a symphony of pain at the start, but by movie's end, there was peace in the valley.
The peace was released, for me, with that line of Bradley Coopers. MAYBE I AM ON TO SOMETHING.
See, this spiritual quest of mine has led me down bind alleys and box canyons, but I have enjoyed the ride. I have done this life weirdly, and I have chosen to be a pebble in people's shoes. I know it and they know it.
I know now that I have to admit and work with the obvious: I effect people. I am here, and I am part of it, and I matter, and the very things for which others have put me down my whole life, I now feel are my most precious attributes: my willingness to consider the fact that I might not be seeing things as clearly as I could being my best one.
What if I did something revolutionary, and stopped hating my own self when others are uncomfortable with me? What about that?
Maybe my job is not to create peace, but to create love.
I am beginning to think that peace is a by product, or a sister of love. I think Love is the engine, and it is the context, and then the variations start to emerge from it, the patterns of peace, self worth, self acceptance, forbearance, gratitude, humor, all those good things. But it comes from love.
Love is word we have bastardized, and I like instead to describe it sometimes, because then I realize I am a bit more loving than I think. Love to me, love is this: Love is
Strong. Patient. Smiling. Permission. Allowance. Tolerance. Forbearance. Inclusion. Expansion. Answers. Truth. Symmetry. Recognition. Forgiveness.
What if all these years, I have been put down for the very things that are what we, as humans, ultimately strive for? Why is it that my meditating and loving God cost me so many relationships? Why is it that I have not yet found someone who is like me?
I think maybe it has a lot to do with me. Where I stand with me.
I think I am all of that with a bag of chips, but then along comes a spider, who checks up on my work, finds ways to get me into trouble and shame me...... and once again I FELL APART.
But then the reconstruction begins again. Sainted work, this.
And I was ready.
At the sink, and all night long, and into this morning, here is what I have been told:
I allowed people to walk all over me and be shitty to me because I did not feel I was worthy of better treatment. I thought that what people give me I need to take, and if they are mean to me, I deserve it. There must be something wrong with me I have yet to discover, the old thinking went.
But I know now that I am complete and intact.
It is no longer something I am ashamed of, that these understandings are not whole at the outset. It was a daunting and embarrassing thing to me that I did not understand so much, and that I was always in pain. I see now that I am built in a way that requires others exert a bit of effort, and sometimes they don't feel like it.
I know I effect people, and I know that sometimes people react to me in ugly ways. I challenge people. I always have. And it is not like I want to, but I just seem to. This effect used to lead to a lot of weirdness, and it still does. I am working on making the weirdness more sparkly, that's all.
This is where the gentleness comes in, and this is how the circuitry is supposed to go, I think.
In a situation where someone is not acting very nicely, I have a choice. In that moment, that sweet golden moment where I say yes or no to an offer. The offer is sometimes to play the game of “Better than/less than.” Sometimes the offer is to play the game “They are all so dumb.”
And in the golden moment, of one person reaching out across the divide to me verbally, that is the moment of choice. Do I play along? Or do I find a way to elevate the whole stupid mess? Sometimes distraction works. Sometimes just leaving the area is best. And sometimes introducing a different game is best. A game of “Where is your favorite place to go on vacation?” or “Do you have any kids?”
But sometimes that magic just doesn't catch on.
And then the games begin.
So if I meet another warrior tonight who is there, ready to challenge me and help me sink into small thoughts and delusions of self-loathing, I will use something which just came to me, one of the many new gifts I have been given.
It is simply A WAY OUT. I have not given myself many of those. I stay too long at the fair sometimes, as The Teachers used to say. I am stubborn and want to move energy and sometimes the energy doesn't want to be moved. My way out will be waiting for me on Wednesday. They are simple business cards. But it is a way out.
I saw writing as my ticket out, and of course it is, but it is also laden with desperation and fear, this task I set before myself. I was so convinced that I could never escape nursing that I charged writing so much, it is not a surprise I have not had more tangible success. I mean, look at this stuff. I deserve national exposure, and I know my words will help many. I know that. If you're paying attention how could you not know that?
But I cannot go directly from my jammies and a laptop to rocking Rockefeller Center. I need intermediary steps. I need contacts. I need friends.
So this is my way out.
Funny, but the idea of doing readings has spurred a lot of other ideas. I love aroma and used to have a perfumers kit as a kid. I am going to learn how to make bath salts, and I am going to present each of the people I read for a lovely gift. I have a feeling that the gifts of aromatherapy and numerology will play a large part in all of this, but for now, these remain interests, idle thoughts, hopes and dreams.
Things are happening, they are popping, and I now want to tell you the punch line.
Ever since Sunday afternoon I have felt peace. It is CONSTANT. It is STURDY. I can rely on it. It is there, baby. I can't shake it.
It is an eery thing, this peace. It is constant. It is new. But it feels like it is in the weave and not a color about to be introduced to the loom, if you know what I mean. I feel, I know, peace. That is what I was laughing about at the kitchen sink on Sunday night. I was laughing because now, without working for it or “calling it in,” there it stands, helping me do the dishes, quieting my heart, calming every nerve. There it is, a part of the weave, whispering against my skin with softness and strength and protection. There it is.
So today, I work again. Pouring coffee this morning, I was told that I would indeed be giving myself another test, another check, to see if I am going to fall apart if someone doesn't like me and starts acting like an asshole because of it. But I am giving this to myself. There is no enemy, just mysterious tests of which I know very little, except I know what they are now when they are in my reality.
Sn aside: I have come to believe that my natural state is one of expansive balance. As such, when lies come into this spin, the spin is knocked off kilter a little. That's the pain. That's the misery. And that's the challenge, the test.
I know I call these people and these experiences to me, and I thank that person who acted like a creep. I am certain that my displeasure will be lodged in her awareness until she has her aha moment, and then maybe she'll understand why I just, by the end of the shift, rebuffed her insincere and angry assistance in disgust. I hated to do it, but she was so awful towards me. I know now that yes, of course, I will test myself to see if I am still willing to abdicate all my good things, just lay them down at the feet of anyone who expresses discomfort with me.
Guess what? If I make you uncomfortable, deal with it. I come in peace. I come in love. And I mean no ill will. I am not a mean or angry person. I expect and deserve respect. I will always give it, and it is my expectation that, around me, it be given back.
What happens when I don't get it?
Isn't that at the crux of this thing?
I said I can't feel compassion, and I hope you know that this is a lie. But there is a deep dichotomy within me, one which made me feel as close to madness as I ever will.
When Sam was born and we'd moved to our new house, I remember I'd go to his room and hold him, rock him, just to get a way and be with him. And yet, as I held him, I felt a weird sensation which I interpreted as me being broken, way down deep.
I would hold him and rock him and feel him, and I was clearly devoted to him and fully aware on most levels of what he meant to me, but I would hold him and rock him and look down on his little body and this is what I thought, a thought which I have never ever admitted until now. I would get very panicky as I thought to myself: I don't understand this.
I would look down at him and just say, “I don't understand.”
And I took that for “I don't love you.”
But that was a wrong interpretation. I love my son. I am a very loving entity. But I remember so well feeling about 30 feet tall, and I would have the sensation of holding the tiniest most precious most most precious substance in the universe in my hand, looking at it, dumbfounded, thinking, “I don't get this.”
I have had many metaphysicians tell me that thinking is not the answer. That beliefs are unimportant and thoughts are not the way to God.
That words are weak and meaningless.
Tell me, please, if that is the case, how a kid's life will go if the mother has a strong feeling and encodes it to mean that she, the mother, is unable to love her child, versus the mother who encodes this strong feeling as one of a mysteriously deep and rich love to which she has not yet had access?
Tell me.
Tell me how a life will go if a child is regularly told and shown it is defective, and the child comes to believe there is no better interpretation that that for her woes. That she is broken and can never be fixed, that her brokenness breaks those she touches, and her way will therefore be one of suffering. Tell me.
What if that little girl had been taken aside and told this: You are surrounded by people you have chosen to challenge your innate sense of self worth. No one around you is going to mirror you back whole, because no one here can see things whole. So when they start telling you that you are the cause of trouble and strife, and when they tell you that the only explanation for their intolerable pain is that it is and will always be all your fault, you will understand that they have missed the point. Just don't take their horseshit as gospel.
Jesus Henry Christ, things would have been different for me.
It is how things are for Sam, and he is flourishing.
So, there It is. It is a multi-layered cake I have baked for you, full of flavor and surprising delight.
Some people have a bad day at work, come home, kick the dog, and go to bed.
This is why, loved ones, after a fight or a disturbance in the field, when next I meet some of the people I have encountered, they feel shame and don't want to interact. And I have to remember that, because I have literally lived years since then. I have transmuted their gift to gifts of wonder and depth. I have used their pain and it is no longer that which it was, so I feel no shame, particularly, when I reunite with the dorks I have to deal with. They tend to walk around like scolded puppies on any subsequent encounters. So I have learned to let them know (non verbally, sometimes verbally, but very very rarely) that all is forgotten and I am in gratitude for their help.
So I will begin my shifts with that little spiel I wrote at the beginning of this piece. I will take my son to that movie. And the coolest thing of all, the biggest most awesomest gift of all is that from now on, I get to be gentle with myself.
See, that's the punch line, and that's what had me laughing at the sink. Here I was thinking I was going to go to work and just somehow distribute this amazing peace. Ha! Yeah. Good intentions, and that's nice, but hey, it's a two way street.
So from here on out, here's the deal if you work with me.
I already think you are awesome. I used to be afraid of people, because I was convinced they could hurt me. But really, most of that is just nonsense. I can't be hurt. And in my back pocket now is my way out.
I couldn't escape my family. I couldn't escape nursing. Now I have a way out. And it's not an escape at all. It's a natural extension, but it is indeed the next step. And having the next step is nice, because it takes the sting out of the creep factor.
I know that there will come a time when none of this will be salient. We will look back on these machinations we used to do avoid interpersonal pain. It might be seen as a quaint read of how things once were, when most everyone was just waking up to their awesomeness, and what it was like for the ancient ones as this occurred on the planet.
All I know is that I can't live as previously expected, and breaking behaviors is fun but scary.
I am on an upward spiral which has no end, and it is ok to have these understandings come in steps. I no longer feel shame that I didn't have it whole, and I now feel such gratitude for having been willing to expose myself as I have.
I am grateful for the movie Silver Linings Playbook. I needed it. I needed to see two lightworkers spin so beautifully. I needed to see the reality that a movie that is in your face about ascension and profound love won Academy Awards, was backed by big names, and starred luminaries.
This shit is as real as it gets, and our time is now. The freaks, the ones who have never fit in. Guess what? I think that living 52 years as an apology is enough. And I am not going off half cocked because I saw a movie. No. I understand now, through an artistry and grace which speaks of the godhead, that which I did not before. And I honor them, aspire to do what they have done, and live life more whole as a result.
I know I should have been writing more frequently, because then this would not have been so long, but I think that it makes a lot of sense why I have not been writing recently. It's been balls to the wall learning mode.
I know that is is ascension. I know that I am nearly there. And I know to be true what was told me several weeks ago, and that is how I will end this thing.
I remember just a few weeks ago, waking up after a deep sleep with only one thought. The thought had color, depth, sound and smell. It was an understanding, not an idle waking musing. And this is what it was:
Things will never be that bad again. Things will never be how they were, and you are not ever going to go back into that pain. The worst is over. The worst is over The worst is over.
And it's true. I knew it to be true as it rang form me that morning, and I knew that I could actually trust that understanding. And now I have proof. I spent maybe, at most, 16 hours in true pain, but the truth is, that before 2012, I was in that level of pain pretty much ALL THE TIME. There was no surcease and all relief was temporary.
Not anymore.
I am never going back there to live. It is not possible.
And yet, the siren song of fear is so seductive, so powerful, even now. But, as I have continually been coaching myself through these hours, my message has been, and is to you as I leave, simply this: The pain I feel is so painful now because it is no longer native to me. It is revisiting me. I am releasing it. It's ok. It wants to go home. I am miserable because these things are not truthful, not whole, not satisfying. I am in pain because I am believing lies. And it's temporary.
It only gets better from here.
There is a pattern and a purpose to everything.
I look forward to spinning with love so thick that we all, each of us,l feel like our chests are supernovas. That is all I want, all I have ever wanted. And I can get there through love. Making choices in that golden sigh of a moment between yes and no. I can err on the side of love, imaging that someone could find something good in me. That because their eyesight is improving and my behavior more congruent, we can have peace. I like not being afraid of people, especially the jerks. I am unplugging from fear. If it no longer applies to me, if I have lots of ways out, and I have lots of ways to find inner peace, then do I need to see The Other as anything but friend? If I trust my own inner strength, how can I be in relationship afraid of The Other?! Maybe my clue to entering the chapel of pain I visited on Saturday has to do with not puffing up The Other. Reminding myself of my own intactness.
If I see myself as intact and inviolate, a gentle gift that sometimes knocks people off their axis, then can I really have a bad shift?
You see, that is the test. That is the challenge. And that is why now, 36 hours I had that crappy shift, I am going to do it again, and I have a happy heart, and excited countenance, and certainty that this thing I carry with me, this effect I give without knowing I am doing it, is a gift that can heal, and it is how I apply it that determines its impact. If I take a posture of fear, things go into the crapper. If I believe the fear thoughts, the lies, I am sunk.
So I will think thoughts that are true and straight and clean. Pure and joyful and funny and happy. And I will get through it somehow, not fully comprehending the miracles that made the shift even occur... this alchemy I participate in for twelve hours a day three days a week is WORK. Make no mistake. But it is not really the work of changing bandages and passing pills. It is the work of self realization. I will remind myself of these good things I have come to know, of the great gifts I have given myself and been handed by my family, this legion of guides and angels all here to support and love me.
This, this great love, this quiet happy peace earned through introspection and trust and faith and hope, this love, this peace, is the origin of all good things.
