My Luxurious Life

Posted on Jul 23rd, 2009 by

I was having a meeting yetserday, and someone said something to the effect that unlike me, they did not have the luxury of being a full-time energy practitioner.

Luxury...it was such an interesting choice of words. It rang in my head.

I do love what I do, but I have given up just about everything for my path. Luxury is not a word that comes to mind for me at this time. Luxury implies indulgence (in fact, that is the definition):

1archaic : lechery, lust2: a condition of abundance or great ease and comfort : sumptuous environment <lived in luxury>3 a: something adding to pleasure or comfort but not absolutely necessary <one of life's luxuries> b: an indulgence in something that provides pleasure, satisfaction, or ease <had the luxury of rejecting a handful of job offers — Terri Minsky>

— luxury adjective

Ease, comfort, and indulgence are definitely not words I'd apply to the path I have taken to become what I am or how I am able to serve.

I've gone from married to single, middle class house to urban apartment, full-time volunteer to working to keep food on the table (I still volunteer a lot too), full-time mom to joint custody, fairly comfortable life to not knowing from one day to the next if I can make ends meet. I've been flayed open publicly, had my ego on display, been thrown under the proverbial bus more times than I can count, and experienced more heartbreak than I could have imagined. My best friend is gone, and the people closest to me have turned away, rejected me, and said unkind things to and about me. I have never felt a greater loss or loneliness for human community.

I think the most interesting thing is that the person who said this about the luxury I have has all the things money can buy, and they see me as the one with the opulent life.

I have Love.

I have angels whispering in my ears.

I have a teacher who has the uncanny ability to know right when I need him most.

I have one friend who would do anything to fix an upset between us, and whose confidence I trust.

I have this amazing gift of healing energy to share.

I have had the experience of a difficult past, and knowing transcendence is possible.

I have rose colored glasses that keep me coming back no matter how many times I feel broken and shattered inside.

I have a connection to God/Something Greater.

I have hope and faith.

The first and last of that list alone, perhaps, qualify me for the category of luxurious.

All the things that have left me were not mine to begin with, and what I am left with is more and more purely Truth and divinity.

If I had to choose (and I already have), I'd take the seeming instability of the precarious balance that is my current life over all the creature comforts money can buy. Maybe someday I will have both. I don't know what's in store.

For now, what is within my reach to love will suffice. I am having a love affair with my soul. I am doing the work my soul longs to do. I am following my path as fearlessly as possible. I am trusting God, my Higher Self, and the Universe to open the doors that need opening, and close the doors that need closing. I am not in charge. I am not in control.

Perhaps that is the kind of freedom and spiritual abundance that makes my simple life look luxurious.

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Tagged with: my teacher, abundance, god, luxury, 2009

Cosmic Grinder

Posted on Jul 15th, 2009 by

Spiritual Liberation

What an intense couple of months! I feel like I've been through a cosmic grinder. I feel today, for the first time since May, a little bit like myself (only better in some ways). But I also feel how easily I could allow myself to spin into my thoughts and questions and emotions again, so I'm being very careful. I don't like where I've been and what I've been going through. I have no desire to revisit that place, and yet many things still feel unsettled or unanswered.

This past weekend was a Level 2 energy practitioner's workshop with my teacher. I pretty much started crying Friday night and didn't stop until Tuesday morning (okay, the truth is I pretty much started crying a few weeks ago...). We were cleansing patterns and traumas and toxins from our organs, so on top of everything going on in my outer life, and my inner life feeling in turmoil, my past revealed that it was still with me as well in many aspects.

Ack, chaos!!!

I mean that in the best way possible though. ;~)

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Tagged with: my teacher

Drop Everything

Posted on Jun 20th, 2009 by

Spiritual Liberation

Today I meditated from when I awoke until 2pm. I was on a mission to drop everything, and I didn't care about eating or anything else until I did.

Well, I don't know if I did or not. I mean, I think I did, because I was not a body for a few hours, but I was still me when I came back from that place of transcendence. I somehow seem to be inescapable to myself...Go figure.

I decided today to go to church for the first time in 24 years. There is a Unity nearby - the one that started the Complaint Free World movement - and they have a Saturday service. I thought it might be helpful to hear other voices speak on God, to be more well-rounded.

I remember once, maybe 10 years ago, my husband said to me that he wanted me to get a life. He said he fell in love with me, not himself, so he wanted me to stop mirroring him, which he did not appreciate, and find me again.

It's always been too easy for me to trade myself for some perception of love, acceptance, and approval. It's how I prostitute myself. I make myself useful so I can be indespensible. I become more like those I want to be around, not only because maybe they are better than me and I can learn something, but also to flatter them so they will like me better, nevermind that my husband liked me less when I acted like him. Nevermind that it was no fun for either of us. Nevermind that I was not authentic.

So WHO AM I? That is what I'm trying to figure out. I can't define that. I am god. I am love. I am everything. I am nothing. And yet in my singular human form, I also have a personality, a set of aspects that are unique to me, that only I can bring to this world.

That is the girl I'm not sure I know anymore, if I ever did.

I think back and what stands out is my refusal to conform. Defiance. Maybe sometimes divine, to preserve my divinity, but probably mostly in ego.

What if my personality is just a mirror, and there is no real substance on its own?

I listened to several more sermons today online when I got home from church, and in one of them, the pastor said our personalities are scar tissue from our wounds. Like, if we weren't paid attention to, then we become outgoing to get people to look at us, and things like that.

So what if being like other people is my scar tissue? What if that was my learned saving grace to survive? What then?

My teacher gave a lecture last week about how the identity is the most difficult thing for the ego to let go of, and yet we must shed the identity to discover who we really are.

And last night I was writing an email to another mentor/teacher about this very thing, and I heard in my head very clearly, "Drop everything." Drop everything.

I am already what I am. What I must do is drop what I am not.

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Tagged with: god

missing my voice

Posted on Jun 14th, 2009 by

Spiritual Liberation

One of my students called me on the carpet tonight. She said she felt angry listening to me giving a presentation last week because I didn't sound like me, I sounded like my teacher. She wanted to know where my voice went. She said it was my voice, not my teacher's, who gave her the courage to leap into her own greatness, to have the courage to change and grow beyond her self-imposed limitation. And now where was I hiding?

She said she'd been struggling with her self-esteem lately, and she wonders if it is because I have lost mine.

Have I gone from being her cheerleader to holding her back with my own dysfunction?

And where has my voice gone??? I don't know my own voice anymore. As you can all see, I hardly ever even write anymore because I have lost touch with what it is I have to say. I don't really talk on the phone with friends. I don't go to lunch or hang out with people. I avoid most group situations. I don't teach anymore.

Where have I gone? What have I done with myself? Where did my confidence go?

Am I going through a 'natural' phase on the spiritual path, or have I gone awry?

I am completely without reference points here.

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Tagged with: my teacher, who am i, confidence

A Meaningful Life

Posted on Jun 13th, 2009 by

Spiritual Liberation

I decided I was going to write a book this weekend, so today I stared at a blank page all day, then took a nap. I dreamed about anger the whole time I slept, and yet I didn't want to wake up.

I was at a program with my teacher last weekend, and we worked with the energy of ascension. My teacher said if we weren't certain of where we were going, that we'd better get sure real quick, because this energy would propel us in the direction of our focus.

At that time, I knew for sure where I was headed.

Ever since then, I've felt complete internal chaos.

I'm in that middle place between walking by faith and knowing that God helps those who help themselves. I don't know what to do. Just BE, or take action? Do I give up my apartment and live in a motel with my kids to ensure my credit doesn't get trashed if I can't pay my rent, ensuring that we can live well in the future? Or have faith that the support will come and risk a credit collapse if it doesn't? The choices life offers are not always easy to make.

I try not to think like this. I try not to focus on what I don't want. After all, I am a powerful creator.

I really do think everything will be okay. In fact, I know everything will be okay no matter how it turns out. What I don't always know is what path to choose to make things easiest, what path will bring the least pain.

Life is a paradox. Walk by faith. God helps those who help themselves. Both are wise. And maybe they are not so paradoxical...walk by faith does imply action, after all.

I've been in this place before. I think perhaps I must keep repeating these dynamics until I get it 'right', until I make a different choice and experience myself as the powerful creator I am. I have created all the circumstances for each event in my life. I know very well how to create pain and chaos. This time I choose to create a life of joyous celebration. A meaningful life. An abundant life.

Just you watch me.

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Tagged with: my teacher, abundance, god, creation

My Lies

Posted on Jun 2nd, 2009 by

Spiritual Liberation

Everything I tell myself is a story. Whether I feel I belong or don't belong, and all my supporting reasons and justifications - they are all just stories I tell myself to validate my emotions. Ergo ego.

The Universe is double teaming me here. I've got a teacher telling me I am manipulating myself (and in those faulty beliefs, inadvertently manipulating others I interact with by believing my own stories), and then as soon as I am off that conversation, I pick up a book that is telling me basically the same thing by saying I can at any moment choose to BE my Christed Self, and in that very moment I can do it without waiting. It may not sound connected, but inside me it is. (unless that's another story...)

I'm reading At Home with God in a Life that Never Ends by Neale Donald Walsch. It's the 10th Conversation with God. I read the first a few years ago, and now I'm reading the last. I haven't read any in the middle. Like the first one, I am not shocked by the concepts presented, but I am greatly enjoying the presentation of them.

My session with my teacher yesterday was pretty incredible. I have a lot to look at and contemplate in regards to seeing myself with more clarity, to see the ways I tell myself stories.

I think maybe stories are an emotional addiction. Without them, we risk discovering Who We Really Are.

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Tagged with: my teacher, stories, concepts, god

apples and oranges

Posted on May 27th, 2009 by

Spiritual Liberation

I've had quite a time recently with trying to figure out my place. Relationships are shifting and changing all over the place. I am in search of truth (and don't always enjoy finding what is not truth, though I'd rather know than not). I've also been asking myself what is community? What role does community serve for me? And what role do I serve in community?

I had an experience recently where someone was telling me all the reasons they didn't think I was a good person, and right in the middle of this, I suddenly no longer felt lonely.

What an odd response, I thought to myself. Why is that?

I realized that I was asking for oranges to pop out of apple trees, or for sharks to declare fish as friends, not food. I had hope and expectation of community relationships that don't have the potential at this time to fill that role for me. What I was desiring was not right for me, and once I accepted that for what it was, the feeling of lack left me instantly.

Even so, I find myself in the uncomfortable place of not knowing, of not having reference points for where I am or what will come next. But in letting go, I opened myself to other options, to new friendships in unexpected places.

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flying

Posted on Apr 29th, 2009 by

Spiritual Liberation

This morning I dreamed I was with my teacher and several of his other students on an airplane. The lady driving the airplane wasn't paying much attention, and we were flying through freeway interchanges, just above the cars. The we went up through a bunch of electrical wires and went upside down. We rolled a couple of times, then we landed.

Don't airplanes usually symboloize the spiritual journey? And since I wasn't flying the plane, does that symbolizes that I am a passenger on my journey? And what is with flying low and going up through the power lines? And then the acrobatics?

----------------------

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community cutlery

Posted on Apr 25th, 2009 by

Spiritual Liberation

Community and leadership have been on my mind lately. Maybe I should say in my heart. Sometimes I wonder if I have what it takes to be a leader. Ever since I was a small child, I longed for a sense of communtity I've never had. The only time that loneliness is satiated is when I am with my teacher, and when I can spend time with my teacher and his teacher, oh! That is like an incocculation.

It's been a year, though, since I've been with them both, and that inocculation has worn off. For the first time in my life, when I was with them both, I felt like a link in a chain, part of something greater that myself. Part of something. Part of something that didn't hurt any more because they were there.

I don't fit in most groups for long. And don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade what I have for anything else if I had to make a choice.

I read a quote recently that said something like, "Leadership is lonely because you are out front all by yourself."

Does it have to be the nature of leaders to be both loved and hated? MLK? Gandhi? Jesus? Obama? Bush? Why does it seem to be the nature of the ego to try to drag someone down to make oneself look better? And why does it hurt, even when it doesn't work?

For me I think it's that little sparkle of hope I can (fortunately) never seem to extinguish that people will be virtuous and moral and kind and decent, that people will do the right thing because it's the right thing to do.

I get the idea that some think that I have power because I am a leader. I don't want or need power, not that I have it to begin with. My tools are love and compassion, but sometimes when love comes up against ego, it makes a sore spot.

I keep thinking that maybe someday betrayal will no longer sting, no longer hurt. But I guess if that were the case, then maybe I would have lost my humanity along the way, and that wouldn't be so good.

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Tagged with: community, leadership, my teacher, Sai Maa

Voltage

Posted on Apr 23rd, 2009 by

Spiritual Liberation

Mmmm, I dreamed of Sai Maa this morning.

I was in a basement. The phone rang, and my daughter brought it to me.

I said, "Hello?"

And I heard, "Om Jai Jai Maa! Do you know who this is?" And I could hear/feel/see a huge smile.

"It's my Maa?" I asked, knowing, delighted, smiling.

"Yes! Are you ready?" Maa asked.

"Yes," I said without hesitation, not knowing consciously what I was ready for, but knowing things must change - and quickly!

"Good," Maa said.

And then a huge power generator activated before me, throwing sparks and arcs of light in a beautiful pattern.

Then I awoke abruptly. I tried instantly to go back to sleep. I called to Maa, "But I'm not done, I want to spend more time with you!"

Oh, it's been so long since I've been with Maa in my dreams. And much too long since I''ve been with her in person. I yearn to be in the presence of my teacher and his teacher. It is there I feel like I belong.

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Tagged with: Sai Maa, dream

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