Every cell in your body, every muscle, bone, tendon, artery, vein, capillary, and the blood the flows through them, every neuron that fires thought both pleasant and unpleasant, every memory triggered, every emotion that accompany those memories whether they bring ecstatic joy or mind numbing, incapacitating, suffering, every breath and beat of your heart, has been written by the Divine who has designed your life specifically for you.
You are Sacred.
———–
Image: “Omniscience” by Carlos Quevedo
“People are hypocrites” she proclaims. “No one lives the life they want.”
I have said those same words myself, or something similar, though it probably contained expletives and self pity.
How do I tell her what I have learned in a single online conversation? How do I tell her that there was a time in my life that I shared that view? How do I explain that my change of view was both instantaneous and took many years?
I had the four bedroom house on an acre of land with a six car garage, a cabin on a private lake, a boat, motorcycles, off road 4×4, a recording studio in my basement, my own construction company, everything I thought I needed to be happy, and in a moment of human failure I lost everything.
Even though it initially brought with it a physical, as well was emotional, pain it also brought a proclamation of “FREEDOM!”, shouted in big screen fashion, it took many more years to understand that none of the stuff I gathered and lost over the years ever really mattered.
At the time of the “loss” it felt like I had been robbed of my entire world. Like I was condemned. Cursed.
Now, looking back with unclouded eyes, I can see that I was most miserable when I had everything I thought I wanted.
It took many miles to discover that what I was missing couldn’t be found on a piece of land or in a store or online or was anything I could carry in my pocket or drive or use in any way.
What I was missing was found inside and I found it only by enduring, surviving, and exploring with gratitude the journey that my life became.
I discovered is that the journey itself is life.
Not the prescribed “this will make you happy” copywriting on a box of sugar sweetened cereal or the dictated image of perfection programmed by hours in front of a screen that insisted I couldn’t be happy unless I owned the latest fashion or drove the newest car or smelled a certain way or walked a certain way or looked a certain way or spoke a certain way.
The struggles and joys and passions and pains and heartbreaks are each but a single step along the paths of our lives.
Today my journey brings me back to the acquisition of “stuff”, but not in the way it did back then. Today my intentions guide both my needs and desires as they apply to others. They tell me that the life I have led these past years, paying off old debt, finding myself and being true to that Self, exposing my underbelly to the entire world, ready to feast on it, without fear, was necessary. Essential.
Each step I have made has led me here to this place of love and gratitude.
Now, in complete surrender to, and acceptance of, a grace that I work to prove my worth of receiving, I push forward with plans left by the roadside long ago.
Plans to live. Fully. One step at a time.
Because life isn’t a destination, it’s a journey.
Travel far.
You see that black box in my truck window with the red light? That’s a dual facing camera. It captures nearly everything I do. We’re supposed to believe it protects us as well as the company but it rarely feels like it. It mostly feels like an unwelcome intrusion.
Especially on days like today because today I am feeling overwhelmed and would like to yell and cry a little but, with Big Brother observing everything I do, including tapping this out on my phone, I find myself holding it in instead.
You see that green outhouse in the picture? That’s where I’ll go to shed a few silent tears for now. The yelling will have to wait until later because it can raise eyebrows in an outhouse.
There’s no particular reason I feel like this. Just life in general. I sometimes feel like I set myself up to fail. Or that for all my good intentions I keep missing the mark. Or that the changes I’ve made in my life after awakening are just too little too late. Or that my body is betraying me. Or that I will never be “good enough”.
Today I feel a combination of all those and more. I know it will pass, and I’m grateful for the insights I gain from exploring these feelings, I just wish I didn’t have to hide in an outhouse to do it.
It can be terrifying and difficult to find ourselves in a place we don’t want to be. We can feel like somehow we deserve to be where we are. That we will ever fail because somehow we’re unworthy of those things we want.
But where we are now is just a place we are passing by along the journey that is our life. It is not our destination and these stops and bypasses are the things that lead us to where we want to be. Where we will be.
Continue the journey with hope. Find gratitude where you can. Because no matter where you are, the path you are on will always lead you home.
a seed
blown on the wind
or carried by bird or squirrel
until deposited
in fertile soil
a spot perfectly suited
for its specific needs
pushes gently
with fragile fingers
to reach the moisture
that feeds it’s spine
to sprout tiny limbs
which slowly reach out
from the warm blanket of its birth
eternally stretching
towards the warm glow of Heaven
in such slow
graceful motion
that its progress is marked in decades
in the rings of its trunk
and its family is generations
of insect
and moss
and squirrels
and birds
that carry its seed
to other fields
to claw and scrape and sometimes
survive
long enough to become home
to their own generations
of life
until one day
hundreds of years
and thousands
perhaps millions
of lives later
it is in the way
obsolete
holding up progress
it is hacked and sawed
and uprooted
and burned for a road
or a home
or a hotel
or a parking lot
and I am reminded
that in life
there are no take backs
I can’t go back to where I began
reach out into the world
in a different direction
rechoose
or replace
the paths I took
that got me here
or retrace the steps
that carried me to this point
here
now
sitting naked in a hot tub
and sipping rum
and allowing the events of my life
events that led me to a walk down this most beautiful avenue
lined with oaks
planted with purpose
full of peace
intentional peace
a grove
this family
brothers and sisters
destined to live their lives
to their very end
while I
still digging my roots deeper
my limbs higher
have every opportunity
as a gift from the Divine
to expand those roots at will
to places of my design
of Her design
ours
still
I can never go back
only forward
and at any time
I too
may become
obsolete
though I am still just a seed
Picture taken at Avenue of the Oaks.
Being yourself means being honest with yourself. I sometimes forget that and fall into the trap of “this is who I want to be” or “this is what I want to believe to be true”.
Those feelings are based on opportunity, desire, and a hundred other feelings that stand in opposition to truth and love and they ultimately lead to internal conflict and pain and obfuscate the Self.
I remind myself
I am also part of “the world”
that tries so hard
to make me something else
something less than myself
and release
the untruths
revealed to me
through them
by simply standing back
separate
from what others might see
or believe to be
in order to hear my reflection say
“This is who I am”
not what I want to see
or want to be
or what others believe
but what I know to true
and though what I see
may not yet be who I am
trying so hard to become
I can see that person
there
looking back at me
and I say to him
“You are perfect just as you are”
