Back To Center

I once had a conversation with a woman who I considered highly spiritual, highly evolved.  Being in her orbit was being in a state of peace.  She was a teacher, and held classes at a Unity church and at her house.  Frankly, I am still learning from what she taught, and its been many, many years since I had the privilege of being one of her students.  There are times I hear her voice, whispering from the past to present, and I will exclaim, "Ah!  That's what she meant!"  The seeds she planted in me then took some time to finally break through the hard ground of my mind and heart, and to finally bloom into conscious realization.

She invited me to her house one day, alone, no class setting, or so I thought, and told me a bit of her story.  We sat in her beautiful den, her office, which was her private domain.  I knew, not only because she told me, but because I sensed on a deep level, that she rarely let anyone into that space.  It felt like Sacred ground.  It was filled with her energy, her presence, and the moment I stepped into that room with both feet all within me settled into the energy she emitted.  She gave me a gift that day, which I'm embarrassed to say I didn't fully appreciate because I didn't have the awareness or understanding.  Now I do, and I am grateful.

Along with the symbol of allowing me into that room, she also allowed me into a private part of her life.  She shared with me a bit of her story, and asked me to not reveal it to anyone else in our small circle.  I gave her my word, and so she began.  She told me her husband, who was rarely seen now that I think about it, was an alcoholic.  Raging alcoholic.  They had been married for 30 years, and he had been an alcoholic for 20 of them to that day.  She didn't ask him to change, because it was none of her business the path he chose to take for himself.  However, she knew her path was beside him, and she knew the love that was hers to give to a man was for him alone, until such day the love inside her said differently.  That was her choice, and her business. 

It hadn't been easy, she said, coming to that place of acceptance.  She lived and taught by the principles she learned from "A Course In Miracles," and was grateful the book had fallen into her lap many years ago.  From what she learned, she now gave.  The reason, she said, she didn't reveal her situation she had with her husband was because first of all, it wasn't anyone's business, and second, because, in truth, they weren't in a place to not judge, and in the spirit of judging, attack.  I knew she spoke true, because I didn't sense in her any shame, or embarrassment regarding her husband or herself.  It was what it was, and she and her husband were who they were in the moment.  I consider it now and realize she wasn't concerned about judgment on herself, she was using her love as a cover for her husband's nakedness.  She would not let anyone touch him with daggers of judgment if she could help it.  Because this she knew...he was already suffering from the daggers he threw at himself.  He needed no more heaped upon him. 

I left her house that day feeling like something important had just happened, but I didn't know what it was.  I felt a bit out of sorts.  Quietly so.  Like I was suddenly adrift in space, and I waited for the next ship to come along to pick me up, so I could find some kind of anchor for my feet.  Or like I had just looked at my reflection in a spoon, and found my image upside down.

Periodically over the years her story would come back to me, and I'd ask myself, "How did she do it?  Her house was filled with peace and beauty, as she herself was.  There was no evidence, in vibration or otherwise, of any chaotic presence.  How did she live with a raging alcoholic day in and day out, yet have and establish and express that kind of peace?"

Before I left her house that day she gave this to me in parting:  "In the Old Testament, God protects us from our enemies.  In the New Testament, God says love our enemies.  Cindy, now we are in the time where God is saying there is no enemy."   I didn't have a clue what she was talking about.  Now I see that the story of the Bible is our story, individually and collectively.  It is our personal and collective evolution to the divine.  We begin with a perception of enemies, and evolve to forgiving them, loving them, and in the act of forgiving, they are no longer our enemies.  Then we come to a place where we see there never was an enemy.  Only in our mind.

It's a friendly Universe.  There is nothing against us.  It is only against us if we ourselves choose to see it that way. 

The last couple of weeks my heart has been troubled.  There have been many revelations that, truthfully, I have had a challenge coming to grips with.  Then, this morning, I read on a friend's post on Facebook, "I'm here..."  It probably wasn't meant for me personally, but it worked as a reminder of how I began this Blog of mine.  So I sat outside this morning and let it all go, and after I did so, this woman's story came to me once again.  My eyes have been opened.  I am once again...here.

My purpose is renewed.

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