The Choice

Right now, in my lap, sits an outline for a book I started writing years ago.  I dug it out last night from the crypt I'd been keeping it in, and after seeing and reading it again, I sat holding it tightly against my heart.  It felt like I had just reconnected with an old love, and I clutched it to my breast, weeping with joy and gratitude for it's resurrection.

I mentioned in a previous blog that since arriving in Ohio I've finally found a measure of peace, and a glorious sense of freedom.  I feel no unfinished business tugging at my soul, with the exception of one thing, but that is something for the future, and I'm okay with that.  But for the most part, it feels exactly how I'd imagine it'd feel if my karma was wiped clean.  And let me tell you...the experience of freedom I feel within my soul has been worth every step I've taken for the past 20 years. 

Within that freedom I recognize I am in a state of Grace, and I have been allowing myself to hang out there, unencumbered, soaking in it.  I needed to let everything go for a time, give myself a much needed break from many things, including writing here.  I have found the practice of fasting to be profoundly beneficial, and I'm not talking about fasting from food, although that has it's place.  Years ago, I took the practice of fasting into other areas of my life, like fasting from speaking for a day, or a behavior, or from anything we do from habit, without thinking.  Fasting has a way of bringing it back to our consciousness, and if you ever want to find out why you do something, fasting from it for 24 hours, or a week, will bring you that discovery quick enough.  It is a practice to self awareness that brings amazing results.

I also know from experience that when we make a conscious decision to seek the establishment of peace, love, or freedom within us, anything in existence that is not of these things will rise up from within to be dealt with.  Call it what you will -- ego, shadow side, Ed -- makes no difference, because the experience of it is the same within everyone.  We humans aren't as different as some like to believe, and ego is extremely predictable.  That's it's weakness.  Consider it an upside down version of the good you are attempting to establish within you.  It is the false god, one that looks and acts like the version of the real thing, but without the true Spirit of the real thing to back it up, i.e. put in action with true feeling...not with pretense.  A person can say they love another, or give a thousand apologies regarding the same deed, but until it's backed up with action, and followed through, it means absolutely nothing.

But I digress, and only bring all this up for this reason...

After a couple of weeks of basking in Grace land, I became aware of a decision I thought I'd made, but really hadn't, and once you know something there really is no going back to not knowing it, so I had to face it down, which wasn't too much fun.  I would rather have ignored it all together, and probably would have, but for one thing...it had to do with writing -- my passion, the thing that makes my heart quicken, that brings me alive, that makes my soul sing wildly.  I discovered there was a conflict inside me whose time had come for a resolution.  I listened to both sides within me, talked about it with my roomies, and the longer I hung in indecision, the more discomfort I felt, until it finally came to a head a couple of nights ago.  Many times the past few weeks I have considered just giving up the ghost by deleting this blog, and hanging up my pen.  I came up with so many reasons for doing so, mostly pointing my finger away from myself.  But I finally had to face that ego within me, do away with false pride, and finally look at the truth...

I was fucking terrified of being hurt and rejected once again.  Of having rage and hate thrown in my face, and at my person.  I didn't trust that I would be able to handle one more rejection, one more set of eyes rolling up in mockery, one more look of scorn, one more person telling me to shut the fuck up, one more person asking me to be different than who I am.  Asking me to be this way, talk this way...then they'll love me.  I was scared I was alone, and rather than be alone, I would have rather given up the thing that is closer than hands or feet...

God.

What brought me to that truth were three articles I read starting with, If I Could... by Zebra Sounds author Judy Clement Wall, then the journal entry This Moment, by Raav Dem, and finally, the brilliant finishing touch, The God of Doing It Anyway, by Rumpus columnist, Sugar.  And how sweet she is!  My heart is filled with gratitude for these people, and it is for certain I ask that God bless them.

God and any creative expression, no matter the form, are so closely linked they cannot be separated.  But I was trying to separate them, even though I knew better.  I was trying to write, express about love, humility, kindness, peace, abundance...all things of God, but with the attempt to Etch God Out.  Ego.  I would not fully claim my God, nor be claimed by Him for fear of experiencing hate filled rejection and belittlement once again.  Compare it to someone who goes out in public with their spouse, but pretends not to know him, keeping a clean distance, for fear they will be shunned.  I haven't been true to the God who loves me, and as a result, I haven't been true to myself.  And the light He gave me, the very light of the Divine within me, will not ever shine through my talents and gifts until I bring together what was separated by me.  Only then can I come from a truer place.

The God I know, the God I have had a relationship with for the past 20 years...that God is nothing like what those in organized religion teach, and the irony is His Spirit isn't far from what I see happening in so many people.  The Spirit of God is alive, and He lives in every heart that loves, that offers forgiveness, that offers healing words, or art, whatever.  He is the Good expressed in this world through each and everyone of you, and more.

I don't care to convert anyone!  I really don't give a shit if you believe in God or not!  It's none of my business.  But I need to bring Him up.  I need to write about my relationship with Him, and the experiences I've had...for it is God that taught me about love.  It is God who taught me all I know about spiritual matters, and the soul.  It is the Spirit of God that moves me.  And that need was never made more plain to me than when I decided to write about abundance.  Because God is a part of that too.  God is my supply, for my supply comes from the Divine within. 

After I made peace within me, and with my God, amazingly, the decision was clear, simple, and oh so welcome.  My roomie, Ben, told me last week during one of our conversations about it, "Cindy, you'll find the choice is already made."  I asked him if he could see it, what my choice was, and he told me he could, then he grew silent.  I finally asked him if he would mind sharing, and he smiled, and said, "Yes, I'd mind.  It's not for me to say, but for you to do."  I felt like slapping him.  Yet I knew he was right.

I dug out the outline, notes, and work from a book I started years ago about my relationship with God, and what that had given me, how it had profoundly changed me, and I held all of it to my heart, so glad for it's resurrection, and more than ready to finish it from a truer, more faithful, peaceful place within me.

----