Yesterday, on the deck of a local cafe, a toddler was screaming in his father’s lap. I reached for my nearly-invincible kid-distracting/attracting toys, when the father swiftly and cuttingly said, “That isn’t going to do any good.” About 1/2 hour later, inside the cafe, the same kid was screaming, his father’s energy large and subtlely challenging.  That tuned-in kid was expressing his father’s anger and rebellion.

Often, when my children were very small, I would notice that they would suddenly cry when I wanted a distraction, though I generally wasn’t conscious of that until they cried.  Wow!  Watch your cat, your dog, your child, and see what they’re reflecting about YOU.

Trying (often unconsciously) to be a renunciant or ascetic while also raising a family, or running a business, is an exercise in silliness, a bleed-over of two separate systems. I know, because I’ve spent a lot of time in this life doing just that.

Those who are in love with “spiritual drama” (it’s a special category!), tell the truth: Doesn’t your suffering make you feel more worthy, above the materialism you see around you? Yet tell the truth, too, about how attached, how un-free you actually are in the midst of these spiritual dramas. This blindness is no less blind than any other type!

Like learning to deal with having a body while also knowing that you are not ultimately your body, learning to navigate the world of material - in the form of housing and transportation, food and clothing, is no less important, is no less a spiritual lesson!

Dreaming will tell the truth. For example, I am now open to a relationship for the first time in several years. I know this to be the case, not just because of my waking awareness, but because my dreams concur. Most nights, I have a lovely connection with a very interesting potential partner. I’m not sure that it’s not actually happening—a pre-meeting meeting, a discussion with other souls, a meeting of possibilities.

I’m also changing the way that I move through my life, with a willingness to succeed and to fly free from my previous belief in the spiritual merits of poverty. So much is my world being shaken in this challenging and growth-filled way, that I also dreamed last night that I had lost my purse. Gone was my ID(entification), my money, the wallet I love, etc. When I was much younger, I acted this same thing out in a physical way - -losing an ID card or two, an address book or two under those same circumstances - - when outgrowing the life I thought was me.

I’m discovering a small feeling I didn’t realize was there.  When I stop my distractions, there it is. And I’m watching all the funny things I do to give that feeling, that shame a focus, to give it a nest–or an altar! Oh, what a subtle, subtle drug this shame has been!

See what no distractions, no defenses brings up for you. Be ready for surprises; it’s often NOT the same old thing! And don’t despair if it seems there’s always something else to work on. That’s only the ego getting trickier and trickier. Remember, that teaches us more and more about God, and about Truth. It’s worth it!

The phrase “Larger than Life” invites us to assume that LIFE is supposed to be small. That big experiences are not Life, but an exception to Life.

I won’t accept this anymore.

Many of us have learned to create physical problems in order to avoid conflict, fear, anger - or to help us to gain control over a situation.

This illness or accident that we then fall “victim” to, makes it off-limits, inappropriate (we believe - and most of society will agree with us) - to blow our cover, to “kill” our Sacred Cow.

A client years ago could not get a root canal done, as that specific part of her mouth would not go numb - though other, surrounding areas DID! She was acting, unconsciously, on a childhood decision, a childhood awareness: “They” cannot or will not make me do anything when I have a fever or am puking, etc.

Her fear of giving up control to an outside authority brought up the old pattern, telling her to RESIST, and, at the same time, to act like she wasn’t doing anything! When the pattern was pointed out to her, she was able to make a different decision, able to surrender to the numbing medication, able to submit to the expertise of her dentist.

If I start to have any signs of an oncoming cold or whatever, I monitor myself, checking to see what is REALLY going on. Nine times out of ten, I find a fear, a resistance, something I don’t want to do, and simply paying attention to this deep truth meets the situation, meets the need completely, and the symptoms immediately go away.

How many Sacred Cows do you have clogging up your personal streets? Stopping your own personal traffic? Look and see. So often, suffering is merely a teacher, who moves away when she is no longer needed, when her lessons are learned.

We live trigger-happy—and trigger-angry, trigger-sad.

As if it’s not about us (the story is that we’re helpless), but about our environment, about the life that happens to us. Dependent on happy-provocation to be happy, sad-provocation to be sad. We use this situation as our alleged baseline of innocence, yet this is no innocence.

Innocence is not victimization, up and down at the whims of fate, but a non-reactionary centeredness: Beingness, the non-attachment of Buddhism. Triggers come, triggers go, I AM. Not I am happy, I am sad. I AM, unchanging.

“Don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger” becomes “Don’t shoot me, I’m just the trigger”!

“Shuddup!” is what God would like to say to us sometimes. “Turn off your teevees and your brain’s incessant chattering, and let me get a word in edge-wise.”

Are you shocked? That’s because you haven’t been listening. Sometimes love doesn’t look “nice”, doesn’t look politically correct.

……………………………………………………… Listen

………………………..

I’ve been asked if I am a channel. My answer is that we all are.

(Just because I do not always put aside my Ego - and don’t you love the way I wanted to capitalize that! - doesn’t mean that I AM my ego!)

What I AM, like you yourself, is not something that appears differently on different days and under different circumstances. What I -and we - are is a part of divinity itself, fair, loving, connected, always wise. This is why we need to listen to our TRUE Self, the Internal Boss, the part that knows our Oneness, that is free, in communion with Truth, with God.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that God or Truth is external; “Be STILL and know that I AM God” means that God speaks in the stillness and Surrender of realizing that you are not who you think you are. I see it when I’m with you, because I know it, though I don’t always remember it when I’m alone…