Tag: Heaven

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I pledge allegiance to Love

Funny, how you can hear something said a hundred times, and you think you get it. You think you know exactly what it means.
And then, one day you hear the same statement, and POW! It ignites a flame, a knowing, in your heart. And you realize you had no friggin’ idea, those other hundred times.
It’s an occupational hazard, especially in the spiritual arena. We hear about spiritual truth all the time: We’re all One. This 3-D world is not real. Only Love is real.
Blah, blah, blah. We get ‘truth fatigue.’  We hear it, and it sounds just like the truth we heard last week and the week before that. And so we tune it out. We’re not really hearing it at all.
Well, that’s part of the issue, anyway. The other part is that authentic spiritual truth is entirely beyond words – so the words that describe the truth don’t actually mean much of anything. They mostly exist so our ego minds can latch onto them and assure us we already know what they mean because we’ve heard them so many times before. Which is SO not true.

• • •

Anyway, I recently finished writing my next book, and the time came to ask the lovely Nouk Sanchez to write an afterword. Which she did. And it was wonderful.
Nouk is an amazingly gifted teacher, both in person and in written form. She’s a treasure. But Nouk’s writing (in its raw state) is…how shall I say it…a bit wordy.
I typically polish my own books until they gleam. I edit the hell out of every page, making sure each word fulfills a beautiful purpose. And if it doesn’t, it’s outta there. I’m kind of obsessive about it.
Yet I’ve never edited another person’s work as stringently as I edit my own. When I collaborate with others on blogs or whatnot, I normally try to change their writing as little as possible. I just fix grammar, punctuation and that sort of thing, letting the original character come through almost entirely.
But this was my book we were talking about. My Spirit-inspired, year-long labor of love. No wandering sentences allowed.
Yes, I wanted a beautifully edited afterword that fit in seamlessly with the rest of the book, but I didn’t want my own bossy, obsessive ego to be in charge of the editing process. And I was having a bit of a quandary about that. How to do justice to Nouk’s piece, and my book at the same time?
I wanted to be able to find the ideal afterword within the pages she had written – carefully sculpting away the excess like Michelangelo chipping marble to reveal the masterpiece already present within the hunk of stone.
Hey, I’m good, but I ain’t no Michelangelo. So I did the only reasonable thing: After much prayer, I surrendered the entire thing to Spirit, and let an Editor far greater than me take over.
And the editing became a light, joyful process. And I ended up with a piece that was perfect for my book, while staying true to Nouk’s intention. And that’s not why I’m telling you about it.
This is what I really wanted to tell you: All of that prayer and surrender allowed me to open up to my higher Self and let the editing decisions flow from divine inspiration. But, surprisingly, the same phenomenon also happened in reverse: By being so open while I worked on Nouk’s piece, I was able to absorb what she was saying with my heart instead of my head.
I’d heard her say it many times before: We have to choose. There’s only One truth. That truth is composed of 100% divine Love, and nothing else; we say we believe this, but our actual 3-D experience shows us the opposite. When daily life is showing us disease, unhappiness, lack, or any form of conflict… what is that? It sure as hell isn’t divine Love. Yet we accept this dichotomy.
If reality is Love and only Love, what makes us think a second reality made out of Love’s opposite could ever co-exist side by side with the only reality there is? Two opposing realities absolutely cannot co-exist. It’s Love, or it’s the ego’s delusional version of reality.
SO WHICH IS IT? Put up or shut up – a choice has to be made.
And I heard it. For the first time, I heard that there’s a definitive choice to be made. Right now. By me.  And I chose Love.
That means every time I’m faced with proof of Love’s opposite here in the 3-D world (no matter how convincing it seems), I stop and reaffirm my commitment to the only truth there is: I choose Love. Which has no opposite. And I pause to focus all of my intention on this choice until I feel its truth.
Has this choice caused me to permanently see the world through the lens of pure divine Love? Of course it hasn’t; not yet, anyway. I haven’t been able to choose Love consistently with all parts of my mind united. My ego mind is still very much in the picture.
But hey, it’s a start.

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Sparks and gasoline

Late last night, Christmas eve, I was nestled all snug in my bed, when suddenly the book-in-progress started pouring out again. It seemed another chapter was demanding to be written now now NOW.
I threw on my robe and went into my office, where a torrent of information poured out for the next hour or more. Afterward, I gazed at my sheets of scribbled notes and couldn’t help but notice this was some of the most incendiary info I’d been asked to transmit yet.
And in a bomb-throwing book like this one, that’s really saying something.
It’s interesting to contemplate what might happen after this book is released.  A whole lot of people who sort of like my writing at the moment, might stop. They might get very upset with me instead.
I’ll be honest with you. Of those two options, being liked is way more fun.
But as I sat there in my office at 3:30 in the morning and thought about the potential backlash I might receive, an odd thing happened. Instead of uneasy discomfort, I was filled with an indescribable peace.
Backlashes just didn’t seem to mean anything, compared to the joy of fulfilling my messengering job.
And I had the distinct impression that Heaven was smiling about that. All in all, it felt like a peculiarly fitting way to quietly ring in Christmas day.
So Merry Christmas, you.
May your holiday also be filled with indescribable peace.

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Connecting the dots: Making up stories to give the world meaning

Here’s a simple way to describe nonjudgment: You have one dot over here and another dot over there. So, through nonjudging eyes, what do you see? Two unrelated dots, nothing more.
But that’s not how we humans view things. Judgment is the automatic function of our ego minds. We see a dot over here and another one over there, and we automatically connect them. Most of the time we don’t even realize we’re doing it. We tell ourselves a story that seems to fill up the space between those dots, and that story becomes our truth.
But really, it’s a story and nothing more.
Let’s look at a hypothetical example of how this works: I see a dog on a street corner. He has no collar. He looks dirty. I automatically say to myself, There is a stray dog.
It’s a conclusion I’ve reached entirely on my own. And because I historically have an affinity for animals and underdogs, I go on to embellish the story further:
He must be hungry and tired, poor thing.

I wonder if he’s been abandoned on that street corner. I’ll bet he’s waiting for an owner who’s never coming back.

People are so cruel.

So I’ve taken the 3 dots of ‘dog on a street corner’ and ‘no collar’ and ‘looks dirty,’ and I’ve used it as an excuse to weave a present story that reinforces my own past forms of condemnation onto the world.
I do not forgive you for cruelty to animals.
And then the dog’s human emerges from the garage of that house on the corner with a tub and a garden hose – and I see that suddenly the story has changed completely.
It’s still nothing but a story, mind you, as the dog turns and trots after the person, and they both watch the tub fill with soap and water. Now my story involves a squeaky clean puppy whose collar will be returned as soon as he’s dry.
I’m flooded with relief. But I also feel sheepish and ashamed for my earlier wrong conclusion. I attacked that dog’s owner for no reason. Clearly, this dog is loved. He’s cared for. I made a bad mistake.
I’m still connecting dots, but this time I’m doing it to condemn myself for my own misguided prejudices.
Connecting dots may seem like a harmless pastime, but it isn’t. We connect dots constantly, and it’s those stories we fabricate that make up the world as we know it. But the world isn’t as we know it. Not by a long shot. Yet we can’t begin to know the world’s true nature until we stop telling ourselves made-up lies about it.
Our compulsive need to connect dots – to judge random unrelated things and make up stories of good/bad, and right/wrong about them – this is what blocks our memory of Heaven.
As long as we go on making judgments, telling ourselves fantasy stories about each other to give our world meaning, we miss this eternal truth: The world in and of itself has no meaning.
It’s just a whole lot of disconnected dots, signifying nothing.
But if we patiently work, retraining our minds to leave those dots disconnected – to refrain from filling the in-between spaces with our fantasy judgments – that’s when the light of Heaven (which is always loving and entirely without judgment of any kind) has room to filter into our awareness.
To practice nonjudgment is to see the dots, but to resist the temptation to assign them a meaning they really don’t possess.
Nonjudgment is hard for ego minds to get used to. It’s uncomfortable for us to leave the dots unconnected – we’re hardwired for storytelling.
I guess it all just boils down to this: Do you want to know the world as it really is, and see Heaven’s light reflected everywhere you look?  My own answer to that question is hell yeah.
And I definitely want it more than I want to hang onto my stories about the world. So for me, it’s time to start doing my best to leave the dots alone.
End of story.

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Enlightenment: infinite joygasm – or just release from ego?

I like Adyashanti. He comes across as a perfectly normal guy who just happens to be enlightened. And when he talks about the true nature of enlightenment, his explanations are clear and simple firsthand reports.
But for students of A Course in Miracles, those explanations can be troubling, because Adya’s descriptions of enlightenment are markedly different from those offered by the Course.
Adya says enlightenment is nothing at all – it’s merely what you have left after the ego mind is dissolved. There’s no more distorted perception of the world; you just have the clear, ever-present truth of Oneness. It’s a state of awareness that’s neither happy nor sad – it merely is. And there’s nothing else beyond it.
(It’s not just Adya who says this, of course. Jed McKenna, various Zen masters and many other self-realized teachers throughout history have all described their enlightenment in similar terms.)
The Course, on the other hand, speaks of a fully enlightened state, which it describes as limitless joy, infinite fulfillment and completion. Perfect love and safety and freedom and peace – along with the certainty of being home at last, exactly where we belong. And this is said to be a permanent, changeless state, radiating with brilliant holy light, forever and ever amen.
So whose description should we believe?
The answer, as far as I can tell is: Both. But they’re describing two different states.
Adya’s explanation seems to be a description of non-dualism, which the Course says is the 3rd step of 4 on the road to full enlightenment. Non-dualism is just what it sounds like: It’s the realization of Oneness, waking up to the reality that we’re not separate.
(The first 2 steps of 4 would be: dualism, which is where we all start out – an unquestioned belief in separate bodies and separate minds; and semi-dualism, which would be sincere-ish belief in Oneness while mostly maintaining faith in the reality of separate 3-D existence at the same time. Trying to have cake and eat it, in other words.)
Adya and the aforementioned other guys are enlightened. I’m not. (I’m assuming the same can be said of you.) So it seems ridiculous to stand up in front of a self-realized guy and say: No, excuse me, you’re wrong, because the teaching I believe in describes enlightenment differently from what you say about it.
I mean, who am I to disagree with an enlightened guy, right? He’d probably just smile and tell me all beliefs are illusion, so get over it.
Well, as it happens, I did get within spitting distance of enlightenment once. And it left a sort of residue of truth behind – a lasting ability to see the big picture.
In the Dinnertable Awakening of 2005, I was presented with an invitation to accept enlightenment. (That’s what awakenings are – you’re awakened to the truth of all existence, but whether you embrace that truth or turn away from it is up to you.)
I didn’t embrace it. At the time I found the limitless freedom of enlightenment so disturbing, so uncomfortable that I willingly threw away the opportunity. I pulled myself back into my body and my 3-D world instead, choosing to turn away from Oneness.
(Could I kick myself now for making that choice? Uh…hell yeah. But I wasn’t ready; I just couldn’t stand to stay in that infinite state of awareness.)
But when people like Adya are presented with the option of enlightenment, they choose it as their permanent operating system. So I’m not about to claim they’re mistaken or misinformed about what that enlightenment looks like. How could they be? They’re clearly just reporting on their own authentic experience.
Yet I choose to believe that there’s more, as the Course says there is. Call it a strong intuition that there’s another chapter to the story – one that those enlightened guys just haven’t experienced yet.
That would be the 4th state of 4, the full awareness of union with God. The unending joy of knowing that all of us, together, are Heaven.
And that state is called pure non-dualism, a condition that’s so far beyond plain old non-dualism that the Course says there’s no point in even trying to describe the magnificence of it.
Pure non-dualism, that’s the one I want. I’m going for the gold. Could I be wrong about its existence? Absolutely.
But it’s still where I’m headed. And if I make it in this lifetime, I will promise you one hell of a blog post.

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Forgiveness vs Denial – The Rogers & Hammerstein version

[pinit]
Forgiveness vs DenialI was recently asked this question: ‘When A Course in Miracles talks about forgiveness, it says we should overlook the terrible thing that’s going on, and tell ourselves it isn’t really happening. But isn’t that just denial?’
Nope. And I’ll tell you why.
But first, let’s back this up for a minute and take a look at what the world means when it talks about denial.
For this, we’ll take a brief detour into the land of movie musicals. Let’s say you’re a small 19th century boy, and your ship has just landed in Siam. The badass bare-chested chief of security boards the boat and prepares to escort you to the palace of the king.
Holy crap.
Terrified, you turn to your mother who offers this sage advice:
Whenever I feel afraid
I hold my head erect
And whistle a happy tune
And no one will suspect I’m afraid.
She concludes by saying that once she’s fooled everyone else into believing she’s unafraid, she finds she’s fooled herself as well. So now she’s no longer afraid.
Or how about this:
You’re a tiny Austrian kid and you’re scared of thunderstorms. So you fly into Fraulein Maria’s bedroom and leap onto the fluffy white coverlet, hoping for reassurance. And the good Fraulein doesn’t disappoint:
When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feel so bad.
The thunderstorm is still raging, but you’re so busy thinking about brown paper packages tied up with strings that you’ve forgotten all about it. At least until the next big thunderclap.
So, in essence, these heroines of the modern musical are both offering the same dreadful advice: Don’t look down at that nightmarish hole beneath your feet. Don’t listen to the horrifying growls of the beast as it plays on your darkest fears.
Instead, grab a rusty, half-rotted plank and throw it across the gap. Stand in the middle of the plank, close your eyes, put your fingers in your ears and repeat after me at the top of your lungs:
LAH-LAH-LAH-LAH-LAH-LAH-LAH-LAH…
So yeah, that’s denial as the world employs it. Not exactly an effective coping mechanism for blotting out pain and fear. The pain and fear are only temporarily disguised, and the source of the pain and fear remains intact.
On the other hand, when A Course in Miracles talks about forgiveness and denial, it’s using denial in a completely different way.
It says: ‘Look down. See that yawning hole beneath your feet? It isn’t real, you know. You made it up. And although you’re tempted right now to be frightened or angry because you believe the monster in that hole is real, you’re completely mistaken.
 
There is nothing “down there” to get you. There is only one joyous, perfect Self, and you’re it. Look past the illusory image of the hole and its contents, to the loving reality of Heaven.
 
By choosing to see its Heavenly reality instead of the nightmare story you’ve told yourself about it, you are helping to heal your own perception of that hole. And by looking beyond the frightening image of that dark pit to the light beyond it, you help to dissolve the illusory pit itself.
 
Deny your dark illusions and trust in Heaven’s truth instead. This is the sure path to peace and safety.’
Ok, so it doesn’t rhyme and isn’t filmed in glorious Cinemascopic Technicolor.
But it works.

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Is it still a crisis if it doesn’t hurt?

Here’s something spiritual author types hardly ever tell you: Journeys of faith are messy. Not just yours – ours, too. We just tend to be quieter about it.
See, once you’ve embraced the goal of enlightenment, there really aren’t any reliable signposts anymore, no matter who you are. And that can be a little, um, awkward.
Ever since my book came out (the book in which I unequivocally state that A Course in Miracles is the last teaching I will ever need) I’ve been having the uncomfortable feeling that I may have misstated it a bit.
Don’t get me wrong – as far as I can tell, A Course in Miracles is a pure teaching of ultimate truth. The content is perfect. But I’ve been feeling like the form is not where it’s at for me. And not just ACIM’s form. Any teaching’s form.
It’s like I keep getting prodded in the back – lovingly, gently, but very firmly – by a Heavenly billy club, while NO LOITERING signs repeatedly appear all around me.
Keep moving, lady, nothing to see here.
So it all came to a head a few weeks ago. I got a chunk of Divine inspiration to start working on my next book. If I can pull it off, I’m pretty sure this book will be hugely helpful to a lot of people, but it’s going to require translation skills I don’t possess yet.
It’ll be the essence of A Course in Miracles brought to bear somehow on the earthly concerns of this 3-D dream world. (Tricky, I know. Maybe impossible.) A bridge of sorts, between worlds, for those who don’t yet actively aspire to enlightenment. But it means I have to strike out on my own all over again, to forge yet another new path through the wilderness and leave my cozy ACIM home behind.
Damn it.
So I freaked out a little. A teeny, cosmic WTF moment. (Hey, like I said. It happens.) And since I don’t know anything about anything, I didn’t want to make any moves at all. Not only did I surrender this whole writing/speaking/messengering gig to Spirit, I actually gave it back & walked away from it completely.
Oh, I’m still totally into it. I happily offer this earthly meat suit as a vehicle for Heavenly expression, as long as I’m hanging around here. I just didn’t want to screw around making mistakes of my own anymore.
Show me what I’m supposed to do/say, or else I’m not doing/saying anything. And if that means a few thousand copies of my current book go in the shredder, that’s ok. Or if I blow up and become some giant oddball media figure, that’s ok too. I’m just not doing anything to engineer it.
So, basically,  you could say it was a crisis of faith.
Except here’s the funny thing. I spent a few hours drowning in the drama of the whole situation that day, but then late that same night a really unusual thing happened: In one of those trance-like states of nether sleeping nor waking, Spirit spent a really long time speaking to me, and I spent those same hours carefully listening.
But I have no idea what was said. It’s not that I knew at the time but now forget – it’s more like I received the information directly into my life, bypassing my conscious mind altogether.
And when I got up in the morning, I felt no pain. No existential angst, no drama. And since I didn’t know what to do, I peacefully did nothing. (Which, if you know me at all, is a brand new thing.)
So there you have it. I’m still doing nothing. All my beliefs have once again been shaken loose and I have no idea where the hell I’m going. But thanks to Spirit, it’s a very peaceful journey.
And did I mention it’s never boring?

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Doing it wrong

A reader sent me a question today on a subject I know oh so well: The fear of doing it wrong.
“It” being spiritual practice, of course.
Back when I first started meditating, I could never get over the idea that I was doing it wrong—and that thought filled me with anxiety. And since I was pretty sure heightened anxiety was not what I was supposed to be feeling during meditation…well that just proved the point. I must have been doing it wrong. Right?
Well no. Not really. It just took time and some very determined practice to get past the stage where my ego mind could keep blocking out all peace by shouting its messages of failure.
The aforementioned reader talks about trying a form of meditation and visualization mentioned by Gary Renard in The Disappearance of the Universe. It involves picturing a circle of light, and then allowing that light to expand freely. It’s a beautiful meditation that’s all about Oneness with Heaven.
Except she don’t see no light. And she’s therefore sure she’s doing it wrong.
Not.
See, this is the main thing to keep in mind: Every human being is 100% equipped to join with Heaven in perfect peace and Love, exactly as we are right now. No ‘extra’ abilities are needed. And it doesn’t even matter whether we want to be equipped for it or not. Perfect divine Love is what we are, and we really have no say in it.
Oh sure, it’s fun to be ‘spiritually talented.’ To see visions and hear voices and dance in waves of celestial woo-woo. But it isn’t necessary. And it’s no reliable yardstick of spiritual advancement, either. It’s just a talent, like juggling or whistling is a talent. And just like juggling or whistling, the ungifted can practice assiduously until they’re pretty skilled at it too, just like the ones who came by those gifts naturally.
So, Dearest Reader, this is my message to you:
So you don’t see lights when they tell you you’re supposed to. No biggie. Concentrate instead on the important part: Do your best to feel the Love and the gentle expansion of freedom that is the true point of that meditation. If you can get focused enough to ignore your ego mind’s critique of your meditation skills, I’m willing to bet you’ll begin to feel that endless Love.
And if you don’t? Ask for Help, and then keep trying it until you do. You’ll get there, guaranteed.
Because no spiritual master who ever walked the Earth has anything on you. You’re the complete package, the real deal. You just don’t remember it yet.
(endless) Love,
Carrie

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More postcards from the cutting room floor

Here’s another piece that didn’t make the final edit. This was originally the last story in the book, until something came along that I liked better.
Interestingly, this one mentions my next book, which I just started writing yesterday…
SPEECHLESS
A spontaneous prayer in the middle of the night:
I will trust more and take the next step in faith, whatever that next step may be.

Leave words behind when you listen to my Voice.

Note: For more than a year now, I’d been hearing Spirit not as an audible Voice inside my head (“When you’re ready, you’ll write books,” were the last words actually “spoken aloud”) but instead in much richer, broader, more abstract concepts. Whole ideas were presented at once, complete with references to my own experience so I’d grasp the specific, along with the general meaning.
But as these concepts came into my mind, I automatically searched for the most accurate words I could find to express them, and compulsively put both my silent questions and Spirit’s abstract answers into common English. I did this to make sure I understood everything about the message being conveyed, but also to ensure I’d be able to recall the conversation afterward. I have a notoriously Swiss-cheesy memory* and I was afraid these precious communiqués would slip right out of my mind if I didn’t nail them down into human language while they were fresh.
*Kids, don’t do drugs.
Spirit had asked me several times recently to try to hear without shoehorning the communication into words, but I had yet to take the request seriously. I did remember how glorious it felt to communicate without language during that Dinnertable Awakening so long ago, but that time I was a passive sightseer. A tourist. It seemed awfully scary to consciously choose wordless communication now as an authentic state of being.
This is your next step in faith and trust. Put your ego mind aside and bring only your awareness into our exchanges; trust that I know your questions before you ask them. And have faith that My answers will stay within your mind until all need for questions and answers has been transcended forever.

Do this and notice the difference it makes. At first it will feel as though you’ve ‘lost’ your communication channel, but the opposite is actually the case; abstract thought is what you are in truth, so your attempt to return to this form of thinking will actually help remove another of the blocks that keep your communication channel narrow. In truth, limitless communication is what you are – there is no boundary or channel.

To the degree that you are able to allow your obsessive need for language to recede, your ability to hear and understand Me will deepen and become more profound.

Think back to those earlier days when you first began the Barbara Brennan meditations intended to connect you with your “guides”. At that time, you were able to receive only visual symbols, remember? You knew you were obsessively grabbing these images and forcing interpretations onto them, so eventually you stopped doing that of your own accord.
And at first, without those habitual egoic efforts at jumping the gun, you were unable to see any images at all and it seemed as if you’d lost all ability to communicate. But you didn’t lose it, did you?

“No. Definitely not.”
This will be the same. Trust in Me. Let yourself fall into the abstract unknown and I promise I will catch you.

“I believe you. And I’ll do my best, really I will. But what about writing books? How will I be able to relay your words if I’m not putting any of what you say into words?”
Just trust in Me. When the time comes for the next book, you’ll know what to write and how to write it. But you needn’t worry about that right now. That’s a long way off.

“Yes, of course. The next book is a long way off. But what about this book? How do I write the rest of this one?”
My love, you just finished it.

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‘Fearful and Angry’ is not all it’s cracked up to be

I know what you’re thinking: But Carrie, you say, being a shy, dweeby hermit sounds so glamorous and interesting. Why would you want to give that up?
The truth is, I really didn’t want to give it up.
Because all ego minds, including mine, get their juice from specialness. And it really doesn’t matter what kind of specialness. If you’ve got reasonably healthy self-esteem, you probably believe you’re better at basketball or more gifted at Guitar Hero than others. Or you secretly know your ass looks way better in jeans.
I wasn’t much for the self-esteem, so I built a very convincing ego identity out of being the very worst: The ugliest, the stupidest, the most worthless and socially awkward. And once that identity is embraced, it’s damned difficult to let it go.
So what happens when all of Heaven and the whole world are showing you otherwise? Suddenly I’m not remotely dweeby, and all kinds of people seem to want to hear what I have to say.  And it turns out I’m not a pathetically awkward wallflower after all – apparently I’m a natural born public speaker. Who knew.
A thorough self-image overhaul was clearly in order.
Scared the crap out of me.
Because who will I be if my identity is taken away? It meant working on a way down deep level, agreeing to release all kinds of unconscious ideas that used to make up my belief system. It’s been a months-long process, and I could never have done it alone; it’s Spirit, of course, who makes this kind of profound healing possible.
And now I’m beginning to reap the fruits of those efforts. As my self-perceptions have slowly healed, my fearful perceptions of others have been replaced with quiet trust and a real sense of safety.
Chicken or egg? Is it my forgiveness efforts toward others that has kickstarted my own emotional healing? Probably. The two work hand in hand.
All I know is, I used to be fanatical about preserving my privacy, and was terrified of what others would think of me if they knew about this whole crazy ‘messengering’ thing. I learned those fears were completely unfounded.
And now the beautiful messages are starting to trickle in, more and more each day, from wonderful strangers who have become my friends. They’ve been touched by my book and they want to make a connection with me.
And I gotta tell you, it’s awesome.
So I’ll take ‘open, strong and trusting’ over ‘shy, dweeby and fearful’ any day.
Wouldn’t you?

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Learning to live without commercial interruptions

This past month or so has been an extraordinary time for me. My book is released and is becoming a bona fide hit on Amazon; my speaking career is in the process of revealing itself to me. (As in: what the hell might I say to a roomful of listeners? And in what sorts of venues might I say it?)
I’ve also informally partnered up with an amazing producer type guy and we’re collaborating on film and book projects; and in general I’m bowled over by the outpouring of love and support from all sides as I step forward and try my hand at this crazy public messengering thing.
So naturally, it was time for my ego mind to weigh in on this beautiful turn of events. Because that old ego’s been with me a long, long time. It knows me better than anyone else. And it knows with absolute certainty that all this success is just some cosmic mistake – I don’t deserve it and soon we’re going to have to engineer some kind of drastic monkey wrench in the works, something that slows my progress to a crawl.
Because a little love and success is fine, but enough is enough. It’s time to reestablish the natural order of things.
I woke up today very painfully aware of the deep down rage-filled workings of my ego mind. Which was ok with me, because lately I’ve been asking to see (and heal) the entirety of that unconscious mountain of mud. So while I was excavating down in angry, fearful Mudland, I took a good look at my firmly held belief that I can’t tolerate sustained success – and then chose to release that firm belief.
I handed over that very mistaken idea to Spirit. And then got out of the shower and got dressed.
A minute later the phone rang. It was Fran, calling from Sedona. She said she’d been trying to email (bad internet connection) but Spirit said, “Call her.”
She said she wanted to tell me how richly deserved all my success and momentum is. That she’s so proud of me, and feels like I’ve waited my entire life with the ‘pause’ button on, but now for the first time am stepping forward to tell my story with the voice of my true authentic self. (It feels that way to me, too.) And that Heaven can’t help but shower me with its joyous outpouring of ongoing love and support as a result.
Well that took my breath away. Spirit often speaks to me through Fran, but somehow the fast turnaround time really caught me off guard this time. I told her what I’d been wrestling with and she laughed and said:
“Well, those kinds of things will continue to come up from time to time. Think of them as commercial interruptions from the ego. So when it happens, just say you’re not interested in buying the product!”
Well I’ve been laughing with gentle joy ever since.
Sure, there’ll be ups and downs along the journey. How could life in this dreamworld be otherwise? But now I realize I don’t have to watch the commercials anymore.
Kind of like getting a spiritual DVR. Goodbye to unquestioned ego beliefs, and hello to the 30-second skip!