I felt so strongly about sharing with those who have become followers of my blog (my fan base… yay!) a very deep and poignant turning point of my life in my last entry. It was something I also wanted to try to relive myself to put to words, because I think that all of us have our own Gethsemane’s to walk through in this life… and I find that whereas I am more than willing to share my inner soul, many around me are not so anxious or willing to. But I feel there are things we all can learn and grow from by pulling together not only the sorrows we are bound to feel in this world, but by being willing and open enough to share the Joys as well!
I pulled a Tao card the other morning called “The Joyous.” This is the energy I have surrounding me so often lately, and it is the thought patterns that helped me to create the preceding entry. I would like to share the paragraph that most touched me from the readings about this card…
Don’t be intimidated by joyousness. It is not something to be embarrassed about, so allow it to suffuse every fiber of your being. It is transforming by being uplifting and can soften even the hardest heart. The more joy is circulated, the stronger its fragrance becomes.
Joyousness is not naïveté; it is the outward expression of a free spirit, of innocence and purity, of the inner smile. Because joyousness bubbles up from within, it is not dependent on external circumstances, nor does it need recognition or gratification. …. Life is inviting you to stimulate and inspire, to spread the goodness. Under these auspicious circumstances, you can’t help but do so. (From the Tao Oracle by Ma Deva Padma).
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE!
It is December 4, 2010.
I am in a deeply satisfying mode in thought and spirit. I want to share it with my family. I want to share it with my friends. I want to share it with the world.
I reflect on my favorite movie of this time of year today. I am in touch with Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Like him, I have so many dreams within me, an exact knowledge of what it is I came to do with my life, but my outer circumstances have kept me in a small town, in a small place, doing something that I’ve never enjoyed doing or thinking about (he continues to operate the small savings and loan building his dad started… trying to give the ones he loves around him a chance to be something in their lives... I am stuck working with money and numbers when I want to build gigantic structures of thought and beauty, wanting to help others find the greatness within their lives...)
Through the greed of the Big Man, George’s close friend has lost (had stolen) nearly all that they had. His world is falling apart, and he can only respond with anger and frustration. He never lived in the world he wanted, and now everything in the world he has been given is falling apart.
He goes into a bar, and in one of the most touching parts of the movie, he says a prayer…
George Bailey: Dear Father in heaven, I'm not a praying man, but if you're up there and you can hear me
[begins crying]
George Bailey: show me the way... show me the way.
He is promptly rewarded with a punch in the mouth.
In a story that me, my family, and all of my friends… our country, our planet are involved in… the last few years have been just that. We all got a gigantic punch in the teeth for circumstances that we wonder what we had anything to do with.
This time of year I replay this movie and retell myself that my life makes a difference… that every life around me makes a difference, and what would be missing in my life if my friends had not been there for me! What would be missing in this earth walk if I had not been here either?
In the end, George Bailey finds out he is the richest man in the town, because he has friends who love and care for him! In the time when he is at the bottom, the miracle occurs in his life that opens his eyes to the love that he had been generating all his life, and it came back to him in ways he could not have expected!
My life is like that. My angel Clarence has been walking with me all of my life, and helping me to see what really is going on “behind the scenes” of my outer experience.
It is December 4, 2010.
I feel deeply loved, and I know somehow, that the troubles that surround my life are only temporary things, and that if I live one day at a time in a willing way, life's Love will help me to deal with them, and grow from them!
For myself, I have learned that I have always been in the right place, at the right time for me, even if my brain didn’t think so! So in the turmoil of the storms that surround me, I feel Joyous this moment, and so often in my life.
Sorrow is contagious. Anger is contagious. Frustration is contagious.
Joy is more contagious. Love is more contagious. Hope is more contagious.
It is the later that I would share with all that I love, but my angels have taught me, it first must start inside of me!
My favorite movie saying at this time of year comes from Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens “A Christmas Story.”
“May God bless us, each and every one!”
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
AN AWAKENING: AN ANNIVERSARY
Once you have discovered your hearts desires, and moved to meet them, the Universe works quickly to make them come to be. (A concept gleaned from the Holy Scriptures, The Secret, and Think and Grow Rich.)
It is December 1st, 1978.
I have been out of the military for about 5 months. I am a wreck. I am a drug addict, an alcoholic, and basically living a life that my natural mother’s husband calls “contemplating your belly button.” I am so focused on the hell in my life that I can’t focus on anything else. I left the family I grew up with down in Salt Lake City because they didn’t get me. I came to Boise to live with my natural mother knowing she would get what I was about. She didn’t, her then husband didn’t, and I certainly didn’t.
My half brother was in Jr. High at the time. He was about my only friend at that point in my life, and he was my drug connection. I spent every day I could getting high because life was hell, and I wanted to die and leave the crap I was living. I had probably been “praying for death” for over a year at this point… not in words, but certainly in deed. A month or so back the girl I had wanted to marry said she had other plans for herself, and I was devastated. I was now working at a job I seriously hated with all my heart and soul, and I was caught up in a world so full of contradiction and hallucinations that I had no idea what anything was about anymore.
Just before this day, I remember one night being in a cold fog out in the world, and hearing what in my mind were starships that had come to take every soul off of this planet and I was left alone to rot in my own hell. I screamed at the stars in anger, and wondered what the hell I had ever done to deserve the life that had come all around me, and was collapsing into a deep bondage.
Every day got only worse, and my mind was torn, shattered, and in a hell I would not wish on a Hitler or a Saddam Hussein.
I had scored a lid of Hawaiian Marijuana the night before. This morning, 32 years ago, I got up and got high with my half brother, then took him to pick up his little friends to take them to Jr. High. I was sharing my pot with all of them… my concepts of doing unto others that joy might flow back to you. After dropping them off I began on my usual pattern. I loved to help folks, even then. I picked up a hitchhiker on the freeway and we talked and smoked some, and I took him where he needed to go. Then I got back on the freeway.
I found another hitchhiker that wanted to go to California and score some cocaine. I had never tried cocaine, but I was willing to make the journey. My higher self/soul had other plans. By this time I was at a pretty high altitude with the pot in my head, and I found myself turning off exits back into the city. I had not intended such. I would try to head out to the freeway again, only to find myself turning back into the city. I had no idea where I was. My passenger was already doing something, and the paranoia came on strong. He started to tell me he had a knife. He started to use criminal language and persuasions I had never been exposed to.
It came to a point where when I looked at him I was “riding with Satan” and I was never going to leave the car alive, and he had come to take my soul away to hell. Trapped… mind swimming in a world so not of this world… so real, and painful, and the darkest place I had ever been in my remembrance. I had come to the end of time, and eternity waited for me, and it was going to be an everlasting walk in fire of spirit and mind and soul.
He stepped out of the car and I didn’t know why he hadn’t taken my soul with him. I saw my life end like a picture show at the end of a reel, when the frames just start to flap around with no meaning. I remember screaming… and I remembered no more.
THE END/THE BEGINNING
A deep peace surrounded me. A quiet and serenity I had never ever felt, but remembered from somewhere. All I felt was a LOVE that one cannot put into words, but one who has felt that will certainly know what it is I try to express. Visions and motions began coming again into my conscious mind. I remember my mouth hurt, but then it didn’t matter. I felt bodies around me. I opened my eyes and saw the tears in a young man’s eyes, and felt like I was being hauled away to be put into a casket. The Peace again. Then awakening again, and I found myself in an ambulance with a woman, and then the darkness again.
It is December 1st, 1978, and I have awoken in a hospital room. The doctor and nurse see that I am okay, and begin the process of letting me get ready to go home. It is early evening. My mother and her husband have been contacted, and Jim has come to get me. He is not happy with me. I don’t think he had ever been happy with me. He tells me that my car is in a lot completely ruined, that the people that had pulled me out of my car had wondered how I had even survived. (I had only bit my lip.) He tells me that the woman that had been in the ambulance with me had been loading a van with her brother when my car crashed into her, and had circumstances just been a few inches different, she would have been killed. He told me that witnesses said I had come out of a side street into a major highway, and that I had been hit by two different cars, but the worst that anyone had gotten was a kid that hit me that said he had had worse pains on a football field.
He said that I was damn lucky, and that if I didn’t get sued I would be even luckier still. He said I never should have survived the wreck.
No one ever found any marijuana in the car, nor did they test me for drugs or alcohol. Apparently when “Satan” left, he took the pot with him, and in so doing, may have really been the Angel in my life at that time, working to answer the prayers I had been saying to come take my damn miserable life.
“Are you sure this is what you really want!”
Life changed around me quickly. My mother and her husband had no idea how to deal with me. My dad and my stepmom made arrangements to get me back home to Salt Lake City for the Holiday that year. My short life in Boise was over. I was later to realize that many things “came to an end” that day in December of 1978.
Early in 1979 my dad took me up to the VA Hospital to begin outpatient drug and alcohol rehabilitation that was supposed to be my life for the next 6 months. He did the most significant thing of my life that morning. He told me that he loved me. He was not a man who expressed much emotion in words at all. I don’t know if he ever really knew how. That made the moment so important and special to me. It was something I had never doubted in my life by his actions. It was something I had never heard him put into words.
Once you have discovered your hearts desires, and moved to meet them, the Universe works quickly to make them come to be.
I made up my mind to make a new life for me that day. I worked on every concept I was being taught up at that clinic. Within 3, not 6, but within 3 months my therapists felt I was ready to go back into life again, with new tools and skills to help me on my journey. I enrolled at Snow College for the spring semester of 1979 in March. I went down there, living with my cousin 1 month my junior as we attended our classes down in Ephraim. I lived in Mt. Pleasant, a block or two from where my dad had grown up with my Grandpa and Grandma and all his brothers and sister. I was at home… in my families roots.
In April of that year I was introduced to a girl that would soon become a good friend. By the end of Spring quarter we had seen a lot of each other, and we came back to our parents homes in Murray, and began dating.
It is December 1st, 2010.
I have been married to my best friend Laurel for nearly 31 years now. Last night we celebrated my oldest boy's 30th birthday with his friends and my other son and his wife, and with my daughter. They are all grown now. And I am proud of them, and love them and my good friend Laurel more than I can put to words.
A new life started for me on that December day in 1978. When I put into my heart what I really wanted, the Universe worked very quickly to make it happen.
When the student is ready, the Master appears.
It is December 1st, 1978.
I have been out of the military for about 5 months. I am a wreck. I am a drug addict, an alcoholic, and basically living a life that my natural mother’s husband calls “contemplating your belly button.” I am so focused on the hell in my life that I can’t focus on anything else. I left the family I grew up with down in Salt Lake City because they didn’t get me. I came to Boise to live with my natural mother knowing she would get what I was about. She didn’t, her then husband didn’t, and I certainly didn’t.
My half brother was in Jr. High at the time. He was about my only friend at that point in my life, and he was my drug connection. I spent every day I could getting high because life was hell, and I wanted to die and leave the crap I was living. I had probably been “praying for death” for over a year at this point… not in words, but certainly in deed. A month or so back the girl I had wanted to marry said she had other plans for herself, and I was devastated. I was now working at a job I seriously hated with all my heart and soul, and I was caught up in a world so full of contradiction and hallucinations that I had no idea what anything was about anymore.
Just before this day, I remember one night being in a cold fog out in the world, and hearing what in my mind were starships that had come to take every soul off of this planet and I was left alone to rot in my own hell. I screamed at the stars in anger, and wondered what the hell I had ever done to deserve the life that had come all around me, and was collapsing into a deep bondage.
Every day got only worse, and my mind was torn, shattered, and in a hell I would not wish on a Hitler or a Saddam Hussein.
I had scored a lid of Hawaiian Marijuana the night before. This morning, 32 years ago, I got up and got high with my half brother, then took him to pick up his little friends to take them to Jr. High. I was sharing my pot with all of them… my concepts of doing unto others that joy might flow back to you. After dropping them off I began on my usual pattern. I loved to help folks, even then. I picked up a hitchhiker on the freeway and we talked and smoked some, and I took him where he needed to go. Then I got back on the freeway.
I found another hitchhiker that wanted to go to California and score some cocaine. I had never tried cocaine, but I was willing to make the journey. My higher self/soul had other plans. By this time I was at a pretty high altitude with the pot in my head, and I found myself turning off exits back into the city. I had not intended such. I would try to head out to the freeway again, only to find myself turning back into the city. I had no idea where I was. My passenger was already doing something, and the paranoia came on strong. He started to tell me he had a knife. He started to use criminal language and persuasions I had never been exposed to.
It came to a point where when I looked at him I was “riding with Satan” and I was never going to leave the car alive, and he had come to take my soul away to hell. Trapped… mind swimming in a world so not of this world… so real, and painful, and the darkest place I had ever been in my remembrance. I had come to the end of time, and eternity waited for me, and it was going to be an everlasting walk in fire of spirit and mind and soul.
He stepped out of the car and I didn’t know why he hadn’t taken my soul with him. I saw my life end like a picture show at the end of a reel, when the frames just start to flap around with no meaning. I remember screaming… and I remembered no more.
THE END/THE BEGINNING
A deep peace surrounded me. A quiet and serenity I had never ever felt, but remembered from somewhere. All I felt was a LOVE that one cannot put into words, but one who has felt that will certainly know what it is I try to express. Visions and motions began coming again into my conscious mind. I remember my mouth hurt, but then it didn’t matter. I felt bodies around me. I opened my eyes and saw the tears in a young man’s eyes, and felt like I was being hauled away to be put into a casket. The Peace again. Then awakening again, and I found myself in an ambulance with a woman, and then the darkness again.
It is December 1st, 1978, and I have awoken in a hospital room. The doctor and nurse see that I am okay, and begin the process of letting me get ready to go home. It is early evening. My mother and her husband have been contacted, and Jim has come to get me. He is not happy with me. I don’t think he had ever been happy with me. He tells me that my car is in a lot completely ruined, that the people that had pulled me out of my car had wondered how I had even survived. (I had only bit my lip.) He tells me that the woman that had been in the ambulance with me had been loading a van with her brother when my car crashed into her, and had circumstances just been a few inches different, she would have been killed. He told me that witnesses said I had come out of a side street into a major highway, and that I had been hit by two different cars, but the worst that anyone had gotten was a kid that hit me that said he had had worse pains on a football field.
He said that I was damn lucky, and that if I didn’t get sued I would be even luckier still. He said I never should have survived the wreck.
No one ever found any marijuana in the car, nor did they test me for drugs or alcohol. Apparently when “Satan” left, he took the pot with him, and in so doing, may have really been the Angel in my life at that time, working to answer the prayers I had been saying to come take my damn miserable life.
“Are you sure this is what you really want!”
Life changed around me quickly. My mother and her husband had no idea how to deal with me. My dad and my stepmom made arrangements to get me back home to Salt Lake City for the Holiday that year. My short life in Boise was over. I was later to realize that many things “came to an end” that day in December of 1978.
Early in 1979 my dad took me up to the VA Hospital to begin outpatient drug and alcohol rehabilitation that was supposed to be my life for the next 6 months. He did the most significant thing of my life that morning. He told me that he loved me. He was not a man who expressed much emotion in words at all. I don’t know if he ever really knew how. That made the moment so important and special to me. It was something I had never doubted in my life by his actions. It was something I had never heard him put into words.
Once you have discovered your hearts desires, and moved to meet them, the Universe works quickly to make them come to be.
I made up my mind to make a new life for me that day. I worked on every concept I was being taught up at that clinic. Within 3, not 6, but within 3 months my therapists felt I was ready to go back into life again, with new tools and skills to help me on my journey. I enrolled at Snow College for the spring semester of 1979 in March. I went down there, living with my cousin 1 month my junior as we attended our classes down in Ephraim. I lived in Mt. Pleasant, a block or two from where my dad had grown up with my Grandpa and Grandma and all his brothers and sister. I was at home… in my families roots.
In April of that year I was introduced to a girl that would soon become a good friend. By the end of Spring quarter we had seen a lot of each other, and we came back to our parents homes in Murray, and began dating.
It is December 1st, 2010.
I have been married to my best friend Laurel for nearly 31 years now. Last night we celebrated my oldest boy's 30th birthday with his friends and my other son and his wife, and with my daughter. They are all grown now. And I am proud of them, and love them and my good friend Laurel more than I can put to words.
A new life started for me on that December day in 1978. When I put into my heart what I really wanted, the Universe worked very quickly to make it happen.
When the student is ready, the Master appears.
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