Tag: god-like

How a Non-Deist Dances (or does the dishes) with God

~ Ingrid Oliphant ~ Leave a comment

When I was in the sixth grade, I saw an angel. At least, that’s what I called it. It was in the sky, it was alive, and not a bird or a plane or Superman. Not even a super-something else. It just was. And pretty as it just was. I told my mother who commemorated the experience with a poor concrete facsimile that confused me to no end. Because that wasn’t it and it wasn’t quite right in my adolescent mind. I don’t know if I ever thought again of that beautiful being I saw until we were reintroduced to each other in August 2015.

I never did see God, though. As an atheist it made complete sense. Out of mind, out of sight.

Until. Until one day in the spring of 2007 while I was washing dishes, I felt it. IT. The thing that other folks have described as God. This coalescing of something bigger than me but not definable, fully there and not-exactly-finite at the same time. Big, but fitting into the kitchen with me. I put down the salmon pan, walked to my then-husband in the living room, said out loud, “I just met God”, and walked back to the sink. Because, apparently God and other invisibles don’t do dishes. No other word was said. None needed to be. It was neither disturbing nor interesting. I didn’t ask any questions because none needed asking. I didn’t tell anyone else until years later.

I also didn’t tell anyone when God came back. I mean, what or who else could that big, infinite, yet finite beingness at the kitchen sink–again–possibly be?  This time, again while my hands were in the suds, it said one thing: “How will you define yourself?” That’s it. No winning lottery numbers. No “Here, I’ll dry”. Just “How will you define yourself?”

Neither of these experiences were met with a response more than nonplussed curiosity. Nothing more than a measured, ‘huh’. Although at one point in my non-religious evolution I was taught that God was fearsome and to be feared, I didn’t believe he existed at all, especially in that way. In fact, I never believed in him as his existence was explained by anyone. Except when that it-that-can-be-nothing-else arrived, I knew. Just knew.

In that moment, I just knew that fear was unnecessary, that worship was unnecessary, reverence was unnecessary, and there was no room for confusion or revelation. It just was. Not from ‘above’ but not from within. Not from somewhere ‘else’ but certainly something else, something other than my mind’s capacity for imaginings or desire for a holy dishwashing experience. In fact, there was nothing particularly holy in the whole thing. The clouds didn’t part, angels didn’t sing and I didn’t zing with the energies I often feel while with things of the ecstatic nature. I didn’t drop to my knees as I’ve done in grief and gratitude; I just heard him. There was no reassurance, demand for obedience or plea for belief; just one simple question.

While I was as unconfused and unawed as the first encounter, the second annoyed me. I knew the who of it and the what of if but, A) I still had to dry the dishes and, B) I’ve got other shit going on so what the hell kind of question is that for God to ask someone like me?

I had no idea then that the me I was would shortly no longer be. I had no context for the question and no understanding that there was anything beyond a definition of “I’m just Ingrid.”

Ten years into thisness, I’m well into not-just-Ingrid and I still don’t know how to define myself. And, I still don’t define that God-thing the way others do.  I thought if I’d define myself in my own way or the way I’ve been asked to the last year by those ones of Creation that got me into this mess, I’d know how to be this whatever-I-am. Notsomuch. God hasn’t come back to ‘splain all that, either. Or help with the dishes.

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Honesty…honestly. It’s about time I was honest with myself and the rest of the world.

~ Ingrid Oliphant ~ 2 Comments

“As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.”
― C.G. Jung

I was on the phone with a potential client last week and after she ran through some of the things she was seeking help with, I asked, “Why me?  Why now?”  Without hesitation she said, “You are the first person I’ve really connected with because, well, it just seems like you’re honest.”  She went on to describe some personal encounters with other folks and stories of fleecing by spiritual types, men lying on dating sites, and other instances where she ‘just knew’ people were lying during conversations.  An acquaintance and I had a similar discussion about passive-aggressive  behavior and communication when direct, honest communication gets us to the point much more quickly–even if it’s something that doesn’t necessarily want to be heard by another (or conversely, said by us!).   This was followed by an interaction with someone who wondered aloud if my ‘working with veterans, law enforcement and first responders for free’ was ‘a gimmick’ or advertising ‘teaser’ to garner attention.

Whoa.  I mean, yay me, right? But, seriously, why does honesty seem like such an anomaly these days?  Or are we just so jaded by all sorts of BS that the bullshit-o-meter is stuck on high?

Now, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not always honest. It’s my general way of being but I’m as human as the next person and will lie on occasion. Articles, books and movies abound about why we do that intentionally and without thought.  For the most part, though, that was beaten out of me long ago.  I’ll tell you up front if what you’re wearing is unflattering but in situations where I’m forced to express certain things, notsomuch.  Ask me how I am on a bad day and if I think you’re going to introduce drama, I’ll say, “Fine.”  I hedge what I tell others sometimes–particularly if they’re asking a ‘psychic’ kind of question–because when they ask questions of me they may not be prepared to hear what I have to say or their resistance may lead to an encounter I don’t have the energy for.  Sometimes I’ll dance around the answer to lead them to it without saying it.  Think of how much time I could save.

I’m also not honest about how I know myself to be.  I’m afraid to put myself out there in the way I know I’m meant to.  It’s one thing to read kitschy quotes placed on pretty pictures (especially those with Johnny Depp!) about not caring about what others think but it’s a whole ‘nother thing to really say fuck you to everyone around you.   For me, the fear comes at several levels.  First, I spent nearly my entire first two decades on the defense physically and emotionally.  While in that state, I was sort of where I am now:  needing to be seen, to be heard.  That’s a lot of time spent being hurt and waiting for ‘it’ to come.  As this gift of mine has unfolded for me, I’ve felt I’ve had to defend it and me to those around me or limit my expression of it

I’ve felt that I’m at a place in my life where I don’t think I can do that again.  But I’m reminded again and again and again through ecstatic experience, visions, interactions with clients, the invisible & visible, that I can no longer play chicken.  So, I’m making a choice to go balls-to-the wall and come out of my own little strange closet, so to speak.

My fear looks a little like this:  I’m afraid of being abandoned by those left in my life.  I’m afraid of nutjobs becoming too much to deal with.  I hedge when people ask about the work I do.  I deny how special what it and I do together is (and the fact that there is no ‘it and I’).  I’m afraid that when someone cheers my ‘unconventional, inconvenient and unapologetic’ way that I will get caught up in the opposite. I’m afraid I’m really not prepared for this, that I’ll be in it all alone, that I’ll not be able to trust people who appear.  In fact, I keep making up all sorts of stuff to be afraid of to, well, keep being afraid–to keep from being honest with myself first and the rest of the world.

I’m more afraid, though, of missing out on life by not claiming my role in it.   In an instant-info age where folks try to out-spiritual one another, create hints and allegations of being THE second coming (neverminding the notion they don’t know what it really means),  bash those who claim their power while sharing ‘that’ Marianne Williamson quote, shouting EGO when someone speaks truth as they know it, I’ve been afraid to join the babel.   I’ve intentionally kept myself disappeared, even in sessions with people when miraculous events have taken place, denying that I know how and what I do because I’m afraid of feeling what I did as a child:  being unseen or, in turn, being seen and either ignored entirely or beat back into ‘being disappeared’.

I’ve known that this healing gift-thing that magically showed up three years ago has purpose beyond what I could have formerly imagined but now need no imagination for.  I’ve known that this form is not merely the deliverer of a message or healing or whatever the fuck this is since two and a half years ago an observer of a session watched me transform/disappear into light while I was standing in front of her.  I’ve known since two Februarys ago that I was being called out to step into a role for which I made presumptions of being unprepared. And, I’ve been reminded gently and I’ve been reminded not-so-gently and have not acted upon those remembrances because I don’t know what to do about all of this.  Although a path has been paved for eons to this point, it’s up to me to create the next bit of it and I don’t know what that means (okay, I kind of do but the mechanics of it escape me).  I don’t know how to be it or in it.  And, let’s face it, so many want to be the ‘expert’,  to tell me how to do & be so when they can’t know it or me and want me to show up in the way their reliance on archetypes and other shit has previously defined how I show up.   They try to wrap their language and labels around me to define (confine?) me in an understandable manner.   Some are ridiculously certain that I have a message–particularly one they’re certain they want to hear! (I love how folks will ignore ‘messages’ that float around, or do the opposite and latch onto the latest-or oldest-and strangle the life out of it, then move onto the next rather than letting the message breathe life into them.)  Some choose to deny and denigrate.  Some choose to attach themselves to the things I say in a manner that I do not.  Some see me.  Most don’t.  Any more, I care only inasmuch as it helps do this:

Here’s what I do know:  I experience the world in a manner most cannot conceive of–I walk with the visible and invisible in the same manner with no need for pre-defined roles, names, associations, hierarchies, and bureaucracies.  I experience the world as it is and appears before me.   I am both mystic and part of the mystery of it all, beyond theories, philosophies, systems, blueprints, codes, myths & models.  I cure cancer and other disease sometimes whether or not anyone believes it is possible. I bring to people spiritual enlightenment or awakening sometimes whether or not anyone believes it is possible.  I do stupid human tricks (everyone believes this is possible!!) like everyone else but more than one heart beats within mine.  I help other people shed pain, peel back layers, cut through cloaks and stories, and drop their veils.  Now it’s time to drop mine.    And I have no idea what this means in the day-to-day movement of life (although the big picture is ridiculously clear!) or what it will bring but my own time is now.

There are many like me all over the world.  Some of us are in places in the world where they cannot express their own being for a variety of limitations.  It behooves those of us without those limitations–like me–to stand up, claim it and start moving through the world as we are meant to without fear, without framing ourselves as another or in others projections to find acceptance, and start doing some shit.  I’m choosing to do so in this manner.  And move through the world as I was born to do.   I will no longer hold myself back and sit in the back of the class.   What has moved through me for nearly six years is this:  “Before there was, I was.”  I am meant to be here, my role is larger than anyone, including myself, could have known previously or possibly see now.  I’m now going to own it,  set my life so that I can know it and move through the world with it.  This is my shift today.

For some perspective on how I’ve come to this take a peek at other posts from last October and the past two Februarys.

Peace in, kids!

Know ye not that ye are Gods. ~ Moses (the dude, not the dog)

~ Ingrid Oliphant ~ Leave a comment

Thomas Merton to Aldous Huxley during their discussion about genuine & pseudo-mysticism:

 What I would call a supernatural and mystical experience…has in it very essence some note of a direct spiritual contact of two liberties, a kind of flash or spark which ignites an intuition…plus something much more which I can only describe as “personal”, in which God I known not as an “object’ or and “Him up there” or “Him in Everything” nor as “the All” but as—the biblical expression—I AM, or simply AM…this in oth the kind of intuition that smacks of anything procurable because it is a presence of a Person and depends on the liberty of that Person.

I found the above passage when reading The Hiding Place of God: A Personal Journey into the World of Religious Visions, Holy Objects & Miracle  written in 1991 by John Cornwell.  I picked it up at the local library when I figured it’d only be polite to actually use some of their actual books while spending eight hours at a time there hogging their wifi.

This passage and learning that even Padre Pio pissed people off because he didn’t do things the way others thought he should were the only things I took away from reading the book.

I’m not really sure why I picked this title except that it’s probably got something to do with me looking for factoids and other niftiness to share with people when they ask questions of me.

I had the same thought when I recently re-read The UnCommon Touch by Tom Harpur, The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggert, and Mike Dooley’s latest.  It’s frustrating to find myself going back to the habit of doing things for other people—not in terms of being in service to others but in terms of trying to satisfy their ideas and ideals about how I should act, speak (that’s my next post! Oh.Boy.), clothe myself (seriously), identify or define myself, etc.  As annoying as it is, I keep going back there.

I think it’s not so much that I want to please people but that I feel I need to load up data & information to defend myself, my own ideals & my own knowing.  I keep trying to use social media as a way to create a real, honest discussion about stuff relating to healing.   Maybe I really am itching for a fight instead.  A way to say, “Listen to ME, please!!” “Hear me.  Don’t dismiss me.”  “See, Saint so-and-so/Christ/Mohammed/Granma Green did it, too!”   I don’t seem to feel quite satisfied to go about my business quietly, hoping that…hell, I don’t know what.

But let me regress six paragraphs and revisit Mr. Merton (do you call a Trappist monk Mister or Father?).  My “ecstatic” experiences are a veritable cornucopia of variety.  They occur with regularity, sometimes extend for an entire day (with an in-n-out of it quality), are sometimes visual and aromatic, almost always emotional & time-space warping, and, usually confounding (with a so-what-do-I-do-with-that-now? quality).

However, my experiences aren’t religious or “spiritual” (used loosely here) because nothing in my experience is religious or spiritual as others define it.  I still call it a Divine experience sometimes but I’m not connecting it to “something outside of me that is more powerful than me”.  I just don’t see God as other people do.  I don’t just give it another name like Source/Universe/Grid/flavor of the day term.

Are there things outside of us?  Absolutely!  Are there invisible things all around us? Yep. Powerful? Influential? You betcha! More than us?  Nope.

One response I’ve received from someone trying to argue that people couldn’t be god-like, godly, god recently was, “But we don’t create storms!”  Me: “Really?  Think about it for a bit and then get back to me.”  I was never gotten-back-to but my point was this:  We do create storms.  They may not appear as weather ‘incidents’ but our actions/inaction, beliefs, & judgments change the barometer around us and those we touch directly or indirectly.    Never mind the fact there are humans who create, move & manipulate climate-related weather all over the globe. Not a forte of mine because outside of being amused at dissolving a cloud or three, I can’t see how that is human business.  We already have interfered in a pretty heavy-duty way, methinks.

I think we’ve become so comfortable over the course of time gifting power and responsibility for life-stuff to something(s) outside of ourselves that we forget how powerful we really are.

So, uncomfortable with the idea of self-identifying with our own greatness that we will easily dismiss and denigrate one who says, “I see God in you.”  It’s all great and fine for India to sing it but that’s just a song, right?

I don’t see anyone made in the image of how they define their god or inspired by something outside of them. I see each person as the god that they see outside of themselves.

I see you as god.  You are God. You are the embodiment of all those things that you’ve connected to, associated with & assigned to that “Him up there”, the “Him in Everything”.  Within you is every iota of power, wondrousness, control, glory, beauty, destructive potential, love, mystery, holines, and, the kicker, responsibility for self and others that has been assigned to a Higher Power.

Can you imagine seeing another like that?  Try it.  Just for grins & giggles.  Today.  Really.  Start with yourself—go to the mirror when you get home and instead of being critical of the wrinkles and that stray eyebrow hair, look into your own eyes (not at your forehead as if to avoid yourself, mind you), and talk to yourself in the same way you talk to God.  Dare ya.

Does that mean that people are no longer annoying, irritating,?  Um…No. That doesn’t mean we lose our human-ness.  We just gain a different level of humanity.  It just means there is a level of respect, a conscious willing suspension of judgment, a heightened awareness that you are he, connected to him/her and others, an acceptance and love that requires no ‘practice’.  It’s effortless.

Yep, loving another, loving all others can be effortless.  Those in the “spiritual” frame of mind are famous for talking about the greatness of Source love, the exquisite Love of the Divine, infinite Love of the Universe, the I AM love from the Violet Flame, etc, etc, Uhhhh…heeeellllooooo?

What about the infinite, exquisite, greatness of human love?  The one to one human sorta love.  The love expressed between two human beings.  How ’bout you start practicing that, too.  It’s painless.  It’s fun. It’s free. It can even become comfortable!  Check out this community & share the love here if you’re moved to.  If not, start with yourself. Go back to the mirror and have a conversation with yourself.  Then with those around you.

So, YOU ARE god.  YOU ARE love. You are all the endless potentialities. You have no limits.

And I love you all the more for it!

If you could get

Rid of yourself just once,

The secret of secrets

Would open to you.

 

The face of the unknown,

Hidden beyond the Universe

Would appear on the

Mirror of your Perception.  ~ Rumi

Angelic Doctor ~ Thomas Aquinas

~ Ingrid Oliphant ~ Leave a comment

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thought; a sense of the sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.
And the round ocean and the living ar,
And the blue sky, and the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts
And rolls through all things…

Moses and the Shepherd

~ Ingrid Oliphant ~ Leave a comment

What follows is a little something to consider on this rainy day. It’s a little long but I’ve kept the translation intact (I often slice and dice) because I think it speaks best to and through us in its entirety. It also has a special significance to me as I move with the realization that I’m not overcome by anything during my experiences alone and with you but that I’m merely moving into myself–my true nature. I hope I can continue to share that with you so you may experience it, too! _/\_

 

Moses heard a shepherd on the road praying,
“God, where are you? I want to help you, to fix your shoes and comb your hair. I want to wash your clothes and pick the lice off.
I want to bring you milk, to kiss your little hands and feet when it’s time for you to go to bed.  I want to sweep your room and keep it neat.
God, my sheep and goats are your.  All I can say, remembering you, is ayyyyyyyyy and ahhhhhhhhhhh.”
Moses could stand it no longer.
“Who are you talking to?”
“The one who made us, and made the earth and made the sky.”
“Don’t talk about shoes and socks with God!! And what’s this with your little hands and feet? Such blasphemous familiarity sounds like you’re chatting with your uncles!
Only something that grows needs milk.  Not God! Even if you meant God’s human representatives, as when God said, “I am sick, and you did not visit me,” even then
this tone would be foolish and irreverent.
Use appropriate terms. Fatima is a fine name for a woman, but if you call a man Fatima, it’s an insult.
Body-and-birth language are right for us on this side of the river, but not for addressing the origin,
not for Allah.”
The shepherd repented and tore his clothes and sighed
and wandered out into the desert.
A sudden revelation came then to Moses, God’s voice:
You have separated me from one of my own.  Did you come as a Prophet to unit or to sever?  

I have given each being a separate and unique way of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge.

What seems wrong to you is right to him.  What is poison to one is honey to another.

Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship, these mean nothing to me.

I am apart from all of that.

Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better or worse than another. Hindus do Hindu things.
The Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do.  
It’s all praise, and it’s all right.

It’s not me that’s glorified in acts of worship.
It’s the worshipers! I don’t hear the words they say.  I look inside at the humility.

That broken-down lowliness is the reality, not the language! Forget phraseology. I want burning,
burning.

Be friends with your burning.  Burn up your thinking and your forms of expression! 

Moses, those who pay attention to ways of behaving and speaking are one sort.  Lovers who burn are another.
Don’t scold the lover. The “wrong” way he talks is better than a hundred “right” ways of others.

Inside the Kaaba, it doesn’t matter which direction you point your prayer rug! 

The ocean diver doesn’t need snowshoes.

The love-doctrine has no code or doctrine.  Only God.

So the ruby has nothing engraved on it!  It doesn’t need markings!

God began speaking deeper mysteries to Moses.  Vision and words, which cannot be recorded here, poured into and through him.
He left himself and came back.  He went to eternity and came back here.
Many times this happened.
It’s foolish of me to try and say this. If I did say it, it would uproot human intelligences.  It would shatter all writing pens.
Moses ran after the shepherd.
He followed the bewildered footsteps, in one place moving straight like a castle across a chessboard,.
In another, sideways, like a bishop.
Moses finally caught up with him and said,
“I was wrong. God has revealed to me that there are no rules for worship.
 Say whatever and however your loving tells you to.
Your sweet blasphemy is the truest devotion.  Through you a whole world is freed.
Loosen your tongue and don’t worry about what comes out.
It’s all the light of the spirit!”
The shepherd replied,
“Moses, Moses, I’ve gone beyond even that.
You applied the whip and my horse shied and jumped out of itself.
The divine nature and my human nature came together.
Bless your scolding hand and your arm.  I can’t say what has happened.
What I’m saying now is not my real condition.  It can’t be said.”
The shepherd grew quiet.
When you look in the mirror, you see yourself, not the state of the mirror.
The flute play puts breath to the flute,
and who makes the music?  Not the flute.
The flute player!
Whenever you speak praise or thanksgiving to God, it’s always like
the dear shepherd’s simplicity.
When you eventually see through the veils of how things really are,
you will keep saying again and again,
“This is certainly not like we thought it was!”
~Rumi
I bow gracefully to the simply Divine you are!
Much love,
Ingrid


 

Becoming Horse

~ Ingrid Oliphant ~ 7 Comments

I don’t share with many folk the experiences I have with some frequency; almost daily.  I’m not quite sure why I tend to keep them to myself.  I think there are a combination of factors.  They are at once deeply moving, awe-inspiring, sometimes physically taxing, some more ‘ecstatic’ than others, and seem just for me.  I don’t often try to understand, figure ’em out or connect the dots.  I also don’t connect them to life-stuff, psychic-stuff, spiritual-stuff and other whatnot in the way I think many other people do. And, lately, folks appear to be looking to me for answers and aren’t comfortable in accepting, “I don’t know.”  I find myself using that phrase a lot when it comes to the ‘work’ that I and quite a few others do.  I don’t know what ‘ascension’ is (twelfth floor, please?).  I don’t know your past lives; don’t have any interest in my own.  I don’t know why folks are so interested in understanding a 5th dimension (or if there is one) when we are right here, right now, in this one.  I don’t know why a dog that couldn’t walk now can after I had a mere thought and why a cancerous tumor wouldn’t go away after the same process.  I don’t know a whole heck of a lot and, frankly, don’t care to.  So, I keep a lot to myself.

I’m drawn to share last Wednesday’s experience, though, for some reason.  It’s not the first of its kind but the intensity of it, the expression of it, and the equine company in which it occurred were a first. And, I think, that by sharing my experiences others will find some comfort in knowing they are not alone & they may come to understand, through continued glimpses into my world, how I come to experience the world in my unique way and how I ‘just’ know and trust.

Some may know that I do work with horses working on both the physical and energetic levels; transforming bodies, demeanor, and communion with their humans.  This week I was asked to begin working with a mare named Marge (I know, right?  Who names a champion mare Marge?) She in no way resembles the blue bouffant of the same-named Simpson character.  However, her frenetic behavior might look a little like Homer’s!

There was another person, a trainer named Michelle, with me to hold her still because Marge is a little off the hook—frenetic only half-describes it.  I got started in my normal way and just felt and watched energy move through, in and around.  I talked to her a little, watched her fight & respond, feeling it in her own unique way.

After several minutes, I felt something strange within me—as if it had moved into me–looked to Michelle and said, “Something just moved into me”.  We both noted that was odd because that doesn’t happen when I work.  Things don’t attach themselves to me.  Introduce themselves, yes.  Attach, move into, errrr, nope.  I kept on keeping on and a few minutes later, energy heightened in intensity, and apparently I looked at Michelle and said, “This isn’t me.”   Although I was aware that I was breathing ‘normally’, I was quite certain I would pass out because I wasn’t breathing ‘right’.  I surrendered and began crying—not of sadness, not in connection with the animal’s emotions (that happens with some frequency, especially with those who have been traumatized physically and emotionally—similar to my engagement with humas), but in communion with something entirely different.  I kept working with the heightened energy, the horse relaxed and shifted in her own way to something resembling calm.  The string of moments (I’ve no idea how long the experience continued) was broken only when a truck pulled into the drive.   I brought my bits back together, brought the horse’s bits back together, wiped snot and tears, and tried to gather my conscious thoughts.  The only thing that really gelled was, “HOLY CRAP! What the hell was that about!?”

As Michelle was helping me re-ground with some tea, I told her again that that wasn’t me. That it couldn’t have been. That it felt like Christ himself or the power behind the horse herself stepped into me and that I could no more explain that or what it meant than I could anything else of this strange experience of the world I live in.

When I asked what she felt, Michelle said, “A swirling, powerful peace.”  Again, I thought, “Holy crap” and couldn’t do much more than shake my head and say thank you.

I left shortly after, still trying to mull over in my head the turn of events.  I know better than to try to ‘figure it out’ and I deal with similar experiences daily.  Not this intense, but enough to know to just ‘roll with it’.   However, that was enough to make me sit up and take notice in a slightly different way than ‘usual’.

As I turned onto Atoka Road heading home, though, the voice that’s not a voice, the thought that’s not a thought said, “That IS you.  That is the whole purpose of your being! That IS your being. Know this.”  If it could be given a face, voice, and tone, it would resemble a ‘tut-tutt’-ing, head shaking in exasperation, universal grandmother/father voice.

Oh.

The next thought—one I have with some frequency—was, “Okay, then.  Now what do I do with that.”

A week later, there have been string of other moments and events that have been built upon this one that I’ll share later.

 

“Life is like a Mirror…”

~ Ingrid Oliphant ~ Leave a comment

“Life is like a mirror: If I smile, the mirror returns to me a smile.  The attitude I take toward life is the same that life will take toward me.”

~ Gandhi

I posted the “What if it really is between the stories?”  a few days ago asking a lot of “what ifs” to hopefully get folks thinking (or not thinking) without demanding they believe it and, frankly, not wanting them to.  Sure, it was nice to read responses that showed I’m not alone on a limb here and that I’m not saying anything original (the reason I won’t write a book, by the way.  There are a bazillion out there already saying the same thing.  We don’t need another tired, old story.  But, I’m not out to persuade anyone to align with my way of thinking, feeling or otherwise experiencing the world in the way  I do.

How Godliness and we appear to me is just different than most.  And, it grows and changes each day into something more spectacular and awe-inspiring. Today, feeling stuck in a rut, though, I wonder why others aren’t willing to see things differently.  Why there is the continued necessity to insist others do and speak in the same way, the need to create ourselves as ‘right’ and then foamenting (new word: think fomenting while frothing at the mouth) anger and hatred.

Again, my experience is different.  I have seen and lived through some shit.  I’ve been brought to my knees in gratitude, grief, and fear of death & pain. I’ve worked with other folks who have perpetrated some horrific terror, those who’ve survived it with a grace even I am awed by. There’s been amazing, awesome, inspiring, heart-rending, humorous, nauseating shit.  And, I know most folks have shared elements of these experiences so I wonder why they can’t see the way I do.   It confuses me.

I wonder why, in all of that, I see them as god, as greatness.  As a reflection of me.  I wonder that I carry that with me & try to behave in a way that reflects that notion and others don’t. Or can’t. I wonder if they can see their own reflection and why they can’t see themselves and others in the way I do.

No, I don’t see auras–pretty plays of color rumored to surround things and people.  I call it seeing through that.  The essence that just is–without stories, behind fear and masks and wordplay and makeup and made-up selves. The brilliance that resembles heat shimmering from asphalt and light but fully encompassing more than that.  The all that is potential and more.

And, on days like today, I wonder why sometimes I see that in myself and sometimes I don’t despite the fact I know it and live in it (albeit in a sometimes ungraceful, freak of nature way).  I wonder why.  Maybe everyone does and that’s why we seem to be in the state we’re in these days.