I’m terribly excited. I don’t know quite where to begin because so much has happened and it all has come together. Everything is so synchronistic there is no doubt as to its spiritual significance.
For months I have been depressed, and saw no way through it. It didn’t feel like the clinical depressions I have had in the past, though, and I didn’t know how to deal with it except to continue praying, and to try the antidepressants. After two months, they did nothing. They didn’t even affect my dreams like they used to. I stopped taking them and felt no difference.
I reached a point where I was spiritually wallowing and did not want to continue here. I just whined and cried to God that I hate this place and why couldn’t I move on? Then I would pray, as always, that I would be a better Christian, mother, daughter, employee, friend, and human being while following it up with protect me, don’t let me be hurt, don’t let me suffer, blah blah blah ad nauseum.
Try not to laugh too hard at my blind ironic pleas… 🙂
Sometimes you have to plunge straight into the cold swimming pool, or you’ll stand around forever dipping your toe and screaming.
Finally, something happened that forced me into growth. I had a horrible, humiliating misunderstanding in which I insulted someone who was trying to financially help me purchase a car.
It was a nightmare.
This experience was the catalyst that caused the wake up call and some growth. Suddenly, in the midst of this horrid thing, I realized I couldn’t ask to be sheltered if I wanted to grow from this experience, and that I was going to have to bite the bullet and experience the lesson in its entirety. The instant I realized this, EVERYTHING started flowing together.
It was like a blossoming of a tight little bud. My prayers changed and I was able to even more fully understand about not asking for your will but God’s to be done. I became astutely aware of my interferences, my fears, my prides, my EXCUSES, my self pities, in a way never before seen. And while sickened at this new situation I was in, at the same time there was a new feeling of safety and security, and okayness, and a stronger sense of self and identity and esteem building.
I could literally feel the spiritual growth happening, my awareness changing and refining, and suddenly I was so glad to be alive and able to learn!
I found this book in the house, which has been waiting for me until the right moment, and it is today. It listed 10 Wisdom Statements, and suggested I respond with my way that I will try to manifest it as a reality to my self. So I have copied them here in all caps, and then written after them one of the ways I decided I would try to manifest this.
The amazing thing is how it flowed, and feel I am on the right track to spiritual progress again.
1. YOU HAVE A HIGHER PURPOSE
I am here to conduit God’s love.
2. YOU ARE IN COMMUNICATION WITH THE WHOLE OF LIFE.
I will improve my listening and understanding skills. I will spend more effort on listening than speaking; I will spend more time on understanding the others point of view BEFORE trying to express my own.
3. YOUR AWARENESS IS ALWAYS OPEN TO CHANGE. FROM MOMENT TO MOMENT IT SENSES EVERYTHING IN YOUR ENVIRONMENT.
I will try to listen to that quiet little Voice and not distract my self with petty drama throughout the day.
4.YOU FEEL ACCEPTANCE FOR ALL OTHERS AS YOUR EQUAL, WITHOUT JUDGMENT OR PREJUDICE.
I will try to understand why they feel/do as they do.
5.YOU SEIZE EVERY MOMENT WITH RENEWED CREATIVITY, NOT CLINGING TO THE OLD AND OUTWORN.
How can I give my God given talents to glorify God rather than burying them?
6.YOUR BEING IS CRADLED IN THE RHYTHMS OF THE UNIVERSE. YOU FEEL SAFE AND NURTURED.
I will spend time each day in the NOW where I do not anticipate nor ruminate, but enjoy the current communion with the universe around me.
7.YOUR IDEA OF EFFICIENCY IS TO LET THE FLOW OF LIFE BRING YOU WHAT YOU NEED. FORCE, CONTROL, AND STRUGGLE ARE NOT YOUR WAY.
I will meditate on how I can allow others to answer and act without my input or advice.
8.YOU FEEL A SENSE OF CONNECTION WITH YOUR SOURCE.
I will try to find a way to make other people feel special, rather than trying to impress them with intellectual superiority, thus alienating them.
9.YOU ARE COMMITTED TO GIVING AS THE SOURCE OF ALL ABUNDANCE.
I will focus on the realization that time and attention is a gift and try to give it freely and generously when requested.
10.YOU SEE ALL CHANGE, INCLUDING BIRTH AND DEATH, AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF IMMORTALITY. WHATEVER IS UNCHANGING IS MOST REAL TO YOU.
I will try to anticipate the positive possibilities when change presents itself, rather than panicking.
All these things suddenly came together, from recent experiences, conversations, realizations, and there they all were, just pouring out as suggestions for a blueprint to begin improving my character.
Good listeners are hard to find. I have spent YEARS and years griping and giving lip service to how people don’t know how to listen, they don’t hear, and they spend that time they should be hearing planning what they will say to you.
When they have a disagreement with you, all they can do is thing about how to make you understand their point of view.
After years and years of INTELLECTUALLY knowing this, I did not begin to manifest it as a desire to actually act upon it and change until I began doing this exercise.
I was talking last night to mom about pain and how it is like a tattoo needle and pain is the learning experience.
If we cry to God to keep us from pain and protect us, we cheat ourselves of learning.
I recently forwarded an excellent cartoon out to my friends. I just found it on youtube and I think the impact watching it this way is much more powerful:
A common complaint that people have against God is that he allows us to feel pain. We demand to be free and have free will, yet we want him to shield us from pain. We cannot have it both ways.
It was breathtaking how safe and unafraid I felt once I relented stopped asking God to shield me from pain, but rather be with me as I went through what I needed to learn.
Confessions of an ICHC Addict 