MAKES MY FACE HAPPY!

 

Some months ago, one of my quiet thinking bouts was interrupted for a fraction of a second. I saw myself alone and needing no one. I could travel the world alone and be very happy. The it was gone as quickly as it came. I didn’t realize it had to do with Freedom, which is a topic that occupies my mind quire a lot.

It was always with me, in the background. Thinking about it did nothing to bring it closer and actually prevented a greater understanding of it.

Recently I’ve been re-reading Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy. I’d had the book since ’91 or ’92 and though I had read sections of it many times, I had only read it through when I first got it and again in 2000. I had gravitated toward the New Hampshire part each time I picked it up without considering that the entire book is filled with nuggets of wisdom. It seems to flow in a more cohesive way that I remember but that could be a change in my understanding. Also, I wasn’t a particular Dirk Benedict fan early on when I ordered the book but I was a big fan of the original Battlestar Galactica so I thought it might be fun to read. The part of the book that kept returning me to it made me a very respectful and admiring fan of it’s author.

Now I find myself near the end of the book where the talk is about relationships, that is, men and women. Then, as I see it again, it is brought into my understanding: I can be alone and be happy. I can live alone, needing no one to prop up my life. If we need someone to “complete” us, and we are taught all our lives that we do, plus it fills our waking thoughts and haunts our dreams – that is a dependency. There can never be Freedom where there is dependency. I see this so well in the outer but couldn’t get it past my psychological beliefs.

Beyond the world of thought there is a place where Freedom and Wholeness reign. It’s the place we long to be, to live, but we look for it continually in another person, blocking the one thing we want from actually coming forth in our lives. What a dreadful thing we do to ourselves. The pain we have to go through before we turn toward this Immensity shakes us to our roots. It seems we need the pain to turn us around.

Something comes to mind that I saw in a TV show eons ago. It may have been a religious show. The only thing I remember is a tapestry that was shown. It was a picture of a regal lion, King of the Beasts, and lying on the ground in front of him was a snake. The lion had his right front paw on the snake’s head. The snake was called The Great Deceiver and he had been conquered by the King. The Great Deceiver is psychological thought which divides itself into two, as the thinker and thought, when it is actually one. Factual thought is just that – your name, where you live, 2+2=4, the Mississippi River flows into the ocean. etc. It is knowledge that is necessary for daily living. Psychological thought consists of all the conditioning, propaganda, sentimentality; greed; superiority, inferiority; all the hype and dogma that swirls within our brain. In the former, thought functions as the instrument that it truly is. In the later, it functions as an “entity” – an illusion, a false positive. The great deception, the false, the abstract that controls us, are the lies by which we live our lives.

I’m learning about the proper way to eat because of this book. It also gives me food for thought. I don’t need anyone to prop me up; I can walk alone. Though having someone whose spiritual growth is twin to your own, to stand beside you must cause your heart to soar – and if you and that other have climbed to heights known only to the few, then the shared ecstasy, sweetness, and joy must be without measure. However, your happiness doesn’t depend on this. You can be alone and be happy. What an absolutely magnificent, factual, thrilling thing to learn! Makes my face happy!

I’m so grateful this book found it’s way out into the world. And to me.

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NO ROOM FOR IT’S ROOTS Part 1

For several months I have concentrated on the food part of Macrobiotics.  I just finished reading Confessions of a Kamikazi Cowboy again and am finding an integration of the parts into the whole.  I decided to read it again but didn’t get very far.  I was struck by something that hit me like a physical blow.

I know this sounds weird but I often see “dead” people, mostly relatives, or close friends.  Seen them all my life. They usually appear soon after they have died and sit looking at me amazed that I can see them, or perhaps that they can see me.  I can see the surprise on their faces.  Sometimes I taunt them: Didn’t know I could see dead people, did you?  Other times they’ve been there awhile, then come visit me to leave a message.  I talk to them (mentally), ask what they want to tell me and as soon as I understand their message, they’re gone.

Just before I started the MB diet a group of my relatives kept appearing.  I though it had a special meaning so I gave them my attention and said,  “It looks like I’m going to die.  Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

What I ‘absorbed’ from them had to do with sugar.  I was killing myself with sugar.  I was dying for sure, but I was doing it to myself.  I was eating little chocolate treats that “only have 12 grams of sugar in each one.”  I understood their message and cleaned the sugar out of my house.

Recently I saw that group again but their message this time was more subtle.  Sitting in their midst was my ex-husband who had inflicted more pain on me that I thought I could bear.  He looked a bit different.  Even his eyes had changed, but he wasn’t looking at me as were all the others.  He was looking off toward the side.

I exploded!  What was he doing with my family?  After all that he had done, why did they allow it?  I don’t care how different he looks, which I took to mean he had changed quite a lot.  But that didn’t take away from what he left behind, what he had set in motion before he died.  People often show up within a few days; took my mother two days, my dad, instantly. An old boyfriend didn’t take long.  I was in the bathroom which didn’t seem to matter.  He took my face in both hands and kissed the top of my head, laughing happily all the while.  So this man taking several years to show up at my psychic door told me he had come a long way from where he had been spiritually when he left this plane.

Just days ago he came back for another visit.  This time he’s alone and he’s looking straight at me but I see nothing in his eyes of the man I knew.  Still I didn’t let him off the hook.  Plowed right into him.  Does he know his cohorts are still carrying on what he started?  Of course he does, but I didn’t give him a chance to say so.  What he did was unforgivable, absolutely unforgivable.  I turned away from him, after telling him to stay away from me and my relatives.

The next day – the next day! – I decided to re-read the Cowboy.  Skipped the intro and started with the Preface — the arthritis, weight, drinking, cancer —remove any of these and you diminish the fabric of my life —my joy has been because of these.

And it hits me full force.  I see again what I was shown long ago — I’m walking up a stairway at a slant angle, slowly, laboriously, when I become aware that my husband is on a downward course on the same staircase that is only wide enough for one.  With each step he makes a ‘zzzt zzzt’ sound.  We collide violently; he, walking right over me like I wasn’t there.  I am left lying flat on the floor, barely breathing for fear of falling.  There are no longer stairs going up where I’m lying, just a flat surface that is so steep that I press to the floor to keep from sliding down, breathing ever so slightly and carefully, even pressing my fingertips down.  I hear him continuing down the steps like nothing happened.  My direction has changed.  The angle is almost straight up and down.  His direction has changed as well, he keeps moving downward, making the ‘zzzt zzzt’ sound with each step.

Because the ‘collision’ was so monstrous it stayed with me too long.  And I only saw the front.  The big, big front.  The bigger the front, the bigger the back.  When someone does something for you, you want to thank them for their kindness.  His acts were done viciously, so I couldn’t thank him, but I could forgive him.  I always knew, instinctively, that I couldn’t run from the situation I was in, that I had to go through it.  I had to come out on the other side of it with an understanding that would happen no other way.  Running away would have kept me on that long slow path.  Forgiving him is a necessary part of letting it go.  The antagonism was complementary.

If this hadn’t happened in my life I don’t think I would have found all that I’ve been learning, especially now.  It turned me in a more positive direction.  Without the pain and anguish I would have missed this book and it’s teachings about food and life.  I would have missed the man who wrote it.  I like knowing he’s in my world.

I think I’m growing roots.  And I can stand alone.

…and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener, is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighbourhoods of men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Compensation