And More Sunshine!

Just when you think life just couldn't get any sweeter, it does. I woke up this morning to more glorious sunshine and I can't wait to get out in it. So beautiful.

I'm doing a lot of gratitude practice these days. It's so simple. Before I get out of bed, I have to list 5 things, quickly, that I am grateful for. Without even thinking, just go, 5 things! This morning's list: boyfriend, bed, sunshine, breath, pillows. But the super-fun thing about this practice is that you can never, ever ever stop at 5! Once you've got those 5 going, they just start to spill out: blankets, sheets, my hair, my skin, muscles, sex, the mangos ripening on the counter, the simple joy of going to the bathroom, licorice toothpaste, my cuppa tea, and everything, all the way down to my toenails. It's just so good. Life is. When you start your day with a gratitude practice and keep it going throughout the day, it's just the best thing ever. You cannot be unhappy when you are in a state of gratitude. Gratitude drives out every negative feeling and every negative thought. It's pure mental sunshine!!!

SUNSHINE!!!

Although I overslept, because last night I stayed up past 1am, this morning I woke up to radiant, glorious sunshine. How awesome is that?

Breaking the Silence

The past few days have been an odd assortment of being very quiet, very bored, very much overflowing with ideas, and very restless and very busy. It's been raining, cloudy, overcast and cold here - January weather in March - and we just don't do well with that. We do much better here with 100+ and scorching sunshine. I need my sunshine. Can't wait to start working on my tan.

But it has also been an extremely productive past few days. I've been writing so much - articles. Real, honest-to-god articles to be published in a real-honest-to-god printed magazine. This is so exciting. I've never done anything quite like it before, and it thrills me. I'm amazed at how many words I have. Words just seem to spill out. I've been writing for about 4 hours non-stop, maybe more, and it's after midnight and they just keep coming. I've got words for my blog, words for my other blog, words for my friends, words for my family, words for my bf, words for my book, words for my journal, words for my plans and dreams - an endless well of words. It's so incredibly exciting. I never knew I had so much to say. I just open my hands and out they spill.

I have to close my hands in order to get quiet enough to pray. And I've been doing a lot of that lately, too.

New Possibilities

I am so excited! I'm so happy! Life is an amazing place.

A few days ago, the demons were on my tail, attempting to drag me down and make me feel horrible about myself and my life - they were even whispering in my ear last night. But today, I can quote the amazing Tracy Chapman and say "All you demons go back to Hell! Save my Soul, save my Self..." (Crossroads, what a great song, great album.)

Today, not only do I have lunch scheduled with 2 of the most powerful women I know - a lunch meeting I've been waiting for for 2 whole weeks - but I also finally received the go-ahead and information I needed for a major, major project that I've known about for a few weeks and have been chomping at the bit to get started on.

My biggest character feature, I think, is a rampant streak of impatience. In some circumstances, that comes across as being pro-active and eager and ready to go, and in other cases, it just makes me a great big, bossy, pain in the butt. I have learned how to wait, although I hate it mightily. This whole process over the past 2 weeks has been nothing more than a continued exercise in patience, learning how to strengthen my patience muscles. Learning how not to jump up in a panic and freak out and run out to try and fill the void in my life called "work" with something really unacceptable called "job." Learning how to be calm in the face of not getting what I want at the moment I want it, learning how to sit still in the midst of very uncomfortable circumstances.

This major, major project is something so close to my heart, and I am so incredibly thankful for it. It's a start to something beyond big, beyond powerful. This is a wonderful opportunity. I'm so happy right now.

Faith vs Logic

Last night we watched Bill Maher's "Religulous" - a documentary of sorts about the atrocities and idiocies conducted in the name of religion. Now, it was Bill Maher, so of course it was aggressive and confrontational, but what bothered me the most about it was his attack on faith. He went to people with a strong faith and demanded that they prove their faith, that they back it up with rational logic, historical proofs, etc. He didn't choose the most educated or profound people of faith, certainly not people as quick and clever as he, so they came across as foolish, deluded goons, while he just came across as mean.

The rest of the film continued on in a less confrontational vein, as after his initial attacks, he just kind of settled in and let whoever he was interviewing kind of stick it to themselves, which is always more entertaining and enlightening anyway - it's hard to side with the interviewer when he's being a big fat jerk, right? And I am the first person to come down on the side against "religion." I think "religion" is the biggest waste of time and energy and money and resources, I think "religion" is so divisive and power-hungry, despite the fact that all the major religions are more similar than different, and all the minor religions are just whacked-out fairy tales.

But FAITH! Hold on a second. Faith to me is so important. Obviously, since I've gone through this whole document to talk about God and prayer and all that jazz, gone off on my "I believe in magic and fairies and angels!" tack - how can I be this steady, clear Agnostic with a huge amount of logic rolling around in my head AND be someone who is developing a profound faith? How do those 2 things correlate, and could they withstand a Bill Maher interview?

Here's how I see it: I believe in a Benevolent Intelligence that has created this world we live in, and that Benevolent Intelligence is that which we colloquially call "God." I have no "proof" whatsoever that this God exists, other than in my own wonderment at the incredible beauty and structure that I see in the world around me, and the certainty that I feel in my heart and spirit that this is true. For me. I believe that this God is the energy field, the force field, the glue that holds this all together, and that within this energy field are infinite variations on energy that do not have to be witnessed with the 5 crude senses in order to be experienced. I don't have any honest experience with a "microwave" but I've seen it turn white bread and American cheese into a sticky pile of glue. Same thing with God and with the other energy levels that we call "angels" or "gods" or whatever.

I look at the world through the eyes of someone looking for miracles, and therefore I am able to see miracles happen all the time. Bill Maher is looking at the world through the eyes of someone looking for "mundane coincidences," and so he sees mundane coincidences all the time. It's the same stuff, it just all matters how you choose to call it.

The God I believe in doesn't really care what I do or how I do it. The God I believe in has given us all free will, which means that we have every ability to do things in the most messed up manner we choose to, or we have every ability to do things in the best manner we choose to. I don't believe that God has any intention of destroying the world (coming back for the punishment of Judgment Day), but He has given us the free will that we are welcome to do so if we're stupid enough.

So if God doesn't care, then why do I pray? If God doesn't care, then why would prayers be answered? To me, it comes back to the energy of it all. A prayer creates an energy, which then stirs up other energies, which then enables the fulfillment of the prayer. It doesn't matter to me if it's "God" answering my prayers, or if it's me answering my prayers - was I able to fall asleep the other night because God put me into a trance, or because by praying I was creating a very relaxing energy in my body which then enabled me to sleep? Does it matter? Is it not in truth the same thing? I think it is, I feel it is, I believe it is. I don't need to classify it as one vs the other. I don't need to argue with the logic that supports that God doesn't exist, because God is beyond human logic, as is love and sex and really good food - other really excellent things that I believe in.

Believing in God doesn't mean that I put any faith or stock into the stories written about God. The Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Book of Mormon, Scientology, the Bhagavad Gita, whatever - they have as much truth as Harry Potter. Which means, of course, that they have a lot of Truth. But they've also got a whole lot of fiction and contradiction and all kinds of garbage that makes it just so impossible as a human being to follow. It would be far, far easier to live your life according to Harry Potter, actually. Those books are more consistent. I don't need to believe in or argue about the creation stories (what a waste of energy!), or about the end-of-days stories. I don't need to believe that God requires me to make human sacrifice - of myself or my loved ones - or animal sacrifice or any sort of sacrifice. That to me is totally human garbage.

But there is Devotion. There is Spirituality. There is Divinity. These are the energies that pull us up out of our base natures and into a much better plane of existence. I believe that this is the purpose of human life, and on some level, the purpose of religion. To remind us of what is possible, not to mire us down into what is extremely likely.

Necessity of Silence

Yesterday I was a little quiet in the blogosphere, a little quiet in the head-o-sphere as well. It was necessary, because actually while "I" was quiet in my head, my demons and devils were pursuing me with all of their might, desperately trying to pick a fight, desperately trying to make me do something I would regret later. What I have learned over the past 2 weeks: when being chased by demons and devils, please do not do what they are asking you to do!

How incredibly funny, really, that I could ever think of following the guidance and advice of the thoughts in my head that have my well-being at the very bottom of the heap. And yet I've done it so many times. When I follow those thoughts to their ultimate conclusion, deep down into their rabbit holes where no light or sunshine or God's radiance is visible (though it is there!), all that is visible is the despair, all that is visible is how deep in trouble I've gotten myself. And man, that just sucks.

The demons and devils yesterday were playing this fun game with me: anybody I love (locally) who I haven't heard from in the past oh, say, 15 minutes, or if I've called them or sent them a text or an email and they haven't gotten back to me yet (because they are busy and have lives) and I do mean quite literally in the past 15 minutes, my demons will catch hold of that person's name and love and memory and they will start to torture me with it. "this person hasn't called you back because they don't love you anymore. they have found out the truth of who you are, they've seen right through you, and they don't love you anymore. don't you want to find out if that's true? don't you want to confirm that your worst fears are true? i promise you, if you reach out to them and tell them everything you're feeling right now, they will verify it. they will. that's why they haven't called you back. they want you to go away and leave them alone." Scary, isn't it? It was that kind of energy that made me post the entry that did, in fact, really damage one of my favorite friendships - expressing my worst fears, which had absolutely nothing to do with my deepest experiences.

A few years ago, I was doing some research on narcissism after being exposed to a pretty powerful narcissist (who was such an incredibly important player in my life, who still is. I have a whole novel dancing in my head about this magician. I'm so thankful for everything he's done for me!), and I read that there is a sub-type or a sub-clinical symptom or something like that in the narcissistic personality spectrum in which the personality assumes a degree of "invisibility," as in they don't consider themselves memorable and so they assume that the people around them do not have a thread of connectivity or recognition towards them. They assume that they will be forgotten, and they do not expect that people will recognize or remember them, even after many exchanges, and they do expect that even people who have claimed to love them will forget about them - out of sight, out of mind. This manifests in behaviors like the long-suffering do-gooder (and that would be me), or in the big, puffed-up, attention-seeking-and-hogging classic "narcissist" who is doing everything in his or her power to make sure that they are remembered.

It's taken me a long time to admit that I recognized myself in the description of a narcissist, even in that tiny bit. I do assume that people don't remember me. Over the past few years of living in my new adopted city, I have made more of an effort to connect with the random people I exchange with - my juice guys, my whole foods guys, etc. - as well as with my clients. Being afraid to be forgotten, I have a frighteningly good memory with names and faces, while always keeping my own identity somewhat anonymous. But what this means with my demons and devils is that they torment me by telling me that I will be forgotten. Not just remembered poorly - FORGOTTEN. Out of sight, out of mind, baby. And as a result, I am terrible at staying in touch with long-distance friends, because I assume they have forgotten me. Seriously.

Now, I don't have this misconception to a pathological degree - just to an inconvenient degree. I'm very glad to have seen it, both in that website and in my own behavior, because it has helped me get over it to a very large degree, to the point now where it's pretty laughable. Until I have a day like yesterday, in which there is panic and fear and a sense of loneliness and isolation and not-knowing, and it's not so funny anymore. Or, rather, it's even funnier and I don't get the joke.

I am God's Pet

I think God loves us the way we love our pets. Not even so much the way we love our children or lovers - too many human expectations - but in the way we love our beloved pets. We take care of them and give them their freedom, we don't expect them to behave in any way other than the way they do. With enough love and gentle training, we can teach them to be more like us, but we still understand who they are and we love them so deeply, so unconditionally, with nothing more than fervent and constant devotion.

So if I am like God's little kitty cat - welcome to jump up into His lap and be stroked and petted, with all the water and food I ever need - all I need to do to "earn" this luxury of love and care is to simply be myself. To share myself in the way that makes me happiest is also the way that God loves me the most. Isn't that amazing?