Excerpt from Exhilarated Life: Discovering Inner Happiness
Claim your bliss!
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So what did I learn from that funhouse ride (shared in my previous chapter)
into the darkest part of my psyche? Well, it illustrated what I already knew,
but often forget to remember. In fact, enlightenment—or I should say “practical
enlightenment” (the enlightenment that is lived where we are now and
not in a monastery)—is a “one step at a time” personal journey.
Most of us start out living unconsciously. As babes and young children
we get our take on the world starting with the family dynamic. No news
there. But what we maybe don’t fully realize in this age of visualization
and law of attraction is that we can read all the spiritual, self-help,
and psychology books we want. We can go to sleep listening to chants
or meditations; we can pray till our knees hurt, but until we actually
integrate the wisdom and live it from the inside out, we will continue
to be on the single rail track of our inner script.
Practical enlightenment is the process from complexity to simplicity. It
is the conscious dismantling of the single rail cart that speeds us into all
kinds of situations, whether we desire them or not. First we clear the debris
that obscures the track and then we take it apart, one piece at a time. If
we have spent decades layering one belief on top of another—beliefs and
behaviors that began in our limited consciousness as babies—is it any
wonder that the process of sorting and tossing becomes so onerous?
When I began my Reiki Mastery, I signed a contract agreeing to do
the work and complete the process to attain the final atunement.
Well, one week in I was tipped into the depths of doubt. My emotions
spilled out and I was a walking bucket of uncertainty, anger, fear, and
unworthiness. I called Rebecca, my Reiki Master, Dean’s wife and told
her that I could not continue with the program. I had made a mistake.
I was not worthy to become a master of anything. I can still hear the
smile in Rebecca’s voice over the phone when she said, “Well, you
signed a contract and it was a contract for mastery—over yourself.”
Always, always, always: Read the fine print!
And so began a three-year journey of witnessing the rising up and
clearing out of a whole lifetime of incorrect information about myself,
my divinity, my purpose, and about the workings of spirit in this world
in general. It was a period that intensified my understanding of our
holistic nature and really was the unfolding of the LightBeam vision.
As we process from our deepest recesses, energies rise up and need to be
cleared from our physical bodies. Emotional, spiritual, or psychological
“work” needs to be partnered with bodywork. We need to physically
clear the detritus as it rises up. It’s like skimming the gunk off the top
of a boiling pot of soup.
Negativity is insidious and, like a parasite, can lay dormant gaining
strength for decades, only to make its appearance at unexpected times—
often with cataclysmic intensity. These nasties express themselves
in at least one of our bodies—physical, emotional, spiritual. They
are ultimately expressed in our worldview through health, wealth,
or relationship. They are not “bad” in and of themselves; they are
incorrect information bytes that run the program of our beliefs and life
experience. Deep beneath that morass is our true nature—the flame of
our spirit—the hologram of all that we might be if we expressed our
most bountiful and beautiful nature without impediment.
So we can trowel over a patina of optimism and positive thinking, and
smooth it out with visualization, but unless the bedrock is firm, the
cracks will return. You can be “happy” and override your default line
of inner dialogue only as long as you keep talking. Eventually life will
trip you up and you will be face to face with the small, frightened child
of your distorted self. Either that, or like a low-grade infection, the
simple pleasures of life—love and success—will be tainted with dread
or doubt.
The lesson I learned over the past few days and the reason I have shared
the bald truth of my own experience is a stark realization: If, in my
life devoted to spiritual enlightenment and understanding, I can be
walloped with the intensity that I was, then others without the benefit
of perspective or practical strategies must be living lives of quiet misery.
And it is the reason I am sharing this with you. Not as a ‘how to’ but as an
applicable map giving broad coordinates to the center of yourself.
One thing has to be perfectly clear for us to proceed toward happiness.
And that is: Like attracts like. You cannot, I repeat, cannot live with
doubt, fear, stress, or uncertainty and create anything other than that.
And if you “think” you are living with a positive outlook and are
visualizing like crazy, you will soon experience in your life what your
underlying “truths” really are.
So yesterday the underlying truths revealed to me were all about loss,
fear, unworthiness, and helplessness. Are they true reflections of my
life? Absolutely not. What are my truths? Over these past three years
I have resurrected my life from the ashes of who I used to be. I am
finally witnessing the first independent steps of LightBeam as it begins
to fulfill its potential to increase understanding of our holistic nature.
Professionally, I am in the business of my dreams, which combines all
my sensibilities, desire, and expertise in a world devoted to creativity
and beauty: Art. I have gained understanding and competency in the
Internet, and website function gives me full freedom from dependency.
I have an unusually creative and harmonious relationship with my two
sons, whom I both respect and admire. And I have a love in my life
the magnitude of which is only possible because of the awareness in
suffering my beloved husband’s death.
So why then did the panic come up? Because there is still a script
running of loss and grief that I didn’t realize. Of course it found the
weakness in my foundation and that was my home. Like the rest of
the world, the fallout of the unexpected is affecting my freedom of
action. The gathering tension of accumulated circumstances—the car,
the credit, the this, the that—conspired to bring to the fore all that I
need to look at closely and release. I’m in a tough spot financially. I do
not know one person who is not.
The world collectively sucked in its breath in shock at the financial
cataclysm nearly two years ago, and it hasn’t let it out yet. Those are the
facts. Those who weren’t direct victims of the greed and mismanagement
of other people’s money—a travesty that unbelievably continues
today—are in due course feeling the effects. Right now, wanting to
sell my house, I have to endure a period of discomfort while the world
finds a firmer footing. A friend asked a few months ago, “What are you
going to do if your house doesn’t sell?” Well, short of taking my two
sons by the hand and gently closing the door behind us to walk into
the sunset, what choice do I have but to do everything in my power to
bring this to an equitable and beneficial conclusion?
I have lots of options—options that divide themselves clearly into those
fuelled by fear and those fuelled by courage. The analogy that comes to
mind is that I have been handed the controls of a 747 in mid-Atlantic
flight. I can bail, ditch it or gather all my strength and bring it in for a
landing without crashing.
The path of enlightenment is often called the path of the spiritual
warrior. Practical enlightenment is the call to face your fears, find your
strengths, dump the rest and claim your bliss in the simple pleasures of
love, peace, and happiness—in a mansion or in a cottage. Happiness
does not know money or status, but only thrives in the richness of self
awareness.
So what was all the drama about these past few days? It was my
opportunity to look very closely at who I actually was. Would I bail
into despondency and depression—psychological suicide? Would I
ditch? Call my real estate agent or some hotshot and beg him to find
a buyer, stat? The ones who are lurking in the shadows, waiting for
desperate sellers?
Or do I grasp responsibility? Know that I cannot function in fear, ditch
that crap, and choose to focus very intently on one day at a time. Focus
on my wonderful and exciting new business, re presenting four amazing artists.
Focus on my many opportunities. Focus on my loves; focus on my strengths.
My 747 carries precious cargo: My sons who are learning life skills from my
every example, my dreams in all their potential, and a lifetime of memories.
It’s no time to panic.
The path of enlightenment has inspired my desire for a very simple life.
One of beauty, creativity, vitality, serenity, love, peace, and happiness.
I am going there. But first I have to land this bird!
~mh
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