Growing into Grace

Today I heard news that someone I know “took their own life.” She was not someone I knew well, but knew as someone who was desperate to know relief from pain and sought a “cure.” That “cure” would be a ticket to “heaven.” She was already focused a lot on dying, without this cure, but was willing to give it (life) one more try at relief before taking that action to change her own matter. As I think about the reality that there are no strangers to me, as a human energy being, I think also, especially today, of her. She was a specialist in addictions, and lived to help, to heal, to learn to love.

I have learned that fear is the greatest addiction, and that the only cure for addiction is a spiritual awakening. (“All addiction is fear of the separation from God.” JOH, 183) I remember my urges to distract myself from thinking or feeling at certain times when I was very depressed, mostly in my 20s - to stimulate senses in a physical (chemical) way, “externally.” It is another level of living the dependency upon only the physical as real. We get bogged down in the details. Like a thirsty man in the desert, we gulp the water – the need is literally a physical one. Deficiency within our cells for the nutrients that give us life and sustain life. Until we understand the gift this is, I understand now, better than ever, we can think the water is the salvation of us for time eternal. The be all and end all of our search for relief. As I continue to appreciate, we are energy beings living as matter. We are indeed made mostly of water!

As I review flashes of memory, I think of the lessons I have worked with, as a mind with my heart on my sleeve or tucked into my skirt, or “hidden” under my hat, inside my boots. I think of what I have learned from Spiritual Philosophy, that all relationships are created by our image of self, how fear is the survival energy of the ego self. I am looking carefully again at my fear (of “rejection,” separation from “God”), and beginning to know the truth and power of “knowing thyself,” gaining ground. The Garden of Eden was our training ground, as energy beings. We began as energy beings, feeling our way (literally, sensing in a way we have mostly forgotten) as energy more than matter, and slowly coming to “know ourselves” in the flesh of us, eating of that tree of knowledge to know we are exposed as physical humans, wearing the energy of our nakedness, the beauty and innocence of our vulnerability to life and all of its pleasures and opportunities of growth and change. In Kathy Oddenino’s third book, Sharing, I read, “The energy of you is part of the energy of all of man, part of the energy of Earth, part of the energy of God, and part of the energy of the Universe. In the sense of energy you are integrated. Integrating your physical understanding of your own energy will create for you a new consciousness level of self. Your consciousness level is your relationship to your physical life.” (82)

The purpose of life is to know ourselves and to celebrate creation.

I review the kaleidoscope of interactions I’ve lived, and I think of the dance life is, in its most artistic form. I appreciate dance and the dancer, the music of life. When I have been dissatisfied with life, it is because I have felt “unloved.” That need, or unsatisfied belief gave me the feeling of losing control over my world and of course led to powerlessness which is the embodiment of depression. I believed totally in the power of my beliefs to guide me, even those that were unconscious to my mind. Such a need creates negative obsessive behavior – challenging friends or family to “prove” they love you; getting angry when feeling victimized and jealous and competing with others who are happy, “powerful.” The list goes on. Without knowing “I am that I am,” an energy being, my mind cannot accept the grace of love in action, the ocean of energy constantly and eternally expressing itself. What is the energy of my true intentions as I live, breathe, act, choose? I think of the role that courtship has played, as we’ve created it, in our history as human beings: the Garden of Eden, the playful sprites in the woods, the Romans at court, the Victorians in their ruses and rituals behind starched collars and jewels, the Flappers and crooners and dowry presenters. The mind, as our male image, invites the emotions, as our female image, to be seduced in overt ways - the physical urge overrules all! The dignity, grace, and fun of true courtship satisfies, because love heals as it guides. The mother teaches the child in the ways of growth as life happens. The father creates with her, guides too, as he learns, shares, grows and changes.

Lifetimes ago, when I began to date a Cambodian man after years of my relationship with a woman, we were both hesitant, unsure of the “rules.” He had never dated an “Anglo” woman, and an older one at that, and my experience as “single,” and engaging romantically with a man was new to me, again. We laughed at our awkward ways for a while, because it was as though the same rules didn’t apply! Gradually we learned to communicate on new levels, expanding our “sensing” of each other, and we continue, as friends eager to “know thyself.” Now I think of this as one more example of how, within me, my mind creates its own “new” rules as it interacts with the love within me – the dance begins to form, to pick up, after the hesitant steps, the stomped-on toes, the straining to hear, the sweat of fear not exertion. As I open my mind to knowledge, my physical consciousness changes, grows into love. As I learn and do NDP, I realize this is the same exalted dance – such intimacy as human energy, honoring and acknowledging the creator of our lives, the nervous system, to love, to energize. As the old saying goes, “greater love hath no man.” (Or woman.) Physical gratification within us comes with the energizing of our matter, the love that nurtures us. What does it mean to be totally responsible for myself as an energy being? As physical people, through sex we can create human life. As energy beings, we create as chemical beings with thought, each breath, each ocean of memory moment, the architecture of us as energy form and energy/matter function. We must focus on how we are thinking and being first, and what we are doing will change. When truthful, I am open to change, and know my self-image as my spirit consciousness, others as the same energy design.

Hope becomes false advertising at some point, until we know love within us as energy beings. Spiritual Philosophy has taught me to know that I am energy first and matter second. I can choose to guide the winds of change within me as I begin to know myself and my motivations as an evolving consciousness. So, a nod to my newer friend and her gusto for life, her challenge with pain and profound loss. Love heals, and we do not live only one life! Healing happens as we change, little ways, big ways. Thank you for our meeting, for teaching me as an energy being.