I’m a lucky girl! I get to take Gloria’s Godwriting workshop in a couple of weeks, and I’m SO EXCITED! I feel that this will be an important step for me. There are all types of prayer traditions in this wonderful world, and many of those traditions contain specific steps. One step that is often left out is “listening”. For the longest time, (an embarrassing number of years) I’ve desired to quiet down and listen to what God is telling me, but I’ve somehow never made it a regular practice in my life. I have good experiences with writing, and written prayer. I feel that Godwriting will be the next step and the step up to the top of the hill where beautiful vistas open up.
Gloria asked the workshop participants to begin their journey by answering these questions:
What in your childhood might have led to your great spiritual adventure now?
Why, trauma, of course! :) We all have these stories and humanity has always tried to figure out the real causes and purposes of suffering. While I won’t say that it’s good that bad things happen, Grace does seems to scoop everything up and re-weave the dangling threads into a new and even more beautiful tapestry. Suffering does tend to invoke important questions and life-giving discoveries.
When I was a child, I tried with all that I was to stop time, to communicate with my future self and my…cosmic self (for lack of a better word). In my motivation to access the power that I felt inside myself, I felt myself and my future to extend into the stars and eternities. I got messages back from these realms, and was set on a path of wondering at the difference between reality as it showed up on this Earth and a different reality I felt inside.
Neighbors and teachers may have seen me as spaced out and wandering aimlessly, but I was actually conducting important experiments to explore the nature of time, space, and perception. When does “here” become “there”? When does “now” become “then”? How does a memory of an event differ in feeling from being in the event? Why do different places feel so different? Why is one moment standing in a particular spot different from another moment in that same spot at the same time of day, in the same pinafore and patent leather shoes? How will it feel to be Ten? Sweet Sixteen? Twenty? How old will I be when it is the year 2000, and how will it feel to say a year so differently? Can I extrapolate how I’ll feel in the distant future from the vast range of feelings I get from moment to moment now? The fascinating differences between the first chill of winter and the relief of deep shade in summer? The vast expanse of an impending summer vacation shrinking into a past-too-quickly memory? The daily microcosm of the horrid vastness of a whole day of school melting into predictable “it-wasn’t-so-bad” relief at the end of the day?
I’m still asking these questions. As layers and layers of consciousness grow, each one was unimaginable to my previous self. The difference between the quality of my awareness at 36 is so many generations different from how it was at 20, I can only move with an open heart and wide-eyed anticipation toward what it will be in another 15 years, and 15 years after that.
What do you imagine are the steps that brought you to this place in your spiritual life where you are now? Can you think of some turning points?
Without a doubt, the biggest influence on my spiritual life has been my physical health challenges. Abraham Lincoln said, “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.” This sums up nicely the roll I believe that adversity has in our lives.
Meaning: When I was bed-ridden, I had to struggle to find value in life through what was left available to me: prayer, sending light into the world, seeing the Christ in everyone I happen to meet in my little bedroom, elevating my own consciousness. I say I “struggled” because I also had to accept that I was utterly unable to do any of those things amidst active, persistent, all-consuming suffering! I could think about them, but I couldn’t really do them. My attitudes about the law of attraction and what we have control over became much more grounded. When we have no apparent control, we are left to turn to God.
Attachment: I affectionately call the effects of my health challenges “Forced Buddhism”. I had to let go of attachments even to meaning, contribution, doing something worthwhile, being proud of how I’m handing illness, utterly everything. It just is. Period. I just am. Period. Oh, there’s a beautiful mountain. That’s nice.
Ego: Destruction of ego has been another benefit of health challenges. It no longer embarrasses me to say “I do nothing”, and most of the time I accept deeply how far from comprehensible my experience is to those who haven’t shared it, and forgive that not everyone can understand me or wants to. St. Therese of Lisieux, an ostracized nun, wrote about the purity of devotion that grows out of being understood by God alone. God becomes more real when he is the only source of connection.
Ambition: I no longer envy or feel inferior to those with money to go to movies, have cars, and hobbies that cost money. The tragedy of unused talents is no longer a tragedy. It just is. Goals are good if they are pleasurable, but I don’t have any illusion of control. The principles of manifesting are there for my inquiry, pleasure, and play, but I’m released from the tyranny of desire and fear about how things are going to turn out. Lack of desire sounds garish until you’ve experienced it, but during one “awakening” type moment I found myself in total presence, with the total absence of desire and its accompanying fear. It was the pinnacle of joy. Now this joy is becoming grounded and stable in my life through the process of long term illness. The difference between the person who entered these challenges and the person who is emerging from them is like night and day.
Freedom from Fear: Now, as my health returns and I do in fact have the coolest job ever that uses many of my talents, and I begin to work toward singing again, my goals are more “choices” than “desires”. I’m not afraid of embarrassment, disappointment, being misunderstood or alone, a “wasted life”, “wasted talent”, or “not reaching my potential”. I’m not even afraid of failing to fulfill my “purpose” or missing out on having some grandiose “calling” to serve and help others, (making me “special” in the process.) These fears were my masters before. That’s not what life appears to be about.
A New Sense of Purpose: The opportunity to grow into the heights of human potential is here for our pleasure. Serving is pleasure expressed. But loss of pleasure is not the same as loss of the inherent value of a soul. As for life purpose and calling, making sure that my life is used in the grand scheme of Grace, is Grace’s business. The participation that Grace calls me to is moment by moment, and as near and non-ego-fulfilling as surrendering to the refiner’s fire and loving whoever is right in front of me. Grace may call me to grab my guitar and sing a song to someone. When the song is over, the purpose is fulfilled. I always perceived my singing as an opportunity to channel the love of God to the people I was singing to in the moment, but the freedom now is that my pleasure in singing or the positive encouragement I get from others doesn’t “mean” something, like that it is my “calling” or my “purpose” and I will therefore have failed if I don’t record a certain number of CDs or make my living exclusively through music, or build up that certain level of fame that would validate that I had “made a difference” (or make those who didn’t love or understand me wonder if they make a mistake! Ha Ha!) I am free from all of this now, and goals I set are more immediate and for the love of the process, not a hunger to fulfill a purpose. My purpose is made secure by my commitment to an open heart and moment by moment awareness of the whisperings of the Spirit.
How clear was your path to God?
Not being rooted in one particular spiritual tradition, my path has been multi-faceted and necessarily rooted in personal experience of universal truths as the only soil available.
What do you see as some past general influences on you?
My Atheist upbringing started to crumble when I saw a PBS documentary on Fractals which enabled me to visualize creative intelligence for the first time. Shortly thereafter, a friend who had begged me to read many books actually purchased a copy of “Conversations with God” and put it into my hands. It was all over. I was a “woo woo” from that moment on.
Some things I got into: Nature Spirituality, Native American Spiritual Philosophies, Tich Naht Hahn, Transcendental Meditation and Vedic Philosophy, The Celestine Prophesy, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Byron Katie, Wayne Dyer, Unity Christianity, Law of Attraction books way before “The Secret”, Dances of Universal Peace, a Christ-led spiritual regeneration experience, Born-Again Christian devotion, Bible study, college religion studies, Kaballa, Synagogue attendance and Intro to Judaism classes for converts, esoteric Mormon theology, Private inquiry into Islam, Sikhism, Sufism, energy healing modalities, the music of Snatam Kaur and Krishna Das, the Church of Conscious Harmony.
Were there phrases you overheard or something that someone said to you that you think of and wonder about now?
Can’t think of any.
Looking back, what spiritual factors do you wish you might have had in your life? What would you change, if anything?
I wish I had found some things at an earlier age so that I would have at least had food for thought on the rationales behind “clean living” and conservative moral values that now bring so much peace to my life.
What steps did you take toward greater closeness with God?
Written prayer, tithing, devotional religious experience (at times 7 times a week!), spinning, seva (service), asking for guidance with every step, daily prayer.
Where are you now in your spiritual journey?
I wish I had a home church that enthralled me the way church used to. I have no one to tithe to because I do not have a “source of spiritual food”. (The first benefit of tithing is noticing your sources, or lack thereof.) I don’t know why I’m so resistant to energy healing modalities. I agree with them in theory but can’t seem to have faith in them. I’ve never been consistent with spiritual or healing practices like prayer, meditation, or writing. I wonder if neglecting to do meditation made it so the only way I could learn the lessons I needed to learn was to be sick for many years.
How do you imagine talking and listening to God will change or add to your life? What would you want to happen?
I’m looking forward to this practice to be so joyful that I naturally want to do it regularly. I hope it will open the door to the flow of deeper communication with myself and God without the floodgates overwhelming my life and my ability to keep up with normal tasks of life, as former writing and prayer practices have done. I want it to be a healthy and life-supporting balance. I desire God’s guidance on discerning next healing steps out of the infinite possibilities. I choose the elevation of my consciousness so that I am ready for whatever transformations are to come for this planet or for myself after I die. I would rather be a light worker focused on serving the planet as a whole, than to have all my resources devoted to just getting myself through day to day. I’d like to feel a part of the shift that is happening, if I can do it in an ego-free way.