I spent my first 30 years accumulating — stuff, jobs, men, money, debt, fat, resentments, blame, victimitis — the usual suspects. It took only one year to lose the external mass: the husband, the business, all the money, and then the last of the stuff. It took another year to lose the fat. Hooray.
Ten years later I managed to lose the blame, resentment and victimhood. It felt pretty good, but nothing prepared me for what happened next: Peace…Love…Joy…It found me!
And then I lost it just as it had come, slowly dawning to the full glory of oneness with the light, being all and everything and knowing what is meant by “Joy” and then slowly fading away to leave me wondering when I would ever experience that magnificence, that true “reality” again.
If it hadn’t been so wonderful and real, I would be devastated at its loss. I know it is what I really am. I simply don’t know how to experience it again — yet. I recently read a children’s book that moved me to such joyful tears that I knew I was on to something big.
I studied every technique I came upon. It started with self-help books that actually DID help — a great deal. Then came Hypnosis, NLP, and Reiki. I practiced Meditation, Yoga, Sedona, The Work, Ho-Oponopono, EFT, Radical Forgiveness and Busting Loose. I’m currently immersed in Mastering Alchemy and A Course in Miracles (I’m a little embarrassed as I list them all here together).
I follow amazing thought leaders on the web and get introduced to new ones weekly. My ego is definitely asking the questions that my real Self already knows the answers to.
Only now do I realize they all had the same message. All in different languages. All in different steps. Some were very simple, some very complex. All pointing in the same direction. But I wasn’t looking for the connection or commonality. I was too busy looking for “The Answer.”
That’s when I happened upon Neale Donald Walsch’s children’s book The Little Soul and The Sun. It was all right there in those few pages of Sunday school artwork. The metaphors in everything I had been reading, studying and practicing were there all the time, but my left-brained analysis couldn’t get it.
A simple children’s book snuck up on my right brain and shook me awake. It seems the answer I had been seeking was a kind of Extreme Forgiveness. Not the common, everyday kind of forgiveness where you take the high road believing someone did something wrong, but a whole different level of forgiveness that recognizes the forgotten Divine, lost in the illusions of life.
It’s taking a lot of practice and awareness to remember who I really am and who you really are. All of you. And it is the sweetest, most wonderful feeling when I do remember. I have never been happier in my life (with the notable exception of those minutes I experienced in Oneness) with myself, my mate, my friends, family, clients, strangers, politicians, criminals, everyone!
My neighbor with the loud pipes has been warming his car up for 20 minutes as I’m writing this. Unknowingly, he gives me an opportunity to remember who we both are, and after a moment of irritation, I smile and then laugh at the treasure he gives me. How many times have I hurt someone and now in my Extreme Forgiveness of him am forgiven myself?
It was there all the time. All my searching and questioning missed it. I have found peace, love, and joy in the moments of my forgiveness and know that they will continue to grow in duration and intensity with continued use.
Blessings abound.
