Grace

It's been weeks since I've posted, and the more time passes the more I feel I need to fill in. So much has happened in Seattle, but I think I will just start from here.

I have gone from 14 days on only papayas, to 10 days on watermelons, to 5 days on green juices, and a couple short water fasts in between it all. I often question how my body can still be failing after all the work I've done, but yesterday as I water fasted I did some deep inquiry. We can't possibly heal physically until we're ready. It's just like painful emotions that we keep inside. They will be there until we are comfortable enough to let them go. A big part of me is so ready to be vibrantly healthy, to be able to run and play and eat so much fruit without pain, but I have been in contact with the part of myself which feels safe being sick. I have spent most of my life as a victim, and I still have attachments to the suffering within me. That part of me is becoming smaller though, and when I am truly present I can see past any suffering of the body. My life is so perfect right now and it has nothing to do with where I am or what I'm doing or the health of my body. I'm often experiencing what it is like to be at ease with life, wherever it takes me. I'm living in a city, a city that less than a year ago felt like a cage to me. But my eyes are opening and all I see is beauty here now. Sometimes I'll be walking and I'll see lanes and lanes of cars, pollution filling my lungs, loud noises all around me, and life just seems to be filled with so much grace. My spirit glows and feels the life in all of it. I also walk through the woods, and on the beach, and I feel it there too. God is everywhere.

Judgement has been such a part of my life lately and it has been a great gift. The mind judges, that is just the way of it, but it's what you do with these judgments that is important. Like most people I often feel guilt for the thoughts that run through my mind, thinking that I am not a good person to have these judgments. Any judgement I have about anyone else is always just about me, and I am seeing that to be true for everyone. And any judgement that is placed upon me can only hurt when I already believe it about myself. No one can possibly hurt you if you inquire into your own mind. Judgement is the path to truth because when you look at your inner reactions you will meet yourself, maybe for the first time. If someone tells you that you are selfish and it hurts it is only because you are already holding this belief within yourself. It is never the other person who is hurting you. You will also see that this person is suffering because it isn't possible to be unkind unless there is pain within you. This is the innocence of humanity! Everyone just needs love and complete acceptance, and it is the most difficult path in the world to learn how to love unconditionally. It is through the struggles that you learn what love really is. I have been through more pain than I thought I could take, and I'm starting to see how intense suffering and pure bliss are so close to each other, just a small shift of awareness apart. I know I didn't choose this life because I wanted to experience simplicity and pleasure. This incarnation is a never ending lesson, one that not a lot of people seem to understand. By living a life of mostly silent contemplation it can appear that my life is empty. I have no career, very few hobbies, and I spend very little time absorbed in the distractions of television, books, socializing, or much of anything else, yet my time here is constantly filled with such substance. When I do lose myself in the dramas of the world I immediately fall from balance and need to retreat back into my deeper self.

"God is good," that's what people say when things go as they want them to, but when life doesn't go according to plan, where is God in that? More and more I'm seeing that God is in everything, that the struggles and the pain are as filled with grace as anything we would consider beautiful. You don't need to have a plan of how your life should go, how this day should go, this instant. If you are just here, just experiencing everything without needing it to be a certain way, it isn't possible to suffer. When you embrace everything there is nothing that is not god. Everything is as it should be, and life is nothing but grace.