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My Spiritual Journey: Following a prophet, One Traveler's Testimony

Week one update #gray-skychallenge

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Dear friends,

I’ve been updating my progress on Facebook. I need to rethink my posting. Some of you are not on Facebook, and by keeping updates on one or two social media sites, I’m robbing you, my readers, on the lessons I’m learning.

Today, I’ll post Day 2 through Day 8, as they appeared, minus most photos.

Day 2’s #grayskychallenge smile is this Blue Jay who brought me a message: Jay teaches lessons of adaptation to any situations and learning quickly with a high intelligence. He gives access to memories long forgotten and shows how to assimilate them into awareness. He

demonstrates risk taking, seizing opportunities and discovering new avenues for exploration. He will show the power of intelligence and fortitude balanced with discreet silence and utmost patience in timing. #greattiming #happyday

Day 3 of #grayskychallenge is solitude day. Once upon a time, that used to be unsettling. Today, it’s #soulfood! There are things about ourselves we sometimes hide from ourselves! Today, I found another part of me. Smile!

What part of me did I find? I found that part of me who listens to Innate, our inner connection to Source. Sure, I’ve listened to her before, but many times I challenge her to prove that I should, and often I end the day saying, “I should have done that thing that popped into my head.” Today was different!

#grayskychallenge Day 4 finds joy in reawakening passions from days gone by when Mrs. Manning, Mr. Valente, and a private tutor named Jesus, fed my love of singing. Today, I start again with basic scales and YouTube accompaniment … it’s not really as easy as getting back on a bike!

Rekindle your own childhood passions, my friends.

#grayskychallenge Day 5 is about the true friendship and love I witness in those around me, from two former students saying goodbye once again, to a cashier and a customer exchanging a hello-again hug. True friendship means never having a final sunset, because there will be another sunrise down the road. #havefaith #truefriends

#grayskychallenge, Day 6 – remember our blessings! Too often, we forget or take things for granted. Today, I sit in awe of the man who was and is my partner on this journey. Whether he’s fixing our RV or making a baton out of a Goodwill golf club, David never ceases to amaze me! The “silver lining” part of this day for me (for I must add a personal lesson for it to fit this gray-sky challenge of mine) … on this journey with him, I have learned that anything is possible, even wild, magical dreams! I have learned that I, too, am capable of turning my life into my own “impossible dream” come true. And that is a lesson we should all take to heart — no matter our age or our upbringing, nothing is impossible if we are willing to put in the work and follow our heart. Now, it’s time I get off this beast-machine and get back to practice! #faithcanworkmiracles Have faith in yourselves, my friends! KNOW it will happen and the Universe will see to it that it does!

#grayskychallenge, Day 7 – laughter is the best medicine. I was reminded today that we can get caught up in the heaviness of this world just like a fly in a spider web; the more we try to break free, the more entangled we become in the heavy trap. It’s not worth the stress. Instead, look for the humor in it. I know, it’s tough to laugh when the spider is eyeing you, but sometimes the Universe reacts to positive vibes. Maybe you’ll luck out and the wind will swing a branch through the web and you’ll be able to hitch a ride out of your imagined trap.

Day 8 of #grayskychallenge … is the challenge of seeing yourself through the looking glass. I am not the one I see in the mirror. She is a reflection of what I show the world, but she’s not really me. She’s the one who fights to keep up appearances to the point that her truth is obscured in the mist of a hot shower. The real me is loving and positive of God’s love burning in my heart, but, like with Moses, I feel my body has been the source of a Divine battle between Archangel Michael and the devil.  Sometimes, even I don’t recognize what I’ve done until the mist has cleared and the devastation is evident. I am sorry to the point of tears for the damage my words or my actions have caused. … so where’s the silver lining to this gray sky? I Know I am forgiven. I Know the Creator loves me more than I can ever imagine, and all I need do is accept His forgiveness. The great thing is, we are all loved and we are all forgiven. Feel it, my friends. The Almighty I Am loves you beyond measure!

My Spiritual Journey: Following a prophet

The Prize Within is a Masterpiece

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who loved his art class in school. It was one of the few places he felt safe and he could be himself. In that world of bold strokes and bright colors, defined by the oversized plaid shirt he wore as an art smock, the little boy could hide from the shoulda’s of his stark black-and-white world.

But that plaid shirt-turned-smock was too colorful for his monochromatic reality. His family didn’t approve of his dream. He was traumatized by that judgment.

Many of us have what I’m calling these plaid-shirt dreams — beliefs or dreams that we understand will not be deemed appropriate by those we love. So we hide those truths or, if we’re brave, we introduce our thoughts in a distant, third-person way in order to protect ourselves from harsh judgment. When the mythical question is rejected, we reject ourself for ever having considered such a ridiculous concept, and our plaid-shirt dream gets folded up and tucked away.

I think back to all of the times I hid my own unacceptable, plaid-shirt dreams because they didn’t fit into my self-made reality. The truth I had created became my prison in which I tried to hide. My flannel desires would have to wait.

Recently, my friend, Stacy Davids, published a book about a little girl and her beloved plaid shirt.(http://upswingpress.com/our-shop) It took me back in time. No, I did not wear a plaid shirt. I wore what society said was appropriate. At an early age I learned how to work within the matrix of reality in order to fit in. I did what was deemed right, ignoring myself. I was never authentic after that.

To those who knew me, I was appropriately happy and settled in my life. My future was mapped out and secure. I seemed to be everything people thought I was.

But I was hiding. Underneath, I was not being true to myself. In protecting myself from judgment, I forgot my truth. I had become a shadow of myself. Sometimes I think I still am that shadow.

On this journey of spiritual development on which I am now hiking, a requirement is authenticity, so I have shrugged off the layers of protection to uncover that secret plaid-shirt reality. My truth.

It has not been an easy task. I make mistakes every day.

I’m still pretending. I now have a new image, and I try desperately to keep it real. How can I keep it real, though, if it’s still just another mask? In this reality in which I am embroiled, I think I need an image. A role. A goal. That’s where I’m wrong.

Do I know how to be true to myself? Do I really know who I am or have I hidden my truth so deeply that, like an ancient Mayan temple, it will never be found?

Rebuilding after awakening spiritually is more difficult than many believe, especially if, like me, you dress yourself up in layer after layer of costumes in order to ensure acceptance.

Shaking off these layers is akin to sculpting a masterpiece. As Michelangelo said, when explaining how he sculpted his David, ”

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

”

I think back to that little boy in the plaid shirt art smock. I wonder what truth he could have reached if his smock hadn’t been destroyed. I wonder what I could have found if I hadn’t hidden from my own truth.

All of these what-ifs aside, I think about the wonder of the dreams I have uncovered as I chip away at my own Michelangelo-creation on my quest to authenticity. I am discouraged by the difficulty of it all yet inspired to find my own truth lying deep within the block of stone that is me.

I encourage you, my friends, to uncover your Truth, your own plaid-shirt dreams.

The Dragonfly’s Student

A Mother and Her Sons, My Spiritual Journey: Following a prophet

A note to my boys about my reality

Aang, the Last Airbender

Last summer, I rebelled from my reality. I went in search of my true self and claimed a Vision Quest was the way to best do it. In this reality in which I lived, though, my personal search was not “right.”

I had two sons, both in their mid-to-late teens at the time. I had a husband, although our goals had begun to change. I had a mother and father, a sister and brother, cousins and one remaining grandparent in this reality. I had a job teaching high school seniors. I had friends and coworkers.

But I was dying inside. I was trying to find happiness in the little things that could help me glue the puzzle of my reality together. But the glue was weak.

My mother and grandmother sensed something was wrong with me. I shrugged off their concern. “What? Me, depressed? Of course not. I’m the happiest person I know,” I said, insisting the unhappiness they sensed was because of the job or because of the political system or because my husband was still unable to find a full-time job after five years on the market. No problem, really. At least he published a novel and received an award for it.

No one knew the truth, though. Not even me.

What I learned during last summer’s rebellious break-out road trip was that I still loved God, despite the annoying, anti-human noise from “Religious” systems that profess love for God, but refuse to love their fellow man or even our planet itself!

I also found that I had so much to learn about myself and my connection with God.

When I was young, I would walk among the butterflies and talk to them. I would imagine walking with Jesus through a rose garden and filling my soul up from His fullness of being. I would see His love in the people around me and I knew the truth behind Namaste –

“I honor the place in you in which the entire universe dwells.

I honor the place in you which is of love, of truth, of light, and of pace.

When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, we are one.”

But somewhere along the way, my life had changed. I’d lost that connection to Source. My Soul was screaming to get it back again.

And this is why this is a letter to my sons.

Dear boys,

I love you more than life itself. You know that. But there’s one thing that I love more, and that is my connection to my Higher Self and to my God.

I’m sorry I rarely forced you to sit down at church to listen to the word of God. Wil, you could always tell the fakers. Thomas, you seemed so trusting of others that I felt I had to protect you from the same harsh judgments that kept God out of my childhood.

But in hiding from my truth all these years, I wonder if you ever understood what really drives me.

I’m so sorry for not being honest with you. I hoped that the things we talked about helped you get a good idea of where I stood on things, but I never force-fed you my God. You see, I don’t believe in forcing God on anyone. When you need His guidance, you will find it within you.

God is love and peace and truth and authenticity. To me loving God means being grateful for the life I’ve been given and the beauty of nature. Loving God means standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. It means speaking out against Oil Drilling and Fracking and GMOs and Veal and, by now, for any farm-raised animal product. (I don’t eat meat at all, but you guys know that now.) It means representing for this planet, our only home, that many of us seem to take for granted thinking she is just as permanent as God.

So, my guys, I just have one more thing to tell you now that you are no longer little boys. You are men and can speak for yourselves. Now is the time for you to make your own paths. I know you are now self-proclaimed scientists. I beg you to open you hearts just a little bit more.

Remember the episodes of “The Last Avatar” we would watch on Friday nights when you were younger? Aang and Katara and I believe the same things about God and self and the world. The goal was to bring the four nations together in peace, despite each particular nation’s personal goals.

I believe very strongly in that reality and in the Source spirit they hinted at in the show.

How about the Pokémon world where Ash and his fellow trainers worked with the creatures they had captured and trained. I loved the way you learned about nature through Ash and his Pokémon. The creatures worked with Ash to help him. The Professors were all named after trees: Professor Oak, Professor Elm, Professor Juniper, and Ash, you both know, will one day be a professor, too.

In that world, the kids were safe and the goal seemed to be a balance of humanity and nature.

I believe very strongly in that reality.

How about when you wanted to play the guitar or the bass or the trumpet or the cello? (I took you to your lessons every week.) How about when you wanted to join the Boy Scouts and go camping? (We bought a tent and went to the Jamboree.) How about when your personal truth spoke louder than the lessons school tried to silence in you? (I spoke up for you being able to keep your authenticity!)

I believe very strongly that the fire in your soul is stronger than the lessons that try to quiet your truth.

So, as I continue to search for the truth in my own soul, I hope you have learned from the little lessons. I hope you never forget the goodness in Ash and in Aang, and I hope you will one day realize that what keeps you real, what keeps you true to the fire in your soul, is your connection to that God within you.

And that part of you is sacred.

I love you, guys. (And, yes, I’m crying, Thomas!)

Mom

The Dragonfly’s Student

My Spiritual Journey: Following a prophet

Transformations

We are cattle. (I guess this is not going to be my average post.)

So, here’s the thing. I’ve been thinking about knowledge lately, Gnosis, in other words.

According to Wikipedia:

KNOWLEDGE:

noun

  1. 1.

facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.

“a thirst for knowledge”

GNOSIS

In Christian, Islamic, or Jewish mysticism, mystery religions and Gnosticism gnosisgenerally signifies a spiritual knowledge or “religion of knowledge”, in the sense of mystical enlightenment or “insight”. Gnosis taught a deliverance of man from the constraints of earthly existence through insight into an essential relationship, as soul or spirit, with a supramundane place of freedom

With knowledge comes a hunger for more knowledge. Eventually, you start seeing things in your real world that you’d never noticed before. I started seeing it in the television shows we watch , the sporting events to which we flock, and, of course, our religions.

Somewhere along the line, you reach that Awakening. I hate calling it an Awakening, because there are so many things tied to that term. It’s become something of a myth, actually. It’s something we expect is going to happen, but it doesn’t happen to us. Why doesn’t it happen to us? we scream. So we look cockeyed at someone who insists that is what’s happening to him or her.

The thing about myths, though, is that many times they are actually Truth hidden from the view of the majority of us.

With me, my Awakening, or Enlightenment as I prefer to call it, has been a long time coming. It hasn’t always been easy. Sometimes, I’ve been dragged to my realizations kicking and screaming by that higher sense of self that’s guiding me. As my knowledge grows, I want to proclaim it from the rooftops. I want to give everyone a how-to guide for this thing I can’t identify, but you can’t describe a cake from the mixing bowl until it’s gone through the oven. Essentially, I’m still the gooey mess inside the mixing bowl. I’m still meeting my shadow self in bits and pieces – ingredients that need to be beaten into the mix like eggs, and milk, and flour.

I don’t know how this process of transformation works for others. For me it’s been a years-long process that involves people I love and respect. And the reason a full awakening is difficult to attain for many. There’s that voice that peals like a bell in my head telling me to protect those I love and ignore my own desires.

That has got to be the most painful realization to have to accept. So it’s been a slow process for me. There is still an intense battle between The Awakening Me and what I call The Human Me.

People may question the origin of a power that works this way. I’ve been torn inside and out trying to define my experience. In the end, I’ve decided it is for the benefit of my own higher self.

How do I know this is right? Because the existence I used to live feels inauthentic. The thought of returning to that life is like heavy iron bars. Moving forward from here is exciting.

I guess this will function as a warning to my classmates out there in the Internet world. If you would not be willing to turn your current life upside down and backwards, you’d better stop searching right now.

The truth is that once you’ve opened your mind, there’s no turning back. You can’t unlearn a truth you’ve learned. It’s impossible to do it without psychotropic drugs.

I love the life I lived that brought me to this point in my life. How could I not? I am this person because of the experiences I’ve lived. Right now, I’m trying to clear up my emotional Karma – that thing that makes me feel I am tied to this reality. There are still some shadows I find difficult to face. Which is why I’m still not at full-awakened status.

So, let’s go back to the beginning of this blog.

We are cattle.

Responding to a friend’s Facebook post about the international banking system and the slaves we have become, I got on my pulpit.

The idea is hard for people to understand, I guess. I mean, really, who wants to accept that to the powers that be, we are cattle. Livestock. We go to work (the field for cattle, for example) then return home at the end of the day for dinner and relaxation and sleep. It’s rarely what we really want to be doing with our lives, so we dream of the weekend or summer vacation or retirement.

The Ranch Owners are the ones who collect the profits of our labor. Our bosses and, in a greater sense, our governments which collect our fruits via taxation.

Enough on that. That is an argument for you to have with yourself if you decide to drop down that rabbit hole! There are so many others, all leading us to realizations about the truth of our human existence.

When I launched my Vision Quest last year, I tossed aside the ideas that had been living in my reality for years. I realized, not decided. The difference between one and the other is that one is based on personal truth (realize), whereas the other implies a choice between two equal realities. The choice is not equal, hence it is not really a choice. It’s an acceptance. An allowance where the truth is allowed to take seed in us.

For me, that acceptance is ongoing. Every day is a new challenge.

I hope that your lesson of knowledge is as enlightening as mine has become.

Your classmate,

The Dragonfly’s Student

My Spiritual Journey: Following a prophet

Remember

For Lent, I have promised myself to post a little something on my page every day. Just a little. I hope my readers appreciate this, but I’m doing this for my own spiritual growth.

When we’re deep in the matrix of this reality, we forget our essence. Like quartz, we are beings of light encased in a physical form. When will you remember your essence, my friends? When will you not only remember but also acknowledge that God’s essence is within each and every one of us?

Ah, this is today’s homework assignment. Remember that you are more than this heavy 9-to-5 world. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience. We should love ourselves and our human lives, but getting weighed down and obsessed with the minute details of the matrix world is contraindicated for this condition.

The details of our Spiritual existence are so much greater than we think. Yesterday, I was meditating to Kryon and his discussion of shades of gray. (Not the movie, but our lives.) We are greater than we think, and this reality led me down a multi-dimensional meditation.

Today, I try to accept that reality as Slipknot’s Before I Forget plays on my car radio.

I am a world before I am a man
I was a creature before I could stand
I will remember before I forget
BEFORE I FORGET THAT!

I will meditate on the chorus, but I will share something a little less raw with you today.

Have faith, my classmates. All will be blessed.

The Dragonfly’s Student

My Spiritual Journey: Following a prophet

It’s All Relative!

As my Vision Quest meanders into Month 2, I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection.

In my reality, these bodies we inhabit were made in the likeness of the Creator in order to enhance the experiences of the One. Everything we experience as parts of the whole become lessons for all. But is this existence as haphazard as we all suspect? I think not. I think there is a great deal of this puzzle that fits together into a perfect solution.

It’s all about fractals, actually. Recently, I’ve been learning about fractals by looking at trees. Fractals are an infinite repeating system where the seemingly ‘smaller’ parts are the same as the seemingly ‘bigger,’ just as the trunk of a tree splits off into two branches and each branch splits off into smaller versions of the originating split. I enhance ‘smaller’ and ‘bigger’ because in a system of infinite scale there is no smaller or bigger. It’s all relative.

As each branch breaks off, it perfects itself, producing the best essence of itself to improve the overall appearance of the tree. Sometimes, there are bits and pieces that are marred but, overall, the goal is the overall success of the tree itself.

So, let’s say God, or Creator, is the tree, and each of us is a separate twig growing leaves and extensions in our own quest for becoming a full branch. It’s not always easy. There are things, like bugs and diseases and storms that threaten our success. Then there are other things that create opportunities for growth, like my favorite Banyan trees, epiphyte plants germinate in the cracks and crevices of host trees and both trees become interdependent. In the end, it’s what we do with these things that adds to or diminishes our ability to succeed.

It’s not easy to differentiate between the things that change us – is this an opportunity for growth or is this going to lead to my demise? If only it were easier to identify ourselves on that tree that is God. If only I could follow the branches and twigs and leaves to discover the essence of my being.

I think I figured out how.

What if, instead of the tree metaphor, let’s make the Creator the ocean, and I am just a molecule of salt, the water is what binds us together. If you boil me down to my essence, who am I at my core? What is it about me that doesn’t change, that remains constant, and how can that part of me grow? What if this life is simply an attempt to fine-tune one characteristic of my being? What if we are meant to identify our own essence in order to perfect that part of ourselves? Never to improve others, just ourselves.

That’s it. That’s my thinking. My goal now is to determine what is left of me when I boil everything else away. When I separate myself from everything that connects me to the others and to God, what am I left with to improve upon?

I think I know what I need to do now.

Until next class, my friends.

The Dragonfly’s Student

These trees have learned to grow together.wpid-20130918_150340

My Spiritual Journey: Following a prophet

Waking from the haze

Some people are asleep. They live their lives as if something really important is driving them to move-move-move. They never reach their goal, though, because they are essentially sleep walking.

Movement is an illusion. I know this now. I used to be a sleepwalker. My drive buried me in my laptop-world of publication dreams. That dream stopped fulfilling me. Like Dorothy when she pulled back the curtain, I’m starting to see through the illusion. Little by little, I’m changing.  I’ve stopped running as blindly as I used to, and I’ve refocused myself.

What I’ve found is that there are many sleepwalkers out there, people who, like Dorothy’s friends, are searching for something outside themselves to bring them true happiness. Sometimes what drives them is obvious – that dream of success, the one promising riches or fame if you just work hard enough, or the dream promising happiness if you have that one secret ingredient like courage or heart. Then there’s the promised comfort  of a drink or a smoke as the sleepwalker continues to hide.

The sleepwalking may be obvious to awakened others, but most don’t see. And the sleepwalker is seldom awake enough to see himself in the illusion.

Many times the things we chase are only meant to shield us from our own truth. And as I continue my journey of truth, I find that what used to drive me does nothing for me anymore. What drives me now is an inner knowledge and acceptance.

As the morning star rises in the sky, hinting at the full awakening that comes with the Sun, I await the day and hope my sleepwalking will soon be over as my Ruby slippers glitter in the morning light.

May the Sun shine brightly on you, my friends. All my love to you,

image

The Dragonfly’s Student