You Are Not Jesus

The first step of enlightenment is believing that you are Jesus – you see the correlations, you recognize the pain and depth and you feel it to the core. Many stop at that step and fall off the crazy wall, but true enlightenment is stepping beyond that level and understanding that you’re just a person, a single entity.

The journey to enlightenment is a challenging path. There are many roads that lead away from the path, many ways to become confused and distorted by the incoming information. The trick is stepping to the next step, you’re not Jesus and nor am I. I suppose that step is challenging, almost heart breaking in all you give up, but it was never yours, it’s just a trick of the light.

The valley is full of tricks and distortions, but we must be stronger than the illusion. I suppose some flail at that point, kicking furiously against the deception, but we must remember Jesus has already been there. We must cut our own path through the darkness and although we can lean on him, we cannot be him.

The valley is dark, the light making shadows through the trees. We must always cling to the subtle truths and forge our way through the darkness remembering that we must not fear the shadows, but also remembering that the path is solitary, it is an experience that we cannot explain. We must remember that we should not attempt to pull others with us on our journey and as much as we may need companionship, the path is not cluttered with groups.

And for those of us that have taken that step, not completely free from the valley of death and pain, but having traversed through the darkness and carrying the scars of our journey, we must remember to send out good thoughts to those beginning the path. We can only hope and pray that they won’t make the same mistakes or disappear down the endless trails that lead them from the light.

Happy Birthday

Today is my birthday, a day I will spend quietly, a day I will reflect. Autumn has grown difficult for me as the years have passed and as I see the barren trees and the dying flowers my mind drifts through the losses I have experienced at this time of year. The outside world of darkness and death simply reflecting my memories of people that left me behind.

Death is hard on the living and although I rejoice that the ones I have loved rest without pain, the trauma and shock experienced with the losses are grooves etched into a record. Even when my mind is determined to stand strong against the waves of reminders, my body recognizes the call and submits to the lonely longings. Memory is not just in our mind, it’s in our cells, it’s part of the whole of which we are and when the leaves begin to fall, my body awakens with the past.

When tragedy occurs it is not just the mind that is affected, it is also the body and the soul. Long after the loved one has been put to rest, the scar, unseen by human eyes, continues to heal and like all scars, sometimes it itches and sometimes it throbs. Some say that the cold always awakens old injuries, the body growing stiff and slow, for me the falling leaves, the scent of smoke in the air and the shortened days aggravate scars no one can see.

The body remembers the shock of that knock on the door or the piecing shrill of the phone, the body remembers and prepares to accept the shock again. The mind may fight and reason, but the body’s emotional immune system gears up to battle the agents of death.

The fallacy that we live under is that time is linear, from point A to point Z, but the truth is time is circular and round and round we go, touching on what has already occurred. We see the cycles of time all around us, yet we think that we can transcend the spiral and move in a straight line bypassing that reality. Of course, the world is set up to support this illusion, but the soul remembers and reminds.

And while the body, mind and soul are preparing, reasoning, battling, reminding, the darkened world we live, hidden under sound and flashing lights, sends out it’s minions, insidious creatures that demand attention. These minions have a specific job, but they do not understand their role and their role simply is to distract, confuse and mislead. These creatures, disguised under a face of care, want to disrupt the natural rhythms, they want to replace our knowledge with their own.

Some say there is a battle occurring down here, not a battle with bombs over oil, money and riches, but a battle to turn us all into a one thought minion. The war is ongoing, the tentacles long reaching and sticky and the goal of this action is to pull us from the path, to make dark the light and to ensure that we do not journey towards our individual call, but embrace the parasitic hosts.

As the rain and wind knock the leaves from the trees, leaving their skeletons bare against the gray sky and I review the reminders of loss, I will strengthen my emotional immune system by allowing the natural rhythms to play out. I will shut the door on the slimy tentacles sent by the outside world to distract me from healing and I will stand strong with surety that although my path is different, it is my path for a reason.