Loving What Is
The clock said two a.m., but Jesse felt wide awake, though far from bushy tailed.
Perhaps a cup of tea will soothe me, she thought. Everything in the house looked different somehow; the way a place can look when you've been gone a long time and your perspective has changed so much that reality shifts, like the Matterhorn at Disneyland. The walls seemed to embrace her and cuddle her as she made her way to the kitchen, and it wasn't until she poured her tea that she realized she hadn't turned on any lights. She went outside to sit on the porch, enjoying the dark stillness, but it was only a matter of moments before she let intrusive thoughts descend upon her.
Why was being intimate so damn hard? How come getting close to others doesn't feel good? Was it just my family? Jesse's mind reeled with question upon question, feeling her old instinct to pull away and distance herself gearing up, and not feeling the strength to resist.
Enough resistance already, she decided. The people who she'd felt had held her back from discovering who she
was were now several steps ahead of her on the path she tried to possessively claim as her own, and she felt left behind. Left behind to wait for Julia. It made her laugh through tears when she visualized Julia and she being the last humans in bodies, because Julia hung on tighter than gravity, and Jesse would not leave her. She could picture Julia insisting, "They're all wrong!" She's the only person Jesse knew who actually believes it's possible to win an argument with the universe. Something in her knew it was not Julia doing the holding on, but Jesse being unwilling to let go herself; an insight she shut her eyes to because anger was easier than forgiveness. She'd built an entire identity out of passive resistance disguised as spiritual maturity, and feeling overpowered by someone, especially her sister, was a victim mentality she protested vehemently, all the while succumbing to it herself. Making a weak, feeble attempt at centering herself, she claimed more boldly than she felt, "Be Here Now," and focused inward just long enough to get a glimpse of the fear and barked back, "Screw, Now."
She went into the kitchen because it was a place where she moved with confidence, but once there just stood in the middle of the room. She suddenly felt older and noticed that her movements were unfamiliar; her body felt like a stranger. She paused at the bottom of the stairs looking around for something to keep her downstairs, then slowly dragged herself upstairs, wondering what she was dreading. At the top of the stairs, she felt dizzy and stopped. Reaching for the banister to steady herself, she found her body unable to move. It was as if some invisible force held her there. Her mind became unfocused, and her body taken over by pulsations she'd never felt before. Intensely aware of the area a few inches beyond her skin, she remained still, not because she couldn't move, but now didn't want to. There were no thoughts in her head, and though unable to form the words, the feeling of immense gratitude for this absence of thought surfaced. The pulsing ebbed slightly, and she looked down at her hands and legs, as if there might be some visual sign of what she was sensing. Colors: red, orange, blue, green and purple, in a kaleidoscope that slowly organized, then sent her attention to locations in her body where the different colors funneled off from the others and remained.
Her first lucid thought appeared as she became aware of her heart chakra: Surrender. The pulsing leapt outward, and she again reached for the banister, this time finding it and steadying herself.
Breathe, Jesse, she heard herself encourage. "I want to go to bed," she said, and tentatively took a step. She was overcome by the presence of this formless, yet tactile substance that now beckoned to her from the bed, and stepped slowly toward it, but once in front of it, something caused her to hesitate before touching the bed. She could feel a sort of vibration or an energy around it. She stepped backward a foot or so and asked out loud, "What's going on?" She felt a warmth-like substance radiating off the bed, and putting her hand out the heat increased. She wondered if from sleeplessness she was hallucinating or something. It wasn't scary it was just... there. She had no opinion or any kind of frame of reference for what she was experiencing. Her hand dropped to her side again. Did objects have auras? Energy fields? She didn't question the existence of auras, and with the exception of childhood recollections of seeing light around trees, she had never actually observed an aura and didn't know much about them.
God, I can almost see this...thing, she insisted. What if it was a porthole? Temporary insanity occurred to her, and she wondered if she would ever be able to describe this experience and not be considered a lunatic.
Her bed had literally become a living, breathing entity, welcoming her like a friend with open arms. She intuitively knew not to be afraid, but was afraid anyway. Well, part of her. The other part was magnetically drawn. She could distinguish where the radiation stopped or at least dissipated, but through what sensory vehicle she couldn't discern. Jesse took a slow, deep inhale, released the breath and stepped closer to the edge of the bed. The sensation intensified and again drew her closer, compelling her to enter the center of the experience by getting on the bed. As the vibrations lovingly washed over her, cleansing the fear and dissolving it in moments, she raised herself up onto the bed and sat cross legged near the headboard, not entirely ready to fully relax. Now she was inside of this radiating warmth-like cocoon.
A capsule. I am inside a healing capsule whose ethereal medicine will take away this wound, she decided. It was extremely pleasant, and despite the foreign sensations, Jesse knew she was perfectly safe and perfectly loved. She inhaled and exhaled slowly a few more times, and coaxed herself into relaxing by talking out loud. "I am okay. This is perfectly okay. I am perfectly safe and perfectly loved. Only the love is real. I surrender to this moment. I let God and let go." The sound of her voice acted like an anchor harboring her to reality, and she questioned ever so briefly which was the true reality. For several
minutes there was only silence, and the pleasant sense of the radiating warmth now tickling her physical body. Jesse closed her eyes as a testament of faith in the experience. Her eyes flew open again a second later. "Okay, so part of me does wonder if I'm going to be sucked into some black hole," she said. This made her giggle, and the action of giggling relaxed her more deeply. Closing her eyes again she breathed in the love, and let go the fear as she exhaled. She was determined to keep her eyes closed. A childhood memory of the feeling associated with trying to trust the darkness came up, and she wrestled with the question of needing to trust the darkness or simply turn on the light by opening her eyes. She felt tears form at the outer edges of her eyes, and the stinging saltiness was more welcomed than she expected. She didn't know what the answer was.
What is the lesson here? Keep my eyes closed or open them? She hated being afraid of the dark, but had not yet discovered the antidote to this one.
It's too easy to get lost in the maze of possible causes, she thought. Why am I afraid of the dark? See, here's that booby trap: why. The answer will not change my response. The darkness is...empty...lonely...free. Hmmm, interesting,
she thought, I didn't expect that. Our deepest fear really isn't that we are powerless, but that we are powerful beyond measure. My God, how on earth did we get so far away from You? How did I?
From somewhere inside her, she said, "The darkness has no power. The light my eyes see is not the light that saves me. The light my eyes see is not the light that protects me." Jesse repeated this mantra five or six times, until the power of her spoken words took hold. "Nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists." This statement is from the Course, and like the other mantra, she repeated it several times. Jesse kept her eyes closed all throughout this exercise, and felt the familiar surge of victory over fear as the hurdle of darkness was conquered in this moment, and more salty tears trickled down her cheek. This time they were tears of relief. Another myth of mysticism: our wounds don't heal once and for all, but moment by moment.
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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