My first teacher/reminder on the spiritual path seemed strange to me. She would often say things like, "The engine in my car seized up. I don't have the money to buy a new car or fix this one - isn't that wonderful?!" What? I used to think either she was ahead of her time or just plain crazy. I would look at her in wonder while I tried to figure out how anyone could be so happy in spite of all the challenges that came her way. Was she for real or was she a fake? I had to admit she did seem to flow with the river, something I definitely could not do at the time, and she always got through her challenges brilliantly.
In the first several months I knew her, Barbara patiently listened to me almost every day as I cried and questioned and cried some more before reluctantly taking another step forward. When I think of her today, I visualize a lady who was always smiling and laughing her hearty, hoarse laugh (she chain-smoked). I remember how she pushed me to uncover more and more of myself, a task that in the early days seemed onerous and exhausting. She had me doing practices that seemed crazy at the time like staring at myself in the mirror, dancing in meditation and hugging trees. I was dying of embarrassment on that last one! Yet as weird as it all was, her love of life attracted me and I pressed on. After all, she was the one helping me turn my life around and I was finally getting a little reprieve from the pain I had been experiencing for years. It wasn't so much of a reprieve as much as I was now developing some alternatives for how I dealt with the challenges of life.
It has taken some years but I tend to view my challenges now like Barbara did. I often hear myself saying, "This will come out fine. It always does." I'll be the first to tell you that I'm not proud of a lot of things I've done in my life. Maybe you can say the same thing, too, but we have to remember that was the past - even what we did yesterday. From one day to the next, in order to have a full experience of life, we're going to make so-called mistakes and missteps. The key is to leave them immediately in the past and transform the behavior. That's how we have the triumphs and victories that make life so sweet.
A couple years ago I was tormenting myself over the part I played in an event the previous year. My mind just wouldn't let it go and it was having an effect on my health and happiness. I was becoming worried about my worry and knew that if I didn't get a handle on it, that energy could manifest in my body as a sickness or worse. Not knowing how in the world to transform this, I prayed, "Dear God, help me transform this into Light. I myself don't know how." I waited knowing that the answer would come that night or perhaps weeks later. And it did. I got the opportunity to share my heart with my friends and I mean, my heart. I didn't point fingers at anyone. I just shared my feelings and the pain I felt. I didn't realize until the next day that the burden I had made myself carry for so long had been lifted. I then received a message in a mystical way which said that I had played my role perfectly, that it was a learning for everyone involved and that it all happened precisely as it was 'written.'
The point I'm making is that everything is a learning to be embraced and loved. Events that cause us to feel sad, bad or angry carry within them the golden seed of transformation. We can choose in every moment how we desire to live this life, in misery or in joy. In misery, we tend to carry a great deal of density on our humanistic shoulders, but that burden can easily be lightened by asking God I AM to help us transform our challenges into Light.
I once attended a seminar of spiritual discipline that required us to remain perfectly silent. Not even a whisper could be uttered for any reason. By practicing sensory deprivation involving silence and wearing earplugs, we would be able to go deeper into our meditation. My then husband was a great source of preoccupation for me. In the opening moments of group silence, he began noisily unwrapping the cellophane around his earplugs. I finally leaned over and whispered to him that it wasn't yet time to use the earplugs and then I suddenly realized I myself had crossed the boundary of silence. I couldn't even get through the first five minutes, so great was the distraction of my husband. As I sat and fretted about being the only one in the group who had so little self-discipline to refrain from speaking, I received a flash vision of the Divine Mother and then heard her booming voice resound within my body and being: "Alright. You've learned from it. Now move on!" This beautiful voice was so commanding it jerked me right out of my self-absorption. Her simple, thunderous message (yes, mothers can have voices of thunder, too) taught me an enormous lesson and left a powerful imprint on my psyche. Whenever I fall into the trap of worrying about past misdeeds, I can still hear the Divine Mother's voice saturating my being with that message. I pass it on to you so that you may remember it at an appropriate time, cast light on a behavior that is begging for transformation, and move on!
Purusha K. Radha is publisher of Velocity Magazine, an Independent Press Celebrating 11 Years as Central Florida's Premier Holistic, Green, Conscious Living Magazine. With a unique blend of education and inspiration, Velocity captures the people, subjects and ideas that are defining the conscious living culture of Central Florida. From life-enhancing food and alternative healthcare to raising peaceful children and green living to tools for designing an ideal life,Velocity is what Central Florida is talking about now.
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