I used to think so many things, that I wouldn’t want to be a cop, to be constantly face to face with crimes of passion and desperation. I used to think that even so, I’d have been a great detective, that my mind would have reveled in the challenge, putting together pieces of the human puzzle with ease.
I used to think that I wouldn’t want to be a criminal, to have my worst moments in the headlines of the daily paper, to live knowing that everyone knew what I had done, what I couldn’t stop myself from doing. I used to think that living inside prison walls wouldn’t be so bad … other than the food … at least I’d have all the time in the world to meditate, to discipline my mind, to find the silence within the noise of slamming doors, chaotic energy, amid the realization that I had no control, that I couldn’t even walk out the door.
I used to think that I would never have wanted to be a priest or a minister, to have my entire life tied to the cross, to miss out on the layman’s world, to be at the behest of other’s needs, other’s souls, others … simply others, to be confined to one religion, one way of thinking, one path. I used to think that want it or not, I would have been good at it, offering myself in service, walking the narrow path of devotion, of benevolent grace, that it would have offered as much as it took, that it could have been a sweet way to live.
and yet …
None of them were for me, none of them had my name written across their door. Life takes us, took me, where It wills. So many possibilities passed by without notice. So many paths forked without even the simplest recognition.
I knew not what I needed not to know. Sometimes it feels like I never questioned the flow, that I didn’t know there was any other road to take. Sometimes that feels odd; other times it feels like the norm, like everyone lives that way; occasionally, more often these days, it feels like magic, like I was never here to choose at all.
I didn’t see life as a game of crossroads and choices — ever. Is that strange? It wasn’t for me. It was more like playing a game of chutes and ladders while blindfolded. Life took me to the place I need to be in the moment, and then I either began the climb or slid down the chute to a destination unknown to me, only to be spit out to start over again.
It’s how I found Kenny, how we sailed through our life together until life spit him out of the game entirely and left me standing by the road for a bit, walking slowly through grief, learning to feel, to let life be. Life upped the ante. It’s how all of life has been, my heart’s rebellion, the loss of friends and family … life doing life, spiraling into more and more trying terrain, providing inarguable proof that the level of difficulty is self-imposed.
Those weren’t choices. Those were never choices and yet, to many they appeared to be just that.
Sometimes I think I am not really living this life, that I am aware of the living, the dying, the grief and the joy, that I feel it more deeply than ever before, but it’s not mine, not really. It feels like a dream, not real, not really real, an apparition, a specter of all possibilities playing out in one tiny all-encompassing version of what could be.
Every breath seems incredibly inconsequential and absolutely miraculous, both at the same time, both — the two that are not two — like someone crammed red and blue playdough together and left them to sit, already purpling, altogether unawares.
It doesn’t really matter what life looks like. It can look like a high-powered career or being a bag lady, a life putting details under a microscope or as a philosopher taking a radically non-material view. Each fork I take changes the scenery and I can never know exactly how it will.
It simply doesn’t matter. Life does its thing, perfectly, even when I think it might have been fun or a bit more rewarding to do it differently. The thinking, the musing, the day-dreaming speculation. are part of it too. Life couldn’t be any other way. There is freedom in that, absolute, joyous, compassionate, unreasoned trust in the agony and the ecstasy, in life itself.
There is no appropriate bio for Amaya Gayle. She doesn’t exist other than as an expression of Consciousness Itself. Talking about her in biographical terms is a disservice to the truth and to anyone who might be led to believe in such nonsense. None of us exist, not in the way we think. Ideas spring into words. Words flow onto paper and yet no one writes them. They simply appear fully formed. Looking at her you would swear this is a lie. She’s there after all, but honestly, she’s not. Bios normally wax on about accomplishments and beliefs, happenings in time and space. She has never accomplished anything, has no beliefs and like you was never born and will never die. Engage with Amaya at your own risk. That said with a giggle, check out Amaya’s new book – Actuality: infinity at play, available in paperback and e-book at Amazon.
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