I wonder … if I hadn’t had the experiences life granted me, who would I be? If instead of adversity I had been given ease, abundance, and love, would I be this version of me? It doesn’t seem so.
Looking at a friend’s pictures, a friend who hasn’t seen death, who still is surrounded by all of her loved ones and seems to have more than enough of most everything, it triggered wonder. I love that … when my triggers don’t arise out of fear but curiosity.
Had I been her, or if Kenny had lived, if my heart hadn’t gone on the fritz, or my relationships with my family been so strained … if my stockpile of money hadn’t dwindled through it all and travel had remained on my dance card, would I be this me.
Would I have been pushed to my knees in surrender?
Would I have bothered to meditate, to reach within if without hadn’t felt outside of my grasp?
It’s a common thing to look at others and deem their lives frivolous, to wonder why they can’t see what’s really here, but is it grounded in anything at all? Could anyone be other than as they are?
I didn’t have my old friend’s experiences, had I, I might be more like her. Most likely, it seems, but I didn’t, and I’m not. That wasn’t my joyride, my walk in this park, my path to follow.
I’ve looked at others and compared — that’s what minds tend to do; guessing you have too — but what’s the point of it, other than to make us feel better, or worse, about our lives? Who does that serve?
But … they should have, could have … I didn’t, I could have … really? Those weren’t the experiences that came our way. The ones that did, opened other doors or closed them, repointing our feet, our hearts, our minds, to our perfect love affair, not perfect in the sense that it was filled with oodles of joy and creature comforts, but perfect for what we are here to experience this time around.
Grokking that, there is a cellular relaxation. People tend to fight against the idea of control-less-ness with everything they’ve got. Of course, we do! This world puts on a pretty good show of choice. To have the appearance — look, feel, taste, touch of choice is hard to deny, but looking at life with an open mind demonstrates something else.
We all know this. We know we don’t choose our experiences. We didn’t choose which neighborhood we lived in or if our parents were homeless. We didn’t choose what clothes or schools we could afford. We didn’t choose.
I was a big supporter of free will, although something within was constantly niggling away at its underpinnings. I was really good at shoring it up, replacing one crumbling abutment with another, one thought with an even more subtle one.
Spirituality was one of the many refined ways I hid from the truth. It gave me all sorts of twists and turns of avoidance to travel within its maze. It gave me labels and ideas of higher and lower, of ascension and those remaining on the ground. It reinforced good and evil in tricky ways and created a sense of those who were special and those who were just ordinary. Honestly, looking back from outside of the labyrinth, it wasn’t very different from the churches of my youth — different words but the same sense of division.
I have compassion for myself now, the struggle that I took on, the swords I felt compelled to cross. It continues quite naturally until something triggers a tsunami of love for life as it is. Sometimes that only happens when all the alternatives have been exhausted, when nothing else remains.
What’s so cool is that none of it is a waste. It’s hard. It’s heart-breaking. It’s filled with tears and loss but what undoing isn’t? You’re losing your old way of being. There’s always chaos as old worlds break up. Recognizing what this is, what we are, means experiencing the demise of what came before. It’s like standing in the middle of an earthquake as everything you’ve trusted and believed falls apart.
It’s not the end of the world — well, that’s not quite true for it is the end of a world of struggle, the end of trying to hold that world together when it so obviously cannot be contained. A calming of the nerves, a settling in that defies fight or flight — a sumptuous feast of freedom — lies in the rubble right in the middle of life as it is.
No … I wouldn’t be me without all that came before … and there is no way that all that came before could be anything but what it was.
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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