Allowing Me in My Enlightenment

When I chose to awaken, I naively thought that it would make me exempt from losing any more loved ones to death. After all, I'd lost a boyfriend, and later, both of my parents. There were several others that died, but these were my closest relationships. After the experience with my dad, I truly thought I understood it all, therefore, no more deaths were needed for me, right? Even when Tobias told us Shaumbra that we were going to experience more losses--relationships ending, jobs ending, and deaths, I trembled inside, but still tried to convince myself that he was talking to all those other people. That it was totally unnecessary for me.

Then in 2010, my beloved Molly cat suffered a second stroke, and died several hours later that day. She had the first stroke about a year or so earlier. When that happened, she was unable to move for about twenty minutes one morning, and I kind of lost it, and told her not to do that to me--that I couldn't withstand losing her. We took her to the vet, though she was back to normal, and he said it was her thyroid, that he could remove it, or put her on medication. Thyroid diseases were the hot topic in mass consciousness at the time--even Oprah was sharing about her thyroid condition. I didn't want to put Molly through surgery--felt it was unnecessary--and no way was I going to force medicine down her throat every day. To me, that wasn't allowing her quality of life. When she was mauled by a dog 12 years earlier, it was a challenge to get her to swallow the medication for that short period. I just wasn't going to do that to her, no matter how much it cost me to lose her. And even then, I was still trying to convince myself that I was exempt from losing her, because I was awake enough. I was a spiritual lightworker, dammit!

I was spiritually bullshitting myself. Trying to mold myself into being how I mentally thought a spiritual self-master should be. Weren't they these people who were wise, gentle, mild, strong, composed all the time? Weren't we beyond having our feelings and emotions triggered? Didn't we have the perfect solution for every situation we faced?

Ahhh! Having all the answers...I've KNOWN deep down that I've always had them for myself, but what I hadn't realized is that my human mind keeps limiting them, diluting them, distorting them in an attempt to make the answer match its VERY LIMITED UNDERSTANDING of the soul's experience while in a human consciousness and form.

In other words, my human expectations of what spiritual enlightenment looked like and how it was, kept me closing down and limiting my experiences. I couldn't perceive and then consciously choose potentials that my limited human mind didn't even know were possibilities. I was trying to force myself to experience death differently than I had in the past, but all I was succeeding in doing was numbing myself down, emotion-wise (by trying to not grieve and cry so much), trying to grapple about and define how I should handle, and comport, myself with the subject of death. Trying to figure out how to over-ride death. My human mind was limiting me all the while it was trying to serve me. I was throwing myself against brick walls, trying to figure it all out--putting so much pressure on myself to perform, to prove to myself and others that I was truly enlightened, and that I had a handle on this death thing.

Two years later, I lost Molly's brother, my beloved Max. In the last few months, he started sleeping under the covers curled next to my husband, and then moving over to my pillow to purr in my ear for the next portion of the night. He was getting us prepared to say good-bye.

He had an episode one night in June. I honestly didn't know what to expect--whether he was going to miraculously get better or die. For three weeks, I struggled with trying to figure out how I was supposed to be as an awakened, enlightened being, while watching him be fully present, lovingly interacting with me one moment, then, the next, not-- he'd stare through me as if I was invisible and wouldn't respond to my voice. It helped a bit more in having heard Adamus say that we often leave our bodies weeks prior to our actual physical deaths, regardless of whether it's an "accident" or an illness--that we don't suffer pain, though our bodies go through the motions and may appear to be in pain. I wasn't beating up on myself as much with Max as I had with Molly by trying to figure out where I went wrong in caring for him. I had compassionately finally realized that I'd done the best I knew how with both--and that it was cruel to dwell on thinking I'd screwed up.

I let him be outside on his own all day, while checking on him now and then--trying to not to hover too much and force my will on him, yet loving him, touching him, and thanking him for our time together. We allowed him to stay out all night when he seemed close to the end, in an effort to let him go off and die in peace, on his own, as pets often do in those last moments. Only to come awake the next morning (not really having slept at all), to rush out to find him, my heart pounding in fear that he died, and breathing in relief to find him alive. This went on and on, with me trying to be what I thought was enlightened through the whole process.

He finally died in my husband's arms on the Fourth of July, 2012. I was outside, trying to just let go and trust that all was truly okay, trying to keep myself open to all kinds of possibilities, but without expectation of the outcome. I did know that he, like Molly, wasn't dying to punish or hurt me. I knew this was all to help me release myself from the beliefs humans have surrounding death, aging, and dying--but that didn't mean it was without heartache and pain in my experience. When Max had taken his last breath, Kel said he just seemed to glow, and that he was so beautiful that he had to bring him out to show me, where I sat in the moonlight, on the bench where Max loved to lay, under the silver maple tree--and he truly was beautiful...but it was still Good-bye...

Some people may be rolling their eyes, thinking, "For God's sake, Penny--all this silly, foolish angst over an animal. That's not like losing a human child, partner, parent, etc. Get over it!"

I've always loved animals, and when I was a kid, our pets were my best friends. They, cats and dogs all together, walked the pastures with me. One dog, Charlie, when he was no longer able to physically walk that distance with me, actually sat up on the hillside watching and waiting for me to return. They sat beside me to watch the sun set. They listened adoringly while I sang to them--Born Free, One Tin Soldier, Billy-Don't Be a Hero, Tapestry...When I was down, they comforted me and did everything they could to make me laugh and lighten up--and they always succeeded, if only for a moment. I actually mattered to them.

According to Tobias (crimsoncircle.com), our pets came into being, an extension of oneself, specifically to support the humans with whom they identify--they were created to remind us humans, who felt so lost and far from Home/Heaven, that we are, in fact, never alone--and that Home is wherever we each are. Heaven is right here, in me, right there, in you...

Tobias said that when our pets die, we should go wherever there were babies (species didn't have to be the same), and the ones we'd lost would be reincarnated--we'd see it in their eyes.

I knew Max and Molly came to be with us specifically--I'd read it in their eyes. Molly, a gold and white tabby, was the first one we saw, and, when Kelly picked her up she lay back in his hand and cuddled under his chin like it was her place to be. Max actually disappeared when my sister went to claim him from the litter. He was the only black and white short-hair, the one she planned to take home, but he was nowhere to be found, so she chose another. When I went looking for the kittens that were left that the mother kept moving around, Max, gazing steadfastly into my eyes, was the lead kitten emerging from their mother's hiding place. He'd been waiting for me.

Kel and I had planned to get just one cat as our first pet together, but we couldn't decide between Max and Molly, so that morning on the drive to Mom and Dad's place to get them, we agreed to take home the first one we saw. The first ones we saw were Max and Molly, sitting side-by-side in a cinder block. We took it as a sign to take them both--and I'm SO GLAD we did!

So, my pets are not just animals--and I am not their master. We're best friends and we're family. Letting go of them was like letting go of myself--because I actually was letting go of a part of me...that's what love does. It lets go of all control over its creations. Love releases them in total (not just a little bit as it suits me) freedom. Love gives life, and sets it free--releases it from all expectation.

And when you're a human stumbling around half-awake and immersed in a human mass consciousness that is very much dead asleep--well, you have no idea how to be enlightened. You want to be able to trust yourself enough to let go of those you so dearly love, but it's hard, it's confusing and frustrating, and it hurts, and it feels and looks like an effing hell of a mess! Deep down, in excruciatingly-fleeting glimpses, you KNOW, without a doubt, that this human experience is more and can be more than what one's experienced and perceived so far--but you've no idea how to bring it all about. So I resorted to spewing spiritual bullshit--mahkyo--in a desperate attempt to convince myself that I was getting somewhere with all of this. Even now, I realize that I had a goal "in mind"--a destination. I didn't "think" I even set goals anymore! I was still searching, whether I wanted to admit to it, or not.

You know the story of how the bridegroom in the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament wandered the streets searching for his bride? He searched and he searched and he searched, wandering the streets outside of himself--only to finally realize she was there with him, within him, all along. The searching outside kept him distracted, kept him from "seeing" a potential reality--one that was ACTUALLY as real as him losing his loved one. It's only when he quit searching for her that he discovered her.

In short, I feel completely powerless when it comes to losing others to death.

According to Adamus Saint-Germain, allowing oneself to be powerless and no longer trying to control an outcome is exactly what it means to allow enlightenment. He said,  "You CHOOSE to AWAKEN, and you ALLOW your ENLIGHTENMENT..."

For me, that finally meant that I FINALLY simply ALLOW myself to feel and act and react and fully immerse in, and experience, whatever happens in my life--without judging how I am. Without trying to monitor, analyze, control, and mold myself into acting and feeling how I THINK I should be. I just am--and that's okay.

I may be a bitch. I may roll my eyes at the crazy absurdities I observe in the world. I may laugh embarrassingly loud. I may try to crack a joke that no one else seems to get. I may get sick and sometimes have difficulty bending or walking, or experience any number of those myriad, often annoying, symptoms of awakening. I may burst into sobbing tears over some book I read. I may feel sad, even inconsolably bereft when a loved one dies. I may have relationships end. I may even physically die.

I may--much to my consternation--feel like, and act the part of the victim, the one role I've struggled for years not to be. I have, in fact, felt like a victim all the time, but like those priests who tried to deny their own sexuality, my victimhood, and their sexual appetites came out in spades.

I can feel totally POWERLESS, lose complete control over myself, or realize I never did have control--and, yet, still--I EXIST.

I've realized that NONE of us HUMANS could have committed the atrocities with one another that all of us have experienced and done to ourselves and each other in the past, UNLESS, deep-down within every single one of us was the profound KNOWINGNESS that the darknesses we explored and played in weren't permanent--that we were more than these stories and beliefs and identities we dabble in.

Some part in all of us KNEW we could NOT truly take the life of anyone. That those dark roles were just role-playing on all our parts--none of it was who we truly and fully are. Deep-down, every one of us KNOWS, without doubt, that ALL LIFE is ETERNAL, and that this experience on Earth, pretending to be limited human beings, is our chance to explore and discover this gift of life that we've all been given--that I Am , that You Are, on a SAFE and SACRED playground.

And with ALLOWING my own ENLIGHTENMENT--simply allowing myself to authentically be, and experience, without limiting it mentally--I've recognized that I'm most likely not going to harm anyone or fight anything anymore. I'm safe with me, and so are you.

Deep down, all of us KNOW that all is truly well in all of Creation...we're all okay, and I don't have to care about trying to save anyone or the world from all this experience.

 Aaah! I finally ALLOWED myself to say honestly, "I don't care!" That's SUCH A RELIEF to admit that--to let go of such a limited, and wildly inconsistent, human programmed belief about how I should be, and what I should care about. I'm done trying to figure out how to prioritize all the things I was taught I should care about. That was a hamster wheel effort going--that's right--nowhere! 

And lightning didn't strike me down for admitting I don't care. I love and I respect and I honor, but I don't care. I have hands-off compassion, but I don't care. And, imagine that!--I still exist. Even though my humanity wants to judge me as being so "bad and wrong" for not caring. My blind, all-alone humanity is yelling at me, "Pen, that's selfish! That's no way to be! Don't admit that (even though, we all know deep-down that it's true, and we're afraid admitting it means we're monsters)."

I don't care about Max and Molly because I KNOW they're okay--and by allowing that, I've felt myself truly finally set my loved ones free...I am no longer limiting them. That's what love is. That's what love does. TRUE LOVE LETS GO!

It finally really doesn't matter to me if no one else understands this or not. I still exist...and I really don't know what embodied enlightenment is going to look like or how it will feel...I don't care! Oh, the breath of freedom that comes with that ALLOWING of MYSELF!

I'm just ready for a new set of potential experiences not conceivable, much less, realized, before--I'm bored with the old traumas and dramas manifested out of those old limited Little Human beliefs and mind traps. I know there's more, and so does everyone else--and they'll all choose to awaken, however much, and allow their own enlightenment whenever they want...and always, ultimately--we're all okay...



P.S. On Friday, December 13, 2013--a little over a month after writing the above post--Max suddenly appeared in a dream during an afternoon nap. I knew, without a doubt, that it was definitely Max--alive and healthy--and I picked him up and carried him over to their food dishes to feed him. 

I grappled slightly trying to remember the story of how I'd lost him: Had he actually died? Or had he just wandered off for a long time?

I realized none of that mattered.

What mattered is that he was alive! And he had returned HOME to me! The past--our old story--had faded, all the pain disappearing with it. All I felt was joy and ease...everything was good...all was well in all of Creation. And I'm left truly feeling excited about being here on Earth now, having my ENLIGHTENED human experience...

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My Awakening
Forgive Yourself--We're All Just Role-Playing Together