"Oh where, oh where can my baby be? The Lord took her away from me. She’s gone to Heaven so I’ve got to be good, so I can see my baby when she leaves this world…” (Lyrics to Last Kiss by Wayne Cochran, song remade by Pearl Jam).
I heard this song again for the first time in a number of years, and it kept squeezing my heart and bringing “almost” tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. Finally I realized it haunted me so because it was making me aware of an aspect of my earlier life that has been running the show, making a foundation for my present daily life, often without me realizing it was here. Only this time I had determined to let it go—to release myself from that old story--so “once-bad, trying to make amends-Penny” was having one final hurrah, taking her bow, arms full of roses as she exited the stage for good.
What does all this have to do with conspiracy theories? My “baby” in the song was Arlen—my first boyfriend who was killed in a motorcycle accident. I had determined that I must have been headed in a wrong direction for God to have to resort to such punishment of me (and this wasn’t something I could articulate out loud to anyone else). I figured I’d royally screwed up so I’d better get myself together and really work at being good in order to make amends—to maybe see Arlen again.
As in the song, I died that night with him, too, and yet I kept waking up to new days, wondering how I was going to get through each one, wondering if I’d ever get it right—never feeling I deserved anything that made me happy. Life went on around me, yet mine seemed futureless and meaningless—I had to give myself a reason and a purpose for being. I had to fight something—it made me feel alive.
Conspiracies surrounding the powerful world money brokers and fighting “The Man” was a natural cause for me—I grew up on those stories from my dad’s travels and experiences. I thought I was honoring my dad by making his causes and beliefs my own. Turns out, honoring another's sovereignty--even a parent's or a child's--does not mean agreeing with them in all things. Nor does it require me repeating their journey at the expense of giving up my own sovereignty and experiential desires. And I thought I was willing to sacrifice myself for a better future for others…but the truth was, and is, I'm tired and bored with that whole self-sacrifice business and philosophy. It isn't what it's cracked up to be. I'm done with martyrdom.
The deeper I plunged into things, the more scared I got, and the more I found myself wanting certain scary people to just die. You know—in all our fairy tales, the villain dies and peace is restored. But death of the villain didn’t seem like a real solution—there always seemed to be another ready to take that person’s place. The stopping of any horrid behavior seemed to need to come from deeper within the hearts of humans—we had to get at the core of why we do such things to one another in order to really bring such atrocities to an end. The execution of Saddam Hussein felt barbaric to me—I mourned that humanity still saw killing anyone as justice truly served.
I also squirmed at the fanatical gleam I saw in other’s eyes (who were on the same side as me) when talking of fighting evil. I was afraid of seeing that same gleam in the mirror. It was just as frightening (and probably more so to see it in myself) as the perceived villains in our conspiracy stories.
That was my wake-up call to questioning the accepted truths of everyone outside of myself and to let go of trying to be a part of some sort of organization. I knew that if change was going to come to my world, that it all started right here, inside of me—otherwise I was just reacting to life (mostly out of fear) and not living it.
The pinnacle of all of this was the three days I pretty much laid in bed bawling non-stop, hopeless for the future of humanity after seeing a film on government officials supposedly using kidnapped children as sex slaves and then filming it all. Though I had no kids of my own, I was an aunt several times over, and the thought of anyone doing such things to little kids devastated me to the core.
This personal terror and powerlessness was further exacerbated by my acceptance of the Christian fundamentalist belief in Armageddon and hell as a possible destination. Eternal hell never really did ring true to my personal perception of God as a loving father/mother but I dabbled with it because it was a pretty popular belief in those days and I was feeling like the lowest of the low at that time. I was also working a warehouse job where I felt like a robot just going through the motions--not being creative (potentially, I knew there was more to me) or really enjoying life—I had given up.
I started talking and listening to God my own way. I read the Bible (learned to use concordances to find the original meaning of key words translated from their original Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek to English), but I stayed away from participating in Bible study groups. The Bible itself said not to study the literal word, not to listen to outside teachers, but to study one’s own heart. Some of the passages wouldn’t make much sense to me at the time of reading, but I walked alone a lot in those days, and as I walked I’d, out-of-the-blue, suddenly get a warm, comforting tingle and clear, personally-applicable understandings of passages that had stymied me before.
There were a lot of “shoulds” and “should nots” according to religious scholars and practitioners, and at times I would feel overwhelmed with confusion as to the right and wrong way—and every now and then I’d find myself doing the Am I Crazy? check. But I’d look back, and realize that I was more at peace within myself compared to where I was in the past, and there was no going back to that, or I’d be dead. So onward I went.
I loved what Jesus had to say and determined to sincerely learn to “love my perceived enemies” and to “not judge.” His parable about the prodigal son was my favorite and most encouraging story for me. The Old Testament Book of Job also intrigued me—isn’t it funny that a whole story was written about what "a job" (though the two spellings are pronounced differently) we can make our lives to be?
It occurred to me just a few days ago that one of the most seductive conspiracy theories in our world (especially inside of me) has been the war/struggle between what we perceive as Good and Evil/Satan/The Devil. In fact, it was the perceived evil inside of me that scared me the most of all—and that aspect has had me doing all sorts of cruel things to myself in my mental efforts of trying to handle it. It also had me feeling alive at times, too—I see that fanatical gleam in the eyes of those I talk with who are still fighting Satan. Drama—it was a challenging addiction to walk away from, but I’m finally bored and exhausted with it, which makes it easy to leave now.
The wonderful thing is that the more I’ve become aware of myself—what I’m thinking, really feeling in the moment—the more benevolent a person I am. I am way less likely to harm anyone now than I was when I was feeling cornered and scared to the core of me.
It also occurred to me that Satan wasn’t a being—Satan was a curtain, a piece of drapery I call the Veil of Forgetfulness. I forgot who I was—that I was a child of God/Source of All, and thus, a highly creative body of consciousness in my own right.
Just for fun, insert “The Veil of Forgetfulness” in place of the word “Satan/The Deceiver” in the Book of Job. It becomes simply the story of a guy who forgot who he was--but he finally remembered in the end, before he physically died. Because of the experiences and wisdom gained from that journey—everything he had seemingly lost in the beginning (his family, his health, his abundance, and his joy in being) was restored, but now it was in an even grander, richer state than it could ever have been before. Because of the experience--the positive and negative, the light and the dark dancing, entwining, separating, and whirling and twirling, all together--the colors got richer, more vibrant, more real.
When the Divine Masculine with the Divine Feminine are set free and allowed to naturally flow into their own state of balancing each other, while alive as a human being--a brand new world, and game, comes into being.
When the Masculine and the Feminine become full and equal partners in the dance of life, along with their respective counterparts--Passion with Compassion, FREE CHOICE with ALLOWANCE of all ways of being--when they dance together, unhindered by a blind and scared, limited human mind, magic happens.
And if you consider the possibility that God sent his “Prodigal Son” to Earth simply to experience stuff and gain wisdom, only to have that son forget who he was and immerse himself in purely separate and all-alone-feeling human pursuits, you’ll get a deep appreciation of why The Father greeted his return with a feast of all feasts instead of “I told you so…”
I had this bolt of fabric dropped over me, enveloping me so I couldn’t see properly—everything was distorted and constricting. It felt like a prison cell. It was dark in there—so dark I couldn’t see any part of myself clearly, and I felt terrified and very much all alone—striking out at anything that moved (which was usually one of my own limbs) in a protective effort to simply survive. My protective shields were up, my energies were balled up like a porcupine on the defensive and offensive--so the unconditionally loving Universe matched my radiation, ray for ray--and I was blessed with a literal hell of a fight to survive at times. This amnesiac’s game of Blind Man’s Bluff was not always an enjoyable game for this human being either—it was hell on earth in its worst moments, albeit, it was mixed with some wonderful and joyful moments, too. But I’m done playing that particular game--I'm actually bored with it.
Arlen didn't die because I was bad and needed chastisement or punishment by some god out there. It was an experience I funneled myself into (more on a soul level than a human level) in order to shake myself awake out of this dense old, extremely linear and limited, consciousness reality--to get me questioning whether it was fully true, to get my human self to open up to being able to conceive of greater possibilities. That there maybe was something more to this life experience than growing up, getting a boring job, having a family, dealing with dramas and traumas, paying bills and taxes--fighting to survive--then dying.
In the midst of all of that experience, I realized one thing: No matter what happens, I EXIST...I exist...I exist...I am that I am!...and no one can take that away from me, even if my human body should die.
I’m ready for something more enjoyable, easier, less serious. I'm dropping my weapons and my protective armor--and I'm still here. I still exist...
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor (brain-researcher and author of My Stroke of Insight) told of her experience of a stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. The left side is very logical and literal—it’s the part that says, “I am a separate being.” The creative, intuitive right hemisphere says, “I am connected to and am a part of all that is.” With the loss of the function of her left brain, her arm blended into the wall she leaned against—there was no perceivable line of separation between her body and everything else. Rather than just blending into our surrounding surroundings, being able to perceive oneself as a separate entity, while still knowing we’re connected, has its joys and advantages.
The Veil of Forgetfulness is actually the physical separation of the two hemispheres of the human brain. We’ve been predominantly left-brained—mental--in mass consciousness, thus our feeling all alone and separate. But the right brain is our connection to God/Our Divinity/All that Is, and we’re coming to the place where the two hemispheres function fully as a united team here on Earth, creating from a vantage point of full awareness of who we are…
Satan, perceived by me as a simple curtain, just lost its power over, and in, my body of consciousness…I am a gift to me, in this body—and I am choosing to live it as such….
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Trying to Save Face when Personal Shame Haunts
Conspiracies and Fear
"One Nation under a Christian God" OR Separation of Church and State?
We're all quite the characters--actors, that is--role-playing together. These are stories of my awakening, my remembering realization that Home/Heaven is wherever I am. That I am not the puppet on someone else's string. The search is over. I simply FREELY CHOSE to quit searching outside of myself, and realized all my answers have always been within.