Life: An Assorted Mess of Sensual Personalized Gifts

Seeing absolutely everything in one's life as a gift requires a huge shift in perspective. 

It means I make the choice to view all my enemies as being gifts packaged JUST FOR ME, instead of being something for me to fight. 

It means I ask the question, "What gift are you bearing me in being as you are right now?"

I drop my weapons and shields, 
I take a deep breath, and I take a step back--
I open up my perspective to a broader view of the whole picture,
and I look for what I've discovered about myself from this situation.

Gifts, gifts--all of them gifts of grace. There is always something to be grateful for in every situation:

The Gift of DEATH of my loved ones was that it shot me into deep inner reflection--I stopped being busy on the outside for a bit, and I listened to what was going on within me. It helped me realize how profoundly and unconditionally I loved all of us all along, even when on the surface we may have been squabbling like tantrum-throwing brats, taking one another for granted, and holding grudges.

Death helped me to let go of the stories and play-acts that I was tired and bored with, even miserable in.

One of the gifts of death is that I got so tired of being afraid of death that I went pro-active with it. I explored it. I explored my feelings and perceptions and ideas about it. When old and traditional and religious answers didn't resonate with me, I looked beyond the conventional, and the next thing I knew I was talking with spiritual entities on the other side of the Veil of Forgetting.

Losing a loved one to death also marked the end of each of my own lifetimes--I changed and became a new person because I viewed things differently. Because of the influence of those experiences and people and beings, I started making more consciously aware choices. I got braver about life. I started cutting through the crap layers of hypnosis and getting to the point of what mattered most of all to me.

The Gift of CANCER when I lost my dad was that I quit trying (emphasis on the trying) to be busy and successful, and went home to savor his presence while I could. I actually blossomed spiritually. I watched our entire family do that very thing--we made time to be together, to laugh, to eat, to cry, to enjoy each others company in a manner never done before. My sensual awareness came to life--some of the simplest moments were more colorful, vibrant and meaningful.

I saw how getting a diagnosis can influence a person's expectations and their creation of the reality they each then experience. I saw all of us play-acting out the disease of cancer--we played the parts of patient, family, caregivers, friends, even spiritual guides. We played out anger and manipulation scenes. We played out forgiveness and helping to shoulder burdens. We played with energy feeding. We played out compassion and REAL love. And we play-acted, and we played and we played...

Everyday life got more sensual, down to where I can still feel how frazzled to a crisp, hot that summer was, the cotton-clogged feel in my mouth and nose, it was so fine-dusted dry. In those moments, I could more easily understand how Dad grappled for a good breath. I can still smell my welcome relief  when a rainstorm broke the spell and filled the cracks in the ground, sweetly moistening the air of which I drank deeply, as though it was an elixir.

One day I stood on top of the Big Hill by Mom's grave and I held my arms out and let the wind hold me as it blew my tears and troubles out. I'm generally not very infatuated with the wind, and I can grumble with the best of them when I feel tossed and pushed about by it. But that moment, the wind was my greatest friend and supporter.

Every time I have German chocolate cake, I'm transported to one of those last days with Dad when he was sitting outside visiting with my brothers, and as I passed by on some errand, he raises his fork and calls over to me, "Look, Pen! I'm eating chocolate cake and it's going down good, too!" Swallowing was difficult for him, but his happiness and joy in his kids being with him made all of it easier.

Mom's prior death had us talking more honestly and from the heart with each other, but Dad's cancer diagnosis took it all another leap further. I only recently realized that I never once prayed to a god outside of myself that entire time. Yet I realized how compassionate I was--that I wanted to honor my dad's choices about his own life. That I wanted him to know I (not some other god out there in the ethers) loved and was grateful for him; and that I chose to be with him every step of the way, as far as it was humanly possible for me to go.

Actually, I watched all of us kids and grand kids choosing to honor our individual relationships with Dad--we allowed each other our separate time with him. No one played the favorites game.

And the night Dad and I got into a tiff was one of my greatest gifts of all--because it made me realize that we weren't perfect humans. I finally took the pressure off myself of trying to stay on a self-righteous pedestal that I kept falling off all the time anyway. While a part of me did immediately recognize it as a gift to be able to disagree and fight with my dad, another part felt ashamed of myself for doing it when he was low on oxygen, thus panicked and not quite in his most balanced state of mind.

Yet even that feeling of shame was a gift because that allows me to relate with others who experience guilt and shame and regret. One of my greatest joys was when I realized how to forgive myself my own perceived trespasses--to call it what it was, which was simply play-acting character roles that were not who I really am. We're all pretending to be human, and simply forgetting that we're just playing a Let's Pretend game. When I view the game as a gift instead of a testing and proving ground, I feel a celebration of gratitude for everything experienced because of the compassionate wisdom I gained from all of it, from all of us.

When humans open up their perspective to seeing life as a gift of experiences, then the services of Death and Disease and War become obsolete, and eventually exist no more in our reality. They are no longer needed to force us inward to quiet reflection and profound realization. With every negative experience there are an infinite number of positives mixed in with it--we've focused most of our attention and memory on that one little slice of negativity though, and that focus made it into a mountain in our reality. Open up, forgive yourself for what you wincingly think of as your screw-up--that wasn't really you--and that shift will allow you to see how much more was going on than you realized. That you were more amazing and grand than you were giving yourself credit for by holding onto the pain and condemnation.

Right now, I'm experiencing the gift of physical pain. I love gardening on balmy spring days. I love clearing out all the old, dead plant matter, smelling the earthy aromas, reveling in the bright lime green of new growth emerging, of youth and possibility. So I got outside a few days ago and cleared out a bagful of debris from my flower beds. I only worked for a couple of hours, and I quit long before I wanted to, all because I chose not to push things so as not to make a night full of pain out of something I enjoy.

I still managed to do enough to bring on a couple of sleepless, throbbing, aching days and nights. It hurts to walk even. I don't do medications of any kind anymore--they don't work at all with me. Heck, even a cold compress doesn't seem to do much, and that used to help reduce the swelling a bit. None of the old methods work--I just feel it, and wish I could bawl it out like I used to do so easily. Once in awhile, I have asked my husband to deeply massage a spot--and that can get painful enough to make me squeak out a few tears--but I don't often do it because he's going through all these body of consciousness transformations, as well. He's exhausted and sore, too.

Lately, I just seem to feel the jolts and observe myself in the moment. I know I'm alright, and I actually tell myself, "You're okay, Pen. Just breathe it in and blow it out. It'll pass. I'm okay." I'm not afraid of it. It's just kind of a pain right now--pun totally intended--AND...I know I'm okay, no matter what happens. I could even die in pain, but I'd still be okay. I still, and always will, exist.

So where's the gift in all of that, Pen? Well, all that pain is helping me to let go of "trying to worry over and work at a living." Taking on a job is out of the question. It doesn't take much right now to exhaust me because I have so many layers and levels of change and transformation going on with me, much of it which can't be seen with the human eye. Yet, it's all very real to me.

I DO KNOW deep down that my reality creates itself around me and in me according to the consciousness I radiate out. I know that if I'm radiating out that I need to suffer and work hard at creating the reality and existence I desire, then the energies serve me by delivering me a life that I have to really sweat at and sometimes bleed for.

I've experienced a plethora of physical symptoms (many of them unpleasant) in the last couple of decades--and it's all been connected to my awakening conscious awareness of my own Divinity and to my current embodied realization of what it's like to be a Divine Human. I'm changing from the old ancestral and karma-created biology into a Light Body, and that has been one hell of a ride. I know my life is infinitely and inherently, naturally abundant--in other words, I don't need to work for a living. But I'm in a human body that's had lifetime after lifetime where we humans have accepted the programming that life is just a lot of angst, work and worries--"That's just how life is--survival of the fittest. Make do with it."

I often think I have a difficult time being still and just allowing life to come to me, but I look around me at all those other busy humans rushing around through life, trying to get ahead and be somebody to someone else, and I realize I'm actually doing better at allowing myself to receive in grace and ease than I was giving myself credit for. I finally actually like me, and because of that, I'm better with everyone else than I was in the past.

And I also realize that it's not easy being something of a consciousness pioneer in the midst of so much hypnosis and mental programming. It's too easy to judge oneself as being "lazy" while in the midst of so much hustle and bustle. But I keep going back to being quiet and content with myself because the realizations and being at peace with myself are so worth it. The freedom is worth it.

When I chose to look at the Graciousness of Life instead of fighting with anything and everything in it, trying to survive it--it changed my life. I began drawing to myself, more and more, gifts and a life that I actually enjoy. Do I still have tough days? You bet I do! And still I always know I'm okay. I'll always exist, even if Penny dies.

It's all a gift...look deep and wide, and you'll see it is so...and so it is.