Where did my joy in simply being alive go?

A few days ago I realized it was time for me to give myself a proper holiday...a holiday from trying to just get through another gathering pretty much like the last one. Gatherings where I didn't really enjoy myself because I was focused on not offending anyone or smoothing over the rough spots for others, whether they were angry or sad or judgmental. It's a heavy, and not so satisfying, juggling act trying to make everyone else feel at least okay, if not happy. I chose to give myself a holiday where I didn't feel obligated to plan for and cook for others--even if it was just one dish for a type of potluck affair. I didn't have to leave my home and my beloved pets to make trips in weather and traveling conditions I had no control over. I let my husband do his own thing--I let him leave me for his family--and that part wasn't quite so easy...

I realized I hadn't truly enjoyed a holiday since my first boyfriend died back in 1984. The feeling of magic and joy in them had been seeping away even before then because my family was stuck in our own limited consciousness situation of lack of abundance--both financially and status-wise in our community. I was old enough to worry about what others thought of me and I lost myself in that story. I lost myself in the programming that taught me that I should worry about and plan the future, and that I should recognize, and not make, the mistakes of the past.

Once upon a time I thought I made a really, really bad and wrong choice.

...and that belief that I was wrong has been haunting me ever since.

Because, you see, that choice involved my having asked to do something I enjoyed doing instead of just going along with someone elses desires and program. It involved me feeling hurt when my request was turned down. It involved me feeling angry with him because he chose his family and their work instead of being with me. And so I did something out of town on my own without him that night...and he died.

So then I felt guilty because I believed my anger and my "that's no way to be" selfishness killed him.

I left him for a moment--we went our separate ways just for an evening...and he died.

All I did was ask if he wanted to go to a simple teenage romantic comedy showing at the movie theater in town that night. A chick flick called "Sixteen Candles." Considering the fact that I continued going out with him after our first date was watching the movie, "Cheech and Chong: Up in Smoke" shows that I was pretty flexible in my own expectations of others. Ha! I really wasn't used to giving voice to my own wants or desires, to making choices, so I was venturing out on an uncertain limb to began with.

And then he died...and there I was stuck in a futureless void that I didn't know how to fill.

I couldn't imagine a Penny without him. His life actually ended, but mine did, too, only I was still waking up to the same reality, but it was without him in it. In looking back, I remember how I was literally grasping anything and anyone to help me stay here. Holding hands, simply being held--I grappled for all of it to keep me tethered to this world.

I wanted to die, too, but I was afraid of it for fear I wasn't good enough for a happy hereafter. After all, he was taken away as punishment for my selfishness--yes, that's what I believed at the time. I believed I'd killed my brother's best friend. I felt responsible for everyone else's pain in losing him because I'd made a simple request for my own enjoyment.

I didn't trust myself to ask for something after that. I didn't trust myself to make any kind of choice--especially not the big ones.

Isn't that THE MOST WARPED AND INSANE THING a person could do to themselves??? A simple little, really inconsequential choice that I MADE into an overwhelming, unclimbable monstrosity of a mountain. I built myself a jail cell, and I slammed the door and threw away the key.

So I set out to try to fill that futureless-feeling void with all kinds of good deeds. I set out to be of selfless service to others. Isn't that what truly good people do--concern themselves with making life better and easier and more enjoyable for everyone else out there? And the especially good ones do so by generously sacrificing their own joy in being--others joy is our reward. Yep--we do-gooders do so with a smile on our face--we take up the gauntlet of joyful martyrdom, and when that whiny voice inside starts to rear its ugly, unsaintly head, we just tell ourselves to hush up and get over ourselves. We slap that "selfish little icky thing" upside the head because that's no way to feel (even though we honestly do feel taken for granted). Believe me, those crabs out there can be a real challenge to lighten up--so that whiny voice yells more frequently than I'd like to admit. Life really sucks here, but damn, that hereafter life is going to be worth it!!!

I hope you're laughing at this by now--I am! What a hilarious act! If I were watching all of this on a movie screen, I'd be laughing at this character and her bizarre insanity!

And there's more!

I'm quite conscious now that I've been (we've all been) just play-acting all this time, and it's been getting easier and easier to step back out of the drama on my stage and just observe it all as playing "Let's Pretend." And frankly, that's a tremendous gift to have right now in the midst of the inhumane acts taking place in this reality. There's a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering going on around the world due to a limited human consciousness that's gone psychotic. There are a lot of humans feeling like cornered beasts out there--beasts who lash out at anyone and anything in order to survive, to feel a bit more powerful and in control of their lives by trying to control others...or kill them off.

With that said, you don't get more conscious by trying to mentally figure it all out. I tried that route. You can't fill up that void of a future by mentally analyzing and pressuring yourself to come up with, and implement a plan A, or B through Z, that involves making all the right choices.

I feel that depressed "failed before I even started" feeling enveloping me just in writing that previous statement. How many times have I wanted to change my life, but the mental human details of what I had to do overwhelmed me so much that I felt myself close up and thus, changed nothing? I gave up even allowing myself to dream of something more, and I plugged away, dispassionately in the same old looking day, after day, after day...after day.

When my husband left me to spend Thanksgiving with his family, that fear-laced voice assaulted me again. It's a voice that tells me this moment could be your last one with him, Pen, so you'd better make it count. Don't ask him to pick you over anyone or anything else--and don't be angry with him if he chooses someone other than you.

It's been a tough voice to deal with. You see, I KNOW it's based in fear and I KNOW better than to give it any credence anymore, but the bastard keeps whispering in my ear, nonetheless.

After my boyfriend died while riding a motorcycle across the highway on his way home from swathing that awful evening, I really don't care for bikes anymore. Actually, I really didn't like motorized recreational toys even before that--they were gratingly noisy to me. I know people don't die just because they like riding cycles. I have a really great memory of him taking me for a ride on that very bike. I know people don't get killed just because some "careless and unfeeling" person in a vehicle doesn't see them. I know motorcyclists don't die just because they didn't wear a helmet, etc. etc.

And I have a husband who rides a Harley Davidson. Every time he heads out to ride it though, that voice taunts and I work to breathe through it, to not let myself worry, to not imagine the worst-case scenario outcome. I CHOOSE to not create that awful story for myself again, but I have to do some conscious breathing to keep myself open and the self-protective guards down. He picked up a motorcycle for my brother-in-law back when we lived in the Twin Cities. It was after I had been the first person on the scene of yet another tragically fatal motorcycle accident--a horror of a nightmare for me--and I had to follow him in our car as he navigated that vulnerable-looking piece of equipment through all that traffic. I was a shaky piece of white-knuckled, bawling wreck of humanity that finally walked in our door afterwards, but I did it, and he made it home without incident. All these years, he's made it home to me without incident, yet every time he leaves me--no matter what he drives--that voice haunts me. And I have to shush it...but it never really disappears completely.

Those potentials are always a possibility...but they're just one of multitudes of potentials. It's just that my worrying about them and bracing myself for their possibility of happening is more likely to bring them into my experience because of my focus on them, than if I let go and open myself up to something more. Yes, that involves lowering my guards and expectations--and I feel extremely vulnerable.

But living in that fear and that worry is no life. That's misery. And I honestly know now that if he should die by that route or any other, that we would both be okay. I wouldn't feel the need to try to fill up the void anymore.

I still don't know how to plan a more joyful future experience without getting overwhelmed, but I no longer feel the need to worry over it.

At this moment, my future doesn't even exist!

I'm in the Void of nothingness--Again!

And I realize that even when in this void, I still EXIST!--I am!

And I feel so free here, unencumbered by stories!

Oh, that sweet deep breath of freedom of being...whatever and without judgment.

And this time I'm not worried about surviving. I don't need to be reaching out to serve others in a manner they expect me to in order to stay alive, to stay grounded. In truth, I realized that's what I'd been doing. I was just trying to stay embodied here on Earth--and my tool to do that at the time, in my very limited consciousness, was in TRYING to SERVE OTHERS, instead of making choices for myself. It served me well when I needed it most, but it's obsolete now, and it's actually getting in the way.

If I were to die right now, I'd actually be okay with that, but I'm here to experience embodied enlightenment--to see and feel, firsthand, that something more that I've known has been here all my life. I've never made a RIGHT or a WRONG choice--ever!!! It was my feelings and beliefs about myself and those choices that drew to myself every particular experience I went through.

That futureless void I once sought to fill in any way possible actually feels really freeing right NOW. I don't have to have a plan! I don't have to figure out details surrounding financing or relationships!

It's a relief to know I'm so much more than that character that I played and have been playing up to now. I really like and appreciate this human that I've identified with all these years, but it's been tough going playing the Little That's all I am Human. There hasn't been much joy in it, not really, because I've kept myself so limited. When you feel so unworthy of living, that's what you get--a pretty boring, often frustrating and tough life.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Penny, and she didn't worry about creating and filling up a future. She didn't worry about saving a world or anyone else. She wasn't trying to make somebody happy or trying to prove herself worthy of being. She was just visiting a world filled with wondrous experiences, a world that was so sensuous and seductive, so REAL FEELING, that she immersed so deeply into it that she forgot she was just a visitor playing a fun game.

I remember that little "I'm here for a visit" girl. It's the girl that was before she adopted other's ideas about how life on earth worked. In the first 7-8 years of my life, I realized that my family probaby enjoyed the most abundance ever in our history as a family, until now. I understand what all the ascended masters have been saying now--when I radiate joy and ease and graceful allowance in my own conscious awareness--all my loved ones around me benefit from my radiance without my having to say a word, or convince them to do it my way. They benefit because they are a part of MY created reality--they're no longer playing tough parts for me because I've lowered my protective guards.

And before that little girl that I was got caught up in all the stories and play-acts that said "life is tough and harsh and sometimes cruel"--that world of hers was A-MAZING! That world was awesome and full of possibilities to CHOOSE without self doubt or second-guessing herself. That world was magical and she didn't have to figure out how to go out and get it--it came to her, freely, easily, without a goal or plan. Wha-La! It was just there!

That world was a gift of experience she ALLOWED herself to receive OPENLY. It was a world undistorted by the judgments made by insignificant-feeling Little Humans who didn't remember they were so much more...

The magic is back, Penny! Doesn't it feel liberating? I feel so open, so excited about experiencing something more! Get out of the way, my beloved and scared Little Human play-act, and ALLOW it to flow to you...

It comes to you, kid. It comes to you--just open up and allow yourself to receive it with ease and grace.

It's time to really enjoy your life as the gift of experience that it truly is...

My shields are down...I am open...wide open...

It's amazing, this experience of having ALLOWED MYSELF a HOLIDAY with just myself.