"Dear Father,
I come to You again; I come on all fours, crawling slowly,...hesitantly; eyes cast downward, forehead kissing the floor, to Beg again for Your Mercy and Your Strength. I am ashamed to ask for Your Love, to need You so much once again...
Why is that?
Why do I think that when I feel Your Grace fill me up, that then I must fling myself out of the safety of Your embrace and rush off blindly and boldly to fight my mortal battles?
Why do I think I need to abandon my Need for You in order to meet my needs in the world?
I hate that I think of Life as Good when I forget to pray.
I find Your Voice in the quiet stillness of Desperation. Others seem to take Pride in carrying the Knowledge of You through their lives; I think I have to make a choice between Your Love and living my life. So I get quiet and still and seek that desperate place so I can be near You. When there is movement I only remember you in intellect and careless, neglectful gratitude.
I Love my Life, but I NEED You. God, of all the things that I have ever asked of You and all the things that I will ever ask from You, please teach me (gently and lovingly) to be proud of this Need.
There is only one person I have ever known that would perhaps make a similar confession. My love for him, in many ways, is born of this common conflict. I would that we be the ones to teach each other this lesson. But that is another prayer for another day..."
I think I need to trip the fuck out. I am planning my summer and I am planning a trip it has taken me three years to feel ready for. I am planning a return-of course in my mind this will be an Epic Odyssey/Alchemist kind of a return; I will be changed and glowing with understanding and new insight into an old life. (All of this may be true but such glowing tends to last for a brief period of time before all your regular issues new and remembered revive and dull your shine).
I've been thinking more on this cycling thing. I think of how scared I am of the recklessness of my happiness; not happiness as an objective concept-just my own. When I made this Odyssey/Alchemist journey back to a home I'd never known, it came from the same epic nature of those other heroic journeys; it was a quest, a submission in the form of a quest, to come closer to God. I made a pact with Him that I would allow anything, miraculous or trying, to happen to me if it brought me closer to Him. Straightening by Fire, it's called.
Now, three years later, I am beginning to realize that that "fire", at least for me, comes from my own rejection of the Truth that He exists even in my peace and my joy. If God's Voice is in the clouds, I think He only speaks to me on dark grey days during heavy downpours; on the light, airy days of life I get so caught up in the blueness of the sky that I miss the wispy, white, whispers of Him floating by. Or sometimes I just don't look up, as if the brightness will blind me.
I think that's what that frantic, over the ledge, feeling is when I get caught up in the moment-um. I fling my gratitude at Him in a half-assed way: "yeah, way to Be, but Love, I gotsta go, I gotta keep moving, I gotta be pro-DUC-tive(in sing-song Oprah shout)!!! And then that part of me, the one that made the pact, gets annoyed at my silliness and says, "well, bitch, I guess we gotta make it rain again, cause you seem to be forgetting our mission." That is why I have to back away from my life, back out, searching for the grey. There I can throw myself into questioning and analysis until I finally hear Him say, "I'm. Right. HERE!" And it feels beautiful. It is so easy to be joyful, it really is beautifully simple, but I find it excruciatingly difficult to be joyful and to hear Him at the same time. But this cycling in and out of my life, this losing myself just to find Him is getting old and tiresome.
A dear friend of mine just wrote me that we were both Truth-Seekers (Amen!) but she wished she could find Joy in it, as I do. But I don't; I get very frightened of Joy because I can feel the Truth slipping away like those, light, superficial clouds on a sunny day; Truth becomes insignificant to the brightness of my Joy.
I want to have the two combined in one peaceful Knowing; I want to end the cycles and just have momentum and stillness so harmoniously intertwined that my life mimics the ocean: going nowhere, but always moving.
Well....like ninety percent of the people I know who understand this conflict (not many do) but have somehow left it behind in their lives to ride their oceans waves, have done a LOT of acid (and other psychedelics). They've tripped time and time again: sacredly, indulgently, capriciously-"anyone want some choc-o-late??", "here, lick this." (of COURSE this was all done in places where these things are LEGAL, so I am in now way endorsing or advocating for criminal activity). And I really think it's done wonders for them (the people I'm thinking about, not ALL people EVER, etc-whatevs...)
I gotta trip until I see God in not just the downpour, not just the fluffy, light clouds, but in the whole fucking sky, the trees, my skin, the wind. (Turn on, Tune in, Drop out man-ha!)
Like Arjuna, I get so damn caught up in the morality of living, it is time Krishna shows me the BIG picture....
You know, it is moments like this where I get....perturbed by the philosophy of the Guru. I mean the whole idea-as I've found in my spiritualizing, is that the Guru comes when you ready-the Guru being a mortal being who has ascended through the journey of transcedence just far enough so that he can be in Communion with the Divine but still remains on the earthly plain to help poor suckers like me figure this shit out. Like the Jimminy Cricket of Spiritualism.
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