Offering Up My Candy

Within the past six months or so, I’ve reached a point along my journey inward where my communication with the Universe/God is very direct: in both directions.

I have found I am comforted and simultaneously petrified as I’ve gotten to see blatantly: I am not the only one working on me and chipping away at the layers of identities I created. There is a being – a part of me – that is infinitely more aware than I am in this body.

Anytime I have thought I need something in order to be happy, it is either simply not given to me or actually taken away…

Naturally, my mind’s initial reaction is to shut down shop, to feel somewhat betrayed by Life, and to ask endless questions like why the heck is this not happening?! I’m begging you, Higher Dude or Dudet of Wisdom, have some compassion and give me what I need please…… Ok come on, I said please…… how about now?!

I’ll give you an M&M … hm. you must prefer skittles……. OH I KNOW! A sundae? With a tootsie-pop on top?

Immediately this image of an old guy wearing a halloween costume-style wizard hat sitting in the whole lotus-zen mode comes to mind… one eyebrow shifts upward as he seems to chuckle and mock my mind’s incessant pleads.

Yea, yea. I know, your holiness. You know much better than I do. But this kinda sucks.

I’m very aware at this point that this is the voice of small me: the one that feels separate and disconnected from the Divine within myself and all that surrounds me. It’s the voice who questions that I have any creative power in my life at all. It’s the one who historically mutters those horribly false words: I am not enough.

At this point in my journey, this voice is somewhat easily exposed in the clarity of my inner world. It’s sometimes so obvious – like the voice shows up as a giant black flag suddenly propelled into the sky in a barren field of peaceful pastels.

And so, after I offer up all my candy in exchange for happiness (like any normal human), I am forced to intentionally choose to see the purpose in each moment.

Then, I climb all the way up the flagpole, dismantle the black flag, wrap it around me to carry it down, and finally remove it from my body, light it on fire, and watch it’s colors flee and turn to a glowing light. In those flames, I release the voice and gently tug away it’s power to speak.

Although I’m entirely exhausted after all of this hard work, I find the pastels of my inner world once again filling my senses and attention with deep freeing presence and acceptance. Stillness. Joy. Bliss.

I come to this space of total acceptance and peace within myself where nothing in my external reality matters. I realize over and over again the truth that I am my only source of lasting happiness. I choose it for myself. It does not lie within the achievement of a goal, any situation, or from a person in my life. Only now.

The shear irony of all of these experiences lately is that once I have reached this place of acceptance, I am suddenly given what I wanted in the first place. Except after all of that, I’m no longer attached to it. I’ve shed of all the “should be’s” and “needs” and every trace of the mentality that my happiness is contingent upon x, y, or z. And so, I have this new ability to say yes or no to the opportunity and understand on a much deeper level whether it will truly serve me or only be a temporary fix.

How cool is that? Don’t get me wrong. I know it may not be a super fun whirlwind: it’s a hell of a lot of work to go from feeling betrayed by the Universe to totally releasing all desire and abandoning external quests for happiness… to then be offered what I wanted in the first place. It could seem totally pointless and endlessly frustrating: like Life is always working against me. Or, I can choose to take on the mind-blowing perspective that absolutely nothing is coincidence. That wizardy-dude is really the more aware Divine me who is infinitely involved in my life.

And so, I stumble into the truth that every moment of my life is meant to grow me into the freest, most loving version of mySelf. I am challenged constantly to shed the layers of need and desire until they no longer exist within me. Peace. Clarity. Love.

My only question to myself and to you is this: Do you want to participate in the challenging process of your growth where the only product of your labor is eternal happiness and love?

All we ever need is within each of us. We just have to learn to look. Listen. Express, and be expressed. Change, and be changed. Love, and be loved.

Namaste, Laura (Luna) Marie XO