Light in Darkness

It is significant that Christmas is celebrated by us at the winter solstice–the point of shortest daylight and longest night.  The nighttime represents our unconscious–the dark, hidden part of us that must birth the new being within us–the Christ into our personality.  This birth comes only after a period of gestation within the unconscious womb.  The long dark winter represents the long gestation period.  The new birth occurs when the darkness is the longest, out of which comes the dawn of a new life.  Only after the longest, darkest period in our lives can this new birth occur.

In the mythological story of the soul–the Christian Nativity narrative–the conception takes place in the spring, the time when nature exhibits her greatest fertility.  Birth takes place in the season when nature manifests no sign of life.  Most vegetation seems dead.  Even light–the source of life–wanes to the point where the days are shortest and the nights are longest.  It seems that light is being swallowed up in darkness, that life is being consumed by death.  But out of this darkness–this womb of winter–comes something new and wonderful–hoped for, longed for, desired above all, yet not dared expected.

Darkness also represents the unawareness of our conscious to the light within us–the abundant life Jesus said he came to give.  Jesus is the physical person who represents the spiritual person of God that wants to be experienced within each of us.  The darkness of our conscious awareness to spiritual matters is such that it does not understand, expect, or even “have a clue” to the inner light that continues to shine in our soul even though we do not see it, do not experience it.  We must finally experience our fill of darkness–become sick and tired–even despairing of looking for some sort of light to warm and illumine us.  We must finally come to the “dark night of the soul” and cry out for light in order for God to be able to make us see and experience the light he placed within us before we were born–the light he begot us with–his own holiness.

Winter is the worst time to have a baby–cold weather, lots of germs and disease going around, little sunshine.  It is difficult for a newborn to get a good start physically.  Winter is the best time for a baby to be born for non-physical reasons: it puts a ray of hope and joy in the midst of our bleak mid-winter–a ray of human light into the short days and long nights of the year’s end.  In the winter of our lives, when the days are short, light has faded from our lives.  We need new light, a new kind of light.

How does birth of a newborn connect with the winter solstice?  Think small.  On the shortest day of the year, in the smallest amount of light, is born the smallest unit of human life.  Solstice and the birth of Christ come together to point us to a celebration, not only of what has happened, is, and will be in terms of the patterns of earth and sun and a special baby born one winter’s night in a cattle stall, but of something that is designed to occur within our individual lives.

Not only do we celebrate the mid-winter’s lengthening of days and the Christ-Child as the “Light of the World.”  We also celebrate the possibility of the coming of a kind of light the kindles a fire within us on the altar of our hearts–a fire that we shall never stop tending because of all that is provides for us: light, warmth, life, joy.

At The Seashore

At the seashore we ingest a sense of eternity—

the primeval rhythms of the sea against the shore,

the sea as the chaos from which all life came,

the depths of the sea as the mystery of whatever cannot be grasped or

comprehended,

the sea as the mystical power of God.

 

The sea-shore activates our  senses and reminds us afresh of our humanity.

We marvel at the sight of the sea, which has looked the same

to countless generations who have witnessed it before us.

We hear the unrelenting pounding of the waves against the shore, booming

yet calming.

 

We touch the water, the seaweed, the driftwood, and the shells the sea brings

to shore.

We smell the sea, its breeze unlike any other.

We taste its saltiness, full of flavor, full of life, of living creatures.

 

As  our senses sharpen we become aware of the action of the sea:

a constant movement in the ebb and flow of the waves,

a surface that belies an undertow,

the  movement of shells and creatures,

the movement that forces the shells to wear down and break,

the movement that causes friction, shell against shell,

the movement that smooths and polishes,

the movement that makes beautiful

even the fragments.

 

We, too, are worn down by the sands of time and the waves of adversity.

We have been broken by the action of circumstance.

We have become fragmented by the sea of life.

 

As we finger shell fragments, let us be reminded that we are precious to our Creator,

who wants to smooth and polish our rough edges, our painful places,

not to erase our scars but to heal us in a way that gives our scars a

special beauty

and our lives a kind of loveliness that makes others want the healing

we’ve received.

 

Let us submit ourselves to the caress of the sea,

the powerful sea of the Spirit of God,

allowing it to wash away what needs to be washed away,

allowing it to make us fresh and new,

allowing it to smooth and polish and broken fragments of our

lives and make us beautiful again.

 

October 1995

Ann Glover O’Dell

 

Transformation

Transformation

that large leaped word

that bounds o’er time and space

and new makes the all of me.

An instant only needed

the Spirit took to do its work

within my still frail frame.

The memory repeats its pulsing

through the channels it devised

keeping me aware always

of once upon a time

the moment I became made new.

Ann Glover O’Dell

17 March 2009

Tidings

Tidings of great joy

to you

in you

for you are being born into

a wonder

a grace

a being fresh and new

for you

of you

by you

with you

as you

scarce aware of space prepared

are knitting infant clothes

and humming lullabies

and all the while

know nothing

of the miracle

you are become

Ann Glover O’Dell

26 June 2009

Poems for Peace (remembering 9/11)

HOW CAN WE BE AT PEACE?

How can we be at peace when

spirit’s doors are locked against it?

Locked and bolted ‘gainst

we know not what for the

unknowing makes us fearful still.

Fearful of whatever lies beyond

paltry presumption of control

beyond concentrated consciousness

that knows so little

understanding even less.

Fearfulness that lies in wait

albeit quite against its will

for frequent fear is nonetheless

predictable and anxious huddling

in its womb is still more

to be desired than any sort

of openness to expectation’s

swaddling cloths of vulnerability.

How senseful that our fear

that chronic lodger

continues welcome with its stale

foul breath and stained attire

when we the landlords

with our legalese

could if we dared

advertise our “rooms to let”

and interview new prospects

always with the veto power

tightly clutched  within our ring of keys.

Ann Glover O’Dell      19 April 2004

 

NOT AS THE WORLD GIVES

‘Not as the world gives’

is your peace you said

yet we would be

content just now with

what the world defines

since such unpeacefulness abounds

we cannot entertain the notion

of a state within

when  all about us

life’s demise looms large.

 

Power plays take center stage

and those rehearsing roles

soon star in great performances

surprising e’en themselves

with prowess and precision patterning.

 

Oh greed where is thy pain

which piercing self to inner well

of generosity so makes our

substance sharing

more to be desired

than much fine gold?

 

Where is the understanding

of that peace not understood

by mortal minds but mandates

light’s deep penetration of the

soul’s storehouse of truth?

Is there a spirit energy

encased within your peace

propelling us

to show the world the way?

Ann Glover O’Dell   20 June 2004

 

BLESS AGAIN!

Oh, One, who once in time blessed

world with your creation

who promised greater blessing

to  begotten and beloved

who blessed with beckoning finger

a journey from the known into adventure

who blessed with ripe womb fruit

the barren and despairing

then tested trust by bid  progenicide

who staged new blessing by surprise deception

dishonor and a wrestling match

who blessed by  rank denial the boons requested

and blessed again with secret benediction

the ones you named your one and only ones.

 

Oh, One, come bless again!

o’erturn the graves of hatred

revive still births of spirit

spill out the coffers’ gold.

 

A Jubilee we seek, we need

where all now cleansed and shining

is ready for the new creation song.

Ann Glover O’Dell   4 June 2002

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GOD’S COMPASSION

As one of the primary attributes of God, compassion is also one of God’s greatest gifts to us.  The more intimate our relationship to God becomes, the more compassionate we become in our relationships with others.

Compassion suggests a great deal more than sympathy or empathy.  Compassion means to passion with, to share the passion of the other—be it fear, pain, sorrow, or despair.  The word has its roots in the womb work of reproduction.  When we are compassionate, we participate in the creative work that each kind of passion produces.

What an opportunity we have each time we allow our innate wombedness to participate with another’s.  Something of God’s goodness is sure to result.

GOODNESS

Goodness includes within it the absence of goodness, else man could not know the nature of the good.

The opposite of a virtue must be present (or presented) along with that virtue in order for the totality of that virtue to be known.  And for any good to be fully known, man must have the freedom and desire to choose it.  Only in the knowledge, experience of its opposite can man fully appreciate, yearn for, and enjoy the good.

The fruit of consciousness enables us to recognize the bitter as well as the sweet in life, and each experience moves us toward wanting that which will satisfy completely.

Without the duality of human existence, God could not hope for man to yearn for the unity that he (God) wanted with man but could never achieve if man had no choice.  Opposites are essential to God’s grand design.  Whether we call the absence of good evil or sin or give it a proper name (Devil, Anti-Christ, etc.) makes no difference.  The looming largeness of this absence of good causes man to name, describe, place blame with such energy—all signifying the enormous influence of and preoccupation with this absence.

Once the good is apprehended, the energy formerly attached to the absence is now invested in and multiplies the good.

Ann Glover O’Dell

29 April 2009

 

Easter Us!

Easter me, O God

Easter all

who sense a never-ending

Gethsemane

Golgotha

or emptiness

relentless in ennui

of  soul.

Easter us

as sure as lilies bloom

ere winter’s past

as sure as sun rise

heralds end of night

as sure as Eden tree

grows from a single seed

in skeleton shadow sown

remaining after all the old has died.

Yes

Easter once again

and again

and again.

 

Ann Glover O’Dell

26 June 2009

Light of the World–in Me?

I’ve never before thought of myself as being a light in the world, let alone part of The Light of the world. Jews have a legend of the creation of the world that has a holy vessel containing holy Light coming out of the holy Darkness. There is an accident and the vessel breaks. Tiny fragments of Light are released to be embedded in every single human being, in fact in all created beings.

The legend pleases me to think that God would in a sense divide himself among us all, giving us each an equal chance to show forth his holiness. But now I ask myself, ‘What would it be like to be a transparency for inner holy Light? And how do I dig through the debris that no doubt covers mine to let the Light shine free? Is this something I can undertake and effect on my own or do I need the source of Light to help me? Or do it for me?

Jesus said we are the light of the world AND that we have the Kingdom of God within us. Perhaps that is but a confirmation of the ending of the Jewish legend.

I think of star light in the Nativity story and wonder if I ponder that perhaps some divine celestial Light might show me the way to reveal my own.

4 January 2016

Obogs

We are all Obogs: only begottens of God. Each of us. All of us. Every human being who has lived, is living, will live. Matters not what other names we are given or give ourselves. Our obog-ness states the essence of who we are, who God is, and our essential oneness with God, in God, from the beginning.

The “only begotten” used to describe Jesus were words carefully chosen to reflect the nature of God having been transmitted both viscerally and spiritually to man. Therefore “only begotten” are for those of us living under the spell of Christian mythology the most important words we can use to describe ourselves. Obogs. And as we begin to live into the reality within the symbol, we become enabled to appropriate the truth spoken in other phrases by other mythologies about the same reality.

And share that good news with others.

9 January 2010

O Christmas Tree!

Wait a minute before taking down your Christmas tree! It can do something more for you than shine some lights and glitter some tinsel.

In Judeo-Christian Scripture man’s story almost begins with a tree—a garden of trees, in fact. The forbidden one was the one necessary for man to sample to become a conscious human being, able to distinguish between good and evil.

Later, the songs of the Hebrews sang of man as a tree planted by the rivers of water, bringing forth fruit in its season. Over and over tree is used as a metaphor for God’s greatest creation, and the water it needs for life as God’s greatest gift.

There are legends that tell of man eager to return to the first garden in order to sample the fruit of the tree he had ignored, that of eternal life. And the gospels corroborate this by having Jesus tell of an abundant life that God intends for everyone.

Look at your Christmas tree one more time, as a symbol of yourself: richly decorated, if only with popcorn strings and paper chains; the center of your holiday enjoyment; holding treasures wrapped and waiting for the joy of the recipient; a memorial to the idea that evergreens represent life that does not die.

You are a conscious tree, growing in living water (whether you recognize it or not): your life having been decorated by all the people who have had positive influences on you; your lights being your positive influences on others; and the gifts (which must begin under the tree to complete the symbol), all the blessings you give and receive throughout the year.

So, take down your tree if you must, but think every day of the corner where it stood, and be that tree throughout the year.

27 December 2015

(Note: Nine other essays on the symbols of Christmas may be found on this website under Meditations)

God’s Essential Attribute

The ability of God to plant himself within the flesh of humankind was an attribute of God from the beginning, so in a very real sense we were with God from the beginning. The soul that resides in each of us is none other than the essence of God which is and was and shall be, having no beginning and no end.

The God-in-us that was alive from the beginning, and has been alive in us since our birth, needs a second birth—a birth into our conscious awareness. This spiritual birth, much like our physical parturition, involves risk and suffering. As the fetus must make the journey through the narrow birth canal, leaving the warm womb and risking asphyxiation in the passage, our spiritual birth involves the decision to leave the present protective will power of consciousness, trusting something within and beyond us to get us through the confines of this second birth canal.

God is not satisfied until his essence is part of our conscious awareness. Only then can he reveal himself to us in ways that give us the fullness of life he has for us. Only then can he think his thoughts in us and through us. Only then can he infuse us with his kind of creative energy so that our work and play become intertwined, transforming us into beings whose greatest joy is simply being.

(Note: a story of transformation that is available to everyone is found on this website under book)

We Are God’s Christs

Jesus is everyman. Jesus is us.  He makes mistakes.  He becomes angry.  He needs quiet time.  And all the while he is trying to minister to others in the way he believes God is calling him to do.

Jesus truly cares about others, and his compassion is shown in many examples throughout the gospel stories.  He also recognizes his need for companions, for close friends, and for time to examine his own motives and goals.

Aren’t we like Jesus?  Haven’t we set out to make ourselves into the best child of God that we can be?  Aren’t we showing compassion and generosity to our fellows as we are able?  And don’t we recognize our need for community and enrichment and ways to keep our bodies and minds and spirits healthy?

I think yes.

So what is lacking?

What is lacking is our awareness that we are God’s Christs.  We recognize our humanity.  In fact, sometimes it is too much with us.  What we don’t experience and can’t find in all our thinking, reading, talking, acting, and even praying, is our divinity–the experiential realization throughout our entire being that God takes delight in dwelling within us, and that we are useful to God simply by being his holy, cherished Child.

So how do we achieve the goal of experiencing divinity within humanity?  We might begin with a letter to God–asking the genuine questions we may not have ever before put in writing.  See what happens.  My hunch is that God would welcome a dialogue with us.

My experience is that God wants our participation, our cooperation in this miracle of making us know we are his Christs.

(Note: a personal story of experiencing divinity is available on this website under Book)

WINNERS VS LOSERS

In all areas of life there looms the competitive force which declares that for there to be winners, there must be losers. The idea that everyone can win seems missing. Even in sports, no game is allowed to end in a tie.

The 1970s produced a number of simulation games which immediately became popular with high school and college students. The name of one game was “Win As Much As You Can.” Players were divided into several teams. Each team elected a representative who would meet with other team representatives in a sort of summit where each would cast a vote for the decision his team authorized.

After the designated number of rounds, scores were totaled and the winning team announced. At the end of the game the players were stunned to discover that the only way they could win the most was to help the other teams win as well.

What causes us to think that for us to be a winner someone has to be a loser? How might we work toward the goal of everyone becoming winners?

A clergyman who was accosted by a parishioner, accusing him of not believing in hell, asked the woman, “Madam, how many people would have to go to hell for you to be satisfied?”

The great Energy of the Universe is a benevolent energy that wills the good, the true, and the beautiful for all. May we attune ourselves to the music of that energy.

SPRING EQUINOX

The term Easter comes from Eostre, the Saxon goddess celebrated at the spring equinox. The equinoctial feast actually goes back to prehistoric times, suggesting man has celebrated balance ever since his conscious awareness allowed him to recognize the equal length of day and night.

And what fortune that Christianity chose the term to celebrate its highest holy day! Celebrating the balance of humanity and divinity in Jesus. And the potential of celebrating the same in ourselves—in this life.

Imagine! A balance in our personalities–of introvert and extrovert traits, of thinking and feeling functions, and of all the other opposites that pull us in two directions.

God designed this balance for all of us—a balance of work and play, of compassion and introspection, of words and silence, of activity and rest.

And beneath that balance a sense that God was/is/will be intertwining all the traits of our personality in exactly the tapestry design that He always intended.

ANGER

Surely God does not intend for us to be angry. Simply because anger overpowers and imprisons the joy that God has planted deep inside us.

Anger seems to be on the increase as God’s children are killing each other everywhere. And increasing in individual amassing of weapons for the purpose of killing.

Anger seems to arise when there is a feeling of loss of power, of control. It can be something as detailed as a TV set not working properly or can be a general feeling of more than hatred toward a group of people—perhaps coming from a fear that they might become more powerful, might try even to kill us.

What God wants is to eliminate the anger in us—one by one—through a personal transformation experience. Elimination of anger is the only means to our living in harmony with each other, whether in marriage, families, communities, nations.

Anger comes from wanting power, no matter how much we already have. Anger may be a sibling of greed—or surely plays into it. No matter how much power we have, we want more. We want people to behave the way we want them to behave. We want events and outcomes to follow our agenda. We want to be in control.

The drive for power does something peculiar to our insides—both physically and psychologically. It causes negative consequences that actually reduces our power and thus increases our anger.

Anger occupies the space where creativity and authentic excitement for life is intended to live.

We would do well to identify our angry spots and ask ourselves if we really do want to be rid of them. If we do, our Inner Wisdom can destroy what is keeping us from experiencing abundant life. It waits for our permission.

13 August 2014
Ann Glover O’Dell

(Note: my personal transformation story, where anger was destroyed in me and hasn’t returned in 30 years, is contained in the book,  Humpty Dumpty Hatched, which is available on this website.)

I SPEAK FOR THOSE

I speak for those who
once upon a time
or rather
once before time
before our fall
into dual time
the time before
the brokenness of consciousness
when we reflected
the authentic image
of what had begotten us.

We
the once begotten
have need of something likened
to a twice begottenness
for blurred has become
the holy image
and our polishing cloths
are helpless to restore
the depth and luster
of our former selves.

2 March 2015

(Note: Additional poems that deal with brokenness and restoration, duality and unity, and themes of wholeness and transformation may be found on this website under POETRY.)

BEING

The story of the sacrifice of Isaac is so powerful that it is never referred to as the near-sacrifice. Abraham’s willingness to give up his son was 100%. The story shows, with two characters and God, what in the Jesus narrative is accomplished in one human being.

In stories the spiritual must be represented in the physical else there is nothing for the reader to work with as symbols. The physical can be interpreted in many ways and that’s what makes for a good story.

For Abraham, the son he had prayed for, his link to progeny, his proof of manhood, the long-awaited delivery of God’s promise—all this as his most prized possession was being asked of him. And his willingness was all God wanted.

Jesus was asked to give his life, his most prized possession, a life lived doing what he thought was the most important things: preaching, teaching, healing—what he thought God wanted him to do. As all those things were given up he became, in the narrative, one whose very being was transformed. The story says his being was so transparent and ethereal that he could move through a locked door and yet could eat and drink as a normal human.

He was recognized in a prayer of thanks. He prepared a meal for his friends. He didn’t preach or teach or heal. He encouraged his friends to be compassionate.

He just was. His being was enough. His being was exactly what God wanted of him. And what God wants of us.

COMPASSION

We must die to our agenda for compassionateness before we can be transformed into truly compassionable individuals. Whatever goodness and compassion our conscious will has chosen as a worthy goal and has attempted to achieve must be sacrificed in order that God’s agenda may take precedence—i.e., take complete charge in us. What that means—how God’s agenda is made manifest—is that we participate fully in the consent to, the receiving of, and the putting into action God’s desire.

Having been washed of our own agenda—no matter how good and godly it was—there is space in our conscious will for the Spirit, which now has been welcomed more fully in to our soul, to feed God’s agenda into our consciousness, which, through our continued free will, participates with this agenda through its own creativity, energy, and with its own peculiar talents of organization and execution.

Though the conscious will continues to make decisions, flowing in and through those decisions is the compassionate, creative, renewing, transforming power of the Spirit from our soul space that is continually enlarging ever since we gave the Spirit permission to clean house—not a case of suggesting to consciousness what needs to be discarded or helping to carry off pieces of detritus but to take charge and do the job solely on its own Spirit terms.

Ann G. O’Dell
10 March 2009

(note: The secret to giving Spirit permission to clean house is accessible to everyone in the book Humpty Dumpty Hatched, available for downloading on this website.)

 

CONTAIN ME, GOD

Contain me, God
within the fabric of this flesh
within the scope mind and hand
that I may not be spilled
in heedless acts of mediocrity
and rash expressions of a wayward pride.

Contain me, God
that I not reach too high
or think too deep
and miss the treasure
resting in my hand.

Contain me, God
that I may be
accustomed to the crevices
you’ve made in me
and careful how I fill
the spaces that I find.

Contain me, God
that I great comfort gain
in being cup and liquid both
held by thy loving hand.

Ann Glover O’Dell
11 February 2009

SIXTH SENSE

The five senses are perhaps adequate for perceiving our external physical world but too limiting when it comes to experiencing God. Long has man recognized a sixth sense, a possibility of perception quite apart from the other five, yet often even more valid. A tingling in the brain, a notion from an unidentifiable source, a bulb of an idea bursting into consciousness, or something even more difficult to describe. These are the knowings that give us something the other five cannot produce. And yet when linked with hearing, seeing, etc., this numinous sixth sense can permeate and transform them all into sacral vessels of appropriating the grace of God.

(Note: The sixth sense became magnified into conscious awareness as a result of an interview with my Inner Wisdom, the story of which is included in the book, Humpty Dumpty Hatched: A Personal Transformation, available on this website.)

Christianity Points Beyond Itself

Christianity points, as is true of all major religions whose basis is love, to something larger, something more wonderful still. The essence within and beyond the creative energy of the universe. The energy that beckons us to let it move through us in amazingly creative ways. The energy that longs to satisfy the deepest yearnings of our soul.

Organized religion falls prey to the same temptations inherent in all communities in the physical world: will to power and greed. The idea that for there to be winners there must be losers. That there must be rules and regulations, doctrine and dogma in order for belief in and worship of a higher power to triumph.

Spirituality is something else indeed. It speaks of the action of man attempting to access his inner self and the action of the universe helping him do just that.

Physical life is an opportunity to allow the energy and creativity in our spiritual center emerge and function uniquely in the material world through our personality. The energy of the human spirit longs to mimic the activity of its source and thus become in union with the ground of all being, the power behind love.

(Note: an essay linked in theme can be found in “All Our Costliest Treasures Bring” under MEDITATIONS)

A Sign for You

Signs, signals, symbols lie around us everywhere—if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear. The eyes and ears of the heart—the inner self—was what Jesus was talking about. And God has placed peculiar signs for each of us, readily available. All we need do is listen and look with our spiritual ears and eyes.

Probably we will not experience an angel visitant with celestial chorus accompaniment. But the directions to our sign are all around us, trying to get our attention, trying to make us see how much we want great joy, trying to make us understand that God wants us to have just that.

We, as the shepherds in the story, will find our own Babe, lying in the stable of our heart, waiting for us to wrap it in very special swaddling cloths that only we can provide.

Note:  More on the idea of our Inner Babe can be found in “Cradling the Babe,” under Meditations on this web site.

23 December 2014

God Within Us

The ability of God to plant himself within the flesh of humankind was an attribute of God from the beginning, so in a very real sense we were with God from the beginning. The soul that resides in each of us is none other than the essence of God which is and was and shall be, having no beginning and no end.

The God-in-us that was alive from the beginning, and has been alive in us since our birth, needs a second birth—a birth into our conscious awareness. This spiritual birth, much like our physical parturition, involves risk and suffering. Just as the fetus must make the journey through the narrow birth canal, leaving the warm womb and risking asphyxiation in the passage, so our spiritual birth involves the decision to leave the present protective power of consciousness, trusting something within and beyond us to get us through the confines of this second birth canal.

God is not satisfied until his essence is part of our conscious awareness. Only then can He reveal himself to us in ways that give us the fullness of life He has for us. Only then can He infuse us with his kind of creative energy, so that our work and play become intertwined, transforming us into beings whose greatest joy is simply being.

27 December 2009

Oneness

The dogma that Jesus died for other peoples’ sins doesn’t work. Doctrine says because of his death, we will live forever. How could his death have anything to do with the essence of God present in every human being? How could belief in this doctrine change the fact that God has put part of Himself in everyone? Would God destroy that part of his essence if the personality carrying it did not accept Christian doctrine? I think NOT!

Jesus said he came that folks might experience life in all its abundance. Does belief in Christian doctrine fulfill that mission? I think NOT! If it did, folks wouldn’t be so burdened with guilt and anger.

If we are not in oneness with God as Jesus said he was, we are missing something we are intended to have. The way we get that oneness is not through a belief system. The way we come to experience oneness with God is through having all our mental, spiritual garbage incinerated—purged. And we cannot do that for ourselves. Only a Golgotha experience, orchestrated by the Holy Spirit with our permission, can bring us to oneness with God.

We are all strait-wired into the energy of the universe. Some trash has gotten into the line that must be cleaned out before we can experience our true identity

Clanging Brass

Without love, the essence of God filling our frame, we become a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal—percussion instruments making noise but enhancing no melody. Without the fullness that love provides, our words are depthless, our behavior erratic, our attachments superficial. Without the Spirit of God blowing through us, which is the intention of love, we are manikins attempting to be humans, moving by winding up our self-created key.

We must be willing to offer our tinkling, clanging pseudo-self to be incinerated on the rubbish heap with all the other falseness in us that needs to die and give God a new invitation to fill our orchestra pit with music.

Humility

Humility is needed. The polar opposite of the pride that is the ego’s primary characteristic. Scripture calls that pride vanity. We would do well to call it hubris.

Our ego has become so powerful that nothing short of hubris gives it proper description. We are more than proud of our accomplishments. In Shakespeare’s words we have let our “vaulting ambition…o’er-leap itself.” (Macbeth. Act. I. Scene VII)

Richard Rohr points out the three demons we must face in ourselves: success, rightness, power. All three can be distilled into hubris.

And what does God require of us? “To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8b)

Humility is not what we have been taught it is. It is not servile. It is not self-demeaning. Genuine humility has achieved a power greater than any hubris. A power that knows itself to be perfectly what it is intended to be–and is satisfied. A power that has no need to boastfully strut about. A power that can bring about good—something hubris cannot.

Ann Glover O’Dell
29 July 2014

What Wants To Be Born

What wants to be born in us?  What is eager to be hatched?  A new, guilt-free, anger-free being.  Our real Self.  Our original personality.

A self is born which, when a mistake is made gives an immediate apology because the complementary feeling is immediate and authentic.  We are immediately sorry for whatever misdeed we have committed.  So the apology is genuine and immediately forthcoming.  And even though the event may linger in memory, the wrenching guilt that used to linger, multiplying our not-OK feelings, lingers no longer.

Some scholars say our preeminent problem is that of shame: being ashamed of who we are–and who we are not, ashamed that we are not enough–in any situation.  We can’t do enough, know enough, have enough, can’t be enough–no matter what.  But guilt is the word we use to talk about our not-OK-ness.  And when the guilt disappears, the shame and despair it covers also disappear.

What wants to be born in you?  The real Self, the original you wants to be born–the human creature, begotten from the union of the inner masculine and feminine parts of the personality.  The union of your rational will with your creative intuition (conscious/unconscious) that produces in you the Nurturing Parent, Capable Adult, and Free Child.  The new self (having moved from childhood to adulthood to godhood) recreates our sense of awe and wonder and delight–the same that God experiences within his good creation, pronounced good from the beginning.  The goodness/godness within us is what we are searching for.  And what is searching for us.

The new Child is born–not childish, immature in its ways, but a new child-likeness–an innocence that lives in the world but believes the good will prevail.  That celebrates the good in everyone/everything.  That looks for the redemptive in every situation.  That is able to celebrate wonder and awe and the comic–everywhere.  That experiences joy, laughter, the expectation of every day holding the same excitement and newness that Christmas Day did for us as children.

Dream scholars suggest that when that happens we will dream of a wedding uniting a king and queen.  I say a dream of a dear child is what tells us either that ours has been born or is calling us to allow it to be born.

Our story begets its own fairy tale happy ending.  But ours is not a fantasy.  Ours is a ‘until death do us part’ union, which keeps us grounded in the inner life no matter what happens in the outer.

Fertilization

Isn’t there something deep inside us that wonders if there is more to life than the best we have experienced? If we’re honest with ourselves, I think the answer for at least some of us is yes.

There is a spiritual fertilization that must take place if we are to be able to experience life in all its fullness. Both male and female parts of our personality are required. The egg resides in the unconscious and, like all eggs, contains the essence of life, the potential of a new being. It awaits the sperm of the conscious mind. The seed. The planting of permission.

Perhaps all the duality of the external world is trying to point us to the duality within ourselves. And perhaps all the tension we see between opposites externally is pointing us to the tension within that needs to be resolved.

Tension is resolved in the world when people of opposing views meet and agree on a peaceful, creative way of dealing with each other. The same is true within. All duality needs union where, as in the Hegelian dialectic, opposites come together in a synthesis that is greater than the sum of the two parts.

This is no more true than within the individual personality. The unconscious yearns to be unified with the conscious. Our conscious ego must want something more than it can provide for itself and be willing to give of itself so that union may be achieved.

Unlike most human biological yearnings, the feminine unconscious is the more wiling of the two. Eager. Obsessed, actually. So much so that it is constantly sending up invitations. Teasers.

But the conscious is a do-it-yourself kinda guy. A take-charge ruler, decision maker, multi-tasker and paramount achiever. It fails to recognize that its most authentic joy and creativity lies beyond its control.

For many of us a crisis must occur before our masculine conscious (rational control feature) becomes desperate enough to take paper and pencil and engage the inner feminine (a.k.a. Inner Wisdom). But the Inner Wisdom is available to us at all times. We do not need to wait for a crisis.

Being OK

I think Humpty Dumpty’s arrogance in the Lewis Carroll classic, and our own, must come from a sense of insecurity. If we felt genuinely OK about ourselves, wouldn’t we be inclined to believe that others are basically OK as well?

Thomas Harris, in his 1967 I’m OK—You’re OK , delineates four situations of OK-ness or the lack of. I agree. Early in life (for me, it was the punishment for crying at age three and a half), something happens to propel us out of our feeling of safety and security and into one of not OK-ness. As we grow, our attitude may morph from ‘I’m Not OK, You’re OK,’ into ‘I’m Not OK and you aren’t either; or I’m OK but you’re Not’—all thinly camouflaging the continuation of our deeply-rooted feeling of Not OK-ness.

Harris also talks of the Parent-Adult-Child alive within each of us, each of which is constantly interacting with the others. My interpretation of his explanation is that our inner Parent, originally nurturing, becomes a judging Tyrant, a constant source of criticism of the Child. And the Child, the source of authentic feelings in the psyche, begins to feel like an Orphan, deprived of the nurture and love it needs to thrive. The Adult, the part that functions effectively in the environment, begins to feel l like a Victim of both inner and outer forces.

Is it any wonder then that all these inner Not-OK feelings would erupt in arrogance, anger, and projection?

In the 1970s I read an explanation of projection in human relationships, how we identify and judge in others the very faults that we have not addressed in ourselves. The idea interested me greatly, but it took nine years before I could finally see the reality of it in myself!

Our Inner Wisdom seeks to transform all our manifestations of not-Ok-ness into an OK-ness that erases negative attitudes and behaviors and makes us genuinely OK. What is needed is our engagement with an Inner voice until we come to trust that it can do what we most desire and haven’t been able to do for ourselves.

Alice’s Arrogant Humpty

Wanting her to be familiar with Lewis Carroll’s chapter on Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass, I had my visiting 10-year-old granddaughter read it with me. Afterward we discussed what we had read. She commented, “Well, I didn’t know Humpty Dumpty was like that! I thought he was a nice egg.”

Humpty’s arrogance is obvious. He is furious that Alice should know a rhyme about him. He emphasizes, as they discuss it, his importance to the King who, Humpty is certain, will not allow any harm to come to him. He discounts Alice’s name with the argument that a name must mean something—tell something about the shape or character of a person. And he is quite proud of his own. (Incidentally, the name Alice means ‘of noble birth; princess.’)

The conversation continues unsatisfactory as Humpty dismisses all of Alice’s mannerly attempts to befriend him. He expounds on his control over his environment, boasting that he makes words work hard for him and uses them to mean whatever he wants them to mean.

He tells of orders that he gives others, outraged when they are not immediately obeyed. He recites a poem he has made about the demands he made of some fish. We are left wondering what is going on at the end of his poem where he finds that the door leading out of his house is locked and he cannot open it.

I wonder if we’re not a little like Humpty—a little too proud of ourselves. A little too smug about our control over our environment. A little too boastful of our work ethic. A little too disdainful of others who haven’t quite accomplished what we have.

I wonder where this arrogance comes from. And I wonder if this arrogance might be locking us in our own homes—in our own shells

Humpty’s Tall Wall

The Humpty Dumpty metaphor continues to intrigue me. In all the cartoons I’ve collected there is a wall. Either Humpty is sitting on top of it or he has fallen off and lies in pieces at its base.

In my research I find that Humpty Dumpty is the perennial favorite rhyme among pre-schoolers and older. Perhaps it is the rhythm of the rhyme or the rhyme itself—with its too-long last line. Perhaps it is the absurdity of an egg sitting on a wall—and the obvious understanding that eventually it will roll off. Perhaps it is the fact that the egg is always pictured as if it had human characteristics and could carry on a conversation. Whatever the appeal, we can ask any random child if he knows the rhyme and he’ll probably recite it.

In psychological terms, I argue that the wall represents the inevitable precipice that our psyche is forming all the time that we are establishing ourselves as competent humans in a world where competence is required

Competence and protection are our watchwords. We work to be able to function in the world and also harden our shell to protect ourselves. This shell-hardening begins early in childhood, at the moment we feel wounded by someone or something and subconsciously resolve to try to keep that from happening again.

Mine was the incident where I cried to keep my mother from leaving me when she took me to my Sunday School class right after my younger sister was born. I was three and a half. She stayed but was embarrassed, later told my father, and I was humiliated by the punishment. Something in my little psyche resolved at that moment not to cry, and for 40 years the hard shell I manufactured honored that resolve.

But the wall grows taller under us and the danger of falling increases. We’re so busy hardening our shell that we do not notice. Then one day perhaps we look down and are amazed. And the wall continues to grow taller.

This wall and the falling off it represents the crisis whereby the new being is hatched out.

 

Going Around in Circles

If we could change ourselves into the calm, creative, life loving persons we want to be, we would have already done just that. Who doesn’t want to feel peaceful, guilt-free, productive? Getting what we want is not so easy. No matter how often we bombard ourselves with affirmations. No matter how many good deeds we do to assuage our guilt. No matter how many craft classes we enroll in.

If we could consciously, with our own will power, change what we want to change in and around us, we would miss what is even better. We would think our rationality is the best thing we have going for us and never open ourselves to the full resources of the unconscious.

Joseph. C. Pearce says that all the creativity we individually and collectively manifest is but about 5% of what the unconscious can produce in us. Imagine! And feelings of guilt and low self-esteem are simply the garbage we have collected which keeps the unconscious from emerging into our consciousness with its power.

We need not fear that giving our Inner Wisdom permission to do what is necessary to eliminate the garbage is going to leave us unmotivated and without direction. (One Christian friend of mine told me he was convinced that without guilt he wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning.) On the contrary, with the garbage removed, our original self emerges—curious, creative, and able to be totally present in the moment so that life in its fullness can be experienced.

The collective confessions and petitions of a religious worship service will not serve, however, as the necessary engagement of our head and heart in genuine dialogue with our innermost self. Each must find his own way, initiate his own conversation. At least, that was my experience.

Testing Our Inner Wisdom

If there is any doubt that you have an Inner Wisdom dedicated to your well-being, consider the following:

–Think of an incident when a creative idea or humorous response erupted from your mouth without seeming to have passed through your mind’s judging facility.

–Remember an occasion when you felt the need to call someone only to hear the phone ringing as he called you.

–Recall some problem you tried to solve, working at it long and hard, only to find when you gave up that the problem seemed to solve itself.

All these are glimpses of the enormous inner resource at our disposal, ready to make our being playful, creative, compassionate. Inner Wisdom is part of the vast unconscious part of our personality. Its powers are benevolent. It does have, however, a mind of its own. It cannot be coerced into following the dictates of our will, but it is ready to serve us well when we are ready to cooperate.

Consider a test:
Tell your Inner Wisdom you want to want to do something. Something you have not been able to make yourself do or want to do. This is different from “Help me do___.” Wanting to want to do something is asking our Wisdom Energy to give us the impetus that makes us want to do some task that needs tackling.

Pick something you’ve put off—something you dreaded beginning, something you’ve not been able to make yourself finish, something you wish you had never committed to. Consciously say, if you can mean it, that you want to want to do that thing. And then let go of it. Chances are in the not too distant future you’ll have a surprise.

 

Having It All!

I pondered what might be needed to entice people into dialogue with their Inner Wisdom—a totally non-threatening conversation which could be ended by our conscious will at any time. A poem came to me, the last line of which stated, “…one of us must die so both of us can live.”

If I could only find a way to convince folks that they get two for one. The basic human duality engaging each of us is thinking we must choose between two options when the necessary cooperation with our Inner Wisdom will give us both.

What died in me—what needs to die in everyone—is the garbage I’d collected—the drivenness, the will to power, the anger, the need to win at another’s loss. Our original personality cannot re-emerge until all the negativity we’ve gathered (all in our attempts, by the way, to make ourselves into good people!) is incinerated.

My new interpretation of what Jesus was talking about when he spoke of losing one’s life in order to save it is not losing/giving up the life we cherish but rather that life that has become stale, dry, meaningless; the life that holds no joy and laughter; the life that is killing us. To ‘save’ the remnant of the ‘good life’—and uncover the hidden abundant life deep inside, we must surrender the old, what is no longer working, what is worn out.

In the Jesus narrative, his physical death produced a new being: one with heightened interpretative powers (look at his conversation with travelers to Emmaus); greater ability to be in the moment and create a festive occasion (cooking breakfast for the disciples on the seashore—a culinary first!); and with increased sense of compassion (he tells Peter and others to tend his flocks—not teach, preach, convert, but simply tend). Intellectual, physical, emotional faculties were all totally engaged. Ours become the same as our new being emerges.

My favorite story of all Scripture is called Abraham’s Sacrifice of Isaac. The truth is, Isaac was not sacrificed. God sent an angel to prevent the deed. God gave Abraham what he had long promised—a son, an heir to be the father of countless descendants. Then God asked for Abraham’s most precious possession, that same son. In being willing to give up what was more important to him than his own life, Abraham was given it back again, with a new understanding of who God is and what is necessary for the kind of relationship with God that God wants him to have.

God has given us a most prized possession—conscious willful control over our lives. Now if we will temporarily give that up, it will come back to us transformed into more than we can imagine,

Important Dream Revelations

I continued eager to find ways to tell people of the miracle that awaited their permission.  But I was always cognizant of my family’s directive against forcing myself on folks.

Some dreams came during this time to help me see that I wasn’t yet ready to give people the good news that had come to me. Several had to do with teaching. The old inadequacy dreams: I had a teaching job but couldn’t find my room; I was employed at a new school but couldn’t get there on time; I was in my classroom but had not made adequate preparations.

One had me with a friend who has chronic back problems. I touched is back and he took my arm. We tried to help each other up a long flight of stairs to my classroom. I realized I needed a great deal more help that he did.

The most exhausting dream was one in which I was assisting a medical doctor with his patients, listening carefully to their complaints and advising the doctor on what should be done for them. Suddenly I became totally confused, unable to comprehend the patient or remember the complaint of think of a proper remedy. I knew I was in no way ready to help others.

Perhaps one of the most revealing dreams was the one where I was in the sanctuary of my church. Something exciting seemed about to happen. Suddenly I was catapulted out the roof and sat atop one of the walls to observe the festivities below. As I studied that dream the idea came to me that maybe I would not be able to use the church  as a vehicle for spreading the word of my transformation.

I pondered my dreams and wondered what would be my vehicle. Then I found myself thinking of people I knew who were in crisis. I decided rather than call or go to see them, I would write to them a summary of my experience and encourage them to dialogue with their Inner Wisdom. Some called or wrote to thank me for my concern. Some I never heard from. None asked me for more information. I decided at least I had planted a seed.

Haven House Came Calling

That same summer the director of a new residential treatment center for drug and alcohol addiction came to my church committee with a request. Would we participate with some others in providing an encouraging Sunday message for the residents of his facility? I was delighted with the opportunity.

My family would be satisfied that I had somewhere to tell my story where they would not feel embarrassed. And I would have a monthly opportunity to interact with people who wanted a new beginning. I was eager to see if they would respond positively to my ideas and my story.

And they did. For 32 years they have continued as I have been taking meditations to Haven House and telling my story as well.

My first message was entitled “Good Grief!” (summary follows)

Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 says “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: . . . a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”

Job 17:7 says “My eye has grown dim from grief, and all my members are like a shadow.”

II Corinthians 7:9-10 says “. . . I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting; for you felt a godly grief… For godly grief produced a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret. . . .”

Jesus wept over the death of his friend Lazarus, wept over his inability to win Jerusalem to the kingdom of God, and grieved over his own impending death. More than anything, the grief of Jesus points to our own basic need to grieve over ourselves. I invite you to consider using this time in your life to do some proper grieving over yourself—some Good Grief.

Grief may be the most important emotion in our lives. It certainly damages us if we do not pay attention to it.  Stages of grief can include anger, guilt, remorse, and feelings of loneliness, helplessness, and despair. Often we get stuck in the guilt. Guilt which produces tapes that keep playing over and over, telling what we did and didn’t do that we are ashamed of.

And the loneliness. And the despair. I urge you to allow yourselves to go beyond the guilt and loneliness to let your grief go even deeper than you have let it go until now. Our natural reaction to negative emotions is to try to ignore them or push them down or run away from them. You have already acknowledged that your response has been to try to escape.

My experience convinces me that the only way we can get through with our grief is to turn and face it—to actually give it permission to let it take whatever expression it chooses to take, whatever form it needs to take to work itself out in us and heal us. A written dialogue with what it eating away at us is what is needed to learn that something deep inside can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Grief is an emotion that cannot be denied if it ever is to disappear. The sadness must be permitted, experienced to the fullest. We must shed all the tears that have been bottled up inside of us in order for all the guilt to be washed away and joy emerge.

Someone has defined laughter as the soul’s most perfect prayer. After our painful, paralyzing time of mourning, authentic laughter will return and with it a special kind of joy. Look at what happened to Jesus as a result of his tears. He was able to raise Lazarus from the dead. In his death the old body died and a new personality was born. Not only the Jerusalem he wept over but people all over the world have followed him as disciples. The same kind of amazing power will happen in our own lives.

I urge you to get on with your grief work.

Why Me?

Marveling at the sheer absurdity that such a miracle could/would happen to me, I began to ask, “Why me? Why has this happened to me?” And immediately and consistently the answer came, always the same.

“Why not you? Why not everyone!? “

I realized that of course the same transformation is intended for everyone. Like the bedraggled Grizabella in “Cats!”, I needed it at the moment perhaps more than anyone I know. I was sure, however, anyone and everyone who needed and wanted what had come to me could have the same thing.

I wanted to shout my story from the rooftops, tell everyone I knew about my miraculous experience. My family accused me of deciding everyone needed an experience like mine. They weren’t far wrong. I became more and more certain that everyone who wanted the freedom and joy that had come to me could have it through a catharsis similar to mine.

With few exceptions, my friends wanted to label the sickness I’d be through a rough virus. Some, when I mentioned miracle, seemed surprised to the point of being fearful, perhaps that I was going to harass them with some born-again story. I wish they had let me.

Several of my closest friends easily recognized that I had experienced something life-changing. And said so. They could hear it beyond my words, feel it in my voice, and sense it in the calmness I exhibited.

My mother suggested I begin writing the experience. So in the summer of 1982, I began making notes and constructing an outline. I jotted down quotes from the hilarious incidents that immediately began to prove—as if I needed further proof—that something absolutely extraordinary has occurred deep in my psyche and was being felt throughout my personality.

My Miracle

All the confessions and apologies began a trip into the depths of remorse. Besides the side of me that needed to be right and in control, there was another side of me.  A me that had set out to make myself into a good person. I realized I hadn’t accomplished that and there was no starting over.

The remorse produced a kind of spiritual despair that is indescribable. I felt an empty space inside that cried out to be filled with something good. But I could find nothing good to put into it.

The next morning a telephone call asked me to help with a funeral at my church. I said I had been quite ill and was unable to help with anything. My caller did not urge me.

As I hung up the phone, a voice came to me. It called me by name and said was its child. It told me I didn’t ever have to do another thing. That all that was intended was just for me to BE.

I heard it in my head and I experienced it all the way to my feet. All the anger and guilt and despair disappeared. And what came into the space inside was a kind of joy I never expected to experience.

I began to laugh—at the unimaginable absurdity that such a miracle should happen to me. The laughing felt wonderful. I realized I had never laughed like this before—a laughter that came from a sense of well-being throughout my entire body—and mind—and spirit. And the laughing was such fun that I kept on laughing.

My Great Confession

Reluctantly, my family agreed to sit down together and listen to what I had to say.  They were exhausted by my uncontrollable and inexplicable sobbing.  It was painful for them to watch me, be with me.

What I had to say was nothing short of amazing.  I asked their forgiveness—forgiveness for all the times I was wrong and should have apologized but wouldn’t.  As tears flowed again, I told them how sorry I was for being the way I had been.

The way I had been was a woman so determined to be  in control, to be right, that I never admitted I was wrong, said I was sorry, for ANYTHING.  Even when I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was wrong, I would not admit it.

When verbally backed into a corner with my misdeeds, I would turn everything around and accuse a family member of making the situation look as if it was my fault when it wasn’t.  I always put the blame on something or someone else.

My family was flabbergasted!  For a while, speechless. Then they told me about the many times they had wished for an apology from me, and it never came.  They told me they finally gave up hoping they would ever hear one.  My family had given up hope of ever hearing an apology from me, and here I was confessing and apologizing for EVERYTHING.

As I repeated my tearful confession of guilt and shame, I could see fatigue taking over.  What I had to say was so heavy to hear that they finally could listen no more.  I think we all took naps that afternoon.

The Unexpected Crisis

My husband met me at the airport as I was arriving home from a meeting out of state. As soon as I saw him, the tears I had been holding back with all my might for hours were released and I began sobbing in his arms.

“What in the world is the matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“What happened at the meeting to upset you?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I kept thinking on the way home that maybe something terrible had happened to you or one of the boys.”

“No, we’re all fine. Or at least I think so. Robert is still on his Boy Scout camping trip. He’ll be home tomorrow. But I haven’t had word of any problem. Now just relax and I’ll put in a call to check on the troop.”

“Okay,” I said, still shaking with sobs.
“Now, you know no news is good news, right?”

“Right,” I said, still sobbing.

“Well, let’s get your bags and go home.”

All the hour’s drive home I sniffled and wept, trying my best to stop. We reached home and the phone call was made. All was well in the scout troop.

And still I wept. I was frightened, more frightened than I’d ever been in my life. I had no idea what caused the tears but I couldn’t stop them. Through the night and the next day the tears continued. I believed I needed tranquilizers or other drugs, but a little thought in the back of my head told me that I would be all right only if I didn’t take any drugs. A therapist friend diagnosed the situation as a crisis and said I would get through it if I didn’t thwart the process with drugs or alcohol.
Sometime during the next day I was moved to ask all my family members to gather because I had something important to tell them. I call that now my Great Confession.

 

The Impetus to Dialogue with our Inner Wisdom

As I look back on my life-changing conversation with my Inner Wisdom, I think my pastor’s words to me were indeed inspired.  He did not say go pray, read Scripture, etc.  Instead, he said, “Listen to the message the pain has for you.”

The dialogue for any of us is not a courageous act, leap of faith, or surrender.  Our free will is never compromised.  It is simply a conversation–an interview with our Inner Wisdom.  Questions and answers.  Nothing more.

And yet so much more!  What we find is a force for good that wills us so much more than we can imagine.  it can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.  Yet it will not coerce.  It invites our cooperation–our participation in our own miracle through our permission.

Being so convinced in my dialogue that the force beneath my pain willed me life and not death, I readily gave permission.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes, let the process begin.”

No more questions, no hesitation.  The resolution was so satisfactory that I folded up the piece of paper, put it away, and forgot that the dialogue had taken place.

Some time later the miracle occurred.

 

Encounter with My Inner Wisdom

When I was a young adult, I named two things I vowed I  would not allow to happen to me.  An ulcer was one of them, even though no one in my family had been bothered with ulcers, and I had only once in high school been diagnosed with a “nervous stomach.”  Throughout my 30s, however, and into my 40s, chronic stomach problems persisted.

The stomach problems were finally diagnosed as an ulcer, and I knew I had lost control of my life.  As related last week, I went to my pastor for comfort, only to hear him give me a strange directive.  “It sounds like a rebirth to me,” he said.  “I think you need to go home and listen to the message the pain has for you.”

He had never said anything so unusual to me–or so important.  I sat down at a table with paper and pencil and began asking the pain inside, “Why are you killing me?”

Immediately a response came. “Do you want to live or do you want to die?”  My head began to think about my life and all the drivenness that seemed to motivate my every action.  And I realized I did want to live but not the way I had been living.  I realized I did want to live–to be glad just to be alive without any need to drive myself, without any guilt over not constantly doing, without any need to do at all.

And in the short conversation, I realized that something in me needed to die in order for me to live in that new way.  And that I could not consciously sort out and kill the part that needed to die.  And that  the force beneath the pain in me could do for me what I could not do for myself.

And all it needed was my permission.

 

I Am a Transformed Humpty!

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Thirty-five years ago I was dying.  One of the two things I vowed not to let happen to me had happened.  Cancer loomed large. I went to my pastor for comfort but received instead a strange directive.  He told me to listen to the message the pain had for me.  What ensued was a conversation between two parts of my personality which resulted in a cooperative venture that saved my life physically and allowed an entirely new personality to emerge.

Part memoir of a miracle and part unique insight into psychological phenomena, Humpty Dumpty Hatched: Transformation for Everyone has indeed something for everyone whose shell is breaking and whose wall is crumbling.  It tells the secret that is intended to be shouted from the rooftops.  No trying harder.  No giving yourself endless affirmations.  No getting busy.

As personal story, Humpty Dumpty Hatched suggests our kinship with the nursery rhyme egg, but unlike Humpty, our need is to break open our shell and allow a new being to emerge. A new being that is cleansed of anger and guilt.  A new being that has expanded space for creativity and authentic joy. A new being that finds itself satisfied in merely being rather than needing to justify its existence by doing.

Meet the person I was for much of my life—driven, controlling, determined to have life work on my terms.  Meet the me after of my shell-breaking, three-day crisis—free, laughing, whole, for all these 30 years.

My repeated question, “Why me? Why has this happened to me?” was, each time I asked it, answered with , “Why not you?  Why not everyone?”  And I realized that my story is intended for everyone.

Stay tuned next week for part of the Humpty Dumpty story. . . .