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Where One Behavior Stopped, Another Began

I've been thinking clearly as of late. Many things have transpired against my will... or have they? The question always seems to remain, no matter how much I put things in perspective where they make sense using a combination of logic and historical evidence of behavior. Apparently, it's all in my mind.

You see, the truth lies in the truth. Sort of an oxymoron in terms of word usage, "truth" and "lies", but there it is. What I've learned just in the past 6 months, being in Ecuador around so many peace-loving people who, on the surface, are on the right path for their own salvation, so to speak, they are also on the mend from lack of self-love. And therein lies the truth. We, who are seeking our own, unique salvation, are exactly that: we are on our own.

Sure, we can seek the tools to gain enlightenment, but they are useless if we do not go to the heart of the matter, which ironically is our heart. Our hearts are the core of our being. Before it even begins beating, it sends out the instructions for the creation of the new you in the womb. This is scientifically proven now... look it up. Just as it sends out the sine wave to beat, it sends out the electromagnetic wave to create. To create our vehicle and our paths and our world.

Sure, we can seek out like-minded people who support our journey and are filled with true love for each other and humanity... but no one is exempt from self-abuse and self-judgment which continues to ground us to this earth. This beautiful, powerful earth. The first song by the Indigo Girls I heard has stuck with me since it first rang into my ears as the truth, their lyrics wrapped up powerfully in chords of triumph and understanding. There we ended up by accident on the Green in New Haven, bound by some form of love, amongst a sea of 80's lesbians (not a judgment, just an accurate observation). In the song, Closer I Am to Fine, the choruses filled my heart with my own truth:
We go to the doctor
We go to the mountains
We look to the children
We drink from the fountains
We go to the Bible
We go through the workout
We read up on revival
We stand up for the lookout!
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive,
Closer I Am to Fine

So... what did that mean to me? Because honestly, it meant nothing to the girl I was with. It didn't touch her heart and soul as it did mine. It was then that I realized that no one outside of us can make us into the person we want to be. And all the attempts at recovering our true spirit and finding our path does not lie in any of the song's actions because they are external to us.

It became evident that my journey was truly within, and I had to admit that I was broken, though I knew not why. Within a year, I attempted suicide, not because the words affected me so much, but because they didn't. I still wasn't strong enough to look at the real me without judgment. I was in pain, at 21, which I couldn't understand. I made admissions of who I believed myself to be to my mother, looking for her unconditional love. She shut herself off from me and didn't speak to me for over a year. I judged every action I took and told myself I was right and it would be painful, but it was the right thing to do to be on the road to recovery.

I know now that it was just the beginning, and my mission was to continue to seek the tools and support that I needed. It just wasn't my family, at the time. And it wasn't my closest friends. Why? Because I was making that decision for them. I decided that they would judge me and I may lose them forever, like my mother, and my ego began a protection of a different sort...

And so, here's the rub. When I stopped lying to others to control their view of me, I began instead to lie to myself about who I was. I began to control my own self through lies and manipulation, and as a consequence controlled everyone who was a part of me, but indirectly. A subtle shift, granted, but in hindsight a really horrific one. For nearly 20 years, I have been keeping my own secrets to myself, like a Jekyll and Hyde, and as insidious as it sounds, I am not schizophrenic or crazy. I just allowed my well-intentioned ego (my mind) to make my most important decisions for me, ignoring the stronger influences of my intuition (my heart).

So, as I chose consciously to stop controlling my external world through lying and manipulation, I began to lie to myself through my ego -a survival mechanism that created a protective shield within our minds as part of The Fall from divinity.

My ego and conscious mind began weaving a different story about my inner power and rose to challenge my physical and psychological strength. I began a pattern of unhealthy challenges that lead to my own fall from grace... literally. I became less graceful but found the challenges of physical strength through these "weaknesses" to be even more profound if I powered through. And so, it was what I became: a person who powered though the limitations of her earthly existence. My path became as deeply carved as the scars on my body. Now, the stigmata takes on a different shape for me. These are not my war wounds of the conquest of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but rather, are the deeper, self-inflicted scars to remind me that I did not believe myself to be perfection... a cycle that is now being broken down.

So, now I know. I am perfection... just in progress and in practice. I need no one else to tell me that because I could never believe them anyway.
I have free will, and I take this seriously, sometimes too seriously - everything is not a challenge.
My lesson has always been on the tip of my tongue. It lies in every word I speak, every thought I create, every gesture that is the marriage of the two. And as I change the dynamics of my world through my thoughts and actions, my beliefs and my energy signatures change in their wake.

Closer I Am to Fine.

I am the observer of everything now. I do not judge myself or others, but instead just watch how things play out and try to discern and learn from the crooked line I have carved, nudged here and there by the will of others which I have taken to be my own. It never was my own, and that is the lesson I am learning today.

In Lak'esh,
Nani

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