**What a Long Strange Trip It's Been**
**So Far**
Looking back, I can now see the pattern ~ a life threaded through with invitations, I barely understood at the time. Synchronicities. Nuanced openings. I was drawn, always drawn, toward writers and teachers and individuals who offered something I couldn't quite name, something that pulled like gravity precisely because it exceeded what my mind could hold.
I was a Seeker. But my seeking was captive to the Temporal Mind ~ the very instrument I was trying to see beyond. The mind that was seeking was the same mind standing in the way.
My Mind ~ It had become my God. And behind it, the heart ~ buried under layers of unknowing, I didn't even know were there. I could see that I wanted love. What I could not see was that I had lost the capacity to give it. Not from hardness. From something more like a long forgetting.
Then came what had to come. A Soul-crushing experience, And beneath that, the utter devastation of addiction ~ a bottom so undeniable, so complete, that for the first time I became willing to question the very ground I was standing on.
Something cracked open.
I found a mirror that would not flatter me ~ that showed me, not as I wished I were, but as I was. And I found a community of broken people who knew exactly what that felt like. Sick and tired of being sick and tired. No pretense left. Just the willingness ~
I was told something simple and improbable: follow these simple instructions, do what we did, and you will be given back a life ~ not the life you had, but one you cannot yet imagine.
Loved unconditionally in this Community ~ warts, wreckage, and all ~ I slowly found I could begin to love that way myself. Through following suggestions. Through true soul-searching. Through the encouragement of others who had walked it before me.
Slowly, through trial and error ~ ever slowly ~
I was restored.
Not fixed. Restored. Returned to what I always was beneath the noise: a Seeker ~ one who now seeks first, and foremost, with his heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment