My life is a mess—the schedule-is-insanely-packed-with-three-kids-and-my-relationships-are-sometimes-impossible-to-understand-and-also-the-news-tells-me-humanity-is-caving-in-but-things-are-going-OK-most-of-the-time version.
Not long ago, though, things were different. Life was still a mess, but the darker kind. Babies I had raised in foster care for years were turned over by the state to their biological grandmother. Children who called me “Mommy” were gone. In a day. I was devastated.
Not long afterward, my 10-year marriage ended. I was a failure. My best friend told her kids (who, of course, told my kids) that I was against God for getting a divorce, and that they could no longer be friends with us. I was discarded.
Mom came to spend three months with me to help, or more accurately, so that I could provide her with a rehabilitation program. When she couldn’t stop leaving water bottles filled with vodka lying around the house, I finally insisted that she had to go.
A few weeks later, Dad called to let me know he had broken down the door to her house and found her cold on the couch. She was gone. The woman who had devoted her life to loving me, but couldn’t love herself. Gone. Completely gone.
My recurring kidney infections were not responding to traditional antibiotics. I was going to work as a psychotherapist by day, diligently helping my clients to dismantle their shame, while going home to drown in my own every night.
If there was any scrap of energy left in my bones, it was used to navigate my Love and Logic parenting plan to guarantee that my children would grow up feeling secure and accepted and empowered and loved and good enough.
Right? Every person who told me they would pray for me, I promptly told to eff off. Actually, my words sounded more like, “Thank you, that’s so helpful right now.” The truth was, I didn’t want anyone going to God on my behalf. I had plenty of evidence that I was like a speck of dust that had been shaken loose of whatever cosmic blanket was meant to wrap within its folds all those who were worthy. Not me.
This was the shape of my despair. Every sophisticated coping skill and every rationalization I had accepted to survive was collapsing. My life was a mess. I would never have picked it.
Well. The thing is—I did.
I opened to my soul
I did. I certainly didn’t realize it at the time. But I would soon come to intimately know the part of myself that picked that mess. There was a me I was not yet conscious of that had signed up for a set of specific conditions in a three-dimensional world of feeling and form.
While in the midst of my mess, I became a student at the School of Metaphysics. Prior to this, I had known about the brain, but not the Mind. I had mastered focus and memory, but not intuition or stillness. I had a 4.0 and lots of degrees that convinced me I knew some things. In truth, I could not have fathomed the depth of my being that was yet to be discovered.
As I began training my conscious mind to pause (all the thoughts, opinions, positions and motivations I believed myself to be), I began to awaken to a much different perspective that seemed to have existed quietly within me all along. It was me, but fearless. A me that was without shame. Me that did not require any proving to accept its wholeness. I’ll call it my Soul. I opened up to my Soul.
Over the years that followed, as I developed a relationship between my human self and my Soul Self, I discovered things that surprised me. Before birth, my Soul had been ecstatic about what lay ahead of me as the human called Devon. Not everything was revealed prior to incarnation. There was a reverence for the mystery of it. But there were peeks into what was available.
After getting this preview, my Soul practically leaped to the surface of our planet and into this life, for the remarkable opportunities that existed to learn, to overcome, to expand, to revolutionize! I was one of the billions of souls clamouring to get to a lifetime on Earth, and not with any illusion of it being some kind of paradise. I had waited for the chance to be alive during this momentous point in time and space. My Soul was ready.
In my study of the Mind, I have found the Earth to be like a simulation classroom. Everything is designed to be holographic. The mental energy humans generate within them becomes manifested in what is perceived as the physical world around them—the outer is always reflecting the inner. This is so that souls can have an experience within the constructs of time and space that allows them to learn from what they create.
When a soul takes on the form of a human, it agrees to mostly forget its real identity (a brilliant energetic being, capable of existing in parallel universes), and to adopt the limitations of a temporary body/brain system. This allows it to experiment with thoughts, beliefs and emotions in a realm of senses.
Each of us is a crusader
A soul expressing as a human interacts with and observes the physical world to evolve its perspective on things that matter to the Universe. It develops a deeper understanding of anger, peace, shame, joy, guilt, love, fear and freedom.
The qualities of consciousness that are ready to be integrated by the Soul are vast in number. These understandings get uploaded to the rest of Creation, so that we all can learn, grow and progress together. The Earth allows us a space to engage in this work we call change, until ultimately, you and I will see who we truly are reflected in the world.
This is a profound process that each of us is an intimate part of—it is, in truth, the evolution of Creation. For millennia, this has played out on a relatively small scale, with most people living their lives separately from the rest of the planet. But within the last century, this has changed, and the mirror has become clearer and louder and more collective than ever before. The opportunity to see ourselves is unlimited.
We are at that tipping point in the evolution of humanity, when the ego has a chance to see that its tricks are played out. We are waking up to the great mission our souls came here for. Each of us is, right now, like a crusader on the edge of the known Universe, stretching its limits and bursting through the old paradigms to design the new.
If your human experience is anything like mine, this incredible transformation is not comfortable. There is a kind of cracking open of the thing we thought we were that is required to make space for the brilliance of who we are.
We all get our dose of dysfunction that comes from surviving a holographic classroom with no instruction book. Earth is meant to teach us about cause and effect, but we easily forget the place of cause.
Awakening to our inner world
We often point our fingers at people, places and things outside of us, confused about why they don’t change. That’s just not how the simulation system works. We come here to awaken to our inner world. The inner is the cause of that which we perceive to be real.
When the inward perception is out of alignment with our highest potential as a Soul, then the outer reflection must bring our attention to this misalignment.
The system uses the way we feel to do this. The outer world is not designed to make us feel good, if we are dragging around harmful beliefs about our value and worthiness. When we are internally against parts of who we are, that is what the external world must appear to be—against us.
If we are fighting parts of ourselves that we see as unacceptable, that is what the world looks like—a fight. This is not to punish us; it is to reveal the effect of the cause so that consciousness can evolve.
If I hate, fear or shame any part of who I am, I will feel this exact thing through the images I see, the voices I hear and the circumstances I am a part of. Sound familiar? What I have learned is that before I judge all the judgmental humans in the world, I might first look at the judgment I pin on myself.
Rather than being victimized by those who make me feel a certain way, I might observe their words and actions as feedback about the beliefs I circulate within myself.
My Soul was wise to the feeling game I came here to play. It picked this mess so that it could see what the limitations of shame, guilt, fear and anger create. My duty is not to reject them, but to have compassion for these parts of Creation that I judged, and have thus been stuck at learning about for a long time. Only once we have recognized ourselves to be Love, Joy, Peace and Freedom, can we expect the holographic world to reflect this image.
When I allow this mess around me to be my guide on a journey inward, it does not feel like a process of bettering myself up. Rather, it is a process of letting go of each criticism and concept of who I am, so that more of my Soul can shine through.
14 steps to change
These steps can help. I’ll share a personal example to illustrate.
- Notice an emotional reaction and write down what you feel. (I feel like my gut dropped out; I feel abandoned.)
- Thank your physical/emotional system for doing exactly what it is designed to do—give you feedback about the beliefs you are operating with. (Thank you for making me feel like crap when I’m holding a belief that is not benefitting me. I’ll stop distracting myself from the feeling and listen to what it’s teaching me.)
- Write down the neutral facts about what happened. (My husband and I had different perspectives. We both raised our voices. He left and went on a walk. I stayed home and cried.)
- Write down what your brain convinced you that those facts meant. (He doesn’t think I’m worth loving when life gets uncomfortable.)
- If this perception were true, what might it mean about you? (Maybe I don’t deserve unconditional love.)
- When was the first or worst time you felt this way? (Mom kicked me out and changed the locks on the house when I was 16.)
- Acknowledge that this was the best interpretation your human self could understand at that time. (Yeah, it makes sense that I felt like I must not deserve unconditional love.)
- Identify a belief that would have felt better. (Love isn’t something I earn or lose, it’s who I am, no matter what.)
- Visualize in detail a wise, loving figure giving that part of you that was hurt permission to believe this. (I see and hear the words of my grandmother.)
- Write an affirmation of this belief and speak it to your eyes in the mirror every day. (I am loved and I am Love.)
- Visualize yourself embodying this belief at work, at home, at school, at the store or wherever you go. (Wow. I act differently when I know that love is my identity, not a commodity.)
- Imagine future scenarios where that old belief might seem convincing, and visualize yourself responding with your updated belief. (The next time my husband leaves like that … hmm, I’m not feeling so abandoned. It seems like his actions aren’t connected to my value at all. He’s doing the best he can to love himself in that moment.)
- Each day, write down related progress. (When my teenage daughter locked her bedroom door, I didn’t feel like it had anything to do with my deserving her love, for the first time. In fact, I felt good about it. She’s learning to create her own space and seems to feel secure in my love for her. The nightmares have stopped. It feels like love resides within me.)
- Honour yourself for the courage it takes to be present and feel. You are creating a permanent understanding that your Soul will carry with it and offer to us all for the rest of eternity. (I am Love.)
Yes, I picked this mess. And I pick to no longer see myself through the filter of beliefs that were just not aware of who I really am. I can look at the history of my planet and my own life to see what that old perspective created.
When Gandhi told us to be the change we want to see in the world, it was because that is the only change. There is no other. The change is that rising up of the Soul within. Love all of your mess until all that is left to love is You.
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image 1 image by Peter Fischer from Pixabay 2 image by khaled Aljaber from Pixabay 3 image by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto from Pixabay 4 image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
