Today is a morning I wake with dread in my heart.
My legs feel heavy and tense. Before I even realize that I am awake, my mind is racing. Pacing. Fluttering and bouncing. I feel like a victim to my Inner Thinker. On an ordinary morning like this, the walls of my head feel like a jail cell that keeps captive my simple desire for peace, happiness, simplicity.
On a morning like this, I hear myself say,
“Have I not worked hard so as to deserve the peace? What more would it take to wake to a slow, tempered, joyous morning when my heart is full of love and my mind is clear and cool? ”
I ponder, I beg. But in my belly I know the truth:
The Divine Source of all things speak to us in moments of agony.
Moments of “breaking,” I call them.
Each and every waking morning that is riddled with angst, anxiety, fears or worries is no more than The Hand of the Universe striking you, like a bell, with a padded mallet.
And now, you hum.
You vibrate and shake.
Your mind races and paces with thoughts and ideas and stories and conversations with a flurry so uncontrollable that your heart is sparked into a dizzy of worry and wonder.
You are being spoken to. God is speaking to you now.
You aren’t trapped in your head. You don’t need to escape your mind. You need to understand (as I have–slowly, so slowly) this is Universal Energy that stirs within you. God, manifest. All you need do is to listen, to trust, and to surrender to this love.
And yet, even to hear myself say such a thing is so bizarre and uncertain that you might sooner seek a doctor to bring me medication than join me in looking up and throwing our hands into the sky in gratitude.
Entertain me for a few minutes, friend:
You came here for a reason.
You typed the words “escape your mind” into Google. You are looking for release, for peace, for quiet–I understand it. Breathe deeply now and understand all is well–read on.
A source from somewhere is transcending time and space to emanate through you in this moment of curious turmoil.
The dread you feel in your heart is a seed of truth waiting to burst through its walls.
Your legs feel heavy and tense for you are ready to stand tall and proud upon them.
Your mind is racing because a message is being spoken to you. Like a plucked guitar string, it shimmies from your cranium down your spine and through your limbs.
This is it, this gift. It’s here!
While the feeling is fresh, you give yourself to it.
Sit down and write. Go off and run. Meditate. Salute the sun in your yoga. Connect your body to breath. Whatever practice you desire, whatever habit you wish, in this moment you must sync your soul to the Divine.
Answers are finding you. Clarity is being bestowed.
You have earned this.
You have worked so hard to deserve a clue; a revelation.
Your life may well change from this moment forward.
Our minds tend to deceive us — to fool us.
Mine deceived me for nearly two decades before I came to see the truth: that my ego was once the captain of my ship, directing my thoughts and thus directing my actions. I moved selfishly and in fear of the world–in fear of people. I judged, I criticized. I sought to find the path that was “right” and made all others “wrong.”
Our minds deceive us, but that is just our nature. Our task in this life is to recognize the lies our egos tell us. I used to say, “Kill your ego.” Don’t do that. Simply forgive it.
I believe that God speaks to each of us routinely.
And please, replace my use of “God” for whatever title you wish: Divine Source, Source Energy, Om, Ganesha, The Eternal, One Love, The Universe, Buddha, Ra, Yahweh, Allah. We are all speaking of the same source; the same ocean.
I am a writer. I write because I have found, one thousand times throughout my life, that writing is how I listen.
When God speaks and the Universe suddenly feels as if it is talking to me all at once, I must make myself sit down and write to transcribe what it says. I believe that we are each our own conduits to the Universal. I believe that we human beings, made up of little more than energy and a soul, are channels by which energies, seen and unseen, pass.
But, your mind deceives you.
That’s why I share this message with you today.
For, like you, I am a student of life who is trying his best to live well and do some good for others, and beyond all else, to be happy and content and in his actions and words feel more and more true to self.
We all desire these, purpose and fulfillment, meaning and love, joy and truth. But so often we do not feel them. We are all the more inclined to feel anxiety and pain, angst and worry. We are more likely to wake in the morning with dread in our hearts and heavy legs.
Our minds are more often racing than they are quiet; we feel like victims to our own thought, for thought seems to occur independent of our choice: our will, our want, our ability to control it.
If there’s an “Off Switch” to our thought we cannot seem to find it.
I would use an analogy to say we are crawling through the dark room of our minds and scouring for the wall, but then, would we not be searching for an On Switch instead? See, even when “Divinity speaks to you,” clarity is not certain.
When God speaks to you and through you, the Universe does not pull back the curtain of unknowing for you to glimpse into a revealing and picturesque portrait of the future. If that were the case, my analogy wouldn’t have fallen so flat. And goodness knows, I should be so much more a poet than I am if all that was required was this sort of listening!
The feeling is enough, friend. The feeling of connection to the Divine Source to which we are each connected is enough to remember that it is there. That, no matter what, we’re forever bound to it. Connected through it.
Answers are not what we need.
Clarity is what we say we desire.
We hear ourselves say in conversations with friends that we want to make sure we “do what’s right.” We say that we want to be “sure.” We don’t want to screw up, make the wrong move, set ourselves back, hurt the ones we love, feel misunderstood by the ones closest to us.
We say these things because our minds deceive us into thinking that life is linear–as if we are driving upon a highway called life and if we take the wrong exit, we’re flat out fucked.
There’ll be no going back, we say. If we choose the wrong job, the wrong partner, the wrong anything, then we’ll receive an F on the test and be condemned to it eternally.
We’re terrified of choosing wrong.
But more so, we’re terrified of choosing what we don’t know, whether “right” or “wrong.”
And we never know how a decision, a choice, a path, a job or career, a relationship or partner will pan out. We don’t have that ability to know, we never will and even if we could, it would make your life unworthy of being lived at all. Life is a journey and how you maneuver through it, whether for better or worse, is the gift of life itself.
We’re terrified of choosing when we cannot see the path ahead. And so instead of choosing what feels right and true and honest and authentic to us right now, we don’t choose.
We sit on the same path that hasn’t been working for us. We sit in an unhealthy relationship that we know will never change, but because we’re familiar with it, it is certain; because we know it, it feels safer than the unknown, which is what we’d choose in leaving that relationship.
I wrote in my book God Whispers on the Wind that the brain “likes to think in highways.” When there’s a decision, a choice, a path, a problem that needs solving or an obstacle that needs overcoming, that’s where our thinking brains default: the biology of the brain looks to find the “right” answer and attempts to see the result before making the decision.
If you can’t find the right answer or see the result, the brain says to not make the decision.
The problem is that our brain likes to make decisions right here and right now on a basis of something we will never know: the future.
Your mind deceives you for this reason, friend.
Forgive it.
Forgive yourself.
We are all in this together. Every human being experiences this feeling.
You need to make your decisions right here and now on the basis of right here and now, knowing full well that what you choose today will indeed influence, affect, shift, and shape your tomorrow–but there is not “one path” for you to walk.
Rumi said, “There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
Today, kneel and kiss the ground in one way that feels good and true to you.
Put pen to paper, sing a song in your car, go to the beach, walk in the woods, call a friend by surprise and say hello. Honor yourself, honor others around you. Be kind, be gentle, be loving.
I often say, “Tomorrow belongs to the unapologetic.”
The unapologetic are those who choose because they believe in themselves, in spite of the unknown.
They are those souls who stand and walk upon their paths with certainty in spite of the fact that, in their bellies, they are so afraid and deathly uncertain.
What guides the unapologetic is a pure and unwavering dedication to self, to soul and by extension to every other self and soul in this life: each human being, an equal; each beating heart that cares and wills for the same honest and earnest and good and true desires.
Are you remembering now, friend?
