DEEPLY AWAKE – “BE GONE. YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE.” BY KATHY VIK 10-30-13
www.deeplyawake.tumblr.com
It's a valid question, “How does darkness die?” It begs a deeper question, and that is, “What is darkness?” It intimates darkness' basic fragility. It is a valid question.
The shifts here have been tremendous, but I feel I am not quite finished with this lesson yet. Here in the stillness, between acts, between work, I want to take some time to talk with you about what has happened here lately.
You know that I use my life as a metaphor for many things, and my days are my fodder, my grist, my lab.
What gives me this right?
Further, what gives me the right to think that how I see things is how things should go?
This comes down to fundamental questions. Is what I believe to be true good enough for all I encounter? Should I modulate my light, dim it, change it, when in conflict with another? Who am I to want to have the outcomes I do, and why do I think these outcomes are perhaps sturdier, and certainly more attractive?
These are the basics, really. Getting down tot he basics now.
An old teacher of mine, someone I revere and felt I needed to meet once more, complete a circuit, say good-bye, well, this teacher finally agreed to meet me.
But time passed, just a few days, and I could feel there had been a shift. It was a disappointment but not a surprise when yesterday I received a one-sentence message from this great soul, this great healer and soul-friend. The sentence?
“What is your intention in meeting me?”
This is after two simple, clear messages, explaining why I wished to resurrect this old thing and get together.
There it was.
What is your intention?
My initial reaction? Simple. I intended to give you love, say thank you and say goodbye. I intended to be kind to you. I don't even understand how someone in this situation could even think up this seven word question. It did not compute, stuck out and seemed so absolutely incongruous.
And so, my response was loving and sweet, but the message was, well, you know, I think it's best to consider this our goodbye.
Have you had an experience like this, where someone adds something to the mix that is just very surprising, odd, and an energetic arm up, out, defended and distancing?
I thought a lot about that yesterday, how it is that there have been just, really, a handful of folks I have collected in my life whose only stance is to have an arm out in defense. That I feel an obligation, and an honor, in loving them, this has been the hardest part of my walk, the hardest part.
I realized that this is one of the oldest engrams I have, one of the core things I set up to dissolve, to heal, and to release.
I know I love. I know I am love. Always have. Just know.
And when I then encounter someone who is not just neutral to me, but hostile or attacking, how is that even possible? I swear, I have spent most of my 52 years just shaking my head and crying inside. People are closed off, unavailable, a lot of them, and they don't even know it.
What gives me the right to say these things, and who am I to have any authority over my consciousness? This is the question I have wrestled with, from day one.
I will now tell you a story. When I was a little kid, maybe four, maybe younger, I remember being at a friend's house, on their outdoor swing, the kind when the benches face each other. My friend and I had been singing the “Found a Peanut” song, and had been playing some sort of game, I forget the details.
But it was plain to me, as the thing progressed, that this was someone who really, really, needed to win this game. And so, I let her win.
Her mom was observing this whole thing. The mom approached me and gave me a look, the impression, acted as if, what I had just done was not acceptable, and that I was a very very odd little girl. It wasn't a warm and fizzy feeling. It was suspicion itself.
Now, I have a choice here, don't I? I could have blown off that memory, made it insignificant, but it has been with me since. Just one more example of not fitting in, being judged by a parental unit. What else is new? That's all they ever do. I could have processed it that way, I really could have. Most people do.
In fact, most people don't have the antennae to feel the gestalt of another, and might even misinterpret the behavior of another in all sorts of ways. And there, in my little outfit, there I was letting my friend win a game, and her mom made it plain it was unacceptable to do something like that.
It stuck with me. I had always felt it as a warning. Watch yourself. Don't show yourself quite so much. Play the game. Play to win.
Why mention this?
Because this is how I am built.
It is not how many of my fellow travelers are built.
Having no one to talk with about such events, I filed it away, and the advice, to play the game, I took it to heart, to some extent, but still, throughout girlhood I collected friends with special needs. Blind. One who was just plain off. I liked hanging with those who couldn't play this game of aggression, whose beings were ill-equipped to win, and we sheltered together.
This gentleness of spirit, it has morphed and it has changed, as I have walked my walk.
And the central question, how can I trust something within me for which I do not see much outside of raw contempt and fear, how will this go?
I went into nursing. Sort of makes sense, right?
Some teach, some create things, some marry and make babies. I went into nursing. Where the gold standard of practice is mindful compassion, skillful neutrality and creating safety to be exactly who and what another is. That's how I roll. It is what my profession holds high as the epitomy of mastery.
But I guess I have not valued this core of me very much, and I am ok with having new pride in how I see things.
How does the dark die? What is darkness, and does it die at all, is it transformed, will it go away, or does it just go elsewhere?
Now I will tell you another story, because this is the way of it.
Six days ago, it came to my attention, through my son, not a school representative, not a grown up, that he had been accused of saying something highly sexually aggressive, obscene, really, and he was in trouble for it.
My kid can't lie, and when I asked him if there was truth to the accusation, he said no, and I believe him.
I feel, as a parent, that if my kid is honest, we can handle anything, and I will go to the mat for him every time. If he does something that is harmful to another, he admits it. If he has problems, he tells me these problems and sometimes, he knows, if I feel ill equipped to address the problems, we bring in help. He has had guides, already, in his life, when I was out of answers. My child trusts me, and for good reason, and he understands there is just no room in this life of ours for dishonesty, for covering up, because there is no shame here, really. None at all.
So, six days later, the pseudo-educator, the identified disciplinarian at the school, he is still terrorizing my son with this “the investigation is ongoing” nonsense.
The accusation is dark.
But what the educator has done with this darkness is even darker. Threats of district involvement, Threats of legal involvement. Intimations that this could impact my boy's life for the reminder of his life.
Yeah.
Talk about drama.
So, today, after dealing with and finally abandoning dealing with the disciplinarian who has placed himself in the tole of judge and jury, I met with the principal.
Of course, the principal was unaware of this accusation, and the actions of the one who encouraged the accusation becoming fully formed and alive as this ugliness we all have been dealing with for six days.
Last night I set the intention, ran light, said a prayer, but in an absent-minded way, feeling sure that my dreams would help more than any prayer I could utter in extremity.
This morning, it dawned on me that I could be far more intentional.
I dropped down, into meditation, into my Self.
I saw and felt light, and I did what I know to do when someone's darkness is impeding on others. I ran light, I gave him so much love, so much love, but it was plain: you have gone too far, fella. This cannot stand. It will not stand.
Have you ever been in a situation where you had your head around a situation or a problem, seen it just one way, could not see it any other, really, and then someone comes up and says things that blow open your internal construct, tearing what used to make sense into a pile of stupidity, and you realized, instantly, that you had not been seeing things whole, that this not seeing things whole led you to misinterpret and to act in a way you learn was disruptive, hurtful or inappropriate?Have you been caught being mean, in others words?
How did you respond to this? How did you change as a result of the interaction, or were you even able to?
When faced with seeing that how I chose to act or think about a situation was based on incomplete understanding, I learned this is really simply a lack of seeing things whole, seeing things whole. Compassionately, yes, that goes without saying, but seeing things whole, this is even more helpful.
We all know, when we get our noses smacked after acting in a way that was mean or unthinking, that a normal thing to feel is shame. Unsteadiness, even. It can lead to a fear that what is within led you too far failed, and therefore, what is giving you guidance maybe shouldn't be trusted.
That is why correcting someone who has things wrong, or is thinking darkly, acting darkly, it is imperative, I think , to handle such corrections of course with great compassion and gentleness.
But sometimes, my patience runs out, and my act of compassion is in letting the one doing the damage sit and be with the damage they've caused.
That is usually corrective enough. Usually that does the trick. Folks don't want to be harmful, especially when dealing with someone who is incapable of returning the harm.
But the shame can make folks do odd and sometimes even more harmful things. To save face, to feel intact, and sometimes to fight against the truth of it, that they had things wrong.
I know many many people who are unable to say the words, “I'm sorry.” To me it is a nice little litmus test, a nice little clue, as to their abilities. Is it always defense, guardedness, attack, or is this person someone who is able to say, “I'm sorry,” when their actions have been perceived as hurtful? Sort of tells me all I need to know.
That we each do things that can be perceived as harmful to another, well, I don't see getting around that, until generations have passed and this father/disciplinarian/judge sort of energy loosens.
I contemplated that, this morning, holding a crystal, blasting light, asking the ancients to continue to keep the space lit up for us, preparing the energy for a healing.
It became abundantly clear to all involved, as this meeting today played out, that the person keeping this dumb accusation, made by a confused 13 year old, that this was the issue at hand. Not the he-said-she-said nature of the thing. Not the content of the allegation, even. But whether this accusation was being dealt with by a grown up.
I asked that the outcome be of the highest love light and sound, in gentleness to all parts of all selves involved. Neutral, complete, loving, whole.
Although the power brokers left things unresolved, I do not fear the outcome now.
In meditation, I realized it is my intent to function completely with the mind of god throughout our time. To be a blessing and a help to all. The mind of god.
I will tell you why the outcome will be a soft one. And if it is not, how the thing will, must, naturally, conclude.
My kid had been told to write a statement, put it down in writing what happened.
And in that fat childish scrawl of his, oh! it fills me with wonder and love just imaging it.
My kid wrote that yes, he liked the kid he's accused of wanting to rape, but he never said such a thing.
And then, do you know what my kid said?
He said, “I know the person who is saying this is hurting, but...”
And there, shining on that page, in that dark place my husband and myself found ourselves in this morning, there it was, shining so clearly, right off the page.
My heart sort of jumped when I read it. Then I showed it to Jerry. And then I showed the principal. Here is a child to, when scared and standing accused, committing to paper his mind of god, his heart of compassion, his ability to see things whole. Loving his accuser, seeing this whole thing for what it is.
I ended my talking with saying that I want, when all is said and done, for this to be handled like grownups.
My Jerry, he then said, well, reading that, I know one person who is doing that.
That is how we left it.
I have been sitting in waves of amazement since this morning.
When accused of something dark, how many times have I gone to the angry place, the defensive place, the hurtful attacking place?
But I have changed. Did Sam change me? Did I change Sam? Or are we just super compatible?
What you think might be passivity, or too high a need to process, I see it differently.
I knew in mediation, was told, no one there can hold as much light as you. It's just how this situation is. Blaze. Be on fire with it. Burn with this mind of god. See things whole and hold them all to a higher standard, one of love and good judgment, compassion and truth.
Being of the light does not mean I am going to fit in.
Quite the opposite.
Quite the opposite, I am learning.
I have spent a long time studying this light of mine, and arguing with it. Telling it that it does not exist because only a few folks are capable of doing anything but spitting on it.
But this is what is changing.
The truth is that whenever I run this sort of light, ease is produced. Intelligence is produced. Peace is produced.
There have been times, in my career, when I have had to involve the authorities, knowing they will pursue punishment, knowing the recipient will be marked by the disclosure.
I have done it only when I knew that by not acting, this person's darkness would go unchecked. No insight, nothing but defense, what else could I do? You beat up one of my innocents, one of my patients, then you've crossed a line which I cannot, am not able, to cross. I know the judicial system, our form of punishing, it is just as wrong as the behavior which makes such a system breathe. But there are some things I will not abide.
Such is it with my kid, this time around. He has done plenty of stupid things, and had to deal with various shitstorms as a result. I let him deal with the shitstorms, so he can see that certain behaviors only have bad outcomes. It's been an important part of parenting.
But I know I can trust him, and his little essay reminded me why.
I am beginning to see that although this sequestration, this vacation I have had to take to get right with myself, and with you, and with the dark, this has been the source of all good things.
I do not like conflict, cannot understand what motivates a person to pursue retribution. I cannot understand what would make an old friend question my motives. My motives are beyond question. They just are.
But I am glad for the question, and glad of my response, too.
Lightwork is more than worrying my mala with gratitudes, with love. Lightwork is more than gathering with the like minded.
Lightwork is looking someone right in the eye and saying, “Really?”
A lot of it is just that.
Really? You're gonna play it THAT way?!
I have thought that my relative absence of mirrors, of like minded souls here around me as friends, that this was a tacit form of punishment. If I were doing really really good with this lightworking stuff, I wouldn't have problems, there would be no complications, it would be clear skies and calm seas.
And so, this morning, I thought about my friend Jesus. I thought about my friend Gandhi.
Did they have clear skies and calm seas? Did those around them always, always, always, agree? Did they have an easy path?
no. They did not.
Central to this is my ancient engram.
I remember, yesterday morning, in meditation, realizing that I have, since girlhood, been making a central, a fundamental mistake in how I have interpreted the behavior of others.
I am love. I am loving. I cannot harm others. Just can't do it. Built that way. Knew it from childhood.
And yet, I am not automatically treated like that. Not always.
And as a girl, I interpreted it like this:
I love you, but you do not love me.
If I loved you better, if I were better, then you would love me.
And so, 52 years later, I am, in writing, telling that little munchkin that she got a few things, understandably, and thankfully, wrong.
I am seeing now that my core is strong, and it is light and it is pure.
My light is strong and pure, and when I drop into my core, into my soul, into that part of me who can easily remember who and what I am and have been and will be, oh, all good things come from there.
It matters not, does not alter or diminish this light, if you fail to see it, if you react
badly, if you make dark pictures in your mind and project them all about.
It matters not to me, and does not diminish my light. Not anymore. Not anymore.
This is fearlessness, of course. This is recognizing that which is within as good, as pure, as loving and just. As truth, just for me, just for me, just for me.
But I have seen this light in action. You may ask those who have been changed by it. You may talk with those who know themselves as good because, in a tight and dense situation, I saw them as good. Once in my career did I have to involve the authorities. Once. All the other times, no matter what happened, no matter what went down, the change came face to face, heart to heart, in conversation, in fellowship.
I know the result of being like this.
I know when I am going into battle, always have, but I am prepared now in a way I wasn't before.
I am not apologizing, explaining or questioning my light anymore. You can, all you want, all you want. I just don;t care anymore.
Let your suspicions and your fear behaviors come up. Let them. It does not change me. It doesn't touch me, not anymore.
After the meeting, Jerry walked me to my car. He told me he was beginning to feel bad for the discipline dude, the one who was projecting all sorts of weirdness onto my son. Jerry said, I know how you can go on and on and on.
I said, yeah, I tend to do that when I see I am not being heard.
Jerry laughed, remembering some of the more awful moments of being married to this. And then he said again that he just felt bad for the guy, he'd been found to be wrong, and it was so obvious.
The discipline dude, he's off the case, and who knows what the replacement will do with this obscenity.
I have said, from the beginning, that it is clear to me that some little one in that school needs some help, projecting, as she is, such vivid imagery onto my kid. Someone needs help, and it is not Sam.
I feel a consensus within our little community that getting along is the highest value. Getting along.
But there are many things which I feel it is wrong to comply with. Many things that are just so unenlightened, so mean-spirited, dripping with fear and loathing.
I do not agree with how my elected officials are conducting themselves. I do not like how certain members of my own tribe conduct themselves.
For so long, I have thought that compliance, obedience, shutting up, going along to get along, that this was good. Less stressful, and a sign of growth.
But I think it has been more that I have just excused myself, for a while, from the BS of others, so that I could get clear on whether I had a right to see another's behavior as incorrect, or even, dare I say it, wrong.
That is a big one.
Auditing the little guy while corporations get a pass on paying a penny in taxes, that is wrong. Funding a war machine and defunding our schools, it's wrong. Banning children from bringing their basketballs in from home because balls could be used as a weapon, that's wrong. It's all very very dumb, very stupid, and it is dark. All of it. Of the darkness.
So, this movement I have been feeling, this shift, I feel as if I am emerging from a soundproof chamber, one in which I have passed exceedingly joyful days, getting to know and love and appreciate me and this curious light I know is what makes me.
I have been unwilling to venture too far into the madness, and now that I wish to emerge, I am struck with just how mad things have gotten with others, with their own minds.
I am not interested in using the law of reflectivity to somehow claim this darkness as mine.
You, if you have intentions which will cause grief without healing, if you are intent on punishing others because you can, without thought and without reflection, you are no longer something I recognize as mine.
I renounce this darkness. It is not mine. I refuse to think that the only reason I am confronted with the scenarios I have had to deal with lately is because I have darkness within me that the other is reflecting back to me.
No.
No.
That might have been true at one time, but it is no longer the truth of it, the core of it.
I realized, driving how this morning, that I just do not feel alone anymore. Usually when I have had to assert myself in such a way, I am left with a hollow, sad feeling, like I wish I could have someone to tell me how I did, that sort of thing.
But today, I touched my heart instead, laying palm to chest, and I smiled. I know I am with the others, and the others are with me, now. I am never alone, now. I can get out of my own way and allow the light to shine, now. I do not self reference when someone is acting in an awful way, an unenlightened or cruel way.
It's not mine. I do not recognize it as mine. I recognize it as something to point out, something to laugh at, really, like Glinda the Good Witch.
Remember? The mean old witch, Glinda's sister, comes to Glinda's place and starts in on her fear tactics and all of that, and remember what Glinda said?
Glinda laughed. First thing, she laughed. And then she said, “Be gone. You have no power here.”
Those who have been formative to my consciousness, I have, one by one, pulled them back to me and released them, I can see that now. This has been a nearly two year process of shedding all that used to serve as my structure, my internal awareness. Those who I have struggled against, those I have loved and lost, those who have disowned me, those who love me.
When I am deep in a problem, I see my consciousness, all my training, all that I have come to understand, as an impediment to happiness, as the reason I have less money than I'd like, why I have very few friends.
But the thing is, yesterday, I finally had a little talk with myself. I counted, on my fingers, those who I have in my awareness who have written me off, rejected me, or who cannot hear me, no matter how articulate and compassionate I am. Some will not get it. And there they were, on four fingers, waving at me.
And then I thought about all the perfection in my life. The friends I feel are family. The hugs I get, unsolicited, at work. The honor I see in my ex-husband's eyes. The words of love my son utters.
I counted these up too.
Ten to four.
Over half.
Over half, now, and more daily, I get little hits of recognition for the light I carry, without the sting of fear so many attach to their awareness of what I am.
And I decided, yesterday, that when all is said and done, this is good. I have grieved, as you know if you have been reading along, for this life I have led so far. The one couched in a desire to blend in, to not call attention to myself, to not opt for love, the one which obsesses over all the things I could have done better, how I could have been more loving, more sensitive, more kind.
Many do not, I believe, feel real pain when they survey their day, or their life, and find themselves deficient in being a loving person. I do. Always have. It's been a real pain in the ass, actually.
But I do have people in my life who do the same. I do have those who see that I am harmless, benign, not a mean bone in my body.
And those who do battle with me, they too come to see that I mean them no harm at all, and that how they are holding themselves is far more harmful than anything I could do or say or think.
It is to them I say, from this day forward, you have no power here. You have no power here. You have no power here.
I have earned this right, and I take this as my responsibility. And this means, now, emerging from this time of contemplation, of will, of spiritual intent which is so intense, so pure and so bright that it could light up the grid for all, as I emerge, I understand that to find that others do not vibrate as I do (“What is your intent in meeting?), that I am no longer willing to slow my spin to meet them.
Keep up, I say. Understand, you are no longer in control, if you are listening to the seduction of dark thoughts, fear scenarios, worry and anxiety and frustration and suspicions.
You have no power here.
I am a light warrior. I am a master. And just like my friends, none of us had that easy of a time, surrounded, as we were with those who refused to see, refused to hear, refused to understand.
These constructs are looking nonsensical to me. It is nonsense, most of the stuff that has us scurrying, has us reacting, has us upset.
I like seeing it as nonsense.
And I like knowing that it is getting so very easy to hold a high light, a high vibration, my own interpretation of the mind of god, in every situation.
I am not alone because I have the mind of god within me. I have support. I have help. I know enough to set the space and then trust that what comes from me is for the benefit of all, with harm to none.
I trust myself that much, now.
One of my teachers told me that the point of dwelling within self esteem, borne of integrity and authenticity, honesty and compassion, the goal is to be able to decide, or judge, the situations at hand using myself as my ruler, my scale. Asking oneself, “Is that what I would have done?”
I did not really ever feel I had enough internal authority to do this, until the last few days. Sure, I see strains of it, and really, it is fun to look back and to see all the times, all the ways, that I have acted on the side of benevolence, of kindness, of wisdom whose origins I never understood.
I have not given myself such authority, because I have seen that others, who are bigger, and meaner and louder, they are in charge, will do as they wish, and it really comes down to how I decide to manage the fall out of their stupidity, of their darkness.
But things have changed, and this is what I needed you to know.
Darkness,fear, separation, whatever you want to label it, it is something to challenge, and the light makes it vanish. This is the light I have found, through my life, that was always there, often misunderstood, sometimes mocked, frequently shunned.
I trust myself, my core, my soul, my understanding of god, well-honed and deeply respected, I trust it all enough to be able to say with a authority and a grin on my face,
Be gone. You have no power here.
