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Sometimes I see everything as the illusion it is… completely devoid of any meaning or value. A Course In Miracles teaches, “I will not value what is valueless” (meaning seeking outside ourselves to quell illusions of fear, lack,’ loss and separation) and I feel peaceful and float through many challenges.

But sometimes my ego runs with it … and things that used to bring me great joy feel empty. Soul less. Devoid of light and life. And then I feel so empty… unexcited. Uninspired.

And I continue on in my “tasks” of life… the never-ending constant companion of dishes. Whoever said death and taxes were the only thing we could count on missed their kitchen sink. It’s dishes. Dishes are the never-ending constant companion of us all in the “civilized” world. Dishes, laundry and all around clean up … or telling my kids to clean up because anyone who has kids knows that’s a never-ending exercise as well. sigh. Adult hood.

Adult hood and the long sought after illusion of “security” that we were all brought up to strive for. This is what leads to the “mid-life crisis”.

“This is it? The big GOAL?”

Well, one of them anyway. This is sometimes the routine “life” that makes us desperate to live again. To feel again. To feel ALIVE. To live by heart once again. The reckless, fearless way we used to before we became so mature … except without all the drama and chaos we put ourselves through before we learned our lessons.

That’s when we call out- Please God, Universe … I did everything “right”. I did everything I was told to do. I have my list mostly completed. Why do I feel so empty?

Sometimes I yearn to feel excited and alive again. In love with life! Isn’t that why we came to these bodies in the first place? To FEEL the roller coaster of living? To FEEL the curiosity of discovering? To revel in the delight of experiencing and creating?

This is what made me love writing … the languishing process of delving into feeling and observing even deeper and more fully. To clarify, intensify and magnify all that makes us drop and soar.

But the steady stream dishes, clean up, bills, “to do lists” and mouths to feed keep us dutifully trudging on… and on. And on.

Unless…is there another way?

It takes too much energy to feel. Too much time. No one would get anything “done”. Feeling certainly isn’t something secure stable people can afford. We can’t ride the roller coaster of emotion and passion, we’ve got mortgages, car payments, car insurance, health insurance, home insurance, life insurance and death insurance to pay for the illusion to make us feel safe secure!!

Not to mention the cable bill needs to be paid so we can watch actors pretend to feel for us … so we can live vicariously in safe controlled 30 minute, 1 hour or 2 hour increments where it always works out in the end and no one really gets hurt or really has to experience anything from the safety and security of their lazy boy couches!

Now don’t get me wrong. I love movies and I have gained some genuine life lessons watching the real challenges of people on controlled “reality” tv shows. (haha) I’d say I’ve even been swept away by the love stories that took countless episodes, even seasons to unfold and finally land. Only to be broken up again by some tragic event or petty emotional manipulation. Love sabotage.

Honestly, that’s what kept us tuning back in season after season right? The constant delightfully torturous edge of tasting the ache of long desired for deep passion. Unrequited love. That is the ego’s favorite game. Seek and do not find. Tease and taunt with delectable delightful promises of heavenly pleasures and absolute ecstasy. Only to break it off again in season two so they can pine and wallow and sideways glance at glimmers of hope. We can wonder and ache for them to hopefully be reunited in season three???????… or maybe some other character will fill the need…

In my teens I wrote in a journal entry that all artists, writers, poets and painters that we were trying so hard to experience the joys and pains of life through were actually calling to us, yelling at us, beseeching us to LIVE. To Truly Live and Experience the wonders of life! To EXPERIENCE OURSELVES.

We live vicariously through artists and creators that live boldly on the edge of life and dare us to peek through their eyes. To see the view, the colors and magnificence of the world and feel the passion they feel. To dare to break the rules and live the life uncontrolled. The life unimagined. The life inspired!

Yet, our ego warns, to live on that edge seems so crazy… so untamed… so unpredictable! So present, in the moment and inspired.  So … Alive. It whispers sweetly.This is what inspired me to write in the first place. This Aliveness is the whisper that keeps calling me back though I have tried to live the straight and narrow “secure life”.

This little journal entry of unfiltered teenage wisdom knocked me square between the eyes in my finally “secure early 30’s adult life”. With a home on acreage with a view, a good husband, two bright college-age step children who had help raise and teach me through my bachelors degree in life and my two young children who were just in their earliest years of teaching me my next degree of mastery. I had so much more of my own life to live and love to experience.

I turned the TV off and walked away.

That was just the beginning of very BIG life changes for me to say the least!

It’s the passionate artists life for me! And yet, here I am, years later, emotionally stable, my life is more streamlined for more freedom for creative flow and my bills still get paid … go figure! My ego thought I would DIE!!! … actually, it was most of my ego that died. 🙂

To live the inspired life can be terrifying. To actually FEEL is Messy! Terrifying! Painful … And yet, it is delicious, delectable, delightful, delirious… succulent. Savory… ALIVE!

It has no guide book. No rules. No map save the one tiny voice in your heart that beacons you to listen. To follow. Please…

To live by feel can seem treacherous and full of pitfalls and torment. Torture. Chaos. Completely unsafe and unsure. Thats what the programs of your mind would have you believe.

… or we can fly free and high… and teach our children to do the same.

The only security we have is the steady guidance of our own hearts.

There is no love, joy or aliveness in anything save the love, joy and miraculous I give to it!

 

let go of the fearful grip, step, leap, SOAR!!

 

Infinite love and Gratitude! ~Jamie