The Hallway

I’d been standing at the door for years.

But I was forever stuck in the spiritual hallway no matter how I tried to pry open the door. It was only when I honestly tried surrendering to my inability to force it that the point of entry came into much sharper focus. For me, it isn’t a neat and understandable thing that opens it, it is openness to the unknowable itself that holds the key. For instance, a session in late summer 2022 with the spiritual medium I’ve been consulting since 2012 felt like the most pointed reading I’d ever had with her — no frills, just clean information, reassurances , and confirmations.

That sort of thing can take a lot of out you. Especially when you realize it’s always been in you. Everything has begun to feel even closer to the bone.

The answers. They’re already there. We only have to become attuned to them.

I live on evidence of the spiritual. And I have experience that not only allows me to do that but insists that I do, so putting the words evidence and spiritual in the same sentence isn’t a contradiction for me. Signs surround me, and whispers float through the air to my ears that this is not all there is, and who I am in this moment is not all I will be. To embrace that possibility with openness and courage frees me and gives me peace. Lately, I feel as though a heavy gauze has been lifted from my senses, but its absence does not leave me exposed and quivering, rather the opposite. I am raw, but I am sure and strong, my mood disorder lifted to reveal a clarity of purpose to say who I am without fear. I’m learning how not to abandon myself even when aspects of who I am might be met with less enthusiasm from others than I would like. I’m weird and always have been. Who isn’t? All weirdness isn’t to be chiseled away. The idea that it should be sends us twisting ourselves into knots, pleasing and hiding for others’ comfort. I don’t think that’s what the universe wants us to do. Allowing vulnerability and saying who we are doesn’t have to mean chaos and instability for everyone else. It can be a way to surround yourself with love and acceptance and show others how to do the same, if they’re ready. I’ll start:

I am frighteningly sensitive.

I like to draw shapes and paint colors for hours on end.

I conduct a healthy amount of personal ritual each day and watch for signs of it becoming compulsive. I seek balance and do not want to be addicted to anything, not to trying not to be addicted, and not to trying, period.

What I wear influences my direction.

I have had PTSD for most of my life. I don’t know when it began.

I like to think about different levels of consciousness, especially when I feel adrift in them. It’s sort of a meditative practice. Sometimes I communicate with my son in this way. He and I have imperfect yet ever-growing telepathy with each other. Removing my reliance on the spoken word exchange demands that my other senses take charge and my observational powers rise to the fore. They’re just as strong, if not stronger, than what my ears can process through speech as I understand it. When I can put my focus there, I can feel and know. Imagine tuning in a radio, if you can remember what that’s like.

I tend to dissociate and have to be careful not to lose myself in all of the above. I’m sometimes afraid the center will not hold.

I am pretty sure the point of being here is to learn to love. Work is good and very necessary to do, but when used as a tool of self-discovery, it’s possible to find what I call flow. And I suppose that’s why we say do what you love. It’s in that flow that our true selves are discovered. We feel aglow in it because it is in it that we can dance closest to whom God made us to be. It is a privilege of the most lovingly supported earthly souls to be able to find a way to earn a living that aligns with that state. Most of us don’t get to do that.

I have recently begun to understand how to play.

I have also recently begun to comprehend dignity and integrity.

Life is a mystery and I think that’s cool. I understand now that some of the things I’ve tried to use as anchors for my voyage on the sea of uncertainty have been hollow. I didn’t know I needed to be my own anchor.

I might be nuts, but I am less crazy than I have ever been.

I surrender to it all. Especially to the beauty of this day.

Love,

AM

Here’s a work in progress. Maybe I’m studying boundary.

From this morning.

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