AN UNLIKELY CANDIDATE

I am the most unlikely candidate of all.

I could never capture in words the profound inner experience I am having in regard to this pandemic. I feel as if I am being revealed at the deepest level. Every day a new insight arises that knocks me for a loop.

And that has been my prayer from the very onset.

In mid-March, when America started being directly impacted by Covid-19, I had already been anticipating that something profound was stirring in the collective consciousness. I had been sensing that a grand reckoning was going to unfold at the global level. It seemed clear to me that the way in which humanity had been living and treating our earth and each other was no longer sustainable. I set my sights on what I perceived to be a new world arising. A new vision that would lead to a more harmonious world that would work for all beings.

I have not lost sight of that arising vision.

I sure did not think, though, that the arising would look like this.

I did not intuit that at the time of this writing over 140,000 Americans would have perished as a result of this virus. Most experts would conclude that the number is grossly underreported. I surely did not foresee that my own best friend would be one of those casualties. Even as I have witnessed and grieved that and those losses, I have maintained an awareness that something else is arising that absolutely needs to be seen. A cosmic unveiling is underway. It is devastating in its effects. It has demanded that we distance and physically disconnect. While many have not heeded that call, I believe it to be a most crucial part of the healing of this pandemic.

We need to collectively take a time out and do some deep and relentless soul searching. We need to face the collective effects but see them at the individual level. We each need to stop and look courageously inside. We are called to allow for a grand reboot. A resetting of consciousness. An excavation of what we say we believe and how we actually live. This is a time to reclaim all blame. To bring back all projections and move deeply into the shadow from which they came. This is a time to forgive our unforgiveness. To release our resentments. To give to God our grievances. It is time to literally come clean.

Though I have been working fulltime throughout these months I have also claimed time to really stop and to examine my own deeper interior. While it is tempting to fall into believing my assessments of how others are handling this tragedy, I do not allow myself to stay in that fallacy. I have become clearer than ever that there is one person I can do anything about.

Me.

Without denying or deadening the externals of what is happening I am choosing to run all of it through my own internal energy system. I want to know what I have not known. I want to see what I could not or would not see. I want to know what toxicity has gone viral in me that has contributed to a collective poisoning of consciousness. I want to know what and who I have blamed for my pain. I want to know what my unconscious priorities have been so that I may reset them consciously.

In short, I want to awaken to what is running this show.

I want to know this not only from a strictly personal perspective. I want to know this in order that I may open to a new order and a new reality for the sake of all beings. I want to get over myself in order that my myself to be used in service of the greater good. I want to be freed from the limiting programs that shroud my heart and dim my Light.

More than ever I want to live and to love in service to the world.

The multiple epiphanies that have occurred as a result of my internal excavations have confirmed for me that I am a most unlikely candidate to do what I do here in this world. I am clearer than ever that I have nothing to teach others that they do not already know. There is no reason that anyone should follow my leadings. There is nothing in me that is special or enlightened. If there is any gift that I have to give it is the gift of an unwavering and relentless commitment to doing my own inner work. It is the day in and day out taking of responsibility of what happens in here, regardless of what is happening out there. If that is worth learning from, then watch me fumble and learn from my many failings. If you want to follow my lead in learning from everything by denying nothing, then so be it. Just know that you can only walk beside me and never behind me. I am always willing to learn from you, and I cannot do so if I always need to turn around to look.

Indeed, I am the least likely candidate of all.

Now, if there are any of you reading this that perceive this to be self-deprecating you are not hearing what I am saying. I am reflecting on what is finally setting me free. If there is a superpower that I possess it is the knowing that by acknowledging my weaknesses, there becomes room for a greater strength. It is the knowing that I of myself do not know that gives birth to a deeper knowing. There is a rooted certainty that I of myself can do nothing. And in illogical ways that admission gives way to empowered living and transformative loving.

I am indeed a most unlikely candidate for expressing the vocation I know I am here to express. What fuels that expression on a day to day basis is that I know how unlikely a candidate I am. From that realization I do not get lost in a role I think I have to play. I do not lead with pretense but follow the One presence. I do not fall into the trap of believing the occasional accolades, or the Light projections cast upon me. That is not altruistic. That just means I subsequently do not have to identify with the evaluations and criticisms that frequently come with what I do. You put it out there and someone will always comment on it.

I am a most unlikely candidate. Yet there is no election I am trying to win.

To minister during a world pandemic is so daunting that it is at times devastating. It would be more devastating if I thought I personally had to do it. My mantra for thirty years has been “how may I serve?” I pra that prayer daily. I also pray for a daily moment of true humility and just one moment of wisdom in this lifetime. Then I follow the ensuing impulses. With every breath I have left I pray to serve. Imperfectly yet radically. Humbly yet wisely.

So, this unlikely candidate is electing to spend this time apart allowing for a deep reckoning inside of me. I am keeping the majority of my vision on the interior. I am committed to coming out of this unprecedented time with less of me and more of what I truly am.

And if you think that is worth listening to or walking with then walk beside me. I may be unlikely, but I am relentless and often even audacious. That is the gift I came to give. Unlikely. Often unlovable. Yet electing to remain a candidate for God happening. For God can shine in and as someone as unlikely as me.

TMI

There truly is such a thing as too much information.

In an age of social media I have experienced TMI in ever-increasing frequency. People post things online that they would almost never share in face to face interaction. There is a kind of false bravery that breeds permission to say things that are revelatory yet often hurtful in some fashion. It does, however, reveal parts of people that lie below the physical proximity pretense. I have often suspected that behind the polite smile lurks a shadow awaiting exposure. And social media is the perfect platform for such an unmasking.

Too much information.

There is another phrase in our vernacular that I find to be stunningly true.

“You can’t unsee that.”

Put those two perceptions together and they make up a fulltime spiritual practice.

That was too much information, and now I cannot unsee that.

I want to be clear at this point in my musings that I take personal responsibility for what I do with what I wish I had not seen. Please keep that in mind as I continue.

I have had multiple experiences of seeing posts by someone that I care about and thought I knew that are in direct opposition to something that I hold valuable and even sacred. In a nano-second I can feel a shift in how I see that person. I feel a reaction in my gut. I sense an impulse to close tight my eyes and to fervently unsee what I have seen. I feel the oppositional reactions inside of myself. Internal chaos ensues.

Damn. That was too much information. I wish I could unsee that.

And I cannot.

And so begins a battle between my caring heart and my ideological mind. I cannot unsee it. It is too much information to not instigate a process inside of me. Trying to act as if the information is not repugnant to me is useless. It is. Seeking to cover up that I have a strong opinion about your opinion is futile. It was indeed too much information to simply be ignored. I cannot unsee what I have seen.

And now I see you differently.

It becomes time for me to get real and serious about what I am going to do with this too much information. There are options parading through my awareness.

I can assess and decide that I did not really know you at all. The warmth that I thought I felt for and from you was a false fire of yet to be known misguided comradery. Had I had the information sooner I never would have joined myself with you. Had I seen it sooner I would not have been blind to what you really represent.

I could act as if I had not seen it, and lead with a cool and slightly pretensive relating. An unresolved simmering of distain would likely lie just below the surface, awaiting an opportunity to erupt into unexpected hostility.

I could realize that the former two options reflect little about you and your online revelations. I could own that my reactions are about me, and my way of relating to those with whom I disagree. Even if my most cherished values are violated it does not give me license to dehumanize or recharacterize you. This is not a pink paint option. It is actually the option of the lionhearted.

I will vehemently disagree with you, and I will not put my personal ideology before what I am willing to see in you. I will allow the process of the too much information to happen in me. I will welcome the revisioning of the cannot unsee that to shift my perception and clarify my seeing. I will go through this privately, and resist any temptation to repost in retaliation.

I will acknowledge within myself that I am seeing you differently. I will also acknowledge that I am seeing you in more totality. I may not like what I have been called to see. Yet my choice to include and to even embrace your incrementally revealed wholeness is what my own spiritual maturation gifts me with.

This for me is process. Atonement is not conceptual. I seek to know my shared humanity in all its messiness and all its magnificence. Human beings disagree. It is what we do. We are in many ways uniquely programmed. Those programs often conflict. Friction ensues. Friction causes fire. Fire will either burn and consume or it will clarify and warm. The choice is in how I choose to relate when my own embers are ignited.

That was too much information, and I cannot unsee it.

Now there are a series of choices to be made. I may well see you differently. I will not choose to see you as less. I will respect your right to choose even when I do not respect your choice. I am called to decide the level of engagement that is appropriate to how our energy systems may dance. I may need to decide to keep you in my heart, yet not in my direct sphere. I will be relentless in not defining you by your information that I cannot now not see. And I will pray to see through that data to the depth of what you are. If I lose sight of that it is me who is at fault.

So, this may be a clunky way of describing what I am feeling. I will post it anyway, at the risk that it may be too much information for some of you.

If you have read this far, however, you cannot unsee it.

ILLOGICAL LOVE

The great loves of my life have almost all been illogical.

They were relationships that had I listened to my head I would have talked myself out of.

I guess that is the nature of true and lasting love. Love does not make sense. At least it does not for me. The most significant people in my life have arrived in surprising ways and remained despite the odds being against them. The really great loves have had an element of mystery around them. They have all been unanticipated surprises. When the love really landed, I stepped back from each with a sense of “I didn’t see that coming.”

I believe that is what made them the really great loves.

I would have never dreamed that my entire life would be changed by a split-second decision to stay for a Unity service that I was completely ready to ditch out on.

I could never have guessed that this non-Catholic would spend a significant portion of my life traversing this earth in the company of nuns. Especially a former nun who would be become the best friend of this lifetime.

Nothing prepared me for eventually marrying an over the top gay activist that initially sent me scurrying in the opposite direction whenever I saw him approaching.

In just those examples an illogical and surprising change of mind changed the entire trajectory of my life.

As a result, I have ceased trying to make sense out of love. I do not consciously look for reasons to love. I simply lean against and often through the reasons my mind gives not to.

That must begin in here.

I hail from a long line of logical lovers.

Love had to be earned and behaviorally sustained. One wrong move and love was withheld. Shame and silent treatment were tools of torment for this sensitive and illogical heart. And so that became the love equivalent that would darken quite literally decades.

I am unskillful, often unconscious, and far, far from perfect. If I wait to deserve love, I will never know it. I must go with illogical love if I am ever to have it. Applied within, a context is set to know it from without.

And I have known great, passionate, totally illogical love.

I have always loved to be surprised. And the greatest surprises of my life have been these intense and illogical loves.

Most of these loves have transitioned out of this realm of experience. And yet I find myself loving them more with every passing day.

Totally illogical.

Total love.