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A Wanderer’s Handbook - Excerpt
CHAPTER TWO: THE ANATOMY OF SEPARATION
SEPARATION FROM FAMILY
To some extent, every individual will feel, at least at times, sorely separated from family or friends. But for wanderers, the separation is felt steadily, keenly and over a lifetime. It is not a separation from the world of nature, but from other human beings. For many wanderers, it begins right in the early years of the birth family. Q’uo says:
So, at the heart of being a wanderer is that feeling of dislocation, of being in the world but not of the world in which you find yourselves. Because this situation seems full of discomfort, many who have wandered here are simply miserable without finding any comfort. To respond to that need for comforting some who have responded have leaned in their discussions heavily towards comforting wanderers by encouraging a sense of separation from native Earth humans. We do not encourage this line of thought because each wanderer, in coming into your Earth’s sphere of influence, took upon it the responsibility of citizenship of this Earth. As much as any other native inhabitant, wanderers will be expected to walk the steps of light when this incarnational experience is at an end, and, just as much as any native inhabitant of Earth, if the steps are walked to a point of comfort within third density the wanderer shall not return to its home vibratory nexus but, rather, shall continue in third density until graduation is achieved.[75]
I believe this is an important point. We may not have always been on Earth, but we incarnated here as Earth natives, people of the blood and dust of this native sphere, subject to its requirements for departure. We will not get back to our home densities until we realize this and work to polarize enough for graduation from our present, third-density, experience. Being natives here seems to separate us from our eternal wanderer spirit, although it does not. Those of Latwii say,
Separation seems to run very deep and one forgets that the stones sing, that the Earth shouts with rejoicing and that the trees skip in the springtime. How easy it is to feel oneself separate from life that indwells all things. How easy it is to feel separate from oneself, to feel that there are factions within the self which must be reconciled, to find oneself analyzing and re-analyzing to no avail.[76]
Norma Talvik describes the basic situation:
I never was a joiner and lived most of my life by myself, and for sure I have never felt more alone or isolated when I am around a large group of people. Yet, individually I love people, and have many wonderful friends, but it is not my people or my home. I can feel very close to an animal, dog, wolf, horse or other, but not to humans.[77]
As it applies to the birth family, the reported dislocation can be felt as the family rejecting the wanderer:
I have had many experiences throughout my life that I have only now begun to realize were different, except for the fact that the other kids thought me “different” and my “family” wished me swept under the rug.[78]
However, some wanderers are of sturdier stuff, and they reject the family, rather than waiting around for the family to reject them:
When I was young I always thought I was adopted even though I knew differently, I had a hard time for awhile because I did not feel accepted by my parents, even though they loved me in their own way.[79]
**
While growing up I remember thinking that my parents were not my parents, my family not my family. That my “real” family would come and get me and take me home. Even my mother said that if I didn’t look so much like her she wouldn’t believe that I was her child.[80]
That is a tough audience! Here, those of Q’uo share some insight on how to work with these feelings:
The only catalyst dealt with in third density is fear and love. The entity begins its babyhood wrapped in love, love known throughout its system, and it learns to close itself, to become apart, and to become defended because it seems fairly obvious that there are things to fear. There are entities and objects out there that can harm and hurt. So the spiritual life within third density may be described as either a learning how to love or a learning how to release fear, for fear is that distortion of love that posits a separation betwixt beings, thus occasioning the necessity of having some sort of response to these persons or things that will tend to increase safety and comfort.[81]
To those who feel somehow guilty for feeling this dislocation from family, Q’uo says:
These feelings of separation among those who seek to be one cannot be seen in terms of failure. It must be seen simply that it takes an enormous spiritual courage to attempt to offer a life to the Creator, especially one in the context of other entities.[82]
In my birth family situation, I was, or felt I was, more the nurturer than the nurtured. It is excellent catalyst, seen in hindsight, but it was very painful at the time not feeling supported. Even looking back on it, the memories are not precisely golden, though adulthood does bring independence and the continuing opportunity to become supportive and encouraging “parents” to ourselves. We need carefully to watch how we talk to ourselves. Let us begin our service to others with the service to our inner selves of support, self-belief and self-acceptance. What the birth family was in no position to do, we can become able to encompass within ourselves. We can become self-affirming, and that is a wonderful start, in my opinion, to affirming others.
CONTROL ISSUES
Why did we choose our families? Q’uo comments:
Within this small group [the family], entities have the most steady, deep and lasting opportunities both for weal and for woe. Each is capable of becoming a portion of the so-called good of another’s experience or becoming the nemesis and the avenger that can destroy another. This family is so deeply a part of the experience of third density and so fully fertile with opportunities for service to self and to other self that we cannot overstate the opportunities for polarization that lie within the challenges and circumstances of the self dealing with groups. Community is something wanderers understand instinctively. That much almost always comes through the veil of forgetting that marks the beginning of an incarnation upon your planet in your density.[83]
The Confederation entities talk of a larger family. Perhaps they intend to include the spiritual family that we gather about ourselves in life. My own recovered ET memories are rich in “clan” living, where each child had many adults to ask questions of, and many other children to be with. I think this kind of extended family of those with similar spiritual interests is a common way of life in higher densities.
Each of you is a portion of a greater family that moves within the illusion at this time, helping those that need help, inspiring those that are weary, and lending assistance to those who walk with difficulty. You may always take comfort in knowing that the love of the one Creator resides in full in each and but requires the smallest of need or inspiration to be kindled into flame.[84]
In theory, this suggestion sounds fairly simple. The suggestion is that we flow into ways of cooperating and harmonizing with our family, in the literal and the larger senses. But whenever humans get together, there are control games going on. Some people try to change themselves to suit others:
Last evening, in a discussion, out came the words that I have spent my whole life changing myself to suit others just to be able to get along with them. But it is now time to stop that kind of changing and start being myself.[85]
Again, this sounds simple. Being ourselves, however, is anything but simple, in the sense of having a priore knowledge of the self. The hermetic instruction to “know yourself” opens the seeker to the enormous and shadowed deeper self within, where the light for searching is always dim and strait, and the recesses of self many and profound.
Many more people respond to the need to get along with the family by attempting in various ways to control others’ behavior. The Q’uo talk about this:
The desire to control oftentimes is based upon the wish to aid others in a manner determined by the self to be helpful. However, the desire to serve in a manner pre-determined by yourself is oftentimes a desire misdirected and a desire which can, if clung to overly much, cause one to miss an opportunity to serve that is more harmoniously and efficiently offered without preconditions.[86]
Looking for a good example of specific work recommended by those of Q’uo in a certain situation, I found Pupak Haghighi’s story. She was a regularly attending member of our group meetings in 1996, and had become righteously indignant over a male acquaintance’s inappropriate behavior. She had to fend off advances made by this married man who had falsely sworn he only wished to be friends. She was understandably insulted and furious! Here is some of what the Q’uo had to say to her when she asked about this experience:
Many feelings of anger are generating orange-ray blockage, as that is the ray in which you are working with yourself and one other self. That is the relationship chakra, the belly chakra, the chakra where many entities will try to control from. The person that has a lower belly tension is often reacting to another being who is attempting to control or is reacting because the self is attempting to control another. In either case, not only the red-ray but also the orange energy center is experiencing some blockage and when the anger has to do with anger at society or at the culture or at groups, this anger is also generating yellow-ray blockage. What this means is that you as an energy user are put suddenly on short, short rations so that although the energy coming to you is infinite, the energy that is making it up to the heart chakra where it can open the heart is much diminished. So once you have accepted yourself for having this dark side you have the basis for a long program of work doing what we might call coming out of a hidden place. We gave this instrument the vision of a closet. It is as though your fear, your blockage as you experience the catalyst that creates anger, contracts you into a crowded, small space, yet the skillful way to work with this anger once it has been identified, accepted and forgiven in the self is to see that there is a real concern which can only be addressed by love itself.[87]
Always, whatever the concern, the Confederation entities offer thoughts of faith, hope and truth, the everlasting ideals. What a challenge, to love a rude cad enough to see the way to forgive him and move on. May I say that in addition to the application of love, Pupak delivered herself of an awesomely fierce and elegant tirade when next the hapless gentleman attempted to speak falsely within the meditation group. For me, a person who seldom shouts, this was a delightful moment in a scary way! But to come back to the concept of controlling or not controlling other people, it is a very scary concept to let go of control. However, the Q’uo recommend just that:
The decision not to attempt power over another is made when the entity grasps that there is no need to have power over others, for all of creation expresses its power in the self. All magical work, therefore, is done upon the self. There is no need to manipulate, teach, control, move or advise other entities. The need is only to do these things within the self, disciplining the self to a more and more balanced and clear acceptance of the universal nature of selfhood, and therefore choosing lucidly and clearly to serve others, to withhold judgment of or control over others, and to practice loving the self, accepting the self and allowing the errors perceived within the self to be self-forgiven.[88]
PHYSICAL ILLNESS
I was a sickly child, born with one eye turned in to the pineal gland or “third eye” position in the middle of the forehead so completely the doctor feared brain damage or early death, and with many other ophthalmic birth defects: slow focus, lack of night and color vision, and lack of depth perception. As a two-year-old, I contracted a case of rheumatic fever so acute that the doctors again expected me to die. When I pulled through, they gave me five years to live. My kidneys failed when I was 13, in 1956, and again when I was 15 years old. In those days, there were no alternatives for a person with glomerulo-nephritis, no transplants, no dialysis. One either lived or died. Again, I lived through the experiences, although I left this period with the rheumatoid arthritis that has continued throughout my life. The doctors were constantly telling my parents that my life span would not be long, that they should make up their minds to losing me before high school, then before college, then before I was 25, then before I was 30. I kept outliving the predictions. I am now enjoying my 58th year. I have had chronic discomfort for decades, so when wanderers write in with stories of their own struggles, I can sympathize. The Ra take a look at this aspect of the wanderer’s journey:
Due to the extreme variance between the vibratory distortions of third density and those of the more dense densities, if you will, wanderers have as a general rule some form of handicap, difficulty or feeling of alienation which is severe. The most common of these difficulties are alienation, the reaction against the planetary vibration by personality disorders, as you would call them, and body complex ailments indicating difficulty in adjustment to the planetary vibrations.[89]
We may not enjoy hearing this, but as wanderers, we need to face the fact that we are more prone to illness than many an earth native. Laura Knight-Jadczyk puts it this way:
All my life I have suffered physically. I cannot eat, sleep, or even breathe as other people do. I have been plagued with constant allergies, ear infections, eye infections, female problems, nerve problems, and, to top it all off, I broke my neck in 1994. I have had seven major surgeries, and my pelvis was separated during childbirth so that I was unable to walk for almost a year. But, it was all lessons. And that is another story. Suffice it to say that God has indeed allowed me to know Him![90]
This suffering can show up as various diseases of a chronic nature. My own rheumatoid ailments are very common among wanderers, and a very angelic gentleman wrote this to me:
In my opinion, Fibromyalgia is a disease either caused by or affected by the energies now upon the planet, as in the increase/raising of consciousness. I believe that fibro, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Epstein-Barr Syndrome and lupus erethymatosis are intimately connected, possibly even variations on the same disease. There is even a man in Canada who calls it Spiritual Seekers Syndrome. He doesn’t claim it’s the same disease as the others but to me the symptoms are almost exactly the same as fibro. He does say that it’s growing at an epidemic rate.[91]
The rate of the growth of this cluster of diseases would naturally be rising abruptly, as many wanderers come into this Earth plane and react to its vibrations. Now, what is to be done? Is there a solution? In any earthly sense, no. That is, we may become more skillful at working with physical illnesses, but our tendency to contract them is a byproduct of our deep core nature and its mismatch of vibrations with those of this third-density Earth plane. For one thing, I think this mismatch sucks energy from our natural, second-density body, as Heikki Malaska reports:
A friend of mine who is practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, looked me over and was surprised to say she could find barely any base energy, and thus almost next to nothing to support the immune system, which makes me very vulnerable to any external influences of diet, weather, strain and such.[92]
The immune system being compromised seems central, and perhaps there is much thought that can be taken to work on this basic energy lack. In Heikki’s case, he managed to heal one of his ailments:
I self-healed my ailments of sciatic nerve, which were at one time so severe the only way I managed to get out of bed was by crawling: while walking, I scanned the muscle/skeletal movements on the healthy side, and transferred consciousness of that to the sick side, and thus taught it how to move in a healthy manner. Has not bothered me since, and I don’t even care to debate with medical professionals any more about whether this is possible or not.[93]
It is wonderful when a wanderer is able to manifest healing. It is something I have never been able to do. Although I manage well enough, and have gotten back up on my feet after spending two years or so in a wheelchair and home-bound, the various rheumatoid diseases, arthritis, lupus and fibro, stick with me. The Confederation entities have some good advice in this regard:
Catalyst is offered to the entity. If it is not used by the mind complex, it will then filter through to the body complex and manifest as some form of physical distortion. The more efficient the use of catalyst, the less physical distortion to be found. There are, in the case of those you call wanderers, not only a congenital difficulty in dealing with the third-density vibratory patterns but also a recollection, however dim, that these distortions are not necessary or usual in the home vibration.[94]
This is a good tip. When we see that we need to deal with catalyst either by working on mental and emotional balancing or by dealing with our body acting out those distortions our balancing process has not released. We will work with the concept of energy centers and their balancing in more detail later, as I have found that this way of looking at the energies of the body, mind and spirit is very helpful to me, and I would like to share it. The basic principle is:
In the situation where there is illness and the heart cries for healing, the healing is that intangible process whereby the mind becomes aware of a more powerful field of energy than that expressed by the sickness.[95]
The higher truth will affect changes in the lesser truth. At least, that is the theory. I can think of a few bodily dramas in which I have yet to be able to manifest physical health, although I have greatly been able to aid my flagging spirits. Those of Q’uo say:
When preincarnative choice has given to you a difficulty, have faith that you are a spirit advanced enough to participate in your own destiny, that occurrences do not happen simply by chance, that the seeming poverty, the seeming limitation, the seeming difficulty, the seeming illness, is also a forthright aid in setting up a circumstance in which a lesson of love can be learned under adverse conditions. Yours is the last density with truly adverse conditions for the positive, or service-to-others oriented person. Only in this density, the density of choice, does this occur. Know then, that that which is in front of you is not more than you can work with, is not that which defeats; you would not program that for yourself. But you are stretching yourself, because you wish to change, you wish to become even more polarized in love and service to the Creator and others than you are now.[96]
Allergies are one of the most common wanderer’s illnesses. I became overwhelmed with massive allergies in 1968, as soon as I joined Don Elkins on a full time basis, which is also when my quiet chronic rheumatoid disease became acute and nearly unmanageable. My theory on the timing is that it was my decision to join Don that triggered those limitations that would keep my gaze turned more inward. In other words, this was a positive change metaphysically speaking, signaling the beginning of a pilgrimage that I am most grateful still to be on. I went to an allergist who tested me for forty-eight substances. I was allergic to them all. Wanderers are basically allergic to Earth. I hear from many such as these:
I do know one thing: I am allergic to everything on Earth: molds, pollen, chemicals, fragrance, petrochemicals; the list seems to be endless. This planet just makes me sick. Even though I love the beauty of the planet and live in a sylvan setting, Earth has never felt like home to me.[97]
**
I was diagnosed with asthma when I was five years old, and the doctor said that I probably had had it since birth. It meant that I was allergic to a lot of my environment: dust, feathers, cats, dogs, strawberries, and all kinds of things would either make me sneeze, itch, or give me a rash. Ironically, it would also keep me from being drafted to fight in Viet Nam and keep me from the possibility of killing someone.[98]
The Ra’s insight into allergy was that:
The allergy may be seen to be the rejection upon a deep level of the mind complex of the environment of the mind/body/spirit complex. Thus the allergy may be seen in its pure form as the mental/emotional distortion of the deeper self.[99]
Apart from illness and allergy, yet still part of the physical picture, is the quality of sensitivity.
I remember feeling different as a child. I thought that other people didn’t feel with the same intensity I did. I found it difficult to watch, or read, or hear, anything that was violent, or cruel, or very sad. It seemed to me that most people could witness all of these things with a kind of “oh well” attitude. Sometimes painful pictures, or words, would haunt me for months. Some of them haunt me to this day. When I was about eight years old I put a pea under my pillow. I thought my difference was that I was a lost princess. I’m sure you know the story. I woke up with a headache.[100]
**
There are times that the top of my head vibrates with such an intensity that I have a hard time navigating around. I’ve tried to handle it by getting actively distracted, keeping myself busy with things. Yet there is an inner call that I can’t explain.[101]
Each wanderer perceives the sensitivity in an unique way, but we can see the tendency throughout these tales. Here Brisis and Heikki talk about this sensitivity as they attempt to adjust themselves to others:
I’d like to say that I’m finding things a bit easier, or at least that I am coming to a better understanding of myself and my place in the universe, but this is not necessarily the case. I find myself daily blocking out all sorts of energies and often times have a difficult time bringing in the energies that I want. Because I have become quite empathic, or rather my empathic abilities have become awakened, instead of trying to ground myself and trying to delineate between other people’s energies and my own, I just work to shut myself off from them, sort of shield myself.[102]
**
I could suffer from rather instant attacks of mild depression, until I learned to recognize that there might be someone in my immediate vicinity who was in fact depressed, and I just tuned into that.[103]
It is my experience that men and women alike, as they awaken, will tend to have this sensitivity. The Hatonn group speaks eloquently of this:
There is no promise of sureness to the spiritual path, only the promise of great and continuing risk of an enormous vulnerability, of a sensitivity that will be with you always as you seek to learn. We are with you on that path, vulnerable, foolish and at the same time, perfect, perfected in love and one with the Creator.[104]
PURPOSE
To wanderers, “purpose” is a central word. There is usually some feeling that one has come into life with a purpose, a mission of some kind. It is not usually felt as a burden, but as an honor and a duty. The search for just what that purpose is can be life-long. I see two levels of discussion here, and would like to follow both, so bear with me while we look at how life’s purposes are seen, in general, by Confederation entities:
We have often said that your third-density incarnation may be seen as a school in which the illusion’s purpose is to drive the third-density seeker from the head to the heart. Whereas intellectual thoughts have light energy, shall we say, it may be said that emotions have heart energy, and because of this the emotions contain more profound information than any wisdom which the brain can encompass and speak concerning.[105]
This fourteen inch journey from head to heart is seen as most needed, and the anguish that causes one to release intellectual and logical considerations is seen as a good thing. It recalls to me Don’s “180-Degree Rule”: If we think something is good for us, it is bad for us, and vice versa.
My friends, sorrow and sighing are deep within each entity just as laughter and glee are deep within your makeup. The purpose of incarnation is not to avoid either the tears or the laughter, either the sorrow or the joy; the goal rather circles around the respect and compassion which one may offer to each emotion felt without preferring one to the other, without denying any pure emotion. We ask you to love, accept and forgive yourselves and be brave and bold enough to open and allow the healing of the self, the healing of memories, the healing of the incarnation. Into such concerns does the light of love’s spirit move.[106]
So there is a general educational purpose to all lives, in that we all came here to learn the lessons of love, to take in what the world has to offer and to find more and more balance and skill in dealing with it.
It is this feeling of rightness and rhythm that will come to the one who is making right use of her/his gifts We commend to your processes of thinking the inclusion of that feeling sense that lets you know when you are on the beam and when you are not. For each has the intuition and the inner knowing that one can draw on and depend on.[107]
We will revisit this general educative purpose again, but for now, let’s look at another sense in which the word, “purpose,” has a certain ring for wanderers. Wanderers often sense that there is a spiritual purpose driving their incarnation:
It has taken twenty-five years to find a place of peace, and understand my purpose here. I have had a lot of help from the other side of the veil for which I am eternally grateful. I could not have made it without it, at least to this point, now.[108]
**
Periodically throughout my life as a young adult I would get a distinct feeling that I came here to do something really big. I would notice this feeling and think, oh, there’s that feeling again. But just what is it that I am going to be doing?[109]
**
I think that there IS a task to perform on this planet, but I don’t yet know what it is except that we must be aware and increase our light/love/knowledge and be ready for whatever is set before us in the best possible condition, psychically, mentally and physically!!!![110]
This level of awareness of a purpose is not, however, as troubling as that level of urgency that many wanderers feel about their purpose and mission:
I have had a feeling since a year ago that I need to hurry. That feeling came after I was shown “the clock.” The hands were at three to four minutes before twelve midnight. Why am I telling you this? I have kept it to myself except for telling my daughter who I live with. Well, it’s just a part of the illusion anyway.[111]
And here’s another wanderer with a clock:
What’s important is that we accomplish what we planned. Boy, do I wish I could remember what I planned. I’m concerned that I may have left something out. I hope God sees fit to reveal it to me if I have. I have had two instances happen since I saw the clock. I may have written to you about this but I don’t remember now. After the clock I awoke one morning with the words, “I have to hurry.” Then, about six weeks ago, I awoke with a voice telling me, “Time is getting short.” It could mean several things and I am not sure whether it has to do with coming events in the next few months, August, 1999, on, or if my physical time is almost up.[112]
It is my feeling that our main mission here is a very simple one, but one that is almost always missed by wanderers because of our enculturated work ethic and our assumption that the mission must be one of doing something specific. But I feel this is not the case. Rather, I feel our purpose is to be present within the Earth planes, to live our lives, breathe the air and enjoy the experiences of the school of Earth. Our main mission is a mission of essence. We came here to be ourselves, for when we do that, our vibrational frequency reflects the higher-density vibrations of our home densities or our awakened hearts, and this aids in lightening the vibrational frequency of the Earth planes. Those in the spirit worlds, the inner planes, cannot perform this task, for they are not incarnate. They do not breathe the air, nor are they mortal. We came here to offer our lives, moment by moment, for Earth and for her peoples. This is not a “big” mission in the sense that this is not a doing at all, but a being.
A common misperception of those that walk the spiritual path is that there is something specific, some vocational career, that someone is supposed to be doing. There is this urgency of feeling that it is time to serve; it is time to move on with the mission for which I came to this place, and as we have said before through this instrument, it is our feeling that that idea of a career is a chimera unless that career is seen to be a vocation of being. There is that within each of you that is perfect. Each of you is a hologram of the one great original Thought, and this is carried in an undistorted form in every cell of your physical body and all of the subtler bodies which make up your mind and body and spirit in its complexity.[113]
MIND GAMES
Thoughts of purpose aside for the moment, there are still many things about the wanderer’s typical mental situation that are troublesome because we have a different “take” on things than many within consensus reality:
My mind tends to work in reverse motion most of the time and I tend to walk the more difficult path.[114]
**
I have always had a different way of thinking, finding humor in many different situations and in many cases having to explain what I find funny.[115]
**
Carla, I’ve always felt different from most people around me including my family. Don’t feel better than anyone, just different. My interests always put me out on the rim, my beliefs certainly so and my lifestyle as well.[116]
This is so discouraging to live with, and I talk with people every day who are experiencing these feelings and having a hard time. Just today, Pharaoh wrote with a concern that was based on feelings of urgency about subjects that most people think are too far out. He tries so hard to connect, and yet he is blocked because his mind does work differently, and people just can’t relate. Like most wanderers, he possesses the highest ideals and hopes. But how discouraging to receive rejection again and again. These wanderers also express such feelings:
The vibration here seems so negative to me that I often pull back from the world; hide out & heal. My actions in the world often seem/feel ineffectual & foolish. Doing and learning things are painful.[117]
**
As a child I always believed that love was the greatest power there was. It was a traumatic experience for me, growing up. There was so much hate in this world. I found very often that I did not understand what was expected of me in various situations, and I spent a lot of time researching culture, etiquette and psychology. Like so many other wanderers, it took me a long time to realize that you cannot trust anyone.[118]
That is so sad! And yet I cannot say that it is untrue, for I have felt the brutality of Earth vibrations all my life too. I think wanderers see the game playing in which human relations often consists.
From a rather young age I somehow knew that I am not from around here. I just could not bring myself to identify with all sorts of games that people keep up. Yet I had no working ability to relate to most people either, because many things felt like living in a different dream, just watching their moves from behind a see-through screen.[119]
I would certainly agree that all of infinite creation can easily be characterized as a dream, or a game, a divine process of play and dance that uncovers self to self. This thought may not be much help to the wanderer staggering under rejection from the world, though. Here’s another slant on mind games:
It is so very easy to say, “I don’t care.” The truth is, other people don’t understand. They can’t, and they don’t need to. If they did, they would. You need to care. When you are able to perceive things that are beyond the “normal” range of human perception, you feel more keenly. It’s okay. If you don’t care, you don’t feel. If you don’t feel, you’ll never learn the difference between what is you and your own, and what is they and their own. You must know yourself. Most people don’t! This is not possible if you do not care.[120]
Good advice for wanderers, to care, to be vulnerable, to wear the heart on the sleeve even knowing that it will be disrespected and misunderstood. It is not easy to go on caring. Sometimes the discouragement seems total. As I suggested to Pharaoh today, my best advice is to focus on meeting the moment with an open heart, then looking for the love in that moment, then following that love. This may mean not sharing what is our personal truth, for when offered unasked, if our personal belief system is enough skewed from consensus reality, as many a wanderers’ is, the offering is often met with disinterest or even outright hostility. It may mean focusing on how we can make that other person feel more comfortable and special, and allowing that person to relate to us rather than our belief system. It is not dishonest to refrain from sharing what has not been asked. Be one who looks to plant a seed of thought, at most, and then move on, rather than offering the heart of self’s beliefs when unprompted. Refuse to stay discouraged. It may seem that we are alone and the situation is hopeless, but actually, there are a lot of people with a tremendous amount in common with us, and we will connect as time passes and destiny unfolds. Here are some encouraging words:
I really feel I am on the right track, for although I get weary, and suffer an awful lot, and speak raucously about phenomena, and swear a lot, etc., I am still mega-tenacious about holding the vibration of love.[121]
**
The feeling within me grew that I was headed in a direction that was inner in nature and involved a lot of other people who wanted to make significant changes in this world and that what we would do concerned love and loving each other, creating a kind of family of the heart. It felt very solid as an inner direction, and it also gave me a lot of comfort.[122]
I find this a marvelous way to look at our differences from the supposed norm. We are people doing inner work. The outer-driven world will often not understand that. But we are here to help, and we are able to be of help. And we have grand companions on the way.
Included in mental problems for wanderers is a thirst for justice. The bone-deep outrage at unfairness and cruelty in people and societies is common among awakened souls. The Q’uo comment:
The third density is not a density in which wisdom plays a great part. It is the folly of men to believe that there is wisdom in third density, and thus one may see the ideal of justice, an ethical, philosophical ideal which does not take into account either the nature of the illusion, the purpose of the illusion, or those entities which have come to self-consciousness within third-density illusion. In any real sense, there is little observable justice, for the plan which each has created before the lifetime often deliberately includes difficult, unfair and painful circumstance, and the more spiritually ambitious an entity is, the more difficult the lessons that that entity came to manifest will be.[123]
Some wanderers share their distress concerning justice:
When, in school as a young child, a teacher explained the meaning of prejudice, I was most upset, thinking how illogical and unjust a concept. I even started to compose a book in my mind about it, something to the effect that no matter what the color of our skin, be it black or white or red or golden or green, we were all of flesh and bone and blood, we all had emotions, feelings capable of being hurt.[124]
**
I get incensed when I see the injustice in the world and people’s apathy towards such acts. I have a vision of what we as a species are capable of and of the paradise that could be.[125]
Is it not easy to see that these mental stresses can sometimes storm out of hand, and that wanderers can end up in mental trouble, mentally ill, or suicidal? As 245 says,
As a wanderer, there is a space in your head where you know you are right. And it isn’t so much that you’re right. Often, you don’t even know why you think others are wrong. It doesn’t matter what anyone else says, and no one needs to hear your opinion. It’s just the way it is. To doubt that space is to flirt with depression and insanity.[126]
I had several years of psychiatric therapy during and after the time of Don’s illness and death in 1984. At the time, we were both going through what I could roughly call nervous breakdowns or depressions. The difference between us was our level of trust in others and our willingness to listen to the people trying to help us. I survived. Don descended into madness and committed suicide. I know he felt this was the “right” thing for him to do. If we are feeling suicidal, please hear this with our hearts: in my opinion suicide is never a good idea. While I can well understand the despair and sense of unbearable pressure that makes people turn to ending it all, suicide does not end anything except our present life and our opportunities for learning within this incarnation. In Illusions, Richard Bach said, more or less, that if we are alive, we still have a mission to complete and it is not time to leave. I agree. When it’s time for us to move on, the Creator will take us on to larger life. I am aware of the rationalizations for suicide for people who wish to die with dignity. And in a sense, it is not my business what people besides myself do. I would not judge a person harshly for choosing to end her life. I would feel, however, that she had made an unwise decision. I know what it is like to survive the suicide of a loved one. In my case, there ensued six tremendously painful years during which I actively wanted to die, myself, for the omissions and commissions of things said and left unsaid that contributed to Don’s despair. By 1990, I had begun to relent in my self-judgment, and in 1992, this process of death within came to a natural end as I was taken to the hospital with internal bleeding, and lost half my descending colon to the surgeon’s knife.
Once this massive difficulty was set right, I chose to enter rehabilitation therapy and work to get out of the wheelchair and back to vertical life. Broadly speaking, my agenda from 1984 until 1992 was surviving my own desperately unhappy walk in the desert of self-judgment. Do not ever think we are only hurting ourselves if we commit suicide. Everyone who survives a loved one’s suicide, even friends who were only acquaintances, will feel perfectly ghastly. To this day, I still am haunted by visions of Don’s face when he was so mentally ill. His suffering was Christ-like and terrible. However, in the fullness of time I have been healed, and now I also see him as a wonderful part of my guidance. But this does not remove the haunting images or my sorrow.
Here are several other wanderers’ comments on their mental health:
I sometimes think I have lost it and become protective of myself so as not to draw too much attention. There are people who would attempt to label me a nut because they don’t understand and probably couldn’t understand from within the ideas they claim as their truth, so I am careful.[127]
**
I was in the throes of the mental health system. I’m a “paranoid, chronic schizophrenic, manic-depressive, schizo-affective, hyper-sexual, eccentric.” I’ve been locked up twice and can say I met more awakened people within the institution than outside of it.[128]
When I was in the mental hospital in 1990, I experienced great love and fellow feeling from the fellow patients, while almost none of the professional healers even believed what I was saying. I was very grateful for the sanity of the other patients! Here is a wanderer who fared better with the mental health system:
When I was twenty-four I was admitted to the psychiatric ward for three weeks (I wanted to stay longer), a kind of existential rock bottom. March, even in the south of Norway, is still barren, nothing sprouts as yet, only last year’s dead leaves have appeared from under the vanishing snow. As I walked across the yard from one building to another my attention is caught by a movement: a single, small dry leaf is wheeling past me. The movement of that leaf, even before I could think, and I’m quick to think, that that leaf is a dead thing moved by a slight wind, had expanded into a dance of life: it was moving! And that moving expanded, reverberated deep into my being, telling me there is life, and life is alive, and I am alive, yes even after thinking that thought of dead thing in the wind I could keep that gem within to help me on.[129]
In the next chapter, we will finish this process of looking at how we are different from the norm, as we look at the emotional problems and pitfalls of the wanderer’s path. I hope as we find people like ourselves in these first three chapters, we will begin to realize on a deep, core level, that we are truly not alone on this Earth, but that we are one of a great number of spirits who have come to this Earth and this incarnation for reasons similar to our own, and that these are wonderful companions that we will connect with as our own stories unfold.
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