Letter to J

[This is my second letter to J as I did an entire tape for J from beginning to end, so let me begin again.]

Dear J,

I’m glad to hear from you. You have not heard from me for a while. Please do not take it personally. Often I have been very far behind, but not right now. The reason that I am not far behind, I will talk about in your letter.

I was extremely impressed with you and hopeful for you when you sold your beautiful geodesic dome, and your beautiful homestead, and all that you had invested in it in love and good feelings and your companionship of all your growing needs and your various interests. Something was driving you and I thought it was wonderful at the age that you are to do something that most people do not have the courage to do in their early twenties, or ever. And that is to say, “I am going to be reborn. I am going on a pilgrimage. I don’t know what I seek, but I know I want to change, and to learn, and to do and be transformed. I feel the change has begun and I congratulate you on it, even as I emphasize the pain that change makes.

As you request, completely within that context I will say that I will start with an A) You have done it high and aggressive and think as teachers. My only comment on P. is to argue that if in any way he had been a stumbling block to him, or if there is anything for which you might feel that you need to say, “Forgive me for judging you,” say it. Balance your karma. And forgive yourself. Make a clean job of it because any day could be our last one and there will be a review immediately thereafter.

Yesterday I entered on a long philosophical, abstract, very concise analogy about something Mao Tsetung said in a book that I never read, but Jim quotes from it sometimes. “How it flows from the bow of a gun.” The reason that struck me in the context of what you had to say is that we, all of us, are warriors. We are not civilians. We are not here for the ride. We are here to love and those are fighting words, just as are that we are here to hate. We are here to bring life, which is just as dangerous as we are here to kill. The things that those two things have in common are power.

J, the person, who I don’t recognize in your description of him very much, invested his power in here. This is the way you have seen yourself and this is the way I accept it. I have to admit that I am very gullible. I have heard you pout. I have heard you mad. I have heard you get on a soap box about the weather or anything else that has particularly been bumming you out, and to the filibuster, but I have not seen the doubt in your deep self because you did not show it to me. You are very good, and I am very gullible.

What do you feel? Lack of control, rejection, abandonment, being laughed at? What is going to happen in the future? How can we control our environment so that we have it clear? How can we manipulate? I am happy to say that I am not here to judge, and I have mentioned that several times. I love irony, don’t you? It is the only Christian church that I know of that denies the concept of original sin and states that we were born perfect and not at all defective and not at all evil. And that these things were our free choice and not thrust upon us by a contrary God.

This means that we have the free will to use the power that we have and lock out the people. All of us have great power deeply within us in the defense of what is instead of what might be in protecting and serving ourselves, and surrendering our own safety to a greater service, which demands faith, and the will, and the desire to know the truth. So you shot yourself like an animal into the unknown. I would say more power to you except I really do think the whole trite, but as you see these things in yourself, I accept them without seeing them in you. I can only say that to me, you have always been a true friend, a clear mirror, a straight-talking person. Of course, a person with thoughts, but a person who is an authentic person, so that the changes that you feel have been catastrophic, are the culmination of things that have been going on with you for a long time.

When you wonder about the analogy of the weapons, the guns in ourselves, you think about the various parts of a gun. What is the gun now? How handling of it is doing? What is the ammunition? Emotion? Muddied emotion or clarified emotion? Or other contacts, creative and loving, use of the intellect or the abuse of the intellect? And it rides you and you don’t ride it. Why does it hurt and where is God?

But while you look at the why of peace that was Jesus the Christ, or the why of peace that was Gandhi and was very active in the world, to completely different takes on being a warrior. You see the same thing. Go ahead and kill me. It makes no difference because my mind is on the Creator in all that I do, I try to do because of my love of the Creator. Warriors who are selfish come to think of every circumstance in terms of what they can get out of it. Warriors of love, and peace and feeling look at situations and think, How can I help? You have been helping a lot of people for a long time. I can’t say, “Yes, you also helped me or saved me.” You have been a good mirror. I can’t remember any specific situations in which something that you said made a good deal of difference, and after all, my sicknesses are different and it is not unusual that I would be a little more able to do as I have been doing for a long time in this field, whereas you have been working more for the world.

What pulls the trigger? The will. You can have all of the love in the world inside of you, but the will can keep you from using your power because you know you will not be popular. The first thing we have to do, if we are the true servants of Love and Light, is to accept the fact that we will not be liked by everyone. This is not easy medicine to swallow. Perhaps they will like us for ourselves when we are not narcisstic enough to behave in temporal ways to get back a smile when we smile, but in terms of our belief and faith, our ways of showing it, we will run into situations where we truly are reviled. This unacceptable thing needs to be understood as part of being a warrior, part of being a peaceful advocate of love. Most people are tangled up in anything contained in their vocabulary behavior.

People have a universal clinging to fear and I think that the unaware grasp that we begin with, most of us out in the world, we have every reason to live in fear because we were God. Nobody ever said that. When we are young, the self is far away so it seems that we really don’t have that fear, but it is always there. And I think on a very subconscious level, it is the primal fear that we shall cease to exist. It is only my unprovable faith in the Godness of spiritual seeking that we feel that we are imperishable so in your journey now, you have identified your fears to your satisfaction. You have found companions along the way, guides like S, and S.J. and A. and I bless the support you give each other who work with you on spiritual principles. That is the good kind of channeling in my book. And then as well, work with yourself. Don’t lay on us.

That is the way I feel about what I miss. I don’t want anybody to be dependent on my channeling or on my vision. It would make no sense whatever. Each of us is unique. My solutions are not other people’s. My truths are not other people’s. and my path is not that of other people. All I can do is bear witness to Love and that is universal.

So I assume you are holding onto your faith because soon you will come again when all things will seem to have disappeared and all that you have been seems lost. This is the nature of, as far as I know, of any kind of transformation. You are doing something that you have never done before and you can’t sustain it. You have to sort of snap back from time-to-time. Don’t get discouraged. It is not permanent. Just hold onto one word like love; hope. And if you disappear in yourself, your business is to forgive yourself. Or the gun that is now you will melt down. The firing pin will be lost. The gun will be dismantled and you will have given away your power.

The only power that there truly is in this internet, in the eternal sense, is the power commitment to something beyond the little, tearful, human self, who is upset by the idiocy, and the nonsense, and the variousness of human experience day-to-day. So hold that in your hand and don’t be afraid of the dagger. Don’t be afraid of the bad times. You are not going to lose what you have gained. The bad times seemingly are those which test what you have learned in the time of awakening and believing. There will be a testing. There will be more than one. Hold onto during the remembrance of those feelings you have expressed to me now. You may not be able to say, “I have faith. I believe,” because you have none to spare, but you can remember that you were absolutely certain that you were living a life of love and peace and feeling a life in faith—a life fitting, and it was good and you had no fear.

So when it comes upon you, do not fear. This weather is the eternal weather that we all have. Just hold onto the remembrance of what you knew and sooner or later you will find that that which you knew once and consciously lost, has been there all the time, but that you have lost the way from it because of the painful difficulties of living in this illusion. None of us stay intact. We all have conflicts. And mostly what other people think you are, the long life as it is that you will bring yourself forward because of the more you become able to be a channel to the love and the light of the loving Creator. I am not talking about local channels. I am talking about living channels, then how clearly you will see the many, many self-perceived imperfections to your character. You will be harder on yourself than you would ever be on anybody else, so be self-forgiving every night before you go to bed. Don’t let many of the thoughts about yourself linger.

On the other hand, this new impossible position when you can’t think any more and you are very burdened down, say to yourself, “Time out. This energy that I am desperately needs a rest,” and be distracted. Go to sleep like you used to, read any books. Whatever you do that rests you, probably it may be more like taking long walks.

Now this gun that you have begun to disarm against fear because where there is love, there will not be fear. There may be unreasonable concern based on empirically observed evidence from the past, but you don’t see it as something to be afraid of. You see it as something that will be difficult, a challenge, and you see it when it is going to be safe and that is your service and awareness is the love. How can this be seen as positive?

I am not a goody-two-shoe. I don’t say to people I am happy if I am not. I refrain from telling anything of substance to most people. It is just my way of maintaining normal contact with people because I think so differently from most people that when people say, “How are you?” I could go on for half an hour right now, or even longer.

So you are in my heart and I am very happy for you as you suffer, and am really excited and enthusiastic about what is happening to you and you are in my prayers and my hopes.

I do have faith in you. I am interested in seeing what happens next. I am glad that you are meditating daily. That really does help a lot. I am glad that you are more aware of the guidance from within. I have always been a proponent of that. I tell people, “Don’t look at the wrong thing unless you recognize it.” In other words, it is all within you and if you hit it and you resonate to that, okay, it’s your truth and then stop and forget it. And, of course, I say that to you now.

I am glad that you are being able to see the light. Are you seeing the white light or the golden light? You don’t say. I have seen two different kinds. The one I trust the most is pure white. The golden light seems to be more personal to me and more of a comfort radiance that feels like home. So I congratulate you. I love you. And I will be here for you. Above all, remember the greatest commandment that threw away the Ten Commandments and all of the Old Testament. “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength. And love thy neighbor as thyself. Upon these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” That is what Jesus said.

It kind of simplifies the whole act, doesn’t it?

It is wonderful not to have judge. That is what fear does to you. It is wonderful not to have to feel guilty. That is what forgiveness does to you. But it takes work. It takes intellectual work in analyzing what has happened today and making sure that you balance any manifestation in a conversation that might seem to be unbalanced, unforgiven. Go and ask that person for forgiveness. Don’t worry about pride. Pride is not necessary to the character. Forgiveness is. You don’t have to receive it. You just have to ask for it. And you have to ask for it yourself.

Remember, pardon me for being so Christian today, when Jesus was on the cross and he was hung between two self-admitted, guilty felons, and one was being rather cynical, but the other one had this hope and he turned to the Lord and he said, “When you come into your kingdom, pray for me,” and Jesus said to him, “This day you will be with me in Paradise.” The only thing that it takes to stop karma, to stop evil, to stop prejudice is to ask. In returning to faith, I think that is very simple and it doesn’t have to do with lots of judgment and returning to belief systems or anything like that. It just means, you can be in a constant state of self-forgiveness and forgiveness of others while doing your work day-by-day and not letting it pile up. Letting yourself act spontaneously. Forget about the haters. Don’t care what people say about you.

Certainly you want to be courteous. I am a courteous person. Most of us are. But we all work for the common good. We are social beings and we now actively can’t be driven from our lives and expect difficulties not to appear, but don’t say what you don’t mean. Don’t try to please people. Don’t behave. Just be. That will clear away so much for you. This is something that you can do. If you have been nagging all your life, it is worth it. It is really worth a shot.

Well that ends my getting up on my soap box. I will now tell you what is going on here. It is a little bit on the rainy side.

I was exercising one day, as usual, as I have been doing for the last twelve years, and was paralyzed for about four hours from the middle of my back to the top of my head and all down my arms. So I had x-rays made and consultations were made and it was the diagnosis that the earlier exercises, perhaps to stave off my neck, were no longer recommended because my disease had progressed to the point where it was inoperable. My whole spine was in a state where there was about one millimeter clearance before I irritate the spinal cord. The prognosis, at this stage and it will gradually worsen throughout my life, and the prescription is until I die, there will be no end. Needless to say, I haven’t even given in to that entirely. I have to a great extent because of the pain, but I am very much wanting to continue to sing in the choir and sing in the Box choirs. You know those are my meat and drink.

And so I am struggling out of the house now and taking a little walk every day in spite of the fact that it doesn’t make me feel very good. I don’t feel any worse by it than I felt before I left. It just makes my back hurt.

I am also going to do a series of stretches, I think. I talked to this really good chiropractor I know and found out which ones will not threaten my neck and shoulder area, which is the critical area. All of this only has happened from that auto accident, from which I have received no settlement whatsoever except for a few doctor bills paid. Most of the doctor bills were refused because I had a pre-existing condition. The only sense it makes is legal. It makes no moral nor ethical sense, but I don’t want to go to court. I am not against this person. And I have written one last letter to State Farm, the insurer of the other’s car, stating exactly what has happened to me since the accident; how I was at the time of the accident; how I have been stable for many years and how could anybody think it could be a mere coincidence that I get slammed into a truck? And at the same time, begin a series of events that put me in bed for life.

If I do not generate a response to that letter, I am just going to let it go. Life is too short to worry about fussing and dealing with people. My money is facing life. I’d like to have some money to get some things with to help myself: get a sauna, get a well-regulated whirlpool, etc. If it doesn’t happen, and it probably won’t, I am no worse off than I was before as far as money goes. I just have discovered that life is once again unfair. I knew that.

There are several other areas of difficulty. One was that my bladder was about four times larger than it should be. Several very painful tests seem to indicate to the urologist that I had some condition where the urethra needs a little operation. He is going to do that at the same time that my gynecologist puts me in the hospital to do a dilation and currettement. My uterus is also three times bigger than it should be and is filled with some kind of liquid. Nobody know whether it is blood or water or what. Needless to say, I don’t feel very well. I have been through a lot of feelings about being here on this couch during the day and in bed at night for the rest of my life. For the most part, I am accepting of it. I am glad that I am enough of a person now to deal with it.

I didn’t used to be able to do that because I was so expected by my parents to behave perfectly and that any deviation from perfect behavior was punished, much more severely than was warranted. So I invested a lot of my life in behavior and with a lot of therapy, and a lot of thinking, and a lot of patience and a lot of mirroring of my friends, I am beginning now to be able to handle it. Especially I am glad that I can feel that part of myself that was down there somewhere.

I also see this as a time that marks the end of a lesson dealing with identity. I was so involved with Don, my identity so twined up with his that when he died, I was in a serious crisis and actually suicidal, as you all know, for a couple of years. I have been intermittently suicidal since then simply because I couldn’t forgive myself for not rescuing him.

I, myself, know that you can’t rescue people, but can I tell that to myself? No, just other people. So I don’t know what the hospital date will be, but I will be going in for a D & C and this little nothing-much operation on my urethra, but apparently it is swollen shut. And they are going to fix it so that it can’t flop completely shut.

The biggest problem of all things is in my jaw. I have had a dreadful face mask pain and I went to an INS guy because I had earaches, dizziness, the whole thing that went with my sinus and I said, “What is going on here?” So among other things he prescribed something called a Bite Block because he felt with all of the pain that I was in, with the back, and the tummy, I probably was clenching my teeth in my sleep and a Bite Block keeps you from clenching your teeth. You can’t do it like fighters put them on. I think they put blocks on the tops of their teeth to protect them. Biters like me tend to use them on the bottom. I don’t know why. It is simply a lot easier to breathe when they are on the bottom. So I will have to have another round of x-rays to discover what may be wrong with the joint next to my right ear, which is the hinge of my jaw. Very sore. It has gotten stuck several times and the funniest part is that I was wearing the Bite Block to keep it from getting stuck, and I woke up one morning and it was stuck with the Bite Block in. At that point, the dentist decided to seek help with an x-ray to find out what was going on with the joints.

So actually I have got four irons in the fire right now. I will be a long time coming to any awareness of what spiritual point my being here on the couch is in order. I have prayed. I have asked for a clear dream. I am in the process of finding out. I think it has to do with getting Carla out of the way. When people come to see me, they say, “Oh don’t you just love Carla? She is so full of love and light. Such a radiant being.” I think there is something better than that for people who want channels of love and light. I think it takes Carla out of the equation so this person says, “Don’t you feel just so healed and so loved and so good when you are in this house?” And you don’t pin it on a personality because it is an impersonal feeling.

I don’t know, J. I really don’t. It is going to be tough. This is probably one of the toughest things I have ever had to face in my life because it is a life sentence. I imagine prisoners have more feeling than I do a lot of times. And I have to be at an incredible advantage that almost everything I do can be done lying down, or lying back as I am now. I am not one of those people who sit in bed with nothing to do but read. I’m not doing that either. I haven’t done any reading for a long time.

If I hurt too badly to work, I intend not to. I have worked hard on that one because I am a work-a-holic. I want to be doing something useful all of the time. I think that is probably one of the lessons I am learning is to be useful, but not to be productive of things, but to be productive of a certain consciousness. And I have to work on that.

So you and I both are going through an initiation and transformation right now. We still have all of our faults. We still have our conceits, but we’ve learned enough of the lesson that we had, and it is time for a new one and I think that is exciting in the midst of a lot of seemingly negative things like pain, discomfort, a tendency towards being depressed because I can’t do anything. I have this sort of subterranean excitement as a new adventure for me on this road and I need to pay attention.

So I am paying attention to all of the signs going on in my physical life very carefully these days and I imagine you are too. May you be sanctified in all of the things you do.

Lots of Love and Light until we speak again. Write me when you feel inspired, not because you think you should write back. Okay? Cheerio. May the Lord rise before you.

Carla