Life is Magic

7May06 Sunday 3:40pm

I believe in God (a higher power) and dreams. I believe that God is
energy neither male nor female or both male and female. I can remember
being 4 years old and lying in my bed in the morning, forced to stay
there because my mother, father and brother were still sleeping. I
remember being surrounded with white light. The light was warm and
comforting. I was safe.

I'm not positive if it was a voice in my head or just a belief but
something told me that I was special. It wasn't a conceited kind of
special as I look on it now, it was more about being unique (which we
all are) and feeling that inner love for my specialness or uniqueness.
Of course we've all traveled through the years of attempting to be less
unique and more clone like trying to emulate whatever clique or peer
group we believed would serve us in the moment but I still remember
myself from before that time.

What I like to believe now is that it was God communicating with me.
If God communicated with Moses, I ask myself, why wouldn't or couldn't
God energy communicate with me?

All through my childhood and into my early adult years I suffered from
nightmares and night terrors. I had horrifying dreams almost nightly. I
walked and talked and screamed in my sleep. I realize now that my night
terrors were a symptom of the scary awake life that I often lived in.
There was the violence suffered at the hands of my alcoholic father,
the fear that my mother didn't or couldn't love me as much as my
brother and subsequently my step sisters. There was a fine melange that
fed into my inner turmoil and haunted me in my sleep.

It wasn't until I was in my twenties that I'd heard of keeping dream
journals. I heard of at least one person curing her nightmares and
hoped the process would alleviate mine since I was on my own. I didn't
want to live with the fear that one night I might walk out of my
apartment and Lord knows what kind of real terror I could have sleep
walked in to. I didn't want to have to live with others just because I
walked in my sleep. I didn't want that kind of dependency.

I can't pinpoint exactly when the night terrors stopped, I know it was
a gradual process and I can say that I haven't had regular nightmares
in close to twenty years. I've had other dreams that have impacted me.

In my late twenties, I started to have dreams that took place in the
same diner that I ultimately called the Spiritual diner. It was
spiritual because I met dead people there. I met Marvin Gaye in my
first dream there and had a conversation about singing. Something I
don't do enough of now. Marvin had been dead at least eight years.

It's ironic, years later because of my spiritual diner dreams, when my
mother passed I was told by a psychic that when my mother came to me in
my dreams, "Ask her what she's come to tell you." I was able to hear
what the psychic told me and not just laugh it off. I believed that I
could have a conversation with my dead mother in my dreams.

Around 1990 or 1991, I had my first real bout of depression that lasted
over two weeks. I was depressed about a boyfriend who was 14 years my
senior and lacking in real intimacy. I was depressed because my mother
and I were at odds with each other because I was rolling around in
childhood memories and having difficulties with reconciling my mother's
love with these images.

I hardly slept. I was distraught with fatigue because if I was sad I
normally could at least sleep. I've read or heard that we need three
worries or stresses to cause us to be depressed. My third worry was
that I had lost one of my part-time jobs and the other one was barely
covering my weekly expenses.

In that sleepless two week period I cried, I paced and I contemplated
suicide. Maybe this was it for me. Maybe this was all I could ever hope
for - fights with my mom, a boyfriend with intimacy issues and no job
prospects. I accidentally started a fire in my apartment by keeping the
gas stove on to generate some heat because the Super hadn't turned the
heat up enough. I'd fallen asleep for about an hour or so and woke up
moments after my bottle of oil fell from the back ledge of the stove
into the flame and created a raging inferno.

I jumped out of bed and called 911 as I grabbed the box of salt and
poured the whole box into the fire. I stopped the fire before the
sirens screamed their announcement to my neighbours down our quiet
street. The huge rubber booted fire men complimented me on my calm and
smarts to have used salt instead of water as I apologized for calling
them for nothing since there was no fire when they got there.

After they left I decided that wanting to die was out of the question
since the thought of dying in a fire scared the shit out of me. I felt
like that fire was a response by God for my suicidal thoughts, to show
me that I didn't want to die. The depression, however, did not subside.
I endured another week of 2 to 3 hours sleep or none at all. I was
fatigued, emotional, and sure I was going insane.

I've heard stories about people surrendering their lives to God. Quite
frankly, I never believed them. I didn't believe in surrendering. I
didn't believe that it did any good or gave any substantial peace. I
didn't believe enough in believing.

I sat on my bed sobbing my soul out. Deep inside me I felt that
presence/voice/belief from way back when I was four years old - the one
that affirmed that I was special. I heard/felt/inhabited the word,
"surrender." I got down on my knees beside my bed and begged, "Please
just give me some peace." I do not remember getting off my knees and
getting into bed and falling asleep. I do remember the dream that I
had:

In my dream, I was waitressing at the spiritual diner. It was a super
busy night and I was frustrated because I knew I didn't waitress
anymore (in my awake life) and I hadn't had a break. I gave one table
of customers their order of four plates of food and saw Mahatma Gandhi
under another table in the seated meditative position (lotus?)
I could hear him chanting. I told myself that as soon as I had a moment
I would go and join him, "he can help me."

I rushed through the double doors towards the kitchen to retrieve the
next order and Pope John Paul II came out of a side hallway and made
the sign of the cross blessing me as I walked toward him. I could see
the intricate detail of the gold embroidery on the wrists of his white
robe.

I went through another set of double doors and stopped abruptly inside
the candlelit incense filled room. There was a man in each corner of
the silent room and a Holy book was leaned against the center column. I
bowed my body and head down in silent apology for disturbing their
ritual and backed out of the room.

When I woke up moments later, I lay enjoying this calming electric
energy that flowed through my whole body. The sensation was something
like what I feel after I meditate or get a massage only a hundred times
stronger. My depression had faded and I subsequently believed that life
has magic.

I see the connections through my past that leads me to believe in an
energy larger than myself that is also within me (within all of us). I
believe that my life holds so much more than I've often allowed myself
to visit. Lately I'm feeling ready to start that journey like The Fool
of the Tarot.

My interpretation of the Fool is that the being (male or female as the
case may be) doesn't see the cliff she's about to fall off in order to
start her journey. The cliff is a leap of faith. The leap of faith is
trusting that your journey is your uniquely special path. The fool is
optimistic, she hasn't thought of all the challenges she's going to
have to face on her journey - the injuries of the initial fall and the
pain that comes with experience. She is optimistic because she does
know whatever path she takes will bring joy and pain in equal measure
just as her past has brought her. No matter which way she turns is the
way she is meant to go.

Today I'm declaring that I'm a Fool. I'm traveling my path with a
little more optimism and the expectation of the unknown challenges that
will teach me inspiring lessons.

I'm here! You can love me or not love me; laugh at me or not laugh at
me; believe in me or not believe in me. God gave us choice and this is
what I choose until I choose something else.