Determination to Rise

Three months into my maybe last year, and the entry into phase two.  It will require more interaction, and participation. It requires re-entry to the world.

It's not enough to analyze the past, or face psychological hurdles.  Those are important steps, but they don't add up to Living.  I want to dredge something out of my center that I've never seen before.

I've said I trust the Universe to guide me, which is to say I trust God.  I'm not certain what, or who, I'm referring to when I say that, I only know that for me, whatever it is, is real.  

A force, a being, a consciousness- I'm not sure.   All I know is I've felt it, and no other word is suitable to describe it's expansiveness. 

I believe that if I find myself somewhere I didn't expect to be, whether it's a physical geography, or psychological state, I wound up there for a reason.  The space, and the events that take place within it, I'm certain are there to teach me something I wasn't aware I needed to learn.  Something necessary to the growth of awareness.  I believe the lives of others are led the same way. 

• I came to my beliefs because I've seen an identifiable pattern of similar events in my life that stretch throughout it.  
• I have these beliefs because no matter how far I've fallen, I've known I was never alone.
• I have them because the things we value aren't easily obtained,  and they usually rest in the depths of what we fear.  You don't enter what you're afraid of unless you trust what led you to it, will lead you out.  

If you've been called upon to enter those depths, and discovered this on your own, you know what I mean.  You have faith.

God's gonna push you firmly to your limits to insure you truly understand what they are.  They're wider than you think.  If you accept the challenges that appear as your secular education, you'll discover that when you go deeper into them, you expand the capacity of spirit. You discover that no matter how hard they might be to endure, what you come out with makes it more than worthwhile.

You know you'll either enter hardship, and emerge with a gem, or you won't survive it at all.

But because you trust, really trust,
you understand both outcomes are the same.

We are not physical beings.

Shards

The insights I value most, the ones that expose me to wonder, and marvel, come from dark places.  The trick is to remain calm, and not panic, when you find yourself in one.  If you don't, you might rush out so fast you lose the message. The world is a collection of untold moments that were turned away from a second too soon.

Just before this recent stall began I discovered a population of students who I understood, and was able to establish rapport with quickly despite it not making sense.  My motivation to teach was beautifully rearranged.

This population of students is accustomed to seeing people come, and go.  They're accustomed to having people give up on them.  I think I've been in this holding pattern to test my resolve.  I think it was necessary to know, for myself, just how determined I am to plant myself there.   I never considered anything else throughout the course of losing everything.  I dug my heels in, and waited until it was clear to the world that this is my path, and I'm taking it.  Even when we lose everything, we don't.

Then the first shard of light appeared.  It came in the form of my landlords.  It's quite common to discover that the instrument that leads you away from darkness is in the darkness with you.  The couple who rents my home to me was paying attention.  They took note of who I was, so that when I wasn't they could remind me.

They've allowed me to live rent free.  They've helped with food, and finances.  In today's economic climate, that's rare.  In just about any era's societal mood, it's unheard of.

God is careful when he plans your fall.  He makes sure it occurs in a place with just enough to inspire you to get up.  The fall isn't designed to render you useless.  It's designed to test the determination to rise.

My landlords and I don't have history.   We don't come from a common group of people.  What we have is common belief.  We both believe we're exactly where we're supposed to be.  We're exactly where we're needed.

We both agreed to enter when we  were asked.  While I withered away in darkness, they never planned to let me.  When I asked them why they said 'because your students need what you have'. Sometimes what we think is about us, isn't, and we're reminded to fulfill our part.

Sometimes the family you were born to leaves so the real one can appear.