Of course, I completely missed the big celebration—100 posts in Inside Sue’s Mind. Just like me. But 103 will do. I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey as much as I have.
Each week I try to get quiet and ask Infinite, Omnipresent Lovingkindness to show me what my readers would benefit from seeing this week. Many of the thoughts I have posted have felt abrupt or unfinished, and almost always unpolished. But I forge ahead and hit “publish.” Then I usually ride a few waves of self-judgment and regret. I’m pretty successful at navigating this, but not yet successful enough that I don’t go through it.
It has seemed that the posts I most judge myself for are the ones that get the most attention. Thank you all for taking the time to email me and let me know that my words resonated. {Did you know that you could tap your cursor on the little heart at the top of each post? Those taps help my work to find a wider audience.}
It’s a happy new year. I think. Several people have said to me recently that they want things to calm down. They want to feel the way they used to feel. I’m sorry to say that I don’t think that’s going to happen.
This is probably bad news If you’re holding onto something from your past. But, if you are ready for some adventure, it is good news.
Your days and nights are going to feel different from now on. Your creative inspiration is going to feel different from now on. You are going to feel different in your body and in your relationships from now on. This sense of difference is going to be exactly what you make of it.
Several months ago, I was sitting in my living room minding my own business when I heard a tremendous crash. I looked up and saw splinters of glass splayed out across the floor. I was stunned into paralysis for a few moments. Then—and I give myself a lot of credit for this—it occurred to me that I needed to find some shoes before I investigated.
While getting my shoes, I called my son. Luckily, he picked up and I described what had happened. He stuck with me as I investigated and discovered that it was a pane of glass from a framed photo on the wall that had slipped out of its frame and smashed on the floor.
As I narrated my process to my son, his comment to me was, “Don’t make it into something bad.”
I deeply appreciated this reminder. My mind was going a zillion miles a minute. All sorts of weird and improbable ideas flashed before my eyes, from poltergeists, to bullets, to a dire warning for my daughter who had taken the photo.
This new year, change is afoot. Take my son’s advice and don’t make it into something bad.
I was reading the Gospel of Mary over the holidays. The remnants of this book are part of the Apocrypha of the Christian Bible. Documents like this one have been discovered in many places in the Middle East over the past century. In this book, Mary describes a vision that she had. She saw seven gateways, each with its own guardian or gatekeeper. This is all too much to go into here and now, though I’d like to write more about it in the future.
Here's the takeaway point for today.
The first (or last, it’s hard to tell) gateway is Darkness. I’m not sure what this meant to Mary or the other Disciples, but to me, it meant that at every moment we have the power to choose either darkness or light. If we choose darkness, we are bound to be caught up in engagement with the guardian of darkness. If we choose light, we may well sail right through the gate unnoticed.
I imagined a Soul emerging from the Oneness of the field of consciousness on its way to becoming a human. How strange it must have felt. A minute ago, I was fully in the embrace of infinite love. Now something is different. Love seems to be…over there.
It might be as startling as a pane of glass shattering suddenly on the floor.
How tempted we all might have been at that moment of realization, to make it into something scary. How like us to judge a new experience as wrong, bad, or dangerous. This is choosing darkness. This is engaging with the guardian of darkness.
In fact, we never left that Oneness. We only seemed to leave as we became distracted by the noisy data of our five senses. There was never a reason to be afraid.
Researchers have postulated that we are not as solid and continuous as we imagine. We are all pretty familiar these days with the idea that our very bodies are made up of more space than matter. Some say that we may be flickering in and out of physical existence many times each second. If this is true, each flicker offers us an opportunity to choose not to be afraid of change. Not to engage with the guardian of darkness.
Author, Kelsey Ervick suggested in her New Year’s post that instead of intentions or resolutions at this dawn of a new year, we might want to try stating an imperative. The imperative is a figure of speech that states a command. The word imperative means essential, required, or unavoidable. I appreciate the energy in an imperative, the way the statement assumes so much about what is already in place that validates the statement.
“Pick the kids up at school on your way home,” is an imperative statement that assumes that you are out, that you will be coming home, that the kids are at school, and that you know everything you need to know to pick them up on your way home.
Try out “Be healthy.” “Be wealthy.” “Be kind.” Tell yourself and see how definitive it feels. Notice all the small corners in your heart and mind where you fight against saying this, all the places where you still believe it is not up to you, all the places you have made assumptions about your worthiness.
This year my main imperative is “Make positive assumptions.” When I find myself cowering in self-judgment after I post this article, I will remember to make positive assumptions about you, about myself, and about my guidance.