God.  Wow, what a powerful word.  It’s one of those word-bombs that almost always elicits some sort of response in folks.  Heart-stopping reverence.  Stomach-turning resistance.  Even God -apathy is stronger than an army tank.  Whatever emotion you have when you hear / speak the word, it’s likely to be potent.

I’ve run the gamut of responses to the G word.  Growing up, I was a devout, very sincere Catholic girl (no uniform, sorry).  I was confirmed in high school, and gladly drank my blood-of-Christ Catholic koolaid.  I was a eucharistic minister, altar girl, and overall Good Christian.  Until the hypocrisy as I saw it was revealed after a friend’s suicide in college.  I eventually found that Catholicism didn’t support who I came to be, so I exited stage left and never looked back.

After this stage, God became a dirty word.  I detested the reference, because with it came the baggage I had carried from the guilt of a failed Catholic.  That was my story back then, and it stuck for years and years.  In order to heal the anger / betrayal I carried from those early years (all made up in my mind, of course, but it felt real at the time), I had to make God a swear word – something I developed a figurative allergy too.

Yet the secret truth is, all this while, I prayed my little heart out.  I stayed very, very connected to “my” version of God – a less human, more altruistic, awareness-laden God.  Yet I didn’t call Him / Her by that three-lettered name, as it still represented an omnipotent, scary-strict, angry fellow who would cast me into hell for batting the wrong eyelash unless I asked someone wearing a collar for forgiveness.  So while I still held tight to my notion of a greater energy beyond my human frame, I didn’t have the heart to call it God back then.  The word I most adored during those days – The Universe.  It came to match a more story-less, warm + fuzzy vibe, and that worked for me.

Nowadays, The Universe is just too small a word, and I’m right back to loving it up with God.  Only He / She has morphed into something / someone more recognizable : me.  Not the small egoic me, but the “big” I, the one connected to the universal consciousness.  The part of me that is pure awareness, and not a conjured fairy tale.  The only piece that’s truly real.

How this happened is really magical.  It really started when I met ex-boyfriend Z.  He and I connected on MySpace, of all places, and it was just an insanely “right” union from the get-go; one of those clear moments that “higher” forces were at work.  That’s how it felt then – that my hands had come off the steering wheel and something really big had just been sparked.

Z introduced me to the concept of enlightenment, and I took to it like a manically hungry child.  Eventually, I got to meet Pranananda, an enlightened master who has dedicated His life to helping us all wake-up.  Pranananda absolutely enchanted me, and scared the bejeezus out of me too.  The Man carries an *incredibly* tangible energy, something that still makes me shake every time I’m around Him.  He’s the most “Godly” gentleman I had ever come across.  But there was one troubling aspect – He used the word God.  A LOT.  A bazillion times per sentence sometimes.  And it drove me a little batty.  How could this new beautiful paradigm of enlightened spirituality use the same word I once ran full speed away from?

Of course, Pranananda uses the term God regularly because He knows it pushes our collective buttons.  Just hearing the name uttered brings up the shit we’re trying to hide from, quite often, and P asks us to really look at what we’re feeling around this (and, really, every) matter.  What that did for me – well, I felt that pain of separation that I had created.  First, the idea that spirituality had ever done anything to hurt me – I had to cry that one out in a big way.  It was untrue, of course, but I held it to be so for a long, long time, so there was a big release that had to occur.  Secondly, I got the chance to redefine the word God.  To see / feel it in a different light.  And to realize there was no man in the sky ruling over our every move, or watching without compassion, or moving us around like chess pieces – whatever it is that we believe.  No, God was much, much closer than that.  He was deep inside me, radiating out of the eyes I peered through.  Hiding in those spaces I thought were empty – waiting for me to wake up to the reality that there was no separation from “me” and divinity.

The funny part of this awakening was that it did actually have its roots in my Catholic upbringing.  I remember the bible teaching me that God made men (and women) in his likeness.  I should have taken a clue right there to the Truth.  Of course He did, right?  There is nothing that is not God.  The bliss we feel when we’re connecting with love – that’s God, of course.  The hatred we hold for the bastard that broke our heart – also God.  The breath of newborn baby – that reeks of God.  But so does the gum wrapper someone just tossed on a railroad track.

As I came to own the divinity of all things, I had no choice but to finally look within.  It’s a scary thing for me, honestly – holding myself as that powerful and Godly.  It’s such a dramatic shift from the old way of being.  When you accept yourself as all-God, and nothing but, you don’t get to hold anything back.  There is no longer a spectrum of comparisons – in other words, my compassion = God, but my anger does not.  No, it’s all-encompassing.  And that’s very confusing for the traditionally programmed mind.  When I step back into the big view, however – wow does it ever make sense.  Every thought I’ve had, every move I’ve made, every tear I’ve cried. . .has brought me to this moment.  The realization of who I really am.

Peel back that pesky little ego – which is, of course, comprised only of the stories we choose to tell ourselves – and there we all are: God.  Not Gods and Goddesses – that’s an important distinction.  We aren’t our own brand of divinity – we are just IT.  From Hitler to Gandhi, and everything in between.  We are all here acting out our passion plays, playing our amazing life-games, so that we can wake up to what’s real.  What’s real is awareness, and awareness IS God.  It’s an absolutely gorgeous realization – and one that sometimes (still) terrifies me.  I am not fully realized, but these things I speak of I feel very, very deeply.

I do know there’s still a story or two inside me that tells me this isn’t true.  If they weren’t there, I would be enlightened.  I still play the separation game, maintaining that pieces of me are disconnected from the whole of divinity.  As much as I can intellectualize that this isn’t the case, my state of being proves that I haven’t surrendered to the truth just yet.  And there’s no guarantee I ever will.

Lately, I’ve noticed a bit more sleepiness in my way of being.  I have been more immersed in the Maya than in past days / weeks.  And that showed up today via chest pains and a general agitation from things that normally make me coo and melt – namely, the God-cat Mr. Boo.  So I allowed myself the luxury of a brief but deep meditation, and I found a piece lingering in there that still desired that old separation.  Why, I asked her?  Why hold tight to the notion that we are separate, alone, and not-so-divine?  Because, she answered – if I know wholly and completely that all I am is God, “I” will die.  I teared up and sent her an energetic hug.  I keep forgetting that there’s a piece of me that does need to die in order for this transcendence to occur.

So this was a good reminder, this light shone on the fear of death.  It’s an ego death, not a body death, but it feels like the real thing.  It really, really does.  And there’s nothing I can do about that but keep feeling the genuine love I have for myself, and keep going deeper into the ownership of the falseness of the ego.  The ego, too, is of course God as well, but she has to totally let go in order for grace to step in.  Maybe that’ll happen, maybe it won’t.  One thing I do know – I’ll die trying, one way or another.  All roads lead to God anyway, so I have nothing to lose.

What a word, that.  God.  I wonder what it will mean to me tomorrow.

As we noodle down the treacherous and oft overwhelming path ala enlightenment, many of us pound our heads against spiky walls out of sheer paradoxical frustration.  It seems every luminous enlightenment being speaks a different language.  Sometimes it feels like no one is really pointing at the same moon – that this is all a crazy game with no real ending.  That there is no such thing as realization at all.

And yet, when dropping the logical constructs of the mind, there is more than just a something there, drawing me into its womb-like clutches.  What is it, really?  I don’t know.  But I’m learning one alarmingly simple yet devastatingly challenging way to get there.  I have a lot of wise teachers feeding me equal doses and beauty and bullshit, and in their cryptically direct banter, I’ve found one radiant consistency.  Mac said it this weekend, and I’ve heard Pi and Pranananda say pretty much the same thing – whatever (or whomever) you choose to get you there, it doesn’t matter.  Just surrender.  Completely.

Just.  Surrender.  Hah.  Just like I (think) I know what enlightenment is not, I’ve uncovered a million ways / reasons / opportunities to *not* surrender.  I have never fully surrendered to a lover.  I never surrendered to authority of any kind – parental, priestly, etc.  Ayahuasca, though she’s given me no reason not to, has never felt me hand it *all* over to her.  There’s always a shred or more held back – just in case.  To keep the illusion of control.  To have a tether into this world, into my mind, in case this is all just a load of baloney and I give away everything – thoughts, heart, breath, life – for a naive, selfish notion that there’s something more.

But here’s the rub.  I have been granted a whole gaggle of spiritual experiences.  Ayahuasca has shown me the primal energies from which I came from – the golden threads that lead all the way back to the beautiful nothingness.  Huachuma showed me my true God reflection in the face of a sacred stone in Peru.  I have *almost* dropped the “i” now on several occasions, becoming the all – and feeling what it is to be the movie, the projector, the observers and the space in between all three.  And no matter how strong my ego becomes, no matter how much that uncertainty wants to scream out her cautions – I don’t believe them.  I don’t believe much of anything anymore.  But I do know there’s more beyond what “I” know.  

I can’t stop what’s coming.  It’s inconceivable to me to go back to the unconscious self.  I’m not really in the state of seeking, but I sense with an insatiable magnetism that there is more to know.  I travel deep into my heart space an unequivocally realize there’s nothing else for me but this.  Not awakening itself, necessarily. but the walk to greet her.  The willingness to own my divinity.

Mac told us last week to stop calling this enlightenment – to hold it as liberation instead.  This facilitated a great shift in me later that week – I came to know in every cell that absolutely nothing about me has to change in order to awaken.  Nothing.  I don’t have to be less egoic or more pious and meditate 20 hours a day or eat raw vegetables with unsoiled hands.  There is nothing I have to do or be, because nothing about me dictates this liberation.  It was a massive relief, a huge opening that allowed me to feel whole and complete.  I could have hugged myself.  Instead, I stared at my reflection in Orion’s beautiful eyes and felt the truth.  This is who we are.  And it’s in those eyes that I found a key.

This game is all about surrender.  And while I understand it doesn’t matter what you surrender to, as long as you do it completely, I realize my mind isn’t going to accept just any authoritative illusion.  I intend to work on surrendering to everything and everyone in every moment, but in order to amp up the game, I’ve chosen two very specific targets.

One is obvious – ayahuasca.  I’ve danced with her almost 2 dozen times now, and I know we have more time to know each other.  I can conceive of a complete willingness to surrender to her chaotic yet nurturing strength.  But those opportunities are scarce – a few times a year or so.  Still, I feel in my heart she can take me there.  I know that *anything* can, it’s just that I feel I can convince my mind to give me one minute of freedom – to hold her breath, and that of my body, and surrender to death by the vine, in order to let light in.  Yes, we can do that.

The other is, in many ways, far more terrifying.  I’m in tears just feeling the very real willingness, and the very real fear – the former from heart, the latter from mind.  I will surrender to Orion.  Not him as a human, per se – as an unreal ego – but as my connection to Shiva.  I can’t remember a single time in the last (almost) year that I’ve known him where I’ve been able to see anything but his greatness.  I have never known a more pure and unconditional love.  I trust his intention, I trust his own connection to divinity – and so, I can’t shy away.  We’ve started practicing tantra together – a very respected yogic path to enlightenment – and I feel as though. . .well, we’re on to something.  It’s both thrilling and horrific.  Whee.

Kat – the name I have for my little egoic self – is so fucking scared of this.  But in a moment of incredible clarity this weekend, I was able to pacify her long enough to open a huge portal for us.  I gave him complete freedom to be who he is.  I dropped the restrictions previously agreed upon in our bond, with respect to sexuality, and asked him to just be.  Integrity is still integral, but rules no longer apply.  And although I shake at times when I realize what this could mean, I also know that this is part of my divine surrender.  I trust the universe (me) to manifest the best possible outcome for us both.  But if I tell God I want it my way only, there’s nothing else He / She / We can do but give it to way I demand.  I’m past that now.  In this relationship, I will not be ruled by fear.

So there I’ve done it – dropped all sense of security and yet, at the same time, promised to throw my all into surrendering to this, my partner and love – the God that he is, and the God that I can allow him to show me.  Kat is so fearful she’s barely uttered a protest.  It’s paralyzing and beautiful.  There’s such a rightness to this act that I feel a glow inside, way deeper than any perceived tremble.  

I want and deserve my pot of gold, should the universe see fit.  And I’m showing Her I’m willing to drop *all* attachments to awaken.  I guess that’s why they call it liberation.  Just the act of doing so makes me feel so much closer.

Calling for my soul / At the / Corners of the world – (Tori Amos)