Rejection or Protection?

In an odd and fluid way, this moment is like a nanosecond in a twenty-nine-hundred-hour-movie- marathon called Our Lives.  We have our noses (I’ll use first person), I have my nose squashed up against the details; I can’t see around the corners.

I can’t see the bigger picture.

I am evaluating, dissecting, analyzing, and pro/conning the moment from this tiny, most limited perspective.

Nose squashed against the tree trunk, I have no conception of the forest in which I stand, the forest of possibility, of manifestation, of grace, of possibility.

I stand, nose squashed, wanting it to be different.

What an odd and funny thing it is to be human!

I occasionally look to my Archangel Oracle Cards, by Doreen Virtue, cards that draw upon the archangels and their core teachings, for validation and reassurance.  (Ha, I’m laughing at that sentence. If you told me that I would be That Person who just said That, I would have not believed you.) The other night, in a frenzy of Wanting the Moment to be Different, I picked up a card.  As I turned it over, it said to me:

Divine Order
“Everything is how it needs to be right now.  
Look past the illusion 
and see the underlying order.”

Those damn archangels.

This is exactly what I need to hear—not necessarily what I want to hear.

I sat with this message for a bit, considering, digesting.

As is my practice, I put the card on my altar and lit a candle.

As is my practice, I wrote the message on a sliver of index card and carried it in my pocket for a few days.

I took some time, as I considered breathing into it, considered living into it.

Yep.

I can hear, I can feel its truth.

Look past the illusion, the archangels tell us.

What does that mean?

For me, the illusion is what I want to be happening, what I think SHOULD be happening, the moment according to Aruni Nan Futuronsky, me, the Great Author of Life. 

It’s an illusion—because it ISN’T happening.

It’s a delusion, a mental desire that has not manifested into reality.

REALITY WINS.

Reality is relentless and in the bigger picture, no matter how it feels or how it smashes our hearts asunder, reality is here to bless us.  

I do not say this to take away any of the suffering, the heartbreak, the devastation of real life, life on life’s terms, as we say in Twelve Step.

I say it to give us courage, to remind us what we already know, to remember—no matter what, we can be okay with what is happening.

Eventually.

No matter what, we are okay.

See the underlying order, the teachings tell us.

Tricky, indeed.

Seeing the underlying order takes time.  Often, I must simply (and sometimes it isn’t simple) outlive my feelings of rejection, my own wounded, injured self.

I can report that every time (yes, every time), I have outlived my feelings, and eventually surrendered to life as it is, every time, what I am given is beyond anything I could have created for myself.

Life’s plan for me is so much vaster, more gorgeous, more glorious than my own.

Can I imagine that the highest will unfold for all, as life unfolds?

No.  Not when I’m sad and frightened.

But I can feel sad and frightened, and lean toward that possibility.

Can I imagine that there is an order, a perfection playing out, that is protecting and caring for me?

No, not when my broken heart is wailing and my stomach is aching.

But I can feel those feelings and lean toward that possibility.

I have decades of evidence-based data from my life, from my sobriety, that tells me reality is here to bless me, to protect me, to care for me, for love me.

Most of the time I can’t feel that—but I believe it—and I practice it—and I will outlive my feelings.  I will outlive my feelings.

I am outliving my feelings.

Tweaking life’s rejection to life’s protection, a sigh of relief and possibility, tiny-teeny-weeny, emerges in my belly.

Tweaking I’m not getting what I want to I’m getting what I need shifts my constricted belly toward more relaxation.

Imagining that life is not here to hurt me, to take from me, to deprive me of what is mine—but to imagine there is protection and care, in all of it, ALL OF IT, especially the pieces of life I do not want—as I do that, as I lean in that direction:

I am freed.

Dear Friends, not an easy teaching, this one, but surely, it is an essential one.  Life on life’s terms. How do you practice this? What do you notice? What parts of your life to you wish to be different?  Where do you tussle with reality?

Please do keep me posted.  Your emails are a gift. I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

Best,
Aruni