Spirit 1, Serpent O

This is going to be a long entry. Lots to say!

My trip was great, though, as usual, so fast-paced that I wasn’t able to fully partake of any part of it. In fact, I was so discombulated from all the moving around, I fell asleep here at home on the daybed last night and when I woke up, even with my eyes open, I wasn’t sure where I was! Very weird. Same when I woke up in the middle of the night last night in my own bed, and had to puzzle out which direction to walk to the bathroom (which was right in front of me!). I’m glad that when I’m in Louisiana, I’ll be staying in one place for a week.

I also have had a touch of vertigo for the last week, and I wonder if it’s a metaphor for the dizzying pace at which I’ve been operating lately. While returning home and suddenly seeing with clarity how out of control things have gotten cleanliness and orderliness-wise at our house, and wanting so much to jump in and overhaul and clean things completely, I realize I need to give my body a break and rest. So that’s what I’ll do for today, anyway, and mostly what I’ll do for the weekend.

Leaving out of RDU to fly to Cincinnati to catch the flight to Denver to come home, I had some interesting encounters. The first was with a young man I sat next to while waiting at the gate for my flight—I didn’t sit next to him at first, though. My first seat had been in the only open one I could find, between a rather disgruntled-seeming woman who was sending out “How dare you take the seat I’m using to hold my newspaper” vibes (I responded with Love and friendliness, but it seemed she wasn’t having any of it!), and a couple who appeared to be quite Americanized, but by their physical features and accents, seemed to be from Afghanistan, Pakistan or somewhere in that vicinity. They had two small children, playing quietly, and the woman was peacefully working a word puzzle. But the man kept bugging the woman, saying, “What the hell are you doing that for?” and “What the hell is he doing?” and “What the hell_____________?” (You fill in the blank!) Everything he said started with “What the hell”! To her credit, the woman continued to work the puzzle, and did not acknowledge her husband’s rude questions except for with a withering look. And I don’t mean that SHE looked withered—I mean that the look she gave him was one that left no doubt that she did not appreciate his behavior—quite bold, I thought, for a woman of her apparent cultural background. Finally, he muttered something about going to check on something, and left the woman and the kids in peace for awhile—a relief for us all! About the same time, I noticed that some seats across from us on the far wall had opened up, so I decided I’d go sit where there was more space—both physical and psychic.

A postscript to this segment of my entry is that, when I arrived in Denver, and was coming out of the ladies’ room, I passed the “grumpy” woman I had first sat next to with the newspaper who hadn’t seemed to respond to my friendliness. (I thought it interesting that she, too, was flying from Raleigh to Cincinnati to Denver.) I smiled at her and she smiled back at me before she even realized where she knew me from! Cool.

Okay. Back to the gate area at RDU, and my “new” seat. There I met Mahmoud, a friendly man whom I estimated to be in his thirties, sitting next to me, with an empty seat between us. First we had a friendly conversation about computers, airport “hotspots,” and about his job working on large mainframe computers. When he asked me about my work, and I told him a bit about it, we plunged into a conversation about spirituality. He asked me if I were a Christian, and I told him that I thought religion was too small a box to contain our dynamic, living relationship with God. I also told him I believed that Christianity had missed most of the points that Jesus had come to teach. I used my favorite analogy: It’s as if Jesus came and pointed to the moon, and instead of looking up at the moon, people looked at the one pointing at the moon and decided Jesus was the moon.

I asked Mahmoud about his spiritual orientation, and he said he was born in Afghanistan, had come to the U.S. at age 10, and had been raised a Muslim, I asked if he was devout, and he said he wasn’t, though as the conversation progressed, I had the feeling that he may have been more so than he even realized. We had a dynamic discussion, and I learned a bit about his religion, and he about my non-religious spirituality. He asked me an interesting question and I have yet to completely formulate a clear answer, but I’m still chewing on it. He asked, “If you don’t believe in an afterlife in which you are punished for bad deeds, what is there to keep you from doing bad deeds?” Of course, that question comes from a totally different paradigm than the one from which I’m operating—clearly a duality-matrix question—yet surely there’s a new paradigm answer that can translate. Sure, I can say that the punishment is built in when you violate natural law—and did—but his response was that if your goal was to obtain something, and you violated someone else to get it, and you perceived that your goal had been reached by obtaining the thing, and you were not aware of an overt, immediate punishment, and nothing to fear in the afterlife, what was to stop you from doing it again? I suppose the crux of the matter is that you will, indeed, need to “do it again,” as you will never find fulfillment in that way of operating, and that that in itself is punishment. Of course, in my view, being “good” out of fear is a duality-matrix trap. But I would have had to explain the entire foundation of the new paradigm of understanding to get that answer to totally make sense! My hope is that he will read Recreating Eden so that he will understand that. Not to convert him—just to offer him a new perspective.

I will confess that even as I was having this totally loving conversation with this openhearted man, my reptilian brain was piping up in my consciousness from time to time with fear thoughts such as, “This is a Muslim man from Afghanistan, with a traditional upbringing, and just because he says he’s not a fundamentalist, he might not be telling the truth. Maybe he is going to blow up the plane!” Ack! How did I handle that? It was immediately obvious to me what part of me was trying "hijack" my program (the untrustworthy, fearful part), but I was so clear that God In Me and God In Mahmoud had brought us together for mutual benefit, and that it was divinely ordained that we have the discussion we were having, it was easy for me to tell the serpent within to buzz off. From a practical standpoint, I figured that if Mahmoud had any ill intent (and I’m sure he didn’t), I wasn’t going to waste my last moments of human embodiment in fear, and with a closed mind and closed heart! It is sad to think that I would have had fear thoughts merely because he was a Muslim man. Such is the serpent within us. And, as you can see, the plane to Cincinnati reached its destination safely and my life was enriched by our encounter!

Mahmoud—if you are reading this, I offer my appreciation to you for your part in the education our encounter provided me, not the least of which was, yet another reminder that my reptilian brain is not to be trusted, and that if I am not aware, fear can cause me to fail in doing that which I am designed to do—be in Oneness and radiate Love.

Briefly, I will tell you that my seatmate on the flight was a really neat South American man—Jaime—from Colombia (currently living in Greenville, NC, getting his masters at East Carolina Univ.) who was headed out to visit his wife who is an American, and for now, an itinerant physician working in Portland, OR. We had a wonderful connection and I enjoyed him so much. Such clear energy! He said one particular thing that stuck—he said he’d always had great jobs but had never had to search for a job. He said he would simply make an intention, and the perfect job would show up! You gotta love that.

And finally, on the flight from Cincinnati to Denver, I was seated next to a lovely woman from Long Island who was going to Parker, CO, to visit family. We started talking the minute I sat down and did not stop till we were in the concourse in Denver. She was fascinated with what I told her about Recreating Eden—and I told her a LOT—more in one sitting than I’d ever shared with anyone. It was as if I were giving an intensive seminar to an advanced student, even though it was all “new” to her (of course we know the truth is that she just simply hadn’t yet remembered it!). She was a GREAT listener and asked such perfect questions and gave feedback that made me know that she totally got it. She is excited about reading the book and we are planning to stay in touch. I’m sure she is on “the team”!

It was quite the dynamic and harmonious trip back to Denver. Thank you, Spirit!