Intensifying

Whoa!

I was up late last night at the Shelter because I was feeling overwhelmed by what is happening to me.  I actually came out into the office in my jammies with my laptop at around 11pm and asked my friendly Staff-person if I could go into the room across the breezeway to work.  Since the only room open was the TV room and it was blaring some cliche film with a bunch of violence against a hooker, I asked if he would let me into the dining hall so I could have some peace and quiet.  Being the wonderful guy he is (I wrote about him earlier. He's the guy who was the first resident to get housed out of the Shelter and is now working there.), he let me.  Its normally locked after a certain hour.  It was dark and quiet.  This is what I wrote:

"I have been broken open. 
I am the Universe and everyone are my children. 

One of my children has bent a rule to let me work in a quiet place. 

I was being blissed while laying down my head to rest - which has been happening regularly lately - and I remembered that I needed to get a special form to fill out and do so in private.  So I got up quietly and snuck into the office under cover of the really loud air conditioner, and got the form.  I told this rule-bending child of mine what I needed it for and he urged me to go through with it.  I was actually not going to do it, but he changed my mind.  I didn't want to write someone up.  But he told me that it needed to be done because M "needs to get off her high horse" and he really respected my opinion.  He made it clear that the staff opinion didn't have the weight needed to get the job done, so he really wanted my "client input". 

I went back to bed but was unable to stop awakening to what was happening.  The Light was shining from me.  It was being sought out.  People needed it.  Then I recalled what kinds of things people have been saying about me, to me, lately and I started to become overwhelmed with what C.S. Lewis called "The Weight of Glory".  I hugged my blankie. 

So this is what is required of me:
I am being asked by the Universe to say something about M to the Staff here at the Shelter.  M is Staff. 
I am also being asked to say something about L.  L is Resident. 
I am also being asked to love B, A, J and D.
Not to mention L, L, J, M, R and M and just generally everyone else here. 

I cannot contain all this emotion.  I started to cry.  L was snoring next to me and sleeping fitfully, and I could hear her whimpering in her sleep, like a lost little girl.  I could hear her as a little girl, and also hear her now as a grown woman who terrorizes so many people.  I so badly wanted to reach that little girl and embrace her and soothe her...  but she would not let me. 

The way I normally contain this is by writing.  It puts it in a place besides my heart so I can observe it and talk about it.  But it does not keep it in my heart.  I think what I need to do is meditate with it, instead, and learn to widen my heart to contain it. 

Regardless, I need to begin my work for M and L. 

M is a special woman with very special gifts and talents.  It is difficult to see what her motivation is.  Maybe she is trying to suppress things in us which are primarilly hated within herself, such as beligerence.  For people in 12-Step recovery, this is about Character Defects.  Most of Staff here are in Recovery and so are many clients. 

It's so easy to be seduced by this.  I have been.  I have been seduced by my own beligerence and indifference. 

I have to sit on the floor.  It is too uncomfortable sitting at the table and chair.

Tonight on the way home, one of those floating seed-pods that we called "wishes" when we were kids, was flying along side of me while I was riding my bike in the busy street.  It was like the Universe playing with me.  So I smiled and blew it like we always did. 

I don't want M to be punished for doing what we all do.  We all do it.  She does it with great aplomb and has gotten caught.  She's very entertaining, and I think she could take the show on the road.  Some of us have been dreaming about having an open mike night event where we have singers and comedians come and entertain people with recovery stuff.  She would "kill".  I would love to see her do this.  And I would love to see her get with a Sponser (and eventually the whole crew) and talk about her Beligerence issue.  I can still see the smile and wide eyes she gets when she's talking about penalizing someone who has a sense of entitlement... "

That's as far as I got when he came in to tell me that it was time to go to bed.  It was 12:17am. 

Since I'm reading "The Four Agreements" right now, I recall the Toltec vision in "The Smokey Mirror". 

"Three thousand years ago, there was a human just like you and me who lived near a city surrounded by mountains.  Thehuman was studying to become a medicine man, to learn theknowledge of his ancestors, but he didn't completely agreewih everything he was learning.  In his heart, he felt there must be something more.

One day, as he slept in a cave, he dreamed that he saw his own body sleeping.  He came out of the cave on the night of a new moon.  The sky was clear, and he could see millions of stars.  Then something happened inside of him that transformed his life forever.  He looked at his hands, he felt his body, and he heard his own voice say, 'I am made of light; I am made of stars.'"

I also hear the Voice of Dave in 2001 saying, "The thing's hollow - it goes on forever - and - Oh, my God! - It's full of stars!" 

All these people felt like my children and I care so much about them.  I've felt this way many times before under strange circumstances.  Everyone seems to be equally fragile and unpredictable at the same time.  Anything could happen.  They could bless me or kill me.  It's really all sort of random - except that it isn't.  It's all perfectly understandable and obvious and so, so forgivable.  I can't believe these feelings are growing instead of diminishing. 

So, I have a job to do.  The Staff needs to be supported by the Client/Resident community in bringing up a character issue to a Staff-person.  I'm the "man in the gap" for the moment.  I want to be "impeccable". 

Ruiz uses a sort of enlightened self-interest kind of motivation for this agreement, but that doesn't really work for me.  I have my own motivation.  I have embraced my own character defect and self, which grounds me in Grace so I can embrace others.  This is not pumped up or manic.  It's just silently ready to be drawn on like still water at the bottom of a well.  It's safe and out of sight until it's needed.  I have no doubt.  No disagreement.  When I love others, that love is reflected back to me in response.  I am surrounded by love - everywhere - like a joyous hall of mirrors.  M is in no danger from me.