The Vagabond

Imagine a man who spent 30 years homeless, sleeping in the streets, living with the kind of PTSD that comes from chronic lack and insecurity around basic human needs (food, clothing, shelter, and love), having experienced the shame and humiliation of living beneath dignity, imagine this man, who’s probably been made to feel at some point in his life less-than-human, is suddenly and miraculously provided a beautiful home and new friends who become like his new family. Imagine his circumstances completely turn around and the only place left for him to go is up.

Now that this man’s circumstances have changed, should he ever curse God for all those days he spent in the gutter?

If he were to continue to wrestle with the ‘why’ of his past; why all that pain, why all that abuse, why all that injustice, he would never be able to enjoy his new circumstances, that is, his present reality. It’s not easy to forget 30 years of suffering, it’s not easy to forget what hurt you. We have to make a conscience decision to leave the past behind us because we truly want a future.

A Million Miles Away

Human beings have the ability to time travel. We know this is true because we can usually recognize when someone is not present. Remember the old expression, “so-and-so is a million miles away”? That’s a figure of speech used when we notice someone is preoccupied, not paying attention, checked-out, not really here with us in the present moment. Wherever your thoughts are, there you are; think about how you can be at a party or at some event where the atmosphere is celebration, festival. Your friends are ready to turn-up and get loose and then one of them turns to you and says, “what’s wrong”? They noticed that you’re not really here, you’re not responding or engaging with what’s going on presently, your mind is somewhere else, dealing with something else. No matter how jovial and jubilant the environment is you can’t really enjoy it when you’re stuck on some problem you may have in your life. This is why they say that happiness, contentment, is a state-of-mind.

Our state of mind, our inner condition and activity supersedes the external world. I would argue that the human mind has the power to block out the Sun. The Sun in all its abundance, all its life-giving energy, its massive presence and god-like importance can all be utterly ignored and factored out when we become so focused, so wrapped up, in our problems. That’s the power of focus. I believe the key is not allowing our issues to become our sun, to become the center or the central governance about which all our possibilities, identity, and behavior revolve. One way to do this is to simple stay open to the possibility that everything is going to be ok, take notice of a sunny day, take notice of a high-vibrational environment and be willing to meet it. Let it touch you. That’s the kind of courage you’re going to have to muster in order to make it through. Don’t allow your situation to rule out the possibility of a fulfilling life. Our wound should not be the center from which we work. My teachers taught me that that center should be the divine incorruptible part of ourselves, but that’s a deeper conversation for another time.

Forgiving God

I used to wonder what they meant when they said you have to forgive God. I thought, how can I forgive God, the creator of the universe can do no wrong. But letting go of the past is precisely about forgiving God because after you’ve forgiven the people who you feel have wronged you, you then have to forgive life for what it hit you with (remember Rocky said, you gotta take the hits). Life is God.

If God is the very life that sustains us, the very life in which we have our being, the life that gives us exposure to every experience both awesome and awful, then to be at odds with life is to be at odds with God. When life has become like a burden, when we regard life as a torturous brutal thing, we come to resent and resist it. For me, life and I were not on good terms. I couldn’t respect or appreciate it because I felt it an unbearable experience, constantly trying to separate myself from it by running away from the present, revisiting the past so often as to pretty much be living there full-time, or wrapping myself up in dreamed-up scenarios that didn’t exist which were the only “places” where I felt I had any control or power. To reject life is to reject God and forgiving God is the willingness to reconcile with life. You can never truly live if you hate life.

So many people are divorced from life, we turn our backs on it in protest, as if to say, “it’s too hard dealing with you”. Some literally end their life by suicide, but so many others just quietly quit. Your relationship with life is one that you can’t give up on, either way, without devastating results. I think the true triumph is in the willingness to live again and live on despite what feels like a brutal and imperfect life history. For the same reasons we must accept our own imperfections in order to have balance and integration, we must accept our life, this life, and all our experience in the same way.

I think this teaches us why we need to accept the imperfect, because it’s a part of the deal. If life is God, then opening ourselves up to life again should provide all the healing energy we need. Author Don Miguel Ruiz said “don’t resist life passing through you because that is God passing through you”.

Don’t drag the past into today. Today is the time that God has given. We can honor God by honoring this time, which is the present. Honoring the present is honoring God because God is, the past and the future is not.