I have had quite the journey this last week, and as a result have spent the majority of my time resting, meditating, and simply doing nothing other than leave my hotel room every day in order to go get some food.
Well, actually, I have been doing a lot in the arenas of emotional processing – deep core stuff that is not fun to face. But face it I did, because I know that once I get through such core stuff, the sun is always shining more brightly on the other side.
Finally, after a week of writer’s rebellion, the words started flowing just after returning from lunch. I’m not even sure if I can take ownership of these words, but they did flow through me – with incredible clarity and ease.
I posted them as my Facebook status earlier this afternoon, and now feel inspired to also share them in my blog.
Following is what I posted:
Vulnerable heart expression …. read at your own risk LOL.
I have been fascinated by the recent Supreme Court rulings … realizing that for the first time in my life that, IF I actually wanted to, I am now legally allowed to enter a marriage relationship as my true self – as Brenda. (I think most everyone here knows that I am a transgender woman.)
I was also quite fascinated by the fear and hate-filled reactions expressed by so many sources – by people believing that my newfound baby-step of legal equality somehow threatens their ability to follow their own beliefs – even predicting that God’s wrath (and the end of the world) is upon us because people like ‘Brenda’ are allowed to exist outside their cages, in the light of day. From my own perspective, this seems like arcane silliness, and I took none of it personally.
That is, I did not feel the least bit affected by the hateful backlash until about three days ago when a casual Facebook friend posted a video to her page – a video that went on a hate-filled, unsubstantiated, rumor-mongering rant about people like … well … uh … ME.
Somehow, realizing that this video was posted by someone with whom I have a casual friendship – by someone that I thought loved me – I began to take it personally. I believed that if I approached my friend in a tactful and loving manner that maybe, just maybe, she might see through what I perceived as her obvious bigotry and possibly shift her position.
A couple of exchanges later, all couched in attempted-loving words (while carrying tense energy), I sank into deep depression. The futility of trying to convince anyone to open their mind became obvious – and I began to silently project that the whole world must secretly think the same horrible things about me – just pretending to be my friends with outward words, while simply tolerating me behind my back.
It was somewhere while treading water out in the middle of this putrid self-projecting swampy muck that my fingers unexpectedly typed a request on Facebook, asking my friends to please send me positive energy while I dove deep into the swamp of confusing crap. (I was actually beginning to feel old suicidal emotions again – but knew there was no danger of acting on them.)
I am happy to announce that I have surfaced from that emotional swamp with a new resolve – and a new sense of love for myself and for ALL people. I surfaced with the strong memory that my whole journey is an “Inside Job” – one of learning to love myself – and of remembering the self-love that I had already found.
After days of processing, including lots of potato chips and candy bars, I remembered that the only quest on the planet that really matters is that “Inside Quest” – the one where I learn to love myself so much that it really doesn’t matter what anyone else says or does.
I have long believed that healing the planet will only happen when I heal myself – when I shift my own consciousness and open up my own heart – when I realize my own inner connection to a divine and loving Universe. It is only then that I will see the world through different lenses.
And I clearly understand that the world I experience is a product of my own projections – and that my projections are a product of the repressed emotional baggage that I continue to carry inside of me. Trying to hide or deny that baggage does not make it go away. The projections happen anyway. The only way to heal the movie screen “out there” is to heal the film inside of us – the source of the projections we place onto the world.
So, at this point, I choose to focus again on my own state of love – and also realize with a giggle that the extremes that seem to take place out there actually serve me in a twisted sort of way. The extreme events are actually causing me and others to further question reality – causing them to start to wake up in ways that would not happen if everything was “normal”.
I, for one, am grateful that my own difficult journey forced me to question reality – forcing me out of my own comfort zone. If I were still in that “conditioned comfort zone”, I would have missed out on the most magical journey that I could have ever imagined.
Copyright © 2015 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved