January 22, 2009 @ 5:42am

Today, I move within and recognize that there are no limits. A full and overflowing life is mine right now. I rest in the knowledge that I am one with Spirit. Affirmation from www.scienceofmind.com.
On mornings like this morning when I awake rejuvenated and inspired, I am so better able and ready to take on the world. The affirmation is so moving, this notion that there are no limits is one of the hardest things for me to accept when I was learning spiritual principles because the Christianity I was taught, made it seem as if there were limits and my limit was a low limit. This concept reminds of a tie when I sang a solo for a choir song when I was much much younger, in my teens. Unlike the song that I sang at the LGBT church, this song went like this: "any way you bless me, anyway you bless me, I'll be satisfied, shower down on me and I'll be satisfied." And then I remember this verse: "I've been doing what you want me to do, I've been praying like you want me to pray, I've been living like you want me to live, I need a blessing." This plea for something, anything and the work one must put into being good Christian only to spend days begging for just a small blessing, as if blessings are in short supl or as if only certain people get blessings or if I was really praying, behaving & living like I was suppose to live, I'd get my blessings but it seemed like the more I tried to be a good Christina the less blessings I got, so that Christianity didn't work for me plus it seemed that all the people who weren't so good were the people who seemed to continually get blessings but then again this was my interpretation.
I always struggled with the Christianity of my upbringing because it seemed so limiting and early on I used to ask my mother and then the other ministers of the church about the people in the baptist church across the street. And I asked them about my white friends who went to Catholic churches or no churches at all. And there answer was that not everybody gets to go to heaven, that there way wasn't the right way. And something about a God who would only select certain people to go to heaven or only create one way felt limiting, felt problematic, felt unGodly and I knew it wasn't right but I had no way of proving it. I spent the better part of my youth challenging many things in church and I had plenty of run ins with folks about their interpretations of the bible. And I ran out of the church plenty of times when I felt the ministers were preaching something stupid and something inside of me, something I can't quite explain had this inkling that there was more than what I was being taught in that church. I've gone onto to reconcile with the church of my upbringing and I love seeing the people at different functions, I've learned to accept them and they accept me but it has been a struggle to get here, at least for me. And as for my mother, I understand that this is all that she knows, these people have been her friends for years and she accepts this church as the place that she will go on to glory from. My only real wish in life is for my mother to have complete and total love for herself, for her to know that she is a divine creation, she is worthy of peace, happiness and unconditional love. More importantly, I don't think that she is anyone who should have to work for her blessings, she deserves them and it would be nice if she would simply receive them because they are there for her in abundance. May my mother know the truth about love.
This journey I'm on feels really, really amazing almost surreal like. I realize how time changes things, how time can mold a hardened rock into a beautiful flower. My life is full of moments now, I am one with spirit and I wear a shawl of contentment, it permanently attaches. I've often wondered how I got here but if I look back, I was a fervent searcher, seeker for truth and knowledge, not always in the right places but in any place I could discover and I never stopped, I never gave in for my life depended on it. I think about those times when I walked away from my life and the determination to live versus die. I know that I hurt lots of people with those acts but the hurt was minimal compared to the hurt that I was really wanting to inflict on myself because if I did what I thought, what I really thought was best, I thought the best thing for me to do is kill myself, so walking away from my life was minute in comparison and ultimately, walking away was the best thing and the act that allowed me to uncover spiritual truths. My most profound spiritual truth came to me direct when I landed on skid row. It was then at the bottom of the bottom that I understood myself to be truly connected to God but what brought that light was that the people on skid row were no different than many of the people I knew in life, there beliefs, there way of thinking, there way of being was almost exactly aligned with people that were doing fine and working and living and surviving everyday. But how could this be? I got my answer about two or three days later after I arrived at skid row, one evening ofter dinner when a church came to entertain the homeless people with their choir and the words of the pastor. I was extremely annoyed at this because I couldn't see where God was at the shelter on skid row but what these people did was sing and preach just like they always do, delivering that same message that I had grown up with, that do the best you can and know that God will spill a few crumbling blessings on you sooner or later and if not in this life time surely in heaven you would get yours. But I've never been too patient and heaven wasn't where I wanted to experience good. And in that moment I witnessed something so profound it nearly scared me, I could see that the church people and the homeless people were no different, we were all the same. And that's when words that had been shared with me in enlightened situations started to puzzle themselves together and provide me with an answer for living.
I'll never forget and I'm appreciative of a woman who honestly i can't say if she is real or of my imagination but the very next day I came across her in the morning, she barely spoke just wanted a cigarette the only thing I had of worth in my possession. She asked me if I had clothes, I said no. She asked me if I was hungry I said yes. And with those answers she led me to a place where I would get some clothes and then patiently awaited outside until i was finish and led me to a place where I could eat. This is the place where I stumbled into a room with books, I love to read so it stands to reason that I would stumble into a room with books and in this room was a teacher who taught writing. I resisted the urge to write because well that would mean that I'm a real person with some type of potential. I had givn up on life when I arrived on skid row, I felt it was my just punishment for being so careless in my life and I had no intentions of ever leaving there, I just assumed I would die there. But this woman's spirit spoke to me and I began writing. What I failed to remember when I started to write was my educational background as well as my strong ability to write. I could see the look on her face when she read the words, it was the words that were compelling but it was what she could see the beyond the words, I wasn't the average homeless person, I could write, write really well and I guess that meant something.
I never came across the woman who led me to the Women's Center that day, I asked about her and people looked at me as if I were crazy as if I had made her up. So that is why sometimes I wonder if she was real or planted by God. I do remember trying to look into her eyes and no one was there which was freigtening but it didn't scare me away or prevent me from following her down dark alleys in downtown LA. I wonder if she is alive, I wonder if her eyes ever came alive again and I wonder if she led herself out of skid row. I say all this to say this was the moment, or the time when I decided that although my life may not be perfect, may not feel good or may be a complete mess, I made myself a promise then that death, or self-inflicted death (aka suicide) would never be an option and there are days when I wonder why I made myself that promise but I am comforted in the knowing that as bad as things are they will get better and I don't have to sink into the whole of suicidal thoughts ever again.
I am perfect and I am whole and I am complete. I LOVE ME.