February 1, 2009 @ 7:17am

I am that I am.
The breathe of life is upon me, silent echoes of lung palpitations comfort the angst, way in which the wind calls me but I am holding onto the light this time. I am letting the moment surround, give way to the break of past darkness and it is easy to know the fullness of love.
It is befitting that I return to book four agreements and focus my attention on the agreement that states: Don't take anything personally. To engage this agreement for myself requires 189 degree shift, a movement from victim mood into self actualization and the truth about the moment. Since I can remember, thinking about what other people thought of me and taking that personally feels like stuff that was encrypted in my DNA, stuff that is so part and parcel to human experience that to live without it would seem as if I'm a freak or something seriously wrong with me. To not take things personally means that when people engage with me in a positive way or a negative way, I am to not reference that as an indicator or allow it to affect my emotional, mental being but it can be hard. There are times when I play in my mind what someone has said or how they treated me, I play it over and over and over again in my mind. And as I look back now, this mental engagement with past actions has been the shackle, the way in which I hand cuff my life and my actions. The way in which I imprison my spirit by thinking that what has happened in the past, somehow dictates who I am now. I've held on to my interpretation of how people interact or treat me for dear life, when those thoughts are the ones that sent to a place where I didn't want to live, didn't want to live and didn't want to be who I am. I must confess I loved victimhood or perhaps I just became so enamored with it. The way I could feel sorry for myself and treat others like shit and chalk it off to rippling effect of how the world works. Using those phrases, if it ain't one thing it's another, can't win for losing or if I knew better I could do better. There was this cycle of pain and suffering that I crawled into and in some respects I really do think that I loved it, that I was into it and gave it power over my life, much like an addiction.
It was back in the 90's when I was searching for enlightenment that the notion of not taking things personally began to come into the light for me. I learned from Rev. Renee McCoy that I was in the right place, meaning God made me as I am and that I was alright with God which gave me permission to not take heed to what other human beings thought of me. This was a time of discovering my sexual orientation, a time of wondering why it was that I liked men and women, what made my spirit so open to intimacy in both men and women and why. It seemed odd, different and perhaps borderline or across the border toward something sinful perhaps. In this phase of awakening I learned that God is creative and I could relate to that given that I was an artist who enjoyed creating things. God created me the way that I am and yeah, I'm unique and different and it's okay. To learn that you're okay with God is like getting permission to be, exhalation and calmness envelopes my spirit because the judgment I may experience I may endure at the hands of other doesn't have the weight that it once held.
When I was exposed to science of mind, my whole world came crumbling down and not in a bad way. The walls that I had built around myself softened as I learned the thing that I hadn't learned up until that point and that is, I am one with the universal spirit. God is inside of me. This revelation would take years to sink in because I was taught from a child the externalness of God, the God on most high and the God who never ever took a moment to hear the cries of a little black girl. I look back it is amazing what people will put into the minds of others, without a bit of consciousness, without a bit of respect for their soul, without wondering if it will really help or hinder. The rote way religion was dished out and without serious reconsideration or contemplation within changing times. I won't spend energy judging but in this moment I wonder.
To grow into a space of recognition of the God force inside of oneself felt more like what I had always thought but had nothing to back it up. I love the notion of having a co-creator in life, that serenity prayer has more meaning when I embrace the truth of spirit that dwells within me. It is in this place where taking something personal becomes obsolete. How and why would I need to take personal what someone says about me, they are connected to me and we are connected to the oneness. So as we said in grade school, everything you say bounces off of you and sticks on me. And vice versa unless I know the truth which is that we are all one, we all have the indwelling of the holy spirit within us and have access to it. I get that when people say things to hurt me, it is because of the hurt they feel inside, it is because of the pain they want to avoid at my expense, it is because for some reason they are holding onto past issues, voices, etc and not partaking fully in the moment. Instead of enjoying what connects us, there is this need to engage in behavior to disconnect us. I don't take things personally because whether the treatment is good or bad, I don't need to judge or be affected, I just need to be in the moment, to use my enlightened mind to understand what is before me and accept what is. Because the truth of the matter is this, it's not personal, it just is and behind it is a whole lot of disillusionment and more than anything I want the other person along with myself, to reach the light, to be in the moment and know what it is we really want in that moment and that is LOVE.
Eckhart Tolle talks about this in his book power of now, this state of now is not happy or sad, glad or mad, up or down, excited or depressed, in the now it just is. It seems in my mental kind of cold or distant but I can understand that it is merely the ability to operate one's life in the full knowing. To know is to have peace, to know is to be at one with spirit and to know is comforted with the knowledge of the real truth. The real truth is this, we are one and we have everything we need inside of us and this is God. The choice that Adam and Eve were making in the garden of Eden was a choice to be inside this knowing and to be outside of this knowing. Why we would want to be outside of this knowing I'll never know but to have experience with being outside of the knowing, allows me to appreciate what I do know. I've come to honor the knowing and feel a level of peace I thought I would never experience. This peace is the thing I've been searching for, it is the place I thought was impossible to get to.
Today's affirmation (www.scienceofmind.com): As God's beloved, I realize that I am God's most precious partner. In loving God, my life expresses God's wholeness. My soul completes the Divine. As I give to my Beloved, so do I receive. I gladly surrender my being for the fulfillment of God.
I love it when my thoughts are in alignment with the affirmation, this synchronism is divine. the truth is as long as my thoughts are in the now, my expressions will always be in alignment with an affirmation. I'm experiencing this deeply and profoundly wonderful feeling of contentment and I can't explain it, it's just an inner knowing, a way in which I recognize that all is well, all is right with my soul. There are no real words to define or give life to what this is but I tell you it is beyond me at times and I sink into the righteousness of it and I am in my moment.
I am perfect and I am whole and I am complete. I LOVE ME.