Watching a fire

Well, I have made my way back from the place of rejection and shame. And I feel better. I think it is an interesting story, so I decided to tell it after all.

I had been requested to give a small help to a friend with a health problem, to give a "laying on of hands" for transmitting healing energy. (It is difficult to say that in a way that doesn't sound "flakey" because I guess it is flakey, but so it is.) Nonetheless, it was a priviledge to have this request, a rare opportunity. But it went strangely; it went awry. It was not a laying on of hands. Instead, unexpectedly, it was a "reading." What I mean by a reading is that immediately as I laid on my hands I felt intense emotions and "saw visions." That is I had understandings of a visual nature, as if remembering the scenes of a dream. But the difficulties came in that it was not my emotions, and not my dream. I had not been requested or invited to view the inner shadows and dreams of my friend. Of course at the time I did not think of this. I was fully involved my event of having visions. I just verbized the reading thinking that a bonus gift was occurring.

It went more strangely from there. Gradually over a few days time, I came to understand that my friend's experience of the reading been a shocking and invasive event, not a gift. With this understanding I fell into deep rejection and shame. For me it seemed that I had found yet another message saying that the deepest most secret gifts I have to give are unacceptable, that the place wherein I feel the greatest power is too alien. It was as if I had offered lovemaking that the partner felt as rape. It was devasting. My desire was to hide, to reject my friend, which would have been a punishment even if that was not my intention. So as I struggled over the ordinary, returning a phone call, arranging on luncheon together, I considered many things. I sat in quiet for hours, waiting and thinking and praying; not responding, not discussing, not throwing more words onto the fire. However, also being in withdrawal.

Eventually I saw a simple understanding. I had had an experience and my friend had had an experience, but these were not the same the experience, though they occurred with the same event. And oddly, the next understanding was deeper. I had not caused her experience, though I triggered it. And my friend had not caused my experience though she triggered it. Oh my, I was having my OWN experience, my own event. My friend did not do anything TO me. She simply had a bad experience right up next to me, and in response I had had my own bad expereince right up next to her. But each of these were oddly independent, not about each other. My shame was my own. What she had rejected was her experience of the event. Graciously, she had not rejected me or even my capability of "reading." I simply did not get the validation - the gratitude and admiration - I had thought I "should" have gotten, but instead was asked to sit through my friend's difficult experience. And ultimately she came around to appreciation after having some time to look at it again, and to view it with the help of another friend.

But even then it took me some time to realize that withdrawal, isolation, and even punishment were not necessary. If I continue to feel unsure about how I am, and what place there is for my capabilities, that is my own journey. I do not have to choose to feel shame as I struggle with these things. I do not have to punish my friend during my struggle, a friend who began with only requesting a small help for an illness. In the end I returned the phone call, reopened communications, reopened my heart, bruises and all.

Then the most remarkable thing happened, I did not feel ashamed anymore. It was as if in granting a bit of grace outward, the mercy to not punish an innocent friend, then then some how that mercy shone back on me. I seem to have forgiven myself for being so different, for stumbling about with a glaring laser of awareness, for not know where to place myself in this distant land I live in for a time, this land of time and space, of "normal" physical reality. I do desperately want to go home, to the spirit realm, but for now I live here, in my rough bruised skin. And need a friend to hold, imperfect and stumbling like me, a friend who gives another chance.