All my life I have been fascinated by words — their sound, their rhythm, their meaning. Thus, big old dictionaries –– as well as dictionaries of obscure words, plus a trusty old Roget’s Thesaurus, and my rhyming dictionary –– have all been vital to the development of my curiosity, consciousness and creativity. I emphasize old dictionaries because definitions are changing all the time — often being dumbed-down for a less educated population, or manipulated to control them. At the same time, powerful words that reflect our greater potential back to us disappear into obscurity.
The word I present in my newest YouTube video is THEODICY. It’s a word that occurred to me before I ever saw it in the dictionary — as I explain in the video. It’s basically a theological argument about how a just and loving God could allow such evil into this world. Who among us has not asked that very question?
In truth, we don’t actually know the nature of the reality in which we live. Perhaps we are trapped in a computer-generated matrix made out of word tricks, as I suggest in the YouTube video by that name: Is the World a Matrix Made Out of WordTrix?
The world has never looked real to me, but like a multi-dimensional stage set on which we play out the story of our lives. And I believe we pre-script this story before we are born, including the cast of characters, in order to compel us to cultivate qualities of being that have eluded us in the past. After all, you can’t know your capacity for true courage unless you’re in a body and under threat.
From this dispassionate perspective, facing the brutal challenges we often encounter in our lives starts to make a bit more sense. For such challenges give us the opportunity to exceed what we think of as possible for us.
Truly, we are so much more than we have been led to believe. And we can only become the super-Hero and super-S/Hero we knew we were in childhood –– when compelled to overcome impossible odds. Think of Gandhi, who nonviolently managed to get the British out of India after centuries of domination. Or Martin Luther King, who led the peaceful civil rights movement that caused the U.S. government to finally modify some of its brutal, divisive policies toward African Americans.
Tragically, many people lost their lives in these struggles for freedom. And agonizing suffering is wide spread. But no one ever gets out of here alive –– except in Spirit. And no one ever really dies. It’s just that we enter this dimension with an expiration date, plus a one-way ticket back Home.
Many of us heard in a nursery rhyme that, ‘Life is but a dream.’ So, waking-up in the Life’s Dream is a primary purpose in life. Therefore, as I see it, we have nothing to lose when we go full out and full in to overcome our difficulties to become our magnificent, courageous and authentic Selves.
This is what THEODICY stirs in me. It reminds me that as the Infinite in finite form, I have what it takes to transcend the ordinary to become extra-ordinary –– precisely because of having to gain the strength it takes to run the gauntlet of life. And finally, I am learning to play this human instrument ever-more sweetly and peacefully –– even as everything speeds up around me.
Life is not a head-trip. And the only way out of the matrix that I am aware of is to let go of my resistance to what I cannot control, and go ever more deeply into my Heart. For it is the Heart that is the seat of Joy. And the more time I spend in Joy –– often by pleasuring myself through acts of Loving Kindness –– the freer and more peaceful I am.
Here is a beautiful, relevant quote –– attributed to multiple sources:
“Life is short, and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who make this earthly pilgrimage with us, so be swift to love and make haste to do kindness.”
Finally, here is the story of the most profoundly afflicted yet deeply joyful woman I have ever known –– and loved:
OptiMysticism: The Capacity to Overcome the World: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/optimysticicsm-capacity-overcome-world-2018-laurel-airica-airica/
