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FIELD NOTES – UNWORRIED BY KATHY VIK 11-20-13

www.deeplyawake.tumblr.com

I have every intention to crank out a bunch of Patrick later on tonight. Canceled once again. Haven't worked for 9 days. Seems I am going to pass through the eye of the needle again, get real real focused, count every damn penny, once again. This happened last year around this time. Tricky. Very tricky.

But at least it's familiar... the first time I went through this I was panicked a lot of the time. I', not panicked, not now. That's a totally valid experience, but completely optional, and really taxing to the old biology. Unnecessary, now. I am here, at my dining room table tapping away, on purpose. It's all been purposeful, voluntary.

Something happened to me this morning that I want to tell you about, although I want to end with the story ideas that called to me, kept me in this awakening game, and then I want to laud and magnify the creators of Wilfred. There. We have an outline.

This morning, I was doing the facebook thing, and there was a video post with a title like heart-warming, something like that. I rarely do videos, because my phone is so slow, it makes videos all skippy. Anyhow, I had to stop the thing five or six times to let it load, but I watched a twelve minute video that had me crying from the first scenario.

It was all set in athletic competitions, people who went out of their way to love someone competing. Many were about opponents being honored by the victor, but what got me spinning was a scene which began with a big man carrying a body onto a gym mat. The body was twisted, spastic, and the child was dressed as a wrestler, helmet and shoe wear and unitard.

The child lay there writhing. And a boy approaches, and gets down on the ground, and begins to writhe, and for just a second, I was unclear what was happening. I feared the healthy boy was going to pin the infirm one. But, then the little boy flips on this back, and starts nudging into the spoon the sick boy's body was making, and it became clear this little, healthy normal boy was then going to wind up sort of wearing this sick boy, pinned down, beaten.

The ump did the count, and someone came over and took the crooked hand of t he sick boy, and raised his ill formed arm into a sign of victory.

I had to stop. I had to hold all that love. Oh my god, I cry now thinking about it. It was so tender, so kind, so loving, so beautiful. So selfless, but more, such a statement of truth.

It was a truth, there wrestling on the ground.

The inform, the ill, oh I love them so much. I'm full on crying. I love the sick. I love them. I love the misshapen ones, the ones who think in ways that just make their lives hell, the ones who broke themselves, the ones who need to be sick, wanting the drugs and the tenderness and the unconditionalness of it all. I love them all, but I love the frail, the irreparably broken ones the most.

I will tell you now of an experience I had my first job out as an RN.

I worked nights with some really cool people. The nurses were always stick in the muds, but the aides were amazing. I had a crush on a boy with dark, long hair, who was an actor or playwright,I forget. I went to one of his works. I couldn’t tell you if it was any good. I was so in love with that guy, I just sat there and ate him up for two hours. Unrequited love, awkward girl that I was, and remain.

Anyhow, there were other cool ones, mainly doing the family thing, and then there was a boy who I will name Brett. I don't remember names, as a rule.

Brett had no face. He had eye, and I guess lids, although I can't really remember. He had blow holes for a nose, and a really little, scarred mouth. He was bald. And it was never clear to me if his face had just melted off in a fire, of if he was born that way. It seemed rude to ask. It's off, being among folks who are just undeniably in a tough spot, like the blind or deaf or retarded or misshapen, crikey, they are different, they are blessed, you see. They are closer to God than we are. They just are. All people who suffer are very close to god, but these, they are different. The suffering is exquisite, the sacrifice enormous, and the payoffs intense, sometimes.

Anyhow, I liked that kid, and he was always really nice to me, very encouraging. Some, who have been reading along, know that I set it up this way, being able to receive very little love, and being surrounded by people who just really didn't like me very much. So, here is this fellow who is kind to me, amazing with patients. All I could think about sometimes, though, was how Aunt Edna would feel about getting care, in the middle of the night, by a dude who has no face. I wondered if he flipped the old ones into hallucinations. I would laugh, guiltily, about that sometimes.

Then one night, I had a dream about him.

He came to me with a face, a very handsome one. But that isn't what was so amazing. In the dream, we were married. We were one with one another, complete, satisfied, whole, together, committed and true. It was such a strong and true love, it was healing, feeling it.

And then, upon awakening, when I followed the feeling state tot he images, I was amazed. Just amazed. Io wondered if that meant I should pursue him sexually, but I discarded that thought. I could feel this person's resistance, sitting on my bed. It was plain that was not the point.

I thought about him, while watching the remainder of that video. More and more and more scenes of compassion, communicating in a way that made my muscles ache with love, I watched these acts of love and knew that something was again shifting within me.

I thought about my career as a healer, a volunteer at the hospital at 13, an aide through college, dropping out for a year to do it full time, a nursing aide at a nursing home up in the hills, living with my folks that year.

I saw it all, felt how I felt so many many times at the bedside. Freed. Alive. Whole. Happy. It's the only place I whistle, work. I love being around the sick, I love them so much. I love it all.

I thought about it there, in my granny chair, in my jammies. Why? Well, I figured that out a while ago. It's because most people don't let themselves be loved until they are in a desperate situation. They usually are closed in some way, unhappy and troubled and sad, the ones not born with a disability. They are unhappy within. Sometimes it is an old injury, lifetimes old, an imprint that is biological, an infirmity we have married our biology to, something we live out life after life, and has nothing to do with processing or character issues. It is deep and mysterious, why people get sick. It is not to be judged, not to be assigned value. It is all valuable, meaningful.

I remember when I needed to get some IV fluids. I went to an outpatient clinic. I wanted to go back the second day, even though I didn't need it, I wanted to go, because they were nice to me. They didn't think bad thoughts about me. I could just tell. It felt good, being around people who were nice because they wanted and could be.

So I get it, sometimes being sick is about getting something that nothing in one's life provides. There's lots of reasons. I have a limp and my hip hurts a lot anymore. I don't think bad thoughts about my person hood, but I am deeply curious, certain that no doctor can or should fix this infirmity. It's me having a profound conversation with me, and I don;t need anybody mucking that up for me. No need. No one knows how to heal me better than me. But I get it, not everyone believes so much in their bodies, and all the other reasons people show up sick. I heard of one guy, who'd survived all sorts of extreme medical and surgical stuff, just a freaking train wreck physically, he went into hypnosis and learned it was because he wanted, had signed up for, all the experience. He wanted to really, really, know illness. HE was examining it, like a science experiment, and I think many of us have lives that speak to testing simple but profound hypotheses.

So the ill, I thought, there in my chair, they are just more willing to take my love, and I love them so much, so much, so much. I love them. It is not a personal love, and that's what I love most about it. It is sort of a category instead.

So, I thought about it, there on my chair. I have seen, often, writing as the highest form of selfishness, narcissism, especially this writing. Who am I to expose my consciousness like this? Who am I to reveal myself in such a way? No one else has. Why me? Am I really that sick, that borderline or narcissistic? I have abandoned, in my heart, my love of the sick. And it was my best part, I sat there crying, that's my best part.

I sat with a great love for who I was, who I have always been. I saw, in a glowing moment that just kept shining, kept going on, gentle but intense, I saw that I have always been good, always been kind, always been loving. Sure, I did things that were bad, from time to time, but it was by agreement. I saw the circumstances of my life all turn benevolent, and I couldn't really identify a mistake. Everything was symmetry. Everything was beautiful.

But, I had a thought, after that. I realized that I have been able to channel the most pure love, allowed myself this great fun, through nursing. Turning from this, oh, my, I am not so sure that's a good idea. I'm not convinced. I don;t think I can love that purely, do as much good, writing. It's not as sturdy, not as immediate, as nursing.

And tonight, I had another letter from a dear reader, who said she spent the day reading Patrick hears Voices, and loved how she could see herself among my friends, these slivers of myself I am populating through my imagination and willingness, and She had just asked me if there was someplace she could go, to learn of my awakening.

I told her about Deeply Awake, and then, I decided, once fully clothed, up from my, it turns out, totally unnecessary nap, to re-read a few of the old essays.

Here's the weird part. I randomly chose two essays, one recent, talking about my experience at the Riviera, when I was told to love it all, all the time, that is the point, to love it when you win or you love, just love it all. And then, randomly, I happened upon the essay I wrote when the experience was fresh. Funny how that works, when I re-read the work. I am convinced it is a gospel. There. I said it.

And I realized, as a read, that what I have done is just as valuable as nursing, just as aligned with my core truth, that I want to ease people's burden, lift up the suffocating blanket folks are sheltered under, tell them that the way out is here, that the suffering is over, all is well. That has been my purpose.

The shame I felt after finishing the video has faded, this faint tribal chant, “You are selfish, you should just stay quiet. Keep small... When you are big, you are scary” this is a chant that is fading now.

And so, I will finish up, spending good words on this essay rather than on Patrick, but some things must be said. They just must.

When I worked with The Teachers, after they left, what consumed me was a story for a novel. There was a woman whose life sort of implodes, and part of it has to do with her missing brother, someone who, she discovers, she never knew, because he had been working spiritually, and had prepared for ascension. When he was “taken away” she went on a quest, to find out what happened to him, and thus, in the end, winds up running a commune up in Leadville, and her brother returns, to assist, and bring the galactics.

Good story, right? But every time I tried to write it, it came out trite and unbelievable and dumb sounding. Like a teenager was writing about feelings they had yet to encounter. It was embarrassing, really.

Then I woke up, and thought, well, this is sort of like that story. I think I'll write about this thing that is happening to me. Deeply Awake.

I could see, once things were underway, that that story idea was more a metaphor, a story my future self was telling me about my path.

When I woke up in January of 2012, I was brought to attention with a brand new novel idea. A woman has a fascinoma and is slow to come out of a coma, or she has some sort of mysterious brain bug, so something. Anyhow, she comes to, and there is her physical body, but there is also someone else in the room, Ernie, who has been one of my guides since the '90's. He is crude, a bit of an imp, sort of socially retarded, but purposefully so, abstracted, wise, in complete control, but with a light hand and tons of really really good humor. That's Ernie. He's also a comedy writer. The first time I channeled, there was Ernie, and he wrote a drop dead funny script idea. That's my angel. SO he was going to lead this woman into her future, into the probabilities she'd set up, not that her life was on “pause,” and it was by manipulating, exploring and healing in the future that when she awoke, she found she had a completely different back story, and a present she'd only dreamed to have.

Yeah. Another metaphor, I know, but a good one. I've long played with time's plasticity, talking with my future self, telling her I need some really clear guidance. Been doing that since the '80's. And yet, to split these realizations off and personify the,, give them flesh and blood and lines on a page, this was a leap I was afraid to make. I was unconvinced I could contain it without losing touch completely with what everyone insists is reality.

And so, I knew, in the back of my mind, part of Deeply Awake was to shake out all the doubt, try on all the ideas and wear them around, see what holds up, reminded, as I was, more and more, of old ways, old selves, but all of it brought into sharp focus, in this now, whole, together, integrated.

I can't think of a nicer thing to say about a person. The highest honor I can lay on them is that they are integrated. Integrated. Whole. Complete. Fearless. Unashamed. Joyfully whole. Integrated.

I am not there quite yet, I'm just not. I have these money and relationships to deal with, this reawakening, now, into the physical, in a brand new way, with new skin, a new set of values, and my expectations, they have also changed.

I wanted to tell you how much I love Wilfred. That is, in essence, my talk with Ernie. I love how these writers split the selves, and then examined a word, and from that word tell us amazing truths.

I found listening to the commentary for Michael Clayton, that I felt a rising sense of alarm and disappointment, when the writer spoke of his work, and said nothing of spiritual or energetic principles. That movie is so obviously a story of a human Archangel. It is so obviously a tale of truth, the power of inner truth.

The line from the movie I love the most, besides, “Do I look like I'm negotiating?” is “I am Shiva, God of Death.”

But the writer didn't give away any clue that he'd channeled a great spiritual tale. It was all details and details and more details.

I want to sit down with the creators of Wilfred, to find out if they are aware of what they're doing, or not. I have no doubt, really, that they are aware of what they're doing. It is such an amazing tale, complete in twenty minutes, satisfying, but ongoing, the tale is. It is lyrical and beautiful and intense. Surprisingly, Sam loves it. He'll hang in through Season Two and get the pay off, and feel better for it.

I know this is all in divine order, and that I am as good on paper as I am in uniform. I understand now that it never was true, that I was worthless. It never was true, that I was wrong for being who I am. Those were things that were said that made me question my own worth, made me examine and come to peace with what was inside of me that often made things hard. I felt so much, thought so much, knew so much, it was hard, in some ways, to function normally.

I like that now, things are sweeter, clearer, it feels, and much more happy. Receptive. Lighter. Things feel very light, and I have few worries now. The ones that come, I deal with, and return to a state that holds no fear, holds gratitude and thanksgiving and excitement instead. Me, here with just change for the milk and stuff I need before Friday. Laid low by cash flow, idle. Stalled.

Purposefully so, but I need for the nightmarish part of it to end. I have learned that I often got rid of money as soon as it came to me, because I was deathly afraid it was going to be taken. I had that happen to, with my bank account, these invisible hands that would automatically deduce things form my account. It shouldn't but it would throw me into a panic. People taking. And this was the way of it,how I interpreted it, anyway. Always feeling like people take, and have no idea how to give. Just no clue. And it got old, real old.

But I can let it go. Those were different times. The lessons were different, and the messages have been received, loved into wholeness, released to go on, but to move from me, resolved, loved, just a bass note in my song now, not the lyrics.

And this is where I end it. I feel this is very long, too complex, perhaps, but this is just a function of the change. This is not Deeply Awake's voice. I feel there were three or four complete transmissions in this essay. Feel Complete now. Am heating up as I wrote, and I know I can go places on the first re-read. If I want to go away and have some fun, I'll be able to. These essays send me away sometimes, on re-read. I am open to that tonight.

And then comes Patrick, and if I am lucky enough to have such a reality come to pass, metaphorically or literally, as my reality, my own, then so be it. It is a good place to be. It is kind and open, curious and soft there, and people are nice there. I like it there. And the more you're there, the more you're there, you know?