Day: June 3, 2016

This is Day 2 of “7 Stories in 7 Days”. I asked my Facebook followers to give me a line from a favorite song to use as a writing prompt. I have not looked up the context of these lines so any similarity to the actual song is purely coincidental.

From dust we are made and into dust we are destined to return. Is this really what we have to look forward to? Is there life after death? Are there streets of gold waiting for us to stroll in heaven? Or is there something else?

I can imagine a ‘place’ where we all exist, not in the physical form as we know each other here on Earth, but in the non-physical. Some call this heaven, but I think most of those see heaven as a destination only, not as our point of origin. But what if we existed in the non-physical before we were given a physical body? Could it be possible that once we are done with this “bag of bones” we simply return to that non-physical entity? What would the non-physical be like? Many refer to it as “Pure, Positive Energy”. What can we take from this title? Let’s look at each word individually, taken from merriam-webster.com:

• Pure: unmixed with any other matter
• Positive:  indicating, relating to, or characterized by affirmation, addition, inclusion, or presence rather than negation, withholding, or absence
• Energy: a spiritual force

What if we exist in this state of pure, positive energy? All of our needs are met. There is no strife, no conflicts. Wouldn’t it be possible to become complacent where there is no negativity? On the other hand, if all you have ever known is pure, positive energy, are you even aware that negativity even exists? Maybe that’s what our lives in this physical body is all about. We get to experience the contrasts to pure, positive energy. We see hate, anger, cheating, doing without. We experience war, depression, illness and disappointment. I can imagine that moment at death’s door when we leave our physical body to return to the non-physical. What a relief! We relish the thought that we can go back and just go with the flow, nothing to stop our deliberate creation of joy and happiness around us. Until one day, in our complacency, we decide we would like to give the physical form another shot. I’m not sure how we get selected to return to the physical. I can imagine a ‘message board’ stream of thought with impending lives coming up. Who wants to try being a white female in a rural setting? Who wants to take a shot at being a black male born to a single, drug using mother, in a blighted urban setting? Maybe we get to choose the physical life we want to experience, or maybe it is chosen for us. Maybe there’s even other options to experience the physical than those offered here, on Earth. I can imagine floating along in the non-physical, without a care in the world universe, thinking I could have done a better job than I did the last time I was allowed to experience the physical. I would be in that line, shouting “Put me in, coach, I’m ready to play, today.” Popping out into the physical form, I would be knowing but not remembering the non-physical from where I had come, attempting to create a life as close to the pure, positive energy that I had come from.

This is Day 1 of “7 Stories in 7 Days”. I asked my Facebook followers to give me a line from a favorite song to use as a writing prompt. I have not looked up the context of these lines so any similarity to the actual song is purely coincidental.

If it were only that easy, Charlotte thought to herself every time someone offered feel good suggestions to her. No one knows the battles that others fight internally on a daily basis. She has spent a lifetime putting on a false front for everyone else’s benefit. To others, she was the perfect playmate as a child, superior friend and student through school, fabulous wife and mother in adulthood. But nobody understood her internal daemons.

She had seen glimpses of what life could be like – “Should be like” if you asked her. She had many ‘teachers’ explain how simple things could be. “If it were only that easy.” She had gone to self-help seminars. “If it were only that easy.” She owned and had read shelves of self-help books. “If it were only that easy.” She had ended one marriage and thought she had started the next one for all the right reasons, but she constantly questioned herself, her motivation, her decision making skills. She never allowed herself to bask in the successes she had accomplished, mere chalking them up to luck.

She had hit rock bottom. She was filled with despair, total and utter lack of self-confidence, self-worth. Her world was now nothing more than total darkness. She had tried reading, that didn’t help. She had tried journaling, that didn’t help. She meditated, asking quietly for her spirit guide to give her direction. That help didn’t last. What more could she do?

“MAKE ME A WITNESS! TAKE ME OUT OF THIS DARKNESS, OUT OF THIS DOUBT!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. The sound of her own voice in the still of the moment startled her. But she had done something she had never allowed before; she gave her feelings a voice. She gave her anxiety a voice. She gave her angst a voice. She waited for an answer. Nothing came.

In her darkness, in her gloom, she drifted off to sleep, a wondrous, healing slumber. The anxieties that had been following her quieted. The anger she carried, rested. The doubt that enveloped her melted away. She awoke realizing there was nothing more she needed to do, it was simply a matter of allowing herself to be.