Hope is a Drug

PEOPLE randomly appear in my life and attempt to dissuade me from living authentically. They’re often strangers or relatives that I barely know. They communicate their lies through whispered words at a family events, sly comment at a parties, or even casual remarks made while cooking holiday dinners. Oh, the programming is so very clever to use guilt or shame to push buttons.

On the other side of things, I also have helpful people show up, such as the woman on the bus who commented that I really should make up with my mother, she was feeling hurt by something I said. (This was a complete stranger to whom I’d never spoken.) Or, that time a person in a grocery store smiled at me handsomely and knowingly when I was down. According to my ex-husband, there was no one there.

Angels and demons are everywhere, possessing people or just walking on by. I have seen possession first hand and it is not nice. For most of life I’ve seen people standing by the roadside, simply watching. Of course, they’re not there, or not here is more correct, I think. I call them “the people who aren’t there” and have seen them since childhood. I see them less now, but at this point I see all sorts of other things so when I do see them, they don’t worry me.

A few days before my ex-husband proposed I was teaching class in a darkroom. There was a student sitting with us who wasn’t there. A ghost? Maybe. I got the feeling that he’d been a student at the university some years before. Never mind, all he did was hang out with us and it was fine. A day or so later, while sitting in a conference lecture, I saw my fiancé-to-be on one knee proposing to me. So when I met him a few hours later, and several states away, I knew what was coming.

The point of all of this is that dimensional shifts and time differentials mean nothing to me. I know where we’re going and see the potential for detours. Not all of them, of course, my tiny linear mind couldn’t take it, but enough and more by the day. This can be frustrating because I grow impatient with time and want to experience all at once as I know is the real way of existing. We’ll get there eventually but until then it’s all pretty limited.

I titled this one Hope is a Drug because that’s important. Hope puts things at a distance. Like the expression my grandmother used to say — “When my ship comes in I’ll do….” Some day, some day. Hope is the same. It freezes an idea into linear perspective and places it at a distance. You’ll never get there as long as it’s at a distance, just like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. (I once chased a rainbow, by the way. It was in Arizona where the skies are huge. I thought I could catch it, but of course, never did. Oh well.)

We are given hope to distract us from the truth of the infinite now. All is now outside of linear time. That means that all potentials interact through us and we are star gates creating realities.

Perhaps you think I’m talking out of my hat? Well, try this. Take a wish and feel where the outcome is. Is it now or later? Then feel into the moment of right now. Are you okay right now? Do you have everything you need RIGHT NOW? In other words, are you breathing? Are you safe? Are you here? Of course, things are rough for everyone right now, the world is an extremely hostile place. But you might find that now is not a hostile place, generally. In fact, it can be pretty nice if you drop some expectations. And if you expand on right now, not projecting ahead but instead creating rings of possibilities outward from you/now, you might find that those ripples change the nature of your reality into whatever you’re thinking or feeling about. The key is to not direct paths of accomplishment, just the direction of outcome. Then leave it alone. Energies travel along pathways and the more we pick at them, the more strange, convoluted, and limited the outcomes become.

One last thing…all of my life I’ve been heavyset. A combination of genetics, inborn empathy, and a body that does a remarkable job of protecting me from ambient toxins. I’m now in middle age and routinely make brownies for myself. No woman of my family would do that, they’re all constantly on a diet. But I like my brownies and have a good recipe — they’re gluten free with almond or peppermint extracts and dark chocolate chips. I cut them into very small pieces and eat them over a whole week. They make me happy and my weight hasn’t really changed in decades. So much for family programming!

Authentic living, hope, and chocolate are all heady drugs. Two of them can be experienced in the now. Think of the fabulousness of that!