Expect a miracle - Conscious contact

I'll be staying in step 9 for a while longer.

I did some reading on forgiveness, what it is and what it isn't in my Al Anon books after I meditated for 40 minutes this morning.

I don't think I've had a spiritual awakening yet in regard to my parents. Maybe because I'm in the middle of remembering everything that happened to me, and coming to terms with it, instead of being in denial. Apparently I need to be here for a while.

I keep bouncing people on and off the list.

I do have four people that are on it, and are a "yes" right now, and I'm living amends with them.

The first person on the list is me.

Part of my living amends is not contacting people or saying thing to them that I don't mean. That means I am not in contact with my biological parents right now.

At the meetings today, I was thinking deeply on what is behind how they treated me.

I came to a somewhat final answer in ACA. My Higher Power invited me to imagine that they weren't abusing me, they were abusing my Higher Power. Then, since I was able to see that they were really abusing my Higher Power and not me, my Higher Power invited me to go deeper, and see that they were also abusing themselves.

I don't know what this means, but I feel better.

I also have seen from this past week, that what they say to me and what they do to me is not about me. It is about them - they are telling me something very important about how they see themselves, by how they treat me. By wounding me, they are showing me their wounds.

Maybe I can eventually find some compassion for them. I feel somewhat softer - but I still don't want to talk or deal with them. Just the softness is okay for now.

I am softer with myself, and able to acknowledge that what I want and say and do matters. It is not silly that I find joy in Pusheen the cat.

It is okay to have a comfortable fashion style that is understated, but with some sparkle. I don't have to stand out in a crowd. I can wear my Christmas shirt any day I want to, and it is okay. I can enjoy life.

After the meetings, I went back to my favorite thrift store. I felt like there was something there for me, and for my husband and sons. So I went shopping with my Higher Power. I found the most amazing things, and I didn't realize at the time what they meant, because I didn't remember (lack of sleep could have something to do with it.

1) I found a necklace with an angel on it that is exactly like the angel pin I remember my Grandma having. My aunt had picked it after my Grandma died, and I forgot she had it. I had a huge fight with my Mom about her giving it away to someone else. It turned out the angel pin my Mom picked was not the one I wanted. I felt like my Higher Power was telling me that everything would be all right with my Mom and I eventually. My grandma is still looking out for me, just like she did when I was a child.

2) I found a silvery gold tree made out of grapevine. Just last week I went to a super high end christmas store, and saw a beautiful silvery gold tree. It was almost two hundred dollars. I thought  it was so beautiful. This one cost me about $4.

3) At the same store they had so many beautiful crystal ornaments. I found one at the thrift store with a mother and child for less than a dollar.

4) At the same store they had candles with flickering flame that were also incredibly expensive. I found three for less than two dollars.

Those were just the things for me that were really miraculous. I followed my Higher Power's will, throughout the store, going right where I was directed, and found everything I was supposed to find.

My Mom and Dad are they origin, the vessels through which I came, but my true parent is my Higher power. He is Father, mother, sister, brother and community to me. When I walk with my Higher Power everything falls gently into place.

I don't know why my parents chose to behave the way they did to me. I am not a Higher Power, and I don't have all the information. Maybe they didn't know what they were doing.

I don't have to judge them to protect myself. I don't have to harbor negative feelings to protect myself. I don't have to control them to protect myself.

It is my Higher Power's job to keep me safe, loved and cared for, and my Higher Power was there for me. My Higher Power placed other people in my life to fill in the gaps.

Every time they hurt me, they were hurting my Higher Power. Every time I hurt others, I hurt my Higher Power. My Higher Power lives in and works through people, myself included.

I didn't expect a miracle, but one found me anyway. Several found me, based on that shopping trip!

Just for today, I will acknowledge the miracles in my life.

Just for today, I will expect a miracle, and search for it.

Just for today, I will let myself be loved.

The loss of Sacred Text and the finding of spirituality

One of the saddest things that happened to me as a result of abuse was losing the ability to find comfort in the sacred text of my faith.

This was a direct result of the 'accusing voices' or 'critical parent' script, that told me what to believe about what I was reading once I physically got away from the abusive family and church I was a part of.

I was always able to find joy in the Psalms, however.

I have only just recently been able to return to other portions of the Word. The Gospel of John has always been a deep comfort, along with his other books. They are so mystical, so only-easily grasped by the heart and spirit, that I don't know if I ever heard a sermon on them. 

The Song of Songs was another - oh, to be loved that way, and to love! I have returned to this book over and over through the years, re-reading it over and over before key moments in my spiritual journey.

Before I became Catholic, it was all I read. Before I entered Mt. Carmel and before my first and second promise. I imagine if I am called to continue in Carmel the rest of my life, I shall return again to this masterwork of the Spirit.

With the freedom of the Spirit, I have been able to read and appreciate other spiritual traditions without fear of being hexed by the bogeyman.

I'm currently reading The Four Agreements, and I've found that its common sense take on life not only echoes but reinforces my own tradition, and give me muscular practice in spiritual change.

I find the sayings / teachings of Rumi inspiring as well.

Right now for formation I'm reading the Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross. I feel like I am looking into his soul. It is his personal Song of Songs. Sometimes I almost feel carried away, out of myself. I can't read it through without entering a spiritual state.

Poetry has always spoken to me, has been there for me, and has given me a voice to express the inexpressible in my own life.

My day has been tiring. My sleep was broken multiple times, by outside forces, but I was able to surrender my sleep to my Higher Power, even surrender the inability to return to sleep, and took it as an opportunity for communion.

I'm getting better at moment by moment communion.

I subscribe to the emails of Richard Rohr, and his meditation today (by someone else) about the God particle was profoundly moving.

St. John preaches the "NADA" or the way of nothing. My ego, my will, my control, my addiction as they slowly drop off me or reveal to me my weakness, expose my nakedness, my personal expression of image and likeness, to the divine impulse.

I slowly become, I slowly return to the garden of delight, of intimate universal communion.

But I run from God, he frightens me, a creature, by his realness, and so he comes to me in the darkness, hidden living inside a body, my body and I give love to him by loving the self and together we walk hand in hand, moment by moment.

The way of nothing is the way to everything. Because without God everything is nothing, but with him, nothing is everything.

Just for today I will try to improve my conscious contact with God.

Just for today I will seek love with love.