My Mother and the Evolution of Consciousness
Part II
You know that phrase– “The truth is always your friend.” This has been a guiding principle in my life. It seemed I had no choice but to go down into the darkest “truths” of my own existence, and as you know, they have yielded the greatest light for me. But it was hard to see how my family would receive my “truth” as any kind of “friend.”
This was my Fire. I had to speak anyway.
I have to tell you that my 97-year-old mother was one I most feared hurting. She is in good health and very sound in mind, especially for someone her age, and I was quite sure she would read my book. In that moment in the restaurant in Denver, I realized, perhaps for the first time, how very much I did not want to hurt her. So before the book was actually in print, I wrote her a long letter, hoping to prepare her for the worst, hoping to soften the blow. I laid out my whole life in that letter—the extremes of anxiety, fear and loneliness I had suffered most of my life, the startling moments of Divine Love and, and finally the Voice of God and Soul that came to me in 1994.
I had no idea what this Fire would create. I just knew I had to walk through it. I knew and believed what my writing had told me—that we are all players on the same stage, that we play parts for each other on the Road of Karma and on the Road of Return, that none of us is the part we play—we are all Soul dressed in different costumes “for the purpose of experience only, and for the purpose of Return ultimately.” I know that and I believe that. But I still have to live it; I have to experience it over and over again, in my consciousness and in my heart. I have to experience it over and over again with the most difficult players in my play. And somehow, in facing my 97-year-old mother now in the flesh with my truth, with my full story, my attachment to the difficulty of those parts miraculously and completely unexpectedly dropped away, and I knew I loved her beyond anything we had experienced or not experienced with each other in this life.
And I wanted her to know that before she died.
My mother was surprisingly responsive. She called me right away. She told me she thought the letter was very courageous, that I was a very special person, though she just didn’t live in the same world I did. She was lovely, generous and kind. This level of exchange was a new experience for me with my mother. I was impressed and relieved, but I couldn’t help thinking—Wait until she actually reads the book!!
Time moved for me in agonizing slow motion. With every day that went by, I felt the white heat of that slow burn in my veins and in my heart and in my lungs. Tears poured out of me in embarrassing places. I said a mantra every day, many times a day—“I willingly walk through the Fires that are mine and I am not burned. I am transformed.” If Soul wanted me to burn off some big chunk of ego in this Fire, I would say yes.
Fast forward. When the book was finally in print, I sent copies to my family. Weeks went by. I’ve done it now, I thought. I’m one of those people whose family doesn’t speak to them. How did I get here? It reminded me of the surreal feelings I had after I left my ex-husband, Bill. I would wake up in the morning and I would feel myself floating over my life, unable to find a place to land, the landscape suddenly unfamiliar and shockingly barren. It isn’t quite the same now. I have a landing spot today and my life is anything but barren, but something essential was achingly out of alignment, like a bone that pops out of joint and you can’t get it back into place.
And then my mother called. She was reading the book and she liked it! She told me she looked forward to reading more. She acknowledged that it didn’t portray her very positively…
I have to stop right there. She acknowledged that it didn’t make her look all that good AND SHE WAS STILL OPEN TO THE BOOK AND TO ME… She blew me away! I was so impressed, so grateful. And then I thought, Okay, wait until she reads about the past lives…gasp…
But she called me again when she finished it, and she talked about all the parts of the book she loved. She did not believe in past lives, she said. Fine, that’s totally okay. And then she went on to say, “Well, I may have killed you in a past life, but I gave you life in this one!” And you know what, she did. We both asked for a chance to redo it, and in the nick of time we got it.