I SEE you...

It seems like sometimes, the Universe decides that YOU need to hear something and it is going to apply itself intensely, so that the message is heard loud and clear.  How the Universal Mind juggles all of us humans and our highly individualized "soul-lesson plans" is an ongoing source of amazement to me. Each of us gets what we need, just exactly when we need it, in order to grow.  "FOG" seems to be the only thing with which the universe is concerned, where we are concerned: Facilitating Our Growth (hey, remember where you heard FOG first :-)-it's one of my corny bests ).  And we may as well get on board: It ain't taking 'no' for an answer.  Makes me think of the Borg declaration: "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile".  Like me, here this morning, about to describe one of my personal lessons for you, when I should be doing other pressing things, but am compelled to write...resistance is futile. 

A few years ago now, we were on vacation: a much, much needed one. It was a sun and sea trip, which is THE only kind, if you really need to RELAX and rest your hiney.  Just to sit under a shady tree, smell the salt on the air and listen to the waves crash, is therapy for body, mind and spirit.  Of course, I may be biased in this view, having been born and grown (although Hubs asks me frequently..."What are you? Like, five????!) on a caribbean island. 

In advance of this vacation, I bought a great pair of sunglasses.  You have to understand, I am not "good" with sunglasses: I sit on them, I lose them, I have one lens pop out, crash and fragment on the floor as I am peering at something on a grocery shelf...all kinds of weird stuff.  I'd lost the immediate predecessor to this pair.

This time, I swore, it was going to be different. I was going to use my sunglasses "thing" as a way to work on my conscious awareness. I WAS NOT GOING TO LOSE THIS PAIR. They were super cute, they were not cheap and I had all sorts of ego boosting compliments when I wore 'em.  In retrospect, I should have known I was being set up!

So Hubs and I went for a really early morning beach walk, as is our custom when we are at the ocean. He's a white guy, right?  He once got a sunburn, to my aghast disbelief, under a large umbrella after 4PM one time in Mexico!  So in
deference to his delicate pink skin and woeful lack of melanin, we walk in the cool of the morning just after first light.
Which, it so happens, is a time of great beauty in the Caribbean.  I was so in the zone, me and my sunglasses, on this 
particular morning. Peaceful, feeling stress drain out of body as my toes squelched in my favorite place to walk on a beach: just where the water reaches up maximally with the tide and dampens the sand.  It makes me think of Jesus: who, the bible says, walked the line between Judea and Gallilea.  Geez, am I ever gonna get this story told? Back to it...

We get to the end of the long stretch of beach and observe that this is a place where a few local fitness buffs do push ups after their morning run...one superman look-alike was just finishing up.  So of course, I decide I too am gonna ACT buff.  With my newfound sunglasses awareness, not wanting them to fall off my face or bash into the rock if my arms gave out (a most likely scenario), I gingerly removed them and hooked them inside the straps of shoes I was carrying. 

I managed, I think, maybe three rock push ups (so hard!), the last of which was mostly a pose for a photo Hubs snapped.  I grabbed my shoes and we began the 2 mile trek back "home" for brekkie. The beach air makes a person hungry, especially after adding in two point five push ups.

Needless to say, we are almost back when I suddenly realize the sun is now much brighter than when we left and.....WHERE ARE MY SUNGLASSES? Damnit, damnit, damnit....they are no longer in my shoes (still carried in my hand), they must have fallen out at the rocks, WHY did I not miss them when we were at the rocks, I am so stupid, they were expensive, I am so careless, yeah-some conscious awareness builder I am, dumb, stupid...and so it went, an incantation of negative self talk.  Or rather, absence-of-self babble.

So that I can finish this tale in time to get to work this morning, to make a long story short, I walked all the way back
to the rocks right then, and again in the early afternoon...just to see if perhaps someone had found them and left them atop one of the now-STUPID rocks, and again in the evening...just in case. I walked maybe 10 miles that day, back and forth, STUPID CARELESS ME,looking for those STUPID sunglasses, obsessing, fantasizing about seeing someone wearing them and going up to them, accusatory, hands on hips, imperiously demanding my property back. 

I am describing for you a total and complete mindtrip, in all its pointlessness,in all its whirling, in all its 
self-abnegation, in all its drama.  And I was in a foul mood, stomping back along that beach, for the last time around 
sunset...another spectacularly beautiful time of the day in the Caribbean...but do you think I was able to appreciate it? Ha.  And all because of the "loss" of a material thing, which actually, made me even more pissed off because I knew I knew better.  Wow.  Was I ever embroiled in a shit storm for sure.

And then, the Universe, having played Its cards just right all freaking day long, saw that I was ready.  As I scanned the people ahead, looking for the "perp" (who was probably a receeding wave of the ocean!), I saw some small children frolicking at Jesus'/my line on the sand. And then my (UV-unprotected) eyes focused in on one little girl about whom my FOG(gy) brain registered something wasn't quite right. And I look closer. And I see that her right leg, was facing backward. Understand what I am describing: the left leg faced forward, as normal; the "front" of the right leg faced entirely backward. She could not walk, she could only shuffle one way or the other, depending on which leg she employed.

Right then and there, I froze and my mind STOPPED for the first time that day since losing my glasses.  I became a perfect observer and I watched this little girl play and shuffle and laugh and express joy of being: despite having an extremely challenging physical affliction. I recognized that all this day, with my two legs set facing just right, legs that I had used to walk, in angst, up and down the beach a million times...compared with this child: I was the cripple. I was the emotional sideways shuffler. I was possessed by a feeling then, of incredible humility and gratitude: that child was my teacher, quite shamelessly used by the Divine (as we all are).  A  powerful right hook, landed by a gimpy right leg.

She has never left me, though I looked but never saw her again that trip. She lives with me now, and every single time I start wigging out because of something material, she and her little legs set askew, stand before my mind's eye and anchor me back to what is real and not illusion, what is spiritual and not material.

By the way, that afternoon, The Universe smiled, and expressed its immense satisfaction with Itself at a lesson well delivered and well learned, by producing one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen. Admittedly, Its kind of a bully sometimes, like the Borg, but actually, I can't wait to be assimilated. 

Above is a photo of the glasses pre-loss and below, their Last Known Sighting (look carefully, they are hooked in atop the shoes) at the Dumb Ass Rocks and the Posed Push Up.  Happy Day to you.  I see YOU.

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