Today's Inspirational “MYTHOLOGICAL MAGIC”
“It's funny.(To his father) I never really understood where you were coming from with your whole fate and everything happens for a reason point of view. But now I think that maybe I was wrong. Everything that has happened to us, good and bad, it made us who we are. I wouldn't change any of it even if I could. I wasted so much time being angry at what I had lost when I had so much. My dad, Joe, and you.”
~~ Barry Allen AKA The Flash (The Flash)
“Margaret Carter was known to most as the founder of SHIELD. But I just know her as Aunt Peggy. She had a photograph in her office: Aunt Peggy standing next to JFK. As a kid that was pretty cool. But it was a lot to live up to, which is why I never told anyone we were related. I asked her once how she managed to master diplomacy and espionage at a time when no one wanted to see a woman succeed at either. And she said "Compromise where you can. Where you can't, don't. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say 'No, YOU move'."
~~ Sharon Carter (Captain America : Civil War)
~~ Don Corleone (The Godfather)
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The entire month of March and the start of April brought what felt like a daily barrage of triggering events and challenges into my life. It culminated with me getting a severe form of bronchitis. I take some heavy auto immune medication to keep the Crohn's disease I have in remission, but it also makes it quite difficult for my body to to fight off such intense infections when they decide to take refuge within me. During this episode, twice I ended up in the ER. Lost about 20 pounds and then contracted a nasty stomach virus that just made things....well... MISERABLE!!
There were days where I was literally too sick to walk up the stairs and so needlessly to say, I had a TON of time on my hands. I tried my best to keep writing posts for The Nerd , but nothing of real consequence was I able to generate. And as the saying goes, “A dormant mind is the Devil's playground” and many of my days became filled with thoughts of remorse, regret, and the pain of all the loss I had endured over the last few years. Slowly, over the course of a few weeks, I started to get quite depressed. And watching repeats of ‘The Ellen Show’ can only do so much to lift one's Spirits.. Just sayin..
It became ultra challenging to escape a mental loop of MY STORY. Over the previous few years, I had lost my dad, three dogs, three jobs, two girlfriends, one house, and most of my personal belongings. And let me tell ya, my mind was recreating movies shot from magnificently different angles worthy of the great Spielberg himself, torturing me with replays of my pain and suffering. As us New Age Nerds know, most of the things that occur in our life are all in preparation for our Hero's/Heroine's Journey, and it was this RE-MEMBRANCE that brought me out of my deep mental funk and propelled me back toward my purpose.
It ended up all being about ....... ACCEPTANCE
I believe my body literally became filled with dis-ease during those six weeks because I was emotionally out of alignment. Now PLEASE understand I DO NOT believe any of us are responsible for our illness, BUT WE ARE responsible to it. It is our job to truly reconnect with yourselves spiritually, emotionally, and physically when we become ill to see where there may be resistance, or internal discord with our own sense of Self and purpose. And it was an unexpected visit from a girlfriend I had recently broken up with that resoundingly helped me understand that I had simply NOT ACCEPTED many of the situations that had been brought into my life over the past several years. Don't get me wrong, I had ‘done the work’ of self forgiveness, and spent many a day reframing many of these painful events as ways for me to gain strength, courage, and insight for my journey and passion of assisting others on their own path. But, when this gorgeous young lady showed up on my doorstep to say goodbye, as she was leaving with the dog we once shared for Cape Cod, I.....just......knew...
I was completely overtaken by the raw TRUTH that I had not truly accepted many of the tremendously traumatic events that had occurred in my life. And when she left, and I watched the tail lights of her car turn the corner of my street until I lost view, heavy tears streamed down my face. I was a WRECK! After walking back into my house, I spent the night reflecting. And many hours later I heard that “silent whisper” from Spirit that many of us receive in times of great despair, if we LISTEN. I understood that there was no way I could complete my own Hero's Journey until I made peace with my past, and ACCEPTED ‘that which now is’.
There is a wonderfully transformative book by Steve Taylor called ‘OUT OF THE DARKNESS’. He covers the topic of acceptance in such a beautiful manner, such as in this passage, “I discovered a similar phenomenon when I wrote my book which examines how difficult and dramatic events can sometimes have a positive and transformative effect. Some of the people in the book underwent transformation after being diagnosed with cancer, bereavement, losing everything to alcoholism, being disabled or suffering from severe depression, and so on. They found a new spiritual strength inside themselves, felt a new connection to the world, and to other people. A new sense of purpose and meaning.” But he discovered these transformations ONLY occurred after each individual completely and utterly made peace with the events in their life and ACCEPTED ‘that which now is’.
By letting go and surrendering to the present moment, and accepting it as being exactly where you are NOW supposed to be, can be one of the most powerful practices anyone can incorporate into their spiritual life.
But it is so important to be kind, compassionate, and patient with ourselves through this critical process. It is not easy. It certainly was not for me. And it takes time. And often assistance from our TRIBE, friends and relatives who can hold a space of love and healing for us, until we are strong enough to do it for ourselves. That is what got me through this arduous process and completely back on track with my passion and PURPOSE! And saying the Serenity Prayer, daily. ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.’
For what we resist will persist, and what we look at eventually melts away.
Nerdmaste,
Jeffrey Louis Martinez
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