~~~ George Bailey (IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE)
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Back in 1996, I was caught in the middle of an incredibly vitriolic and spiteful business relationship that nearly cost me my life. I had only been out of college for a couple of years and still finding my way in the wild and at the time wonderful world of television broadcasting. After a two year stint working for WRC-TV (NBC-Washington, DC) as a sports producer for the ‘George Michael Sports Machine’, I decided that 80 hour work weeks and Holidays spent behind closed doors editing video tapes of college football games while chowing down on what I THINK was cold turkey and stuffing was not the things my dreams were made of!
So I landed a job for a local TV production company in the suburbs of DC. They produced a local half hour business program(that I shall refrain from naming for legal purposes) that promoted up and coming tech companies in the DMV area. The first year was a total BLAST! Here I was 24 years old, holding meetings with the likes of Steve Case of AOL, and Larry Ellison of Oracle. This is when the technology revolution was in its infant stage, and simply being around the icons who were prescient enough to see the future was mind blowing! And in the process I definitely got my MBA at the University of MIH- MAKE IT HAPPEN! LOL
During the second year of employment, my boss and then close friend asked me to relocate to San Francisco to start a West Coast version of the show in Silicon Valley, where most of the most influential tech companies were setting up shop. I had been itching to to get back to the West Coast (I was born in LA) for years and jumped at the opportunity. And for the first four months, I woke up every morning thinking I was in some sort of duplicate Universe where dreams ALWAYS come true. It was the Land of OZ for the tech set! I had daily meetings with the CEO's of companies like Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, and Oracle. Although I sometimes felt out of my league, I NEVER let em see me sweat. And they accepted me as one of their own. Meetings by day and parties at night, all in one of the most beautiful and eclectic cities in the world! I was truly a STARGAZER collecting information and memories of a lifetime.
And then, one October morning in 1996, I got an email from one of the companies I had met with the previous week. They were calling me a fraud because I had told them that the sponsors of the show which was to air on the local ABC affiliate were The Wall Street Journal and Dunn and Bradstreet. The company had connections at both companies and they claimed they were in no way affiliated with the show. While reading the email, my heart began to pound arrhytmically! I started having a minor panic attack. They were threatening to send a letter to every tech company in San Francisco telling them that I was running a scam and to not accept meetings with me.
I immediately called my boss back in Virginia to try and straighten out this unbelievable mess! After all, he was the one who told me that those two entities were the sponsors of the show. I was only repeating the information given to me by him and our company. After an explicit tirade he fired me on the spot and told me I had 24 hours to vacate the apartment he had set up for me and the rest of the crew. Needless to say, I was shell shocked. What the HELL was going on, I thought.
After having no other choice than to hire a lawyer, the TRUTH slowly unfolded like a guilty lover hiding his dalliances with the utmost discretion. My boss had lied about the sponsors singing on to the show. In his infinite wisdom, he believed he could get REAL sponsors signed onto the show before anyone found out. In the meantime, I was the companies face man out on the West Coast. The waiter serving food that had been screwed up by the cooks in the proverbial company kitchen.
To save his own ass, he blamed me for all the confusion and sent me to the awaiting wolves.
When I was fired I lost my health insurance and the massive amount of stress over the possibility that my reputation in the tech community was ruined, caused my Crohn's disease to spiral completely out of control. By the time I was actually able to obtain decent health care, my doctors said my colon was so diseased that it was about to perforate. Which meant, instant death. I had lost an enormous amount of weight under the pressure of the previous few months and was actually too weak for the 12 hour surgery to have my colon removed. But after a long chat with my doctor, I decided to take the risk of having the operation rather than waiting to regain enough weight and strength before going under the knife.
The memories of the whole surgery and the almost 16 month recovery is still haunting to my soul. It was excrutiating in ways human beings should never have to suffer. And let's say that wearing a colostomy bag at age 27 is not exactly a hit with the ladies! lol Even though it was hidden underneath my t-shirts, every time I passed gas, the bag blew up like a balloon, scaring the shit out of anyone in arms distance of me. Yeah, that's how I rolled! :0)
While recovering from this nightmarish ordeal, you can only imagine the amount of anger and frustration I had toward my former friend and boss. He went so far as to forbid ANYONE in the company to visit me while I was in the hospital. There were days and nights in which I absolutely fantasized about ripping all the tubes from the hospital machines from my body and taking a taxi to his house to ummmmmmm...have a little chat! With my fists acting as compassionate truth seekers!
I held onto that anger and pain of betrayal for quite a while. In fact, at times it consumed my every thought. Ironically enough, it was during this time that my current path of self realization started to take its core form. While still in the hospital, a friend of mine gave me a book called ‘The Celestine Prophecy’, and I for the first time in my life I felt like I was home. A few weeks later i was finally released from the hospital and went straight to the nearest Barnes and Noble with that book firmly in hand.
I excitedly asked the nearest store clerk where this book could be found in the store. And within a few yards, I was in a row that felt like Conscious Christmas land. Books after books of like energy to the one I had carried into the store. I bought about twenty of them and stormed back to my car to get home as fast as I could to begin what I know now to be the start of my own Hero's Journey.
The first book I read is still today the most influential on my own personal resonance with the world of spiritual truth and Universal Law that felt like TRUTH to me. The book's title was ‘Conversations with God’ by Neale Donald Walsh. Page after page was filled with wisdom and knowledge that fed my soul and strengthened my faith! This was as close to feeling Heaven on Earth as I had ever felt!
And then something that transformed my understanding of human interaction occurred when I got to the section where Mr. Walsh told the story of The Little Soul. And that parable struck a cord so deep within my consciousness that it still informs my daily interactions nearly twenty years after reading it. Here is the excerpt from the book itself:
There once was a little soul who knew itself to be the light. This was a new soul, and so, anxious for experience. "I am the light," it said. "I am the light." Yet all the knowing of it and all the saying of it could not substitute for the experience of it. And in the realm from which this soul emerged, there was nothing but the light.
Every soul was grand, every soul was magnificent, and every soul shone with the brilliance of MY awesome light. And so the little soul in question was as a candle in the sun. In the midst of the grandest light- of which it was a part- it could not see itself, nor experience itself as Who and What it Really Is.
Now it came to pass, that the little soul yearned and yearned to know itself. And so great was its yearning that "I" one day said, "Do you know little one, what you must do to satisfy this yearning of yours?" "Oh what, God? what? I'll do anything!? The little soul said.
"You must separate yourself from the rest of us," I answered, "and then you must call upon yourself the darkness."
"You may choose to be any Part of God you wish to be," I said to the little soul.
"You are the Absolute Divinity, experiencing Itself. What Aspect of Divinity do you now wish to experience as you?"
"You mean I have a choice," asked the little soul.
I answered, "Yes." You may choose to experience any Aspect of Divinity in, as, and through you."
"Okay," said the little soul, then I choose forgiveness. I want to experience my Self as that Aspect of God called Complete Forgiveness."
Well, this created a little challenge, as you can imagine.
There was no one to forgive. All I have created is Perfection and Love
"No one to forgive?" asked the Little Soul, somewhat incredulously.
"No one," I repeated. "Look around you. Do you see any souls less perfect, less wonderful than you?"
As the Little soul twirled around, and was surprised to see himself surrounded by all the souls in heaven. They came from far and wide throughout the Kingdom, because they had heard the little soul was having an extraordinary conversation with God.
"I see none less perfect than I," the Little Soul exclaimed." Who then, shall I have to forgive?"
Just then another soul stepped forward from the back of the crowd. "You may forgive me," said the Friendly Soul.
"For what?" the little soul asked.
"I will come onto your next physical lifetime and do something for you to forgive," replied the Friendly Soul.
"But what? What could you, a being of such Perfect Light, do to make me forgive you?" the Little Soul wanted to know.
"Oh," smiled the Friendly Soul, I'm sure we can think of
something."
"But why would you want to do this?" The Little Soul could not figure out why a being of such perfection would want to slow down its vibration so much that it could actually do something "bad."
"Simple," the Friendly Soul explained," I would do it because I love you. You want to experience your Self as Forgiving, don't you? Besides, you have done the same for me."
"I have?" asked the Little Soul.
"Of course. Don't you remember? We've been All Of It, you and I.
We've been the Up and the Down of it, and the Left and Right of it.
We've been the Here and Now of it, and the Now and Then of it.
We've been the Big and Small of it, the Male and Female of it, the Good and Bad of it. We've been the All of it.
"And we've done it by agreement, so that each of us might experience ourselves as The Grandest Part of God. For we have understood that.....
"In the absence of that which You Are Not, that Which You Are, is NOT.
"In the absence of 'cold,' you cannot be 'warm.' In the absence of 'sad,' you cannot be 'happy,' without a thing called 'evil,' the experience you call 'good' cannot exist.
If you choose to be a thing, something or someone opposite to that has to show up somewhere in your universe to make that possible."
The Friendly Soul then explained that those people are God's Special Angels, and these conditions God's Gifts.
"I ask only one thing in return, " the Friendly Soul declared.
"Anything! Anything," the Little Soul cried. He was excited now to know that he could experience every Divine Aspect of God. He understood, now The Plan.
"In the moment that I strike you and smite you," said the Friendly Soul, " in the moment that I do the worst to you that you could ever imagine---in that self-same moment....remember Who I Really Am. For I will have forgotten."
"Oh, I won't forget!" promised the Little Soul. "I will see you in the perfection with which I hold you now, and I will remember Who You Are, always."
~~~ from Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsh
And that is why Jesus the Christ, on the cross, looked to the prisoners also being crucified to his left and right and looked to the sky and said to SPIRIT, “Forgive them father, for they know Not what they do.”
In what way does this story touch your feelings about the possible intentions behind the actions and words of those who have hurt or wronged you on your path? Could it be that there is someone in your past or even in your life currently who stepped up on YOUR behalf to allow you the exact experience you chose to have on your Journey?! And more importantly, have you remembered WHO THEY TRULY ARE when they caused you that strife and pain, because they chose to forget themselves as the ultimate gesture of Love and Compassion? !
It might be something worth pondering as you continue on your path and purpose! I know it has saved me an enormous amount of resentment, pain and suffering. And my wish is that it does the same for you......
Nerdmaste,
Jeffrey Louis Martinez
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