the holiness of our imperfection: 1

Lately, for a lot of reasons involving travel, a cross country move, and more, I’ve been letting the tasks of life get in the way of my practices. I’ve been less than regular with quiet time, meditation, reading, writing.

And not to make excuses, but just recently, I’ve been thinking that maybe THAT is my path too, the path of the flawed. Maybe that’s part of my purpose? Intentional imperfection. I mean, we were already (The) spiritual giant before we got here. What newness would I experience gazing upon my own divinity? We are constructed of the fabric of the One, the US-ness my beloved spiritual teacher, Suzanne Giesemann, calls Joy.

Joy, the All That Is, unable to contain its own ecstatic state of being, bubbles up and creation happens. Here we come, then. Perfect works of art housed in an infinite variety of human suits, each of which is, no matter what, also perfection. Because we are made of that.

So what then? For those of us destined for Earth school, we fly down the chute (or are extracted through the incision, however it happens) and we arrive in human state. Wheeeeee! (Also, holy smack! What in Joy’s name have I done? again!?)

Someone says, “it’s a boy!” or “it’s a girl!” and a name is applied. We are given a loving welcome, or not that. We’re taken home to a cozy cottage or a dramatic villa by the sea or a car in a Walmart parking lot. The separation has commenced and it continues with each breath we draw in human form.

We immediately begin to perceive the world through these meat suits we wear and, as intended, we feel things. Of course we’re affected by that, and we then tell ourselves stories about what’s happening, about what we’re seeing around us, the experiences of this life.

Separation continues. Layers and layers of experience and sensation, joys and love and devastation, all taking us farther from awareness of the holiness that we are. By no means are all of the stories negative. Thrilling, exciting, amazing, powerful stories are their own layers over what is true, keeping us in thrall to the human world.

And that is why we’re here. It’s not wrong or bad or indication of damage or failure to create these lives, to live out the thing, to tell the stories. If we had wanted to flit around in our magnificent Oneness, we’d not have bothered writing a script and choosing a new human costume for this act of the play. It’s a lot of work being here. The play is complex. Human life is not always easy. But how can we experience our own shine when we are brighter than a thousand suns?

We need contrast. In Neale Donald Walsch’s charming parable, The Little Soul and the Sun, the little soul, anxious to experience its own glory, “calls unto itself that which it is not”: darkness. Story. Human thoughts, feelings, experiences. They are the contrast necessary to see our own shine.

Before long, we can entirely forget that beneath the layers and layers of humanness, the endless stories, there is the always perfect Light. It is eternally who we are, even when the layers become so thick and insulating it seems there’s nothing else to us.

Flares of conscience, exquisite moments of bliss, recognizing great beauty and love and feeling how that resonates deep within: We’ve all had these experiences, even without awakening. They are gentle reminders, these moments. Our souls bursting through the story, prompting us to remember, remember, we are eternally the Light.

For years I thought I was missing something everyone else had, and if I could ever find it, I’d be okay. Some of my earliest memories arise out of a sense of not being like other people. In church, kindergarten age, I would bow my head and pray as we were instructed, but I felt nothing and I knew my prayers went nowhere. I’d glance at others in the pews and imagine they were connecting with something powerful and meaningful while I felt nothing at all.

And so I told myself there was something wrong with me. It was my first – though nowhere near last – experience of comparing my insides to someone else’s outsides and coming up short.

How I felt versus how they looked as if they felt.

Unworthiness was one of my first stories, and that particular myth inhabiting the little girl brain of Lynette began to act like a kind of magnet, attracting other information from the world around me to confirm the sense of myself as broken and wrong, as lacking and less than.

And WOW! It’s out there, isn’t it? This world is chock full of experiences which, interpreted in a certain way, can create or add to that feeling of not being good enough. (It’s such a neat trick, though. Because it’s all a lie while seeming so real. We are always perfection at the center, the core, where Love lives in all of us. The stories we tell ourselves, the ones others tell us, they are very powerful and extremely deceptive.)

While packing to move to Georgia last summer, I found hundreds of stored books, the remnants of decades of searching for my missing pieces, efforts to fix the wrongness of me. It was strange to see them, because that sense of not being enough has since been swept away by a tsunami of love, the result of finally remembering, uncovering again, the truth of who I am: Magnificence wearing a human suit. Even in my wildly imperfect, sometimes very messy humanness, I am that. And you are too.

Nothing was ever missing. I was never damaged. It’s impossible for that to happen with our souls, just as it’s impossible for our loved ones’ human suits to cease breathing and for them to then be lost to us.

One energy, One love.

No one goes anywhere.

We just change form.

And so the perfection I arrived with didn’t go anywhere either. I didn’t lose my Light. I covered it up. The process of muddling through this life, of awakening again,isn’t finding some outside truth or healing experience, it is excavating the truth of who we are, of shedding the layers of untruths and stories and experiences misinterpreted. Excavation, not acquisition.

I have to say it again:

Excavation. Not acquisition.

I had every single thing I needed when I got here. And so do we all. We just forget. The story is so riveting, such a distraction. We are born of Divinity, of Magnificence, holding within each molecule of our being the potential for all things. And we remain that way always. …

And with that glorious truth I’m signing off. This post was turning into a book — too much — and now that things are settled in Georgia, there’s more time for writing and extricating all of this stuff rolling around in my head.

Because I don’t know about you, person I hope may one day read this, but it is a blast to think about all of this and to share it with others and hear their thoughts and experiences. We each have so much to add to this joyful process of coming to know what’s true.

If you’ve read this far, there’s a part 2 to this post on the way. In that we’ll go on an archaeological dig for the soul, further explore the United (and so very loved) Mess of Us, and celebrate what a fabulous thing it is to wake up. Again.

Meanwhile, know you are precious and so deeply loved. If you’re not feeling it, take a leap and trust. I know (KNOW!!!) this is true. Our cracks, our imperfections, are treasures. They’re how the light gets in … and out again. Shine on.

——

And some magic with this post. I’d intended to put it up yesterday. Minutes after deciding to tweak it a bit more, I went to Suzanne’s Facebook page for the daily Sanaya message and there was this. Truly, only One of us here, people:

If you could see the glow of light around each other—the auras—then the gig would be up.  Then this human level upon which you focus so intently would be revealed for the dense reality it is—one of layers of experience of being of which you are capable.  These human bodies you wear—these people suits—are not the ultimate or only you.  They are your vessels.