NOTE: I wrote this weeks, maybe months ago, got it ready to go and then left it. Because it’s (too) long, I recorded it so it’s like a baby podcast or some such, without the professional production qualities.🙌
So the actual post, the long one, for all my kindred “I’d rather read it” folks:
In my spiritual evolution over the last 45 years, I’ve happily abandoned concepts of sin and punishment, but also that gentler version offered by the eastern religions, karma.
At first, karma felt like a refuge. Unlike Christianity, Buddhism and its cohorts does at least give us a bit of hope. Maybe after ten thousand lifetimes slogging around the wheel, trying to get good enough to achieve nirvana ~ and no doubt experiencing life as a bug or a rock at some point because of how messed up humans can be ~ we’re finally set free.
Over time, though, that began to feel like sin and punishment lite. Just another admonition to be good or else.
I’ve finally come to see this human life as more like an art studio. I’ve heard so many analogies over the years and they all work to a degree: it’s a play; it’s improv theater; and of course “it’s a class.”
That last one raises my hackles. I rebel against even the idea of it being a class because it feels so restrictive and, worse, it implies that we’re missing something and have to learn it ASAP. (“Or else” again.)
Lessons. Pass/fail. Ugh.
Art studio, though. That’s pure creative space. Find your thing, your inspiration, and go for it. No projects, no goals, or direction, just freewheeling play.
Once I came to experience Who We Really Are, it didn’t make sense to say that I believe in an all-encompassing energy from which everything arises, and yet bits and pieces of that One Of Us are lacking something and need to be taught a lesson. How?
Lessons again. Ugh.
It really carries the feeling that we messed up in another life and need to receive our comeuppance. “For shame! You blew it. Now take your medicine.” And the medicine is always bitter and hard and it chokes us going down.
Punishment. Painful consequence.
In truth, what lesson am I learning if in my ultimate state of being ~ majestic, divine, purest Love as the One Of Us ~ I am ALL things?
I am bliss and perfection. Pure Love. We all are.
Even the ancients understood this. As Rumi said eons ago, “I am the entire ocean in a single drop.” Other mystics speak that truth in myriad ways. The tiniest fragment contains the whole. “Lessons” implies a failing, something lacking, and I don’t buy it.
But why quibble, really? Call it a lesson, call it a classroom, the whole point is just about having a new experience, and I am entirely on board with the idea that in my pre-birth state, I was eager for that. But all that I really want to experience, to “learn” about, is what it is like to live it up in this freewheeling, creative human art studio space as me (and you as you, and on and on).
In the All-That-Is-ness that is Who We Really Are, before Audrey brought me into this world, I decided on a theme for my art studio adventure. I came up with the story of Lynette, with all of her quirks and oddities, with her varied traits and qualities, little bits and pieces of amazing and not so much.
Her basic wiring, I decided, would be something different from what I had experienced before. And here it is, this Lynette story, and it’s still unfolding. It’s taken a lot of turns, it’s been a lot of fun, with many years of tears and fears, an abundance of love and friendship, some really unexpected detours, and some really, really hard things.
Like all of us.
My dead mother, hideously abused, seriously mentally ill later in life, coming through the medium SandySoulsister.com, said, “Even in the hard times, my soul was rejoicing.”
There are our human stories, temporary and fleeting, and then there are the stories of our souls, and our souls know they are eternal and can never be harmed no matter how hard the hard times. That reading with Sandy was an epiphany, one of those 180-degree rearrangements of what I knew to be true changing in the course of an hour. And my mother’s words ever since have become my mantra.
My soul, knowing what it’s about, Who It Is in big picture, looks at each experience, each ingredient, painful and otherwise, as simply being “of interest.” What will happen next? What’s this version of the Great One Of Us, this Lynette creation, what’s she going to do with this? Pass the popcorn, it might get wild!
So there’s that. And then my other rebellion against the concept of karma in particular, has to do with the idea of new and old souls. Admittedly, karma is a step up from what I learned with the Lutherans, because that promises a fiery and eternal hell. We were born miserable sinners and there are no do-overs in Christianity. It’s one and done. Pass/fail. (And woe betide those who never even hear of the risen Christ, for they, too, are doomed.)
But my rebellion is against the idea that “new souls” ~ which truly makes no sense in the One of us, but is part of this human rule set for the experience here ~ NEW souls would get the hard path because they don’t know anything, while the evolved many lifetime souls would get the easy path because they’ve earned it through good deeds.
I say nope to that.
If my soul doesn’t judge any of it, my soul would be bored to tears with a primrose path of a life. Long-experienced souls want to jump in full force, take on ALL of the challenges and test themselves.
My particular soul feels like a crusty old thing. It has a bad limp, a bunch of poorly healed broken bones. It wears an eye patch and it’s covered in scars. It’s a badass that can do really hard things. And just as you would never send a toddler into a knife fight, you wouldn’t send a tender, new baby soul into the kind of life that the more experienced crusty ones have come to relish for the trials.
It’s the battle-scarred veteran who chooses the hard road (See “Wolf’s Message,” “The Afterlife of Billy Fingers,” and so many others.) And even so, to the experiencer ~ to Lynette ~ it isn’t going to seem like fun as it’s unfolding.
But that crazy soul? It’s having a blast. “Even in the hard times my soul was rejoicing.” I’m sure that we plan some things pre-birth. Not all of it. Maybe we just map out potentials rather than a dedicated script, but also some special events. (And by “special events” I mean those things that my soul will relish while my human is all bug-eyed and screeching.)
And then we gather our materials and slip into the studio to see what happens when it comes together ~ and to see what we can add to and make of the special events.
I was 15 years old when one of the loveliest human beings I’ve ever encountered showed me how to make beautiful things out of the unexpected. Maxine Warren, an extraordinary high school art teacher, took me under her wing when I was objectively a mess. She was endlessly encouraging and kind, and so much a booster of my art. At the time, early 70s, art was pretty freewheeling, as was Maxine.
She would take me aside for little chats as the other kids were sketching or gossiping, and she would offer up possibilities. “Lynette! I want you to think of using found objects in your work. I think it will inspire you to make great beauty and meaning of even unwanted and discarded objects.”
I thought the term was so funny. Like you’re just walking down the street and trip over something that suddenly shouts I AM ART!
I think I was her “found object.”
And I still very much love the idea of great beauty being found in or made of discarded things. What is trashed, forgotten, or unwanted turned beautiful.
As with most of us, I’ve encountered a lot of “found objects” on my path through this life. Beginning in September of 1999, my husband’s sudden illness was a found object, something we stumbled over out of the blue on what had been to that point a perfect storybook life together. After came 12 years of illness, unrelenting siege-like stress, and two more years of trying to regain my sanity after his very complicated death.
That happened. I got better. I was able to find meaning in the rear view mirror, coming to terms with such grief, eventually coming to know that he was not gone, that he still existed though not in the physical of this human realm. My broken heart healed. I came into balance again, only better, because now I knew things.
A new reality came into being years after the deeply unwanted found objects of illness, death, PTSD, and grief.
What I did *not* know was that there could be an actual physical cost to the siege years. For him, obviously, but also for me. That’s been the big surprise of late, the current found objects on my peaceful path of living a life I love. It’s as if those 14 years had been wadded up and stuffed back on some lower shelf in the art studio only to tumble out and trip me up out of the blue.
And what did I trip over? Two diagnoses. Two autoimmune disorders. TWO. What?? How could this happen? I am connected. I am deeply spiritual. I’ve done the work, for decades. I know who I am!!!
When I look up what that opinionated heifer Louise Hay says about autoimmune disorders (she of the think-right-and-be-healed school of thought), I can see how that and similar works have shaped my perception of the why of illness ~ and that perception was wrong.
I didn’t create the stress hormones that are installed in our bodies for a reason. I didn’t manufacture the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis or the unavoidable in-built release of cortisol and all of what happens when we are faced with danger.
And now they’re here, these two found objects, unavoidable arrivals that I, by design and the human rule set, do not recall agreeing to, and that do not feel much like creative play. It’s very strange to feel absolutely amazing, very, very well, full of energy and happiness and yet here they are.
Found them. Don’t want them. And yet it’s life, right?
So what to do with this, given what the evidence shows about who we really are, and what we’re really doing here? I know a lot about daily challenges, as well as trauma and healing and grief and recovery, and how that can impact the body. I do know a lot about how to reduce the toll that the pains and challenges of living have on quality of life.
But I didn’t know that inescapable stress ~ siege-type stress ~ can have a lasting impact on the body that isn’t changed by my happiness or my repertoire of wellness and healing practices. The damage was done in those 14 years, when I didn’t have an extra jot of energy, barely even a free moment for the basics of life, let alone self care.
It’s as if I drove my low mileage, well maintained, beautiful car up and then down a mountain, and along the way we encountered washouts, ravines, boulders, viciously sharp rocks that peppered and punctured the underside of the car no matter how slowly or carefully I drove. Yes, we made it up that mountain and down again, started to breathe, got better. But the car was unavoidably damaged, and some of that damage was hidden well enough it didn’t even begin to reveal itself until years later.
I can’t undo the drive. I can’t take back the 14 years, nor would I, because it was Mike.
But in looking at it, in coming to see that I chose the life I did because of what he and I had together, another found object appeared, and this one, too, was a surprise, but in a beautiful way. I took another look and I can see that I really, really like that woman, the one who kept going through all of that. I love her, honestly, the one who survived those 14 years of hell. I admire her strength, her commitment, her refusal to quit. All of it. All of her.
And she’s still here. On one hand, living her best life. Happy, joyous, and free. And on the other, dealing with found objects of the much-unwanted kind. We really can be two things at once. This AND that. The older I get the more I see that evidenced in just about every aspect of life.
I am crazy healthy,* happy, AND completely fearless. I have a couple of things happening that could change the healthy / happy of that AND that’s not happening today.
One of the greatest ongoing struggles of my life has been to learn to extend to myself the same compassion, tenderness, and kindness that I have no problem extending to others. Maybe at this point, that’s what’s unfolding here in the studio: an exercise in unconditional love. For myself.
Sometimes I think that, in the end, the hardest thing any of us really have to learn is how is to truly love ourselves, no matter what, to allow for imperfection and *gasp* even frailty.
And yes, let’s call this one a lesson, because it is a hard one for many of us: to give ourselves the holy generosity of grace.
Looking at all that transpired both in my life with Mike and after he died, faced with these diagnoses and their likely origin, I became willing to open my heart to myself, to grace, to allowing that I am all things including vulnerable.
That’s my dream for every one of us: a soft place to land when hard things turn up. And if we trip over something new and unwelcome, to be caught and held and reminded that we are so deeply loved.
*in so many ways, and these new arrivals are simply additions, not indictments
yes ,yes, yes, yes!!! thank you!!! xoxoxoxox Machi ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
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And thank you for reading (or listening!😍)
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I did both! great to hear you and your laugh!
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Well you’re a glutton for punishment. 😎
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Every word of this fed me. I am so grateful to you for writing and sharing this. Forty plus years a student of metaphysics… and this was a balm and an illumination, a confirmation of my own heart’s knowing. I love the vision of life as an art studio full of materials, found objects wanted and unwanted, skills, knowing, human perseverance, grace, and frailty. The full spectrum. Beautiful you, thank you.
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Well this right here is just what I needed. Thank you. Every word of your comment fed me. 🙏🏻
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Yes! 💖 I so love this, Lynette! It expresses so beautifully what I’ve come to embrace after 43 years of exploring what life is all about. You’ve expressed this so beautifully and it resonates so deeply within me. I’m very grateful to have the gift of your wisdom in my life. Today’s timing is perfect. Sending big hugs to you. 🤗🤗🥰💖
Dianne
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I love this, Dianne. Thank you so very much.
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Every time you share with us your musings I always feel so honored to be trusted with the truths you speak. Your sharing is what I would wish for from a beloved friend, a friend I easily can laugh with, cry with, be sarcastic with, play with and go home with an overflowing heart. Thank you. You are greatly appreciated and loved.
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What a precious, beautiful comment. I’ve been toying with the idea of not writing, for a lot of reasons. Your words give me a lot to think about. Thank you.
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I have autoimmune too, after a different battle. Mine was a long term undiagnosed mold exposure that just about did me in. As with nearly everything, I found out from info online what it was, and after seven years did get out of The Mold Castle, “The House That Tried To Kill Me.”
Almost zero executive function, ruined gut, living outside — for three years. I don’t think my brain totally recovered.
Then it took another several years for the pernicious anemia (which is caused by autoimmune gastritis) to be diagnosed, because doctors know nothing about the relationship between ingested B12, pernicious anemia (high levels of intrinsic factor antibodies, for the studious among you) and serum level. “Serum level is fine; must be something else.” So one corrected the enlarged red cells with folate, another decided I had food allergies, a third said my blatant neuropathy and ataxia “are not a medical problem.”
I just don’t do doctors any more, having had to figure out several different difficult things myself, and if my lack of trust in them kills me, I suspect it will be later than if I had trusted them again.
We are only here for a vacation, anyway. Sometimes we’re on the beach, and sometimes we’re in a ditch.
MattAllen
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Good lord, you have been through hell. I’m so sorry. I’ve had plenty of encounters with some really dreadful medical people, mostly when Mike was ill, AND, of late, some really wonderful ones I feel lucky to have. I do think the entire autoimmune spectrum of ailments is misunderstood and the idea that it’s all in our heads seems pervasive. Thank you for sharing your story. And for reading this one. It means a lot to me.
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Thank you. Such a comforting, encouraging hug of a read .
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Thank you so much for reading it. It was a lot. 🙏🏼
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Good morning, Lynette. What a beautiful and timely post. I have moved into a weekly outreach to people I want to stay connected with so I
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I’d like to hear more about that idea of a weekly outreach. I have changed up my routines a lot in the last six or eight months, much of it to accommodate how my energy flows these days. But also just trying to settle into the time I have v how I really want to spend it. It’s interesting what comes up … ongoing adventures, yeah?
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Me too, finding myself shifting into a bit slower/quieter pace Lynette. Trying to embrace this aging process instead of fighting it – I still think the linear calendar has made a mistake…LOL.I continue to insist that we are all “Perfectly
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I hope you were about to say “perfectly imperfect,” because that is my lifetime mantra … Slower, quieter, it feels like heaven.
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An art studio. That’s it, right there, Lynette.
Long, long ago I signed up for a beginners watercolor class where the supplies list included just three tubes of paint. The reasoning was, according to the teacher, that we could make anything we wanted by blending just red, yellow, and blue.
I hated that class, for many reasons. Trying to create ANYTHING with just those three colors plus a one-inch flat brush was stifling.
It only became interesting when I added a whole bunch of brushes, and colors to get lost in, and other media, and found objects. An art studio of my own making.
It’s all about the options and the off-ramps to Let’s See What Happens. A lot of paper gets chucked into the wastebasket, but it wasn’t wasted time. And it wasn’t dangerous, any more than experiences on this planet could be dangerous to our souls.
I’m blessed to be creating stuff in the art studio next to yours, dear friend.
Tracy Wilburn
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Good Lord, I cannot imagine an incredible artist like you diddling around with three colors and a single – 1 inch! – brush. When I look at this exquisite painting that you created of our friend Brenda, I have always imagined that you were doing it with brushes with a single hair or two. Isn’t this life a trip? We just don’t know. I think the gods every day for people to share it with. Love you my friend. Thank you so much for reading.
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I listened to your recording while reading the content. A real treat, as I hadn’t heard your voice before. Love the giggles and inflections! As I get older, I tend to question all the things you addressed in your blog………especially karma. Thank you for writing and sharing with all of us. Much love!!!
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Well it was a real treat to read your comment because I questioned posting anything out there with my squeaky child’s voice and inability to pronounce things like “hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.” I think a lot of what we have been fed as metaphysical truth has more to do with marketing than actual truth. But I’m old and opinionated — but ALSO in good company. So thank you for your time spent listening and also for your comment. It means a lot to me.
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Once again Lynette, you catch me by surprise and remind me of the reality of this existence. I forget, (or stop paying attention) regularly, that money and toys and politics and all the other distractions aren’t the important parts of this life. It’s nine years since I lost my son. The edges of that pain are now somewhat dulled, but from time to time it catches an edge and digs in deep. And then you come along. Thank you. You are a shining point of light and love in this crazy place.
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It is a crazy place and one of the saving graces is that we have people to share it with. Otherwise it would not only a shitshow, but a crazy lonely one. Thank you for this. It means a lot.
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Yes…belief systems like Karma. Ugh! I sometimes wonder if Karma is that human built belief system for the life review when a soul returns to the creator.
I cannot tell you what it meant for me to rediscover who Source really is and always was, and that he/she/it has always been there, and never changed, no matter what different groups did to that story hundreds of thousands of years ago. I don’t assign a special name to God…that’s good enough for me. It is interesting to note that what we all grew up with was decided upon, on the whim of people who wanted to control the masses and decided on a new religion…POOF and Jesus wasn’t even there much less authorize the feeble and misguided attempt at describing his presence on the Earth.
I don’t buy into the BS that we were engineered by extra-terrestrials. I think that is a convenient agenda for those who like media money that do not believe in a Creator of all that exists in the Universe, designed to be their workers. I am not impressed by agendas with tiny bits of story or overheard whisperings/conspiracy theories , or borrowed ideas from published authors in order to collect revenue in the guise of enlightening the world or raising our vibration.
YET..it all came from somewhere! I’ve been studying Sacred Geometry as taught by the late Dr. Robert J Gilbert and am generally amazed that it explains SO VERY MUCH in detail instead of this one tells a bit of and that one mangles the story of in order to receive a YT check.
That’s what irks me…the youngsters that think they know enough to teach. Agendas, social media advertising money..the great driver of the new age. Nah….not impressed by 99.5% of them.
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Well I’ve got you beat: I don’t even believe in the life review. Ha!! Yes, as part of the human experience STORY, the rule set we agree to engage with when we decide to do this. But my soul already knows what’s happened here, and there’s NO judgment absent these meat suits. So it skirts a little too close to sin and punishment again for me. So many people are HORRIFIED by the idea of it. When EVERYthing is out there ~ with others observing! ~ OMG. Naaaah. My friend Brenda, who died in 2018, was for a lot of her life not what you’d think of as a very nice person. She could be very, very lovely. Had wonderful social skills. Was incredibly smart, educated, successful. But her own misery and pain and self hatred led her to some pretty wild projections of that suffering onto the world. She healed a great deal before she passed, but not everything. And guess who DID NOT have a life review? Nope. She already knew it. In her greater self, she understood it all, the reasons, all of it, and NO JUDGMENT. For the first time in her experience of being Brenda, there was no judgment. What a joy that must have been.
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Thank you for writing that. Bless you. I am still working at loving myself completely. That may be the most important “lesson” I chose for this life. We’ll done Lynette. Thank you for sharing your journey.
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I actually think it’s pre-installed. Even the people who profess to think they’re absolutely fabulous usually have a little kernel of “eek! Maybe not” buried deep within. Maybe it’s just part of the human rule set. “You will go to this experience of earth as a magnificent being of light and love; it’s up to you what you do with that, but spoiler! You won’t believe any of it. Go forth!” Maybe like that lol. Than you so much for reading and for your comment.
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I actually read the text as I listened to the audio. Love hearing your voice for the first time and all the giggles that go along with it. As I get older, I question more of the things I have learned in this life! Karma is one of them. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Much love to you!
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Thank you so much for reading AND listening. It means a lot to me. And YES! Getting older is such a joy. I feel more free than at any other time in my life. I’m abandoning shoulds and ought and ideas of right and wrong at every turn, in exchange for paying attention to what makes sense to me, what pings my truth meter as far as what’s right.
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Thanks so much for sharing this blog – I loved reading it and resonating with so many goodies in here.
It reminded me of an old Star Trek (original series) episode, called “Shore Leave” (I was such a trekker when I was 12 or so): Our heroes arrive on an unknown planet for some much needed R ‘n’ R but things go horribly wrong until someone called “The Caretaker” shows up and explains that the planet is actually a mechanism that converts thought to ‘reality’. When they had arrived, their minds were tired and easily thought about danger and problems, and that’s what the planet created. Once they understood the rules, their vacation could commence in earnest, with all manner of fantasies and adventures. And nobody was actually hurt (even though they sure looked like it).
The difference between that show and this lifetime is that, sure, there’s knowledge at the Soul level that this is a place for creativity and adventure, and the Soul cannot be hurt, but once here, that knowledge is left in the gym locker after we suit up.
I could ramble on, but instead, I’ll say, thanks again for your creative and thoughtful blog.
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Wow, an art studio! *huge lightbulb* This was brilliant, as usual, Lynette! Loved the audio, thanks for that. If you ever start a podcast or write a book, I’ll be first in line. I learn so much from you.
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