Author: tomgrasso (Page 24 of 38)

So read the message from someone I love. I had been there; hopeless, helpless, without meaning and unsure of each step. I could almost feel the suffering in those words as they stared at me on my computer screen. I could almost remember…

But such is the life lived not in self but in spite of self without realizing who the Creator is. Life is truly a process of creation, not of discovery. We create the ample bosom of suffering at the same time we decry its very existence. We struggle for answers to questions we create without changing the conditions we created along with them. We simply excuse the situations we created and expect them to change themselves. We pity ourselves in morbid fascination with what is not by pretending we are all we can be at any given moment.

I remember once, in a moment of lowness, wondering what would be the best way to end it all. I didn’t believe that anyone would care. I stared at my fingers feeling sorry for them for being mine. I felt so much sorrow that what was the “me” I hated so much actually was “me” that I broke down. I searched in my soul for the answer, I search in my suffering for relief, and when none came I simply thought it best to continue in the suffering. I hated myself so much, I felt so much dislike for who I was that I wanted to continue suffering as punishment. I was not afraid to die, I simply wanted to suffer more than I wished to end it all.

I realize now that I was not “lost”. I was exactly where I needed to be. Even if I had taken my own life I would have been exactly where I needed to be. We all learn the lessons for which we are ready. Yet, in my dismal place I pressed forward because I needed to know “more”. I was not done with my lesson.

I reach out to my loved one and simply say: “To whom do you owe this moment?” You are not discovering that you are “lost” at this moment, you are creating both the feeling of emptiness and the feeling of not knowing where you are. You may blame others. You may blame things beyond your control. My reply is the same no matter who you blame:

“You are not lost, you are exactly where you need to be. Lose the attachment to where you think you should be and you begin the process of creation anew.”

It took me a long, long time to know those words and thereby experience the results. It took some “things” along the way to get me here. I can say with equal confidence that we not only are where we need to be, but we all are given the messages we need to get to there. Just be open to the possibilities. Learn that Higher Vision you have for yourself and create it in the world around you. Be the change you wish to see and you will see the change. I wish you well, and bid you blessings on your journey.

©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ

Today I created.  I created the value I placed on the dream I had last night.  I created the way I felt when I woke up as “great”.  I created my desires for the day (“I must train”, I must have a good day of work”, “I must eat well”).  I created the measures of success or failures in reaching those desires, and in the process created success or failure.  I created a perspective that water was “too hot” this morning in the shower, and in the process created what was hot.  I stubbed my toe on the door into my bedroom and created pain, and then the judgment that pain was bad.

In essence, I am the Creator.  As I gazed upon my wife this morning, I thought “there is the most beautiful woman ever created.”  Then, with my head half-cocked at my seemingly benign words, it dawned on me that my wife was not created beautiful, she was just created until I created her as beautiful.  I saw the sunrise as as I hiked my normal trail through the residential maze of homes I have created as “my neighborhood” and said to myself, “…what a beautiful miracle this is.”  I half chuckled as I realized that it was not created a miracle at all except by me in what I wish it to be.

I learned of the death of a loved one once and thought “how sad”.  In the indomitable spirit of conversation I have with self, I then asked “is it really?”  What gives us the ability to judge the death of anyone as sad?  In my experience, death is only sad for those still in this existence (what we erroneously sometimes call “the living”), so who exactly was I sad for?  During that pain I subjected myself to, through the tears and wails of sadness that echoed in my mind and out into the world, I came to realize something.  This death is NOT sad.  I am sad not because of the death itself, but because of the ATTACHMENT to that I thought of as “him”.  “He” is gone forever as I knew him, and that attachment drove me to such pains as to effect all around me.  At that moment, the moment I let go of the attachment (which seems to me to be what the 5 stages of grief are…the process of “letting go” of the attachment) I was then able to feel the joy “his” soul must have felt in its passing.

I had not only created “him”, I created my attachment to “him”, I created my suffering in not having “him”, and I created the conditions by which joy could allow itself to be in letting go of the attachment.  I created joy.  I am the Creator.

We all put ourselves in situations whether past, present, or future, where we create our universe.  Whether we want to or not, every situation we find ourselves in is of our own doing, and we create the situation and the condition by which we exist in that situation.  In those moments, we are faced with a choice: do I recognize myself as the creator of this moment and therefore created it in my own image or do I unconsciously allow my ego to create it for me so that I have someone else to blame?  Ownership of such responsibility is a daunting thing, one many are nor ready to take, but man the beauty one can find in exercising their right to create!!

Of course I created that too…

©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ

I felt time slip away as if nothing else had ever been. Long had this life owned me, the prevailing thought that pain was essential if for nothing else than the feeling that life itself existed. I had been beaten and prodded into such knowledge, the stinging hand and utensil of those who were assigned to teach me things like “love” and “life” crashed down on my body and mind like raindrops in a summer storm. They had been my teachers, they had been my mentors, they had been my Hell.

I remember when there were times I searched for the bravado to end my life. The anger and pain welled in me like a violent storm and manifested itself in such horror that I today stand a testament to extremes. I felt so alone as to know no one, and felt banished to a life of awkward desire in a moment mine to share alone. I could not feel close to anyone, I could feel their disappointment in me even before they could feel it. I knew that they hated me even before they did. I knew my life was over even before I closed my eyes for the final time.

There are many such moments of anguish that I can point to in my young life. I can attest to the bruises my parents either caused or allowed to be caused in the name of such love. I would long remember the words “I do this because I love you” as the pain rained down on me. I wondered if the belt loved me too, or the pot, or the stick, or the switch. I wondered in the deepest parts of me whether the love would ever stop, and toyed with ways to see it end. I lived homeless for a time to escape my tormentors. I lived beneath it all in order to not be beneath it all.

Such stories may remain for another time when they matter. Believe it or not, this story is not so much about the pain as it is the rise from it. It is about the perspective such experiences provided. It was about the knowledge born from such torment to know certain bliss. In a world of relatives I would be a testament to each side, failure and success, torment to freedom, fear to love. Perhaps, as I realize this very moment, I am the gift I give to the world. It is an understanding that has taken over 42 years for me to realize.

Autumn did come to this weary life. The first moment I felt time slip away from me was when my first daughter was born. That moment was fleeting yet frozen in time, a paradox unlike the feeling I had while in that moment. Such love had never crested from my heart before, such warmth had never touched my soul, such beauty never had my eyes beholden. I was lucky, I was able to experience that feeling again, the second time when I met my second wife, the third when my second daughter was born, and the fourth when my son was born. Those brief but everlasting moments of pure bliss, what I call “my touch with Nirvana” gave me an insight into a world I never thought existed. Yet, because of the pain I had known on so many levels, that insight would drive me into wanting to know and experience those moments of Nirvana over and over again and at will. Such is my journey at this moment.

When my first daughter was born, I cannot describe that feeling even as I remember it this moment. Indescribable is the only word to use. That feeling ended my first marriage to a rather obnoxious woman who was nearly me in female form. She hadn’t known my pain, but she knew my toughness from it. I married her out of trust and a mutual admiration, but we shared little in our true natures as time would bear. Our paths began to part at that moment; a moment when I realized Bliss for the very first time, and a moment when she would laugh at me for the description. I see the birth of my first daughter as my rebirth, it allowed me a new perspective of healing and love that allowed such growth to continue to this day. As I relate it now, it was the golden outer skin of my onion beginning to peel away.

When the woman who would now be my wife met me, I was a mess even as I believed I was in control. I still feared love, despite the 7 years that had passed since my first moment of Nirvana probably more than I feared that pain of fear itself. Today, the idea of “fearing love” seems outlandish to me, but I lived such fear! The first time I saw my wife I felt something, but since she is the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on I gave up that moment to Aphrodite rather that to Cupid. Still, it took me months to get a date with her, and when I did I “knew I was in trouble”. Gone were the promises of bachelorhood forever. Gone were the whimsical understanding of solitude when it suited me. Gone were my impressions of love and the fortress I had built to protect myself from it.

What I had built was a “fortress of solitude”. So, while she saw walls built of the toughest stone, it was only I who had created that illusion. Those walls that kept her at bay were nothing more than fragile glass, easy to shatter but impossible to climb. Climb hard as she might, there was no getting to me in that way. No, I had created my own glass menagerie that contained those fierce animals that were me as a matter of survival, created to inflict pain before it was inflicted on me, to lie before I was lied to, to test before I was tested. It was not until she shared in my pain that her cries would shatter the illusion and allow me to hear the call of Love. The real understanding began not when those walls came crashing down, but rather when I forced the tools of demolition on her. She accepted them, took ownership of them, and used them as often as necessary to allow the light to be. She became my conduit for it all – the “good”, the “bad”, and the painful. Why she chose to bear the burden of such a cause I will never figure out, but such is the angel that picked me up, dusted me off, and healed me until this time came to be. The animals still exist, but they do not define my moments or own my actions. Rather, they serve as reminders to what was and what could be again.

We all need our angels, and mine came in the form of a 5’8″ beauty with a heart of gold and a soul as pure as any I had ever met. She gave me two more gifts, a daughter and a son. Ah, those moments of pure bliss that come with the birth of your child! And in the time that stretched between then and now there have been similar moments; the first steps, the first words, the first time they look at you as if you are something to them, the first moments when they act like they understand themselves. The creation never ends, it abounds in every moment of every day for every soul. You begin to see that no one moment is more special than the other, they are all equally special in the creation of them. Such are the numerous moments of Nirvana born of the first.

Forgiveness of my parents came for me not as some painstaking process, but rather as the realization that I owed them something for the beauty they showed in the Hell they created for me. Slowly, I began to forgive myself for the pain I had caused others, for the brutal violence, for the lust, for the unabated energy I devoted to the quest of ego. Now, I see forgiveness as an automatic mechanism of love, it happens without request and without effort therefore is no longer “forgiveness” as I once knew it. I see that there is no “good” or “bad” in the world as a result of my being able to experience Divine intention. I turn my focus from fear to focus of love, and the results are that the world has a lot more color and warmth to it. I can relate to those in distress and those causing it. I can see the Divine perfection in all things, and in that they are all equal. Forgiveness does not exist, nor do miracles. I am here, I am now, and I am perfect in this, my moment of Nirvana.

©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ

I read some very interesting articles on this forum about ego and what it is, its necessity, and what appears to be its purpose. I was first exposed to the metaphysical understanding of ego through the teachings of Dr. Wayne Dyer, and his explanation of ego certainly aroused my curiosity. It began a very intense and trying investigation into my own ego through the eyes of my own experience.

So, the conversation on here made me want to share my perspective gained through the experience of me. Not my experience, but rather the experience of me as seen through the eyes of the Observer. Forgive me if you can, but this experience is far from over so my description may change as surely as the seasons come and go. So please, allow this foray to be a matter of this moment and not the next. This particular post will deal with what I see as the purpose of ego as a matter of spiritual experience. It may also be long, but since few of you know a thing about “me”, I figured some background may be in order to get to the very simple understanding of ego’s purpose.

Perhaps it only fair to say that I find the experience of Neale Donald Walsch to be similar to my own. When I read his CwG books, they spoke to me as if I wrote them myself. Not everything to detail, but the gist of the books spoke to me much more deeply than anything I had ever read. While the books did not create my perspective, they certainly helped confirm something I had heard in me my entire life. They caused me to expand my experience of these “memories” to the point I am today and they caused me to listen to the voice that has always been with me. Why is that important you may ask? Well…

It is my experience that I am a spiritual being having a human experience (well duh, isn’t it everyone’s?). It also seems “right” to me that the purpose of my human experience is that my spirit may know what it is through the experience of what it is not. The Pure Love that is my soul simply did not exist as Pure Love until what Pure Love is not was created. Now, you may call that a “dream”, or an “illusion”, but whatever it was it first had to be what it was not. Throughout my ongoing practice of discovery, I see my existence (my body, mind and soul) as clearly defined in that triad. My soul experiences itself through my body by creating all that is with my mind so that it can experience Itself. The Father knows Itself through the Son by creations of the Holy Spirit.

So, it would appear that the soul, being perfect and pure in its state of bliss, needed its opposite in order to experience what the mind created for Its benefit. What has no form (soul or spirit) took form (body), what was perfect (spirit) created its imperfect version (ego) for experience. The amazing part of this understanding is that as my perspective changed from the ego instilled in me since birth to the soul that I forgot at conception I began to see the ego work not only in myself, but in those around me. Egoic energy becomes so easy to see in these moments of perfect awareness, and it all becomes clearer and clearer as the dust of this reality settles in stillness.

The first thing that was necessary in this understanding was a lack of judgment of the ego. When in a state of awareness, one can see any judgment as coming only from ego. When I am in these states of “soul awareness”, I simply cannot judge ANY THING…it is really amazing. I see ego working in me and it simply “is”. I see it work in others and it simply “is”. Not good, not bad, just perfect as it “is”. Some may be more egoic than others, but the measurement is really meaningless as we all enjoy this moment of perfect existence in a universe created for such enjoyment.

In this reality, I have discovered that ego is perfect and necessary. Just as a window cannot exist without a wall, or that the stars cannot exist without the space that allows them to be, I know that ego cannot exist without the soul. Yet, just as a wall becomes defined by a window, or as space is defined by the stars, or as silence that is defined by sound, I know that my soul in this physical universe is defined by the ego. That, my friends, is what I find the purpose of ego to be.

Ego is simply the proof that my soul exists and vice-versa in the physical realm. Ego is simply the yin that exists so that my soul as yang can be. Ego is the sound to my soul the silence. One exists so the other may be, and in that the entire thing we call a “dream” or an “illusion” is shear and complete perfection. What we call “love” exists only because the dream exists, for when we are awakened from the dream in complete perfection love will cease to exist because that which defines it (fear) will cease to exist. It is ALL part of the dream: love, hate, strength, weakness, peace, war, birth, death, beginning, end, yin, yang…all equal parts of the dream as my soul experiences itself through what it is not. An experience only possible by one part of me: my ego.

©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ

Today is not special simply in that a challenge has arisen within me.  That is part of the necessary experience that my soul must have here, and everyday occurrence that happens hundreds, if not thousands, of times a day at all levels of my existence.  Most challenges go unnoticed; a cell divides correctly, an organ functions as it should, the immune system keeps me in balance.  Such mundane miracles of the body usually go unnoticed as if they are not even happening, as if the miracle of creation never happened and is not continuing even as I create this prose.  It is simply, nonexistent because we have made it so.

In this, I find my challenge today.  Recently I have felt an awakening, a movement of spirit to the center of my life.  In this effort (or lack of effort), I have felt love as never before.  It has permeated all aspects of my life, and the world has appeared brighter and more sublime than ever before.  I have felt a “avalanche” of love, pure and simple as it is, to which there was no challenge.  Nothing could end the mood, nothing could end the connection, nothing could end the process – until today.

I still have the feeling, but it is tempered with a bit of anger.  I am not sure where this anger came from today.  I didn’t sleep well, but that is fairly normal for me.  The first four hours of the night I sleep like a log, the second 4, well, its more like I sleep on a log.  I don’t know that a lack of sleep is the issue here.  Upon getting out of bed I just did not feel right.  I meditated before I got out of bed and I just didn’t feel the warmth and energy I had over the recent past.  In the shower, I did not feel the connection to everything around me.  The water did not feel particularly warm.  I could not feel the purpose of each water droplet, of the embrace of the chill as I left the shower, or the comfort of the towel as I dried myself off.

Something is missing.  So far this morning has been “blah”.  It seems darker, and although the skies are gray it is hard to see the vibrant color I had just yesterday.  I can’t find a reason or a cause it just is.  I think, I search, but still can’t find a reason for the loss of clarity that possessed me just a few short hours ago.  Perhaps all I can do is not search for the cause of losing that clarity, but focus on the cause of having it in the first place.

The challenge that has arisen today is not about anger or fear, love or hatred, it appears to me at this moment to be about focus.  Which part of me is truth?  Which is the essence of the “me” I wish to create in this world?  What exactly is my purpose beyond this post and beyond this breath?  Why, today, am I focused on the darkness and not the light?

©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ

From the deepest regions of my soul I can feel it.  Yet, even as I enjoy the bliss of this experience my mind continues on with its mantra, “do you deserve this thing called ‘love'”?  That voice was given strength by me but created by the ample efforts of those who molded that thing I was. It echoes through the vastness of the void left by your departure, yet billows outward with the knowing that it shall all soon be over.

You are still with me not in soul but in body.  I take pleasure in what your body can give me without the ecstasy of what your soul could share.  This is only half a triumph for a man so needy of both yet so starving for one.  Such hunger causes him such despair that he devours the body as if it could satisfy his need for the soul.  The flames in which I walk singe my feet with unabated agony, the searing heat of hell evaporating the tears before they can even form in my eyes.  They beat me into this, they hammered me into a shell of a boy and less of a man.  The vision of my self standing before the mirror of what has been this life to date sickens me as I stare at the naked, bleeding man looking back at me.  I am so helpless, I am so childlike, I have grown but some small amount in the time I have been here.

Yet I thank them this day.  Without their torture and anger I could not know such peace and love as it is and as I wish it to be.  Without your tears and cries of pain I could not see it as that which I wish to end.  Without the storm I could not see the beauty of the sun.  Without your love my eyes would still be clouded with that which I knew as right, but felt was wrong.  What little growth there has been is still growth, and I thank them for planting the seed that not only spawned the knurled sapling but also the growing tree.  The roots of this tree have known such infertile ground as to root deeply in the good soil while still looking upwards to heaven in loving purpose.

So, as my mind rings out the words of fear, “do you deserve this thing called love?”, my soul knows itself and my heart listens no more.   I bask in the warm glow of the sun as the storm has moved on.  While I can hear the distant roll of thunder that once deafened my ears, I am not afraid of it.  I no longer see the world as my torturer but as my self, I no longer seek to instill fear but to hold love so dear as to know fear no longer.  This Being, this part of the me you wished to know once upon a time now beckons for your hand, your love, your soul.  I beg you hear and grasp that part of me I now know to be the only part of me that is truth.

©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ

The light from the fire licked slowly on her face, dancing brightly off her eyes and exposing the fragile stillness of her gaze.  I looked slowly at her, cautiously as if the very sight of her could be a danger from which there would be no return.  I wanted so desperately to have it end in a way that would soothe us both, in a way that could have us both dancing about this fire in pure ecstasy, in pure love.

Such a hope would prove impossible on this night.  Her bliss could not be found in my desires, nor mine in hers.  One of us would certainly be dancing on this night but at the expense of the joy the other simply could not find.  While we had packed lightly for this trip, we carried with us unseen baggage that had accumulated over the years.  Even as she vehemently protested that she was not a “hoarder” and that she resented clutter, she certainly hoarded a resentment toward me unlimited by space and undiminished by time.  I had done my part in this tragedy as I piled on the pain as one would pile on the charm and in equal delight.  I had provided her the cause as she hoarded the effect, and we proved an ample tandem in both pain and pleasure although we shared certainly more in the former than the latter.  Such potential wasted by the ignorance of fear and the hoarding of anger had rarely been seen by either, but so stuck on ensuring the grip of both would not resolve we they both to their own demise.

And so it was.  Laying around the campfire surrounded by Nature in her glory provided the contrast to the folly of man.  As she looked up at me there was a hint of sadness in her beauty compounded by the glistening of teardrops faintly finding their way into her eyes.  It became eerily silent at the moment she spoke as if all of the world had paused to hear her voice, as if the universe had ended its purpose but to witness the charm of this woman.


“I just can’t do it anymore.  I love you but the pain is too great for me to get over.”  The universe could clearly see, as I could, the trail of tears pouring from her soul.  To me, in this reality to which I was steeling myself to survive, these were not tears of sadness as much as they were tears of relief.  She had finally found the end to the nightmare and turned the corner to the healing she so richly deserved.  My absence would be the healing and this time would be the method by which a beautiful person such as she would end the torture of hoarding that which she had no interest in keeping.

I would be gone.

Such began my trip through the fire, the part of me that suffered in order to burn away fear to find love.  This was no ordinary occurrence, it signaled the end of torture for me as well.  No more clinging to the final branch of the past “me” that shot out from the sheer cliff of the present moment.  So, in her tears I saw relief for her while I felt relief for me.  This would be the moment that I would begin suffering anew while finally being able to take comfort in the knowledge that I suffer for the one I love…the Truth…the Way.  As her words explaining her position teased the trees that surrounded us, my ears had move on toward the time when I could hear her laugh in delight or moan in ecstasy.  My eyes did not see the visage of her sadness but rather saw the smiles of love I once got from her.  The fingers that now played with a twig in nervous angst could not feel the stick but rather felt her hand in mine.  Ah, such could have been the life we led, the love we shared, the memories we created in a life that neither hoarded nor created such pain that shredded love’s potential.  So, while I felt pain in the loss of such limitless potential and human understanding that only such companionship could bring, I took solace in the understanding that this moment was the most selfless one of my life.


She reached out to touch my hand, a sign of pity I allowed without reservation.  My mind screamed at me to fight back while my heart simply beat to the rhythm she provided.  Had this feeling and understanding but come a few years earlier this touch would have been much different.  Rather than signifying the end it would have signified a continuance of Pure Love’s grace providing us both the glimpse of heaven that love is supposed to provide.  I threw the twig into the fire as she continued about trying but failing to overcome my failures while describing the indelible scars my actions had left.  I absorbed every word with a countenance that suggested indifference yet betrayed my acceptance of what had to be.  I loved this woman with all of my soul, and in that love I had to simply let her be.


Her explanation finished only served to expose my acceptance.  She, as most would, thought my silence and seeming indifference to be an act of defiance that proved her point to the letter.  She retired in frustration at my lack of response, leaving me to stare at the fire without thought but in complete contemplation.  I could feel tears on my cheeks yet could not cry.  I could feel me reaching out to her while my arms were stuck in paralysis.  I could hear me calling for her though no sound could leave my soul.  One side human suffering at the loss of what he valued so dearly, the other side Being knowing it was as it must be; the darkness of yin that allowed the light of yang to shine.


And that was that.  The ending of ego’s love that attached myself to her and the beginning of pure love that allowed her to go.  Not all things that take a trip through the fire are destroyed, they are merely changed from one thing to another.  As I feel the fire burn around me I don’t look forward to the result, I merely allow the fire to complete its art.  Through it all there is love, that endless array of fuel that allows the fire to burn brightly, that allows the scars to heal and the pain to end.  To that end we must all take this trip at some point in our life, and we can either see the trip as painful and our fortunes to be at its end or we can learn from every step we take and every singe offered with the touch of flame.  In this figurative, I long to touch the fire and not judge it, to heal the wounds I have created in my ego’s desire to be “it”, and to love my life as freely and as exorbitantly as possible.  I seek not to be loved, but to love…I seek not to be carried but to carry.
 

©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved

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