I Died to Myself

I knew there was a life breathed within me. I was led to such truth in the perceived highs of my life. Status held in corporate America, good education, good income, highly desired and respectable career, a home I lived in a neighborhood I loved, time, freedom. Those highs can actually be the lows when you're digging deep to find something inside, seeking to capture the worldly things becomes so shallow. Though I was always in tune with the creation and that still small voice within, it led me to another way, a deeper one that blessed me with more intimacy and love for and from the life within me. I was drawn near to the deeper parts inside myself, my heart was ravished, my soul was watered, as I listened to that still small voice inside. I was disciplined and taught obedience. I learned to listen, hear, and follow the still small voice, the yearning heart, and that gut instinct.

I died to myself, I died to my old ways of being and thinking, I died to the world, and I became the most alive I'd ever known. I knew life in creation. I knew creation deeper as it became my best friend, my comforter and my teacher. The more time I spend in the woods, the deeper I was drawn in. The more time I spent at the waters, gazing into this river, the more I was swept away, a few times I nearly drown. I knew a deeper, richer, revelation, as I finally came to remember, the greatest love I have ever know. The one I knew from before I was born was coming back into sight as I remembered.

Before time began, I was known. Before I was formed, I was known. Before the foundations of the earth, my name was known. But I wanted still to know more. I thought I'd come to know all that I would know and perhaps some more. I knew things were changing, as the old me was dying, I began losing everything I'd worked for over a decade to gain. I gave it up willingly, knowing that I was called for more. I just knew it. Then, everything kept being taken away. I kept expecting it to end, the disintegrating of my old life, but it only kept getting worse. The further down that rabbit hole I went, the closer to this new reality I'd found, I was moving further away from all I knew.

I began to not let things go so easily. I began to fight, beg, barter, and blame. It felt like the closer I was getting, the further I was getting. I was falling away from the truth. Or was I falling into the truth? It kept feeling further, I kept losing and couldn't hang on, I kept losing everything and couldn't hang on. I was so far gone. I wanted to die. It was all dark and I wondered what I'd done. I only wanted to know the truth so badly. I'd followed all that I knew and I had faith beyond what I knew I was capable of. I asked myself, why were things only getting worse? It did not make sense. What have I done but seek one thing and be so obedient, painfully obedient, and nothing was getting better. In the days that I stopped fighting, I only wanted to die. My Spirit felt shattered and I felt so far from where I wanted to be, where I longed to be, and where I knew I was supposed to be. I could not even recognize the truth anymore. What remained, just a blurry glimmer of the light I couldn't seem to catch with my hands.

Then it happened suddenly! I woke up! It was like someone shook me and I was awake! I felt like Dorothy in the wizard of Oz, at the end when she wakes up and everyone is there. The whole thing was a dream that she knew was real but it wasn't real. She was most alive in those moments in Oz. I suddenly knew I was so alive inside. The truth I was searching for had become an integrated part of me, I never even saw it happening. I asked myself, how did this happen? I knew truth through creation before, from an intimate, very intimate place, I knew the romance of creator and creation. Yet, I was shell shocked at what revelation just bled into my being.

I thought nothing more could possibly exist beyond that love in my heart that over flowed, like a golden chalice filled with a golden liquid, like light that had exploded in my heart center and poured into every cell of me and more so over time. This time it was more real, as in, this is real life. When you find the truth living inside of you, it's real life. You see true reality and the past just seems like a dream. Before, it was like a romantic fairy tale that I knew is real but couldn't feel. So child like in its innocence. Now, there's a deeper reality to it, a mature romance. I know now, found in my lowest of lows, in the world where the swords of humility slashed me. I was found and I was washed in the blood, humbled like I never knew before. And then I knew deep things like I never knew before. And I was never the weakest and never the strongest, both, at the same time. But now I am.