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She walked in carrying a brown leather suitcase and wearing stiletto heels. Her raven colored hair, high cheekbones and dark red lipstick set against a backdrop of times past and present. The gleam in her eye as she stared you down from head to toe.

Images of sins and pain flash as images on a billboard

Of thoughts and actions in every lifetiime

You have come to live.

Her name was Karma. She didn’t need your permission to visit or open up your life and tear out its pages.

Your life was her business. Your history was her game.

Your penance was her obligation. Your weaknesses were her breath.

You had forgotten what she looked like each lifetime she came around.

But you will begin to remember.

The sound of her heels walking slowly through your path.

The noise so deafening it screams through every cell in your body.

She rarely utters a word.

She simply stares as you tremble, gazing at that suitcase

Where your judgement awaits you.

Make no mistake.

Karma’s looks can be deceiving.

The moments she spends with you can feel like an eternity.

We never really know what’s in that suitcase or what our judgement is until the next time around.

But we wait as sweat pours down our cheeks.

That one last glance as she throws back her hair, purses those red lips, takes that suitcase

And walks out a door created just for her.

Deeply

Intimately

With such reverence for the vessel

In which your spirit calls home.

Tend to it with great mercy

Only the light could understand.

Bathe it with immense

Hope until

You quiver with faith.

Touch it with pure kindness

Until you weep the name of God

In every language known to the angels.

One day, you just might receive

This gift that you have been given

In all its splendor.

With wild thunderstorms that dance through the universe

With dreams of merriment amidst ancestors of old

With mischievous spirits that frolic through the ethers

With bouquets of flowers that whisper sweet nothings into my heart

And with human beings who never stop believing

in the eternal power that kindness can wield.

Listen to the embers burning

Of ancient cries amidst war

The desolation and emptiness that only darkness can bring.

You search for souls as your narrative

Weaves its way among ruins and bodies

Whose story becomes imprinted in your own

And within generations not even birthed yet.

You and I were once torn by gunfire and hatred

In another time, another place.

Do you think there are sides to war beyond the veil

Where the light glows?

You are both my comrade and my enemy

As centuries have passed

And our wounds have befriended

A peace deemed by God.

But our minds still want war

And to tear each other’s stories to shreds

So that no one can whisper victory but you.

When you finally cross beyond that veil

You will learn that victory belongs to nobody but

The light you refused to see.

breathing long ago. A fragmented humanity,

weary from suffering and wandering listlessly

in the darkness.

Your heart still lives my friend.

It yearns for sunshine, the incandescent light

of grace whose melody will breathe life

back into it.

“God, why do I need to understand my own darkness?”

“Because you asked me to show you your light.”

“But then why do I have to experience such struggle?”

“Because you asked me to bless you with miracles my child.”

The little boy was getting frustrated with God.

“Can’t I just experience love without the sadness, the pain, the loss?”

God looked quizzically at the little boy.

“In which dimension are you referring to my child?”

“Where I exist, light and darkness, love and pain, suffering and freedom; they mean different things than they do in your world.”

“Humans complicate such matters of the heart when it comes to their own existence and experience and then when they cross, they evolve into such an energy that there is no differentiation in those matters of the heart you ask about.”

The little boy, still looking at the heavens, wanted to ask one more question.

“Well, can I have that now? Do I have to wait?”

“I’ve never stopped any human from experiencing that kind of heaven on earth in their hearts or minds. It’s up to you my child.

You can change your internal experience and understanding any time you want, so that you struggle less. The power has always been inside of you.”

The little boy became quiet and God continued.

“Humans want more. They want to rush through the darkness and the pain to get to the light without realizing the light never left.

They refuse to see the miracles in the suffering.

They can’t see the peace in the loss.”

“I don’t know God, humans sound so confusing to me now,” the little boy said.

“I’m right there with you my son. I’ve been perplexed by their need to perpetuate their own suffering when the answers are only a heartbeat away.”

And with that, the little boy thanked God and sat for a while in the sacred silence God left behind.

Restless and shaking in its grasp, my voice trembled as I screamed,

“What do you want from me? Let me go! Let me go!”

No answer from the void.

I writhed and squirmed trying to pull myself away but its tendrils had me bound to uncertainty, fear and doubt.

My cries went unheard by the gods, the trees, the mountains, and the rivers.

No one could be seen for miles.

Tears streamed down my cheeks and the silence became deafening.

That hand held me so tightly that moments seemed like lifetimes.

Until finally, a gentle voice called out to me.

“Why are you hiding my child?

It’s me, God. I’ve been holding your hand all this time.

So have the trees, the mountains and the rivers.

Even the sun, the moon and the stars.

You kept thinking you were alone in the darkness.

But we were all right here with you every step of the way.

Your screams and cries were heard and your tears wiped gently from your cheeks.

We called out to you a number of times, but you didn’t hear us.

We stood in front of you but you didn’t see us.

We held you but you didn’t feel us.”

I slowly shifted my gaze upwards and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

I hadn’t moved from that very spot where I saw nothing but darkness.

Yet all I saw and felt now was love, surrounding me in many forms.

And then I knew, from that moment on, that there was a place for both amidst the gods.

And where there was one, the other would exist simultaneously.

God showed me it was my choice to exist with each of them peacefully.

I turned to God and asked Him to show me more. I wanted to know all there was to know about the universe. My fear turned into excitement, my dread into curiosity.

He reached for my hand again and gently whispered into my ear.

“Knowing everything will not keep the peace that I am offering you. Accepting the unknown that appeared before you heard my voice will.”

The abyss surrounded me once again, the unknown touched my flesh. But the hand of God was still holding onto mine. And all was right in my world.

It’s hard in a partnership to not want to analyze or judge the other person’s experiences, thoughts, emotions or intentions.

It’s hard to identify your own inner process when we are too busy interfering in theirs.

I’ve seen this happen far too often.

A partner on a spiritual path or some kind of conscious inner work, yearning for their partner to bear witness to the changes they are going through. To bear witness to the transformation and evolution that has been a challenge in the making. I used to tell clients they cannot expect their partner to begin to understand the new person being birthed in front of them, especially when patterns in the relationship were years in the making.The desire for the transformation to be seen, heard, felt and witnessed may not always be met by those closest to us. That disappointment can leave us feeling empty, angry and alone. I remember when some partners in haste thought of leaving the relationship because expectations were met with emotional abondonment.

We have a tendency to judge the time frame in which a person heals, the amount of inner work they have done on themselves, and subsequently, blame may follow for not relating to the new person we have become and the ways in which our patterns have changed. We feel powerless as we look at our narratives so differently and we want our loved ones to rise to the occasion in the ways that serve us, not the ways that serve them or are safest for them. Think about that for a moment. They need to feel safe too. It’s not just about us.

Relationship becomes a power struggle when one or both people are healing. There’s this rush to heal and work through issues to mitigate the pain and uncomfortability. We think it is up to the other to connect to our new core, to the new ways in which we see things, as opposed to bearing witness to the ways in which they see things. Remember, once you have changed, your experience of your partner will change. If you allow for space, you will begin to see that their process might look a little differently than it did before.If one reality in a partnership shifts, so does the other but it can’t shift to our will and expectations.

So you take a step back, embody patience and compassion, and allow for change to be a choice for your partner, not a requirement.

There is a descent into the underworld where we embrace flesh and bone as much as we do spirit.

A descent into darkness where we fall upon our knees and give thanks to the landscape that nourishes our understanding of good and evil.

How fortunate we are to listen to the wilderness that runs through our veins, echoing our names over and over again until the illusion slowly dissipates into oblivion. To realize that we die so many times during our lifetime. The psychopomp materializing out of an emptiness, appearing in a form of a being we recognize as aspects of oneself.

A hidden landscape versed in the chorus of angels as well as the entreatments of demons. The ruler of this underworld are those wounds we hold close, yearning to ascend, reaching for any hand to help guide our way out of pain.

We become the master of life and death within our own experience. A nuanced pulsation of light and darkness, love and hate, a hunger for light to be fulfilled by pushing through the mire

of a reality created by thousands of years of disconnect from grace. We become the psychopomp that we have prayed for to carry us through this confusion of self and to leave the underworld as we originally left it. With love.

Yes, with love.