Sanctified and Chicken Fried

It's been awhile since I've written. I have been going through a phase that could be called detox...if I was only talking about the work I have been doing on my physical body. But the message that my Unity minister delivered yesterday clarified it differently for me...sanctification.

I suppose what I have been doing is going through a sanctification process.

A few years ago, I wrote a note and put it on my refrigerator. It said, "if you want your life to change, you have to change your life."
Kind of like the old definition of insanity:

Doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results.

So at the beginning of April, I took that to heart and started making changes. I started seeing an acupuncturist and finding out that the circulation in my leg could be improved.
I took a rare opportunity to see a gifted 6th generation ayurvedic doctor and have applied her prescribed diet and supplement program to the letter.
And by doing both of those, I will be able to fulfull the second half of her prescription by starting to walk 60 minutes a day.
Just walking without pain is something I have not done in almost two years now.

But after less than half a dozen acupuncture treatments and living on a vegan diet for only a week, I have less pain than I have had in a long time.
The supplements and the juice/oil/herb drink I take daily are having an effect also. I spent two or three days last week feeling not just sluggish, but almost sick. I knew though that what I was feeling was a good thing...not a bad thing. I could literally FEEL the toxins being squeezed out of my body.

And you know what? I am finding that eating "vegan" is not nearly as difficult as I had imagined. It's cheaper for me to eat at work and eat out. It's not effortless to find restaurants just yet that offer foods without everything that I'm avoiding...meat, dairy, eggs, fish, fried foods, etc...but it makes me much more aware of how much of that was my diet for so long.

Fortunately, we have "The Spiral Diner" here in Ft. Worth which is a great vegan restaurant. After experiencing a substitute meat dinner Friday night, followed by a dessert shake with organic peanut butter and soy ice cream, I'm thinking..."I might just be able to live like this."

My diet was difficult for me to change for years. It wasn't because I loved the feeling in my body after I ate meat or dairy...but more because of the underlying programming of who "I thought" I was.
I have lived all of my life (with the exception of 9 years in the Navy) in Texas...and if you haven't heard, Texas is kind of big on meat.
There was a story in my family of my father embarrassing my aunts and uncles in an all you can eat steak restaurant after he had devoured seven sirloin steaks.
My father loved beef, steak especially.
I was brought up with lots of meat and my favorite was the least healthy...chicken fried steak.

For those of you not in Texas; chicken fried steak is a cut of tough round steak, tenderized somewhat by pounding it out flat, then battering it and frying it. And of course, smothered in cream gravy....which is also typically covered over the mashed potatoes that come with it and of course to round it out...fried okra.

That meal was my favorite...and likely a heart stopper.

I also grew up as a hunter, but put down my gun years ago after I had a change in heart about seeing the suffering of animals I killed.

I had continued to eat meat though.

I had given up beef for the most part several years ago, but did it primarily because I had shifted to the "Eat Right for Your Blood Type" diet that a naturopathic doctor had prescribed for me.
My blood type is AB+, so beef, chicken and whole cow's milk had been off my diet. But I had simply replaced them with lamb, turkey and goat's milk.

I had another change in heart this past week after reading what life is really like for the animals whose lives are sacrificed to allow me to eat meat and drink milk. I think I can survive without it.

(I do understand that as more people shift to vegetarianism that there will be some amount of fear based news and information coming from the meat and dairy industry. That's normal and we should expect it.
Change is scary for all of us. When that starts to happen, hopefully we can help them to see that we will need more local farms and that it's much easier to raise crops than raise animals. Perhaps, more co-ops will arise out of it and people will be able to assist in the transition. The good news is that we should have a LOT of good fertilizer!)

As with everything else in life, my diet is evolving and I feel like vegan is the next natural step in my evolution.
After experiencing the "cleanse" I have been undergoing for the past week...and starting to feel SO much better, I cannot imagine going back to eating as I was before.
I am making transitions in other areas of my life and perhaps it's appropriate that now is the time for me to transition in this as well.

The sanctification that I am undergoing though is holistic in nature. So while the sanctification of my body is an important aspect, it is not only what is happening.
I have been moving forward in the healing of my emotions and learning to identify...experience life more as Spirit.

In preparing to leave the career that I have been in for the past 11 years and that I felt I had been preparing for the previous 12 years to that, I am taking a great leap of faith.
And to take that leap, I have been feeling that I need to clear out all resitance, all doubt.

So I have been in an intense study of reading, listening to CD's, researching book reports and the information from all of that and the message delivered yesterday from our Unity minister dovetailed nicely.
I experienced something similar to when that Shaman taps Marlee Matlin's forehead in "What the Bleep."

The question I was asked was a reminder of something I think I heard on a Wayne Dyer CD...a quote from Einstein I believe. I felt like I was being asked:

So do you live in a safe Universe...or an unsafe Universe?

I realized suddenly and finally...that if I believe...if I CHOOSE to think and believe that I live in a safe Universe, then my perception of everything I see in my world can change!

I realized that as long as I chose to believe that I live in an unsafe Universe, then I do need to defend myself against others. My mind would be justified to continue to dream up how it's going to handle this or that situation, to continue to pound on me to be better than I have been...and on and on and on.

But if I simply choose to live in a safe Universe, then I can relax. I can trust that God is going to bring me my desires. I can choose to experience those moments of stillness, those gaps between thoughts and to allow my natural state of peace and love to shine forth from where it already is...deep within me.
I can BE the observer of my thoughts and feelings. I can notice when my mind starts to think about something that does not serve my intentions for peace and stop it before it creates the self-sustaining cycle of think negative - feel negative - think negative.
I have spent much of my life in that pattern and once in that cycle, it is more difficult to break out of it, then to simply stop it before it gets going.

In just doing that, I am starting to learn to trust.

In learning to trust, I am starting to embrace what Deepak Chopra refers to in "The Seven Spiritual Laws for Success" as the Law of Detachment.
Because if I trust that I live in a Safe Universe, then I am free to turn my desires over to God and allow the Universe to bring them to me in ways that I have not considered.

And within that Law of Detachment lies the Law of Uncertainty...or as I am learning to refer to it...the Magic of Uncertainty.

Remember when you learned that Santa Claus wasn't real...that the Tooth Fairy didn't really exist? Didn't it take some of the magic out of life for you?

Was it more exciting to know that it was your parent's sacrifice that brought you your desires...or Santa Claus?

Well, if you have ever felt that way, I have good news. In learning to embrace Uncertainty, I am finding that magic again in my life.

I am realizing that once I found out "how the world worked" that I started creating my own solutions instead of allowing the Universe to create them for me.

Somewhere along the way, I lost trust. I lost sight of what my original problems were and I focused on the lack of MY idenfitied solution as my problem.

In embracing Uncertainty, I am finding that the Universe always has much better solutions than I could ever imagine and best of all, I don't have to spend any time at all worrying about how it's going to happen.
I simply have to act when I get those opportunities.

And even better, my life has become magical again.

Now there was one more thing that had been holding me back.

I discovered that I needed not only to accept myself for where I am right now, but I also needed to accept who I had been. I had learned new ways to forgive all those who I had perceived hurt from, but in all of that I had not forgiven myself.
I had learned that all of those people I had forgiven were simply doing the best they knew how to do with the knowledge they had at the time.
But for some reason, I had been holding myself to a higher standard.

I had been criticizing myself. I had been looking back at my past and pointing out where I should have done this or that differently'; where I should have acted with more confidence, courage or compassion.
But all of that type of thinking was actually holding me back from being able to learn from those experiences. I needed those experiences to learn what I did and did not want, who I did and did not want to be, how I wanted and did not want to feel about myself.

It was important for me to accept myself for who I was, to have compassion for what I did and did not do, to become my own best friend instead of my worst critic and to tell myself that I did the best I could with the intellectual and emotional knowledge that I had at the time.

It is what I did then and what I AM doing today.

I finally had to accept that life/enlightenment/Self-Mastery is not a destination...that there is nothing within me needing to be fixed or healed...and that I could simply learn to enjoy the journey. I could learn to trust God with all of my desires...and they will be met.

I could learn how to let go of how they will be met and that the Uncertainty of not knowing how it will all happen is what brings the magic of living back into my life.

In learning to trust in that magic again, I get to experience (for the first time) what it feels like to live in a safe Universe.