Who the f**k am I?

Dear God, I can read the answer about who I am in a book; but I want to know your opinion directly. It is the whole reason I’m contemplative. I don’t want to be an unconscious person. I want to know, or life is a complete waste. Why run? Why be alive? These are the same questions. I keep doing both. I pause and listen with the ears of my heart:

As a child, I was merely trying to survive. In college, I had hopes for a meaningful career. In my 20’s, I hoped God would give me something. God and career joined forces. This modus operandi continued into AA, where I began to hope for a “spiritual experience,” and find a husband. Then I had an era of studying the New Age, where I hoped for enlightened ecstasy. I still wanted God to give me something.

Then, I got a motorcycle and a boyfriend. Pride won and lost. I was cool on the Harley, but I hated the attention because I knew it was fake. People admired my chrome and leather. Once in a while, someone would mention “God on a Harley” or “The Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance.” But I had found neither God nor Zen on the Harley; no spiritual experience. The boyfriend(s) didn’t provide the spiritual experience or even financial security. In fact, the boys were taking up a good deal of time. I eventually realized that the motorcycle and the boys were draining energy from the spiritual quest.

I got rid of both the cycle and the boyfriend. I discovered meditation. Meditation led back to religion as many meditaters are religious in some way. Then, I wanted to go to a monastery, where I hoped to find what the mystics had found. So, off I went. Four years later, finding myself unsuited to their communal life, the monastics booted me back to the secular world.

I made a new life in the secular world. I continued with religion for about two years, until I found I disagreed with its premises. To this day: I meditate, I run, I read, I talk to Jesus, I try this or that technique, I fast, I search the internet, I play free cell, I stay in solitude. This series constitutes a futile search.

I look inside, searching my inner being. I find that part of me continues the futile search, in frustration. Another part of me is happy to rest in peace. If I run, I can get a day-in-day-out peace with my body. If I meditate and study spiritual writings, I can get a day-in-day-out peace with my mind. But what about my spirit?

At the level of my humanity (body and mind), my life has accomplished nothing and means nothing. It is entertainment. If there is a higher level, a spiritual or divine level of existence, it does not produce at the human level. It must be relegated to the un-graspable, intangible, nebulous. It can enter a human awareness as intuition or peace; not as satisfaction or profit, but as fleeting phenomena. If peace and healing are the same, then it can be said that the spiritual heals. If peace and love are the same, then it can be said that the spiritual is love.

Love does produce human by-products. Love is a phenomenon. In my humanity, if I am at peace, then I am also love. Hence, the highest order of human existence is peaceful love or loving peace. In the state of loving peace, nothing about this world, my body or my mind matters. The world, my body and my mind, therefore, must not exist, or have meaning or purpose. True reality can only be loving peace, and not anything which doesn’t matter.

Being alive at the level of loving peace is satisfying. I call this satisfaction Christ. Loving Peace is Christ. I will give up myself to Christ. I will live in Christ, as Christ. Who the f**k am I? Christ. There is no other answer.

Personal statistics: I ran 17 miles this morning after the early morning storm. Since returning, we have had wave after wave of strong thunderstorms. In the ACIM workbook, I am on lesson 157 and in the text, I am at 28.I. I will need to mow the lawn during the week, as I didn't get to it today.