Asters in Meadow Best

The call comes while I sit on a friend’s patio eating lunch. It’s from the artist who rents the studio on my land.

Your neighbor called the county inspector. He’s here citing me for a code violation.”

I take a breath and call on the Beloved.

“Your neighbor was here too, threatening me during my class,” she adds. “She wouldn’t leave but finally she did.”

I feel the assault in my chest, as though knuckles are pressing in.

“Please get the inspector’s number and tell him I’ll call when I get home,” I say. Setting down the phone, I chant my mantra.

My friend asks what happened, and I explain.

“You don’t seem very upset about it,” she says. I sit back and realize that I’m not. Though my emotions feel a bit fluttery, I’m calm and joyful.

We finish our lunch, talking all the while about the Beloved. Even with this new challenge I’m able to appreciate the flavors of my beets and greens and the quiet babble of the fountains that adorn my friend’s patio.

I return home and call the county inspector. He explains that my tenant needs a license to teach her occasional art classes, and yet she is ineligible for one since she doesn’t live in the studio. The gravity of the situation tries to pull me off center. My tenant has to teach in order to afford the rent, so if this is not resolved I will lose her and thus the monthly income.

Still, even with this peril, I remain calm. I surrender, become willing to lose the tenant and even the income, knowing that I rely on the Divine Source for all sustenance.

I ask the Beloved to show me a solution, and slowly a possibility trickles in. I will contract with my tenant to teach in the space. Thus she will operate under my business license. I present the idea to the county inspector and he’s pleased we came up with such a simple solution.

I revel in the fact that all this happened without anger or a sense of injustice kicking in. I don’t have ill feelings toward my neighbor, but instead am grateful that my trust in the Beloved was tested and proven strong.

And yet…

The next morning, while the sky is perfectly clear, I sense a dark cloud hanging over me. It’s familiar, though this may be the first time I have really seen it. As I sit on my porch drinking tea, I awaken to what it is: a sense that I am wrong. Not wrong about renting the studio to an artist who occasionally teaches classes there, but wrong about everything, wrong in my very existence. The feeling is subtle but very strong. I know that like a sepia photo its brown tint has colored my days.

The Beloved gives me a glimpse of its origin. As an eternal being living lifetime after lifetime, I have been wrong a lot—or at least perceived myself to be.

I have made countless errors in my writing business, loved men who didn’t love me, let my house get flooded, and harmed people with my selfishness and anger, so many wrongs one could never count them all. And those are just experiences in this life. How many thousands of “wrongs” came before?

Now I’ve manifested a neighbor who goes to great lengths to point out how wrong I am. (For more on this, please read The Divine Court.) Of course, this neighbor reflects the shadow within me, the part that attempts to thwart my spirituality. Upon seeing this, the weight hangs so heavily on me I can barely stand and walk back into the house.

But I do stand, and I continue with my day, calling on the Beloved for the transformation that I know will come in recognition’s wake.

The next day my body responds with a bout of stomach pain that leaves me weak and napping on the couch.

Then I sleep the first full night in weeks. I wake to the quiet dawn, dark with a sliver of waning moon. I rise to do my spiritual practice. During it the Beloved lifts the sepia pall from me. This Divine Source takes me up and shows me how “right” I am in Soul.Pansy Flower

All those wrongs were never wrong at all—they were necessary to bring me to where I am today. Even more important, I am not them. I am Soul—pristine, flawless and eternal, made in the image of the perfect Divine.

As the sun rises and lights my day, I float through it knowing that the lower worlds will constantly vacillate from good to bad, from right to wrong, just as day turns to night and summer to fall. I sit above it all within the blissful expanse—the bright, sparkly Oneness of my God self.

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