How do you spell s-y-n-c-h-r-o-n-i-c-i-t-y?

TUT... A Note from the Universe‏
From: The Universe (light@tut.ccsend.com) on behalf of The Universe (theuniverse@tut.com)
Sent: Fri 2/22/08 3:19 AM
To: xxxx@hotmail.com

It's not that some people in your life are just mean- spirited, shortsighted, and ignorant, Ingenue, it's that they're grand, brilliant, and magnificent. Fellow adventurers who, at the peak of their glory, in worlds before this one, asked to dance with you in time and space, however briefly, so that they might learn a bit faster than otherwise.

And you know how you love healing. (OMG! Healing others to heal myself. AGAIN! I think the universe is trying to tell me something here.)

In the presence of greatness,
The Universe

This keeps happening! Every time, EVERY TIME, I pray for guidance I read or hear something unbearably appropos to my current dilemmas. Even w/o conscious prayer it happens 95% of the time I go to meetings. Invariably the speaker will deeply address whatever's been tormenting me for the day. No pre-meditation needed. Welcome to the wonders of living with a higher power.

I feel like I shouldn't be as awestruck as I am by all of these deeply spiritual comings and goings. After all, I've done some sort of yoga on and off for almost ten years! Also, in my early twenties I use to wear bindis over my third eye with no sense of irony whatsoever. Clearly I am openminded in regards to the spirit. Then again...

I'm doing my Second Step reading right now and there were three chapters (three chapters for one step! That ain't right) to get through, the final one being for the agnostics. Ah yes, the agnostics. That hopeless bunch who utterly rebel at the thought of needing a "spiritual solution" complete with the requisite "higher power" to recover from their alcoholism. Thank heavens I'm not one of those sorry bastards. Things are bad enough as they are. And yet. I'm a liar if I say I didn't identify. In fact the whole chapter is streaked with neon highlighter memorializing the points that hit home.

Even if I didn't self identify as an agnostic I was certainly living the life of one. And sometimes the hardest ego to crack is one that feeds off of a sense of pseudo-spirituality. The glamorous (and expensive) brand of spirituality; living as a raw foodist in Hawaii, doing barefoot yoga in Indian temples, paying someone hundreds of dollars to sort out the messy business of my locked up chakras-these things were how I wanted to express my spirit. You should have seen the look on my face when it became clear that my soul could only be recovered in dingy rooms sitting on folding chairs listening to homeless black men tell my story. And worse than that? My main job is to take people I despise in this life and do everything in my power to give them that which I have wanted for myself! How bad does that suck? Honestly.

But it remains the quickest and easiest way to enlightment. Even if I try to rebel my life sends me lessons from the divine to knock my punk ass back on track. Everytime I humble myself in these unthinkable ways, everytime I serve someone else's divine nature before my own, my own small petty problems evaporate. I mean they just disappear. It's really a bit freaky, but I'm learning to trust it.

Take for example my crusade to quit smoking. Being able to quit for my own health should be motivation enough, shouldn't it? You would think, but sadly, this is not so. Yesterday I spent the day looking up all of the harm my smoking does to the people, animals, and world around me. It ain't pretty. I cried looking at the animal torture that is conducted to prove WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW. Smoking kills people, so let's kill off millions of god's sweet animals JUST TO MAKE SURE that it's really that bad.

I prayed then and I pray now, God please give me the strength to be freed of this addiction. Please free me from addictions that rule my behavior and cause me to hurt my fellow men. If I can't personally help end all suffering at least guide my actions to keep me from doing harm. Do for me what I cannot do for myself.

This is day 2 of not smoking and 118 days of not drinking. Can't say I miss either one, really. Thank the cosmos for that, it's certainly none of my doing.....

Yours in Abject and Humble Devotion,
The Gratefully Dis-Illusioned Ingenue