Denial is not a river in Egypt

My spiritual exploration began by obsessively attending lectures and reading books abounding in ways to perfect denial.  Just say these affirmations each day and your life will be fixed.  Just act as if everything is fine and it will be.  Fake it until you make it.  Think positive.  Breathe and let go.  Just look at the bright side. 

And, my favorite one:  It’s all good!

I was an ‘enlightenment junky,’ jumping head first into anything that claimed life-changing results.  I was desperately trying to not only feel better about life, but trying to figure out what the hell my life was about!   I had Big Questions!

Although some of these practices helped for a while, the gains were never consistent (Read:  they lasted about an hour until Real Life set in).  Freedom from what was trying to bubble up inside me was short-lived at best.   

Convinced there must be something inherently wrong with me because I wasn’t able to maintain those so-called enlightened states, I acted more as if, faked it even better and just kept breathing!   My brief visits to the blissed-out state that others seemed able to permanently reside in left me unfulfilled.  Tasting those spiritual hors dourves left me even more famished.     

For years I would exit my latest spiritual venture filled with dewy-eyed hope that, at last, I found “It.”   My bliss wouldn’t even last as long as my drive home, slinging curses at those mindless L.A. freeway drivers cutting me off or stupidly turning left too slowly.

 

I would frantically repeat a pre-emptive mantra:  “Just be calm, control yourself, and don’t let anything get to you.  Think positively, for God’s sake!”  Try as I might, no positive thinking technique or Susie Sunshine affirmation worked to appease my automatic irritation, my uncontrollable need to lash out at the innocent bystanders in my path.  Arriving home provided more to blow up about, aiming straight at my husband who hadn’t taken the trash out or vacuumed as I had requested. 

No matter how distressing it was to those around me, and no matter how often I would guiltily vow to be different, the scene played itself out to the grand finale:  A dramatic fight about something oh-so-petty.

Although incapable of stopping the blast until every drop was vomited out, I would wonder why on earth I was really exploding.  It made absolutely no sense that I could spend an entire day in such spiritual harmony only to land with a vicious thud the minute I crossed my threshold.   I felt like an actor in a play unable to separate from character, reenacting the same scene ad nauseum, even though the audience was booing.  And throwing popcorn.

This mystery became the impetus to find some sort of spiritual something that wouldn’t fade when the reality of day-to-day life set in, something that would be a permanent shift in consciousness, something that would stick no matter the circumstances.  Something that would shine a bright light on what’s lurking inside the caverns of consciousness, not relegate it into the corner to be ignored.   

Combining some of what I had learned from my discipline hopping, along with tapping into some very wise intuitive guidance, I developed my own method:  Perfect Love Awakening (www.placlasses.org). 

 

Through the copious trial and error, I discovered an essential key:  Trying to put a fluffy layer of positive over a steamy pile of negative won’t, can’t work.  Try as we might, it’s impossible to suppress anything -- emotions, negativity, fear -- because it’s an energetic see-saw:  If we push down one side, the other side always pops up somewhere, in some form, and often how we least expect it.  And, denial ultimately creates destruction both inner and outer.

Which explains why, when I would come home to my loving family after a spiritual workout, all I had been quashing with lofty Sound Good Concepts, would ultimately jump up and bite me in the butt!   “Oh yeah, we’ll show you how loving you really are… you can’t even tolerate your husband not taking out the trash! Sheesh!”

Even though I thought I wanted to change my life (See, look, I am trying, really really hard), there was a deeper part of me that was in bratty defiance, refusing to give in, kicking its heels in full-on tantrum.  “No way!  I don’t want to change!  It’s much safer sitting in this pile of sh*t  because at least it’s warm and comfy and doesn’t smell!”

I didn’t know it then, and even if I’d been finger-nails-on-a-blackboard tortured, I never would’ve admitted that I was subconsciously sabotaging those life changes I was trying to make.  I needed to prove my accomplishments couldn’t last, confirming that I was exactly the same as before attending the seminar du jour.   Why?  To be RIGHT about all those false, subconscious notions I had about what I deserved.  Or rather believed I didn’t deserve.

No matter how much expectant excitement the participants of a new PLA class have, the sparkle fades when they realize what a deep spiritual journey entails.    The core issues that start to emerge cause even the bravest of students to start clamoring for the door.  Luckily, the strength I have from walking my own steep path out of denial allows me to recognize the symptoms and be able to explain:  It’s just fear.

And, it’s all good.   Cause doing this inner work ultimately takes you to deeper awareness, joy, peace and personal empowerment.  And, it sticks.  Really. 

 

Excepted from Royce’s upcoming book:  “Know”

Royce Amy Morales is the founder and director of Perfect Love Awakening, an "inner makeover" center in Redondo Beach.   www.placlasses.org 

When a Bump on the Head is Not Just a Bump on the Head

When a Bump on the Head is Not Just a Bump on the Head

As the peeling painted wooden garage door came crashing down on my head in the spring of 1976, a spiritual journey was the farthest thing from my mind.   Mostly I was thinking:  What a stupid klutz!  And, How could my husband not know that the rusted spring needed changing?  And, Gosh I really hope I’m not permanently injured! 

Little did I know as I lay there writhing in pain, that this blow to my head would catapult my life into a new direction:  A Serious Spiritual Quest.   

This bonk-on-the-head-moment occurred about the same time I had begun, or actually re-begun, my interest in spirituality.  What seemed like “just an accident” and inconsequential, ended up being my final wakeup call.  I couldn’t ignore the inner shifts I’d been resisting for years:  I could finally, completely, trust the direction my life was heading (no pun intended) and embark on teaching others. 

Throughout most of my life I was a seeker, relentlessly delving for spiritual information and truth.  As a child, I pressed my mother with my spiritual concerns (“What happens when we die?”; “Is there really a God?”), driving her crazy with my non-stop interrogation.  Yet, no matter what questions I asked or how much I begged, I never got answers that satisfied my cosmic-sized hunger for The Answers.

My parents were non practicing Jews born in America of Russian immigrants.  They were highly educated, so it was drummed into me that logical thinking is the only sensible way to live.  No room for anything that didn’t pass the litmus test of Rational Reality.  My parents’ valiant attempt to give me left brain answers to my deep questions about life only took me so far.  I didn’t know exactly what I wanted but I did know I was still feeling famished.    

There were two incidents indicative of my insatiable desire to understand life on a spiritual level.  First, when I was about ten years old, I began a full-on campaign to convince my parents to let me convert to Catholicism.  At first they thought I was kidding, but I persisted.  They tried logic:  “Royce, you are Jewish and you are a child and you cannot possibly convert!”  It was impossible for them to understand why in the world I would want to make that change, thinking it outright absurd.  No matter how many times I explained that I just loved the ceremonial aspect of that religion versus what I perceived as the stark heaviness of Judaism, the posh beauty of the churches, the joyous singing, the ceilings painted with dizzying gilded angels, they thought I was crazy.  Understandably so.  Looking back on it now, I know I was just craving that intangible spiritual feeling I just couldn’t put into words.

A few years later during the beginning of my hormonally challenging adolescence, I was in the car with my parents on a daytrip to San Diego.  My father drove in silence, his gaze steady on the road.  I sat brooding in the back seat, resenting having to spend time with anyone other than friends. 

 

Somehow my mother and I got into a heated discussion about religion and God.  My mother, the intellectual, was as un-spiritual as you can get.  Desperately wanting to make sure I didn’t go too far askew in my developing life’s philosophy, she insisted that she believed in God, even though she hadn’t had any personal experience that would prove His existence.  This ostensibly ridiculous notion threw me over the edge of illogic and into the realm of utter frustration.  We bantered back and forth, me posing skeptical questions as to how she could possibly have faith in something she couldn’t see or touch.  I mocked her by throwing back some of the logic-laced words I had been raised to worship, but she was relentless.  Her responses did nothing but make my own developing cynical mind bristle. 

Out came words that, to this day, still come up at family dinners when we all need a good guffaw.  “Well,” I said, hands on my beginning-to-be-womanly hips, mouth in a petulant stance, in full pre-teenage drama, “I swear to God I’m an atheist!”  There was a three second pause to see if I realized what I had actually proclaimed, and if I had actually meant it.  Since it was so spontaneous and riddled with such frustration, I didn’t quite get the humor of it until both my parents burst out laughing. Duh!  I joined in and we all roared with laughter until our sides ached, an infrequent family event during that period of fierce teenage confusion.

 

My innocent outburst was a clear statement about who I was becoming:  One who questions things that others seem able to easily accept without thought.  Things that the masses hold sacred.  Faith-based notions held no validity to my logical mind.

 

Certainly not knowing it then, as I sat huffily in the back seat, I was already knee deep in experiencing a spiritual Truth:  “Thou Protesteth Too Loudly!”  Who I was swearing it all to was God.   

 

Years later, when I started personally experiencing the undeniable presence of a Universal spiritual energy as well as my connection to it, I remembered that moment of angst.  My demand for Truth, my frustration at what I perceived as unfounded conviction, was ultimately was the Gift that threw me into the Biggest Journey of my life.  

 

Excerpted from Royce’s upcoming book:  “Know”

Royce Morales is the founder of Perfect Love Awakening, an “Inner Makeover” spiritual center in South Redondo Beach where you can uncover the life you were born to live.  www.placlasses.org

She and her husband Michael are the owners of Harmony Works, an eco-fabulous shop selling meaningful creations for your soul.  1705 S. Catalina Avenue in the Riviera Village of South Redondo Beach.  www.harmony-works.com