The Man Who Believed Nothing Showed Me Everything

Last week someone  asked me “When did you start believing in all this stuff”.  I get that question a lot.  I’m not sure what people are assuming “stuff” to be exactly, but it seems everyone kind of takes for granted they know what my beliefs are based on the fact that I do Reiki and Read Energy and communicate with Spirit.   They never ask me “What do you believe?”.  Truthfully, at times their question is hard to answer, because I am still seeking and forming new beliefs. I hope my metamorphosis is eternal.   I think people assume I am completely immersed in a spiritual world. In fact, there are many layers to me and my life is one of contrasts and balance between the material, physical and spiritual world.  

I understand people are naturally curious about me because of this blog and other media regarding my experiences and what I do.    I feel my message is about life, love and living one’s lifetime to the fullest.  Spirituality does not consume me it is just a “label”.  I also run a Real Estate business, live in the real world, maintain a home and have hobbies and many friendships and connections that are spiritual as well as not spiritual.  I am a whole person.  The “stuff” I believe in are things I have felt and know to be truth based on my life experiences.  As those experiences change my beliefs evolve. 

So what do I believe?  I know with great certainty that I believe in love and it’s power.  I work with the energy of universal and divine love during Reiki healing sessions. This has led me to know without a doubt that the vibration of Love heals.  I believe there a higher power at work in our lives because much seems to be orchestrated, you know synchronicity etc…  What that higher power is, aside from the energy that created us… I can’t say.  I believe energy = love.  Some people call it God, Spirit, Source whatever you label it to me it is just love.   What is love?  To me love is pure intent, it has no agenda except to love, it is quiet- no puffing up or grand declaration required.  Genuine love has the wisdom of these things.  I don’t really complicate it more than that.   I believe there is a place of greater love than we know in our present state of being and that we will all one day be there.  I have glimpsed and felt that "other place" and that love can not be described in words.

The idea of soul contracts is interesting and I do believe in them. But, I don't agree with their rigid validity, and while I will concede that it COULD explain much of what happens in our life, I feel free will and our choices dictate our outcomes.    I do believe we have many lives because I have seen past lives during meditation.  Sometimes however I doubt  and I wonder if that could be a trick of the brain or coping mechanism on my part to justify this life and take solace in a "do over".   I always want more… another chance,   do it again, let’s go higher…I can go faster - do better...lol!  It’s this childlike enthusiasm that even at my age drives me, but just in case this is my only life I try to pack as much loving and living in as I can!

We are all going to find out the truth someday anyway.  Our beliefs won’t change the outcome of what is the truth of our existence? It is out there unchangeable we just have not discovered or remembered it yet, but we will. That is inevitable.   I think it’s more important to live your best life and put love wherever you can, than worry about what or who or IF God exists.  Be happy.  Be love.  Believe in whatever feels right for you.  I don’t care what anyone else believes.  I only care if they are a good person and trustworthy and if there is an opportunity for love between us in some form. So THAT is what I believe. How did I come to believe in these truths?

It is ironic but the seed for my belief was planted by a man who believed in nothing.  No God. No afterlife. Nothing.  Just get up, go to work, live your life, do it again the next day. That man was my Dad.

Ours was a very complicated relationship fraught with disappointment, judgement, abuse, harsh outcomes, anger and loss. Yet in the end, faced with the reality that shortly we would have no more of each other, there was forgiveness and love and a connection forged that eventually would cross the realms.  When we finally both dropped the rope we became the father and daughter we were meant to be. Our poor choices had cost us a life time of being such, but we had a beautiful and evoking last year together. All negative fell away as I nursed him . With wonder I felt my tender heart bleed out all the poison from those years before as love erased anything that had harshly come before.  And I became peaceful as compassion gave me a quiet strength I never knew existed within me.  The man who was the greatest influence in my life responded in kind and the father and daughter that emerged from the shadows of abuse and abandonment were a beautiful testament to forgiveness and reconciliation.  Proving love is always the answer.
One day as my Father lay dying I knew we had to have “the talk”.  I tucked him in bed under the covers. He sat propped up on several pillows as I took a seat on the side of the bed and began rubbing his painfully thin legs.  “So, Dad”, I started boldly, with more courage than I actually felt, “What do you want, you know, what do you want us to do for you when the time comes?”   “Is there anything like a song you want sung or someone you want to say something, what are your wishes?”  

There, I did it.  I finally asked the question that had been torturing me for days.  At that time I had no particular beliefs.  I had been raised Catholic by a very religious Mother, but never thought much about anything beyond getting through each day and being a good person, and thanking God for my blessings.  Arranging a funeral was a little out of my scope.    And you have to understand my Dad was a toughie, a larger than life, charismatic, gregarious, moody, sometimes nasty, grouchy, always intimidating but funny as hell pain in the ass.

 So, I held my breath anticipating his answer.  And in typical fashion he answered.  “I don’t want anything.  If you so much as put a Cross in that room I will come back and haunt you. I don’t believe in any of that crap. It just leaves me cold.”  

I was a chip off the old block then, so in MY typical fashion I was going to answer, “All righty, no problem, less shit for me to do”, and go make lunch.   But instead I hugged him and said “OK, well if you get there and there is something send me a sign and let me know OK?”    And he chuckled and said he would.  Our eyes met for a moment in mutual admiration as we silently acknowledged the courage of our conversation.   That was always the way of it between us.   We connected in our silences more than in any words uttered between us.   My then husband had remarked on it once, after he had witnessed me caring for Dad during his illness.  “You two always seem to know what the other wants but you hardly ever speak”, he said.  I had no need to answer his statement it was just the way of it between Dad and I.  I always understood my Father even when his actions caused me much pain.  Our connection was strong. We were in many ways cut from the same cloth although I had hated to admit it for most of my decades. 

A couple of  weeks after we had “the talk” my Dad died.  He suffered quite a bit and it was very hard to watch. He was in pain. We spent long tiring days filling the hours together as best we could. Playing the music of Chanticleer soothed him as I sat beside his bed and read to him for hours.  He was brave and stoic and he gave me a great gift because as I watched this hard ass, invincible, stubborn veteran of two wars die -he did it with such dignity that he taught ME how to die.  As his body grew weaker somehow in my eyes he grew stronger, his resolve to meet his end head on was the bravest thing I had ever seen and he never wavered or became fearful. 

One day wracked with pain as the cancer attacked his bones he looked up at me and said, “Honey, Don’t be scared because, If I can do this so can you”.  Yes, he taught me how to die with dignity and I will be forever grateful for that.  It was his way of making up for all he did not teach me in life when he abandoned me at the age of 13.  In the end none of that mattered.   He taught me a priceless lesson that no one else could have.  And I no longer judged him a coward for leaving, but forgave him his human weaknesses and admired him for his unbelievable courage in the face of death.  Because in the end, during his final days on this earth he gave ME what I needed and he was there for me.   

When he finally succumbed to his illness and his lifeless body lay in the bed, I went over and laid my head against his chest one last time.  I wanted to feel my Daddy.  The one from childhood who carried me over the hot sand at Crab Meadow Beach, when I cried “UPPY GO” because my little feet hurt.   But when I placed my cheek against his chest the "home" I used to rest safely against had no strong beating heart, the chest was cold and quiet.  It was brittle and hollow.  He was gone.   Great sadness overwhelmed me because I realized in life we would never be the Father/Daughter I wanted us to be.  This “summer of death” was the only place we had ever found a common bond to work for.  It had nothing to do with any God or beliefs it was simply a final act of love between a father and daughter.   As the days slowly passed that summer, we grew strong in our resolve to share his death with dignity between us.   As his body grew weaker, we grew stronger, I learned the true measure of a man is found in the content of his heart and nothing else matters. I learned sometimes our actions can be terribly wrong even while our heart holds the best intentions of love.  Father, Mother, daughter, son we are all playing out our humanness on this grand stage of life.  The final curtain is the teacher that shows us in the end - love is all there is. 

I went home that night after he passed over and I didn’t think I would sleep.  But I did sleep.  And I had a dream.  In my dream I saw this unbelievable sunrise over the water. Not just any sunrise but a sunrise so stunning with colors so vibrant that there are no words to describe the colors I saw.  It was almost as though I was seeing a sunrise from another world.  Thinking of it now, years later I am still overwhelmed trying to describe it.  It was stunningly beautiful and filled with energy like a powerful glow you could feel.  When I woke there were tears on my pillow and I was very moved by the experience. And for some reason I KNEW, I just knew it was my Dad showing me there was something, a new beginning, another day, a sunrise.  The words life goes on passed over my lips in a whisper as I awakened that morning.

This wasn’t a huge revelation or big life moment or aha experience at the time. On the contrary it was a quiet absolute acceptance.  Like a soft whisper revealing a bold secret.    I just knew it to be so, without a doubt in my heart and in every cell in my body that my Father sent me a message.  In fact, I had never been more certain of anything in my life.  And that is when a seed was planted in me... that there was something more than just here. There really was an "other place" far more beautiful than anything imaginable.  In truth that was the beginning of my journey.

Eternal  limitless love was shown me by the soul of a man who wrestled with love in this lifetime. 

 I didn’t know what it meant or what was beyond that sunrise.   I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought back then, but I knew it changed me.  It opened my heart to seek. The occurrence of that dream/vision had nothing to do with religion or believing in God.  It just felt like there was love over that horizon and that my Dad was sending it from wherever.. . All I knew is since that experience I felt different, my heartfelt more full and kinder.   I had something to believe in and it made me feel more solid more confident and grounded.  After feeling such incredible love I knew my life had to change in some ways.  I knew I had to honor that place and the love there.

 But, I had no idea then, what was to come and that this would be the start of an incredible journey I would have no choice but to travel.  

Postscript  Fathers Day June 2017 - and so it has come in all the years since  my fathers death,  that my spiritual journey has shown me incredible things - yet this beginning is the seed of it all. I truly believe the forgiveness and love  that evolved between my father and me after such harsh beginnings  is so powerful that it transcended realms to show me the purpose of my life. The fact that his presence in my life has been stronger after death than when living is proof of this for me.  My fathers spirit has facilitated my own healing in ways it could not in our lifetime together.  I am eternally grateful and have unconditional love for him my greatest teacher.  I honor his lessons with my life.
I love you Daddy!

Peace and love,
Georgia Rose