WHY YOU'RE NOT FORSAKEN
Something culminated in me, in all my mental darkness—a kizuki, a realization I had hungered for my entire life.
I want to tell you about it. And I wish I could without using the word "God." But this might be one of those pieces where I just can’t beat around the bush.
So read on, if you feel you have some kind of relationship, near or far, with a Higher Source: God, Goddess, Universe, Life Boss—whatever you call it in the sanctuary of your heart.
Swipe left if you have resistance or aversion to any such belief or terminology, if for you what you see is all there is. We can still be friends, of course. Just that this one might not be for you.
The strange thing is, I’m not religious, nor have I ever been. Spiritual, yes—in the sense that I love to explore my inner terrain, beyond body and thought, into consciousness itself. Before I dove headfirst into yoga and Indian philosophy in my twenties, the only language I had for such things—even if poetic and metaphorical—was Christian.
That’s because my parents, though not religious, sent me to the cheapest international schools they could find in Tokyo—which happened to be Catholic elementary and Christian middle and high schools.
Maybe that exposure has contributed somewhat to my why. I did grow up with my own personal sense of God—or Source, or Universe, whatever you wish to call it. My dad, a hardcore atheist, never did. My mom was a part-time churchgoer. Neither mattered to me. My relationship to Source was mine alone, as personal as my relationship to Santa Claus once was.
Except—Santa never let me down.
God sure did.
Santa gave me that bright yellow bicycle I dreamed of, that exact year that I wanted it.
God didn’t protect me from the parental divorce that tore my world apart.
God also didn’t protect my mother from her neurological illness, or guide me through the torturous years of ambiguous grief that followed.
I had to figure my own way out. And through. I had to carve my own way through this cold, hard life, because no one else would support me. Not my parents. Not nature. Not God. Just good old dogged effort, the kind where you just keep trying until something works.
I felt forsaken.
I felt forsaken when I married someone I thought would finally keep me safe—and he turned out to be the greatest moral failure of my life.
I felt forsaken when I finally began to heal, and I remarried a man who loved me purely, deeply. And then lost him instantly in a traffic accident just a few years later.
My heart screamed its own version of “Eloi, Eloi, why have you forsaken me?”
The way Jesus cried on the cross.
This is a big one for me—maybe the biggest one. My whole life, this theme has followed me: the belief in separation from Source.
In my world, I was separate from Source because God was that "external, unseen force" I'd write to, the same way I wrote letters to Santa Claus. I felt separate from Source because I was taught that "God would reward me if I was a good girl." I felt separate from Source because I felt abandoned by this greater flow; I felt alone in my suffering every time something hard—real hard—happened in my life.
In fact, I have come to understand that this is, in essence, one of the deepest human illusions.
The belief that there is an external God watching over us, protecting or rewarding us for being good. This shit runs deep. It’s passed through parents, schools, churches, and even moral codes.
And yet I maintain: it is not true.
This, for me, was an incremental kizuki—the realization that separation itself is an illusion. I needed to warm up to it. Because, well, ... could it be?
If separation is an illusion, then surely, there is no separation not only between me and you, but between us humanity and Source.
It sounds rationally correct, right? To say, well of course, there is no separation, there is only All-That-Is. There can be no God outside of us if All-That-Is is All There Is.
Meaning, everyone is Source expressing itself.
There is no “I deserve goodness because I've worked hard,” because there is no external God to reward you like a parent would.
“I deserve to be rewarded” is a mis-aimed thought, born from the idea of separation.
Entitlement becomes irrelevant when All-That-Is is all there is. There would be no "other" to claim the entitlement from.
I don't mean any of this to sound philosophical.
It's actually quite literal.
There is just one Being. One You. One Big Us.
And there is no “I am forsaken,” because every time we’re grieving or crying, feeling lost or alone—God is in the tears. God is in the grief. God is in the cry. God is omnipresent, always, and in the agony just as much as the joy and love. Love loves all. ALL. Period. No discrimination.
What’s left, then?
You might ask?
When the rug's been pulled out from under the hard-core belief in hard work and struggle to carve it out, WTF is left for me?
If nothing is so separate that you or I would have to work hard to achieve it and be rewarded, and everything is here and available,
Then, I have concluded as of late,
The only thing to "do" is a "non-doing," because it is Allowing.
Allowing What Is—fully, without resistance.
That's all there is to "do."
Because allowing What Is expands our capacity to be as vast as we truly are. And as One as we truly are with All-That-Is, beginning with whatever is right in front of my face, in the here and now.
To receive What Is.
Without resistance.
Just to be it,
To be in it,
And let it be.
And to express from That,
When it arises,
As it arises,
In purity.
That’s all there is.
And guess what?
Even that doesn’t guarantee goodness.
It doesn’t guarantee reward. It doesn't guarantee perpetual happiness.
It guarantees only the Knowing of What Is—in all its colors.
But ... wouldn't you agree?
Isn't that enough?
That’s the peace of Santosha: contentment without condition.
And that's enough for me.