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January-March, 2015

One Miracle Leads to the Next

by Rev. Susan Comello, O.M.C.

Some wild stuff has appeared on my dream-screen in the last year. It was just about a year ago when my world was turned upside down by events which seemed to occur to me. Learning to take 100% responsibility and 0% guilt for these events is a continuing lesson. I was faced with situations which led me to question if I even wanted to be in this life anymore. It all seemed so, so very big and so very painful. So confusing, in fact the only way to describe it all was (and sometimes still feels) incomprehensible. Looking at it with the eyes of the ego, it all seemed so real and so very unfair. I am learning, with the help of Holy Spirit, and A Course in Miracles as well as my many conversations with journey partners and Pathways weekly phone meetings/courses, that these seemingly catastrophic events are actually lessons in love, if I choose to be open to Holy Spirit’s interpretation. 

How to begin? This fear of “beginning” to share has kept me from writing many times in the last year. How can I share about such seemingly “shameful” things in the eyes of the world? What can I say? As I come back into awareness of never being abandoned by Love or the Holy Spirit, I am receiving messages that tell me that perhaps it is time to take this step of actually writing about it.

Over the past 24 years of being part of Pathways, I have heard Robert and Mary say many times, “I can hardly wait to see the good that comes from this.” Sometimes that seems so far-fetched when the world and its problems seem so very real. But I hear the message echo in my mind as I come back to the Light and thank you God, because I am beginning to see the good that has come from this challenging part of my life. 

The first few months were a blur. I remember being in shock and everything seemed muffled and yet blaring. I would blurt out what happened to anyone who happened to be around me as I tried to just get through a day or a night. Or, I would hide in shame, afraid everyone would “know.” I just did not know what to do with myself. I suffered. I had much support, for which I am so grateful, but still I felt alone, devastated (almost), and very much like a victim. “Why God? Am I being punished? Why have you taken so much from me?”

Many feelings of grief and loss came and went over the next 6-8 months. Sometimes, I would remember that this is all a dream, the realizations coming in moments when I let Spirit come through. Still, the feeling of loss persisted. I still felt like a victim of events caused by people “outside” of myself. I prayed to Holy Spirit to show me what I needed to learn. After all these years of opening to the teachings of the Course, I had faith that somehow, somehow, this is all for my good. I slowly opened to the possibility that all this really would bring about more love and peace in my life. It really was a case of taking it on faith, because the outer world continued to show me circumstances that were pretty horrible, in the ego sense. Thank God, Holy Spirit is always here for us and never gives up loving us unconditionally when we are willing to hear the Voice for God,

I guess one of the first realizations I had about “why” this happened was when I asked Holy Spirit the purpose of these events. It wasn’t a specific answer, exactly. I started to see patterns in my life of times when I had made other people and my relationships with them as my source of happiness. In other words, how I let special relationships rule my life. It started as a very young child, as I grew up believing that I was not loved. I learned to behave in ways that would bring me love or approval. With Holy Spirit’s help, I started to see that I had spent my life looking for love outside of my Self. 

My relationships were never happy for long, if ever. When I found “the love of my life” 11 years ago and we married, I thought, “Ok, here is the good one, the right one, the one I’ve been waiting for.” But the ego was still in charge, I am realizing. The marriage became my identity, rather than Oneness with God and all my brothers. I put him as the source of my happiness. I ignored certain feelings or thoughts that there were problems. I chose to stay in the relationship based on fear. I feared loosing love, of being alone. I feared uncertainty. I didn’t want to be single again and I didn’t want to not know what was going to happen. Spirit showed me, after the “storm” that all of my life had been spent looking for love outside of myself instead of within. 

The messages were there all throughout my life, like when I first got married at 19, Spirit tried to reach me by saying “What am I doing? This feels wrong!” but I continued with the “show” because this man (also 19) was the first person who ever said “I love you” and surely that was all I ever needed in life. (Needless to say, that marriage ended long ago.) Spirit is now showing me how I had done the same type of thing over and over. I didn’t ask Spirit for guidance, and when I did, I usually did what I was going to do anyway. I continued to make choices where I thought I would find happiness and security from other people. And then, after decades of these kinds of choices, this BIG thing happened. I thought “This is my 2x4 over the head.” I could have listened many times and the lessons would have seemed smaller, but I kept ignoring Spirit. I thought I knew better.

Another layer of this all is another realization: I am full of judgment. This is how this buried belief came to light: My daughter is outspoken and very direct. We have had many lessons together in the last 36 years. We have gone through this challenge together in some ways, because it effects our whole family.  She has often been very supportive but it has come out that she feels burdened by my difficult situation. She has felt resentful that my (now) ex-husband’s actions have upended our family and that I have been so sad or needy, at times. We muddle through these strange, uncharted issues in ways which are not always pretty. She is my greatest teacher. 

Recently, we were trying to communicate with each other, not at all agreeing, when suddenly I remembered something from the course I am doing with some other Pathways members, called Healing Through Forgiveness. In this, we are reminded of the message from the Course which asks us to consider the question, “Would you rather be right or happy?” As she talked, I paused. I asked Spirit for help. I heard, “I think she believes she is “right”. OH! And so, I relaxed a bit, feeling a bit of understanding. Next I heard, “Perhaps I, too, think I am the one who is right”. WOW! The “interesting” thing I began to understand over the next week or so, after more conversations with her and other supporting friends and journey-partners, is that, in truth, I believe I am right pretty much ALL the time!! 

Holy Spirit “showed” me, I could feel it as a wave of light and understanding, across the events of my whole life, that deep down inside of me, I believe I am right. There have been many times over the years where I have caught myself being judgmental or arguing my point because I believed I was right. But this was way beyond that. This was a base belief, from which I have lived my life, I usually do not truly consult Holy Spirit, because I believe that my way, which appears to be, for the most part, very loving and peace oriented, is RIGHT. Until now, though, I have not been conscious of how deeply this belief has been buried and how it has run my life

I saw that the difficult relationships, and especially my marriage, are the result of the belief that I am right. I believed that I knew what was supposed to happen, how things were supposed to look and how people were supposed to act. If they fulfilled my expectations (another way of saying, if they appeared “right” or “good” based on ego’s judgment), then I was happy. When they did not, oh-oh!

I have not been aware of how this has dominated my life and led up to this seemingly huge events of the last year. In worldly views, this was life-shattering. But in the eyes of Spirit, it is nothing, simply an example of how the ego has been ruling my life, but I was unwilling to see it. I am now willing to see it. It is nothing. In Truth, there is no harm. In Truth, many wonderful lessons, way too numerous to write about here, have brought joy and peace and a sense of freedom. The “good” has come! 

I even remember to laugh as I write this little ego drama. A few months ago when a friend suggested I might laugh at all of this someday, I actually was offended that she could be so insensitive as to suggest that this great tragedy was something that could be seen as funny. And as I write now, I laugh out loud with gratitude and joy that I have been shown the light. Though it all seemed so real and so difficult, it was really nothing. It was simply me projecting out the beliefs that I had from childhood which were blocks to Love, the real Love of Oneness with God and all brothers. And the security that I wanted so badly from the ego is replaced with freedom and light-heartedness.

The fear that has ruled my life is still there a little, I guess. But I KNOW Holy Spirit is completely loving. I KNOW the source of love is within me. The other players in this drama are not harmed either. We have all grown in love and this is the only way. Spirit does not harm.. The ego saw harm and loss and experienced suffering. Love sees only love. I am in the gentle healing flow of Love, as we all are. Thank you God for everything,

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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