I had always thought of myself as a good person perceived by others to be the same. Suddenly I felt like a really bad person. All I had done fell plummeted upon me. Overwhelmed with guilt and shame I began to cry. The pain in my heart grew more intense as I felt myself falling into a pit of darkness and despair. Crunched over and gripping my gut-wrenched belly in pain, I stumbled onto my knees and sobbed helplessly. My face became reddened and streaked with tears and mucous. Apathetically, I surrendered. Like all “good” sinners, I deserved to be punished. I thought I was a good person but apparently I was bad; lying to myself and everyone else. How could I be so blind as to deceive and betray myself? Could different layers of me simultaneous exist within myself that harbored varying agendas, some good some bad? I did not know who I was anymore and feared what else I would discover about my secret reality. All I knew was I was losing the grip on life I had worked so hard to establish and it had turned out to be a false grip. Overcome by the anguish that accompanied the fear of my true identity, I felt my being spiraling into a dark abyss, what seemed like an endless hole penetrating deep into the earth where everything goes when it dies. Above the hole, we call it depression.
When I reached what I suppose was the bottom of the pit, I found myself totally alone and terrified; no sign of life around me and no escape. My only company was my conscience which began to beat me to a pulp. Mentally squirming in guilt and regret over words and deeds that were said and done and could never be taken back. How I lamented them so… The pain and suffering bled from my soul. It seemed to have no end. I began to smell death and feared I would die. Maybe I was in hell. At a minimum I was imprisoned, serving a penance, stripped of everything but the air that filled my lungs. My ego had succeeded in making a fool out of me. Overcome by fear bordering panic, I now closed my eyes and begged for God’s forgiveness and mercy. My pride, arrogance and self-created sense of omnipotence had landed me on a false mountain top creating the majestic mountain from which I would plunge into a state of deep despair and a profound sense of failure. Embraced by humiliation and misery, I scolded myself before God; a sort of verbal flagellation. In the midst of my soul’s grieving, broken and whimpering for redemption the blackness I experienced began to gain color increasingly so until with all of my senses I began to experience a transformation in which my loathsome, dirty being began to transform, to metamorphose into a sensual, beautiful, naked woman whose body formed the bud and center of a thriving, blooming and voluptuous flower with robust petals; and I became one with the breath of life itself as the flower vibrant and exuberant swayed and danced within the breeze . Awed, amazed yet dumbfounded and baffled, I questioned, ‘I love flowers but what does this have to do with what I was experiencing?’
The vision and experience persisted. I had become one with a colorful blossomed beautiful, feminine woman flower.
Within minutes, my hell had been transformed into paradise. My agony into ecstasy. How could this be?
Suddenly, a loving voice within me began to speak saying,
“Never has an ugly flower existed; only a being who did not know how to appreciate it.
Everything is a gift from the Creator, even a dry leaf,
Fill yourself with gratitude and you shall have abundance.
What is abundance? A heart that feels fulfilled. “
Categories: Real Life Stories