Did you ever see that episode of Night Gallery where Joan Crawford plays a wealthy blind woman who’ll do anything to be able to see? She’s very mean, very crazy, very bitter - and no one really likes her but they kiss her ass because she has money? No, not Faye Dunaway’s marvelous spectacle with the bulging eyes and the wire hangers. I’m talking about the real Joan Crawford in early color TV.
Anyway, so Joan plays this blind woman. She’s been blind her whole life and is desperate to be able to see. Her doctor tells her the only way that it might be possible is if he performs a transplant by using someone else’s eyes. Living tissue, of course, no cadavers, please. She’s elated with this news, but has to blackmail Doc to get him to do it. With nary a care for anyone else, she offers to pay some exorbitant amount to a poor-vulnerable- and-hence-makes-her-worse man for his eyes. He’s so desperate that he agrees - and with all this delicious devilishness afoot, the surgery is performed.
Joan can hardly wait to take off the bandages and counts the slowly ticking minutes by the chimes on her clock. Finally, the time is at hand. She breathlessly removes the bandages only to find that she is still in the dark and can’t see a thing. She thinks she’s still blind, but what she can’t see is that there’s a blackout and the whole city has gone dark. She stumbles around her apartment in a fevered frenzy and finally freefalls out the penthouse window into a grisly splat. Re-enter Rod with a witty wrap-up about being careful what you wish for.
The moral of the story, from Lisa’s view? We have to be ready for what we receive and recognize it; otherwise it could all go to shit.
Hold on, I’m not being a hypocrite. I’m just making a clarification so we don’t wind up face-down on the concrete like our high-end friend. I know I’ve been telling you all along that everything we want and need is waiting for us out there in the great cosmos and it’s ours simply for the asking. And it is, I promise you. But we still have to do our part, and our part is the awareness. From self-awareness comes understanding; from understanding, harmony; from harmony comes peace; and from peace within comes peace without. That’s how our spiritual system works.
The failure to recognize our good is as much a spiritual kind of blindness as it is physical. We often don’t see what’s right in front of us, because we’re expecting something else.
Like this laptop I’m using. Typing away, being spiritual and all that. It’s a brand new Mac, complete with all the programs I don’t know how to use. A few months ago, my old laptop started to bug out. You know that slow descent into the big crash/black screen? I thought about how I needed to get a new one, and that I would probably get a Mac after I saved up all my pennies.
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So time passes by. I continue using my PC, content and happy that at least it’s still kickin’ and I have a handy back-up drive just in case. Then, lo and behold, I get a sweet corporate contract gig, and they give me a new Mac. No desktop, no PC, no clone. It was like the Universe saying, “here you go, Lisa.” Not only do I now have state-of-the-art technology at my fingertips, I have a way to pay for my new laptop when I do need to buy one. Isn’t that nice?
I could easily go off on a negative tangent and say it’s not really mine (like some of you probably are), but what would that accomplish? I needed it, I got it and it’s serving its purpose. What does it matter than I didn’t actually “buy” it? If I went down that road, then I might as well leave it at the office every night and use my trusty relic – in which case you’d probably have to wait another two weeks before I finished this piece. But I choose to accept the gift that was given, instead of trying to dissect it with variables of human logic that talk us right out of our spirituality.
I tell you this not to prove that I am in complete harmony. I tell you this because it’s part of my journey, just as you have yours. I am not some Zen-like creature who has the luxury or desire to sit on a lotus pad and contemplate existentialism. If you’ve ever read this column, you know the spirit-trapped-inside-a-human dance I do. The one we all do. The only difference may be that I’ve been practicing active awareness a little longer so I’ve learned to see things more clearly - and I’m sharing it on these pages.
So, let me share that first part again – only the crux of my whole column, now that I’m almost at the end. (That’s how perfect I am.) I was happy with my old PC, appreciative that it did what I needed it to do no matter how slow or ancient it might be. I did not smack it…okay I did; but I did not lament its age or its limitations. I was happy to have it, and still am. That’s when I got what I needed.
That’s what I mean by being ready to receive. We create our future by living in the present, by accepting and appreciating where we are right now - in our journey and in our lives. By taking that leap of faith to say – and believe - “I know this will change,” and seeing it when it does. No matter how long the blinders have been on.
Looking forward,
Lisa V.
