By Marguerite Jill Dye
Inspiration may strike at the oddest hour betwixt and between deep sleep and dreams, then an idea floats into my head and I have to get up. It can’t be ignored. If I don’t jump up out of bed right then and I mull it over again and again, by the time I’m ready to write it down, it isn’t there. It’s left my head. But if I get up while it’s fresh, I sit down at my computer desk and pray for the muse to return to me. When it returns, I type word for word, not knowing where my writing may lead. If I’m uncertain, I pause and request confirmation and further guidance.
Whenever I sit before the white screen, patiently waiting for words that don’t come, I dress and go outside for a walk or bike ride to freshen my mind. Then I see a lively gymnast squirrel, a red fox dart, or a song bird chirp. The sun rises up over the trees, shining across the mountaintops. A new day dawns promising beauty, action, interaction, and new ideas. I’ve learned to appreciate these simple things that make daily life so interesting. I anticipate feeling joie de vivre while seeing old friends and meeting new people. By setting intention to have a great day, it unfolds smoothly and falls into place.
However, as we all know, being human comes with difficult days rather often. When challenges to my peace arise I take a deep breath and consciously decide to remain calm and try to perceive the problem from a higher perspective. It isn’t easy, that’s for sure, but it’s getting easier each time I try.
It reminds me of when I was a girl in the woods of Vermont as we built our own ski house. We followed my dad manifesting his dream on weekends from our New Jersey home. Every weekend was an adventure, indeed, helping my parents and exploring the woods. Once in a while, as a child, I’d get upset and want to escape. When I was older, like most teens, I’d get riled up about not much. Perhaps I’d been told what I should do or received a guilt trip for this or that. Whenever I felt that I would explode, I’d stomp out of our tent or later, basement, feeling sorry for myself. I marched through the woods, huffing and puffing, to my destination where I sat down to brood — inside the tiny wooden house where a Sears Roebuck catalog hung from a string and elegant travel posters plastered the walls. But soon, my attention was drawn outside, past the half-moon cutout in the open door, through the door frame to the sights, sounds, and scents of the natural world from our outhouse.
Pico Peak peeked through fluttering leaves against a periwinkle sky, the trickling brook sang and danced, and my nostrils were filled with pine needle fragrance. All of my troubles blew away on the gentle passing breeze. I couldn’t help but be inspired as I beheld our amazing world that left me feeling like a new girl. So, after a time, I always returned with a bounce in my step and a smile on my face. The transformation renewed my spirit and gifted me with the Outhouse Perspective.
Eventually, pipes and plumbing usurped the hut’s necessity. While away at college, our outhouse disappeared, dismantled and buried beneath leaves and dirt. But whenever I feel overwhelmed, discouraged, mad, or just let down, I go outside and find my place to contemplate and look around. Soon I feel rejuvenated and gain a new perspective, like I did as a girl in a most unlikely place.
As I listened to spiritual teacher Greg Sherwood interview Anita Moorjani in the Hay House World Summit, she talked about her new book, “What If This Is Heaven? How Our Cultural Myths Keep Us From Experiencing Heaven on Earth.” She, too, discovered a new perspective in an unlikely place. While in a coma from end-stage cancer, Anita was aware of rising above her body in the hospital room and going to a higher dimension. She learned that our illnesses are our bodies’ way of trying to communicate with us and that competition limits creativity. She learned the ego is a healthy part of who we are as long as we gain self-awareness, and that we need our ego to fully value ourselves. The ego helps us understand our traits so we can best shine our light on the world. “Who am I? Who have I come here to be?” She understood that heaven is not a place, it is a state of being where “our only work is to value ourselves, love ourselves … and be love in action.”
Many teachers say we return to earth to experience life and learn. Our souls are immortal and yearn to return for the privilege of growing in our earth school. Anita’s father, who had crossed over years before, was there to ask what she’d prefer: to stay in the loving, heavenly realm or return to earth to complete her life purpose. She didn’t know what her purpose was but had flashes of speaking before thousands of people. She had no idea why or what she would say, but she chose to return, and soon was revived.
The doctors were baffled. Her tumors were gone. She rose from her deathbed to recreate her own life. People turned away when she shared her experience. It was contrary to what they’d learned. But when Wayne Dyer heard her speak he immediately took her under his wing, introducing her to the world to share her profound insights. She’d grown up in a foreign culture, in a family from a fear-based society, where the repression of women was a normal thing. She explained how treating women as second class citizens limits girls’ God-given dreams and potential. The repression of women backfires and hurts everyone, not only half of the world.
Another lesson Anita learned is that in our fear-based culture, we learn to fear death, but there is nothing to fear. Death is a continuation of our soul’s life, but without that understanding, we live in fear. It is our choice to live in Hell, which is fear, or Heaven, acknowledging our divine connection. We are one with God and one with one another. All life is interconnected. If we live with the perspective of being who we really are and leave fear behind, our lives and life purpose fall into place and we can transform our life on earth. Can you imagine what we could accomplish with this understanding? We’d work together to eliminate poverty and war, and resolve the root of all of our suffering.
I shared Anita’s story because it empowers us to choose. Do we choose to live in the living Hell of fear, or do we focus on our divine inter-connection and together, create heaven on earth?
Marguerite Jill Dye is an artist, writer and budding philosopher who lives in the Green Mountains of Vermont and on Florida’s Gulf Coast with her husband Duane Finger. She leads creative spiritual retreats in the Killington Dream Lodge and hikes the Appalachian Trail.
