Discernment, Marmalade Jelly, and a Chocolate Malt with God

Discernment, Marmalade Jelly, and a Chocolate Malt with God: A Rant

CAUTION: Late-night, can't-sleep rant, inspired by a dream of friends sitting in a circle with spoons and a jar of marmalade jelly...

When you've had it up to your tit chakra with life's challenges, cursing the total abandonment of your discernment - that once was as clear as your best friend's voice in a game of "hotter/colder." It's now about as compelling as an apathetic babysitter just off her swing shift stocking shelves at Sam’s Club, muttering guidance for her version of the hotter/colder game: ‘tepid and meh’ - whilst itching to be done with you so she can get to a rave.

When you decide that you just want peace and the return of the hotter/colder discernment that you had as a child, guiding you to the certainty of 'next' – not the next of what to be when you grow up, who to marry, or what to do next weekend, tomorrow, or later today – just the comfortable, infallible knowing of what to do in the next moment.

The First Lesson of Discernment: Anything that tells you anything about any time other than NOW is just a voice in your head lying to you. It might end up being right, but that's just coincidence. True, true, and unrelated.

When you get just a taste of that peaceful, easy, delicious guidance that makes you wonder if perhaps you're not really broken after all, and maybe you really are safe – perhaps even an unfuckwithable, blank canvas of Life's expression – then you start to ache for that feeling. Like the simple deliciousness of a spoonful of Marmalade Jelly with your best friend.

When you find it, you have no choice but to protect your life from the contrast of its absence. Like shot-gunning the shit out of a bird that starts pecking at the breadcrumbs laid by whatever Grace or Guardian Angel that was sent to help you find your way back home.

When you want peace, you dig for its soft pearls in life’s steaming piles of manure, rather than shoveling crap on top of the effortless treasures you’ve discovered that were hidden in-plain-sight.

When you want peace, you’ll hump the leg of whatever or whomever focuses on your sparkly parts and delights in your madness, as if your madness is the secret password to the island of whatever makes us all the same.

You choose people and things that sweeten the soil that blooms who you want to become.

You choose clarity, not confusion.

You choose the freedom of your human potential, not the prison of your past.

You choose the relief of 'come as you are,' not the trepidation of falling short of the made-up expectations of others, or the ones you've created for yourself.

You choose the acceptance, understanding, patience, and compassion of fellow scoundrels, not the rewriting of history by hypocrites escaping accountability.

Some would rather guard their heart than guard their peace. But when you get a taste of peace, anything that takes you away from it feels intolerable.

It feels like smiling, not surviving.

It feels like gratitude, not grief.

It feels like being chosen, not an option.

It feels like who you want to be, not who you never want to be again.

It looks like the soft beckoning light of a beacon on the shore of a safe place to land, not the harsh warning flare to keep away from a train wreck.

It feels like snort-laughing at someone's attempt to guilt-trip you for your intolerance of their shitty, abusive behavior, because you refuse to exchange one minute of your life for anything that atrophies your sovereignty.

It feels like the clear discernment of immediate closure the minute someone treats you in a way that your mom, or the mom you should have had, could not fathom.

As long as you have a heartbeat...

if you seek peace over the good opinion of others;

if you seek the relief of just being, over striving to abide by the world's 'ought tos’;

if you seek gratitude for your courage to never compromise integrity for the validation of those who harsh your mellow, living lives you don’t want;

if you ache for the hotter/colder discernment you were born with to come rushing back in, so you can find your way home again to the only thing that matters – yourself;

then you will eventually find everything you seek because you've re-discovered the compass that takes you there.

No one who wants that, and finds it, would be able to consider it an option and let it slip away. Rediscovering your discernment is the end of confusion, frustration, and insecurity… like meeting God at the park swings on Tuesday at 4:30 for a chocolate malt, Her treat, because She wanted to remind you: "Oh Sugar, you’re tryin’ so hard. I'm always telling you everything you want to know (and some hilarious dad jokes) if you'd only listen to that thing I gave you from the moment you came to this place.”

It's as simple as: this feels good, that feels bad. It's as simple as hunger – eat; thirst – drink; tiredness – rest; restlessness – move; loneliness – company… (and if it's loneliness – swallow your pride and tell someone that you could use a hug.)

Discernment is so obvious and simple that we miss it all the time… it's screaming at us all the time. And when you learn to listen and heed the obvious directions your body and soul are giving you, you remember and regain what you were born with. That's how you know who you can trust, and how you learn to have your own back.

Not everyone is willing to go where they would find peace - too hung up on the need for validation of “my side of the story” from those who cast them as 'the bad guy' in a confabulated account in the first place. Some people would rather guard their heart amongst those who are willing to break it, rather than guard their peace amongst those who support it - even if that means being alone as the only guard at the gate.

Sometimes guarding your peace comes with lots of heart-breaking goodbyes. Apologies are for the apologizer. They have no impact unless it comes from a person who has become something other than the one who was capable of treating you in a way that required an apology.

When you effortlessly deposit your respect, concern, feeding, watering, adoring, patience, friendship, integrity, honesty, humor, talent, and love into a relationship – it should feel like compounded interest, not a withdrawal on your joie de vivre.

(Yes, I realize the non-sequitur of this rant. You're welcome.)

COLDER is when you feel like an option, afterthought, or fixer-upper. HOTTER feels like when the last epithelial cell on the fingernail of your outstretched soul, tickles the boundary between you and everything else, and then you utter the password prayer: "FUCKIT," and the boundary collapses, and things like "options," "afterthoughts," and anything to "fix" no longer make sense.

And you say with a wry smile, compassion, and perhaps a touch of “I know something you don’t know” to anyone who tried to convince you that there was such a thing as being broken:

"I hope someday you'll see it too. Meanwhile, I'll keep your gaslight on for you."