A Birthday Lesson from Amach

Excerpt from "The Spirit Bundle”, Chapter 14, Birthday Lesson
(This is the second novel of my "Sacred Bundle Series". Selena and Flyn are traveling from South Dakota to California. They have honored the passing of his Grandfather, Eagle Boy, and will return in a year for the Wiping of Tears and Return of the Spirit Ceremonies. Flyn has been given the task of keeping his grandfather's Spirit Bundle for this period of time. Here is the automatic writing session in which Amach, Selena's long time spirit guide, offers a teaching about honoring oneself.  )

            The next day, when it was my turn to sleep, I sat on the bed across the back of the van and tried to review all my feelings and sensations. I knew I was cranky, but I also felt old, tired, used, sad, and God only knew what else. That’s when it came to me. My birthday had come and gone without my realizing it. 

            Disappointment flooded through me. Then I got mad. “That was it?” I thought. “That was all there was to hitting a major life milestone? I turned 60 and no one remembered? Not even me?” Here was a date I’d been preparing for, agonizing over, and waiting to step into for two years. Since I’d turned 59, I’d been announcing to everyone I knew I was going to turn a corner and pass into another decade of life. And, when it had happened, I had been so involved in Flyn’s life and the drama around his granddad’s passing, I hadn’t felt the shift, or celebrated it, or sobbed over it. I had forgotten the damn date.

            I sighed. On the other hand, I had turned 60 and had not instantly become an old woman. My breasts and butt hadn’t sagged any farther south. My hair wasn’t any greyer.  I didn’t have any more facial wrinkles; well maybe a few, since I hadn’t been doing my regular skin care. All in all, I had gone through the proverbial eye of the needle without screaming or screeching my resistance.

            “Be honest,” I whispered to myself, "you made it, old girl, and you're none the worse for wear." Tears swelled. “Oh, now, Selena. What are these for?” I asked myself. I searched underneath the wonder of sidestepping a wart growing on the end of my nose. There drifted a truth. Not only had Flyn overlooked my 60^th birthday, as well as I, but no other person had called or left a voice mail message, not my mother, my kids, my friends. No one.

            Tears dripped. My nose clogged. I searched pockets for a tissue and found a used one in my jeans wrapped around a ball point pen. Having sunk into myself, I barely felt Amach fitting herself between my cells, a sensation so different than when I was pulled into her body, her life. This feeling of fullness was accompanied by a gentle nudge at the front of my skull, letting me know I needed to find a piece of paper to go with the pen I’d just found. A teaching was coming from the essence of Amach who was like my overseer, my over soul. I scrambled for my journal in my back pack and readied myself for her wise words  whispering truths I needed to read as I wrote them.

            I’m here.

            “I feel you,” I thought.

            And I feel your sadness.

            “I don’t really want to talk about it.” Tears clung to my eye lashes. I felt embarrassed that I was crying over no one remembering my birthday, even me.

            I want to talk about it.

            I squirmed. “Why?”

            Because your point of view is invalid, out of context with being in balance.

            Annoyance clouded my feelings. “I can feel anyway I want to,” I said out loud, then slunk back on the bed, hoping Flyn hadn’t heard.

            True, but, when it stands in the way of your being all you can be, it is close to a travesty. You are holding sadness without reason, because you cannot see beyond your ego which thinks it is bruised.

            “Well, isn’t it? I turned 60, for God’s sake, a landmark, and no one cared.”

            This is true. But even you did not remember the day when it passed.

            I heaved a sigh. “I know,” I said, suffering another cascade of tears.

            Now you are practicing being a martyr.

            I thought, “Now, I’m going to stop writing if you don’t stop picking on me.”        
           No, you won’t. You’re too curious a person. You won’t let go until I leave you because you might miss something.

            I grinned and sniffed. “Got me! But, stop labeling my feelings. They just are, and I feel them.”

            True again. But you are on the verge of becoming them. Feelings are signposts for taking an emotional temperature. Extreme negative feelings are signs you are dwelling in the place of ego and are out of balance. Sadness, anger, frustration and the like are only telling you something needs to be looked at more closely. Time for a self-perception lesson.

            “So my point of view, as you call it, or what I call feeling sad and angry because everyone forgot my birthday, is a message for me to stop thinking of myself?”

            It’s more about starting to love yourself.

            I scratched my ear. “Go on.” A shift occurred inside me, and I thought, “Did I just fell you sigh?”

            Just write this down. Any day can be a day to honor yourself. Any moment can be a moment when you love yourself for your beingness. Any body can be celebrated for its uniqueness and miraculous existence. A birthday is simply a mark in time that can remind you to do it yearly.

            You can choose gratitude for the gift of your life every second of every day. Without your body, your spirit could not walk on the earth plane and do your work, learn your lessons, embrace your passions.

            Without your mind, you could not cipher your numbers, imagine paintings or stories. Without your emotions you could not sense the shifts in yourself and bring yourself into a point of balance.

            Without loving yourself, you cannot know when someone else is giving you love or how to love another.

            “Phew!” I was writing frantically, until she stopped; then I read her words. A different kind of tears filled my eyes. “Oh,” was all I could say.

            Don’t be so hard on your family. Remember . . . you chose them to help you learn this lesson.

            I waited. This couldn’t be the punch line, but she was gone. I was alone.