Otis Funkmeyer, The Ph.D. of Popping

So as I mentioned in the previous entry, life has been quite the little roller-coaster for the past week. I haven’t been humbled like this in as long as I can remember. Like hands on knees, why oh why kind of days and nights.

This has eased up slightly and I have realized a couple things that are worth passing on:

• Greatness comes out of weakness, not without weakness.

• If it feels like you’ve hit bottom, you’re on the verge of a breakthrough.

I have been shown parts of myself that I truly would have preferred not to have seen or dealt with. If it had been possible, I think I would have gone my whole life without dealing with these darker sides of myself. Because looking at them, facing them, accepting that these truly are parts of *me*, the same me that I thought was so light-filled and beautiful, isn’t so pretty.

But yet again (and I’m sure it will be again and again and again) I learn that the purpose of life is joy, but that continued joy requires continued expansion and change. So if you are scared to change in a certain direction, whoops, there goes the joy!

This is such a beautiful way for life to work. It’s like on auto-pilot. It’s like ok, make the people enjoy doing this. Check. Now, make them scared of doing that. Check. Now make that sound exciting. Make them wanna do it. Check. Oh shit. Now I want to do something that scares me. And on and on and on and on it goes.

And now, after millenia of being scared and growing, we’re hitting the really tough ones. The collective fears of abundance, sexuality, uncertainty, and total joy and freedom. The ones we have really put the brakes on for so long. And since time is speeding up so much, gearing up for the total collapse of space and time at the end of the 13th cycle of the Mayan Calendar on the Winter Solstice of 2012, we gotta squeeze all those old fears out. So I predict more and more people are going to want to be rich transsexual hedonists, just to get through the fears as quickly as possible!

Here’s a good example. Tonight I went to a spiritual center that just has the most amazing music. It’s live music that makes you want to dance and jump out of your soul (or at least that’s how it makes me feel). And I noticed that not a single person is going crazy dancing. And all I want to do is go crazy dancing. That is the most obvious thing I could think of doing. But no one is doing it, and I don’t want to be the ONE crazy guy in the place, having everyone looking at me. That sounds scary. BUT! That’s what I *WANT* to do. That is the most natural thing, that’s what I would do if I didn’t know the cultural norms, that’s what God is calling me to do. And I didn’t. And that’s weakness. Truly. It may be a perfectly normal, perfectly acceptable and understandable weakness, but it’s weakness nevertheless. And I see now, that when I do this, when I really DO let go and let God and dance my soul off, this is where greatness comes from. It comes from doing the things that most people are too weak to do. Too conditioned and too sheep-like. And so of COURSE greatness is scary. And so of course the PATH to greatness is fraught with breakdowns, periods where you really want to die you’re so scared of what you are being asked to do.

And so all you have to do get to greatness is just go through it. Just keep walking and moving forward, even if some of the time you have your head between your legs as you do so. And stay humble, because staying humble is like staying close to the ground as the bullets whiz by. That ego will get your ass capped, or at least it got my ass capped. And be patient, because like finding love, the going gets tough when you least expect it.

So yah, on the UPSIDE, when you do get capped by that great purifying machine gun of God, you know that things have gotten so bad, you have not taken the gentle nudges for so long, that it was time for your ass to get laid out. And boy does that feel like shit. But at the same time, it means that a change has come, a change that will ULTIMATELY, as in, AFTER THE FACT, feel good, no matter how it feels at the time that it’s happening.

The cool part though is that it encourages you to start taking the nudges more, cuz when you do, you get all the upside of the change without that feeling that can only be described as worse than death.

Me, I’m still going through it. I’m definitely not on the other side of this change yet. But I’m working, striving, learning, and I know that when it’s all said and done, I’m going to be a lot more free, a lot more loving, a lot more humble, and a LOT closer to God. Which is really all I care about at this point.

I am a robot of God!

Let our joy be so triumphant, that we rest in God and say Amen.
Good night.

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So I have really been going through it the past few days. Feeling worthless, unloved, pathetic, a speck of dust in some stupid cosmic game.

It’s funny too, because I just wrote an e-mail to all my friends and acquaintances about the power of belief systems and love and a whole bunch of other stuff that has seemed far, far away as of late.

It has been a real humility giver this one. I really thought I had it figured out. I told my dad that I thought I had maybe a couple things to clear up and then I was done. Enlightenment here I come. I got so cocky I started thinking I could handle even a seemingly scary thing like homelessness with no problems, no issues, piece of cake.

Oooooh boy.

Anyway, I’m not going to go into it, but homelessness kicked my ass. It was NOT easy for me to fall asleep not knowing who or what could appear while I slept helplessly. At the same time, shouldn’t I have just been able to use the power of mind to send out vibrations of love and fall asleep easily, knowing that all is well.

That’s what I thought would happen anyway. Turns out that no, that did not happen. Instead, my mind would not let me fall asleep, every noise sent out a new flood of fear-based adrenaline, as I laid there, awake, until I just passed out due to sheer exhaustion, waking up only a few hours later, unable to fall back asleep and thrust into the stupor that I would spend the remainder of the day in.

So this for whatever reason thrust me into a whole spade of life issues that I didn’t even remember I had. Fears and inadequacies and a whole host of reasons that I was worthy of self-hatred. I eventually had to call a friend and was extremely graciously (thank you thank you thank you 1000 times over) given a place to stay and good food. When I saw my friend, I immediately burst into tears in a way that I don’t remember doing since childhood. We’re talking minutes of all-out sobbing.

Anyway, this wasn’t even the worst of it. This was followed by days of numbness and despair, wondering (in the most negative way) what the point of life is and if I was ever gonna make it through this one.

But boy have I been given some lessons. I learned that I do not have A DAMN THING figured out. I may have discovered a trick or two, cast a few spells, but I am right in the thick of it just like everyone else. So no matter how much I teach other people or encourage them to live the life of God, I am mostly just talking to and encouraging myself. And that’s fine, as long as I remember!

I learned how much deep self-hatred I have had. How much I have not really loved myself. The time has come. I have always thought that maybe I had an attraction to men. I didn’t realize how much shame I felt about this and how conflicted I was. I have always thought I could be a little more physically flexible– but I didn’t realize how much I sent thoughts of worthlessness and hatred to my body.

So after almost collapsing today, I retreated into a room, laid down, started breathing, and went through my body, sending hearts and roses and I love yous to every part. My hips and butt, my neck and shoulders, my elbows and ankles and toes. I sent love to my thoughts and my desires, to my actions and dreams, to my shortcomings and hangups.

But what am I really getting at here. What do I want to say. Why do I feel these feelings. This is what I want to say.

I want to say that this is why we are here. We are here to move forward and to learn and to grow. And that the reason to live for joy and to follow your excitement and your heart is not the pat answer that I thought it was.

You follow your joy because that is what is specifically designed to knock you head-f’in-first into your next wall, your next barrier, your next limitation. And the only way I can see out of looking at life as one endless journey toward limitation after limitation seems to be HUMILITY.

Because when it comes down to it, what really gets me each time is thinking that PHEW! that last time was tough, but I DID IT! I crossed the threshold, jumped over the final hurdle, and now I’m home free. But that’s just another illusion. After every completion is a new beginning. That’s the nature of life, just like it’s the nature of fractals.

And even if you DO cross every hurdle, then you have a whole new set of astral hurdles to cross over oh wide-eyed human voyager! So I’m learning, little by little, to accept this. To see that this is the way it goes and that this is the way it is.

That no matter how much I think I understand, that no matter how high I’m riding, there’s another hurdle waiting to cut me down if I don’t have the humility to remember that Brit, the personality structure physically typing these keystrokes, is nothing more than a dream of the Cosmic Dreamer.

Buddha told his disciples to love each member of humanity equally, as you would your lover or your family. He suggested this because he knew that due to the immense number of life cycles each soul has gone through, every single person on Earth has been near and dear to you at one moment or another. Wow.

Here’s to loving yourself and staying humble. Amen.

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