A Miraculous Life

So, let me tell you about this magical journey I have been on.

For many years I have been attempting to write the story of my life, in particular, share the miracle that transformed my life November 23rd, 1991. It was, incidentally, the night that George Bush, Sr. took the decision to attack Iraq in the first Gulf War.

On that glorious day, I saw the face of God.

It came in the form of a magnificent, truly awesome vision of Jesus Christ, in full colour, on a cloud in the sky over Maui.

He was dressed in white, with a red mantle over his shoulder, his long auburn hair flowing over his shoulders, his hands in an attitude of prayer. He was praying for us.

I was in a car with four other people. We all watched in stunned silence as the cloud on which his image was painted in full colour passed majestically across the ocean.

This lovely image had been preceded by an image of an angel, its tiny wings resting on the edge of a cloud, looking upwards.

I thought I was hallucinating, so I stayed silent. But after a long period of silence, I finally asked my friend if she saw what I saw. “Yes, Shelora, I see the angel,” she answered.

I was not crazy. Four people were in the car. They all saw it.

And so, after the image of the angel on the cloud passed away, and, a few minutes later, the image of Jesus appeared, we said nothing. What could be said? The beauty and the reverence of it was beyond words.

Afterwards, in answer to my question of why I had been chosen to see this wonder, I discovered A Course in Miracles, the Voice of the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God, speaking through Christ, which has become my constant companion over the past eighteen years.

I want the world to know about the joy that knowing Jesus in such an intimate, gentle, yet majestic way has brought to my life.

Yet something stopped me.

Every time I came close to speaking my truth in public, I retreated. I felt afraid that you would reject me as a liar, a scam, a fraud; I would be scorned and humiliated, scoffed at and mocked. Nobody would believe me.

I would, in essence, be crucified for speaking my truth, just like Jesus.

After years of healing work, I finally traced it back to an incident in my Kindergarten, when, entranced with my ability to draw, to make stories and pictures, and longing for the art materials to do so at home, I took a package of crayons from the stock room at school, and was told I was a thief, and spanked for it.

In that humiliating moment I decided I was a bad girl and deserved to be punished.
I have been royally punishing myself in one form or another, creating attack and injustice ever since.

But you would never have known it.

My parents never knew what had happened that day in Kindergarten. As far as they were concerned, I was a friendly, happy, trusting little girl, the teacher’s pet, a straight “A” student. They never knew that the other children waited for me after school, held me down, washed my face with snow, tied me up and left me in garages or under bridges, called me names, blamed for breaking windows, and anything else that they did not want to take responsibility for. I did not realize that I was being bullied, or that there was anything I could do about it. My fate had already been decided. I was a “fairy.” And I was a bad girl who deserved to be punished.

But I was determined that no one would ever know. I would never be humiliated like that again. I would show them!

From the age of three I had been on stage, surrounded in my home by famous artists, actors, dancers and musicians, a glamourous life, indeed. I learned to live in the world of fantasy. I became the best pretender in the world, a consummate actress. As I got older, it appeared I had talent, and I loved the theatre.

So I hid out in the spotlight.

I became an actress and a dancer.

When I was sixteen, I auditioned for and was accepted by the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal, one of only seven girls and seven boys chosen from across Canada. That year, at sisteen, I appeared with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, playing Titania in a Midsummer Night’s Dream.

While I was suceeding at creating an acting career, I was failing miserably in Grade Eleven Math. Facing the need to repeat a year, instead, I dropped out of school and went off to Europe for four months, before returning to Montreal to attend the National Theatre School.

After graduating, I moved to Vancouver and acquired four university degrees, including a teaching degree.

However, that conviction that I was bad and guilty and deserved to be punished was still running in the background of my life, sabotaging every shot I had at success.

Believe me,  there was no shortage of evidence in the events in my world to confirm that that was so. From the age of five onwards, circumstances transpired that proved to me that there was no God. There could be no God. Otherwise how could these horrible attacks and abuses have been allowed to happen to me?

Of course, I took no responsibility for what a five year old child had decided all those years ago. I was not even aware that my decision was there, running my life, colouring everything that happened to me, creating seemingly undeserved, unjustified attack, out of the blue, again and again.

As a child of nine, I was stalked in the woods, and a young man attempted to rape me. After that I was molested from age ten to eleven, by a 27 year old former Nazi movie actor who was a tenant in my Jewish mother’s home.

As I matured into a lovely young woman, I became adept at giving men what I thought they wanted: my beauty, my innocence, and my sexuality. By the time I was fifteen, I was having affairs with fifty year old famous men. Since I had grown up surrounded by such people, I thought this was what was normal if I was to become like the beautiful divas that graced my home as a child.

But the dream of fame turned sour as I grew older.

By the time I was in my thirties, despite all the talent I possessed,  between rehearsals, I was being beaten and tortured by an alcoholic artist who subsequently sank the houseboat I was living on.

So, from a tiny incident as a child, a decision made by a five year old, I had created a life in which been molested, robbed, cheated, rejected, judged, betrayed and abandoned. I had created all the drama you could ever want to prove that I was alone in the Universe, and there was no God.

And I certainly was not responsible for any of it! If there was a God, I blamed HIM!

In fact, after my houseboat was sunk, and the man who had sunk it came and found me and beat me again, causing me to be thrown out into the night of an apartment I had just rented, trying to get away from him, I found myself literally SCREAMING at God,

“WHY! WHY! WHY!! What did I do to deserve THIS!”

The answer came in the Voice.

A few weeks later. I had taken refuge with a friend of mine, and she took me to a Sufi meeting. There the Master said these words to me: “When you go to sleep at night, let there be someone who looks after you.”

I did. That night I slept deep and dreamed of a handsome man in a black Riverboat Captain’s hat and black, silver-trimmed shirt, smiling at me, knowingly.

The next day, in the waking dream, I heard the Voice of God for the first time, as I beheld the man of my dreams standing in front of me, dressed identically to the dream I had had the night before. As I stared, the Voice spoke as clearly as if someone was in the room, saying, “This is the man who will be the father of your children.”

Astonished, I told this handsome man what I had heard. He replied, “That’s all right. I like children.”

And so it was. He became the father of my two beautiful girls.

Many such miraculous things, both terrible and wonderful, have happened since, but the pattern of magical bliss followed by unexpected, seemingly  unjustified attack persisted, along with the sense of being chosen for some special purpose which I have been afraid to fulfill.

Yesterday, In A Course in Miracles, I read, as if for the first time:

“Say only this, but mean it with no reservations, for here the power of salvation lies:

“I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upn th egoal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me
I ask for, and receive as I have asked.”

“Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done to you. Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken, and all effects of your mistakes will disappear.”

And then, this morning, as I read Gloria’sWendroff’s  invitation to return to the Heaven Letters community, and I read the God’s Child Heaven Letter, I realized that I had been holding myself superior and apart, somehow special because of all my suffering.

As I read the words, “Whatever marks the world has put on you or you have put on yourself, you can rise higher now. All that anyone can be, you can be,” I came home to the Truth of who I am and have always been, God’s Holy Child, forever innocent, unmarred by anything that has ever happened to me, or anything I made it mean about myself.

I realized that I have done this to myself. Out of a mistake in perception, that I was guilty, bad and wrong, and deserved God’s wrath, I created all that attac, judgment, guilt and blame.

But at the core of me, no matter what happened outside myself, what labels or judgements have been put on me, by myself or those who loved me, or those who feared my passionate intensity, no matter what words have been said, judgments passed, or deeds done, nevertheless, I remain an innocent Child of God.

One that is worthy of miracles on a daily basis. And has received many, many miracles in her life, not the least of which is the privilege and honour of being a teacher and therapist of A Course in Miracles.

As God said this morning through Gloria Wendroff, “If you are to teach others, it is by your example and not your instruction.”

I am deeply, deeply grateful for all the lessons of love that have brought me to this point in my life where I am finally claiming my power to teach by demonstration.  I am unstoppable, a miracle in motion, a blessing to the world.

“By my healing, legions are healed.”

ACIM

By my example, I am committed to teaching the gentle, generous way of peace and forgiveness, starting with myself.

Thank you, Gloria, for your Heaven Letters, and for reaching out to me, and inviting me back into your community.

I love you.

Stay tuned.

Shelora

~ by shelora on May 8, 2009.