Cabin Life 3 – Life’s harshness sculptures strong people.  Humility overcomes strength and births love.  Today my cabin becomes a classroom, and my Spirit Self (SS) challenges me to seek her fully because she is the real me.

Saturdays are for exploring, after filling all my water containers, checking my oil supply, occasionally cleaning out my oil stove, and sanitizing my cabin.  A typewriter ribbon doesn’t last too long, and it is a good excuse for a drive to Anchorage, but today is a full “snowed in cabin day.”

Today the snow is falling steadily.  My typewriter at the table faces the front window overlooking my little porch.  I tie my green curtains to the side and watch the giant snowflakes fall softly, like light cotton candy balls piling up rapidly, inch by inch until the front steps are hidden.  Silence embraces me, her friend, and I search my bookshelves for lively entertainment.

I receive telephone calls only at the office.  My cabin is without telephone and television.  With no wires connected to my cabin, a telephone is impossible.  The hill has bad television reception (according to the previous tenants), and I have my little portable radio that I bought while in college and it catches only three stations.  The clearest reception is a Christian Bible station which intermittently becomes static nonsense.

So books and the electronic typewriter are my true indulgence, and my Spirit Self constantly challenges me to seek and define my higher self to gain knowledge and understanding beyond the physical realm.  I am permitted…no, invited… to step through a veil just by closing my eyes for a clearer vision of a life without regrets, and a promise of a destiny not without struggles but certain completion of my life’s purpose fulfilled.

My cabin time is to chart that road—so says SS.  This morning nothing on my bookshelves jump out at me, so I sit once again at my typewriter, letting SS type at her will.  I am a woman with gifts and graces not meant for storage with mothballs, but to wisely grow and fulfill my purpose.  She further instructs, Study and work to find your higher self, redefining and acknowledging your values and rediscovering my attributes.

SS loves sitting on my shoulders whispering in my ears.  She is my higher self and we have deep discussions, and today we discuss “passion.”  Ah, passion, so carnal, it wreaks havoc with the physical body as it cries out in pain, ecstatic joy, deep sorrow, yearnings and longings.  Those are the cries of mental anguish or pleasure, and the lie is that such emotions are only met and remedied in the physical realm with the aid of medical devices, drugs and counseling.

No, it is the spiritual that looks at the physical “child” (for that is what I am) in the eye and says, “Those are just emotions, feelings that belong to another place and time.  They are not forever.  I am forever, and in me the pain and sorrow fall away.”

Oh, Spirit Self, what of the joy and love?  They are emotions, too.

 Jen, there are emotions, and there are truths.  Love is not an emotion.  Love is, just as your spirit is, just as God is.  Joy is an attribute of love, and therefore, where love is, joy abounds.

The greatest love expressed to us, oh Spirit Self, has been the sacrificial love of Christ.  And there were much sadness and sorrow in what we call love.

Again, Jen, you must discern the physical from the spiritual.  There is physical pain, and Jesus expected it and endured it.  However, it was through the knowledge and promise of the spiritual world—the world of His kingdom that Jesus overcame.  We are spiritual-physical beings, and not physical-spiritual.   When you understand this truth you will master your emotions.

Although I speak with SS a great deal it helps me to put my thoughts on paper in an orderly fashion.  She encourages me to write and oftentimes I feel she is dictating my writing.  It’s like painting a picture—you never know the result until it’s done.  And while the artist is at work she becomes one with the paint and the canvas and she paints the picture that is already there, inside of her, and she mixes colors and brushes and dots and smears paint on paint until out of all the thoughts and blobs a picture emerges, and she exposes the simple, plain truth she has learned.

© Jennifer Lee and WomenNewDefinitions.Wordpress.com, November 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from Jennifer Lee and WomenNewDefinitions.WordPress.com is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jennifer Lee and WomenNewDefinitions.Wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.