Awakening: Can A Spiritual Person Shop At Walmart?
by Jan Eisnor

As I look back, it was just about a year ago. Maybe before that time, I lived in a kind of half dream state, not quite awake. I didn’t know it. I remember, it was just around the time I took the metaphysical hypnosis course. It was just around the time I went to the Spiritualist Church. It was late fall, into winter. I had lived in that HDS (half dream state) for so long, now looking back. Then, I noticed, I was becoming more aware of my surroundings…outside, out of doors. I remember taking pictures. I bought 3 digital cameras in the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was fascinated with the look of the trees, becoming bare, being bare. I never noticed it all before. They were just bare, barren, gray/brown trees against the gray backdrop of the dreary winter. Now they were trees, limbs and branches and trunks, silhouetted against the sky, sunsets. I took pictures of branches on the ground around my feet. I noticed how they were strewn about, discovering designs and shapes within the settings. I took pictures of the sunset in the background, with the flat roof of the motorcycle shop in the foreground, blackened against the simmering settling sun. I took pictures. 

Until you have the awakening, you don’t know you are HDS. Life is simple, get up, go to work, go shopping, go home, do it all over again. There’s nothing more. If there is more, you don’t know about it. You don’t miss what you never had.

Then, something changes. For some people, it’s a meteor, a lightning bolt, a two by four in the skull. Suddenly, a life changing moment. Boom. And the awakening.

For me, it was gradual. It’s funny, how some things I do get done in a flash, things that other people might take years to do. I have bought 5 houses in my life, and made the decision for each one in less than a minute.  Really. I’ve made the decision to get married, divorced, change jobs and careers in seconds flat. It’s always been because I’ve had a knowing. I knew, and I was sure.  (I think)

But this awakening. I think it took awhile because I was so sure, always, that what I was doing was IT, life, that I wouldn’t have recognized awakening if it did hit me in the face.

I’d had my personal challenge with cancer. No awakening there. There was the challenge with a teen child deeply involved with drugs. Still, no awakening. Still, I just kept on going, doing, living, IT, life.  Just put one foot in front of the other, keep going.

Now don’t misunderstand. I was happy. I was always happy. 

I remember though, I had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind. It had to do with worry. I knew that I always needed (?) something to worry about. If everything was going fine, I’d find a way to stir things up, just to have something to fret about.  Now, why was that?  I said over and over, “all I want is peace in my life’.

Now, what the heck does that mean? I wanted to make everything peaceful. I wanted to be responsible for the peace, to MAKE IT HAPPEN. So, if it just was peaceful, that was not good enough, because I wasn’t doing anything to MAKE IT HAPPEN. 

Looking back now, I can see the changes in me with the seasons. Last winter, I really saw the winter. I saw the fresh snow glistening on the barren branches of the trees. I also saw the dirty gray snow along the side of the highway. I sat on the fence. Am I spiritual, or am I just plain…plain?

I struggled. Does a spiritual person shop at Walmart? Will I have to eat just grains and vegetables?  Can I still wear a bra and be spiritual? 

Then, spring. Take the allergy pills? Try the homeopathic remedies? I bought pine needle oil, and some other things, and mixed my own version of a concoction from an Edgar Cayce reading. I poured the mixture into a spray bottle from an over the counter nasal spray, and shot it up my nose. Now, if ever I felt a bolt of lightening, there was one drilling it’s way into my sinus passages. Back to Western Medicine, where I could just take a pill, and make whatever ailed me go away. 

I sat on the fence. Sometimes, I’d slide off into the never-never land of the spiritually connected. I’d read channeled books. I’d  meditate. I’d do tarot cards. (I have a well-worn copy of Tarot for Idiots, which works well with the Waite Universal Deck.)

Then, sometimes I’d leap off the fence into the brightly colored chasm of materialism. Buy another camera. Buy another printer. My cell phone usage was phenomenal. AT&T Wireless loved me. 

Then came the summer, and a bigger challenge for a quasi-materialistic quasi-spiritual being. I’ve got a boat. Now, it’s not one of those gentle, neutral colored little sail boats, gliding over the ripples in the lake. No, I’ve got a 23 foot power boat, complete with carpeting, six speakers CD player, 2 built in coolers and a 450 cubic inch V8 engine. It flies. I tell people I got it because it handles great in the ocean, but the truth is, I love the power of it. I love flying over the waves, music blaring, engine roaring. I also love to tie up to a mooring in the river, and turn off the engine, and play some meditation music. So, I continue to sit on the fence.

And now, the fall. Season number four. I’ve watched the leaves turning color, seeing them dancing on the branches, a graceful ballet in a gentle breeze…a frantic jitterbug in the first chill wind of November, desperately hanging on, till they are truly ready to descend, down into the earth, to reincarnate once again in the new season.

Sometimes sliding off into the land of the spiritually connected. Sometimes leaping into the whirlwind chasm of materialism. 

Perhaps, I don’t really have to be one or the other. Perhaps, that is the awakening.

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