My higher spirit was right. I really do learn through pain. I wish there was an easier route, but pain really gets my attention. And after wrenching my back before Xmas (see the post Crash), I was in the kind of pain where swearing a lot helped release some of the agony. So I did that for a while. Then I propped myself up in bed with lots of ice, heat, pillows and pain killers. Sleep was impossible. So I signed up for Brene Brown’s online art journaling course and doodled through gritted teeth for a couple of hours. As I started to have fun with the journalling project, I noticed my back pain subside. The more fun I had, the less pain I felt. There is something in this I thought; fun = less pain; being stressed (especially about the distance between me and pure joy) = agony.

The next morning I was still in bed and looking for something to distract me, so I picked up one of the two books I had rescued from Laura’s Gay St apartment, Ask and It Is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks. It felt like a gift from Laura. Here was the road map to joy that I was looking for, right under my nose. At first I thought it was a joke. What could be madder than this, a Texas housewife channeling a bunch of spirit entities called Abraham? But I was entranced. Everything ‘Abraham’ says is the perfect match to what I experienced in the life between lives regression. He says, ‘we are all pieces of source’ (the exact words my higher self used in the afterlife ). He says our purpose in life is joy (again the exact word ‘joy’). You have to follow your heart, allow yourself to enjoy (that’s a compound word en-joy), instead of pushing and struggling and efforting your way forward.  In the 6 weeks since I started listening to Abraham Hicks on youtube and reading the book, I feel an inexorable flow of sweetness and joy in my life. Everything seems to be opening up like a flower and getting easier. Fun things seems to land in my lap. Sure somedays I feel tired or grouchy (see the post Comic Relief.) and that’s OK too. But little by little, glimpses of heaven are manifesting in the most unexpected ways and I feel like I am finally learning to fly.