Trusting in Goodness

It was dark and my plan was to drive just far enough into the driveway that I could smell the ranch and perhaps understand what was luring me, but I drove farther. When I got out of the car, a surge of emotions overtook me. My eyes welled up and before the tears could fall another car appeared. “I am sorry,” I said, and started to explain from my unconscious, “I used to live here and I got homesick.”

“Do you want come and see the cottage?” he asked kindly. I felt as if I had known the man lifetimes ago and was meeting him for the first time in this life. Not in a lover’s sense, but in a true friend sense. In the cottage I felt like it was still my cottage and I was back in time, seven years earlier. Oddly, I felt more at home then I do at the property I own.

We talked for a short while and when I departed I was drawn to embrace him. When I did I was instantaneously warmed with comfort and relief. It took me several days to figure it out. Why those feelings in the arms of a stranger? Why was I drawn to the cottage that night? What made the man and I go there at the same time? It was not his main address.

When I lived at the cottage I had a strong faith that the universe would always provide for me. I believed with all my heart that all things were good in the world. I didn’t worry about money, work coming in, or the health of my animals, of which I had many. I wasn’t looking for a relationship or trying to get ahead in my career. I lived each day as if it were pure and perfect. I wrote every day, walked the dogs, talked to my animals, did yoga, fell asleep drinking wine by the fire, and woke up to glorious sunshine on the Topa Topas.

The coyotes would yip to warn me if someone was driving up the driveway past nightfall, owls would fly so close to me that their wings would just barely touch the edges of my hair, deer drank daily out of the water trough I filled for them, bobcats would hunt the ground squirrels and leave my cats alone, and a golden eagle perched on a cypress tree just outside my cottage every morning. There I believed whole-heartedly that if we are open to receiving it, the universe is abundant with all that we ever need.

When I moved from that ranch seven years ago, I walked my animals and myself into the darkest part of my life. I learned about sacrifice, evil, dark spirits in the realms I only knew existed in horror films, betrayal, visions of truthful ugliness, cancer, and sickness, and everything else that is bad in the world. I was quickly stripped down to my bare bones in every sense. I learned not to trust myself or anyone else. I learned that the universe could abandon me in darkness with a swift chilling wind. I learned I had anger and despair deep inside of me. For years, I suffered.

I am in the light now and far out of that dark tunnel of my life. I have reinvented myself. For years now, I have believed and trusted in goodness once again.

I have come to the conclusion that my contact with the man was actually an embrace from my past and a reminder to allow the love of the universe to be my sacred guide. He was my angel for the day, a messenger. I realize now that I came out of the dark void with one hand on my sword and a fortress built around me, and have been scared that if I have, live, and trust the wonders of all life once again the universe may brutally decide to rip it from me. Deep inside I know, I have been through the darkest part of my days and if they come again I already understand what will make me healthy and sane.

There is a blueprint of my life still living at that ranch. When I went back, I tapped into it. I wonder if the man has felt me there all along. Something happened to me up there that night. My body and my soul have shifted. I am different. The walls to my fortress are starting to come down and I have released the fighting grip on my sword. Now I must surrender to universe and allow time to reveal the change to come.