A New Paradigm of Truth: Silenced No More
by Amari Gold
It was an early summer day in June. My seven year old dog had recently passed away after 6 long years of joy, and suffering. The life journey is so often bitter sweet. After the death of my beloved husband 7 years earlier, the same year my sweet Samoyed Krista came into my life, I‘ve slowly learned to appreciate it all.
I believed that Krista’s death was a completion of successive years of hardship. With my husband’s passing went my home and livelihood, along with my life savings by way of bank foreclosure. My stress levels were well beyond the recommendation for sustaining good health. Krista’s presence throughout our time together gifted me with the necessity of cultivating compassion for both of us. Her final days were some of the most profound and elegant moments of my life. Even through her blindness, her trust in me never wavered. Witnessing her gentle and willing presence throughout the insulin injections, the failing of her life-sustaining internal organs, her blind trust and total willingness to follow my footsteps through the path that she and I had traveled together for 2,550 days, were my initiations to a knowing of graceful countenance and acceptance of the full spectrum of life’s banquet.
Krista was a beautiful soul, and a beautiful animal. Several of my friends knew the comfort that her presence provided me throughout my grieving and struggle to recreate a meaningful life for myself. Her life was now complete. All that was left was my own.
So it was that 2 weeks after her passing, on an early summer day that when a handsome and available man of my age walked into my life, I recognized his presence as a gift from God.
It was also true that at that specific time in my life I was without a home of my own nor the financial means to support myself. I was two weeks away from traveling to Boulder, Colorado for a SpiritQuest retreat where I would sit alone in silence for 3 days and 3 nights to listen to the whisperings of Spirit as to what direction my life would take me next.
There was something immediately auspicious about the presence of this new guy who appeared at this time. It was apparent to each of us that the hand of the divine was involved in our encounter. As we explored the nature and purpose of our having met at this particular time, we decided to share the journey to my Quest from Oregon to Colorado together on his motorcycle.
I was brimming with excitement about this new development. My heart, soul, body and mind were deeply longing for such an experience to be taken into the nurturing arms of Mother Nature. Things were definitely looking up!
A month later, after the completion of a 5 day motorcycle journey to Boulder, my 3-day Quest and 6 days in camp, 10 days integrating in the home and hospitality of a loving friend, and a 5 day return motorcycle ride, this guy and I landed back in Ashland together. It was then that I realized that we were both homeless with no income. The only source of sustenance between us was the remaining cash from the sale of the home that my husband and I shared in my earlier life.
The question crossed my mind … only once or twice … what can I do? Can I ask him to leave? Leave where? We don’t live anywhere. Are we better off alone or together?
I can’t say that panic took over, not consciously. In retrospect I recognize that at this time of what I thought was a new, improved chapter in the unfolding of my life, I began to convince myself that this man was my gift … my rainbow at the end of the stormy years of fear and unknowing. With this in mind I would do everything in my power to sustain us both through whatever difficulties lie ahead. Secretly, to a great degree unconsciously, I was really angry and frustrated that I was supporting this “new man in my life”. Hadn’t I been through enough? Couldn’t you have sent me a “working man”? Admittedly, I didn’t recognize any other choice than to take care of him.
Off we went, staying with a friend here and there …. my friends. Then a couple of house-sitting gigs. We landed in the saving grace of the home of dear friends of mine. The new guy in town and I were gifted with a small bedroom in the basement apartment and wholeheartedly welcomed into the midst of the generosity of this loving family.
Fast forward 7 months later …
Through the months I continued to support us both with my rapidly dwindling reserves. The guy picked up a couple of odd jobs, resistant to sharing any of his financial gain with me due to the monthly payment for his motorcycle. When the possibility of training at Oneness University came into view, I was once again gifted with the voice of Spirit suggesting that I cash in the retirement plan.
Retirement plan? What retirement plan? It slowly came to me that Warren and I had set aside a few thousand dollars one tax year in the distant past. There was $15,000 in the account. Aha! Another gift from God and an answer to my prayers. It was just enough for this guy and me to go to India and return to begin a new career in Oneness.
And so plans were made, plane tickets were purchased, driving to San Francisco for his visa and passport, along with overnight accommodations were arranged. His motorcycle payments were paid in advance, and off we went on a 24 hour plane flight that took close to 54 hours to complete. There would be no money left by the time we returned to Ashland.
The guy found this news to be very disturbing.
Once we landed in India, the guy that had walked into my life 9 months earlier professing his love to me and whom I had supported throughout, including providing airfare, travel documents, and room and board in India, made a decision to no longer speak to me. He motioned with an invisible key locking his lips shut that he was now in silence. Over the course of the next 3 weeks, being greeted similarly by him on a few other occasions, it became clear that his silence applied only to me. He was apparently choosing to talk to other women at will, just not to me.
After several times witnessing his animated gestures in conversation with one of the female translators during the meal breaks, I asked him directly to tell me what was going on in his life and how I was to interpret the meaning of his behavior. It was then, and only then that he told me he had come to India to consider whether or not to stay in relationship with me. When he told me he had decided to end it, I asked how long he had been planning to leave. He confidently told me he knew he was leaving our relationship at least by Christmas, three months earlier.
The sudden realization of having been “taken for a ride” at great personal expense had not yet set in. I was aware of trauma, shock and terror that I could not comprehend on such short notice. Few words crossed my lips. After some time when I was able to form sentences to speak, I discovered that he had absolutely no inclination whatsoever to have any further conversation with me of any kind for any reason …. other than upon his return from India when he was most anxious to tell me all about the new woman in his life.
The three conversations I recall most clearly were these: I said to him at the meal table in India “Don’t ever do this again to another woman. It is hard enough as it is without adding this kind of hardship.” To which he replied “I am not accustomed to anyone telling me what to do.” The second instance was asking him to sit and have a conversation with me about our relationship, and how we got to where we were, to which he replied: “It’s all in the past. I’m done, and there’s nothing further to talk about. The third: Why didn’t you tell me you were planning this all the while I was spending the last of my money to create a career path for our partnership? To which he replied with the utmost sincerity, “God told me not to”.
My terror was in realizing that I had not only been taken for a ride, but had been sleeping with a complete stranger who was now exhibiting sociopathic behavior, relieving himself of all accountability for his own actions and placing it on God, and, from my perspective, holding himself entirely separate from the paradigm of Oneness. I felt greatly at risk, above and beyond the financial condition I had been abandoned to, and ultimately concerned that I had not only introduced this guy to my community but empowered him with a title as a Oneness Trainer through my gifting him the coursework of Oneness University.
So …. here comes the moral to the story … why now am I writing this message and sharing it publicly?
There are many reasons:
My concern for protecting other women from falling into an abusive relationship with the same guy who has now committed to Ashland as his current residence and holds his behavior as appropriate, having admitted to me since that should God tell him to do it again, he absolutely would;
The assumption that it was appropriate and therefore easily assumed that I would be “silenced” to this deeply disturbing and conditioned belief structure and behavioral norm that resides within men and women alike that there is such a thing as “legitimized rape”;
My spiritual commitment to actively participate in breaking through to a new paradigm of Truth for all members of God’s Creation, meaning no longer agreeing to be silent about issues that matter most to me;
Because my voice matters, and what I do for myself I do for the One;
Because I am committed to do the work that is mine to do with regard to recognizing my role in this relationship saga, why I attracted it into my life, what I have learned from it, and how I have grown through it, with gratitude for having had the experience;
Knowing that my gratitude, lessons and growth do not justify the manner in which I was treated, i.e., stolen from, disregarded, lied to by manner of omission, and abandoned without a thought for my care or well-being by an individual within my spiritual community who had a causal role in injury and harm that I sustained;
To contribute to our collective conscious choice to cease and desist causing harm to any other sentient being, Masculine & Feminine alike, including Mother Gaia, and leaving the mess for someone else to clean up.
There ya go. There is so much here for each of us to look at, including women whose time it is to discover how our need to be recognized as beautiful and worthy through the eyes of a man is so insidious as to blind us to that truth within us.
For the women who themselves find the revealing of this “private” relationship between a man and a woman to be inappropriately shared publically because they are harboring a conditioned belief that had it happened to them, it would have turned out differently; or equally as common, since it didn’t happen to them, it bears no significance to them now, then, or in the future.
And for the “new guy” who I am most hopeful will come to a greater awareness of his role as a co-creator in relationship, and in our peaceful, loving planet.
For any man or woman out there who considers it his or her God-given right to “take” and/or receive with disregard for the Universal Law of Sacred Reciprocity.
For those that would choose to remain silent and allow harmful behaviors to persist unchallenged, and those entrenched in the belief that responsibility begins and ends with self.
For myself and for every woman like me that acts to care for others to her own detriment, desperate for a sense of love and protection from a male partner due to the woundedness of our own and the collective masculine aspect.
We all have so much to learn and to heal. Sri AmmaBhagavan of Oneness University tell us that Life Is Relationship! When, where and how do we begin relating in truth and honor? Where do we omit it? Disregard it? Rationalize it? Allow the other to suffer at our hand, or the absence of our hand?
I am not suggesting that I have answers to these questions. I am simply, finally, counting my voice and my learned perspective among the gifts of divine grace available to our awakening world.
