Kahlil Gibran: When You Can't Walk The Talk

The eye sees what it brings to the scene.

You see failure where others see unrelenting effort.

Ann: Kahlil Gibran?

Kahlil Gibran: Yes. You have been feeling my energy and not for the first time. I know what you want to know because I struggled as you do to connect that which I channeled with how I lived my life.

Why, I asked myself, if wisdom comes through me to such an extent that it is clear that I have been connected with the highest order of intelligence and knowledge, why could I not put into practice what was being taught through me?

I was embarrassed to die. I could not believe that I had squandered such a gift, that I would go to my maker unenlightened, a helpless alcoholic with as many schemes to my name as any huckster on the corner. I knew the jig would then be up, and there would be no place to hide. As I transitioned, I waited for the ax to fall.

Instead I was handed tenderly into the arms of the angels who had wept at my side for all that I had endured, for all that I could not allow myself to hear, for the isolation that I imposed upon myself as a consequence of my supposed crimes against humanity and the heavenly hosts.

I am here to tell you that there is no wrong turn. I could not allow myself to trust, to hand my soul over to my guides and to follow their lead without question. I took upon myself responsibilities that were never mine to claim. I struggled because I could not measure up. In short, I thought I was supposed to be God and condemned myself to eternal hell for my failure to accomplish that mission.

My dear, hubris is a deadly disease. Only when we realize that we will stumble and fall, that we are, like our fellows, capable of much good and much harm with most of our lives falling somewhere in between will we begin to be able to approach our maker with an honest heart.

Ann: But I should know better, I do know better, and yet the old patterns remain.

Kahlil Gibran: My dear, patterns change when the stick becomes too heavy to bear or the carrot too alluring to resist. It is not an intellectual decision. You cannot push the river. Enlightenment, grace, comes when it comes.

What you can do is to prepare the ground, to clear away a place so that the seed can fall on fertile ground. You do not know your mission in its full expression. It may be to live the contradiction of life versus precept with darkness serving, as only darkness can, to throw light into high relief.

You will be received. You will be loved. There will be hardly a break in the connection you have so advocated and fostered in your human life when you transition to spirit. Simply come with an honest heart, and do the best you can before your get here.

Ann: That “do the best you can” pabulum always puts me back on my heels because I figure I could have always done better, could probably give you a dozen examples off the top of my head where that was the case. So telling me to do the best I can makes me crazy, that Sisyphean rock always rolls back down the hill no matter how many times I try to push it to the top and over the hill.

Kahlil Gibran: Ah, but the eye sees what it brings to the scene. You see failure where others see unrelenting effort. Again I repeat, you will not achieve divine perception in human form. You can, however, develop a profound respect for the courage it takes to persevere in the face of certain failure.

We all die. We none of us accomplish what we set out to do. There is always more if we tie ourselves to a stated goal with movable goalposts. Only when we give ourselves to the process with faith and honour for all that we have put into the life we are leading will we be able to leave this world with a quiet heart.

So yes I died an alcoholic. I felt the push and pull of what I thought was divine expectation. I gave myself no quarter, but this is not a game of one-upmanship. No one else has your life.

As long as you can manage to stay at the wheel and in the trenches, you will have nothing to apologize for when your transition comes. You will take those times where you opened in joy and received our Creator’s love as part and parcel of the life that sometimes was so overwhelmed by the magnitude of that divine love that you sought shelter in mundane pursuits. Everything is grist for the mill, everything is a wellspring of learning, and everything sows the seeds of a future garden.

Just keep living, noticing, praying and learning, falling and getting up. Then you will have a life well lived and be welcomed home when the time comes.

August 7, 2021

Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883 – 1931), usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist, also considered a philosopher although he himself rejected the title. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages.

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