Growing up, I always thought my grandfather did weird things. He recycled those styrofoam containers from food packaging and used them as plates. He swore by apple cider vinegar like it was the cure-all for everything. He gardened, canned, took care of bees, made his own mead, did pottery, rarely if ever watched television, and was always outside.
He wrote letters and took photos. He traveled all over.
He owned half of Indianapolis, buying up homes in the poorest neighborhoods. He rented them out to the poor on a rent to own basis.
He wasn’t a Christian man, even though his kids were. You try to convert him and he would just laugh in your face. All he would say was that when I was older, he would tell me what he believed.
He dated the same woman for 30+ years and never married her. To me, that black lady was my grandma, you couldn’t tell me otherwise…even though she never lived with my grandfather.
These days, when I look at those styrofoam containers, I think of how it’s such a hazardous waste. Then I think about how my grandfather reused them again and again like plates. Granted, I can’t bring myself to do it, but I always think of how eco-conscious my grandfather was decades before being eco-friendly was cool.
I think about how important gardening and canning was to him, just like I do now when I plant herbs and can the summer bounty from the farmer’s market.
I think of him every time I pour honey into my coffee, and how I used to go out and he would show me how bees made honey and how to collect the honey.
I always think of him every single time I pour apple cider vinegar on my food to settle my stomach or use it to clean the house or fix some health issue.
I definitely think of him every single time I get sick and drink hot water with fresh lemon mixed with honey. It’s the only thing that makes me feel better.
When I think about investing for my future and making sure that I always have income coming in, I think of how my grandfather did it. He spent money on only the things that brought him happiness (like food or spending time with his family), and invested everything else in the community. I think of how I should invest in the poor in order to help the community. I think of buying property and ‘renting to own’…especially in this economy where banks are rarely loaning out money to anyone.
When I think of God and religion, I realize that none of his beliefs made sense until I realized just how alike my grandfather and I are. He taught me the secrets of the universe. He helped me unlock that treasure trove of information in order to live the most amazing life possible.
Along with that…he helped me to find HAPPINESS.
Happiness does not lie in any religion. Happiness lies in that connection with God. When you realize through God anything is possible…you embark on an incredible journey in life. You don’t need religion, because you’ve evolved beyond the need for it.
You’re not searching for God, because you’ve already found him. And if you’re very lucky, you get to meet the mother. You know, that goddess that NO ONE talks about.
You know what God looks like. You know what powers and treasures are awarded in that connection with the Father. He’s always talking to you, and you’re always listening. You don’t even have to say a word…he knows all. His solution to any problem you may have is much better than any solution you could ever come up with yourself.
If you want to feel love, peace, joy and happiness in the purest of forms the same way a baby feels those emotions, you have to be continuously connected to God. He gives you all of those things.
My grandfather lived his life only keeping the things that were sentimental to him like photos of the family (alright, if I’m going to be honest here…19 photos of me and only 3 of my brother), his favorite easy chair, a blanket my mother knitted for him, a chair his girlfriend gave to him, and the basic things that were needed to furnish a home.
He did not live in excess. He lived with what he needed, because it was the only thing he wanted.
He never had a cell phone or a computer. If he had a TV or DVD player, it was because one of his kids bought it for him for Christmas.
He found peace in creativity by creating pieces of pottery or working with ceramics.
The moments in life he enjoyed were those moments when he would sit next to me and tell me stories from the Great Depression and the World Wars. He’d tell me the stories of the history of our family.
The moments in life I enjoyed with him were those moments when I would make him sit on the couch and read the funnies to me on Sunday mornings. I enjoyed those stories he told to me of the past. I used to sit next to him and tell him stories about Paris or Thailand or Japan…all the places he sent me to. I would paint that world I had seen and watch his eyes light up as he imagined the places I had seen, the things I had done, and the food I had tasted.
Those adventures he experienced were through my tales, until one day I said to him, right before my high school graduation as he was getting ready to prepare his Will, that we only have one life to live in this lifetime. He should go out and do anything and everything he ever dreamed of doing. I told him to sell all of the houses he rented, including the ones that he kept in the family, because I didn’t want any of them when he passed away.
I told him that he should go out and see the world while he could. Do everything and anything he ever dreamed of doing. What would happen if he found out that this was the only life he had and he never truly lived it?
I went off to college that fall and he decided to take my advice. He sold all of the homes (except the one he lived in) and spent the rest of his life traveling all over the world (before he got sick with cancer). He traveled to the places I had been. He tried all of the things I had tried. He went to see that world I had painted for him…and he fell in love with it.
While I was in college, our stories were shared through letters. He wrote of the places he had been, the things he had seen, the food he had tasted. He always sent photos to me in his letters.
During the holidays and summer breaks, we would sit at the table and talk about life, and he would give me all of the details of everything I had missed out on.
After he died, I learned of all of the things he had tried to protect me from. He always wanted me to focus on the good, but he made sure to warn me of the dangers that lay ahead for me when it came to the family. I think he knew I would be cast out the second he died. He was right. They cast me out before he took his last breath.
He had warned me what would happen and that he didn’t stand for it. Because he knew that I would be excommunicated by the family, he constructed his Will to inform them that he had cut them all off. He then left instructions with the executor of the estate to make sure my brother and I were taken care of. He tried to hide that fact from the rest of the family so that the pain I would endure from them would not be so great.
It’s funny that my grandfather did his big f*ck you to the family when he died. I remember when someone in the family would walk up and hear him telling me stories from the old days, they would ask, “Why didn’t I ever know about this?”
He would stop telling the story after he realized someone else was listening. It was as if he didn’t want anyone to know because it was our secret. It was the same with his brother, they would both sit around telling stories to me from the War and Great Depression. The second someone else wanted to listen in, they grew quiet.
In his death, I saw the whole picture as clearly as he wanted to paint it for me, but didn’t want me to see while he still lived. I saw how my aunt was jealous of our relationship. She wanted that type of relationship with him. She would always say all throughout that week after his death, “There is nothing special about you.”
I sat there and listened to her and my family condemn my grandfather’s soul to hell because he didn’t believe in their religion. Everyone expected me to get up and say something. I just sat there, because I knew if I got up, I would have condemned them all to hell, locked the doors and burned the place to the ground with all of them in it.
The sad thing is…we knew they would do this…condemn his soul to hell (and this was before they found out about the Will).
My brother left the family because of everything in the end. He always tried to stay out of it, but then he realized that I never fought back. I never corrected anyone when they told lies about me. I never stood up for myself. I never said anything.
He sat through one too many dinners before he realized he couldn’t take it anymore. He had heard enough of them speaking ill of me. His point was…I had done nothing to hurt them. I had never sinned against them.
This was that green monster called jealousy that had taken over. It’s the kind of jealousy that has someone saying, “There’s nothing special about you.”
I actually felt bad for all of them. They had no comprehension of the great sin they had committed against me. I felt their pain in what my grandfather did to protect me. It was his way of saying that despite what was about to happen, I wasn’t alone and he needed me to understand that.
I learned after his death that my grandmother didn’t come around much when the family was around because my aunt is racist. She forbade my grandfather from bringing his girlfriend to her wedding, because ‘what would her friends say about her father dating a black woman.’ He never forgave her for that or the subsequent racist remarks that followed.
My aunt got her other siblings on board with this…making it a controversial thing if my grandmother came by for dinner or any event. I was always asking why I couldn’t see her more. I didn’t learn until after my grandfather’s death why that was the case.
During his funeral I told the family what they were doing wasn’t right. They refused to acknowledge the person that my grandfather spent so many years with. She nursed him when he was sick. She loved him when no one else did. She brought him so much happiness. If they loved my grandfather…why couldn’t they love her?
Oh, that was definitely more fodder for me to get tossed out of the family.
It’s been 5 years since my grandfather died. He would have been 85 this past Sunday. One thing I’ve learned from my grandfather since he died is how to live.
At the Meditation Center, one of my friends said to me that there is a presence that follows me around. It’s a good presence. When I told them about my grandfather, they said that was the presence they felt. He’s always looking after me.
Truth is, I feel him there all of the time. Each time I eat an apricot, I think of him and how he would always buy me dried apricots when I came to visit him. Each time I do something eco-friendly, I think of how he had taught me how to be green when I was a kid. When I stand in various places around the world, I have that moment where I wish he could see what I am seeing…and then I feel him standing next to me taking in Prague from the old castle walls in Vysehrad.
When they give me foreign coins when I travel, I always look at them and smile. I think of how I’m continuing the adventure and the stories my grandfather and I used to tell to each other.
When I’m sitting in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris watching the tourists walk by, I can see images from the past of the time my grandfather stood in front of the cathedral in his French beret…a tradition he picked up and continued until he passed away. I have that photo sitting on top of my refrigerator in my French themed kitchen.
When I realize how incredible this dream has been over the years, I am always surprised that it all started when he died. He gave me the secrets on how to unlock and live your dreams in the most amazing ways. It was the greatest gift anyone could have given to me.
More importantly, he showed me the way to finding God. He led me there. I remember sitting in the Meditation Center a year after his death saying, “So you’re telling me that what I’ve known my entire life is really the truth? I’m not crazy?” The sister laughed at me and said, “No, you’re not crazy.”
I always wondered who I got all of this spiritual stuff from and the evolved consciousness of being. I got them all from my grandfather. He was just like me.
We have evolved in ways that most people do not understand. Just like he could see what would happen in the future and plan for that day, I had the same gift.
He had the ability to hear what is not being said. When someone speaks to us, if they lie, we only hear the truth. If they try to skirt around the truth, we still hear and see the truth as clear as day.
There are other abilities that my grandfather did not have that I have…like the ability to manipulate the universe around me, to make people do what I want them to do without saying a word…I can just push the thought into their head and they do it. I have the ability to walk into a knife fight and calm everyone down. They immediately forget why they were mad to begin with.
At the Meditation Center, they help me to harness the power of my mind because it was becoming too powerful and things were overflowing. I felt like I was going crazy. It was too much. The power I had inside of me, made me feel like I was going nuclear.
Sometimes not understanding what one is can be dangerous. After you learn who you are and how you have evolved as a human being, you start to take the steps in a direction to learn how to control the things that you can do that nobody else has the answer to.
The sisters at the Center used to watch me meditate. They wanted to see where I went when I talked to God. One sister watched me and went into my mind to see where I was going. She saw me sitting in the garden talking to God.
When I came out of the meditation she asked me where I was. I said I was speaking with God. She smiled and said, “You were in the garden.” In Indian lore, there is only one garden. In Christianity, it’s called the Garden of Eden. The only way anyone could enter into that garden today…they would have had to have been there before and be without sin in order to enter into it. Their soul would have to be PURE.
The sisters told me, “You are special.”
They didn’t say this because it’s one of those meditative…everyone is special moments. They said I was different than anyone that had ever walked through their doors before. Most people have to learn how to connect with God. They don’t walk in from off the street and already know God and his ways. To them, I was fulfilling a prophecy. It was a sign to them that a new age is being ushered in.
I am thankful to the sisters there for helping me to control what I can do. I’ve always had issues with anger and someone dropping dead (by an act of God…like a heart attack) because they pissed me off to the nth degree. They taught me how to use these abilities for good and to change the world for the better. In other words, I don’t get mad like I used to.
They taught me the things I needed to know that my grandfather had unlocked for me. They taught me how to live the dream. They taught me how I could change the world. They gave me the tools I needed to do those things.
I was able to finally not feel conflict from what my family and their religion said was God. I was free. I knew who God was all along. I’ve been talking to him my entire life.
I remember telling my father the things I learned. At one point I felt what he was feeling, that fear that I was right and everything he knew and believed in was wrong. I felt that hint of jealousy that I knew God and he didn’t. He didn’t even feel an ounce of what I felt – that joy, peace and happiness. I had found that connection he had been looking for his entire life. He was afraid to admit that maybe that religion he engrossed himself in was wrong.
But like all Christians, he immediately said I was worshipping the Devil. No one can talk to God, so I must be talking to the Devil. They have to go through Jesus Christ. I then responded, “Why do I have to go through my brother to talk to you when I can just call you and talk to you myself?” [Yep, he was pissed at me after I said that, because I made my point.]
The thing is, my Dad knows that I’m a little different. He always looked at me with a fear of God in his eyes, because he knew I could see right into his soul and it scared the hell out of him.
In his world, I had to be quiet about the things I could do. It was whispered. Everyone was afraid. They walked on eggshells around me. No one ever wanted to make me angry, because they knew that God was siding with me.
But these days, those things that I could do and had to keep quiet about…I now can do without feeling remorse or that I’m going to be burned at the stake for being a witch, because they don’t understand that this is the next step in evolution.
My grandfather and my mother knew that I would do something great for the world one day. Believe it or not, I already put my plan into motion.
When I wrote “A New Heaven,” I was honest about what was going on in my world and what I was going to do next. That post is being passed around and finding itself at the top of search engines everywhere. You think God has his hand in that? I think he’s getting the message out…this is the plan.
We have to be the change we seek in the world. It starts from within. This is the plan I’ve put into motion to bring a New Heaven into this world.
This is what I mean by living. This is the path my grandfather had always seen that I would take. His investment in me at a young age…he had his reasons. He saw what I would become and that was why I was special to him. This was his gift to the world. He was preparing me for the world I was about to change.
That person he saw in me, I strive to be her every single day. It’s a never ending learning process…just like this month’s lesson is all about my intuition. If God said it’s happening…you best believe it is happening.
This is my blind faith…I do what God wants me to do and don’t question it. I go along for the ride, knowing that if I ask too many questions, it will only drive me crazy. I should just enjoy the moment, because I have faith that whatever God has planned for me is much better than anything I could ever dream up. That is my blind faith in God.
I have not put blind faith in man and his religion. I have put blind faith in God. I’ve learned that was the best decision. That’s the #1 thing that my grandfather taught me that didn’t make sense until I was older.
FOCUS. 
Needless to say, none of them are completed. I started them all, but then realized the ADD was taking over. I put them all neatly to the side and went back to what was supposed to be the current project: building the space saver for the bathroom.
I’m surprised Martha Stewart and Country Living haven’t found this place yet. It’s everything you would see from their sites and magazines for a fraction of the price (and saves all of that time scouring antique markets just to find these things). 
