Maya Angelou: Lessons on Ascension

Life always opens doors, windows, portals etc to make a way for progress, either by breaking us to be remodeled into our true selves or by simply being uncharacteristically kind in our times of darkness, sadness, wallowing and self pity, to show us the rare but beautiful and powerful force that is empathy, kindness, love; our own personal outlet for passion and for salvation. 

                   Image credit: Rivka Kawano

For me the collective poems of Maya Angelou was that door and that window and those countless portals into myself, my passion, my essence. During my adolescences my life situations and experiences were far too dark, desperate, marred by pain, and emotional agony. Although I could hide in plain sight, smile for the cameras, escape to the safety of my mind, I knew that the emotional turmoil that I was experiencing at the time needed to escape, to be released from my spirit, so that I could one day be free from my circumstance and find peace from the source, the core of my being. 

Poetry saved my life. Phenomenal Woman was one of the first poems that I ever read and something in me just clicked and without effort and with an unexpected level of skill I became a poet. My own words poured out from my soul and for a moment my life had meaning and purpose. I was giving a quiet place, a solitude within myself that I continue to cultivate today. A sacred that place that I can be both connected and disconnected from the world, a place that I know is pure, whole and safe from cruelty and punishment. Although the pain has come and gone in waves it has no since then been able to hold me hostage to my mind, my thoughts or my emotions. The fear is now fleeting and just like the pain it has taught me to be brave to come from a place of love and to learn to be courageous in my moments of doubt, fear and uncertainty. 

Her soul was present in my life and for that I will be eternally grateful. The poems of Maya Angelou introduced me to a form of expression that saved my life. Phenomenal Woman indeed. Yet another soul who touched this earth and rose above life's many trials, tears, roadblocks and fears to realize her purpose on this earth. My connectedness to her life has reinforced my belief that we all share an unbreakable bond with and to the universe. We are bonded by love, by passion and by truth. We are all responsible for the education (the ascension, evolution) of our brothers and sisters. Thank you to a kind soul who exemplified the power that can only ever be harnessed from the spirit within. I have a warrior spirit just as she did and I owe her a debt of gratitude because her words set a course in my life and caused a shift of consciousness that has equipped me with a sense if responsibility to my fellow man to live out my own extraordinary purpose, believing at every step of the way that what is written cannot be unwritten. I truly hope that her soul is reborn for my daughters and sons and all of our daughters and sons. 

The power to change a life is my purpose in this world. I've started with my own life. Learning what being courageous means in my life and for my life, loving myself; warts, callouses, scars and all. Accepting that there are no mistakes in this life. Every wart, every callous and every scar, those seen and unseen have been earned and I wear them all proudly. And from another of my absolute favorite poets whose words also resonated with me in my youth Robert Frost;  "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that had made all the difference." 

Namaste.