Awake... at 2:30AM

Not unusual for me as of late but it is probably unusual given the 20mg of Ambien coursing its way through my bloodstream. I can really feel its odd effects. Everything is kind of dreamy. I haven't actually had a full blown out "sleepwalking" incident that you hear about on the commercials. Usually what I do is specifically what they tell you to do when you can't sleep. If you're not asleep within 20 minutes, get up and do something relaxing and quiet for 10-15 minutes and return to bed. Yeah, don't do that if you take ambien but since I'm a chronic and life long insomniac I've been taking ambien for years and years and have built up quite a tolerance. So I can take 20mg (like tonight), not be asleep in 20 minutes, and following the old advice I would get up and do something.

The very first thing I did was some gardening. In the house my husband and I had upstate there was a huge brick fireplace that we liked to leave going all winter long at a roaring crack. The empty wood rack was outside behind our garage and was no longer level. I'd taken my ambien got into bed and couldn't sleep. Sat on the couch. I guess at some point I got up, cleared away the old mulch, leveled the stone tiles the rack sat on and replaced the old mulch with a layer of fresh mulch on top. I woke up with very dirty fingernails and no memory of doing this.

When we moved back down to Long Island, I was still taking the drug. One night I couldn't sleep and decided to sit in my studio. At one point I decided to break out my largest brushes... my most vibrant colors and paint a floral mural on the guest room wall. A large white lily (now masked by the headboard) and a huge sunflower. I also scribbled Baha'i symbols and bits of scripture around the wall and painted a Qiblih line on the ceiling. I had been reading some of the writings of Baha'u'llah's before bed.

Another time I thought it would be best to organize my craft items in the basement. (Scary part here!) Drove our cars into the driveway to get them out of the garage leaving the driver's side door open on my husband's car and (it's a manual) was in neutral. My SUV was in park and all doors were closed. I then used a wheeling cart to move a dresser into the basement from the garage and began rigorously organizing my craft supplies.

The most recent event was after we had gone to dinner at my parent's house. My mother, a retired hairdresser, was lamenting the state of my permanent wave. It had grown out and was not looking fresh. She insisted it "just needed a trim." So unable to fall asleep, I got up, went to the bathroom just to shave a little off. And ended up with something looking layered and shoulder length... but oddly even and bouncy.

So I probably shouldn't continue taking this medication right? Wrong I do still take it. The problem doesn't really occur when I'm in bed. The problem happens if I get up and start doing random crap.... like I'm doing now. I was reading Richard Schmid's Alla Prima: Everything I know about painting. He mentions a few artists I wasn't familiar with so I figured I'd get up and look at some pictures.

No harm in that. Yet.

Look at the pictures and go back to bed kelly. Stop typing. STOP. no I mean it. now.

Jewels from the words of 'Abdu'l-Baha

The Baha'i Distribution Service has so many wonderful and amazing books about the Baha'i faith with such a range from sacred texts to self-help and parenting books. I have spent a great deal of money on books from them and every single one of them is an absolute fountain of spiritual fulfillment.

There are six books they sell in a series. Each book has a theme such as love or unity and they are entitled "Jewels from the words of 'Abdu'l-Baha"

There are four kinds of love. The first is the love that flows from God to man; it consists of the inexhaustible graces, the Divine effulgence and heavenly illumination. Through this love the world of being receives life. Through this love man is endowed with physical existence, untill, through the breath of the Holy Spirit - this same love - he receives eternal life and becomes the image of the Living God. This love is the origin of all the love in the world of creation

The second is the love that flows from man to God. This is faith, attraction to the Divine, enkindlement, progress, entrance into the Kingdom of God, receiving the Bounties of God, illumination with the lights of the Kingdom. This love is the origin of all philanthropy; this love causes the hearts of men to reflect the rays of the Sun of Reality.

The third is the love of God towards the Self or Identity of God. This is the transfiguration of His Beauty, the reflection of himself in the mirror of His Creation. This is the reality of love, the Ancient Love, the Eternal Love. Through one ray of this Love all other love exists.

The fourth is the love of man for man. The love which exists between the hearts of believers is prompted by the ideal of the unity of spirits. This love is attained through the knowledge of God, so that men see the Divine Love reflected in the heart. Each sees in the other the Beauty of God reflected in the soul, and finding this point of similarity, thy are attracted to one another in love. This love will make all men the waves of one sea, this love will make them all the stars of one heaven and the fruits of one tree. This love will bring the realization of true accord, the foundation of real unity.

Faith or lack there of...

It's been a long time since I had belief in God. You know how you're a little kid and you believe with all your heart that there is a God and that that God is in heaven watching over you and protecting you. Maybe it's because your parents tell you these things and when we're little we believe whatever our parent's tell us as absolute concrete fact but I like to think that childhood is a pure existence before the world tells us what we should think and do.

I believed in God once. When I was little, I believed with all my heart there was a God. I didn't just believe it. I knew it. You ever have a helium balloon? When you first get, it's straining to reach the sky and escape. And then slowly, as the helium leaks out, the balloon just sort of floats just below the ceiling. And then it's down at eye level and it keeps going like this until finally it's just laying on the floor. Well, that is my faith.

I had such an overabundance of it as a child and it slowly leaked away as I grew up. By the time I'd reached my late teens, I wanted nothing to do with anything spiritual. At that point it wasn't so much a rejection as it was ambivalence. I had other things I cared more of and wanted to spend my time doing. By the time I'd reached my mid-20's, science had gripped me and changed my mind into one that thinks and logically I couldn't work out the existence of God. I couldn't wrap my head around the concept of something existing that I couldn't test for, see in a microscope or measure in a machine.

To be honest, I was fine with it. There is no God. There is no great spiritual point to life. We are just a happy accident of the universe. We must exist to better our lives and those around us not for the promise of heaven. I was fine with all this. Really. I also developed a disdain for the religious. I viewed God's plan as a way for deluded people to find an explanation for the evil of the world. I viewed religion as a crutch for those who are too afraid of the empty void of unending non-existence that lays in wait for us after death.

I suppose there is great irony and not a little hint of karma in the fact that after my life's dreams were destroyed and I developed an irrational fear of my own demise that I, like so many lost souls, turned my face towards God.

For nearly 8 months now, I have drowned myself in the Baha'i faith; it's practices and beliefs.

I used to laugh at my mother for saying that going to church every Sunday meant that she believed in God. This idea seemed absurd. To me, you go to church because you believe in God and going to church is an act of that belief. It's not the other way around.

Again, some irony and probably a little more karma, I am now throwing myself into religion in the hopes of conjuring faith. Is it working? I don't know. I always thought of faith as a constant thing. It is either absent or it is present. You either have it. Or you don't. Some days I feel full of faith and belief... and then other days I feel nothing. It's been a process, accepting that faith seems to wax and wane like the moon. I just keep reading Baha'i texts. I keep praying feeling like a hypocrite.

I would give just about anything to have the rock solid concrete faith I had as a child again.