Life, Death and the Holiness of the Human-ness

By Julie Day
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Let your Human-ness be Holy.

I just returned from an incredibly dense and layered experience, and I would love to share a bit of that with you today. 

My Father has been diagnosed with a progressive disease. My Brother and I have had to make quick decisions to enact the level of care for him that is currently required, as well as anticipating and preparing for what's to come. That alone is a big enough task to move through.

However, this past week, I traveled all the way out to the Olympic Peninsula to organize and pack my Dad's home, sending it off to Florida... all in 4 days! As I entered his home and prepared for the task before me, I was hit with a wave of... density (no better word for it). Oh crap, how do I do this? How do I feel what I'm feeling and do what I am here to do? How do I decide what goes and what gets discarded or given away? How do I navigate this... doing the best possible organizing job for my Dad while simultaneously dealing with all the feels surfacing from a very complex and complicated history together?

What I learned is this: you let yourself be human, and you let that human-ness be holy.

I felt waves of sadness that left me sobbing in the bathroom. I felt anger over the wounding our human mash-up created. I felt love... a deep down buried love that I didn't know was still there for my Dad. I felt pride, seeing my Dad through the eyes of a mature adult Julie, seeing how beautifully he managed and governed his life. And, after years and years of healing from the pain I experienced as a child... I felt a surprising amount of gratitude that I got to have this crazy, wounded, imperfect, quirky, caring guy as my Dad. 

The result? The whole experience was downright holy to me. It might not have seemed that way from the outside looking in: I ate french fries, I drank wine, I got irritated, I didn't sleep much, meditate, or exercise (at all, ha!)... and yet it was just as holy and sacred as the most high-vibing spiritual retreat I have ever experienced. I had no bandwidth to judge myself, or hold myself to any egoic standard of how I should or shouldn't conduct myself, I just followed and allowed. I trusted the process. I let myself be human, and I let the human-ness be holy. 

There was something to allowing all those emotions and experiences to be felt consciously, authentically, and with gusto, that allowed for something transcendent to take place. 

I'm sure there are many layers of this that will continue to teach me and work on me, but this one, the holiness of the human-ness... it's a lifelong teaching that continues to awe me with it's richness and gifts. And it makes sense, right? I feel like that's why we're here. I'm here to experience this thing called Life as Julie, in all her colors. To deny that, on any level, is to deny the Divine idea that brought me forth into this Earth experience. The more I surrender to this and allow this to happen authentically, the more I feel a merging and unity with the Divine. The holiness never comes by by-passing, escaping, jumping out of or around to.. it comes be being and allowing who we are in every moment. Ahhhhhh~ yessssss. Can you feel that to be true for you, too? Just do you, authentically and consciously. Does that take a weight off your shoulders? 

I realize this level of authentic allowing is not as easy as it sounds. Our egos can really get in the way with shoulds, shamings, or spiritual by-passings. Ironically, it takes a high degree of trust and understanding of who we are (personally and spiritually) to let yourself be intentionally messy, unclear, and human.  

Thank you for allowing me to share in this with you! 

Deep bows to your most holy human, 
Julie