I Would Rather Die

As an 8 year old, the earliest I can remember, I asked myself:

How do I live this life?

When I asked that, I was standing on the blacktop outside of my classroom.

It was recess.

I was facing the big open space for us to run around in, play.

I felt no desire to play.

I had a very important question coming through.

How

do

I

live

this

life?

It was a gloomy day.

I don’t know if that’s why, or if it was the nature of my question,

but I felt quite bleak inside.

I didn’t feel like I had an answer.

I felt like I was given a massive task of living this life

with

no

fucking

manual.

I felt alone.

I felt afraid.

I felt uneasy.

I felt abandoned in a way,

but not like someone had left me,

more like I had lost myself somewhere and I had no way of knowing where or when or how I would find myself.

8 years old.

It makes me laugh now,

but man, I was so serious in that moment.

I heard the kids playing,

saw the recess chaperone walking around sternly,

the sky looming overhead,

daring me to look for answers in it.

I remember my sinking feeling inside,

no hope,

no way,

no how.

Fast forward 23 years.

Today.

Now.

I get it.

I get that 8 year old.

I get her and I get it.

I get her question.

I got the answer.

23 years of searching, seeking, yearning, wandering.

23 years of turning over every goddamn rock.

23 years of wishing, hoping, desiring.

23 years of getting it and then losing it and then getting it.

Feels like a long time,

and also,

feels like a blip of my life.

The journey has been real.

It has been so

fucking

real.

And I get it.

What I wanted so dearly,

so fiercely as that child,

the knowing,

the solidity,

the LIFE,

all that I wanted,

what I wanted was to know who I was.

To know why I was here.

To know my place in the world.

To live free.

As a 20 year old, after a massive spiritual experience that essentially flipped my life upside down inside out,

I began the conscious journey into my heart of hearts,

into the quiet deep unknown.

It was here, I began to piece together the secrets of the universe,

of God,

of soul.

It was here, I allowed my heart and soul to take over.

I prayed to God to just take over me,

just mf consume me,

my life,

everything I’m worth.

I desired nothing more than to live in accordance with the divine,

the supernatural.

It was my cry,

my demand,

my appetite.

I filled journals on journals on journals of all the things I was learning,

of all the things I was discovering about the truth of God,

truth about the world,

truth about ME,

truth about my HEART,

MY SOUL.

And I knew that I knew that I knew that I motherfucking knew:

I would rather die than live without this,

this depth,

this fullness,

this knowing,

this ever-expanding-ness,

limitless flowing evolution,

palpable,

more palpable than my own heartbeat,

more real than my own blood,

louder than my own voice,

vaster than everything I knew I didn’t know.

I would rather die.

That was my fierce, toddler-like proclamation.

I literally wrote,

“Take my life.

I don’t care.

I don’t want to live another way.

I REFUSE to live another way.”

Because I KNEW

I KNEW

I KNEW

I FUCKING KNEW

THERE

WAS

NO

OTHER

WAY.

Nope.

Maybe for others.

But sure as fuck hell not for me.

I didn’t care what choosing that would ‘cost’ me.

I didn’t care if that meant I would go live in an ashram and meditate my life away.

I didn’t care if it meant I needed to give up all of life’s pleasures.

Because HELLO –

WHAT WOULD LIFE’S PLEASURES EVEN **BE** WITHOUT LIVING IN THE EFFORTLESS FLOW OF ALL THAT IS,

OF ALL MY SOUL,

OF ALL THAT IS GOD AND BEYOND???

What EVEN IS LIFE BEYOND THAT?!?!

I knew.

I knew so deep,

so truly,

it hurt sometimes.

It was so sweet,

so beautiful,

so glorious,

this life I came to live,

the God I came to know,

to remember,

to walk with.

It was almost unbearable,

the amount of grace I walked in,

the love I inhaled,

the freedom of being that sang through my veins.

This.

THIS is life.

And I choose it.

If it’s not for me,

if I can’t have it,

I’d rather die.

Just kill me now.

It no longer became about knowing how to live my life or feeling better.

It no longer was about anything physical.

It wasn’t even about being happy.

It was about LIVING.

It was about REALNESS.

It was about GOD-NESS,

the motherfucking MAJESTY of ME,

of my essence,

my wonder,

my beauty,

and all of life that reflected it all back to me.

I realized life was happening inside of me.

And the physical world was shifting around me,

simply smiling back at the big ass toothy grin I had going on inside of me perpetually,

constantly.

I was free.

In those days of seeking,

of coming face to face with the most REAL RAW thing I couldn’t even have IMAGINED,

the thing that my 8 year old heart somehow knew about,

had a clue about.

What a precious child.

Yes, me.

Seeking something she didn’t even know she actually knew.

Hearing the voice within,

the desire,

the inclination,

the tugging.

Not knowing what to do with it,

what it meant,

just feeling it all,

feeling all the vastness,

the craziness,

the wildness

inside and not knowing wtf to do with it.

To come to this point in my journey today is SUCH the full circle.

To remember that bleak ass day in third grade.

To think that she knew there was something worth dying for,

something that she would demand more than life itself.

She KNEW.

Today, I say the same.

That 8 year old has evolved,

that heart of hers,

so clear that THERE IS MORE,

THERE IS MORE TO BE HAD,

MORE TO BE LIVED,

MORE TO BECOME,

so fucking adamant, stubborn, single-minded (my parents and Soul can tell you all about that part of me lol).

That knowing has evolved into EMBODIED KNOWING.

Her mind, her body, her heart have synced over the years.

And now she doesn’t KNOW by default,

living in a world where only her soul knows and the rest of her is living in a hellhole.

She KNOWS by experience,

by choice,

by the breath of her body,

the skin of her heart.

She KNOWS.

She lives it now.

She lives in the freedom of all-of-her-ness.

She lives in the grandeur of the universe within.

She lives in love,

in faith,

in joy.

She knows,

her life is more than anything she had ever thought,

than anything she had ever been taught.

She knows,

life is happening ONLY within.

She caught it,

she followed the thread,

and it took over her.

Until there was nothing else but all of Life and God and Spirit.

There she lives.

There I live.

Here I live.

Unfettered, untamable, bound by the magic of the soul.

You’ve read this far, my sense is you’ve received the invitation from your soul,

to step into all of you.

To allow soul to take over.

To live life well,

full,

in overflow.

It’s your calling.

And your choice.

You are living exactly what you are allowing yourself to live.

If you know you are meant for it,

and aren’t clear on what the hell it means to go all in on you,

PM me, comment, email me at grace@gracejyk.com

Within you, is a life worth dying for,

a life worth living.

Your choice,

always.

Love,

Grace