my secret

so in a world of self-help books i find it interesting that everyone is willing to read a self-help book but not perhaps a religious self-help book, though i would argue books like the secret and such are steeped in religious fundamentals and philosophies and such that they secularize it and market it to people who don't believe in the divine.

i believe in the divine though my belief comes with a long line of arguments and conversation and some uncertainty, though i think this is the age of questions, and i'm a mere product of my environment more than anything else. this culture/age is a culture of questions and not many answers, and we're brought up doubting and it would be fake of me to say i've not ever had questions in the things that i believe that i've never argued with God about things...

but, i will say that because my belief is steeped in the divine, i believe that everything that has happened to me has been ordained by something/someone else, and that all my success should be credited not to myself but to God.

i started 2008 in celebration. i didn't know what i was celebrating yet, but i was at my friend's house and i said we need to go out and celebrate this year and what's coming. in 2006, i had this feeling that i would be published within the next two years. call it intuition which i think is a selfish term for what i believe is a divine voice speaking to me. i told a friend to keep me accountable, and to have someone be able to say "yes, she said this to me two years ago" so then i don't sound like a spook or an idiot, though having that confirmed makes things a bit more difficult to explain away.

my secret is listening and following directions and following directions in an unfettered path, in a direct, straight line to where you see yourself. there should be no detours. of course, you can't help detours, but you must turn those detours into the path still getting you where you need to be. i consider my going to rutgers was a detour. but at the same time it was a step in the right direction: i don't think i would have submitted my manuscript (i was sitting on it for most of 2007 without submitting it anywhere) anywhere if i were still in school and thinking i should be holding these poems that i was writing for a new manuscript and i was ready to throw the old one out and get rid of it...but some divine timing occurred, and doors opened, and i believe that is the key: when you see a door open you have some choices to make: you either walk through the door, or you stand there and look into the room you could be standing in, or you turn around and walk away. most times, i walk through doors, and then deal with what's in the room when i'm in there. never turn your back on a door. never.