themuseinme

I have always known the muse.  I didn’t always know him by name, but I always knew he existed.  He went with me everywhere.  Like how a drop of water stays within the ocean or how an ocean holds on to the drop of water.  I don’t know.  We have always been a part of each other.

I don’t remember now because the memories of the days spent in my mother’s womb are gone.  I have to believe that my imagination is telling me the truth: that the muse was with me when I realized I was in a different place.  That I was in an exquisite tiny human body that was being formed  and that I had to stay in the dark, warm uterus of my mother’s body until my body would become big enough and developed enough to hold the real me.  The spirit me.

 When I merged with my human body there was a jolt of human consciousness that shocked me.    It was abrupt and startling and I immediately had human sensations.  I could hear earthly sounds, human voices.  Muffled, but sounds nonetheless.  I could feel. My tiny body quivered with life and impulses, pumping blood surging through my tiny vessels to the tips of my forming limbs.  I suppose that was the moment I realized I was not just a spirit anymore.  My spirit had hit the earth and had joined up with the fertilized egg of my soon to be parents, Harold and Virginia Painter.  I looked at the boundaries the egg gave me in disbelief and then at the muse.  “You expect me to live in this tiny thing?”   I asked, irritated already.  He just nodded his head as if he understood and said, “Donna, I’d like to introduce you to your body.”

 It took me a few weeks to get my bearings; I was so dazed to be in my new environment and body.  I think he asked me, “Don’t you remember us giving you “the plan?” For the life of me I could not quite remember what “the plan” was.  From the time I entered my mom’s body,  I began to struggle with remembering what my spirit life had been like before I came into this new, human form.  I must have asked the muse why I was having trouble remembering something as important as “the plan,” that something was mentally keeping my spirit from being the dominating force it was before I came to earth.  It was something new for me; having a brain.  It was a reasoning part of my new body.  I had never had to reason any thoughts before.  Now, my mind was beginning to question my spirit. 

My spirit began to wrestle with my brainy thoughts,   It knew exactly what it had been sent to earth for but the brain questioned me.  It told me I didn’t really have a reason to be on earth.  For the first time since I had been created, I felt confusion.  I had not even been born yet, but I was feeling confused.  I became a bit weaker and depressed.  The muse answered my question.  “You have something that will always try to keep you from remembering ‘the plan.’  It will always try to reason with you and confuse you, forcing you not to carry it out.”  “What on earth are you talking about?” I asked.  “Is this something I’m always going to have to deal with?”  “Well, Donna.  I’d like to answer ‘no’ to that question, but it’s something that is part of the way you are made and it comes with human life.  Donna, meet your soul.”

For obvious reasons, I eyed my soul as if it were the devil.  We walked in circles for a few minutes, our hands drawn up in fists, daring each other to strike first.  The muse had to step in and hold us at arm’s length.  “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, almost sounding as if he were hurt because a house divided can’t stand.  “You might as well get used to each other.  As long as you live on this earth, you two have to live in this body.  Spirit, soul and body.  That’s the way it is.   The three amigos.  But there is a pecking order.  The spirit tells the soul what to do and feel and the soul tells the body how to act and feel.  That’s the way it’s supposed to be, you guys.  Spirit, you MUST be in charge.  You are the one with the plan.  Soul, if you don’t let the spirit lead, things will go haywire.  The plan won’t be totally successful.  Soul, if you become the one in charge, Body will also suffer and go crazy.  And Body, you have no business telling Spirit or Soul what to do.  Got that?  There’s enough of that in the world already…people being led by you guys (pointing to Soul and Body.)  THE PLAN is for Spirit to be ‘large and in charge.’  Together, all of you make up ‘Donna.’  She has a body, a soul and a spirit.  Now, all of you…get it straight.  Donna’s spirit deals with me.  Got it?  If she has a question about ‘the plan’ and what to do next, she asks me.  After I talk to her about it, she will tell you all about it, Soul, reminding you how you should be acting.  Soul, serve Donna’s spirit. Never second guess it. Then Soul, you can comfort Body and keep it well and functioning.   Don’t question her about the plan.  If you do, Donna may get confused or depressed and then Body will slow down and get sick or hurt.  We don’t want that to happen.  There is a divine order and this is it.  There is a chain of command.  Now let’s use it so ‘the plan’ can be implemented.”

 None of us had spoken a word the entire time.  It as if each of us had thoughts and they were all being spoken out loud.  It was my time to come to earth and be significant.  The muse wanted no glitches before we even got started.  I saw Soul slightly raise his hand as if he had a question.  “Yes Soul?”  The muse asked tentatively.  “Muse, who do you go to when there is a question about ‘the plan?’”  He asked in a  quiet voice.  I couldn’t believe he would ask that.  I rolled my eyes.  He should know better.  “God,” the muse answered.  “I thought so,” said Soul.  “Just getting it all straight in my mind.” 

It was a serious moment.  There was some shuffling and righting that had to be done.  At that time, I’m sure my mom must have felt her first flutter of me moving in her as we quickly rearranged ourselves in her tummy.  Soul and Body looked downward, as if they were hurt with their positions.  “Why are you two so down cast?” the muse asked gently.  “Don’t you trust me?” 

In retrospect, I had never heard him talk that way before.  He sounded almost like a military officer.  He was serious about me executing “the plan.”   He took me by my spirit hands and looked at me in my spirit eyes.  “Let’s get this clear.   For you to do everything you were purposed to do, we held on to you a very long time.  When it was time for you to come and fulfill your destiny we sent you down to earth and placed you with great precision right into the womb you are supposed to develop in.”  As I looked into his eyes, “the plan” began to come back to my memory.  The longer I stared, the more my spirit remembered.  I recalled how enormous I really was before I made my home in this tiny human being. I was soaring.  I was free.  I was ancient and with the muse, full of superior knowledge and creative abilities.  I realized that I could do anything within the boundaries of “the plan.”   Like a genie, I fit myself into Donna’s body and waited and got ready to be born.

The muse stayed with me, never wanting to leave me alone.  As if he was babysitting my prenatal self.  I remember him clapping for me as I kicked and did acrobatics as fine as any Cirque du Soleil artist.  I danced a pre-natal dance of happiness as I heard the beat of my mother’s heart and realized that there was a rhythm and grace to movement.  Sometimes he let me use his finger as a balancing beam to do graceful pirouettes and practice my ballet positions until I became a bit too large to accomplish such feats in such a small place.  But by then I had the sense of rhythm in my bones, in my very center of being – my core.  

It was time to settle into a fetal position; one that I didn’t move around in too much.  Except for stretching an arm or a leg, a foot or sucking my thumb, I settled in more or less, for some much needed growth in my internal organs and other body parts.  I had outgrown my dancing days in utero and it was time to let the Body grow.  There were two things going on:  the Body was developing and the muse was getting ready to download me with some incredible knowledge and thoughts that I would need in my life outside the womb.  The funny thing is that the word “download” was not even on the radar in 1957, the year I was born.  But that’s what I got.  A download of everything I would need to equip me to insure that “the plan” could be completed within my lifetime.  During this time, the soul stayed quiet, and let me get the instruction I needed. 

(This is the first part of the series, “The Muse in Me.”  I may publish other posts that do not relate to the serial in between the serial posts.  I just didn’t want you to be confused if the next post is not related.  Thanks for reading!)