Although the HOW and WHAT vary over time, for me, the WHY of writing is a given. It’s a calling.

Whenever I doubt or become distracted by immediate daily concerns, the inner voice that guides me (call it what you will), sends messages to steer me back on course. Sometimes they’re subtle – even comical. Other times, they hit with the force of incoming bricks. (Maybe you know the feeling.)

Here’s a good example.

I tell it, by the way, because it’s not just about me. More importantly, it’s about you too. So . . . please stay with me.

One day, a couple of years ago by now, I was on the way to the grocery store when the van I was driving took a sharp turn in a different direction. (Sometimes it seems to have a mind of its own : )

It pulled up in front of a Dollar Store. So I decided to take a look around.

As I walked through the aisles, what caught my eye was a small table lamp. It was okay. And I did need a reading light for my bed stand.

But there was no room for extras on my card. I counted out my pocket change to see what I could afford.

I had $6.26. Down to the last penny, that was the exact cost of the lamp. An “all-in” moment. I was being asked, as an act of faith, whether I was willing to give everything I had in exchange for this lamp.

It seemed like the thing to do.

As you can see, it works fine. The lamp shade is opaque. It appears to be black. But when I turn on the switch, electricity shines through, making it brightly translucent.

I liked the guitar motif, but didn’t get the hidden message for quite a while. Then, Click!

I should have known. Being a string player, the message was tailor-meant for me.

During my musician-yoga years, I’d actually outlined a book, The Body as Instrument: How To Tune It. Did you know that string instruments are modeled on human anatomy? They vibrate the same way we do, which explains our resonance with music.

It’s no accident that violin parts are called the back, belly, neck and head. Strings (which used to be gut) are stretched across the neck. They resonate with an underlying sounding board called the spine.

There’s much more. But here’s the point. Going deep into music, I discovered that there were important similarities between me and my violin. I too am an instrument. One that needs tuning.

In essence, my guitar lamp was an answer to unspoken doubts about writing, confirming the call to “be an instrument of light.” Cool.

But I still continue to unpack the meaning. Is writing the way to serve? I could just as easily be a light in my daily life, in the conduct of my ordinary responsibilities. Becaring the humans and dogs I love. Making meals. Doing laundry. Running errands.

Who’s interested in light, anyway? Most humans are hidden away in Platonic, cave-like normalcy. Historically, they kill light bearers. They certainly shun inspired messages, or else imitate them, adding spin to negate the message.

There are, however, small windows in time when catastrophes make it suddenly “convenient” to hear truth. My thought for a long time has been, prepare. Put the writing in place, so when the opening occurs, what’s needed is ready and available.

I’ve waited several years to write about the lamp because its hidden messages are still unpacking. Now, taking it to next level, the connection with you becomes clear.

I’ll give you the Aha conclusion first, then back up to show how I got there.

God is not

and could not possibly be

dead.

Being made in the image of God,

YOU are the living proof

of God’s existence.

(How convoluted and ironic is this? Though made in God’s image, we have the free will to hide from our Creator and deny the very being which our existence mirrors, upon which our lives depend.)

Nevertheless. The truth cannot be altered. Each of us is the embodied form of a musical instrument. Even if, for any multitude of reasons, your light is switched off right now, you still have the innate potential to conduct electricity (energy, prana, chi) that in turn transforms into light.

Ancient Hindus mapped the internal energy transformers knows as chakras [“wheels].” Know how to activate them, they taught. You’ll experience enlightenment.

Throughout time, various systems have reached the same conclusion, though using different avenues to reach the same destination.

If that were not enough, there’s more. Did you know that each and every part of our anatomy is a fractile-like mirror of the whole?

Maps of the front and back of the head catalog pressure points which correlate with every other part of the body. Stimulate one and corresponding internal organs throughout the body resonate with healing effect.

Similarly, complete correlations are mapped for the hands, for the feet, for the eyes, ears and tongue.

As such, the human physical body is a magically redundant fail-safe system. If you’re hurt in one place, you have a full-spectrum range of distant locations from which to choose. Use one or any combination of sites to intercept and remedy what ails you.

A few of us are natural healers. We intuitively know how to regenerate from injuries, often with remarkable speed. But most have forgotten. The maps, much less the sciences which explain their effectiveness, are not within the range our limited, fractured belief systems currently allow.

Why? Who does it serve, that we’ve been so alienated and cut off from the magical inner workings of our miraculous, musical bodies?

The Egyptians knew about subtle anatomical correspondences. Sages in China and India based their healing practices on them. Though suppressed by the politics of unnatural Western science, the facts now packaged as “reflexology” are available for you to act on, if you to so choose.

It may well be that, given the inevitable, coming collapse, it will suddenly once again become convenient —  perhaps even urgently necessary — to seek out and restore what we’ve relegated to the outer limits of conscious awareness. We have untold, as yet unknown resources for obtaining information, guidance and healing — if and when we are sufficiently motivated to heed them.

In 2014, I put it this way in Rethinking Survival:

I’m now convinced that the Life Wheel imaged as the Quantum Paradigm of Change is the ultimate answer to the ancient ultimate question. It’s the literal proof that humans are made in the image of the Creator — the microcosm resonates with the macro. I AM that I AM.

Put another way, “God don’t make no junk.” In this context, the exhortation, “Ye must be perfect like your Father in Heaven” makes perfect sense.

Just as Einstein had the Unified Field Theory, but didn’t know it, each and every one of us on the planet is perfect in potential: made in God’s image. But we’ve forgotten.

And tyrants want you to sleep on. They’ll do anything to prevent you from remembering that you’re inherently okay. Because once you do, as Einstein did, no one can intimidate, control or dominate you. You’re aware that nothing anyone has for sale can make you more perfect. Nor can anything that anyone threatens to take away alter your essential okayness.

It’s your inalienable birthright. A given.

The Quantum Paradigm is the viable basis upon which to build valid self-esteem. It’s the key to personal freedom — freedom from ignorance, freedom from fear. It’s the rock-solid foundation of functional relationships/community. It’s grounds for rethinking what the word “freedom” really means and how to implement its promise.

One minor caveat: it all depends. While we all have the option to remember who we truly are, most of us are like Lambert, the Sheepish Lion. It takes a smack with a two-by-four upside the head before we’re finally ready to wake up. Often it takes the form of life-threatening danger to those we care for. A personal health crisis will also do the trick. So will job loss or a run-in with natural disaster.

But, like Dorothy stranded in the Land of Oz, when you want dearly enough to return “home,” you can click your heels whenever you chose — and come to find out, you’re already there.

Maybe my calling as an instrument of light is simply to remind you that you are too – if and when you choose to remember who you truly are. And to warn you that crunch time is upon us. The time to wake up to your unlimited potentials is NOW . . or never.