Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [127]
to do just what I’m meant to do
Love each and every one of you
it’s here right now . . . as I sit here
and don’t know how
to pay the rent or the laundry man
or the big tough lawyers with their get-even plan
it’s here right now . . . for me . . . for you . . .
for all of us who refuse to do their will or their way,
just because they say
it’s the way to do and the way to be
because they don’t know
they just make up schemes
as they improvise their unsteady way along
with the I’ll-come-with-you throng . . .
but that’s not the key to harmony, goin’ along
with the rest of the group you see
who will label and stamp and press you out
till we’re all like each other,
without our own man, understand?
If we just be what we are, we’re all a star!
So if I love you like I love me,
then our problems are over, don’t you see?
So do whatever you have to do,
always holding that in your point of view
and our great big world will finally be
what it’s always been that we couldn’t see
because we are free!
That’s the way it’s intended to be.
I continued to listen but all I could hear was silence. There was nothing more. Well, that was strange. Very strange indeed.
I wondered where those words, those thoughts, had come from. They hadn’t come from me. I was just the one screaming for help. I was just the one taking them down. Today is Liberation Day . . .
Something was going on here.
Something big. Something powerful. Something much bigger than me. It wasn’t just the words I’d heard or the thoughts, but the overwhelming feeling of peace that came entwined with them. And well-being. And Love.
Whoa! That’s what I felt: Love. That’s what had enveloped me, consoled me, and suddenly strengthened me. Love. I felt like a lamp finally plugged into an electrical socket, and the light was within me and all around me. I was surrounded by it.
I sat on my log all night in that blissful solitude. As I watched the dawn bloom, I slowly realized that nothing—not all the forces of the world gathered together . . . not a person, place, thing, or circumstance . . . nothing, absolutely nothing—had the power to stop that dawn from dawning. Why? Because that was the dawn’s purpose—to dawn. To spread its fingers of light over the advent of a fresh new day.
And I knew as well that it was a fresh new day for me.
I hadn’t called anyone for help—or lit up a cigarette or a joint; I hadn’t reached for a drink or a pill or a man or sex. I’d stopped trying to figure things out for myself. I’d simply asked for help. Could it really be that easy?
I went inside and looked up the word “liberate” in the dictionary.
Liberate: To set free. Release from imprisonment. To liberate the mind.
Today, indeed, was Liberation Day.
In a flood of excitement, I called Lily and told her about my experience. I was so excited that the words just poured out of me in an exuberant rush.
“That’s it,” she said. “You heard it.”
“Heard what?” I asked.
“The still small voice of truth. That’s it. And it has set you free. Dyan, once you’ve opened up to the truth, the truth will stay with you. And this is only the beginning.”
Wow, I thought. If this is just the beginning . . .
By this point, Jennifer was waking up and I heard her call me. I went to her room, took her into my arms, and held her tight, then made her breakfast and took her to school. Throughout the day, I warmed myself in that cocoon of pure love, a love that wasn’t going anywhere. I could move away from it, but love wasn’t ever going to move away from me.
As it turned out, I didn’t lose my home, but for a long time I had neither a job nor money. But I had peace. And it was real.
I spent the next months in much solitude. Apart from being a mother, my time was spent in study that steadily led me from faith to understanding. I knew that what happened on that Malibu beach wasn’t just a one-time experience—that the warmth and peace that had revealed itself to me was a constant reality, not a fleeting thing that would be here today and gone tomorrow. Therefore, it must be available to everyone