Global Community Communications Alliance Member Profile
LaTaYea
Why am I here? Why do I stay?
Simply? It's a gut feeling I have.
The kind you can try to ignore, but it stays with you, nags you even, if you try to disregard it. It got me here, and it's why I stay.
Ever feel that way about something—something you just can't shake?
For me, that nagging, driving feeling has been there, inside me, since I was about five years old. It was a feeling that I was supposed to be somewhere, doing something "important" and significant, on a world-scale almost, and yet I couldn't figure it out. So I spent most of my life running. Running from a lot of things and running towards something. Something that I couldn't identify or name.
Growing up outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in small-town America, I felt like I had been accidentally dropped into someone else's life; I didn't quite fit in. I had the trappings of a "normal" life on the outside—a big, loving Italian family, and achievements like being Class President and on the Honor Roll in high school. I had a nice car, expensive clothes and a handsome boyfriend who was the school's quarterback. But it never quite fit. And no one else around me ever seemed to mind their lot in life; I wondered why?
By the time I went to Penn State University, my quest for my life's meaning accelerated. I became Vice President of my sorority, got another handsome, sweet boyfriend, and we did all the socially correct things...I eventually got a job with a Philadelphia advertising agency, a condo and a better car...and it still didn't fit. I had a lot of money available to me, and wined, dined and vacationed in some of the best restaurants, hotels and places the East Coast, Caribbean and Europe had to offer and still everything left me unfulfilled for the most part; empty.
It was all empty. It was great on the outside; I had the whole image, from limos on Friday nights (just to go out bar-hopping) to elegant black tie dinner parties and weddings. I think I bought every name brand there was to buy – for my clothes, my linens, my cars, my sports gear, including the restaurants I was seen in. You name it: I bought it, did it, went there...and I still had this hole in my soul.
But I never quit searching; that driving, nagging, feeling inside kept pushing me on. I consumed people, things, and experiences, and I couldn't seem to find "it" – whatever it was I was looking for. I guess you could call that "it" my destiny.
I am 34 years old now, and throughout my twenties, I had a true "life in the fast lane"—with all the "sex, drugs, and rock & roll" you could want, plus a status car and good-paying job to respectfully cover it all up. Then in 1989, as my search continued, I experienced two life-changing months. In August I visited Arizona (including Sedona) for the first (and only) time in my life, and then simultaneously got deeply enmeshed in the New Age – books, channelers, palm readers, seminars, crystals, etc.—still searching. In September, I started attending 12-Step meetings. And there, for the first time, despite growing up with Christianity, I truly found God. Actually, at the time, I found spirituality. (God showed up later.)
I spent the next six years in Al-Anon (a 12-step program) and read every self-help and New Age book I could find. And through it all, I'd occasionally find specks of the truth; but they never filled in all the gaps nor answered all my questions. I did, however, start to solidly believe that our thoughts have a tremendous and direct impact on reality and that there's no such thing as a "coincidence." Combined with my new sense of spiritual meaning, I really began to trust that there was a ‘power greater than myself' who was actually running the Universe.
Based on these new beliefs and budding faith, as my 30th birthday approached, this burning, yearning, drive was nagging at me to a point nearing insanity, so I sought to quell the incessant clamoring in my mind and heart. The only pieces of the puzzle I had were my intense memories of Arizona (and red rocks) combined with an absolute knowing that I was supposed to move, to the Southwest of the United States. So I called my only friend living in Arizona and planned a visit that would symbolically coincide with my 30th birthday.
The long list of successive serendipities ("coincidences") that happened (again in August and September! of 1995) are something I hope to share with you at a later time, but for now, suffice it to say, my life changed again, dramatically. My trip led me to visit the community of Global Community Communications Alliance where I read The URANTIA Book for the first time. At that moment, deep in my soul I knew, that as outrageous as the claims these people were making seemed, I needed to check it out—just in case it was for real and true. If it was all a hoax or some dangerous group, I'd leave. But on the outside chance it was legit, and I didn't check it out,...well I knew with that same gut feeling, that I'd never be at peace with myself if I didn't find out. Within five weeks, I moved from Philadelphia and stayed, here in Sedona at the First Planetary Sacred Home, ever since.
If I could say one thing to the
world, it would be this:
There's no pill, drug, drink, lover, spouse, child, house, car, vacation, no amount you can spend or enough things you can buy that will fill that hole in your soul. It's a spiritual hole; you can't fill it with material possessions, relationships, or even conditions and atmospheres you can manipulate and create. A spiritual hole can only be filled by God. No one and no thing else. Period.
So why did I choose Divine
Administration, and why do I stay? Because that hole in my soul is getting
filled, for the first time ever in my life. And because in my heart-of-hearts,
I know that I'm going to have to do the personal growth work and change myself
at some point in eternity; there's no escaping it. So why try to avoid it
when I know that it'll be quicker to learn here and I (and many others on this
planet) will suffer less if I make the effort now, rather than later?
I stay because it's good for me, and it heals and grows me, because absolutely everywhere else on the planet, I can run away in one way or another; I can dodge what I don't want to look at and deal with, especially certain parts of my personality and the hardships of life. But here, in the spiritual olympics, when my buttons get pushed (everyday), I am expected to respond in the highest, most loving, and thoughtful way I can muster.
I loved my life in Philadelphia – I had it all, on the outside, in many ways – but I was so unhappy and empty on the inside. And I was getting exhausted, still RUNNING, all the while living there for 9 years. Since I moved into the training as a Cosmic Destiny Reservist in The Starseed and Urantian Schools of Melchizedek, my mind doesn't have to run away from anyone or anything anymore. It's a strange feeling, not running. I'm still getting used to it; and I certainly have moments when I still want to bolt—it's like Pavlov's dog; it's a knee-jerk reaction I have in my mind when things get hard in life. But like they say in the 12-step programs: "the only way out, is through." And so I stay. Because the one thing you can never run away from—no matter where you go—is your self.
And as for that nagging gut feeling? It's gone. It was the Hounds of Heaven barking at me; it was truly God calling. I finally discovered my very cosmic and very eternal, real family. No one can take that away from me; it's a gift, from God.
Ever hear that Biblical phrase "a peace that passeth all understanding"? Well that's what I have now. It's a gut feeling.
With prayers for your journey,
LaTaYea,
Minister
First Assistant
to Gabriel of Urantia and Niánn Emerson Chase and the Mandate of the Bright and Morning Star
This coming September 2005, I will have been here in Global Community Communications Alliance Community for 10 years. In this last decade I have seen the world take an unprecedented nose-dive into some of the worst suffering and oppression of peoples, needless wars and murders, and outrageous political stunts—all in the supposed "name of God" and based, frankly, on selfishness and greed. I have watched as the elite few in power and their networks of "good ol' boys" perpetrate injustice upon injustice in most every nation, and I am simply stunned by the horror of it all.
At the same time, I am so grateful and feel so blessed to be living amidst a group of 100 individuals (from 5 continents) who strive daily to create global change, beginning first and foremost with personal, individual change and right relationships. I believe that if enough people worldwide begin to make the personal choice to change, to become someone who actively strives to do the highest will of the Universal Father, we will find ourselves living in a whole new world—one where soldiers put down their guns on all sides and we become one planetary family, with no "sides" anymore. So much divides us today—religions, politics, philosophies, dogmas, you name it—and I believe only as global brothers and sisters under the one God can we truly unite and begin to solve meeting the world's real needs.
I invite anyone and everyone to explore the teachings of epochal revelation ( The URANTIA Book and The Cosmic Family volumes) and seriously look into the work and ministries of Aquarian Concepts Community. It changed my life, and I know it can change yours and our entire world!
With continuing prayers for your continuing journey God-ward,
LaTaYea