Universe or Reality?

What is reality?

This question has been explored many times, in many ways. Some movies suggest it is something created, that it is, in fact, NOT real at all. Others bend it, along with what we thought we knew about life as we live it. Some still, look at it as if it is the way it is and nothing we do affects it.

This question has come up for me a lot over the last 2 years as it pertains to me and my life. Because, let's face it: we are all the stars of our own stories. And our stories become our reality.

I asked the universe to show me MY reality. In my ignorance, I thought that what I was living was somehow NOT mine and that if I asked for it to show up, I would be able to start living the life I had always imagined. I thought I could simply step OUT of this reality and into my own, which obviously would be better.

Fast forward to the present. My "reality".

I started looking around and really not liking or enjoying anything about it. I had to move to a cheaper neighborhood, I had a very stressful job from which I was laid off when the company went bankrupt. The new place we lived was not a great or safe neighborhood, there were homeless camps everywhere, people doing drugs on the sidewalks, and the store across the street was robbed regularly. Each month I wondered how bills would be paid.

I raged at the universe. I was depressed. I said to it, "THIS is my reality?" I screamed in disbelief. "THIS?!? Look at this? This is NOT what I asked for or envisioned for myself. And quite frankly, UNIVERSE, if this IS my reality, I would not like to be alive anymore thank you very much."

This line of thinking went on for quite some time. I would cry almost everyday. I felt sorry for myself. I asked my body to just die so we could move on and maybe choose something else for the next time we come to earth to play.

I also was determined to stay. A contradiction, I know. I had my dogs after all. And who would love them as much as I did? Who would take care of them with the kindness I show them?

Then, one day, I was talking with a friend of mine. A magical friend who among other things, is a very aware pranic healer. She got angry when I told her about when I asked universe to show me my reality.

"Why would you ask that? Why would you want any reality? Especially if you do not like what you are seeing around you?" She asked. "I hear others who should know better ask this very question, and it angers me. Ask for your universe. Do not limit yourself to some "reality". Reality is shit. And you are sitting in everyone else's reality. When you are in "reality" it is like you are sitting in shit, then you are asking the universe to show you shit! Ask what am I in relation to you and what are you in relation to me? Ask what is my universe? With money? With my body? With living?"

I came to understand that even if I am aware of everyone's reality (and I am) that I can be aware, and NOT step into it. I can have my universe, which is nothing like what I 'see', and is everything that I can create. It is like walking my dogs. I see shit on the sidewalk. I am aware of the shit. I walk around the shit. Or I step over the shit. I do not say "Oh! Look at the shit! Lets sit in it, take it home, make it ours".

No. I leave it alone. And as I walk away, I become less aware of it until it is not even a thought anymore.

And right now, someone is screaming on the street. Instead of allowing it to make me cringe at that fact that I live in earshot of this, I smile. Happy in the knowledge that this is not my universe. And the universe I now ask for is going to materialize for me. For my family. For my dogs. It is a universe full of wonder and possibilites. It it boundless. It is full of multiverses. And every one of those versions of me IS me.

I am grateful for my friend. I am grateful for the capacities I have. I am grateful for my mind expanding and choosing different. I am grateful and excited for what is to come. I know it is better than I am living now. I know it is better than anything I have lived up to this point in my life. I know that now is the time and space to receive it.

Universe? Show me.