Distracted By Infinite Beauty

Seeing Through the Illusion

Abundance Is Reality

“Sometimes I feel like the richest person in the world surrounded by starving people. I try to tell them where there is food enough for everyone. But, they won’t go. It’s like they are feeding off of suffering.”

This was part of my answer to my friend who asked me if I thought it was fair that I was “walking around all peaceful” while people around me were struggling. I had explained to her that I used to try to “save souls” when I was an evangelical Christian. But, it seemed that no one liked that about me—not even my fellow church members.

I had been raised by my grandmother and mother to believe that nothing was more important than serving Jesus and getting into heaven. So, for about fifteen years, I built my whole life around trying to be the best Christian I could be. My focus was on living in such a way that my grandmother wouldn’t have to lie at my funeral trying to protect and take care of my mom. But the only thing that I seemed to get from it was people—mostly other Christians—saying that I thought I was better than others, that I was holier than thou, or the most recent one, I wasn’t a real Christian because I was too open minded.

This admonishment from members of my church led to me almost having a nervous breakdown as it came while I was going through a divorce. For whatever reasons, my church members thought that kicking me while I was down was the best way to get me back on their track. It didn’t work. Instead, I sank into a three month detour into angry atheism, before my way back to Christ and a peace that surpassed all understanding. Once I got back to that peace, I didn’t want to give it up. So, as I saw it at that time, the best way for me to keep a peace that surpassed all understanding was to stop trying to explain it. And when I did, I discovered that I was surrounded by infinite beauty and miracles—and had been all of my life.

“You Have to be the Luckiest MF of the Planet”

After my three months as an angry atheist, I was back with Jesus, who I had started calling Yehoshua in my head. And he and I were tighter than ever. Without all of the church dogma and stuff, I was able to remember how this invisible benevolent zombie who took my brains but gave me an intelligent heart, had carried me throughout my life. The people from my church told me that God was going to abandon me if my divorce went through and that it was my fault my wife didn’t believe in me because I wasn’t making her submit like I was biblically instructed to do. Hearing this after all of the years I poured into the church was devastating. And, rather than tell them where to stick it, I took it out on Yehoshua. I felt like I had wasted my life trying to be a good Christian and now, according to these elders, none of my good was worth a damn because I wasn’t a good patriarchal misogynist. But how was I supposed to learn their misogynist ways when I was raised by all Black women? My mom wasn’t going for that. 🤣

Fortunately, even though I was mad at Yehoshua, he wasn’t mad at me. And one day, after I had fully purged all of the church drama, all I could see was the perfect love that cast out fear and the peace that surpassed all understanding. Interestingly though, after I was asked to leave my church, I started clubbing and acting the fool to make up for what I thought was lost time. And now suddenly, I had no appetite for it. Without my anger and despair none of that seemed attractive. Like I had been previously, I was distracted by too much beauty to be attracted to anything that seemed lesser. All I wanted to do was marvel in the reality that I had nothing to worry about and that for however long I was here, I was meant for joy.

Of course, as my friend pointed out, people were struggling around me. So when people saw me happy again, naturally they thought something was wrong with me. They made it their job to remind me of everything that sucked in my life and that I was in denial if I wasn’t worried. One of the things they pointed out was the fact that without my wife’s income I was basically broke. 😅 I was. I had used all of my savings to make it after she left, and I was about to have to use credit cards for everything else. I legitimately had $0.26 in my checking account until my next check. But, I was cracking up laughing about it. My friends were worried about me. Plus, I had started selling stuff in my house for cheap or giving nice stuff away for free. Apparently, this is a sign that a person is at risk of dying by suicide. So they tried to get me to talk to someone. Again, I kept laughing. And it was even starting to annoy the people who liked non-church Pedro better than church Pedro.

I knew things were getting out of hand when the office administrator told me she couldn’t stand my face when I went to the admin office to take my now ex-wife off of my beneficiary list and to schedule my reenlistment appointment. I didn’t even really know this woman. But true to form, I started giggling and asked her why she couldn’t stand my face. And she said, “Because you have nothing to be smiling about. I know about you. Your wife left your ass, your church told you to get out, and you don’t even really have that many friends anymore.” She had pretty accurate information considering I didn’t know her. And I only annoyed her more when I told her that I did have something to smile about because I had Yehoshua back in my life. I see now that I sounded a little touched in the head. But I was sincere.

Well, back to the $0.26. Here I was in a precarious financial situation - no wife, no church, and almost no friends since I stopped clubbing and went back to only listening to Christian music. But, boy was I full of joy. It was like nothing could get to me–not even people throwing my problems in my face. And I could tell that people were just waiting for something to get to me, which while sad, really was none of my business. I just felt sorry for them that they would rather I join them in misery than to be curious about my joy, which was just about to turn into ecstasy with an unexpected miracle.

On the day that I was supposed to reenlist, I also had a dentist appointment. For whatever reasons, the dentist took forever to get to me. He offered me the option to reschedule since I had a reenlistment appointment. But, I decided to wait and ended up missing my appointment. Well, something amazing happened that night. At midnight, unbeknownst to anyone, a reenlistment bonus was added to my career field which amounted to about $20,000. So, when I went in to reenlist the next day, the people in the office said, “I don’t know what good deed you did, but because you missed your appointment yesterday, you are going to receive this bonus and you will get half of it up front in your next check.” Needless to say, I was thrilled. But what made it crazier, was that other people in my squadron had reenlisted the day before and didn’t get the bonus—some of whom were the same people who wanted me to know how much my life sucked.

Knowing that I was getting the money and they weren’t, I decided not to mention it to anyone figuring they didn’t know. But when I got back to the shop, some folks immediately came up to me and asked me why I missed my reenlistment appointment the day before. When I said it was because of a dentist appointment, they looked at me suspiciously and asked directly if I knew the bonus was coming and just didn’t tell anyone else. Isn’t that crazy thinking? Of course I had no idea about the bonus. How could I? After a few more questions, one person gave up and said, “Either you are lying or you have to be the luckiest mf on the planet.”

With the next paycheck, I paid off all of my bills. Next, I was able to refinance my car for a way, way lower payment and take my ex off of my insurance. And just like that, I was debt free and living lovely. And that was basically how my life went for months and months after and into a year. Miracle upon miracle, joy upon joy, beauty upon beauty everywhere. It was my normal. And the only thing about it that I questioned was if I would ever be able to share it with anyone else.

Long Story Short…No

No. You cannot share your joy with anyone who doesn’t have it themselves. You can only celebrate it with other people who have found it. Point Blank. You don’t have to believe me. But, it is a fact that I have learned several times over. Just like you can’t share your sobriety with anyone else, if you try to share your joy with someone in despair, the only thing that is going to happen is they are going to bring you down to their level eventually because they cannot come up to yours. There are many reasons for this. The number one being hedonic adaptation, which I talk about in this article from my Linkedin Newsletter, People Are Not Things. Hedonic adaptation is essentially an emotional baseline that people return to after having an emotional experience—whether positive or negative.

I learned this as a pastor. It took me years to figure out why people would get inspired after a sermon and believe that they were going to make some kind of positive change only to have that feeling wear off about an hour later. At first, I used to get super frustrated because I’m the type of person who, if I learn some really good news or some really bad news, I am going to change my life forever once I know that information is accurate. I love truth more than I care about being right. So, if I find out I’ve been ignorant, I’m changing on the spot.

For example, I was raised to believe LGBTQ people were bound for the Lake of Fire. Then one day, I heard this woman pray a prayer so filled with the Holy Spirit and love of God for all beings that I started crying. And crying is not my jam if I can help it. I still have a little of that toxic masculinity to get out of my system. Well, that lady’s prayer changed my life immediately. And this was months before I found out that Laura was once Laurence. When I found that out, my life had to change again. And to her credit, she actually listened with an open heart when I confessed to her that I didn’t know anything about how she experienced life and I was raised to believe one thing, but my soul told me another. She then took some hours to tell me her story. After which, I had to admit that she sounded more clear about who she was than almost any person I ever met in my life. So there was no way I was going to be able to go back to how I was raised.

However, it took me until about three weeks ago to fully accept that my rate of change or access to joy is never going to be something that I can share with someone unless that person is willing to be broken of all of the things that distract them from the joy and peace that actually permeates everything in life. And yet, I also cannot withhold the joy. I just have to express it without attachment to anyone getting anything out of it. In the video below, that’s exactly what I set out to do. I didn’t 100% land it because, especially with so many folks being depressed with the state of the everything, I still have a twinge of the habit of wanting for people what they can’t want for themselves. But just a twinge. More than anything, I am trying to shift my focus back to grounding my presence in the peace that I know is possible because I have lived it.

Of course, as I mentioned in a previous post, Be No Stranger, whenever we make changes in our lives, it means that the people in our lives who didn’t agree to those changes are going to have to shift as well, which will bring up some 💩. So, if you make the decision to ground yourself in infinite beauty and joy as well, just know a whole lot of people who are in your life now will try to stop you. Therefore, it will behoove you to learn how to understand why people will resist moving from their baseline. That way, you won’t take it personally when they try to sabotage you. Because they will.

Also, make sure to decrease your intake of information from the insane world that is bent on self destruction and increase your intake from people who are moving on to better realities. And lastly, stop sharing your joy with downer people and find people who you can celebrate with. You can still help the downer people from your surplus. But, do not go into energetic debt for folks with no capacity to reciprocate. I have done that off and on for 40 years because I didn’t have any consistent mentors to teach me. I learned from trial and error. So, let me save you some time. STOP!

Oh. And one more thing. Lavish yourself with love. It doesn’t cost you anything. But the return on investment is infinite.

Below this payline are some reasons why most people you encounter will not be able to give and receive joy. Also, if you are a paying supporter, I am offering 3 half hour sessions to reflect with people on unpacking their core motivations through the Enneagram. (There’s an offer for non-paying supporters as well. So keep reading.)

If you don’t know about the Enneagram, as taught by the Narrative Enneagram (TNE) system, it is a dynamic map of nine core personality types, each reflecting a distinct pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving rooted in deep motivation and worldview. Unlike static personality models, this approach emphasizes direct experience—encouraging self-awareness through storytelling, somatic presence, and compassionate inquiry. It sees personality not as a fixed identity, but as an adaptive strategy developed in childhood, which can evolve toward integration and transformation. Central to the Narrative tradition is the belief that transformation happens not just through concepts, but through witnessing ourselves and others with honesty and empathy.

I have been studying the Enneagram consistently for 6 years and will be soon completing certification as an Enneagram Teacher through the Narrative Enneagram. You do not have to know your Enneagram Type to get something out of this session. However, if you do not know your type, I would encourage you to take a look at the core types from the link above and choose three that you think speak to you or take either the TNE test for $10 or a free online test so that we can ground our conversation in a stable framework.

And for those of you who are not paid subscribers, but would like to participate, I will extend the invitation to the first three folks who restack 5 of my posts and mark it with the hashtag #liberation and DM me afterward.

I am putting this invitation out here as an expression of the abundance that I know is surrounding and permeating everything. I look forward to connecting with those who will receive it.