Books : Faith in the Valley : Excerpts

Introduction

I was ending a thirty-five-day promotional tour. Having flown all night, in a very crowded airplane, to get from Los Angeles to New Orleans, I was senseless from exhaustion and still wearing the clothes I had put on twenty-three hours earlier. I was feeling pretty bad. After making a few telephone calls just to make sure no one wanted me to do anything for at least eight hours, I crawled into yet another hotel bed. I had only been in the bed forty-five minutes when my sister-friend staff member arrived. We decided eating made more sense than sleeping, so off we went to hunt for and gather food.

Walking casually through the mall toward the food court, my companion was bringing me up to date on what was going on back at home. Then she asked me if I had heard about Phyllis. She had been found dead the day before. Beyond exhaustion there is numbness. In a state of numbness, the news that a sister-friend has left her body is called "the valley." I told my companion to shut her mouth! It was the only logical response to the feeling of pain, fear, confusion, and loss that descended over my body. I felt the pain, but I knew that examining it would mean I was in danger of losing my mind in a New Orleans shopping mall. I surrendered the thought. Actually, I shut down and continued the search for something I could tear apart with my teeth.

With a few morsels of food in my body, I moved out of numbness and back to exhaustion so that I could ask the question: "Why?" Why is not the appropriate question to ask when you are in the valley, because a mind in pain will reject everything except what it wants to, needs to hear. If the mind does not find what it needs and wants, it will ask why ad infinitum. After I asked and rejected all plausible explanations, I engaged in appropriate valley behavior: I cried.

Crying is a good thing to do in the valley because it clears the channels of communication. Crying purifies and cleanses. I once read about a scientific experiment which demonstrated that there are 38 toxic chemicals in a tear of sadness, while only one toxin exists in a tear of joy. As you cry in sadness, fear, or confusion, you cleanse the body and spirit of the toxins which cloud the mind and prevent it from accepting the truth. Once I was sufficiently purified, I asked the more appropriate question when one has fallen into a valley: "What is the lesson here?" In the quiet, undeniable way of spirit, the answer came. "She did not pass the test. The choice was hers to make." As my mind could now accept the truth, I fell into a peaceful sleep.

No matter who you are, you will have a valley experience at some time in your life. It just "be's" that way. For some, a valley will be a time of great fear, confusion, and, probably, emotional turmoil. For others, it may be a grave inconvenience or a time of seemingly endless struggle. You may whine, complain, shut down, or beg God for mercy. The truth is, you will only get what you need to grow. You are not being punished, you are being fortified!

In a great holy book of the Eastern tradition, the Bhagavad Gita, there is a passage which reads, "You will be tested! What if the Creator has a great task for you to perform and you are unprepared? Your tests come to ensure that you will be prepared when your time comes to serve." A valley is a testing experience which prepares you for greater service. Serving the Creator is what life is all about. Many of us, in the quest "to do" and "to get," forget service. We have not been taught that service means to "be" the embodiment of the Creator, actualizing all the attributes of the Creator as what we are. The Creator is life, truth, love, harmony, balance, principle, and peace. In living we become so busy "doing" we forget to "be." Humans doing are not human beings.

The wise woman, mother, sister, and stage diva Beah Richards once told me, "You are a human being, which means you lack no thing essential to your survival. You are whole, complete and loved just as you are. That is how I love you." This is also how God, the Creator loves us. Just as we are is the physical embodiment of God Itself. What we look like, what we do, what we have, does not alter what God made us to be. Living in a doing-made world, confronted by rules, laws, and expectations which force us to do, has a way of wiping the knowledge of our divinity right out of our memory. We become indoctrinated to a process of struggle, conflict, restriction, and denial based on what we do, what we get, and how we look to others who try to out-do and out-get us. Then we get mad. We get mad at the people who participate in the struggle, conflict, restriction, and denial with us. Then we get mad at our self for having the experience. Some of us go so far as to get mad at God for not helping us "do" better.

What we call living or trying to live is not life! God is life! God is not in conflict or struggle with anyone about anything. God is not restricted or restrictive. God cannot deny Itself. God perfects! This perfecting presence is always with us at the core of our being, even when we are in the valley.

With my father and mother gone from active living, it has been easy for me to turn to God. I had nowhere else to go! Then I realized the nowhere means, "now here." Even after I had this revelation, there were days when I got very busy "doing"; times when I went into fear; moments, sometimes weeks, of total confusion. I have even had experiences of temporary insanity. These were my valleys. It took a while for me to realize that all testing experiences fortify my faith, strengthen my character, and open my soul to the perfecting presence.

I have learned to breathe through those testing times. I am no longer afraid to let go, to give up control and allow spirit to work in my life. In those now-rare moments when I do forget to breathe or how to let go, I grab a book. A book of spiritual truth which will jar my memory back to my divinity, the truth of who I am. This offering is something for you to grab and hold onto if you should happen to forget what else to do. Keep it near at all times. Hold it tightly in the testing times. And, when all else fails, act on faith!

I love you just as you are!
Iyanla