Answer: That depends. Do you want what’s coming to you? No, really – do you? Think about that one a minute. It could get scary.

This question is a weighted one. We seem to think that what is “due” us is a shining pat on the back, a pot of gold, and a 1950’s ticker-tape parade in which we are a central figure, showered in confetti and hand-drawn signs of adoration. We often see ourselves down here on this planet not as part of a whole, but as a singular entity all unto itself – and it’s amazing our capability to promote ourselves to near-super-hero status: The Great Crusader, The Great Martyr, The Great Creative Genius, The Great Underdog, The One in the Trenches (while “the man” rears his theoretical dictatorial finger of authority and passes us by, choosing some bum-kissing schmuck to our right to be the next recipient of the “Human of the Year” Award). It is astounding, for a race that is so innately insecure, that our inner human personae actually identifies with our most incredible abilities when demanding a “pay-out” from The Universe. It makes you wonder – with this “super hero alter ego” running out in front of us to define ourselves to one another – why would we even ask this question at all?

That’s simple: Because we don’t actually believe our own press.

In other words, one may THINK they are The Great Creative Genius, but if they make a point to put forward that identity into the world, over and over again – really, they’re trying to prove this fact to themselves. The Universe KNOWS what we are, moreover – WHO we are — and apparently, we don’t, until we receive fifteen five-star reviews in 15 different newspapers.

How can we “get what’s coming to us” when we’re not sure what we are, outside of the identity on which we are trying to get feedback? In this instance, The Universe acts like a boomerang. We toss something out and The Universe lets that “something” loop around and come back to us. However, in this instance, upon its return flight, the boomerang comes back in a slightly different format. Think of a boomerang that changes shape in mid-air. If we want feedback on being The Great Philanthropist, then we shouldn’t throw out the boomerang labeled “The Great Martyr”, as those are two different energy signatures. It’s not a game of charades – we don’t need to elude to what we wish we were until people guess our identity. We need to BE what we are, in this three dimensional incarnation where “action inspires reaction” is the rule, and let the chips fall where they will. That way, the Universal Boomerang of “who we are” will have no room to morph in mid air, change into the shape of a frying pan, and blast us across the back of the head with an unsuspected return.

Of course, this “being what we are” isn’t as easy as it sounds, or we’d all be doing it, for crying out loud. First of all, most folks have a very hard time discerning what they are, because they aren’t certain WHO they are. Since The Universe recognizes that who we are is what we are, this “what came first, the chicken or the egg” thing becomes a frustrating dance for most people. And, to add gasoline to the fire, we are taught – at least in Western Culture – that what we are is dictated back to us by a piece of paper on the wall with University lettering, or a license hanging below it, or a union card with our name on it. We are taught that what we are must be signed off on, by a respected third party, who somehow approves of us in some way — and in this approval, makes us bona fide to the world. In fact, if we were able to separate the what – the actual accreditation or validation of our work – with the who – who we were in achieving the accreditation or the validation — then we’d have a much clearer understanding of the whole Who We Are is What We Are issue. However, the latter suggests that we’d have to have a pretty healthy sense of self, going into the professional accreditation process, and again, most Western Culture dictates that it is in this third-party validation system that our “role” in society is defined.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Our “role in society” is defined by our actions toward others, when we are not on the clock, and those actions are defined by who we are. So we’ve got it all backwards, and that is not accidental. As long as Darkness can keep us chasing shadows of ourselves, we remain slightly out of connection with who we are. And as long as we are not truly locked into who we are, we will never have the impact in this third dimension that is possible for us, while only riding the “what” credentials. Because the “what” without the “who” is like the icing without the cake.

We would greatly benefit from relaxing, and simply being who we are. Yet often, that transition from “what” to “who” is a touch scary — no accreditations or diplomas or professional affiliations to hide behind, just little ol’ us – and to most, “little ol’ us” just isn’t enough. “Being” is the process of putting ourselves on the line with one another. Quite literally, it is the act of putting ourselves right out there, the good, the bad, and the ugly, for everyone to see, no matter how many letters may or may not be behind our name. There is a lot of general tentativeness in doing this, because when one is positioned behind the social identity of, say, The Great Achiever, rather than the emotional identity of “Bob, the guy who is a workaholic and whose wife left him to start a family”, there is a lot more wiggle room. We fear our own “non-shiny spots” because we think they makes us “lesser than”, when in fact, it is our non-shiny spots that we relate with most, in one another.

I’ve never seen humanity rally like it does when one or more of us are hurting. Even George W. Bush was embraced by the entire nation at ground zero in New York, as he wept with the firefighters on national television. As a species, all of our lofty principles go flying out the window when we see another one of us in pain. We immediately default to our most base operating system, which is one of love, and we swing into “recovery” mode because part of our body is hurting, even if it is not us. This is one of the few times that we are reminded of our connectedness to one another – that we are not our solitary “Super Hero Id”, but a singular consciousness as part of a Greater Body that needs assistance. We are seeing this instinct kick into high gear with the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the many Marines and Policemen who join the movement to show solidarity for the many who are hurting. Our natural reaction to dive in and help people in pain, though we may not even know them personally, is one of our greatest gifts to one another, and one of our most potent attributes as a genus.

It is what defines us as a Spiritual Family.

And who knows each one of us better than anyone else around? Well, typically, our family, of course. Yet who do we tend to take for granted and treat with the least amount of respect? Well, our family, or course, because we know that deep down, we will be forgiven and loved by our family in spite of our petty craziness. So indeed, since Humanity is a spiritual family down here on this earth, and since we’ve seen examples of our connectivity to one another in times of great pain, like right now, with Occupy movements erupting all over the nation — doesn’t it stand to reason that our best bang for our buck is to let people see ALL of who we are, within reason, rather than just our best DC Comics representation?

How can The Universe bring us “what’s coming to us” (or more accurately, what is truly ours) when we are only choosing to be only half of what we are in this incarnation, and that “half” is a rather scripted character based upon only on our shiniest parts? How can “we” be defined in this equation? We can’t, because we’re only bringing half of us to the party, which in terms of our original question means that Universe can only bring us half of “what is ours”. Since we tend to be a “glass half empty” spiritual culture, that “half” feels like “empty”.

Now, no one is suggesting that any one of us sink to our lowest common denominator and become a narcissistic nightmare who drones on and on about our painful childhood, our “process”, our “mommy issues”, or our seemingly endless list of human “isms”. The act of BEING should not be confused with the human propensity for general attention-seeking. The latter should be reserved for discussion with a licensed professional or very close buddy over a six pack, otherwise – it’s just a really irritating and pretentious display of our own self-indulgent woe that will nearly always net a loss of healthy relationships.

The key here is: 1) honesty with oneself and others about the fullness of who each one of us are, and 2) moderation in the distribution of that honesty to others, because some people just can’t handle a lot of input. Again, no one wants to be on the receiving end of the Woe-Is-Me Guy in the check-out stand, where his Diarrhea of the Soul is splattering all over the entire line. That kind of spiritual stink is hard to get off. Though none of us can control the comfort level of another person, we can look at our own process of “honesty distribution” and set up a series of checks and balances, to gain a better idea if we’re leaning too much into the “Super Hero” corner, or going for the gold in “The Oppression Olympics”.

One strong tool in our Check-and-Balance Fix-It-Yourself kit would be making sure that we know how to receive, as in, receive a gift. Seriously. That may sound inane, but really, it’s a humongous problem with humanity, especially Westernized Society, whose post-Puritanical mantra “Tis better to give than to receive” has driven a Christmas retail season for sixty years, and bold spiritual and sociological denial for over three hundred. It is not the Super Hero version of ourselves that “receives” – that version of ourselves is “the provider”. It is the non-shiny version of ourselves, the Inner Five Year Old, the one who needs help and appreciates compliments and really does like ice cream way too much, that needs to be accessible in order to receive. And we deny ourselves receiving of great things for many reasons – we may not feel like we deserve it, deep down. Or we may feel like if we receive it, we will have to be responsible for it, and we’ll mess it all up, and then be left heartbroken with nothing, so instead we subconsciously decide we don’t really want it, because the old pain of “wanting” is something we’re familiar with and is much less heartbreaking than the thought of losing the thing we’ve always wanted. Or, we were raised in a home where our needs were secondary, and we don’t know how to receive, without giving it away to someone else. After all, if we don’t know how to receive, then how can we “get what is coming to us” in the first place?

Ah, but wait one moment. “To receive” means that we are presented with something. To “get what is coming to us” — get — implies an effort, something that one is endeavoring to acquire, not presented. “Get” is an action verb. Here we are, asking The Universe “Am I ever going to get what’s coming to me?”, when what we MEAN is “Am I ever going to be presented with what I feel I have earned?” The original question is asked by our inner Super Hero – the “getter” – and the latter question is asked by our inner five year old, “the receiver”.

Not to be the universal attorney here, folks, but the verbiage in both questions mean two very different things, and it’s time to let The Universe off the hook on this one until we understand what we are asking for.

To do that, let’s tie this all together:

Because, for fear of rejection, we often times lack the courage to let anyone else see our Inner Five Year Old who may not be so shiny, we push The Super Hero version of ourselves forward to greet the world. We do this because we want to believe in what we understand to be the most powerful version of ourselves, as reinforced by the third-party accreditations we have hanging on our wall. Subconsciously we know that The Inner Five Year Old is within us as well, so to balance this less-than-shiny side of ourselves, we require more external feedback on The Super Hero, to keep our attentions focused on the version of ourselves that we consider to be more “acceptable” to most people. However, most people respond best to another person’s Inner Five Year Old, as that is the most genuine – and most universal — part of every one of us. Because we refuse to accept this basic spiritual dichotomy within ourselves – The Super Hero living side-by-side with our The Inner Five Year Old — we push our Super Hero to ask the question of the Universe: Am I ever going to get what’s coming to me? Since the Inner Super Hero is “the getter”, it intrinsically asks the wrong question, to which, The Universe is bound to bring a direct answer – which we inevitably feel is the wrong one, because our original need was never addressed.

So. Come out of your Inner Super Hero for a moment, and give the Universal Inner Five Year old a chance with this question: “Am I ever going to be presented with what I feel I have earned?”

The answer, from the Angels in the ethers: “Yes. As soon as you are comfortable to receive it.”

Remember gang – the Universe will never force miracles upon us. We must accept everything that is to come our way. Challenge yourself to strike a healthy balance in both versions of yourself – The Super Hero and The Inner Five Year Old. Both of these people inside of you need to be free to function at 100% peak capacity, so they can each be readily available on deck to take their turn at helping you make key decisions. None of us are victims in our own lives, though sometimes Life feels like it’s making a special effort to give us a hard time. (That’s not actually true – Life is sort of busy, and we are but one speck of sand on a beach full of probabilities in Life’s daily routine).

No one but you is in the driver’s seat of your own journey. And no one can “take away” what is meant for you – not the slimy boss, or the disingenuous neighbor, or the rotten spouse, or the other band that got the record deal, or the other actor that was cast – what is meant for YOU is meant for YOU. If we have a “near miss” with an opportunity, and we watch it fall to another, it is because it was simply never ours to begin with. This is a tough pill for humanity to swallow, because we are suffocating in a sea of fear down here on earth that is thousands of years old, born of eons of lack, limitation, and suffering. We tend to think that there is only ONE shot for us, ONE chance, ONE opportunity – because it is the only one that we can see, at that present time. Therefore, we place all of that moment’s value on that ONE outcome, and we panic if that opportunity does not fall to us. Or, we are devastated and enraged when we perceive that someone else has underhandedly “weaseled” our opportunity away from us. And it may appear that way, in the moment, when the bum-kisser at work is awarded our promotion, instead of us. However, remember – that is an emotional and fearful view of the occurrence. Because we placed so much value on that one instance, we are incapable of seeing the “big picture” – that once we accepted that promotion, we’d be stuck at work 70 hours a week, now the fall guy for everything that ever went wrong in the department, and having to account to a furious spouse at home who is now saddled with the kids full time, all the time. We fail to see that “the promotion”, WHAT we are, would have been a death knell for our relationship, which was forged on WHO we are. In Spiritual Physics, WHO trumps WHAT, any day, and The Universe will allow the bum-kisser to “steal” that promotion, because in doing so, the bum-kisser learns the lesson of hubris through the losses that would have been allocated to us. “The Promotion” is then better used as a teaching tool to the bum-kisser, and a real advancement in career that won’t compromise WHO we are will be allocated to us when the timing is more appropriate.

The Universe will never grant us anything that will do us harm. We, however, are welcome to author, and participate in, as many harmful situations as we choose. It’s a nasty double-edged sword.

Though it may feel like it when we are on the other end of a victimizer, or a real A-hole, there is not one human being alive with the ability to truly take away what is truly, Universally ours – “what we have coming” — in both the positive and negative respects. Our lessons and our opportunities and our gifts are ours, and that is between us, and The Creator. It is a sickness of the soul and a sadness of the spirit that there are people walking the earth who truly believe, due to their negative actions of terrorizing others, that they have the power to take anything away from anyone. That is Darkness at play, puppeteer of the broken, leveraging their pain to turn the abused in to the abusers. And to those, much pain in life is to be had, with no spoils going to the manipulator except the lessons of the emptiness, paranoia, and broken trust brought on by betrayal.

I don’t wish that kind of slow spiritual death on anyone – not even the biggest A-Holes I know. Yet I know many who choose that lifestyle, and writhe in agony everyday awhile being ground between the jagged teeth of Jealousy and Non-fulfillment.

And that is their right. The Universe is a delicate balance of cause and effect, after all.

So.

Relax out of the Limitation Consciousness of “I can’t” that is created by the pride of The Super Hero, release the victim conscious of “I’m not allowed” that is created by the insecurity of The Inner Five Year Old (who is never allowed to handle anything), buy your Inner Five Year Old some ice cream — and put them in charge of joyfully receiving what you have earned. Believe me, you’re ready. Plus — your Inner Super Hero will love the success, as it’s all about outcome.

No one – and I mean NO ONE – can take away the bounty that is yours, the gifts coming to you by your Parent Creator. And, sometimes, those gifts may come to you in ways that you’re not expecting – so be open to the Creativity of the Universe, in delivering to you what is yours. If you spend five dollars on a friend, you don’t expect to be paid back a week later with the exact same five dollar bill, do you?

When are you going to be presented with what you feel you have earned? As soon as you are comfortable to receive it.

Get comfy, my friend. And enjoy the ice cream