The Reluctant Avatar

by Kayt Kennedy

I want to tell you a story about a woman—me—who was not one of those students who just floats through The Avatar Course going, “Oh, now I get it!” and smiling and glowing with deep gratitude. I did get to the smiling and glowing and gratitude, but I went through some kicking and screaming first. I’ll tell you why.

I had been a spiritual seeker all of my life, even when I wasn’t consciously aware of it. I remember the look of horrified amazement on my church-going mother’s face when at age eight I questioned The Ten Commandments: What if someone just made them up, I asked. I loved going to church, but some of what I heard just didn’t make sense. A loving God would put people in a place called Hell? What about people who had never heard of God or Jesus? Would they be put in Hell too? That just didn’t seem fair. So I began my own search for truth, which took me down many paths: studying psychic phenomena, Gestalt psychology, TM, est, Lazarus, Ramtha, A Course in Miracles—you get the idea.

Then one day in the spring of 1989 an unsolicited magazine called The Avatar Journal showed up in my mailbox. I tossed it. Funny thing though, it seemed to be calling to me from the wastebasket, so I pulled it back out and began to read.

As I read, something tingled in me, kind of like a neurological alarm clock had gone off. I knew I had to do The Avatar Course, even though I was going to have to pass the financial hurdle in my mind: if this is really the key that unlocks the prisons of our minds, as the magazine had implied, then why did it cost so much? Didn’t that make it less accessible to us seekers? (I did not realize then what a bargain The Avatar Course is.) I knew I had to do it, that my life depended on it. My parents had recently died, and I had some money from their modest estate. What better way to spend it than on enlightenment? I ordered the Creativism book, which at that time contained the Section I course materials. (The books Living Deliberately and ReSurfacing® now contain the Section I course materials.)

So, fast forward to June, 1989, and my showing up to take The Avatar Course. While previously I had consistently gone unconscious while reading Creativism, now that I was in the course room and actively engaged in my own awakening, I breezed through Section I. I was allowed to move on to Section II, where some of the puzzle pieces of my life began to fit together.

I create my own reality. Hmmm. That was both the good news and the bad news, although it wasn’t exactly new news. I already knew that, intellectually, from the other reading and workshops I’d done. I accepted that I did indeed create my own reality, but HOW? And if I really did create it, why didn’t I do a better job?

I came to the Section II exercises in which I had an opportunity to practice creating—what a concept! I would get to learn how I do it and how I’ve always done it. Yippee!

Then I turned the page. I was to practice creating happiness. Alarm! Alarm! Danger! Danger!
I froze. I had never been happy except for a few fleeting moments like when my babies were born or when I first saw Cinderella’s castle at Disney World or when I watched Jim Palmer pitch a winning World Series game for the Baltimore Orioles or when I was
in the throes of a new romance. There was always a reason I felt happy in those moments, but it was definitely not something I felt on a regular basis.

But now I was faced with creating happiness. I had no clue. I didn’t even believe that being happy was necessarily desirable. How could anyone be happy in a world where people were starving to death and killing each other? Being happy was not reasonable. Only fools could be happy—or think they were—in the face of the injustices in the world.

Still, here I was now being required to practice creating happiness. I didn’t believe I could. And I knew that I was only in Section II of the course. If I couldn’t do this, then I was done. I couldn’t finish the course. There must be some mistake, I thought. This can’t be right. It isn’t fair. I know this is my chance to really live in an aware state. What is this obstacle doing in this course that is to be my salvation? I was going to be out my money AND out my enlightenment. I was sad. I was angry.

I sat in my chair facing my trainer, trying to get myself to create happiness. This sucks, I said. I’ll never be able to do this. I’m taking myself off the course. OK, she said. What? She’s supposed to convince me, beg me to stay. Maybe she thinks I don’t really mean it, I thought. So I gathered my things and walked to the door. She did not follow me. I got all the way to the door before I heard her say, OK, now come back to your chair. I was glad she had called me back, but I was no closer to creating happiness than when I decided to leave.

During this exercise I made many trips from my chair to the door, during which I got to fully experience my pattern of leaving, of giving up on myself, my need to be right, my agony at thinking I was blowing my chance, that there was no reason to be happy.

And then I got it. I could just be happy for no reason, except that I chose it. No one had to give me a present. I didn’t have to win the lottery. Nothing outside of me needed to happen. I could just choose to be happy. I could create it out of my being. What a glorious moment! If I had gotten nothing else out of the course, that would have been enough. But there was more, a lot more.

Why am I telling you this anyway? What’s it got to do with you? It’s because I recognize that me in you. I know your body, mind, and spirit long to know happiness and that you know the futility of waiting for it to just show up in your life. I see you live as consciously as you know how, and yet I see the sadness in your eyes. I want to assure you that there is life beyond that way of being in the world.

Harry Palmer, author of the Avatar Materials, tells us, “You want to be responsible for creating yourself, not just for getting to a point where you can live with yourself. You’re creators, not adjusters.”

You are a powerful creator, as we all are. But we have been taught otherwise: that life just happens, and we have to adjust to it, like the saying, “If life gives you lemons, then make lemonade.”

I’m here to tell you that life giving you lemons is an illusion—it’s backward. In a state of unawareness we give ourselves the lemons, then spend our lives making lemonade, trying to make the best of less than desirable situations. Yes, we can say it’s all part of our path of growth, but there is a more effective, efficient, and empowering path to living in our full creative glory. It’s called The Avatar Course. You have been looking for something to lead you to your Self all of your life. You’ve found it.

Kayt Kennedy, Albuquerque, NM

 

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