When we come to need/want some kind of healing or spiritual help, we have reasons. (How's that for stating the obvious?)
Put simply, we're all looking for a way to deal with the stormy energies that have triggered in us. Even if we come for a physical reason, there is almost always an emotional component -- an interpretation, fear, frustration, etc. -- that makes the physical issue much more than just an objective matter.
Sometimes we are very aware of the oceans of fear, anger, envy, remorse, and shame etc. that are roiling waves within us. They are known but unwelcome, like seasonal extreme weather patterns that will periodically (or more often) threaten to drown us or burn us up. Maybe it is one of those times that gets us to make a call, read a new book, or take a fresh look at some advice we were given once.
At 57, I continue to learn about this topic, and in that sense, my life is my laboratory. Both my life's work in the world, as well as my life's work within my own inner self, have focused on how to relate to the storms that can rage within us.
When they aren't fiery infernos that flash and burn themselves out, these storms can come on like bleak, endless winters that strike us unawares. We thought we were maybe okay this season, so we failed to stock the wood pile and the pantry. But something happened -- at work, with our kids or families, to our bodies, etc. -- and here we are again in the "dark night of the soul," and we wonder how (if?) we'll make it through.
"What do I do with myself when what I honestly feel and think are slowly killing me?"
"How do I feel like myself again?" Most of the clients I see are asking me this sub-consciously, if not verbally. After all their best efforts to live a good life, their honest condition in the moment may be excruciatingly painful, spiteful, and even murderous.
In quiet moments, they might sense the magnitude of the storm they haven't been allowing into full awareness. It can be at most inopportune times -- 2am comes to mind -- that we feel the truth of our condition.
It scares us to know "what I honestly feel and think are slowly killing me" and so we usually avoid it, at least at first. And "at first" can be a very long time. We try not to get too quiet -- we work, we play, we drink, we "whatever"...all the ways we distract.
What makes this so incredibly hard is that so often the rage and condemnation energies are being focused 10 (100?) times stronger at ourselves than at the situation or other people involved in whatever challenge or narrative we are cycling through in our heads as "cause."
Life force energy is Love. Love is required to live.
This self hatred weakens us...it's like we are slowly killing ourselves, because in real way we are. Very slowly usually, but we are robbing ourselves of life force energy.
Let me be clear -- life force energy is Love. Love is required to live.
I am not talking about Hallmark "love" or "love story" love or even "self-care" love (spas, me time, etc.) Contrary to what most of us are raised to believe, Love is not --
something we can get from others
something we earn
something that comes from being "a good person"
something we can cultivate, buy, or manipulate (not even through the Law of Attraction, folks)
and --
It's not something we lose.
Yes, I said we can't "lose" Love. We can't. We lose our awareness of it -- that's different.
Please don't tune me out. How can I tell you the Truth if you chalk it up as a platitude? Love is what we are.
I'm going to digress a minute.
Take Reiki, for example. We Reiki practitioner/teachers say Reiki is spiritually-guided life force energy. It heals and restores on many levels of our being.
This is the same as saying spiritually-guided Love energy...Love. It's energy...or a manifestation of the ineffable Abstraction you can never define but you might call God, Source, the Universe, the Unified Field, Holy Spirit, the Higher Dimension, etc. It's a form of Love we experience.
Thankfully, this God/Source/Love has many ways and many forms (including, but not limited to, spiritual teachings) to meet us where we think we are.
Let me clarify further. Freedom, beauty, peace, gratitude, patience, joy, spacious ease -- these are all qualities of Love shining through a prism called You. It is Love reflecting and expressing in the world.
So back to the storms: When we are identifying with the fear energy that we've been born into, Love -- the who/what we are -- seems lost to us. This is crazy, because we can't lose What We Are. But we feel like we don't have it -- like we are alone and separate and weak/powerless -- so then naturally we go seeking it.
But we start looking outside ourselves, because we identify as the neediness. And then we can't ever find it, because we're looking for it where it is NOT -- and that seeking-and-not-finding activity that can last a whole lifetime makes us crazier and crazier and crazier.
Insane, even.
Just read the news. The mass killings and invasions and lying-cheating-stealing dramas? It's the collective fear we do not meet with Love. When we believe we are not what we are...Love....then this fear lives on the phantom power we inevitably feed it. Infused with "life" it acts out on center stage, gathering more and more confused ones under its spell so it can continue to "live" on the belief food they feed it.
That's both hell and the endlessness of maya...the distraction from Self Knowledge that we call "the world" that just goes on and on and on.
You are the light house.
So we must eventually all learn how to meet the storms within -- and without -- as a Light House.
In practical terms, that means meeting everything that we judge within ourselves and others with welcoming Love.
Yes, welcoming Love. We say, "come closer greedy neediness in me. Come rest. You have a Home with me now. You are no longer an orphan, so curl up with me. I will not push you away or try to rehabilitate you. From here, I accept and Love you unconditionally."
The storm is within you, and you must own it. Not with the judgmental, "I must fix this or carve it out of me" attitude of the past... that just created more of it.
The storm is YOU. It's your creation, and you must welcome it, embrace it, fix it a big feast and listen to all it has to say.
I am reading your mind and hear your "oh...this is dangerous!" thoughts. Let me be super clear. You must listen as the Light House, not the drowning one who needs a life boat. When you've listened as the latter, you've gone on a 2-day bender. That's called "what we usually do."
Still not clear, you say, because a Light House can not listen for it has no ears? You are right... I am mixing metaphors in a clumsy way....
Okay, I will state it another way -- first, you cannot listen as the victim/victimizer character in the story being told by the storm, or you will just swallow more water as you are drawn into the under tow. This will drown you again and again, while feeding the energies that whip the waters up into storms.
That's right -- I'm saying that when you listen as a person or the inner child of you or the asshole or the jerk, you are actually fortifying the system and setting up the necessary momentum for the next storm.
YOU ARE THE LIGHT.
So let me simplify. Forget about the house.
You are the Light. You are the Divine Mother. You are LOVE. You can welcome the unwelcome. Your prodigal son (which you still sort of feel is also you) can come Home to the feast you spread for him/you.
Make the inner screaming children in you (and who are still feeling a lot like you) a warm bed for the night, or forever. It's like you give yourself a hug.
Do it now. Put your arms around yourself. It feels a little weird and not like a hug, but then again, it also feels kinda good like a real hug, right?
You practice this. It gets more authentic as you do.
You are who and what you are. These energies are coming home to be "enlightened" and you are the guru you've been waiting for. You have to show up for yourself. Your salvation is up to you, as A Course in Miracles says.
There's no other way, although there are lots of forms this process can take. It can look like many things -- helpers, practices, etc. -- that aid your efforts, but the essence of what you must know is that you must love yourself unconditionally.
Do not deny your hatred and do not indulge it (believe the "poor me"/"bad me" narrative). Welcome it as part of you, Love it, and do not judge.
As you will do this, things will shift. You are learning you can Love unconditionally, because that's your nature.
The waters are calming. The sun is coming out. You might even catch a rainbow.
And as you begin to feel centered in this powerful Light source inside of you -- your warm Heart Center that is continually expanding and that is not subject to all the whims and judgements and crazy thoughts of the world -- you also begin to realize it is effortless to love others unconditionally.
In fact, you are becoming just an atmosphere of Love....a "transparency" for Love to shine through. The body is less your identity than the Light that flows through and around you.
You are beginning to sound like the saints, because you are one. Christ is another word for this Love we are talking about. As you meet the fear from your Truth as Christ, this Life Force/Love/Light awakens you further. "I and the Father are one," Jesus said (John 10:30). He could have said "Light," "Divine Mother," etc. but he was a Hebrew and spoke in the vernacular.
Enlightenment is the most practical thing in the world.
Meet your inner condition with Loving Acceptance, like a parent meets a raging 2-year-old. That Loving Acceptance is God in you. The Divine Parent sees through the tantrum and takes the scissors out of the toddlers hands, but never judges or cuts off their love and caring. You do not indulge in the hatred or act on it. But you accept and love. You trust that it is all working itself out. And it is.
This is also the same as Forgiveness as taught in A Course in Miracles. A correction to the mistaken belief in separation from our Source.
Lesson 62 Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world.
1. It is your forgiveness that will bring the world of darkness to the light. ²It is your forgiveness that lets you recognize the light in which you see. ³Forgiveness is the demonstration that you are the light of the world. ⁴Through your forgiveness does the truth about yourself return to your memory. ⁵Therefore, in your forgiveness lies your salvation.
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