Knowing, Awakened

It is early in the day and I am returning from dropping off my children at their before-school activities. So early, I am already carrying a lead weight of anxiety in the bowl of my belly, my mind racing between “shoulds” and my heart hardening with each breath. It is a grey morning, after a rain, with small puddles still gathered in pockets of asphalt. But I am moving too fast to notice.

And that would be my state on this day —this mindless, slightly panicked energy— but for an unexpected interruption. A robin’s chortle breaks into my self-absorption. Suddenly, I am aware of the veil curtain of mist, hanging close to the ground, and the cool scent of soil rising through it. New bird song rings, further away, then closer. I can feel the contours of my body, trace my breath through my lungs.

I am alive! I am here.

And I can see! I see the crabapple tree next to me, in the fog’s embrace. I see a tiny nuthatch hopping up its trunk. And I see the nubs of leaves, waiting to unfold, gathered on spindly branches.

I am here, in the damp mist and the echoes of bird chatter, and I am also home, hurtled by my senses through time and space to the landscape my Soul loves best: the contours of the mountainside on La Finca. And the awareness awakens this knowing in me, again: here, too, I am home.

When I stop to see, when I feel with my senses that I am alive, then, wherever I am, I am home.

Photo by Jay Simmons

Self-betrayal

Self-betrayal is the ways that I turn my back on my Self and refuse to honor Who I Am.

It is when I don’t wait for clarity, but jump into things because that feels easier, more comfortable. It is saying “yes” when I already know I can’t follow through or don’t want to with my full Self. It is also saying “no” because yes means peering into dark corners of my Self.

Self-betrayal is turning away from the nibbling of knowledge at the edge of my consciousness because turning towards it means seeing, right behind it, a cavernous black hole that threatens to suck me in.  It is setting a course and following it, regardless of the signs along the way that direct me to go a different direction.

Most of all, Self-betrayal is allowing my heart to be padded, protected, numbed even  to those I hold dear.

Ease, comfort, oblivion… they tempt me away from honoring my Self.

I breathe deep, I straighten my back and lift my chin. In the spirit of the Reiki Principles, I tell myself: Just for today… I will align myself with the highest energy of my Self, and look where I fear, feel what I would not risk, know what is present, and honor my Self in each moment.

Photo Credit:Lars Sundström

Remembering to Listen

This is one of the spaces I have consciously created for reflection, for listening to my Deepest Knowing and to explore what otherwise would find no outlet. I created it as a space for play, in the sense that it nourishes me and I lose my sense of time when I am in it.

Along the way, I learned that I have to show up regularly, that the inspiration to write rarely comes over uninvited, and often hides under many layers of “shoulds” and apparent urgencies.

I learned that I could write many, diverse reflections in one small burst of time, and I could begin many reflections that never really went anywhere more than a tight circle.

Lately, I have been forgetting that this is supposed to be play, fun, nourishment. I have been telling myself “I HAVE to blog,” and I sit down with a pout, my inner adolescent ever ready to stake a claim for independence. I have been in a power struggle with my inner Taskmaster, as one of my clients calls the ego.

Only when I catch myself, realize this and decide to let go, step back, hold up my hands in resignation; only in surrender can I begin to find my way back to the purpose, to listening, truly, and opening up.

Now, I do. I come back and sit down with joy and curiosity, with the excitement of discovery: what does True Self have to say?

All that I can feel is my heart unfolding open, like a book.  I find no certainties, no assurances, nothing to grasp. And yet, this is real: I am alive, in the energy that vibrates out of the center of my chest, and courage to be present in this moment courses powerfully through my veins. I am alive, I am present, I am Love.

Photo by Andreas Krappweis

The Soul Calling

As we go about our lives fulfilling the roles that we have chosen to take on, that we may have inherited from the people around us, we are sometime interrupted.  Sometimes the interruption comes through something big, often painful or frightening, something that shakes up our life. And sometimes, the interruption is only a niggling sense, a feeling, an unfathomable itch that gives us no peace.

It is our Soul, calling us back to our essence. It calls us to recognize that which would emerge into the world through us. It calls us to own the fullness of who we are in spite of the apparent contradictions found in that very fullness. It calls us to remember we are more than we seem, more than our bodies and our minds.

Sometimes that calling is present to us for a long time, we keep going as if we didn’t know it is there. But we intuit the potency of it, we are aware that it will not abate, will not release us to continue as we were. Yet, the force of  habit, the familiarity of living and doing as we always have, the approval of our family and peers for continuing as we were, and, especially, the overwhelming power that the fear of change grips us with, all conspire to keep us from heeding that call.

We have not been taught to honor our Soul, not been taught to listen for it. Our world is not built to support this kind of growth, this kind of stretching that feels like taking so great a risk.  Our lives are built around keeping on keeping on.

We all need to be reminded of the great Wisdom of Life, which we are part of, and, more so, of the Wisdom we already hold. We all need a mirror that catches our Light and reflects it back to us, so that our physical eyes can behold it.  We all need someone who has faith in us when we doubt ourselves; who asks what we would gain, when we ask what we would lose; who recognizes our fortitude when we feel weakness; who speaks back to us our own words of Knowing, which we have already forgotten.

We all need support and companionship on our journey to respond to our Soul.

I am that, I am a spiritual companion. I hold up the mirror for you to see yourself in your power and your potential, walking your own path, guided by your Soul’s compass, through the spaciousness of your own making. This is what my Soul calls me to.

A mirror that reflects our Light
Photo Credit: Andrea Friedmann©