Seasons of the Soul

Emptying and Refilling

 

I am a person who looks for synchronicity in life, and have been well rewarded for the willingness to be aware of what is presented on multiple levels. A dear friend called after I had the realization of everything just mentioned, and she was overwhelmed by physical ailments and the loss of her 101 year old aunt. She and her sister had just dealt with several deaths in the family, and the stress level of always being the care givers to everyone was taking its toll on her. She'd been told by her doctor to stay off her feet and not do anything for at least a month, and here she was being pulled to give a eulogy and help a family in grief. As a result, her own health was impacted and at risk. So I told her about the statement I received the previous week and that this is indeed a time of revelation. We see it not only in the world at large and with the corruption and scandals facing major business and political figures, but in our own lives.

That which has been corrupted within us or which is misperceived or misguided is going through a catharsis. As one of our healer friends said years ago, nothing can enter when the cup is filled with junk from the past. If we are all vessels of light - the carriers of God's Being - then we have to continually replenish and refresh the chalice we are. We cannot allow the old addictions, judgments, attachments, and junk to clutter our present view. Cleaning out the old is a necessity to keep us relevant and ready to take on new possibilities.

I had taken all our 5 gallon water jugs that we keep for emergency and emptied the contents onto the flower and vegetable beds, refilling them with fresh water and dating them so that we would know when it was time to clean and refill them again. If we had just let them stand, when we need them in the future, the water might not be good. By emptying and refilling, we make sure when something is needed, it is usable.

All around us there are reminders of how life works. Just in the concept of refilling emergency bottles of water, the implication refers to us as well. By the time my phone conversation with my friend was finished, she felt she had gained a much better understanding of what she was facing now and how she needed to go about dealing with it all. Again, I was taking things that had been my own observations related to my daughter's life and mine, and was able to share with my friend in a way that was totally what she needed. Now she will do the same for someone else. Light shining light shining light. On and on it goes when we awaken to its inner presence. And conversely, in this paradoxical universe, the opposite happens as well. When those steeped in darkness spew out their hatred, it goes on and on touching resonant chords in those who are equally isolated from the beauty of life's fullness of Being.

Question and Answer

I received a question from Dick Kazan regarding yesterday's article, and he suggested that I share my answer with readers of Seasons of the Soul after he read my response.

Q. You're last three pieces, one leading into the next, have been very compelling and each Tuesday when I visit your site, i look forward to see where you'll take us next. From this week's piece, how do you see mankind resolving its issues? What do you think will bring us together?

 

A. I think that what will help us is to identify that there is a much larger play unfolding, and that the opportunity is to see our lives as opportunities to overcome the illusion of separation and recognize that we and all of life are ONE and intricately linked in the dance of life and death. However, nothing really dies. The energy merely shifts. Leaves decay and become the mulch for new soil...new life. We do the same, and in the realm of consciousness, as we grow and overcome our sense of devouring life, we become as the butterfly is to the caterpillar who ate everything in site. We become the carriers of a gentler way...and more conscious understanding of the possibilities in life that transcend dominion and gathering stuff to make ourselves feel important. We recognize the value of service to others - to Love as the answer rather than continuous judgment and enmity. We look for our connecting strands rather than our differences, and we make of life a grand adventure rather than an endurance test or battle of might as right.

So....finding the larger overview that isn't caught in the crisis of the moment....raising our consciousness to recognize that ALL of life is equal and important, and doing what each of us can to make a difference in large and/or small ways. You certainly are!!!

(Dick Kazan has a wonderful weekly newsletter with inspiring stories. You can subscribe for free at www.kazantoday.com )

A World in Turmoil

The world at the moment is in disarray. Looking at almost every country on the planet we see either political unrest or near economic collapse. We are heading into something that has not faced the past few generations, and we are going to be confronted by challenges that we have not been prepared to face. Yet, like the generations of the past who dealt with depression and major world wars, we will adapt. The difficulties ahead may force us to deal with aspects of ourselves as a people and as individuals that we haven't looked at.

Technological advancement has removed many of the mundane things that used to be chores. We've become soft in the middle, and the coming years may indeed require that we buck up and tighten our belts and adjust our expectations about what we think life owes us. It's time for us to take to heart something that was said years ago by John F. Kennedy. "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country." We haven't done that in a long time...and now we may need to turn to that admonition out of universal necessity. Beyond that, our statement might be enlarged to, "Ask not what your fellow citizen can do for you, ask what you can do for them."

In looking at the whole idea of healing the world which now permeates my thinking, we have to look first at the roots of the dis-ease that requires healing. In all of it, we can go back to root language and stories within our bible and in other religious texts about the fall of humans from the state of grace. If we go beyond the allegory presented and turn the context of what was stated into practical terms, the overriding and glaringly obvious cause is a sense of separateness that created duality. In the Adam and Eve scenario, what was provided in innocence was defiled once the intellect arose. In the process of allowing the Intellect to override spiritual resources, the mind became a mine field in which each of us has a war between "heaven and earth" going on daily. There is the illusion of our own wants and needs as juxtaposed to the wants and needs of others. As we each feel our view and perception as the only clear and right choice, we preclude the views of others and war over space, control, and dominance. Adversarial positions keep us locked in a perpetual war between what we see as good and evil. We have fallen into the trap of duality.

We imbue qualities on to a living earth that justify our exploitation of it and depletion of what is given to us freely. We take for granted the gifts of nature and seek to manipulate it for a profit motive that has no connection to life systems and maintaining balance within that system. We see cultural warfare in the name of a god that could never be as petty as the ones espousing its legitimacy and demeaning any other view of the Creator.

All of this is done out of an internal primal need to be safe, to control variables so that nothing will be out of order. Yet, in the very insistence for one secular view, an adversarial position is established, and there can only be winners and losers. There is no room for acceptance of differing points of view, ways of being, or beliefs that see creation from various angles. If I need to dominate everything around me in order to protect my view and show my level of power, I am deluded. And this is one of the major cancers on the earth right now.

Life is out of balance and out of order as humans continue to propagate ignorance in the name of "the only real truth".  Humans have become cancers on the planet...rogue cells that are disconnected from the flow of the whole, devouring everything on our path and skewing the planet's natural checks and balances through our avarice and self-importance. We are a species clearly in need of healing, so healing the world starts with healing human beings. And healing human beings starts with healing each one of us...cells in the Being of God. We need to address our own sense of separation and bring ourselves back into the unified whole...the blessing that we were given in original intent rather than the annihilation we have caused.   

(to be continued)

Heal the World (continued)

There is a continuous paradox unfolding in life. As much as I might feel that we have destroyed life in one context, I see God as the ultimate Being that is enacting ALL of life. Does that then make God the destroyer? Does it make us puppets in a grand plan unfolding?

When we paint life in colors of black and white, we are polarized to one side of a continuum or the other, and we miss the vibrant interchange that is taking place. We become stuck in a view that precludes other views, and as we do this, we are cells that have closed themselves off from the greater circulation of life unfolding.

We look into the natural world and all around us is evidence of life coming into expression, going through the process of growing into fulfillment, and fading into completion. It is in everything. Nothing is exempt from this process, the only difference being how long each element takes to build up and break down. Yet, if we truly understand that there is no end to life, we stop seeing ourselves as one momentary fragment in time. We would recognize that energy continues always, although the form it takes changes, and in the change, we see a particular framework crumble and appear to be gone because we are looking through a lens that only sees what appears to be.

One might think this is a false argument, but if we look through specialized filters and glasses and microscopes, we see life teeming in ways that we have never imagined possible. We see things that through the naked human eye might seem improbable. And once we understand energetic fields, we will see that there is an incredible activity in the vast space that surrounds us. Just because it isn't in a tangible form we currently understand doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We face this now with electro-magnetic fields. We are being bombarded by electro-magnetism that may have effects on our physical bodies that can be disruptive, but since we don't see it, we think it doesn't exist.

For weeks prior to the directive in the morning, I'd been told to revisit my notes on the previous major adventure I'd experienced where the grail became a focal point. I'd met incredible people during that time, and in the intervening years, many became close friends and allies on the journey. But others died. Good friends who were older began to move beyond this limited reality, and I was left with a feeling of loss that found no replacement. Younger friends surfaced, but so much had changed that offered opportunities to meet the kinds of people with whom I had the special contacts that were afforded through the wonderful bookstore where I worked one or two days a week.

At the end of 1999, we closed the doors of our precious metaphysical shop. Customers had migrated to the Internet, and what was a new mode of shopping became an ingrained way of life. We all surfed and searched for the best prices, never realizing that we were undercutting the very places we loved going to. As the years unfolded, the little bookstores closed one by one, replaced by the big chains. And as we came to 2011, the big chains were also closing their doors, overtaken by online book sellers such as Amazon.com. I was as guilty as anyone, appreciating that I could order books or anything else I was looking for and getting it at a wonderful price with no sales tax and no shipping cost once I'd paid my annual dues for free shipping.

In everything we do, there are repercussions. We develop vaccines without understanding the full implication of their impact. We develop antibiotics, never realizing that bacteria will morph to adapt and overcome that which seeks to kill it. We modify food genetically, never recognizing that what we do to our food has major implications to the body, and so as certain diseases increase and become epidemic, we scratch our heads in wonderment....why? Short term solutions do not satisfy long range life processes, and one area where we are being called to wake up is in our food production. Food stock raised in fertilizer and pesticide is no longer a nourishing part of light exchange that the body requires. It has inserted elements that are not digestible by the body and which in the long run do not enhance the food chain, but actually weaken it and the soil in which it grows.

When humans put their own wants above the wellbeing of the whole system, the imbalance created tilts the scale from a healthy ecosystem where all are included in decisions that affect life to an atmosphere of might is right. In this scenario, there are big winners and big losers. It is shortsighted, and rather than following the Golden Rule, follows a path of greed and corruption. In the short term it can be appealing and bear rewards, but this attitude fosters the cancers that are devouring the earth's resources and degrading life for the self interest of the few. These are the cells in the Being of God that are out of relationship with the Light Body, and these are the cells that require the rest to awaken to higher potential, higher calling, and concern for ALL life - not just one group or one species. EVERYTHING is interrelated. This is one life and one earth, and as the least goes, so go the rest.(to be continued)

Heal the World

 

 You are the Grail

 

I will heal the world if you ask me to." Out of nowhere the statement came into my head. I had been feeling depressed and used up, aging being complicated by changes in my body that seemed strange and by a lagging virus that would not go away. I'd wondered in the morning if there was anything left for me in life - if there was any further purpose or meaning - and then the statement...just like that. "I will heal the world if you ask me to." And beyond that, "Are you willing to be an agent for that healing?" Suddenly, I was being included and I saw my previous journey in a new light. Instead of having a vision of the grail as something outside of us that I'd investigated years ago, I saw that each one of us is the grail. I am the grail and you are the grail and each of us has an opportunity to allow the pure light of what we often call the Christ to reflect through us. Whether it is a series of photons or a light body or whatever else we want to call it, the supreme intelligence that has fashioned this creation of life offers to heal the world we have been responsible for disrupting.

We, through misguided interpretations and illusions of separateness have fashioned a world that puts us in an adversarial position to one another rather than linking us one to the other in a circle of love and light. It may sound like new age psychobabble, but it is not. There is physics involved in this, and the potential of each is to see ourselves as a beautiful cup that is filled to the brim with a liquid light that illumines everything around us, and in so doing, we spill forth the benefit of that light to reach out and contribute to the rest.

Those who are dwelling in the illusion of separation are like a leaden cup that has no light and no way of connection. Its contents are contaminated through the images within its own mind that somehow it must defile earth, dominate others, and satiate its own selfish wants. Doing only for self defiles itself, even if the momentary appearance is that it controls external forces. In the long run, the individual is eaten up by its own isolation, and even though we may not see the results of this kind of self-involved living, the effects are there and the damage is done.

When we look at one another as vessels, we can see the light filled ones and those who are diminished in tone and shading. When we do that which brightens our part in the unfolding creation, illumination becomes visible and the brightness shines out and imbues others with the light of possibility. Our light does not diminish any other light - it enhances ALL of life and makes way for more and more light to enter.

So, with this statement, a new way of viewing what I'd experienced years ago during a grand adventure to New Mexico and beyond was brought to another level of depth and understanding. In the intervening fifteen years, there were so many mundane and practical things to take care of, including the care of aging relatives and the settling of the details of their lives as they passed into death. Moving into elder years myself, the confusion of feeling as I always have inside was challenged by body changes that did not conform to the inner field of being. And as the world changed significantly, the promise and idealism of the earlier years was replaced by seeming contradictions and a new way of being that demanded speed in access and a smattering of information as opposed to deepening wisdom. All this created a void inside. The old no longer applied. The new was not yet anchored. Somewhere in the process, I felt that I'd been misplaced and sidelined from being or doing anything of further significance in life.

I had come to an understanding that each of us is a cell in the Being of God. We are the outworking of the Divine Intelligence that has created the cosmos and all that is in it. All of this creation IS the God we seek, and so as I am a cell and you are a cell, we have a portion to play in the outworking of life unfolding. Some of us are warrior cells, some are the vision, the lungs, the heart, the cancer, on and on...we are the elements that make up the body of this incredible light body, and there is a constant interplay between the positive and negative, light and dark, seeking balance and instilled with a potential for something greater if enough of the cells awaken to their highest calling.

(to be continued)

Am I Living in Love or Fear?

 

Years ago, there was a book written called Love Is Letting Go of Fear. The premise is sound. When we are locked in fear, there is no room for love. Love trusts. Love is all the things mentioned in the bible, and fear is its antithesis. When we are afraid, we have lost connection to our Source. We are in a state of war with life, wanting to control elements, wanting to possess and make things be a particular way. We are frozen, scared, and dangerous. Fear is not love. Fear of losing is not love. Fear of being rejected is not love. Love opens itself and is vast in comprehension, breadth and depth. Fear is constricted and isolated. It is alone, petrified, and alienated. When we move into Love, the world expands and we feel ourselves expanding with it. We become at one with it and there is a wellspring of joy and well-being in our hearts and minds that fill us with gratitude and appreciation for all that is. Fear does just the opposite. It is totally isolated, and the world contracts and is confined to a small box. It causes panic, depression, attack, psychic breaks, and all things that drown us in its whirlpool of annihilation.

Fear is like a non-swimmer thrashing in the water, trying desperately not to drown. Love is when we stop striving, roll over on our back, and float, allowing the water to uphold us and gently bob us along. So, in all things, we have to ask ourselves, "Am I living in love or fear?" When the answer is the latter, we need to move up the ladder to come back to our true resource and Home - Love.