Rooted in Love

The existential anxiety, fear and doubt must be off the charts in this country right now. I certainly have felt it drift through my consciousness over the past few days. It seems like the collective, consensus reality crap is looking for a home in whomever might decide to download a bit or a bunch of it.

The question on my mind today...will I be home to Love or a hostage to Fear? As Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith says, "you are either pulled by a vision or pushed by pain."

My answer during these times has been to increase my conscious contact with God, to root myself in Love...to pray and meditate more consistently, to cleanse my body, to continue my yoga practice and to reverently listen to God's guidance and vision for my life...here now. Listen, be, act.

It is so easy to fall prey to the words and images that we ingest everyday from the radio, TV and Internet (I personally don't listen to radio or watch TV except on a rare occasion). The word and image have power and impact, and it is so important to be discerning about what we choose to ingest with our minds, hearts and ears these days. If we want to be a people of faith and to allow faith to guide us, we must invest our awareness and our energy in those things that fortify and sustain us in Love and in Love only.

Now is the time when our collective faith needs to grow stronger and bigger than our collective fear. That is my vision for these times...unplug from the Obama/McCain/Palin circus...unplug from the AIG/economy crashing coverage...you've seen enough and you've heard enough...and yes, enough is enough. Instead, plug into your own vision, your own greatness and your own stewardship of those things that you love and care for: your business, your children, your lover, your health, your inspired idea, your creativity. Plug into your own inspired leadership, know and be the truth that change comes from grassroots initiatives and from small groups of inspired and committed people, stay focused on the one purpose we share...to be a vessel of Divine Love...to express and magnify the unconditional love that is God, that we are born from, made from and reside in...always and in all ways!

And from this place of Love, ask yourself..."how is God's greatness and excellence wanting to express in and as my life?" What is God's vision of greatness and excellence expressed through me? What is wanting to emerge?

And then actively love yourself...gently, gracefully...

Eat good, nourishing whole foods.
Listen to inspiring music.
Drink water.
Take naps.
Pray and pray some more.
Be still.
Dance.
Walk.
Serve.
Read and write poetry.
Ride your bike.
Watch the leaves change.
Call your parents, your grandparents.
Play with your children.

Create your own inner environment, raise your own radiance through conscious contact with the Divine. We choose. Each moment we choose...to be a home for Love or a hostage to Fear. Let us choose Love now. Let us Love now...sound simple? Yeah, I think it is simple...not always easy.

"And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is Love. Whoever lives in love, lives in God, and God in him/her." 1 John 4:16

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Romans 12:2

Ahimsa, Ahimsa, Ahimsa

A still and gentle love occupies my heart this morning as I sit in the silence reflecting on my life and my current "occupation" of embodying sacred love, the path of becoming love. The image I see as I look into my heart is of a soft pink rose spinning in the center of my chest, opening slowly, with tenderness. Some petals are opening, exposing beauty, truth, love...some are clinging to the core, not yet ready to release into the wild unknown that is my life.

I am having a real relationship with myself today -- a naked relationship with my own heart as I sense into the movement of my Soul. I awoke this morning with deep sadness. As I laid in the silence and stillness of the morning I became aware of my fears, of my vulnerabilities, of what it requires to live a life sourced from love and revealed in love. The consequences of living the Naked Heart path.

The more I stand in and commit to fully living my purpose -- to embody radiant love -- the more I am finding myself in relationship with that which blocks the flow of that love...fear, uncertainty, doubt, confusion. In New Thought we are often taught to change our thinking when we are feeling fear or sadness, to think a new thought, to affirm a new reality, to do something to change our current state. In my experience the possibility of true and lasting transformation lies in going into the feeling, understanding it's message and working from within my authentic experience to allow what needs to be opened, to be opened and what needs to be known, to be known, what needs the tenderness of true love, to be tenderly loved. the way to truly transform and embody love is to enter into a direct relationship with that which blocks our awareness and experience of Love's presence. I believe these feelings are messages from our Soul, they have guidance, wisdom and truth embedded within them. Follow the feeling, listen for the message...become free.

I was keenly aware this morning that I had a choice. To push through, perservere, be strong, be disciplined, focus on my intention or to surrender to the deeper, truer call of my Soul. I could get up and put myself through my daily regimen of making fresh juice, kundalini yoga, mediation and writing. Or, I could listen to the deeper call...the call that would take me into direct relationship with myself and God.

I made a different choice today. I decided to have a real relationship with my interior, with the sadness, the despair, the sense of nothingness. I wanted to know her...what is happening for the being that lives within this skin, around this skin, that lives within this heart, that sees with these eyes, that touches with these hands. What is she experiencing, what does she need? How can I practice Ahimsa...a radical love and compassion towards myself today? How can I court the Presence by being present with what is moment to moment?

I am moving slowly today, staying connected to my breath and to the gentle voice of love, the tenderness that I am needing to give to myself today. What does she want? She wants forgiveness, she wants me to let her off the cross for all the ways I succumb to fear, for all the ways I hide and play small. She wants me to stop judging her for her failures, the ways that she is still unskilled in love, the ways that she can find herself in the prison of the past.

I breath in, I breath out and I dedicate today to loving myself, to practicing Ahimsa, to slowing my pace to the rhythm of my heart, my soul. When my mind races I know it is time to stop pushing, forcing and to release into the flow of God, the river of ease that will deliver me home to myself. I am coming home again in this moment, home to my selfSelf. Home to trusting that the Universe loves me, adores me, wishes all good for me, supports and sustains me. Yes, I too am a Lilly in God's field.

I place myself in the river of God and I listen for the voice of my true desire. I vow to follow the authentic promptings of my own heart and soul today. I vow to be kind to myself and to have compassion for the ways I miss the mark. I vow to behold both the woman who is clear, confident and powerful and the woman who is vulnerable, fearful, and unsure. I vow to trust the underlying rhythm and flow of my life and this sweet universe. I vow to trust that I will be delivered to the source of my desire, my devotion and my destiny.

Ahimsa. (http://www.dlshq.org/teachings/ahimsa.htm)
Ameyn.

P.S. Interestingly enough the structure and acitivites of my morning were not all that different than any other day...subtract the kundalini yoga and add a dead sea salt soak....what was different was my presence and intimate relationship with myself. I was able to shift out of a fear-based dictator relationship with myself full of shoulds and force to a love-based romance of allowing and nurturing and unfolding. This is the sacred practice of Ahimsa. It is always an inside job!

Knock and Be Opened

This day which is quickly coming to an end...started out at 6 a.m. I woke up, started playing with my iPhone (still fascinated with it) and accidentally (?) clicked on Neil Douglas Klotz Aramaic Prayers. I began breathing and chanting...feeling my heart open to the presence of Yeshua. One of the prayers was a translation from Matthew 7:7 ~ "Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you." I chanted the Aramaic words, Qush Wa Eth-Phetah..."knock and be opened" over and over again feeling the resonance deep within my heart. I knew that I would be opened, I knew that my heart would open from the inside, that a dam would break and love would flow to the outer regions...the places within my heart that are fenced off by fear...fear of being left in love, fear of loving too much, fear of losing control in the ecstasy of true love.

I kept chanting anyway...for hours I listened, chanted. I felt the Love Presence grow within me...I followed desire all the way home to the Source of Love within me. I felt the dams break.
The constrictions within me began to uncoil, unwind.

Love is flowing. Love is infiltrating the barren lands of my own heart, the places where I hide, mask, run from what I most long to experience ...a true love, a true loving -- myself true in love and in loving. Being true to myself in love.

My father left when I was 1 1/2 years old. I think that at this young age I was baffled and stunned that this man with whom I shared such warmth and joy and love could all of sudden be gone. In an instant. I am certain that I registered this deep within my cells. I know that as a grown woman, just standing near him would create a resonance within my cells, within my life force that said, "yes, this is my father." I must have had a cellular recognition and resonance with him...since most of the time I spent with him was during the ages of 0 to 3 and then again in my 30's. My grandmother tells me stories about my father coming to visit me when I was 2 or 3. She tells me that my father would often cry during our visits and that I would comfort him...but never shed a tear, never let on that I was hurting...until he left. And then the tears would come. I don't think I had ever heard this story from my grandmother until recently. It may have been after my father died...just over 2 years ago now. He was gone in an instant then too...one moment pounding the pedals on his mountain bike...the next laying dead on a trail.

I think this story can tell me a lot about how I show up and how I hide in love today...about my fears, about how I suppress the fullness of my love and desire...my pleasure and my pain. I think the story I made up to reconcile this separation might have gone like this..." be really good...don't show too much emotion, don't ask for too much, don't reveal too much...stay as small as possible so that he won't leave again. Abandon yourself so that you won't be abandoned. Don't desire him too much or he will leave...don't trust the love that exists...be baffled and confused. I am done with this story.

I have compassion for her. She was so madly in love, so crazy deliriously in love with herself, her father, her mother, her life. I can't imagine the impact on her soul to lose the presence of such a great love.

So what is the point? What is opening in me tonight is the awareness of how I've spent so much of my life compensating for that experience...controlling, avoiding, protecting my relationships so that I would never, ever have to experience the devastation of that kind of a loss again.

Until now.
Until now.

I am surrendering all my ways of hiding from love, of controlling myself in love, of manipulating others in love so that I might have a chance to receive, to create, to experience and to live...a great and true and profound and ecstatic love in my life.

I have deep compassion for this part of me that screams so loud, who grips so tightly to these charades, these lies, these illusions. I bless her and I ask her to please come home, to please come home to my heart where I can love her and care for her. I ask for her to serve a greater purpose...to support me in being a generous and open-hearted lover. I don't need protection anymore. Her job is done. A new assignment has arrived.

To love myself.
To love others.
Truly, deeply.
Authentically.

Knock and be opened. Let me be opened fully. I withhold nothing from you God. I make a full and complete surrender tonight. Into your arms, into the mystery of my life, into the fires of Sacred Love that burn within me. I no longer wish to be a child with childlike ways...I wish to fully embody and inhabit the woman that I am. I wish to be grown up in my love and in my loving.

I am knocking from the inside, heart opening from the inside.
I wish to be made new.
Resurrected wholeness.
Holy Spirit, Maranatha...
Come do your sacred work within me, within my life, within my relationships now.
I ask for your grace and for your delicacy as you breath new life into my heart.

Dear God, I ask for your blessing on my anim cara...his soul's presence in my life has brought me to this moment now, where I begin again, anew.

Ameyn. Let it be so.