Change
New tricks for old doggies
Making lasting changes in our lives can feel challenging.
Sometimes I have to admit, I feel like the dog below... Is it just me or is he laughing in the background?
Today I’d like to talk about how change happens.
Because it does. In fact, that’s ALL that happens all day long no matter how much we resist it.
It seems we’re all in the process of transformation and acceptance of this whether we like it or not.
So why on earth does it seem so bloody hard for us to make conscious or positive changes when we REALLY want them? How can we free ourselves by understanding ourselves?
To understand something means to stand under what is and see it differently. To “get” something we didn’t previously.
To have what I call a “see” change or a shift in our own perception and respond from a deeper place and then we see the changes begin to happen on the surface of our lives or in my particular case, to allow my body to transform itself once my mind is aligned.
To do whatever we feel intuitively compelled to do from love, not fear.
I’m not even sure it will be particularly helpful to share my own insights at this stage since it’s mostly speculative for you reading, but today I’d like to share a few of my realizations on the general topic of change in case you find it helpful.
I was trying to think of an analogy to help do this and one came quickly to me…
FIRE. And snakes. They are both powerful teachers.
I’m sure you all recall the devastating Notre Dame Cathedral fire in 2019.
Fire engulfed the spire and most of the roof. Thankfully, firefighters were able to control the blaze, saving the main structure including the bell towers and rose windows. Nobody was injured, and the Catholic relics housed in the cathedral and priceless works of art were rescued and brought to safety.
Most of us at some point have had to put out a fire of sorts in our own lives.
In order to change, we want to figure out how we got to this place. A part of us needs to see (admit) how we indirectly CAUSED or contributed to the fires we experience in our lives by trying to fix what we’re feeling in a way that doesn’t serve us.
Remember a few weeks ago when I used the German word “Verschlimmbesserung” which is a noun for an attempted improvement that only makes things worse. Apparently that is exactly what happened when Notre-Dame caught fire in 2019. It was the renovations to fix the church that accidentally caused the fire when there was a short circuit in one of the temporary “church bells”. Or possibly a cigarette that wasn’t fully extinguished by someone also trying to fix a feeling and to calm themselves with a chosen habit that kills more than 8 million of us each year.
Our attempts to fix our lives can sometimes do more harm than good.
We can also struggle with this torn feeling or conflict inside ourselves between wanting to continue the habit and freeing ourselves entirely.
One of my favourite writers John O’Donnohue used to talk and write about this “radical letting alone of yourself and the world” or letting the world or your life speak to you in its own voice. I finally understand what he meant. It’s this deeper knowing in us. Our intuition that can help us see something more just hidden from our view.
I’ve come to understand that our point of power as human beings is ONLY in the present.
ALL of our thinking happens in the past and the future and that is why it’s often called “Maya or illusion”. Our intellect and thinking is helpful ONLY to a point.
We live in a museum of the ideas of people that came before us. Their imaginings, their intellectual concepts are the physical reality we are experiencing today.
Our perceptions that can quite literally transform the world. Healing our minds is what will save the world. The more beautiful world we all know is possible is an inside job.
In the classic cartoon “Beauty and the Beast”, when Belle falls in love with the Beast as he is, he is transformed on the outside to match what he’s feeling inside. The curse or spell is broken. That is pure metaphysical genius. It was in him ALL along, it was just covered over with a spell or dark thinking. Good old Disney.
Our efforts to quickly repair the perceived damage done our own “outsides” in our lives needs to be done slowly, carefully and mindfully so we don’t do any further damage to our psyche (which means Soul).
On the one hand, when our house in on fire, acting quickly can save us before it’s too late. We may need medical attention and sometimes we need to act first and think later. The French authorities reported that just another half an hour of blaze would likely have collapsed the whole Notre-Dame Cathedral in 2019.
AND…of course we need to act or do something when our lives are about to combust. Maybe we’ll need to go check ourselves into rehab, see a therapist, have surgery, hire a personal trainer or hire a lawyer and get divorced.
Once the last ember has been extinguished, it can be disheartening for us to survey the damage done and not know where to start AND that is the perfect time to get still and quiet and go inside ourselves.
Stay still long enough and you WILL KNOW WHAT YOU NEED.
There is also a deep awareness that a relapse and the loss of our sobriety, the loss of our health after a lifetime of eating poorly and smoking. We never expected things to get so out of control and grief and shame or guilt can settle in on us.
We are officially no longer in denial because we are standing in the ashes which is the key to our freedom and now we have learned to love our fire breathing beasts with compassion that has us open minded to learn something new. Or as Jesus encourage for us to have the mind of a child. To be meek in order to inherit the earth.
WE really can only see this for ourselves when we’re good and ready and not a minute sooner. It doesn’t work if others that love us try to get us to look or force this change before it’s time.
It seems counterintuitive to proselytize anyone to any of our ideas, it needs to be up to each of us to choose with our free will when we’re ready to awaken to higher levels of consciousness. We can intuit and feel our way forward to the next best thing for us and trust that whatever we seek we will find.
Life can also paradoxically seem darkest right before dawn. It can like we feel like we’re moving blind through thick smoke and we need to stay low and take that first crawling step without a clear sight and sometimes on sheer will to live and blind faith alone that the next step will reveal itself to us.
I love how nature demonstrates this behaviour in all kinds of creatures. One that comes to mind is when a snake is undergoing the incredible process of molting the outer skin that it is beginning to outgrow. Unlike us, it has no free will, it must do what it’s intended to do or it will perish.
This transformational change is completely normal and nothing to be concerned about if you’re a snake or have one for a pet. They just need to be left alone to take 3 or 7 days to quite literally shed their old skin. They interestingly lose their eyesight for a brief time when a temporary lubricant is secreted to aid and the filter over their eyes. Their blindness causes them to run their head or eyes and they feel compelled to crack through and slither out first at their head and then slowly their whole bodies. Right before they do, their skin looks dull, they want to hide, their appetite may decrease and become more skittish or defensive. Their eyes turn a blue hue and they even seeks out rough surfaces to help rub off the old skin off.
They trust the natural process of transformation and so can we. If they don’t shed their old skin they’ll perish. We can also lose our will to live or sabotage ourselves to death.
It’s too constricting to live that way and that is what it feels like for us too at the lower levels of consciousness. It’s uncomfortable and that’s why I do this work, not because there is something wrong with anyone or that I am better in any way (we are ALL the EXACT same) but because the freedom felt of us having our own conscious realization of our true nature is the BEST thing that’s ever happened to me. I was lifted out of my depression, addiction not by focusing them, but with love. Not many people are speaking about that as a possibility for our human evolution. To feel our pain. To stay and I want to normalize that shedding our own outer skins or ego is a necessary part of our personal evolution.
That is how lasting change happens. We solve the issues on a new level.
A spiritual or imaginal one first and then we’ll see it in manifested in the physical. In matter or in our bodies.
It feels odd that we don’t see this for ourselves sooner, I sure didn’t even though I’ve been on 100’s of diets and I even know that was the definition of insanity, but a part of us has just forgotten or feels compelled to keep trying the only way we know how. It feels like we create our own friction in life to evolve whether we’re conscious of it or not.
We may be tempted to just bulldoze our whole life and have a fresh start, but what if there is something priceless in the rubble that is still worth saving? In my own experience, there usually is. If we’re not too hasty we may find a buried treasure. And it’s not a painting or an ancient sculpture or anything material, it’s US.
Our souls.
Some of the best archetypes given of this movement of salvation or freedom are the Phoenix rising from the ashes. Anohter crowd pleaser is the more complex psychological drama of the Christian crucifixion and the resurrection.
The transcendence of our perceived challenges and freeing ourselves.
When we keep trying to distract ourselves from the pain we feel it’s like a snake trying to numb or distract itself from the squeeze it feels when it’s growing too large for its skin. Like the discomfort we feel about something we’re not ready to see or deal with.
I’ve come to experience personally when I’ve visited higher levels of consciousness for brief periods of time both spontaneously and in my own personal spiritual evolution the humbling shock that there is more to us.
WE CAN CHANGE OUR EXPERIENCE OF LIFE BY ALTERING OUR BELIEFS AND PERCEPTIONS ABOUT OURSELVES AND OUR PHYSICAL EXISTENCE.
There is an expanded version of ourselves we may not have yet met that some of us try to do with psychedelics and that is one noble way to transcend our ego and belief system temporarily, but from personal experience is that it’s the nature of our personal reality to experience this expanded version of ourselves
It’s the real reason why diets don’t work. Why doing family interventions and rehab relapse rates are so high. It’s feels like we’re having to put in some kind of Herculean force or effort to constantly hold a hose to put out the never ending fires when a part of us is not ready or willing to put down the matches that keep starting them in the first place.
Only WE can choose or decide to do that.
Help will come from surprising places we never imagined and it will feel as though the world is conspiring to help us because it is. Until that happens this all sounds like magical thinking and I get that too.
So for now let’s just clear the rubble we can see in front of us.
There is one thing most builders use that will help to keep us safe from harm and will come in handy for anything we want to change in our physical lives.
Scaffolding. There is this little guy to help us with a few smaller habits like maybe bookending our days with a walk, doing yoga, meditation, breathwork or watching a sunrise and sunset.
Scaffolds are a temporary structure used to support and aid in the construction or during renovations. I love that Wikipedia defined it as something we use to “get access to heights and areas that would otherwise be hard to get to”.
The scaffolding will support us to create new life supporting habits that will help to sustain and guide us along the way.
The scaffolding is a temporary measure.
For our own scaffolding, James Clear and his book “Atomic Habits” can be super helpful to build a solid structure of habits. He shows that when we want to change our outcomes that we can set goals and then evaluaate our process and systems. But even he agrees that it’s not until we CHANGE OUR IDENTITY and our beliefs that we can change our lives. We need to question our biases, our beliefs, our worldview and our assumptions.
Scaffolding can help us like the structure that holds the rocket upright until take off.
We may think we can do without it and it’s true, we can but in my experience, when we’re out of alignment our guidance system is a bit glitchy and it’s just safer for us to be supported in our transitions.
Like a rock climber we can choose to climb solo without a harness and rope like some of the best climbers in the world. It’s riskier, but yes we can do anything or think anything we choose.
Anything is possible so this next step us up to you.
Sometimes healing is spontaneous or miraculous. When we’ve set our ego aside and we are feeling convicted or our faith is running high and we’re aligned with our true nature or the source of our being at higher levels of consciousness. We manifest very quickly and we’re in the flow.
On the other hand if we’re feeling on the lower end of the spectrum or if our limited belief system prevents us from experiencing this upper level in our being we can put in the blood, sweat and tears in time and space to make changes happen in our good time.
Let’s push up our sleeves right now and talk about how we want this new building to look.
Creating the vision for what we want and then drawing up some blueprints in our own imagination can help us get more exacting with our focused efforts but it doesn’t need to be forced. Let’s hold our plans loosely so they can evolve.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.”
James Clear
I love that. Very true. And here would be mine…
“You do not rise to the level of your desires, you fall to the level of your consciousness”.
Nona Morrow
In my experience, our total vulnerability and humility and even our creativity is more possible with this scaffolding around us.
We can show up for life and have a power structure and feel safe to be guided within the creative process when we’re ready we can let it go and learn to trust our true nature.
Mary Oliver teaches that we need structure even in our creative pursuits. That even a good poem has a structure and then you can be creative inside of that structure. We are safe and held to dip into our imaginations and not worry about losing ourselves. Her poetry combined a dependable balance of dark introspection with joyous release in a natural world as a kind of perfect dance that I still can’t get enough of.
She carried notebooks and hid extra pencils in trees so she’d never miss an idea as it passed her by her on her morning walks.
THE GOOD news is that if we’re not ready to find our true nature of even make changes in our lives that is just fine. YOU DO YOU. We get to move through this reality experiencing our own level of consciousness in our own good time.
I’ve noticed over the years that we tend to enjoy being with others on our same level of consciousness. There is a feeling of belonging that we get when we hear someone resonating energetically at the same level. We like the same television shows, we have the same beliefs about vaccinations and medications, we even have similar diets. It can be hard for us to relate to one another if the gap is too great and the best teachers for us are someone just a bit higher because we relate to them. I’ve noticed that my own friends have evolved or have fallen into the current quadrant I’m inhabiting…
Teachers at the opposing quadrant or say calibrating at a level of consciousness of 800 or above are powerful, but much harder to relate to if you are at 300, your best teacher may be at the level of 400. I remember someone being surprised that someone like life coach Jay Shetty calibrated at such a low level of consciousness but that is why he’s so popular. People LOVE him because they hear and understand him. Even “A Course In Miracles” at 600-650 is too high for most of us down lower to even grasp. Here’s a LINK if you’re curious about the level of different spiritual teachings and calibrations that I found online that seems pretty accurate.
On Dr. Hawkins Map of Consciousness, we can see that the highest point we’ll ever reach with an intact ego or even with our intellect and rational minds is the level of 400. I can see now that the Human potential movement, life coaching and therapy or focusing on our intellect, psyche and science can help us max out at the 400 level. James Clear can expertly help us creep our way from 250 to 350 with our 1% a day to achieve our goals and feel GREAT pride for our new building.
We can win medals with this system like the English cycling team did.
It genuinely feels like we’re working towards our best selves and we feel compelled to show up and do our best or “win” and it's a giant step up from the times when we feel paralyzed or depressed and can hardly rise out of bed. Our goals and personal desires seem like the point of our lives over and over until they don’t. We only see this for ourselves when we’re ready and until then it just rubs us the wrong way.
It’s what compels us to get to our chosen start and finish lines.
It’s quite literally a divine pull that wants us to learn about integrity and never giving up. We love underdogs and we think we’ll find it in the world or by crossing those lines, but that is the illusion.
It’s just one simple stage of our Human development and evolution.
An extreme example of doing this is that we crave this burn to shed our skins. We so badly want to meet this higher version that we’ll be drawn to extremes to meet our raw selves. Asceticism is an expression of this that belief that suffering can help us get there. Or the long sacred hikes and pilgrimages taken to retrace steps of the saints and sages that came before us. Buddha nearly lost his own life this way from starvation but gave up and ate and sat under the tree and then had his famous epiphany.
I was recently listening to a Rich Roll podcast (love it!) and had this epiphany when Rich’s wife Julie Piatt told him that when she helped him at ultra races she loved to meet the more raw or real version of him. This tired more vulnerable side she rarely met in everyday life behind the facade of his personality.
I understood immediately. I loved that me too.
We can meet it 30 days in the woods in a tree planting camp when we need to dig deep to find some scrap of positivity to keep going when we’re tired to the bones and when bugs are clouding our heads or we’ll otherwise go mad.
This is the version of us we meet about mile 20 in our first marathon.
I believe now it’s why we LOVE the longer and longer races. The longer the hike or the harder the goal the better. A part of us thinks we’re conquering our fears but it’s something even bigger. We are being shown the truth of our being beyond our fine exteriors.
I didn’t meet my own until I couldn’t run and needed to have my hips replaced. It helped me deconstruct my own very powerful and stubborn ego.
The DAVID BECKHAM story on Netflix is pure gold.
You can see the human ego at its finest when the crowds turn on him and he begins to receive death threats. It’s so mind boggling that we can’t see this when it is happening to us, because it feels SO ultimate and real.
Those WINS are a matter of life and death even to the fans. We are seeing through a glass darkly and we don’t realize it. That is the delusion of our lower levels of human consciousness where war and attacking or judging others seems to be the right or rational thing for us to do.
My favourite part was when Beckham showed us his closet and meticulous planning. Trying to control something when there’s so much he can’t in his life. It’s so fascinating I almost want you to stop reading this and go watch in immediately. It describes what I’m speaking to better than my written words ever could.
This photo and the hundreds of others of people crawling over finish lines or losing their lives (thousands have had cardiac events) doing marathons and ironmans because they did not want to give up. NEVER. GIVE. UP. It’s so deeply embedded in us to want to free ourselves and it’s a noble pursuit and all quite innocent but not even necssary once we understand why we even want or feel like “we HAVE to” to do it.
We don’t have to. That is our pride and our ego.
It’s like we’re a living gestalt of responsive flesh and we crave this deep vital equalibrium or wholeness and we’ll push ourselves there without even REALLY knowing why. It feels like seeking or striving to fill what has been described by many a God shaped hole with worldly accomplishments and our ego is never ever satisfied.
In the same way that Beckham HAD to keep playing or being involved in the game.
Most of us that have crossed one finish line know that familiar void afterwards when we can hardly wait to book our next. It feels like our ultimate purpose and for a time it can be.
I feel so moved at race finish lines. People stay up until midnight to watch every day people in all shapes and sizes hear the announcer say “YOU ARE AN IRONMAN”. Just to make it over the line in hopes that we’ll feel differently about who we are.
We feel compelled to cross, like our integrity is on the line and in some ways the promises we make and keep do strengthen our future resolve. I cried when I did and for a moment it felt like bliss and pain and sweat and tears right before I threw up.
Why do we do this to ourselves? This is the surface or personal identity James clear means but there is another in us that we unknowingly are expanding into.
I better understand it now but I couldn’t then and there are no words for it. It’s feels to me like discomfort is the price of admission inside ourselves. WE WANT to be known at that level of real and we don’t see another way to meet that raw version of ourselves.
It’s a beautiful trip to strip away the outer layers to discover the truth of who we are.
I had no idea of my eventual destination and I still don’t. Life is so much more of a mystery now than it was to me before when I thought I knew better.
I didn’t.
We live in a physical world of physical facts, but now I understand how they spring from a deeper unseen realm.
This is an inconvenient truth that challenges our ego and personal belief systems in every way that we’ve been taught. I get it. Most of our egos are not ready to concede their illusion of control. Of needing to be right so we keep straightening our closets and planning our holidays. Especially intellectuals like me, we’re the worst and most stubborn and I mean it. I was not willing or able to change my world view for 5 decades, I was so convinced and convicted.
Thank goodness science is helping us explain the how and quantum physics is showing us the true nature of our personal reality as intelligent observers and how we create our reality through our conscious ideas about ourselves, others and the world so we can allow ourselves to relax and see it for ourselves. Jesus tried his best. So did Buddha. We worshiped them more than took their realizations to heart.
It makes me cringe to think that we ever felt like we needed to separate science and spirit in the first place. It’s only our HUMILITY and courage or the beautiful beasts that can take us beyond our self concept to something so incredible that when we are not there yet we can’t really even imagine it.
It seems non-sensical. I get it and it’s all okay.
A decade ago I may not have been able to undersand this but I could or would have conceded to the fact that it’s the races or relationships that we do poorly in that we learn the most about ourselves and it’s not just to be better athletes or partners or how we become stronger after we fall but that would have been the extent of it and it was as valid to me then as where I’m sitting today.
Despite crawling over the finishing line with the help of marathon marshals, Hayley still managed to beat her personal best time by three minutes, finishing the London marathon in 02:33:59. Which I believe was 18th place.
I can’t help but wonder though, did this experience change anything else in her?
This is the epiphany I had this week. My well-worn dog eared copy of “Atomic Habits” was perfect for me to a point. It still will be as long as I’m living in a mind that believes in a Newtonian reality. I doubt I would ever have gotten anywhere much past the point of intellectual pride for achieving a physical goal or a desire. This is huge for me, it’s not ULTIMATE but it’s amazing for us to do things like win the Olympics or the world series. It’s LIFE stretching us perfectly between 200 and 400 and it’s the closest we get to feel that bliss of being our divine self.
Self help is not wrong, it’s VERY right.
Religion is not wrong, it’s VERY right.
ALL OF IT has value at the level of consciousness it was created to help pull us forward to the next with love.
It’s our life curriculum. The classes we take.
Support groups, telling our stories, team traing camps, sermons, injuries, loving AND even making fun of self help and judging one another is a part of this journey home. Stoically setting goals is a critical stage of our personal evolution but when we are ready to see that it’S PENULTIMATE on our life journey that things REALLY shift for us.
I’m so grateful for my body now I don’t even have words. I’m filled with awe by it, it’s shape and AND I realize on some higher level that it’s also not really “me” at all but how I’m currently expressing as an eternal soul or consciousness. That Soul is embedded in every single cell with its own consciousness and will to live and evolve. I’m ready to move from this place to see what’s possible for it.
We need heart or “COURAGE” to be existing in human bodies at 200 or higher. To stop taking everything so personally, to neutralize and be willing to accept and forgive ourselves and each other. This could be the work of many lifetimes to move ourselves from the bottom rungs of Guilt and Shame or Depression to Acceptance or reason and that is what we are here to do.
The work.
OUR EGOS and fear run our show until we transcend pride into courage.
Love or 500 and above is what Jesus and Buddha have been trying to help guide us towards their world view. We’re on one side of the river and want to reach freedom or higher levels of consciousness on the other and they invite us to hop on their rafts so they can help us across the turbulent river of life with their incredible teachings, but instead we either decide we know better and stay grounded in denial of the divine right where we are planted on our side of the river with people that look and act like us or we reluctantly hop on the raft with our egos intact and start worshiping the raft AND even fight the other rafts and never get off on the other side.
To me it’s why the “Beasts” in our lives ARE the most beautiful helpers, guiding us back into ourselves like snakes. To help us along the continuum heading in the direction of expanding our consciousness towards the other side of the river.
It’s beautifully and entirely UP TO US.
I can’t stress this enough. Not even James Clear can help us, this is an inside job. When we take down the scaffolding and see what’s possible for us to create with our gifts and our lives more intuitively. To write our own poem.
To fully express ourselves.
I’d like to be a bit vulnerable here myself and admit that as dog eared as that habits book was, it wasn’t long before it was like every other self help book read or unread on my shelves. Well intended and filled with promises to help me but I was not willing to finish many of them or do the work.
When we’re stuck in shame, apathy, grief, fear and desire it can feel like a washing machine of emotion and feeling like we have no say in our lives. We feel like victims because in a sense we’ve become one but not because of the circumstances of our lives, because of us.
I found it helpful to see that not a single one of these emotions on this spectrum are “better” than others. There are no good or bad “levels” or calibrations they are simply different states of Being.
Like water is not better if it’s frozen and bad if it’s vapour. That makes no sense, it’s all water at different levels of vibration.
In music, a musical tone or a note, is a small bit of sound of a system known as the solfege. For us to have this realization that we may have perceptual preferences of what we like to listen to based on our own state of consciousness, I think we can all agree that a base clef is not better or worse than a treble clef. Although there is a song about it being all about the base:)
Our consciousness rises and falls like musical notes and we mistakenly believe that we are wrong or bad for being at a lower place on the continuum.
We want so desperately to avoid feeling badly or try to bypass grief and head to happiness town even if we need to drug our way there. We avoid feeling pain and now I understand why we’re told or taught to increase our vibration and “get in tune” because it feels good to feel free. But manipulation and force can only work to a point. The only real way we can be lifted to a higher chord or octave is our willingness to see ourselves differently so we can experience a lasting change and this deep peace that passeth understanding we’re told about in the Bible.
Drilling down in any one scripture or spirital teaching deep enough can be the raft to help bridge us to the realization of our true nature. The problem is that we keep changing teachers. We’re raft hopping and we never get to the other side that way either.
Our point of power is being present in this moment and tuning INWARDS.
Now in this moment where we are. As we are. With what we have. I was right to desire to be the kind of person that does not WANT to WANT to lose weight for the reasons I did. That was fear.
Is this beginning to make sense to you?
I finally realized that I made my own body with my mind and it will change accordingly to reflect my thinking naturally when it’s ready. It will find a weight it wants to be and I will help it by loving it as best I can by creating structure and then being myself. Doing what I love. Not from my own intellectual deciding what it needs to look like out of fear, but to allow it to be what it is.
GOOD.
I feel lighter already just writing that.
I can see how I also lost myself or my sense of presence in my old daily routines and practices that felt like more to do or a checklist, even our well intended ones like our organized religions and yoga or meditation practices. They are rafts or a map, not the territory so holding them loosely as guides is a helpful insight.
WHAT WE ALL really CRAVE IS TO EXPERIENCE OUR TRUE NATURE.
This is the fulfillment we are seeking that lasts.
Devotion to a power greater or this mystery of life is the only thing that really makes any rational sense to me now. Not to a man made image I’ve made or anything in service of self but to a God of my own understanding.
That is too much of a stretch for most of us. To get there, we first need to shed our old ego skins.
So yes, I guess you CAN teach an old dog new tricks after all.
Trust the process. Even if your eyes become temporarily blinded by the darkness or in a marathon when we break our PB.
GO FOR IT. Do it all, what you want, what you desire and keep listening because where you are heading will shock you in the best possible way.
Allow. Relax. You are free.
You are NOT at the mercy of your subconscious mind or your trauma any more than you believe you are, you are not your body or your anxiety or depression or addiction, they are just a stage of evolution like grade school to where you are heading which is a place inside you that has been waiting for you all along.
And if you’re not ready to change, that is just fine. You are doing splendid. You are safe in this Field to just sit and be yourself as you are.
We can’t stop this carnival ride so even if we want to curl up in a ball we can’t stay there long because when we don’t listen to our inner prompts we will be changed by life. We are being done. We are not the doers.
I’ve had so many personal epiphanies this week that my mind is filled with awe for the truth of our being.
Our ego and fear can certainly help us to get angry and get moving, but in my personal experience they are much better servants than masters. They can help us get lift off in the short term but setting our sights on love and compassion in the present moment is where our true healing power lies.
Let’s build our scaffolding and fix our own wall so we can “see” things in a new way not only from the top of the finished structure but, from the process of becoming ourselves along the way.
When we see another person’s raw, real true self can touch something DEEP inside of us and it will make us cry. I watched this happen in real time on THE VOICE this week when John Legend described his tears coming from watching this contestant “being fully himself, and it felt so moving to me”. I had to stop making dinner and I stood and cried watching those three contestants of Niall’s sing their hearts out. We feel it to our core.
I understand that the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is going to cost about a BILLION dollars to renovate. Earlier i mentioned that there is usually a treasure worth saving, in this case the original “crown of thorns” that was reportedly placed on Jesus’s head at his crucifixion was saved from the fire, but now I’m wondering if maybe the fire itself was the real treasure that will have the power to change us all.
With love,
Rev Nona
ps. To finish…a poem I thought you might like today
Scaffolding by Seamus Heaney
Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;
Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.
And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.
So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me
Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.