Being Part of the Flow

Many things are changing now within the internal landscape as well as outwardly, and as a result of these shifts, relationships are changing. These changes can be gentle and progressive or sudden and unpredictable. In either case, the important thing is to be able to trust the flow of life, to believe in the future, and to open one's hands to let go of the past.

Letting go of the past in the presence of change requires a secure conviction that one will be alright with an unknown outcome. The sense of 'alright-ness' must therefore lie within the self, rather than be attributed to someone else or something else. This is an important shift that must take place if one is to grow emotionally and spiritually, and also if one is to ride the currents of change that are moving through life.

In the presence of change, one can be part of the flow or resist it. The difference typically has to do with the choice between fear and trust. How much can you trust yourself, trust life, trust God in the presence of the Unknown? This is the area of growth for many, now, and the answer to this question will determine how gracefully you can move through a time of change. All blessings be with you.

Standing at the Threshold

    Standing at the Threshold

Two Days of Silence

There are, within each life, moments of deepening awareness, moments of recognizing a more profound sense of one's inner being than normally occurs. These are the moments of contact with one's center - the place within which the deepest identity resides, the place that gives ultimate meaning to one's life. In these moments of greater awareness one doesn't need to pursue a spiritual life. It is already there. And each person has within themselves the point of access, the inner map that leads to that place of deepening.

It is with this in mind that I listened to a radio interview with a woman who had just written a book on the virtue of silence. This woman was not a practicing Buddhist or a practicing anything that had a spiritual name. Rather, she was one who, for sixteen years, had found the merit of setting aside two days each month in which to be completely silent.

Her journey was not spectacular or glamorous. It did not produce spiritual fireworks in any of the ways we typically speak of these. Yet, it fulfilled the quest of her heart and soul to find a point of greater contact with herself, a point of deeper truth. In the stillness, she found herself to be more and more at home. And even though after each day of silence she went back to fully and actively participating in the verbal affairs of life, her two days of silence per month had a profound effect on the rest of her days.

Each embodied soul has, at their disposal, similar choices that can be made. Each can make a choice for solitude, a choice for going within, a choice for establishing contact with inner truth. The world is now ready to discuss the value of such things on mainstream radio broadcasts. It is ready to think about the meaning and value of an inner life. Yet, it is up to each one to find that value within themselves. Such a value defies the temptation to feel one is "too busy." "Too busy" may be a standard for activity for many, it may even be commponplace. But it cannot be a standard for life. For life asks of us something different than activity. It asks us to engage in a relationship of the heart, one in which we involve ourselves with the meaning of each moment - one in which we engage in a dance with both the Giver and the Gift.

Letting Go

You may be afraid to let go of something because you fear nothing will come to take its place.

You may be afraid because you've been holding on for so long that you've forgotten how to let go.

You may be afraid to let go because the one who has been holding on is who you have been, and who will you be if you're not that?

All questions about letting go have to do with fear.

All answers have to do with love and trust.

The Unknown is not empty. It is a vibrant, alive, full Unknown, filled with love that comes from God and is God.

Instead of picturing an empty space where something was, picture a space that is alive and pulsating. Now, it is covered with a veil. When you enter it, the veil will be lifted.

Then, a new empty space will be created as you continue to move into the future.

This is the path of new creation. It is how one becomes free. It is how humanity will learn to flow with the Divine movement of life.

Reaching for the New

Imagine reaching toward something in front of you with one arm, stretching, stretching, stretching as far as you can go... while the other arm is holding on to something with equal force behind you. Clearly, there would be a serious limit to how far the reaching could extend, even if you were reaching toward something that was very desireable.

Opening to something new is like that. It involves reaching with one arm and letting go with the other. Holding on to what is behind you prevents the new from emerging. Therefore, no matter how much one desires a goal that the mind or heart may choose, the desire must be accompanied by a letting go in order that the new may appear.

Both mind and heart can be made ready to let go to the extent that each becomes rooted in a relationship with God. Then, one does not let go into emptiness or fear, even while the goal has not yet been reached. One lets go into love and trust. One lets go into God.

Understanding Sacred Relationships

Sacred relationships are relationships in which the Divine essence of the other and of oneself are acknowledged as real. Such a perspective creates a sense of honoring and respect which replaces the need-states that characterize most karmic relationships.

Within a sacred relationship, there is not the desire to change the other in order to meet one's own needs, but rather the desire to support the other so that they can grow and become who they are meant to be. This 'meant to be' is not a particular path of action or expression on an outer level. Rather, it is the path of complete inner freedom to allow the soul-essence to take charge of life and to direct life's decisions and movements.

In order for a sacred relationship to develop and to flourish, one must have the willingness to allow another to be real. This may seem like a simple idea but for many it is difficult to do. One hardly ever sees the reality of another person. This is because need-states and their associated fears are so strong in most people that they color perception, preventing one from seeing reality. Instead, one sees only a portion of reality, thinking it to be the whole. This limitation creates many distortions.

To let another be real one must be willing to see them with the eyes of love. Such love rejoices in the inner being of another, not for what it can do for oneself but because it is intrinsically beautiful and sacred. Witnessing the inner beauty and sanctity of another is the basis for all sacred relationships.

How can this state of perception be arrived at? The primary ingredient is to not have one's sense of identity or wholeness dependent upon others, but rather to allow and encourage it to exist within the firm foundation of self.

When the self can know who it is beyond anyone else's definition, that is, when the self can become real enough in its core identity to feel solid and enduring, then others can become more real as well.

The world is moving away from karmic relationships toward sacred relationships. As each one moves into greater degrees of wholeness within themselves through a reconnection with their Divine identity, the limitations of the past will become more and more of a memory, and the openness of an infinite future more and more of a realized possibility.


See also: Sacred Relationships Titles
Artwork by Daniel B. Holeman

The World of Possibility

The 'world of possibility' exists within each moment. It comes into being through our relationship with the Divine which is the strongest creative power in the universe. This creative power flows through all moments, yet is invisible to us when we are closed to it - when we view ourselves as formed and shaped by the roles we play and the past we have lived through.

On a collective level, this past has separated the physical from the spiritual and held visible evidence to be the underlying structure of reality rather than invisible grace. Based on separation from the Divine, our collective past has created a world that predicts from the past to the future based on what has been seen and known. This view conditions our expectations and restricts our hope. It also restricts our hope for the possibilities inherent in each moment.

Today, this worldview is being challenged by the new awareness arising in many. This awareness is expanding perceptions beyond the visible and revealing new realities that have never been open to us before. Beyond logic or reason, Divine life and light are bringing into being the confluence of spirit and matter. They are closing the gap between the spiritual and the physical and making what was impossible before, possible.

Our outlook, then, if we choose to flow with the Divine in each moment, must be that something new can take place if we allow it. We can be new, because the fixed identity of the past is now loosening its hold on us. Divine light is causing the heart to awaken, and with it a deeper truth about who we are.

We cannot be new if we are afraid of change or if we believe we are the past. These beliefs must be let go of for they close down the moment and limit the possible. However, we are being invited to claim our Divine heritage, to join with the sacred core of who we are in a unity that has always existed, however unrecognized.

This movement into unity is the reason things can be new. For we are joining with that part of ourselves that has never left the grace of God, the love of God, the oneness of God. We are joining with the higher aspects of our selves and entering the realm of multidimensionality. This is the world of our higher self or soul, now able to express itself more clearly within our consciousness and within our life upon the Earth.

More than anything else, fear of the Unknown restricts the opening of the 'world of possibility'. Fear that the Unknown is not trustworthy. Fear that the Unknown will not guide us. Fear that we will not be led, or shown, or illumined in ways that will teach us how to live. This fear is based on what has been, and also on the transition we are in - one in which a new reality is emerging yet has not fully emerged. And so we are unsure of its stability and its ability to be the firm foundation for a life.

Fear diminishes and confidence increases through embracing the Unknown – through allowing it to teach us, and guide us, and shape our actions and decisions. When we believe in our capacity to live a Divinely guided life, we have already begun to build the foundation for that life. We have opened the doors so that the currents of creative inspiration can enter.

Today, we live in a time of change and of awakening upon the Earth, of letting go of the past in favor of an unknown future. In this movement, the light within all things is leading us toward a life that is fluid rather than solid, undetermined rather than known, changing rather than static. To be in this new life, we must learn to swim with the currents of change.

Today, we are being called, each and every one of us, to embrace this shift and to become fluid. For it is the time of possibilities and the Earth itself is now moving from a state of pain and limitation into a new state of beauty and grace.

Sea Voyage

To travel lightly one must relinquish

ownership of life,
giving back to the Creator what felt

like a possession
but was really only a borrowed form -
the sail of a ship floating

on uncharted seas,
filled with the Breath of God.

Flow

Inside each of us is a perpetual flow, a changing landscape of sensation, feeling, and awareness that represents itself as our inner truth. This flow has been with us since birth and priot to that as well. It is an inner matrix, a perceptual grid through which we view the world. Our perceptions of outer events and inner as well are governed by this flow which constitutes the substructure of what we call 'personality'.

It is a great learning to discover the deeper level of being that is not part of this flow - that can make itself known when we go beyond it or when we penetrate it to its core. Then, we find our transcendent self, our self that just is, beyond thought and feeling.

It is hard, however, especially when feelings run high and the tasks of daily life are challenging, to believe that there are alternatives to the specific feeling state that we find ourselves in. This feeling state, connected as it is with both the history of previous occurrences and the presence of physical sensations that define the emotion for us, seems very credible. Credible and inevitable. In the face of repeating emotional states it is often very difficult to believe that something else is possible.

Meditative practice for thousands of years has endeavored to assist with the recognition that the inner flow of thought and feeling is not the deepest layer of being. Today, we have another way of accessing this truth, namely, through the power of light and through aligning with the light within ourselves. We can invoke this light, we can anchor in it, we can return to it when we find that we have left it. In each case, a new kind of spiritual gravitation is now possible, allowing us to move back toward the center of ourselves which remains present and constant, even while the flow of emotion may carry us here and there.

Anchoring in light creates a new kind of 'flow' - a flow of connection with the Divine source of our being. It is uplifting, positive, tranquil, reassuring, comforting, and real. During the moments in which we are truly within this Divine flow, we know ourselves to be safe and we know ourselves to be alright.

Which 'flow' we align with is a choice that each must make - whether to remain attached to the emotional swings that appear to be generated by valid and definitive external circumstance, or to be anchored in what is permanent and beyond the influence of the external. The Divine flow of light moves through the core of our being at all times or we would not be able to live. Today, we are able to access this truth more easily because of the greater proximity of spirit and matter. All that is needed is to search for it within.

We open the doors to spiritual anchoring through our practice of alignment and through our trust that letting go of the familiar way of feeling will allow something new and better to come into the picture. This is the magnificent opportunity that is being given as a result of the influx of God's light.

May all awaken to the truth of their inner being beyond circumstance. May all find peace and the source of peace within. Amen.

Pain

The fear of pain is often as great as the pain itself,
the fight with pain leading to additional tension and distress.

Let go of fighting and allow a space in which pain can just be.
It is not you, it is something you are carrying.
It is also healing you of things known and unknown.

Let peace replace fighting, and love soothe

your tired heart.