The Opening of Intuition

Notice that your awareness may be moving in the direction of greater sensitivity at this time. This is light's gift to you - that you may notice more things. One area in which this frequently takes place is that of relationships. Being able to see the deeper meaning or intent of what someone else is saying or doing happens as greater clarity comes into being. It may be that you can feel the energy behind words or within the body of another. This may not be known to your conscious mind, but your intuition has a mind of its own that operates through the heart and the higher senses.

It is a learning process to develop trust in one's intuition, but an important part of regaining your connection with the other levels of your being. Let your senses and awarenesses open, and see what comes to you. Blessings.

Breathing

Paying attention to one's breath is an important way of coming more fully into the present moment. Many people know this, but do not take the time to do it, often because they are too busy with other things to remember to breathe with awareness.

Breath connects us to life-force and to our inner life. It creates a consciousness of what is going on in the body and hear, not just the mind. It opens us to inner guidance. The reasons for not paying attention to breathing at times throughout the day are simple - we are too involved with what is going on in our minds to do so.

Becoming more fully involved in the present moment is a doorway to new experience that cannot happen while one is fully engaged with the mind. What new experience? This depends upon the flow of awareness that is uniquely the inner journey of each soul.

The experience of the present creates a new view of life - one that does not rely on worrying, planning, and thinking, in order to feel safe. Instead, it relies on trusting, allowing, and participating in the flow of life in order to feel safe. This is an important part of the consciousness shift that is happening now and it can happen more fully for those willing to embrace the present moment with love and care, as if it mattered. Each moment matters. Each is sacred. But to perceive this one must be there with one's full self. This is God's invitation to each soul - to show up at the feast of life.

Overcoming Numbness

Television often saturates the senses so that they become immune to responding emotionally and with humanity to scenes of violence or cruelty.

News media also saturate the senses so that they become immune to hearing or seeing people committing atrocities or being harmed.

In the face of sensory and emotional saturation with the pain of the world, it is easy to become numb, just as it is easy to become numb in the face of one's own deep pain. And yet numbness is not the best solution to this problem for it merely suppresses the pain that one feels temporarily; it does not do away with it.

What is more useful for the world at large and for each individual who is growing is to bear witness to pain with a sense of compassion - with a heart that is larger than the pain itself. By bearing witness with a sense of compassion, by making oneself 'an instrument of peace' to use the expression of Saint Francis - "Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace," the pain can be held within the context of an overriding purpose to help. Even a small amount of bearing witness without becoming numb is often a greater help than one ever knows.

"Make me an instrument of Thy peace and love" opens the heart, allows healing to begin, and sends love into the world. In the presence of conflict, suffering, and pain, it creates the full intentionality to bring healing love to all who suffer or are afraid, including oneself.

Relationships: Love and Truth

The balance needs to be found in relationships between love and truth. All relationships are based on the dimension of depth, and real intimacy, love, or sharing with others cannot take place unless a high degree of truth is part of the relationship.

If you are afraid to be truthful because it will hurt another or cause greater separation, then consider this: that the absence of truth is already creating a separation and limiting what another can share with you and you with them. Souls help each other by encouraging each other to be more real. This is the meaning of "when you set yourself free, you set others free as well." It is why souls come together in the highest sense - to help each other into greater wholeness.

Relationships as Energy

The effect of increased spiritual light on people's bodies, whether they are conscious of it or not, is that the body becomes less solid and dense and more light-filled. As a consequence, human beings become more sensitive to the energies passing through them from their own unconscious mind, as well as energies passing through them from others.

This is a new phenomenon, one that has not been part of human experience before in a widespread way. And so most people do not know what to do with these energetic perceptions or even that they are having them. Since conscious awareness does not mediate responsiveness in many cases, it becomes more likely that individuals will react unconsciously to either the light in another or to the darkness in another, depending upon what they feel and resonate with at a given moment in time.

If you have been feeling certain people becoming more reactive to you in recent times, it may be because they are becoming more energetically sensitive (on the level of the body) without being more energetically aware. Light can join with light in another, but darkness can also react to light's presence with discomfort, projection, or rejection. Darkness can join with darkness in another even when that other is being amiable and not exhibiting it outwardly. This is because the ENERGY within, not the PERSON, is joining with what it perceives inside.

This is a time which calls for greater awareness, greater patience, and greater trust, that these energetic reactions are all part of the process of healing and that all is in motion toward that end. In relation to others who may be less conscious of being in or needing to be in a healing process, patience and forgiveness are needed since the process is happening whether one is aware of it or not.

Try, therefore, not to take things personally when others are reactive to you in ways that may be uncomfortable or different from how they have been in the past. Love is the best and primary healing force in all difficult situations, and it only takes one to love, not two. With this in mind, all relationships can be moved along further in the direction of wholeness and healing. May all be blessed in the light of a new day. JR

Honoring Relationships

   Namaste - I bow to the Divine Self within You

To be present in relationships is to honor them - to carry them with us where we go and to not neglect them as we would not neglect a child of our own, or a person who asked for our help, or the needs of our own bodies when they require restoration to health.

Relationships need watering. They are the beautiful expression of love manifesting between souls, often with the purpose of mutual healing and growth. To be faithful to love is to be faithful to relationships - to see that they are not subordinated to other things in life because we do not have the time or energy to take care of them.

If we do not have the energy or time to take care of that which we love, what do we have time for?

Time, in any case, is not the most important thing that relationships need, even though it may appear so. Consciousness is what is needed. Presentness is needed. A person can be apart from us for a very long period of time and we can feel very close to them because the moments of communication are intimate and true. And others can be around us on a daily basis and we can ignore them and not give them the best of ourselves or the caring that is needed.

As we grow in spiritual awareness, we must grow also in accountability to life, to love, and to relationships - for all of life is a relationship with every living thing, all of the time, for every living thing is part of God.


Photo: Claude Renault - Namaste - Tamil Nadu

House

There is a house I passed by yesterday while driving down a busy road. Its back faced the highway, not more than fifteen feet from the line of cars. Its front was hidden from view except for a rusted trailer top that peeked from behind and a few rubber tires. It isn't possible to know anything about the residents of this house as one drives by, except what the stark gray shingles and the small, square, regulation windows might convey. But behind the house in its hidden private front yard, was life, and I wondered as I drove by - what life is that?

This house set my heart to thinking about its residents, and, by extension, of souls in general who present a face to the world and retain a private world that no one else sees. I frequently wonder as I pass this house, who lives there? Did they choose to live there because the land was cheap, or perhaps handed down to them from another time? Have they made their peace with the sound of traffic and the exhaust of cars? Do they feel that they are at home in their front yard which no one can see? What is this private world that exists only feet from the road.

These questions apply to the world of every soul, for each carries a universe within themselves, each is a universe. Who gets to see this universe in many instances is no one at all. Whether that is a tragic fact or an indifferent one is a matter of individual awareness. Some might not feel that it matters whether they contained an inner universe or not, their attention being directed elsewhere. But there are oh so many souls who are longing to be seen, longing to be met in their interior world.

What is true for the house by the side of the road is often true for the human condition at present. We do what we have to do to present the face that we wish to a busy world - sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of the belief that nothing else is possible. And yet what world would we live in if people could view our private yards, those hidden from view the way the front side of this house remained concealed. We can only imagine a world without defenses, of greater truth, of greater visibility, of greater love for the inner being. Fear must be removed before this can be possible, and self-love and respect must take its place.

One day, though, allowing oneself to be visible and known will not be as difficult as it is today. For the general tenor of that time will be sharing and the desire to share, rather than the desire or need to conceal out of fear. Then, we shall see the inner world of others, no longer hidden from themselves or behind a facade, but revealed for all to witness and for all to appreciate and be grateful for.

Intellect and Soul

Many people who have been closed are now opening to a deeper sense of life and of themselves. The rational left brain is pondering its own experience and the limitations of that experience and beginning to reach for something else.

Often, what slows down this process and makes it more laborious is the way in which the intellect has been used to protect the self from feeling or knowing certain deeper levels of awareness. This protection has worked well in many cases, since with a well-honed intellect one can operate very successfully in the world - at least outwardly.

And yet the intellect is not the soul. Beneath the rational mind and the outer success is the awareness that something else is missing. Eventually, over time, a reaching for that something else takes place.

Help toward making the shift toward greater feeling, intuition, inspiration, and softeness in general can be had by making efforts in the direction of acknowledging whatever fear may be present toward doing so.

Sometimes, the intellect has done such a good job disguising this fear that it is invisible to the conscious self. Nevertheless, the turning of the soul toward a deeper level of truth will produce the beginning changes that need to happen to open up a different level of awareness. The principle of "ask and it shall be given" is true here, for those who desire to know the truth of their deeper nature will find it.