Tag Archives: spreading light.

Where The Light Enters

Posted on by learning to live like water

The wound is the place where the light enters you ~ Rumi #quote #wisewords drawn into a Moleskine Notebook:

Yes, well, Rumi.   It certainly is.  When we are wounded so deeply, we have to search deep in order to rediscover our value.  Rejection, wounding, shake our foundations, don’t they?  We have to look deep, and somehow let that light in so we know, once again, we have value just because we exist.

We cannot find our value externally. tt exists within us, always.  Through this lifetime from the moment we are born, and into the next one, if you adhere to that school of thought.  The question is, how do we want to live this life, this one precious life? Searching for the validation that already exists within, that we are connected to the one great thing, looking for someone else to tell us we belong?  Or…do we want to take the beautiful soul that is each of ours and find another soul who can join us in a journey to go deeper, higher, more joyfully?

The light enters the wound, because we all make the wrong choice at some point. Or at least most of us.  I think this life is meant to evolve our souls, and there is no growth without pain.  We were meant to make the mistakes, we were meant to live through them, we were meant to learn from them.  Then, the light enters the wounds, illuminates the lessons, and makes us glow.

I think there are people that cross our paths that can see us glow.  I also think there are people who cross our paths that cannot see it.  Just because someone can’t see it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.  It means that their state of consciousness doesn’t let them yet see it.  I think when the light enters our wounds, we are bound to spread that light to others whose darkness doesn’t let them yet shine.

I feel like the light has entered my wounds, it is fast at work making parts of me glow that I thought had died.  I find that I have some attachment to the wounds, that they remind me how I loved, and loved loving.  But the light says, you can love again, and it won’t leave these wounds.

I saw a crack in the one who wounded me the other day, I saw the armor not completely sealing him.  I hope he lets the light in, I hope he finds a life that can bring him joy for the rest of his years on this earth. I hope he doesn’t waste this one precious life, settling for what is easy.  I hope he finds a life worth working passionately for.  I hope the light can enter his old, and deep wounds and let his self worth begin to glow.  It would make me happy to see that transformation.  It would also bring meaning and purpose beyond the lessons I already have learned, if those things rippled out to him and others.

I got the nicest comment on a blog this morning, where someone thanked me for being a blog that constantly inspired them.  This is really one of the main purposes of blogging for me, to share the lessons and let the light shine that was given to me. It was wonderful to wake up to read that, and know that my words helped someone else.  I hope the light that wrote those words that helped that person shines on everyone, even him.  Maybe, especially him.

Hurt people hurt people.  I have done it, hurt others, even him, when I have been hurt.  But now, I want to shine the light, whatever light I have, be it just one candle or a floodlight, on others.  I don’t want to hurt anyone again, if I can help it. And I can.

Let the light in.  More wounds, maybe mean more light can get in.  Maybe our souls and hearts can be mended like the Japanese custom, with gold, so that they have even more value than before they were wounded.  Let your wounds glow, and let us all light the world.

Ripples

Posted on by learning to live like water

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsrUxhaaWks

I am a fan of Oprah’s show SuperSoulSunday.  She has had a lot of incredible teachers on this show, and I’ve learned so much from them.  This morning she had a re-run of the interview with John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods.  At the end of the show she did “Soul to Soul” with him where she asked him a set of questions she asks all her guests.

One of the questions is “What is the lesson that has taken you the longest to learn?”  He said,and I am paraphrasing, “The lesson I continue to learn, over and over, is that we have a wake.  Our actions ripple out in ways that affect people and our world in ways we will never know, can never imagine.  So I keep learning that I have to be kind, that I have a responsibility to make sure that what ripples out from me helps people, is positive, and doesn’t hurt anyone.”

All I could think is, wow, so true.  Everything we do ripples out.  Sometimes we see the results, or some of the results.  Sometimes we have no idea.

I remember when I was introduced to “cord cutting”.  It’s a thing you can do, a kind of ceremony, calling in your guides, archangels etc., and cut the energetic cords which connect you to someone.  It is done with love, never hate. Never ill feeling.  I did it to help free myself from my ex.  I went to a group meditation, and imagined cutting the energetic cords which bound us and came from that long dysfunctional relationship.  I imagined the two of us flying around saying “Good bye, maybe I’ll see you, maybe I won’t.  Have a good life…” And I felt freer from that negativity than I ever had when the meditation was over.  Which I thought was the end result.

But a few days later, my ex showed up at the front door of the condo I was renting.  I wasn’t home but my son was.  He got out of his car, and his father said to him. “I apologize for everything I ever did to you…..”  For a few short months it lasted, they had a relationship, until his father slipped back into  his old ways, and began to play with his son’s life and emotions again.

I will always believe that it was a ripple out of the cord cutting I did with  him.  At the time I said to someone, telling the story…”You throw a stone in the water, you never know what will ripple up on the shore.”  I like the idea of us leaving a wake behind us…..same idea, but it seems a more powerful representation.

And I love the idea, the truth, that we have a responsibility to not hurt others, to make sure that what washes up on the shores of the rest of humanity lifts them and shines light on them.

Conscious Healing

Posted on by learning to live like water

Not too much to say this morning, but that goes so much against my nature, I feel the need express it, lol..

First of all, it is hot and muggy.  Real summer weather.  Closed the house up and turned on the AC again.  I would love to be at the beach, but didn’t make any plans, so am not.  The beaches will be wall to wall anyway, so I’m probably not missing much.  This is my kind of weather.  It’s why I can live full time in Florida.  I can take heat.  I cannot take cold, snow, heating bills.

I have been dealing with carpal tunnel syndrome for about 5 months.  I kept putting off getting it fixed, because surgery scares me, the expense scares me (I have one of those wonderful high deductible plans), and I didn’t want to miss work. But it’s been getting progressively worse.  It keeps me up half the night, I am taking 3 to 4 ibuprofen before bed and an Ambien to help me sleep through it and even that doesn’t always work.  Last night was particularly bad, because I did so much housework yesterday with it, especially preparing the seafood gumbo.  Lots of slicing and dicing.  So, Aug. 28 I am having the surgery.  And I will only miss one day of work for sure…it’s so simple now, it takes literally 10 minutes…(the dr. said, yeah it takes 10 minutes if there are delays….)  I should have done it ages ago…stupid…..

I am a great believer in the emotional component of most physical ailments.  Louise Hay suggests that carpal tunnel is brought on by railing against the injustices we see in the world.  My friend who is a spiritual counselor and is even more tied into alternative healing than I am, says, “You’ve been giving too much.  The right hand is for giving, the left for taking.  and you are out of balance.”  I think that is possibly true, regarding some of my, well one of my relationships.  So maybe it will improve now that that is no longer in my purview.  I think it is possible that the emotional aspect is not just giving, but giving to someone who doesn’t want it, and is not receptive to the light.  Because overall, giving acknowledges having, and the more you give the more you have.  But trying to lift someone out of darkness who professes to seek the darkness, is stupid, and unfulfilling and a waste of time.  So when the energy gets thrown back at you in a negative way, and upsets you, I would guess there are some physical ramifications.

Until you learn to do the Byron Katie thing, and say, “It’s not my business that he likes the darkness. It’s his.  I have to stay out of it (and in my case, away from it….)”

And you know, he has/had so many health issues, I think his longing for the darkness is giving him what he wants.  He should be content.  I am content to have only a couple of issues….and I know where they came from. Diabetes, from not taking in the sweetness of life for 40 years.  And the carpal tunnel.  I have had what I thought to be arthritis, bad, actually was thought to be rheumatoid arthritis, but in the past months, the symptoms have basically cleared themselves.  Just very minor stiffness in my fingers now, and even that is improving.

Some friends I have in alternative healing said to me, “Put your hand into a tight fist for 5 minutes and then release it.  It hurts…..You held on too tight for too long.”  And yes, that was true.  Louise Hay suggests arthritis is from feeling unloved, from criticism. and resentment.  All of which were true in that long nightmare of a marriage.  It seems that I’ve been out long enough (8 1/2 years), and have learned to like myself, love myself, that the symptoms are subsiding.

Pretty cool.

I guess I am at the moment, just living in the moment.  And grateful for being able to sit out on my deck and listen to nature, and feel the soft breeze that occasionally drifts by.  And just kind of let my mind go where it wanted.  Which apparently was to healing…..spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

Love and light….

Crack the Door, Crack the Mirror. Spread a LIttle Light.

Posted on by learning to live like water

I have heard it said, from so many great spiritual teachers, that when we rage at someone, we are only raging at ourselves. That we see in the other person, that which we dislike about ourselves. Or that which we fear in ourselves.

I have done this myself. Gotten so angry at someone, because I read into their words something they didn’t mean to say. I have answered questions that weren’t asked, and not answered the one that was, because I projected, based on my own demons or ego, what I thought they really wanted to know.

And people have done that to me. They have taken my good intentions and twisted them into something ugly. They have inserted their own guilt, or fear, into what I say to make it mean something hurtful to them. And raged at me for it

Generally speaking, when one person rages at another, I am pretty sure it usually ends up with two egos battling, and two people angry with each other. A ruptured relationship. I am guilty of this, as I have defended myself against the untrue projections. And people have defended themselves to me, against my false accusations.

Imagine, for example, you offer your help to someone who asks, but at the same time, lay down boundaries which are necessary for you to maintain your equilibrium. The person, who had other ideas about the form your help would take, becomes angry at your boundaries, and interprets them as being put there to hurt them. While in reality, they are put there for your own safety, so you can continue on with your life while helping them.

This happened to me…..which obviously I am trying to work out by writing this essay.

It got ugly….there are more details in my last blog. But the fact is, 4 or 5 days later, I am still concerned about this person. I blocked him on my phone, on my email. Because of the ugliness. But I began to worry, about the ordeal he faces, and just wanted to know he was ok, with what he had to do, with the arrangements he made. I didn’t want to start up with him again, or even have a conversation. But I could not sleep wondering if he was ok, and knowing that I’d cut off all access to reach me.

So what is that? It’s unconditional love. This person has hurt me, but I see now that he has hurt himself more, that he lost much more than me from his actions. I forgive him, and move on. Because I know that holding onto pain and anger is like taking poison and thinking the other guy is gonna die. It’s a lesson I learned well going through an ugly, contentious, 4 year divorce. In order for me to move on, I had to forgive my ex for all the ills he had attempted to do to me. Because holding on to the hate, pain and anger, gave my ex control still. I knew he didn’t know better, I knew that it was his own fear, and feelings of inadequacy that caused him to do those things. And I also learned that our thoughts become things. All the ills he wished on me, were what manifested for him. It is sad, just sad, to see this happen to someone you loved.

So it is the same now. I see that this man believes he is not worthy of unconditional love. He believes he is being punished by forces greater than himself. He lashes out, because he listens to the voice he thinks is protecting him, when in fact it is the voice that is leading him to harm. It leads him to being alone, thinking he needs no one. That he is separate from the whole. When in reality, we are all one thing, and need each other.

Now that the anger has subsided over the projections, and nastiness, and I have allowed my spirit to once again take over, and feel the unconditional love for him that I try to extend where ever I go….I feel for him. I feel for his inner child, I see his soul and the struggle it has to be heard, to be allowed to shine, to remove the layers of darkness that lie over it. Last night I could not sleep, because I knew I had shut a door that needed to be cracked open. It actually made my stomach hurt.

During my divorce, in the early days, my son was living with my abusive and controlling ex. My ex conspired with my son, all kinds of things that hurt me, one of which was to cut off my ability to communicate with my son. I used to go knock on the door of my old house, the place I’d lived for 30 years, and just beg my son to come out and hug me. Because I knew, somehow through the grace of God, that my son needed to know I was still standing no matter what he did to me. That I still loved him unconditionally just because he existed. Eventually, he understood, and walked away from his abusive and controlling father to my door, with the clothes on his back. Because he knew.

It was then, that I learned the overwhelming power of unconditional love.

So, I sent this man a text after unblocking him, and told him I just need to know if he’s ok. I think I wanted him to know that I still care…that no matter what he throws at me, I will still be standing. I don’t want to be his lover, but I want him to know that I can live what I preach, that I can walk the walk at the end of the day. I also want to know that for myself.

Unconditional love means just that…it’s unconditional. We cannot pick and choose those we love. We have to love everyone. Probably especially those our egos feel least deserve it.

So….my intention was not to be a mirror to him. But I know I was, we are all mirrors for each other, whether intentionally or not. It’s the way it works. I know he didn’t like what he saw, and that his ego took over and projected all his fear onto me, and my motives. And I know he hurts, he knows somewhere that he read me wrong. A little bit at a time, I hope he can begin to believe that he is worthy of love, and….that he doesn’t have to earn it. That it is his because he exists.

Living like water means that we find a way to get back to source. So that’s what I’ve done. I have found a way to get back to source and extend love where it is needed. I know that most people would not understand. But this morning, my soul feels free, I am satisfied that I did the right thing, cracking open that door for a little light to shine through.  A Course in Miracles says that a miracle is a change in perception from fear to love. I hope I have helped to start that process.   I hope I cracked his mirror a little too. Cracked the door, cracked the mirror. Spread a little light where it was needed.