Freedom fighters: taking back your power

Sometimes "growing up" spiritually is akin to integrating psychologically or healing emotionally. It is the primeval human condition, that ancient reach for our full humanity, that calls us on the journey out of the darkness of denial and unconscious behavior  into the light of awareness, consciousness, free will and a choice to love. It is the way to empowerment, out of control, into autonomy, freedom and authentic human beinghood.

Pretty heady language, I admit.  It's no wonder that for those who have looked to God for help in their pain, found help and found valuable potent language that has an efficacious ability to speak directly to the soul and call her to step up and stand up and take back her power from all the sucky, vampirish fear mongers that plaque our world today.  

For those of us who recognize this journey, we embrace the light/dark language of the Gospel.  It really speaks to us parabolically and iconically.  

So, as children of the light, we are always being called out of darkness - not just out of a spiritual lack of full awareness as much as the whole quagmire of control, manipulation, deception and game-playing people who are not strong enough or evolved enough to stand up in their own power and have the courage to ask for what they want/need.  Rather, they cower and manipulate for it. Their cowardice masquerades as power, the wrong kind of power, and they attempt to frustrate and confuse those who are still on the way to self individuation, personal empowerment - those who have wrestled with the tiger and now ride her.

Until we have awakened to this struggle - this wrestling with Jacob's proverbial angel - we cannot triumph in this struggle between darkness and light, between victim and predator, between weakness and rage, between love and control. In that state of being controlled, which we all are until we ride the tiger, we are reactive rather than proactive.  In that state of being controlled, either by a system of religious belief, the teachings of unloving parents, our own internalized unhealed fear, or a tyrannical political regime, we are not free.  In that state, we are not self determining.  Rather, we are puppets doing someone else's bidding, or worse, we're slaves.

Once I had a vision of an Alice-in-Wonderland kind of tunnel.  At the bottom was all the cares of the world, the intensity of life here on Earth with all its worries, fears, insecurities, cruelty and pursuit of material abundance and personal pleasures.  I looked up and saw a warm radiant brightness at the top of the tunnel.  As I started to climb up towards it, I realized that there were tree roots that stuck out into the tunnel shaft that seemed to draw my attention away from the light at the top and preoccupied me.  Oddly, though, the brightness and warmth at the top seemed to have a kind of magnetism that continued to call me upward.

But, each of those roots that caught my attention were things I felt I really wanted.  They could be objects of desire, a relationship, a personal need to succeed, meet my parents' expectations of me, fit in, be popular, liked, etc.  In that vision I saw myself really struggling with each of them in an effort to release myself from the temptation they were to me and the resultant delay on my journey into the warmth of the light above.

I thought about those temptations and their incredible power to appeal, confuse and delay me on my journey.

Those temptations are side trips away from very real internally rooted fears.  Unless we take them seriously, they will hold us back.  Recognizing what the fear is and then embracing it with all the love we have in us, even asking the Lord of the the light to help us, is the only way to move through those obstacles to greater personal power, and real birth into our full humanity and full self determination.

No one ever said life would be easy.  We work at it everyday with all our will power, intelligence and with a courage and fullness of heart.  At first pain is the enemy, that emotional heartbreaking pain, then pain is the symptom of the problem.  Then pain is our friend, a guide to where the fear root is.  There is no point in avoiding the pain, drinking or drugging it away.  That is only a long arduous detour away from our destiny, away from the light of full humanity.  Wisdom was always promised to those who would call on God for it.  

In my own growing pains, I called on God for wisdom and for help.  And God provided a wonderfully wise sister, an equally wise and compassionate best friend and other precious loving people who seemed to just call or write and drop by just when I needed them most.  And, then, the conversation grew, manifesting a greater power in us through its ability to heal us, mature us, empower us and bring us closer to our destiny to be Children of God.  

I think this is the whole point of life.  We're not here to make money, have a family, populate the Earth.  We're here to evolve our souls and become lovers in the fullest and greatest meaning of that word.  We're here to be lovers, freedom fighters of the soul.  

Befriending the tiger in your tank

On the way to that inner spiritual harbor where delicate picturesque sailboats bob gently in the softly rising tide, something surprising storms your path.

St. Teresa of Avila and more recently Carolyn Myss have written about the oddities of the mystical path to God.  One might think it's simple.  Just meditate and get peaceful and try like hell to stay peaceful when the world is erupting all around you.  You know as in the Buddhist way; stay calm in the storm ..... Right?  Not so easy.

While the intention is to enter that inner calm harbor and sail out into the depths of your consciousness to enter into the sublime realm of the holy, it seems something always comes up to divert you on your way.

Recently I had an experience that took me quite by surprise.  I had been having some pretty intense chest pains which is odd for me since I'm a healthy woman with no heart problems.  By nature I'm a calm person generally easy going and never raise my voice or get angry. I wondered why I was having this heart trouble suddenly. Then a co-worker did something unexpected.  Well not completely unexpected.  It had been a series of behaviors that I had been tolerating while growing increasingly annoyed with this person.  Finally, after I had requested that this person be more considerate, the annoying behavior happened again. I was surprised at the person's choice to do something that she knew annoyed me so much. But, there's always a lesson in every challenge. I discovered that I had a temper after all and that actually scared me.  I knew that my reaction was my problem.  It was the effects of that internalized shrapnel I'd mentioned in an earlier blog. 

While I could barely think because of my tempestuous fury, I knew that had to be the case.  Why is it when I reach for serenity, I discover madness?  Why is it when I attempt to purr like a kitten, I find myself roaring like a tiger?  What is it all about?

I thought about Teresa's inner castle and realized that on my way to heaven, through the doorways of each of the rooms in the interior castle, there is a gremlin - or gargoyle - or whatever - a demon, maybe, that attempts to block the way.  That was good imagery. 

I realized that my early-life frustration from a less than peaceful homelife had been deeply internalized.  It had grown into a pernicious beast, a furious tiger of the soul.  I had to befriend the beast.  I couldn't take it into the harbor with me because it blocked me from entry.  Simply you can't bring your baggage on the metaphorical sailboat to heaven.  

What do I do with this fury?  I called my sister, as I always do when I need to figure things out.  She talked to me about "stuff" from our tempestuous childhood and I realized I needed to accept that tiger. I had to do this.  This is not an easy path, this path to the divine.  I don't know if I've completely succeeded in befriending the tiger or if she had cubs over these many years that will grow into later tigers.

Then, I discovered something more, something really quite awesome.  As I sat with my anger, my hurt, my ancient agony, I really came in touch with a magnificent power within.  I had somehow separated myself from my "tiger" power when I attempted to block myself from feeling the pain in my heart from that early frustration. Now, just by honoring the tiger's presence I integrated the power of that tiger with the vision of the mystic.  It took on a new dimension, a new strength, a power - still raw, maybe - but a power that would not ever catch me by surprise again.

I wondered how many of us have attempted to avoid that inner tiger.  How many of us try to tip toe around it, afraid of our own power, afraid of our own broken hearts?  Probably, most of us.  Yet, if we are to ever become empowered enough to enter our own hearts, that proverbial inner harbor where the divine resides, we must ride in on our tiger power.  We cannot avoid our authentic being no matter how unruly and outrageous that tiger may seem at first.  Tame it?  probably not. That might only separate us further from our forsaken power. But, befriend it?  yes.

At least one thing is for sure.  You will like yourself a whole lot more when you honor and hold onto your aching heart, still weeping and raging in your hands.  And then, hopefully, you may find that you are closer to entering your own most sacred heart.

Oh, and by the way, the chest pains are gone. Maybe the heart was talking to me afterall. I think there's a wisdom in the body that speaks to us when we fail to hear it any other way. 

Remembering an old love song

Life is a dream and we are long past remembering when we fell asleep.  Somewhere along the way we became lost in the mists of reality and forgot how it all began. 

We were born out of the great cosmic heartbeat and like a swarm of bees right out of the hive, we flew far and wide from our birthplace.  Maybe we knew for a very long time that we are the beautiful child of the creator of all that is.  Maybe for awhile we communed with our creator by tuning into our own little hearts, vessels into which our creator speaks from His heart.  But it seems it was a long time ago and something got lost along the way.

It felt as if our creator left us alone shipwrecked on this planet and we fell further and further away from our beginning when we all listened through our hearts to our creator and to each other.  We sang, danced, made art, wrote poetry, made love, created circles in the sand and looked up into the night sky and wondered at the mystery all around us.  But in our long sojourn here, gradually we forgot. Then, we felt alone.  We felt scared.  We felt vulnerable.  We cried out for our creator to come back to us.  We prayed and then developed rituals and rites and rules and anything else we could think of to convince our creator to help us.  

But, our creator was always there, always hearing us, always loving us, but knowing that we could only learn through our own trials and errors.  Most of all, He wanted us to keep our hearts open, even if we were breaking our own and everyone else's hearts every day.  Then, we made a great discovery.  We discovered that the one who makes the rules gets to be the boss and that feeling of power temporarily takes away the feelings of fear and vulnerability.  We discovered that within us is a power that we tapped when we stood up tall and faced our fear and took command over our life.  The mistake was we took that a whole lot too far.

Then in our global dream, we discovered our intelligence and used it to create all kinds of religions and rules to feel that big power, which really only masqueraded an even bigger fear, and used it to control everyone.  We blamed the harsh rules that controlled and dominated our heart-based human nature, imbued in us since that very first moment of birth out of the great heart beat, on our creator.  Out of our fear we imagined the first big nightmare in this dream. We imagined that our creator would punish and destroy us if we didn't obey the rules we thought He made. That first projection launched the first fear-based primitive religions.

We went too far and now everyone is living their lives in straight-jackets, unable to move to their own heart, unable to even hear their own heart, enslaved to a variety of (religious, economic, government and social) systems of domination and control.  In fact the quandry is which one do we choose to follow.  We are truly lost in this nightmare of control, based on fear and yet not remediating the original fear.

There was a love song left in our hearts to carry us onto our final destination through the mists of reality.  We were never meant to get lost and forget.  

And then one day, a true lover came along and He spoke to us about new things.  There was something in his voice.  There was something in the way he moved.  There was just something about Him and we fell in love with him, a lot of us did.  He came to help us reconnect to our hearts where we would hear that old love song again and we would know our only reason for being was to sing and dance and live in communion, in tune with, that song.

That song resounds throughout the cosmos.  It is heard by angels. If we could be still and listen to the trees, to the birds, to the sounds of the waves breaking on the shore, to the children laughing, to each other, we may begin to feel again, feel the love within our hearts.  Then, in our quietude, we may hear - really, really hear - our creator's words of love for us.  Maybe it would be a miracle if we could ever get that quiet.  But, if we did, we could wake up from the nightmare and be happy that this global dream isn't real and something so beautiful is.  We would all still be here but we wouldn't feel alone, scared, vulnerable or shipwrecked because we would hear our creator's love song for us all the time and we would know, really, really know that we are not forgotten or forsaken and are very greatly loved.