Loving yourself

Sometimes it is just grace, a gift from God, when you stumble upon a wisdom so profound that it shakes your world and wakes you up.  Paul Ferrini's teaching is that gift.  I share this with you because I love you.

Sparkling spirituality

It's not a secret, nor a mystery.  It's out in plain sight.  Our land is drained of its vital minerals and nutrients. Our rivers are seriously polluted*, our air is toxic, and the Ozone hole is bigger than North America.

We know this. We already know this. But, that's not what I want to talk about here. I want to talk about us - you and me. It's about honoring ourselves, loving ourselves so much that we won't let pirates enter our inner harbors, we won't let a big steamer enter to dump ridiculous amounts of stuff on our shores or let the huge Monsanto corporation plant genetically modified crops which is actually affecting our own DNA, and further poisoning our bodies. That all sounds overwhelming, doesn't it? And, I haven't even gotten started.  But, that's not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about honoring yourself.  If you honor yourself, you will not subject yourself to following the crowd, reaching to be part of the status quo, playing the global board game that says he who has the most money wins.  It's a dead end street, and we all know it.  And, if you don't know it, you know that too - that you don't know it.  So, there, you do know it.  It's the thing that kind of haunts you when you search your soul.  The longer you do what you hate, the more you hate yourself.

So, the way to heal the world, is to heal your own mind, your own heart, your own soul.  And, paradoxically, you can't really love another until you open your heart to yourself.  This is not vanity or narcissism.  It is recognizing that the God of the universe has a direct line to you through your heart.  When you open your heart to loving yourself, honoring your own integrity and dignity, you are inviting God in as well.  As the great creator of the universe and more loving than we could ever imagine or even receive, we will clean up our lives, our bodies, our pasts that still haunt us from within our own deep beds of unconscious material.  We might have discovered by now that we do have sediment poisoning our lives (like the Willamette's Superfund) but how do we clean it up? 

I would suggest that we start by loving ourselves and inviting God into the picture. God will also serve as your underwater searchlight and help you interpret what you find, bring it to the surface, explore what it means, and then let it dissolve in the sunlight.  God will lovingly hold you as you realize what happened to you.  And, then God will pour love into that wound, that gap, until your entire inner seascape is coated and enriched with God's love, God's healing balm. 

It's a process, and it may be a slow one or a fast one. That depends on your willingness to face the truth of what's happened comparatively against where you want to go, how fast you want to get there and how to live your life purpose - that's after you discover what that is. God will show you.

As we each clean up our interior lives, choose to live authentically and explore what being authentic really means for each of us, we will grow the courage to stand up to the big global polluters out there - and there are many. And, don't be fooled, they are enormously powerful, and won't go down without a fight.  But, if enough of us wake up, take back our lives, refuse to be prostituted to these evil giants (sorry but that's what they are) then we can take back our own souls and that of the world.

But, we can't do it alone.  It can only be done through the heart  with God at the helm of our hearts.  I can promise you that God is more than capable of doing this. Sometime I will write about the miracles, the many miracles that I have heard and seen in mine and other people's lives in which God healed and helped us grow and heal and reach much higher levels of empowerment and enhanced abilities to act on behalf of our families, communities and even world.

But, as for now, beginning the clean up - first in our minds, then our lives, is a great start.  Next, we reach beyond our own individual lives and connect with each other.  Of course, that will happen naturally, just as naturally as God will fill you with love, and that love is contagious.  All you have to do is invite God in.  God does the rest.


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*The Portland Harbor Superfund Site in Portland, Oregon, is the result of more than a century of industrial use along the Willamette River.

Water and sediments along Portland Harbor are contaminated with many hazardous substances, including heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), dioxin, and pesticides. These compounds have been found to be harmful to human health and the environment. Because of the contamination, some types of fish found in Portland Harbor, such as bass, carp and catfish currently pose a health risk to those who eat them.

Portland Harbor was added to EPA's National Priorities List in December 2000. The current study area extends from the Columbia Slough to the Broadway Bridge.

EPA and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality are working with potentially responsible parties to clean up contaminated sediment and control sources of additional contamination.

Following the river

For millennia, the river has flowed into the Canadian rockies in British Columbia and then wound its way south through Washington State to the border with Oregon and then west until it empties into the vast unlimited Pacific Ocean. There, in that wide junction, it forges a turbulent entrance as well as a vital seaport for the northwest. 

The Columbia most profoundly and powerfully staggers the imagination. Time travelers, past and present, find her mysterious power compelling. Is it her ability to take life that draws our breath away as we experience her substantial and timeless flow?

I grew up on the Niagara. As powerful as she is with her capricious currents and terrible under toe, she can be cruel, occasionally tragically taking life in her roaring falls. In winter, when the falls glisten in the frigid moonlight, her dark depths are forgotten in the delicate magical essence of her frozen mists glazing everything nearby.

Unlike the Columbia, the Niagara doesn't hide her power. It is on display as a warning. Both have a mysterious past which entice the imagination and invite deeper reflection as we plumb the power inherent in their depths, spiritually matching our own inner, watery worlds. 

There is a dramatic beauty about the Columbia that speaks to me every morning as I cross from Washington to Oregon for work. East of the bridge I travel on, Mount Hood either hides from view or rises proudly in the morning sunrise. I have come to look east for Mother nature's wisdom in the merging dance of light and dark, grey clouds or sparkling sunshine on the dark, often moody river.

So, why?  Why does the river fascinate me so much. Why do I love her, fear her, listen to her, but I would never swim in her. Her depths terrify me, but above, on a bridge or a boat, I can flow with her, watch her. I have come to find an answer to that question.

In my awe of the Columbia, I have come to realize the river is a symbol of Neptune's mysterious abode. It is alluring in the mystery of its contents.  If nothing were down there, then there would be no fear. But, there is something down there - a lot of something and that's where my fear comes from.

Recently I read Underworld  by Graham Hancock who is a leading underwater archaeologist.  He has explored underwater ruins throughout the planet that stem from predeluvian civilizations that were flooded and remain submerged in oceans around the world. They serve as evidence that the great flood really happened.There have been at least three global floods.  

One especially haunting underwater structure is Krishna's Dwaraka temple off the coast of India. For thousands of years, historians thought the ancient temple was myth.There was no evidence of it. Then recently, Hancock discovered it. He rationalized that given the water tables had risen since the last flood, logically it would be in a certain location off the coast. He talked to the locals. Some of the fishermen said there's a certain spot off the coast where their fishing nets get caught on something.  

Hancock began scuba diving there and found it. He has done the same around the world and found pyramids and other ancient temples and structures just off coast lines in Japan, the Philippines and in the Mediterranean, among others.   

And, seriously, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Neptune does have a world down there - our world, our history, stories long forgotten, and yet for the world they contain essential information that reveals from where we have come, what we valued and did, and perhaps warnings we should heed.

And, that's only on the external, global level. We each have buried in our own minds ancient familial relics and personal messages. As we trace the flow of our own timelines, as a river, we may uncover things we have just assumed were acceptable, but aren't. Without challenging them after discovering them, our lives would continue down a trajectory to a destination we would choose not to go.

A friend and I traveled a good distance along the Columbia, where the Lewis and Clark expedition once traveled. We explored where the Oregon Trail struggled along, until ultimately ending in Oregon City. We saw history with new eyes, an enlightened vision, and gasped at the terrible cost in Native American lives, and loss of life among Buffalo herds. We saw the meaningless cost of those early covered wagon trips to come to a completely undeveloped remote part of the continent. Why did they do that? Was it necessary, we boldly asked. 

But, that's all another story. That's our American story. What about our own deep internal buried memories? What holds me back? What holds you back? What is blocking each of us from our encounter with the great ocean, to where the I Ching says we need to flow? What is holding us back?  What ancient submerged temples are catching our nets? The answer is what lies undiscovered in our unconscious, those sunken ships or temples that are still actively seeping their beliefs, ideologies, religious myths, their judgmentalism, their messages to conform to a past that is gone, but still haunting us.

By listening mindfully to our thoughts and the events of our lives, our intuitive leanings, all comparatively against where we want to go and be and do, we can identify what is blocking us. As we look at what we have magnetized into our lives, we hear what the old haunting messages are. As we reflect on them, sort them, and analyze them for what benefit they offer, we can trace the emotional pain or the nonworking parts of our lives back to the source. 

As you explore the past by tracing back to your own early life and the unconscious programming there, you may find beliefs and ideologies that have informed your beliefs which are drawing certain circumstances into your life which may not serve your goals, dreams, hopes.

Our lives' vitality and purpose, joy, peace and power depend on it. Our ability to fish out of life what we want and need might be impeded by ancient temples that catch our nets.  Maybe we will learn not to fish there, but we can't know it until we disarm the power they hold lurking there. Wisdom says to listen deeply, mindfully, and with respect for your past and love and longing for your future, which you can create when you cut the strings with which the past is mysteriously still controlling you.

One thing is certain, once you've heard the old stories those submerged ancient structures have to tell you, and you forgive any ancient, buried, grievances you still hold, your bondage will disappear. And, as you release the old ghosts, sending them into the light through your forgiveness, your power will surge up under your own control, and your life will flow unimpeded into a brighter future. And, maybe then you, and I, won't have to work so hard at life, and reaching our dreams.

Sunken ships in the subconscious

What lies below the surface of our inner harbors, submerged in the watery dark unknown?  Are they war ships or mercy ships, submarines, or crashed airliners? Maybe they once carried refugees fleeing a heinous dictator, war or corrupt government. 

Recently a friend and I visited the mouth of the Columbia River as she empties into the Pacific Ocean in Astoria, Oregon.  On a map,  markers indicate more than 2,000 ships have sunk there over the last 300 + years.  Many are old English sailing ships, some are merchant ships carrying beaver pelts to China from the rustic interior of Oregon, and some are simple sailing vessels. The marker said more than 700 people died when those ships sank.  The currents are strong in that port. 

I shuttered at the image of 2,000 ships sitting on the bottom of that dark watery opening to the Pacific.  Something mysterious lurks in that dark river bed, something haunting and invisible to the surface.  The unknown has a raw power, drawing and pointing to our own untapped power.

Marianne Williamson wrote in her acclaimed book, Return to Love, that we humans are most afraid of our own power, from which we try to hide. It is almost as though we know how powerful we really are and don't know what to do with it, like a loaded gun that we can barely hold.

We all have sunken ships in our subconscious, and they all are still loaded and contain an enormous amount of power. After I wrote yesterday's Tiger Lilies post, I realized as much as watching our incoming and outgoing thoughts mindfully is important, it just barely scratches the surface of an important topic.  It is a kind of "first thought" on a long continuum.

Previously, I've discussed our deep subconscious, describing it as an invisible partner, a silent cook in the kitchen of our lives, or as I just have as a huge submerged strata of unconscious material. It is indeed like a sunken ship that's still radioactive. But, since it's unknown and seemingly untouchable, we remain its puppets, controlled by an unknown power, placed there when we were children by parents and authority figures whose instruction then is limiting our lives today.

This "sunken ship" contains their beliefs which are now our beliefs until we go deep sea diving to explore and disarm the ships magnetism. It holds active all our automatic beliefs about ourselves and the world and God and money, and just about everything.  It contains early life programming from birth until six years of age, and most likely through to 15 years.

In our teens, we begin to think for ourselves and often attempt to rebuke any authority's attempt to brainwash and dictate to us - that's if we're healthy enough emotionally to rebel in order to assert our own autonomy.

As we remain mindful of our thinking and feeling, we might be able to hear those old ships whispering their tales to us. They may reveal themselves in a particular message pattern which shows up in our lives. Are we magnetizing, unaware, those messages, people, events?  Do we want them in our lives?  Are they helping us create our dreams with power or are they limiting us, keeping us frozen in fear, afraid to move beyond the status quo only to remain in the dark?

Ascension

Over the weekend, I continued to see the image of all of us radiantly filled with the ineffable love of God, liberated from all that oppressed, controlled and held us down in the depths of worry, despair, living unfulfilled lives even in depression and illness. 

I remembered another image, reflecting a similar vision,  in the wood carving by Gustav Dore of Dante's Divine Comedy shown below. While it does not depict exactly what I saw in my mind Friday evening, it is actually what was ahead of us as I saw us ascending individually and then rising and coming together as one bright light, drawing closer to a brighter light in the distance.

Paradiso Canto 31, by Gustave Dore, The Empyrean.
In the Empyrean, the highest heaven, Dante is shown the dwelling place of God. It appears in the form of an enormous rose, the petals of which house the souls of the faithful. Around the center, angels fly like bees carrying the nectar of divine love.*

While I've always been a bit frightened by Dante's depiction of hell in his Inferno, the allegorical story is powerful in its metaphor of the ascension of the individual soul, out of the dark hellish depths of despair, through surrender, and the expanding stages of light, likened to a stairway, as its rises up into the radiant light and love of total divine ecstasy, bliss, on the way closer to the beautiful union with the divine.

I share this with you, not to incur any fear of judgment because our creator does not judge, but to highlight the simple idea that when we surrender all that holds us and controls us, we will heal from our weakened state as we accept and experience only love which opens us to the ultimate love experience.  It is our perception of our own self-condemnation that we project onto our creator. The darkness itself, which controls and weakens us by condemning us, draws us away from the light with fearful, manipulative, controlling threats of judgment, self-rejection diminishing our sense of personal value and power. BY inflicting fear on us, it creates a strange sense of weakness and dependency, creating a fear-based allegiance to itself. By reversing that, we begin to grow in real power. We gain courage and strength and the longer we remain in that consciousness, we will build and stand strong and tall, able to withstand the cruel attempts to control by the darker forces.  Each time we stand up for our own dignity and value, honoring our own voice, view and self, we defeat the power of the dark.

We are here in this human life to expand our power and our light, not reduce it through fear. There is a one-way street to the divine, and it is out of fear and judgment into light and power.

As we realize the divine would never judge, and any idea otherwise is a dark and terrible lie that enslaves us to the great oppressor, we naturally surrender that lie. Then awakening begins. We awaken when we realize we are loved more than we can imagine and that nothing can ever reduce our creator's love of us. That thought is the antidote to hell's false power to control and subjugate us. It breaks its evil spell. God's love is always there as the sun is always there, regardless of any clouds. It seems once we realize this and allow it to free our minds, liberating us from our preoccupations of things in our mortal existence, then we are freed to live as we were always meant to live - in total love, peace, and joy as our authentic and unique selves and creators of our most magnificent lives.

Once we are free, we cannot ever be caged or controlled again. That is when our empowerment begins, launching on the way to divinity. Then we begin our spiritual ascension, propelling us closer to the divine, and empowering us spiritually in ways we could never have ever imagined.  As we become free, we become empowered, which is the greatest joy we could ever know.

* http://www.openculture.com/2013/10/gustave-dores-dramatic-illustrations-of-dantes-divine-comedy.html

Surrender

Imagine letting go - of everything - of everything on your mind, your life agenda, at your work, at your home, everything.

What would happen if you did that? What would happen if we all did that? What would your life be like, what would our world be like?

Can you do it? Can you feel the freedom, the joy, the peace, the total exhilaration, the total surrender - to God, to life, to love.

I can see us, all of us, one by one, as we let go of what holds us down, surrendering to the powerful draw of God's love, lifting up toward the brightest light our hearts can ever imagine, continuing upwards,  breathless, filled, transformed, utterly beyond bliss - all together flowing into God's unimaginably beautiful love and light.

Ultimate surrender.

These lyrics to Exhale, a beautiful song by Plumb, touched me deeply, giving words to what I was feeling, as I also exhaled all that holds, traps, preoccupies my attention.  As I invited the Holy Spirit to breathe even more life into my heart, I inhaled more of God consciousness and love. 

Totally beautiful, beyond words, yet words opened my heart to the awareness, consciousness, surrendering my entire being to this vastly beautiful experience. 

We are all here together, glowing brighter as we draw closer to God's light, all in love, ascending together, all in love which is itself the most beautiful love song ever sung, a profound  rhapsody to God's love, which loves us completely as we surrender and draw closer to it.

Just let go let His love wrap around you
And hold you close
Get lost in the surrender
Breathe it in until your heart breaks
Then exhale
Exhale

Oh God We breathe in your grace
We breathe in your grace
And exhale
Oh God we do not exist for us
But to share Your grace and love
And exhale

You are love

When you read the words above, "You are love," I bet your mind focused on the word "love," rather than on the word, "you."  Right? I know I did when I wrote that powerful, yet short phrase. Like most of us, I pray for and work toward being Love.

Maybe we know, or don't know, what love is.  Maybe we've heard a lot of stuff on what love is and most of it might be true.  But, the point here is on who you are.  

We are not our jobs, our families, our ethnic origins, our bodies, our health or lack thereof, our financial circumstances - wealthy or not, our homes or net asset value.  While those qualities and characteristics may be swirling around in our energy fields, in our consciousness, in our every day activities, they are not us and they do not define us.  

I know so many people, myself included, who struggle with being whole and holy people in a materialistic, money-oriented, cold, crass, corrupt world. I heard recently that for a woman to become successful she must be a "bitch." And, I certainly have met my share of those ladies. 

"Well, there goes ever being successful," I thought.  

I won't sell out the light of God or the love of God for ANYTHING. I won't be rude or selfish or mean or sharp-tongued, cavalier, nonchalant to get an upper edge on someone.  I won't be controlling.  I won't be polluted by the toxicity of our rotting old way, which by necessity must decline and ultimately cease to be. Will we still be standing in the ashes of the old world when the golden age peeks through the fog and smoke?  Everyday, we consciously or unconsciously encounter situations and people who challenge us to either be loving, kind, caring, honest and open or be controlling, manipulative, deceptive, gossiping, mean and closed. We may be deceived into thinking they have what it takes to be successful and financially viable in a diminishing middle class.  

Sometimes I feel like Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind who throws her fist in the air and declares, "With God as my witness I'm going to live through this and when it's all over I'm never going to be hungry again."

That is who Scarlet is, a powerful woman determined to not be defeated by the death and war around her. Forget the rest of the story, although it has significant psychological / spiritual merit.

Despite my own frustrations with less magnanimous people, I will not step down my standards of being loving. It's a tall order which requires discipline, prayer and mindfulness.  It's the good fight, I guess. But, it's the only way that leads us out of the dark, out of the overgrown, polluted cultural, political, economic and social climate in which we're all steeped today.

How are we going to survive what's at our doorstep and is already infecting us?  

With God all things are possible. And, God is love, and so are we - at the core of our being. There is nothing in our universe other than God and I believe God is even in the dark spaces where we think we're alone, abandoned, forgotten, left to die in the burned out battlefield of our interiority. 

When we choose God, choose to love, swallow hard sometimes, smile when we'd rather cry, stand up politely to the "bitches" in our workplace or world, and know that we are doing that all for a noble cause, we are being love. We are being true to who we are, who God made us to be, and who we really are.  

The old teachings of the church taught us - especially women (and all other oppressed groups of people) - to be slaves, servants and doormats to authority.  In order to stand up with integrity, with a commitment to survive, to get through this day or this hour on the way to that "more excellent way," St. Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13, we have to do it with grace, kindness, gentleness, open hearts hearing the other persons' need to be loved and respected, to hear their exhaustion, their own drowning in the over-the-top spiritual toxicity levels like most of us, and yet at the same time, stand up for ourselves. 

When we honor the love, the whole value of Who is in us and Who made us and Who is calling us out into the light of our authentic being, out of the dark inner caverns, then we will begin to feel the power of that love.  

Please remember.You are love. Breathe that in, exhale the darkness, call in the light, breathe and know that you are a most beloved child of God.

Remember it through all that you are going through, through the pain, the disappointment and everything else.  You can discover heaven within your heart and mind and soul and draw it out into your life and the world.  It is there waiting for you. 

Return to who you are. You are love and you are loved and you are loving and all of that can be taken up many octaves, beyond anything you've ever known, but can and will know someday. 

You are love and nothing less.  You are love.