Bathed in Love

Day One of my retreat is complete. I have been taking several days in personal reflection for 25 years, and while I will be the first to say there is no "normal," I have certainly experienced patterns.

Generally, I read something introspective in the days before or even on Day One, as I did part of today. Most of the time lessons are thrown on my path in the days before just to stir things up a bit. Almost always I do a lot of journaling, which, more often than not, leads to some emoting--I cry because I recognize a flaw in me that I don't like. (News bulletin: I am human.)

Sometime on the third or fourth day, after I have looked at my ugliness, I have usually had an almost other-worldly experience of feeling God's love and light move through me. The experiences have always been extraordinary.

Three or four hours into my reflections today, a recurring image presented itself. A large opulent round room with 12 to 14-foot high ceilings and gold silk moire wallpaper has popped into my meditations off and on for at least a dozen years. The particularly interesting feature is that all the way around the room are almost equally tall doors...without door knobs. There I stand in the middle of this beautiful room with no apparent way out.

Over the years what happens next has varied, but today as I stood in the middle, slowly pondering my plight, suddenly one door swung open inward, then another and another. As the did, what each revealed was what I can only describe as looking like golden walls of water as it opened. While I instinctively braced myself for a force that I expected could knock me over, as the forces moved toward me in all directions, they were as warm and gentle as the first morning's light as they embraced me. I was literally being bathed in the light of God's love. This was what I "normally" would have expected in the final days of my retreat, not the first.

Hmm. I felt so loved, safe and warm, like there was absolutely nothing in my life that wasn't perfect. Well, I thought, where do I go from here?

I have to fall back on a garden metaphor to describe my retreat experiences. When I pick up rocks in the garden, more often than not, creepy, crawly things await me underneath. Not exactly scary but also not pleasant either. Depending on what I find, sometimes I just put it right down and try to ignore it. So it is with lessons I need to learn. Sometimes there's scary stuff that reveals itself when I begin turning over the rocks of my life.

Over the years I've dispensed with a lot of those metaphorical rocks. Others are life lessons that I have explored over and again, just in different manifestations.

I believe my experience of being bathed in God's love so early in my retreat this time was to give me courage to turn over those really scary rocks and to know that it would be okay. No matter what I find, I will always be safe with God beside me.

The journey continues...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Actually Being Still and Knowing

This morning I did what I said yesterday I was going to do: "be still!" and "know!"  Well, actually, I spent a good bit of time attempting to "be still!" but actually very little time doing so.  I've often quoted Yoda, "There is no try.  There is do or no do."  I guess the truth  is that "being still!" was a "no do" for much of the two hours during which I dedicated myself to that activity.

As a bit of background, I went with a friend to the movies last night.  The movie my friend picked was "About Time," a time travel film, which ended with the message to fully live each day as if it were your very last.  As often as I've written variations on "being present," you might imagine that the movie's message resonated with me, and it did.  Except...

For whatever reason, instead of following the film's message, I spun off into a totally different place.  Instead of using the precious moments I had with my friend in the present, I went into quite a pity party about how I'd squandered my life (the past.)  It's not as if I took my inheritance and went off in prodigal fashion for a life of partying and waste.  Most of the time, the decisions I've made have been the best in the moment.  I probably haven't been as prayerful about all decisions as I might have, but I am still "in lesson" on that.

As I bounced like a Ping-Pong ball from the past to the future and back, I painfully looked at my life from judgment of where I thought I should be.  Everything that most of us have been told about life planning is that I should be at the pinnacle of my career with assets and relationships accumulated to carry me through the rest of my life. I really don't have much to show for what our society would describe as a life well lived.

I tell that story because history drove my "be still!" time this morning.  As I struggled to be still, my pity party continued.  I replayed decision points in my life which had led to this point in time. Then, I beat myself up about it.  This wasn't "be still! and know! that I am God." And that is what I heard when I was finally still.

"Be love! Experience joy! If God accepts my life with love, why can I not find that a place in my heart for me to love my life?"  Almost as an after-thought came a parting message: to remember what I've written about "forgiveness." 

I booted up my computer and looked at what I'd written about forgiveness (10/3/13.)  The gist of it was that how I "be Love" is through forgiveness, including forgiving myself. My job isn't judgment of my life: it is loving kindness and compassion.  That is what I know when I "be still! and know! that I am God."

Letting God be God

My posts usually come at the end of often long days.  Today I sat to write in the afternoon, but something unusual happened.  There were no words.  I've been writing since I was able to hold a pencil, and words have almost always been there.  And, today, there were no words.  I made several false starts, but I knew those words were from my head and not my heart. I washed the glass top tables, but when I came back to my computer, there were still no words.  I did some ironing, and still no words.  I watched episodes of two TV shows I missed this week...and no words.  I watched a movie, and no words.

I had made a commitment to this spiritual discipline to write every day, and words would not come.  But writing from my head and not my heart for a blog called "You Know In Your Heart" seemed like a serious breach in integrity. By that point, darkness was approaching.  I'll do my grocery shopping, I thought; then I'll have that chore out of the way for the week. I can write later.  You can probably guess that when I returned the words were still not there. 

What should I do?  I felt duty bound to my commitment to sit at my computer and contribute to this blog.  Early this week I wrote about the angel who had showed up to help me with learning some features for this blog.  One of them was the "Labels" feature, which allows me to make the blog more searchable.  Well, I thought, if words won't come, I'll devote that amount of time to attaching labels to old posts.  I set about reading through the last month's posts and labeling them.  Then I "got it."

Reading my most recent 25 posts was homework for today's writing.  If you have been reading regularly, you know there have been some demons that keep recurring on my journey.  Being awake and present, consciousness, gratitude, forgiveness, the nature of God and Love, integrity.  There was something missing though, and whatever was missing felt like "glue" for the others.  "Surrender" was the word that kept coming to me.  I've certainly wrestled with spiritual surrender before, but I had a hard time connecting the dots today.

By the time my labeling task reached today's post, I was ready to write. Floating up as gently as a feather floats down were the words, "Let God be God."  A smile came to my face, and a knowing chuckle caught in my throat.  In my day job, I'd describe the problem as role ambiguity--not being clear about what my role is and what God's role is.  My job is to be awake, present, and listening so that I may be led, allowing the world to experience God's love through me.  I am to ask for help, probably even  when I don't think I need it, be grateful, offer forgiveness, and walk my talk.  Other duties as assigned, of course, such as writing this blog and books that may bubble up from within me.  That's it.

Everything else is God's job.  Most importantly, God gets to be God.  That is explicitly omitted from my job description.  Enter "surrender."  I believe that it is important for us to do the work we are given, to learn and grow spiritually, and to develop our "God given" talents.  Holding to those intentions may be the only things in our lives that are real.  God's job is to determine how these play out and on what time schedule they occur. 

That's where surrender comes in.  For me and many others, "surrender" seems counter rational in our modern driven society.  We are taught to take charge of our lives: active on the world before it acts on us.  That is playing God.  Doing so requires resisting the forces of the Universe.  It is exhausting and counter-productive. Sigh!  Surrendering allows us to float through life on the River of Peace, like I did when I was in Greece and the waters parted at every turn to get me to the publishing house. ("Being Led", 11/4/13) Why on earth would I want to resist that?  I cannot for the life of me figure out one good reason.

I surrender. 

I will let God be God.

Everything is Planned to Teach Me Love

Some days as I go through my affirmations, one will particularly resonate with me, and then it hangs in the back of my mind all day. Today when I got to "Everything is planned to teach me love," the statement wouldn't let go of me and whispered to me all day.

Even before I got to the office, I was pondering, "Why does something need to teach me love?"  The immediate answer seemed to be that I don't know love.  When I focus on breathing into my heart, I am sure the "vibration" that I feel is God's love.  By extension, since I believe that we are all connected through God's love, I am sure that it should be the same or similar.

Yet, I don't know that I've experienced that feeling with any human being when I know I should feel it with all human beings.  Hmmm...  Maybe I don't know love, or don't know how to feel love.  Or, just maybe, I've guarded myself so that I shut others out.  Ouch!  That again.

I believe that part of our basic equipment as humans is to be able to give and receive love.  Is it possible that my equipment is so under-used and rusted that it has forgotten what is basically human?

One of my favorite little books is one that has been around for awhile, called The Knight in Rusty Armor (Robert Fisher.) The book relates a parable about a knight who has lived in his armor so long that he can no longer take it off at the end of the day when he is done doing battle.  Only when he weeps at not being able to hug his family do his tears cause pieces of his armor to drop off. 

I sense his experience may be similar to what occurs to well guarded hearts, like mine.  I haven't cried...yet. I have been overwhelmed with a deep sense of loss about all the people I have "loved" intellectually in my life but for whom I have thought it was just too risky to really open my heart. Well, I didn't really "think" the risk part in a conscious sort of way.  I am pretty certain, though, that it was happening in a less-than-conscious way. Now I realize that whatever damage I thought might be done to my heart could only be exceed by the sadness at not having really let "my people" in. 

I feel like a toddler at this, taking my first wobbly steps.  I am certain that I need something to hang onto as I steady myself, and my heart tells me that something will be God's love--it will be my compass teaching me love.

BEing the Nature of God

Back in the day when I owned an automobile, I enjoyed taking road trips.  As I drove alone down the highway, I often slipped into repeating a mantra or affirmation of something I wanted to bring into my life.  I would repeat it hundreds of times during my trip.  What was quite remarkable was how often a deeper level of understanding would just gently float into my awareness during the repetitions--Aha! moments. 

I really don't remember what the mantra that generated it was, but I do recall having a thought toward the end of a trip about 15 years ago that continues to both inspire and terrify me.  The thought was that the only way humans have to experience God is through each other.  If we want others to know God's Love, we need to demonstrate it to them: they will know it through our behaviors.  If we want others to know God's Forgiveness, we need to demonstrate it to them: they will know it through our behaviors.  God Nature is reflected through each of us to all human kind.

What a concept!  That I could allow everyone with whom I come in touch to experience God by how I relate to them is inspiring me.  I hope that it is equally clear why that is so terrifying.  As much as I try, I know the frequency with which my behaviors reflect what I want others to know of God isn't near what I would like it to be. I think that I am usually a good person, but I do get irritable and impatient from time to time.  Perhaps even more embarrassing is how much of my life proceeds on autopilot.  I'd hate to think that God puts us on autopilot.  Even more uncomfortable for me, the author of a book about "BEing" is how often I "do" things with people instead of "BE" with them. 

Since retyping The Game Called Life a couple weeks ago, this whole thing about BEing the Nature of God has been with me.  What "floated in" today is not how I reflect God (though for me that is still a concern,) but how I receive God from others.  In my autopiloting through life what wonders that God wanted to share with me have I blown off because I wasn't paying attention.  In my "doingness" how often have I missed the opportunity to "just BE" with God through another human being who is reflecting the nature of God.

Today I have new understanding of the Sanskrit greeting--"Namaste," still used in India and Nepal. "I bow to the God within you."  When I bow to the God within you, and you bow to the God within me, it is said, "We are One."  What if I just took responsibility both to be a reflection of the Nature of God and to be present to the reflection of the Nature of God in those around me?  What a ripple I could create.

Forgiveness

Meditation truly is a gift I give myself.  This morning I took my 20 minutes and extended it by 30.  I was wrestling with understanding what is Truth.  As I went deeper and deeper, the contradictions became more intense and then they melted away.

I have written previously about the several spiritual statements or affirmations that I recently adopted.  This morning as I meditated I found myself lingering on one: "Forgiveness is how I return to God/Love."  I thought I'd forgiven those in my life for what they'd done to me. Then the questions came. Have I really forgiven if I still carry resentment? Have I really forgiven if I still guard myself or am wary?  Of course not.

Then I attempted to forgive; I wanted to get to the place where I could feel nothing but unconditional love. As I went deeper, I found that in each of the two relationships I lingered with I had accountability. Hmmpf.  :-) Did I not know this part? 

For several years I provided spiritual coaching in three-day, one-on-one intentional living intensives.  Each was unique to the person with whom I was working, and my guides would give me unique coaching questions and exercises for that person.  Most were used only once.  However, for most a similar exercise on forgiveness was given to me.  It always involved three levels of forgiveness: acts which the client needed to forgive others for, acts for which the client needed to ask for forgiveness, and acts for which the client needed to forgive him- or herself.  Finally, we'd explore the gifts that had resulted from hurtful circumstances.

As I meditated on forgiveness this morning, these three levels kept intertwining. Back and forth, I went from offering forgiveness to asking for forgiveness to forgiving myself and back again. Then I drifted deeper.  I'd written two books on fear and courage: were fear and courage not really about forgiveness?  If there were always gifts, why would I not have courage?  Why would I be afraid?

Almost when I felt like I'd gotten to the bottom of understanding the relationship between fear and courage and forgiveness, I found myself going broader.  I've always thought that my purpose was to help people find the place of pure Love that dwells inside themselves and connect to the place of pure Love that dwells in each of their fellow human beings.  When I had been meditating on my new affirmations a few weeks ago, what had come was that my purpose was the forgiveness of all human kind.  I thought I'd just go with it since that is what came, but thought my real purpose was connect us to and through Love. 

Only this morning in this meditation did I realize that they were the same.  Only this morning did I realize that the reason the forgiveness exercise was always given to me for clients while other exercises were unique was that my purpose was forgiveness.  These clients wouldn't have been brought to me if they didn't need to learn forgiveness. The Aha! moment for me was that forgiveness is my gateway to Love; it is the gateway through which I lead others to find pure Love. Without forgiveness, we will never find that place in ourselves where we are Love, and we certainly will never find that place in others where they are pure Love.

This knowing didn't come printed on bulletin boards: it came from listening to what I know in my heart. This wisdom came because I showed up to listen and floated through lots of clutter to the crystal clarity of what I know.