WHAT MATTERS MOST

From this sixty year old perspective I sometimes look wistfully back on what feel like a whole lot of lost opportunities. It feels as if there were so many wasted years in which I was lost in my own limiting story. I lived years with a closed, protected heart. I always felt like I was here on this planet to serve and to make a difference. But I was too fearful, too cut off, to hidden to really be effective. There was an internal battle being waged between what was seeking expression within me and how willing or capable I was to be seen and heard and really felt.

And so I hid. I medicated in countless ways, pretended, defended, and played small while acting big. I deadened in so many ways and then wondered why I couldn’t feel the Love I believed my Source to be. I tried to look as good as possible. I tried to sound good, make good, and pretend I was good, all the while covering over what did not in any way feel good to me.

Years ticked by and opportunities to love were lost. I lived stretched by a tension, by a deep and continuing call to release the shroud of protection and to then step up and out in what was essential and authentic inside of me. As much as I wanted to do just that the fear was often paralyzing.

And then one day a crack in the armor began what was to be my great unveiling. I began to deeply examine how I had been living. I began to be gifted with the courage needed to go into the interior places that most needed my caring attention. I began to reclaim all the disowned parts of myself. I took back my projections and got honest about the people and circumstances I blamed for my self-induced torment.

I asked bigger questions and my life got bigger. I re-evaluated my priorities and prayerfully sought the strength to live by what I discovered matters most. I fearfully yet consistently began to allow myself to be seen, heard, and felt. I risked exposure. I became less and less defended. I became willing to love first, to love beyond return or condition. I found hidden beneath all of the deadening a life that was seeking to serve as love. Beneath the pretense was the presence I had always longed to become and to serve.

I do not love perfectly, no, far from it. Yet I know it is what matters most. I know it is my purpose. Now when the fear arises I rarely reach for one of the old compensating reactions. I bring an acceptance to the fear that softens it without deadening it. My goal isn’t to never fear. My goal is to love beyond the fear. To not let fear prevent me from serving, giving, being the love I know I am meant to be. The ability to be with my own fear allows me to stay with and to compassion yours.

I guess this awareness and this increased capacity to love and to serve are the currency that turns those lost years into the price I paid to reopen. What feels lost is now a literal part of my spiritual gain. It took what it took. I look back with a tear and a smile. I look back with a determination to never hide in those ways again.

And I look forward with a stunning clarity about what matters most to me. I am here to love. I am here to open and yes, to close, and to reopen again and again in love. I am here to be imperfectly perfect in a state of essential, authentic love. To waste no more time in hiding or pretending or defending. Whatever time I may have left will be spent in service of love.

And that is what matters most.

MY UNDOING

In an age of internet and social media the ability to join energies and co-create experience is profound. And it could well be my undoing.

With an increasing barrage of information and energy it is a full time job to stay awake and present. Chaotic forces are blurring the mind and shuttering the heart. This is happening at the macro level and has a direct effect within every living micro-being.

As dualistic humans we have an equal opportunity to generate either darkness or light. We are receivers and transmitters both. Everything in manifest creation is energy, and so energy is always moving and being transformed. This can happen as darkness being transformed to Light, and it also happens as Light being drawn to darkness. The current predominant force in collective human consciousness is fear and darkness. It is grief. It is disconnection. This is our suffering. And at the highest level it is my opportunity for choice.

I feel the waves of fear, darkness, grief, and disconnection moving within me. I see manifestations of them everywhere. I hear their voices all around me. I see them posting themselves, their veracity going viral. As I allow the free movement of these energies within me I move into conscious relationship with them. They are not what I am. They are not what you are. And there is an enormous identification with them for the masses. Some are fighting for them, and some are fighting against them. There is a ferocious level of fight.

It is seductive to join in the fight. And it is the fight impulse that is increasing the energy fed into the objects of attention. I become what I fight against. I join my energies into the fear and darkness. The greater potential is that I also become what I take a stand for. Same dynamic. Radically different outcome.

And so I feel these energies and I lean into the feel. I relate to the energy, and not to what I think is sourcing it. I attend to the places it tends to lock in me. I reclaim my transferences and projections. I become a conduit for these energies to be transmuted.

I am willing for this chaotic time in history to undo me. Yes, I am willing to be undone.

I am willing to see and feel the effects of my own programming. I am willing to take responsibility for the energy I am putting into the field. I am willing to have the True Source shine through me and to extend Its Light into all of this fear, darkness, grief, and disconnect. I am willing to allow my Being to be a beacon.

So every wave I feel, every post I read, every fight I see is a miraculous possibility for me to contribute peace. It is an opportunity for me to shine the Light and to spread the love. It is a chance for me to use my place within the One to generate and to give Sourced energy.

In so doing my sense of separation is diminished and my conscious doing is in actuality my ego-undoing. My autonomy becomes an opening to intimacy. My every moment becomes my contribution. I choose how I show up and what I transmit.

So unknot me, life. Undo me now. I am stand for Light, compassion, love, and peace. I am stand for what I ultimately am.