For the past several weeks, I have been rehearsing for a concert I will be performing with my dear friend Suzanne in mid-May. We have put together a number of really great arrangements, and are performing a variety of musical styles and genres. While I have mostly been enjoying this artistic and challenging endeavor, it also has been presenting me with a few lessons that have been impossible to miss and not to easy to digest. I actually have a deep and abiding appreciation for the fact that my life is always unfolding in just that way; everything I do brings with it a myriad of lessons to be learned. I realize that it is not unique to me. It is just that I am almost always paying attention, choosing to hone in rather than to zone out.
There was an extended period of time in my life when I must humbly say that I was a very fine singer. I was blessed with a natural ability that presented its self early in my life, and then was enhanced by a number of really gifted voice teachers. I was told often during the time I was living and performing in New York City that I would one day be performing on Broadway. That, alas, never happened. Perhaps I really did have the talent. What I did not possess was the confidence. Rehearsing for this concert has put me in touch with the part of my wounded self that actually diminished my own talent based on what I was saying to myself, about my self. I began early on in these practice sessions to feel some once familiar feelings in the pit of my stomach. As I chose to listen in to those feelings, I discovered that I had begun again to criticize myself for the way I was singing, comparing my abilities with those of Suzanne, and with the way I had once been able to perform at the height of my career. Beyond just recognizing the scrutiny I was bringing to this particular project, I also courted this awareness as it revealed to me that most of what I have done in my life experience has been done in the starkness of this same analysis. I have never really been on my side. For the depth of my mystical devotion and practice, I fall short when it comes to truly affirming my self and my abilities in terms of human expression. I believed early on that no matter what I did, it would never be good enough to win the approval of my parents, and specifically my mother. She wanted so much to see her children succeed, yet the only tools she had at her disposal were the criticism and judgment used so liberally by her mother. I adopted this quality of attention, and turned the volume up. I do not fault my mother. I truly and deeply know that these are my lessons to learn. I was gifted with the perfect messengers. I am so very grateful to be able to see this today, and to have the inner musculature to make a different choice.
And a choice it is. The quality of our life experiences will be directly equal to our quality of attention. During this month of celebrating mothers, I would offer to you that in terms of energetics, the father is intention and the mother is attention. Both must be in balance and harmony in order to co-create lives that are reflective of whom we are in Truth. While I had many intentions about what I wanted to manifest and to express in my life, I didn’t have the quality of attention to support it. I literally miscarried my dreams because of the way I was holding them. The constant scrutiny was a toxic environment, one that began to chip away even further at my habitual low esteem. It also began to affect my abilities to perform and to want to pursue what I was once so passionate about.
We are each, male and female, invited to create a nurturing and affirmative mothering inner atmosphere in which to live and from which to express. We must align with the Cosmic Mother in her infinite and unwavering compassionate embrace. We rarely if ever know unconditional love in this world. And yet we are not of this world. Our Source is Unconditional Love. It is Mother Attention and Father Intention, and It wants only to co-create and to joyfully express as and through us. It truly is a Love song waiting to be sung. Listen deeply to what you are saying to your self about your self. Is it Truth? Is it supportive? Is it affirming? Is it loving? Is it worthy of an emanation of the One? If you are not willing to bring this quality of attention to yourself, no one else can or will. It is truly an inside job. Remember: the quality of your attention will be the quality of your life. Sing a new song, and just feel what happens.
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