Wednesday, July 24, 2013

A TEAR-FILLED PRAYER

Crying can be a most intimate form of prayer.

I gave myself the gift of a four day prayer retreat last week, and it was much needed and profoundly appreciated. I spent the majority of those days in rapt attention to my interior beingness, and my experience of my Source and was again deepened and expanded. I am grateful to be at a place in my spiritual emergence where I am mostly cooperative with my authentic urges. When I feel the call to take added time within, I arrange to do that as quickly as I can. The benefits of this cooperation are immeasurable. Something(s) was calling to be attended to, and giving myself the time and space to do that resulted in clarity, spaciousness, insight, and a couple of good old fashioned snotty cries.

I feel blessed to have a friendly relationship with tears. That wasn’t always the case. The big boys don’t cry syndrome had me in its vice for awhile, and it was a contributing factor to an extended period of emotional paralysis that thankfully has passed. My ability to freely feel has been augmented by a lessening of the dualistic logic of many New Thought teachings. The “if I’m doing it right I will always feel peaceful, joyful, and filled with love and light” perception. That tripped me up for longer than I care to admit. Now I embrace the fact that an actualized spirituality is in alignment with a healthy psychology. It isn’t about always feeling good. It is about being really good at allowing myself to feel. I don’t identify with my feelings anymore than I do my thoughts. But I am an open space for both to pass through without resistance.

And so knowing that I had given myself the gift to tuck away within my Beloved for a few days brought forth both tears of relief and joy, and some of grief and remorse. I sometimes feel when I have extended meditation and prayer time that I am leaning into the enormous breasts of a Divine mother, and that she is tenderly holding me throughout whatever I will allow myself to experience. She is wondrously intuitive, and she either holds me gently or tightly, depending on which is most appropriate to the moment. She never shuts me down, no matter what the velocity of the tears or even sobbing may be. She understands that tears are an enormously intimate and healing form of prayer. She knows that tears are Holy water that flow from a heart that is open enough to allow the flow. She hears the silent scream that has been suppressed, and is finally liquefying and taking stream. She knows that tears are real and vital and authentic. They are so often stifled behind stories of defense and deadening logic. When I tap into the beginnings of an erupting cry and I choose to allow those tears to flow and fall, I know I have honored something that needed expression. Whether it be grievous or joyful, I have gotten real with myself and with my Source. I have chosen not to withhold or withdraw. My prayer has filled my heart and fallen from my eyes. And I know I have been heard, felt, and supremely comforted.

Crying can be a most intimate and profound form of prayer. It can’t and needn’t be forced. But it also won’t be suppressed indefinitely. In the world in which we live there is much to grieve both individually and collectively. There is also an astounding array of beauty and transcendence. The fullness of the human condition is only experienced in a heart that is open to feel the entire spectrum. Truth is often accompanied by tissues. I am grateful to be able to cry my losses and also the lessons they reveal. Gratitude will often be accompanied by as many tears as is grief. They are both movements within my heart, and they both translate to activity within and from my eyes. And so I let them fall. I pray the tears and they are a baptism from my Soul. A beautiful flowing baptism occurring within my Source Beloved. And for that recognition, I may surely weep.

www.taylorestevens.com

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

AUTONOMOUS CONNECTION

It seems like other people have wanted to define and/or change me my entire life.

I allowed that fact to torture me for many years. The suffering began to ease when I could clearly see that, for starters, the dynamic has little to do with those around me and everything to do with an engaged factor in the agenda of my own Soul. It is also an indication that I am an open enough individual for people to feel comfortable sharing what they want to share without fear of reaction or repercussion. That is a mixed blessing for sure.

These awareness’s have brought me to peace with the repetitive dynamic and yet they have also invited me into a deeper level of self-definition and referral. When I say self-definition let me be clear that I am not speaking of the personality self. I live within a consistent prayer that seeks to align within a Source-definition and a Soulful self-referral. It is clearly the personality self that those around me have sought to define, fix, and rearrange. It is my personality self that for so many years took this personally and unconsciously chose the path of the chameleon. I thought I had to be what you wanted me to be and do what you wanted me to do in order to have the much needed love and acceptance I craved. I was an actor on stage and in life. I agreed with you in order for you to stay, though it often was to the detriment of my own authenticity. I guess at a deep level I was so confused about who I was I hoped you would have the answer. Little did I know then that I was being defined by people just as clueless as to their identity as was I. If that were not the case, they certainly wouldn’t have wasted their projections on trying to reconfigure me.

In this age of mass information and social media autonomy is more crucial than ever. We have been given by our Creator the gift of free will and choice. We get to choose who we are going to be in any given moment, and we get to choose how we are going to show up. This looks simple and obvious as words on a page, but free will and choice are always related to where we currently are in consciousness. Our sense of self is meant to always enlarge and expand. But it is meant to expand from the inside out. We were not born to constantly react to external stimuli. Awakened consciousness spirals out from center to circumference. To consciously co-create that center must be in synch within our Source. We are called to be governed by our Souls, not by our programming. Not by current cultural trends. Not by those around us, no matter how well intentioned they may be. The path of the Soul is the path of autonomy, and THEN intimacy. It is the path of Soulful self-referral. It is the path of conscious choice and deliberate contribution. You will know you are aligned with your Soul-definition by the peace in your gut and the lack of reactivity in your interactions. I can smile now when others try to define and change me, though quite honestly it rarely happens anymore. My own inner strength radiates out, and it is strength of certainty and purpose. It is not as open to interpretation as my former sense of self was.

What you think of me is none of my business. And who I am choosing to be is quite frankly none of yours. My choice of how I behold and interact with you is definitely central to how I choose to show up here. I am more committed than ever to caring and compassioning the often painful ways that people navigate this world. I am committed to staying present to the story and yet ever vigilant to what lies beneath it. I will not identify you by a momentary place in an always evolving consciousness. I will not allow others to identify me with what is currently out picturing either. My autonomous presence is my authentic power. I am not yet all that I know I am called to be, but I celebrate that I am miles ahead of where I was. I live within both a deep internal knowingness and a fluid state of uncertainty regarding who and what I am. I am peaceful in the awareness that I am evolving to who I am by exploring and releasing what I am not. And that is just the way consciousness works to free us from the bondage of personality-self identification. Autonomy is the home of my connections. And that is the choice that I am making today.

www.taylorestevens.com