Thursday, May 19, 2016

ALL OR NOTHING

It is a truly frightening conclusion to realize that I cannot know the totality of my Source without including the totality of humanity.

Ouch.

While concepts of Oneness are energizing and uplifting to ponder the reality of it is confronting, chaotic, revelatory, and often exasperating. In a world of social media, instant information, political mania, and constant terrorism images of people grossly unlike me are parading through my consciousness with relentless frequency. It is at the surface level of our shared humanity that they are unlike me. This is not the level at which we are One. We are One at the level of Essence. We are One at the level of Spirit. We are One at the level of Principle, not of personality. We are forever One within our Source.

It is the remembrance of our Source and of our shared Oneness that is at the core of why we are here. If I choose to focus only on ways that we are different it will be a long and arduous road to the experience of Oneness. If I choose to allow and embrace the experience of what feels so different between us it will be a road of awakening. There are far more ways that we are alike than that we are different. We all have a deep and intrinsic need for connection, belonging, acceptance, and love. We may go about the pursuit of those in bizarre and even tragic ways. Levels of unconsciousness are always out-pictured in unskillfulness. If I really want to know Oneness I am called to look at my own unskillfulness as a way of discovering my unconsciousness. If I am sitting in judgment of you it is a reflection of MY limited perception. If I am only focusing on the ways I think you are wrong it is a reflection of my own mistaken identity. If I confuse behavior with what you are it is me that is fooled. I am the lens. You are what I am viewing in the mirror of my consciousness.

I lived in fear of letting others in almost my entire life. My early wounding left scars that shrouded my heart. I was hurt in relationship and it is in relationship that I will heal. It is in relationship that I will challenge the tendency to recoil and pullback. It is in relationship that I will come to know the depth of what I am. In choosing to love you I will come to know the One Source of Love. It really is an all or nothing proposition. To know an essential love I must love at the level of that Essence. I will love and compassion your unskillfulness as a way of knowing that I live in a field of ultimate love and compassion. My opinion of you will either open me or close me. And my opinion of you will often painfully reveal my hidden assessments of myself.

I am grateful to finally be courageous enough to acknowledge that I need you. I need all of you individually and collectively. I need you to awaken to a felt-truth that we are indeed One. Sometimes it is messy. Often it is painful. It is frightening indeed. And it is always necessary. To love you is to love God, which is really just loving Love. That is why I am here.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

A MOTHER'S LEGACY

A most chipper waitress yesterday asked me how I was going to celebrate Mother’s Day. An attempted smile was all I could muster.

This is the first Mother’s Day I will spend without a living mother. I feel a dull ache around not sending a card or ordering flowers. I feel an empty longing with no one to call. I am breathing open the wafting contractions that clench my chest. And I am profoundly grateful to be able to include all of this in my moment to moment experience. I appreciate beyond description the capacity to feel all of this without denying or becoming it. Since the death of my father in 1982 I have subtly dreaded the loss of my mother. In the early years following his passing I pondered whether or not I could survive her transition. And now it is here and I have and I am. And it leaves a void in my life that only my own enduring presence can heal.

My prayers regarding my mother over the past several years most often included the intention that before she left the planet she would see and realize that the way she felt about herself was at the root of the torment she so often felt. To say that she was plagued with low self esteem doesn’t begin to get at the level that it was true. It was an identity, and in many ways a badge of honor. Her own relentless self scrutiny was consuming. Her inner atmosphere permeated her self talk, and spilled over into the way she frequently interacted with her children and others. She had no idea that what amounted to a toxic self image would become a large part of her legacy. It was a blind spot of epic proportions.

My mother was a smart, attractive, witty, giving woman who took care of others both personally and professionally her entire life. And yet she had been imprinted with a belief that she was somehow faulty and undeserving, ugly and undesirable. It didn’t matter that she had two marriages to men who completely adored her. That was lost in the perceptual prescription she never quite transcended. Life did not turn out the way she wanted and it hardened her and confirmed her suspected unworthiness. She so wanted her children to have something better. Yet what she demonstrated spoke more loudly than what she tried to tangibly provide.

I took on the scrutiny and the unworthiness early in life. I do not fault my mother. I was in close relationship to her mother and so I know from whence the programming came. She fixated on not wanting to be like my grandmother. And yet in many ways she became just that. How could she not? That was the role model of mother she had to learn from. There were certainly ways in which she did better that example. I do not lose sight of her gifts. While ours was an imperfect relationship she was the perfect mother for me. I will love her until my last exhalation. And I am committed to transcending the inherited esteem by dedicating my days to allowing life to love me and then to extend that love as my way of being and as my contribution to the world.

I in no way intend to diminish my mother with my candid sharing. And I ask that you not disparage my mother either. I share this as a way of honoring her and as a request that you my readers look deeply within your own inner atmosphere for any ways you may diminish or dishonor your self. Our inner atmosphere is in reality an energetic mother womb. It is where we dwell and from where we express. We cannot earn worthiness by helping or giving to others. We cannot earn worthiness at all. We are worthy by Source. Though our behaviors, words, and actions so often miss the mark our inherent worthiness goes unscathed. Regardless of what we may have taken on early in life what we are is far more than we realize. Our inner atmosphere is our experience of God. God loves us via our own withinness. Low self esteem is forgetfulness of God. We are here to learn that and to become all we were born to be.

I know my mother loved me. And I know that at the level she could take it in she knew I loved her. I trust that as she has crossed the threshold of this great Mystery she moved into a place where a clearer vision and a broader perspective is soothing her heart and drying her tears. She is a part of me and a part of everything I do. She is a part of this writing. I can feel her Higher Self speaking to me and to you “Love your self and Love your life. Let this be the legacy you leave.”

Thanks, Mom. I am doing just that.