I have recorded an audio track of this post. If you’d like – Listen here.
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I am still the radiant light that I Am. I will burn even more brightly. More fiercely. More powerfully than ever before.
I will tend this inner light. Sing to it. Be mindful of it. Stoke it. With beauty. With love. With patience. With silence. With paint and pen and torn strips of paper. With lovingly handmade food created in my tiny kitchen. With long walks by the creek. The ocean. The forest. Immersed in the Earth. The Sky. The moment.
I will take strength from the cycles of Life ever unfolding all around me. The sun rises each morning – even if hidden in dense fog.
Light falls away into the sweet and mysterious promise of night’s restorative powers. To bring closure. To work things through in the deepest recesses of our minds. So that we might wake to the potential of something new, of something crisp and unknown when the sun once again climbs the horizon.
I will find strength and wonder in the variety of creatures I share this planet with.
The Natural and simple order of things.
A family of deer crossed the rushing creek in front of me this morning. The doe led the way. Fawn in the middle. A tall and majestic buck quietly brought up the rear. Powerfully holding space. He had their back. I heard these words as I observed – “Strength crosses a river.” My shoulders dropped. My lungs filled. I was reminded of the natural balance of feminine and masculine energies. The beautiful, supportive qualities of the awakened masculine energy available within each of us.
Witnessing this encouraged me.
It opened my heart – And light rushed in.
The trees – as they shed their glory all around me in Autumn – help me to understand that letting go is a process. A dance.
It begins slowly. Leaves shift and change color long before they fall. Every tree has its own way and manner of release. Storms of wind and rain may arise that cause great liberation in an instant. Yet many leaves tenaciously remain – no matter how strong the wind – until they too in right timing come to their own completion. Fall free.
Every so often I am blessed to witness without rhyme or reason and to my absolute astonishment – no apparent wind or breeze – multitudes of leaves simultaneously letting go. All at once. As if some unseen conductor has waved her magic baton and a chorus of release is unleashed.
Leaves shower down all around me. Covering my lap. My head. The surface of the creek. These are moments when delight and wonder spontaneously appear and dance in my heart. Fizz like champagne bubbles in my sinew and along my nerve endings.
And when the trees have ultimately shed their raiment. When they slumber deep within themselves I take heart. No matter what appearance says – No matter how bleak and frozen the landscape. They are not dead. Simply resting. Quietly.
Waiting for that precise inner moment – when some internal and unseen spark of ignition occurs and once again they begin the slow process of awakening. Sap begins to rise. The cycle of life – death – rebirth continues.
I find Wisdom and Truth in this. Nothing is as it appears at first glance. Cycles and flow are always present. Storms wake us up. Make us more mindful. More alert. Nothing stays the same.
My fervent prayer, the mantra rolling through my being is this –
“Don’t go back to sleep.”
“Don’t go back to sleep, dear one.”
“Please – Don’t. Go. Back. To. Sleep.”
So I listen. I keep my eyes. My heart. My mind – open.
I am galvanized. Alert. Present.
I am the radiant light that I Am. I will burn even more brightly. More fiercely. More powerfully than ever before.
I will love more. Not less. I will send more messages of love. Of kindness. Of gratitude. Of beauty out into the world.
I endeavor to be a messenger of Grace. Of Peace. Of Love. Always Love. To Bless and to be a Blessing.
There are innumerable difficult even horrific events I have experienced, witnessed, lived through, traversed in my life. I am not a stranger to difficulty. And yet, I have never turned away from Love. So many opportunities to be bitter. To hate. To not forgive. It has not been easy. And still, through it all I have softened and stood my ground. I have never turned away from Love. I certainly will not begin now.
I don’t stand against anybody. I stand FOR humanity. I stand for equality. Inclusion. I stand for Freedom. For Kindness. For the power of the Heart, the Soul to persevere and to affect change. I stand for each individual’s birthright to live the Essence their own heart is calling them forward to express. I cannot pretend to know what that should look like or how it may unfold.
All of us are warriors. There are all kinds of us. Some speak loudly so we can hear a different perspective. Some are fighting in a way that gives us an opportunity to connect more fully for what WE stand for. For who WE are. For how WE choose to live.
I am a warrior of the Heart. I will endeavor to not willingly add to divisiveness.
Do not let my love and kindness be mistaken for weakness. If you cross a line and cause harm through word or action I WILL take a stand. I WILL speak up. I will do this with as much love, courage and kindness as I can gather in the moment.
I may not agree with you. I may not understand you. I may not even like you all that much. However I will endeavor to love you. I will open my heart and mind with all the compassion I can muster because that is who I am. That is what I choose. That is the stance I have spent a lifetime cultivating. I can do nothing else.
At the end of the day – I can only love. Everything else leaves me hollow, nauseated, unhinged.
I can and will feel the full and wild constellation of feeling and emotion that rises and falls within me in any given moment. I cry. I shake. I yell.
I welcome whatever is here because it is part and parcel of my humanity. I will not repress what wants to express. I will let it flow. Let it flow. Let it go. This keeps me healthy. Clear. Present.
I will do this with as much dignity, honesty and respect for myself and others as I am able to access in the moment. I will endeavor to not make anyone else responsible for what I am experiencing. I will support others in the same.
We all have our opinions. Our view. I have learned through my work. My study. My experience that that view is predicated on cultural, familial, ancestral patterns – the vast majority of which we did not even consciously choose. Are not even able to get perspective on.
Our ideas about the world. About Safety. About Enough-ness. About Sufficiency. About familiar and strange. Most are formed long before age five. Many are handed down through the DNA. They did not even originate with us.
How can I judge you for this? How can I make you wrong?
In my better moments I remember this more and more. We are all a product of our patterns of Perception. These patterns simply continue to play out, to run until they are interrupted.
I am still the radiant light that I Am. I will burn even more brightly. More fiercely. More powerfully than ever before.
When I get lost in the swirl of the outer and listen too closely to the crazy inner nonsense of the mind – I will always come back to this. To Love. To my sweet center. To the unwavering Silence and deeper Truth that is at my core. That is at yours. That is what connects each and every one of us. Transformation is a process. Love is what holds us all.
