The photo above was created by my dear friend, Alex Preciado, and hangs across from my bed, so that I see it every morning. It is essentially a soul painting of what guides my life, that I commissioned Alex to create for me, and illustrates the message of the quote. Alex has a powerful and beautiful podcast called Ancestral Knowledge which he does with his wife Laura, and often speaks of the fountain of love.
“Become one who can give everyone what they need, because there is so much need. And become one who can fully receive, so that you can become a fountain of love and give everyone what they need.”
Kathleen Hanagan
Becoming one who can receive
Over the years, I have often awakened in the morning with full sentences wanting to be spoken. It’s as if some message from my soul insists on being known by me, and is usually something I am meant to share. The quote above came to me one morning last month, and I have since reflected a great deal on what it means.
Of course, none of us can give everyone what they need, but the message was about becoming one who could. And the only way that is possible, is to become one who can fully receive.
How do we receive and from what or whom? Really, from everyone and everything, including the source of all, Love herself as the energy of the Divine Feminine She is the earth, your tender friend, your angry friend. your dog, the sky in the morning and at night and the sound of the cicadas. She is sex and play and food and death. She is the mother birthing, feeding and allowing us to die. She is life herself. We allow ourselves to receive from her by surrendering our own will to hers. To Love.
Learning to surrender
In the course of my work with thousands of people over 30 years, I have come to make a very significant observation: the people who become adept at surrender are far happier than those who resist.
What gets in the way? Needing to be right, feeling offended, insulted, wanting to get even, and countless other expressions of the primitive survival ego. In a nutshell, when people mistake surrender for resignation they are not able to surrender. To be resigned is unwillingly giving in to a greater power, while surrender is letting go of the need to have power over another.
Surrender is a conscious act of letting to, and is both the movement of a single moment and the movement of a lifetime. It may be the path you take during an argument, when you drop your end of the rope and breathe into your heart, soften your belly, and begin to listen to the other person. It may be the path you take when you face the fact that you are no longer fulfilled in your job, or your marriage, or anything you had previously devised to keep yourself happy. It is the foundation of recovery in the Twelve Step Program, where members learn to surrender their will to a higher power and thus surrender their attachment to the addictive substance.
Surrender involves letting go of what you are experiencing and are identified with in order to open to something uncertain.
Often it involves conscious suffering, usually loss, that you both experience and witness within the larger context of your life. It involves a kind of spiritual or mystic death, after which you are changed, and life is no longer a dedication to self but a celebration of life. It involves showing up as who you really are.
The tools of surrender
The tool of surrender is not a sword, but rather, the ability to be vulnerable, honest and kind with yourself and others. You surrender, realizing that whatever sadness, anger or fear you are experiencing is something you must embrace, and you drop your resistance to it, out of a desire to be free.
Acceptance is a kind of passionate surrender, and the Universe is incapable of saying “no” to your intense yearning for liberation. You must simply offer the Universe a passion equal to its own. There is no bribing the Universe, God, or whatever you call that power. Surrender is an expression of the natural urge of the soul, while resignation is an expression of the ego.
The Natural urge of the Soul
Why is this important now, in this very chaotic world where there is so much pain and loss and violence? Because so many people are feeling a deep soul call to help alleviate suffering, and are not sure how to go about it. They come to me, many older—in their fifties and sixties—with great urgency to do something more or different than the work they have been doing. Many have experienced an initiation through their own suffering and transformation, emerging more connected to their souls, and there is natural urge of the soul is to extend to others.
When this powerful need of the soul arises, it can create a great disequilibrium, and lead a person to think they must turn their life inside out and in order to fulfill the natural urge of the soul.
This poem by St. Thomas Aquinas says it so poignantly:
Otherwise The Darkness
I have a cause.
We need those don’t we? Otherwise the darkness and the cold gets in and everything starts to
Ache.
My soul has a purpose, it is to love:
if I
do not fulfill
my heart’s vocation, I suffer.
The supreme initiative of the soul vs the ambition of the ego
When you begin to take orders from your soul, the cosmos and your own light body conspire together to bring a supreme initiative of wholeness and oneness back to you. You begin to fulfill your soul’s purpose, which is to love, without having to change your profession or partner first! You wholeheartedly surrender to Love.
We are energy broadcasters, radiating out our message all the time. When we connect consciously and reverently with our own soul—-with the essence of who we are—–we begin to source from the fountain of love. When we anchor our intentions in that very energy field, we become co-creators of our lives. We begin to flow like a river carving a path to the ocean of love for others.
Where are your intentions anchored?
If you are honest, you will see that they are often anchored in survival or goals, and even tasks, but rarely in your dreams. The ability and choice to shift that is ours, and most people need support for that.
We are trained to set goals, and studies have shown that those who do set goals are far more successful than those who don’t. Yet those goals can either be in the service of our egos, or our souls.
If you feel joy and ease and a sense of enthusiasm and something new emerging all the time, you are following the energies of your soul. That does not mean that everything goes smoothly, and in fact, some of the greatest challenges arise when we are following our soul’s guidance.
The soul bears witness
When we have anchored our intentions in our soul, and hardship arises, there is greater certainty, and ability to stay the course, than if we are not anchored there. Fear and doubt arise, and as in mediation, they fall away, as the soul bears witness.
If you feel off course, restless, a joylessness and staleness to your life or work, you have lost (temporarily) conscious connection with your soul. It happens to all of us at times, and we call them “dark nights of the soul,” because we are not living in the light of the soul at those times. Something obscures that light, since the light is always there.
Old emotions of fear, anger and grief that have not been released can get in the way. Old beliefs that no longer support who we are build barriers to the light, and can fall away when we deeply desire to reconnect to our essence.
Choose to let light in
We have so many ways now to release those old and unneeded emotions and beliefs, yet it remains a choice. Even now, during this time of powerful shifting, the choice is ours, to move into a consciousness of oneness, within ourselves and our lives, or not.
Some simple steps can make all the difference:
- Recognize what you are still carrying from the past—what old resentment, anger, jealousy or fear have you still not said good-bye to? Just own it with no judgment. Feel the weight of it.
- Touch that part of yourself with compassion, knowing that it is all part of your human experience.
- Consciously put it down at a “higher altar” in your heart. You can actually create a simple altar with a candle and stones or gems. The point is, that you place these emotions from the past willingly on that altar, as an offering of your humanity for humanity.
- Open to the emptiness that you experience.
- Allow the light in.
The steadiness and matter-of-factness of love
Love has a knack of asking us to express her in very practical ways. Some people are called to great things that many see, and receive recognition for their accomplishments. Others are called to do great things that only a few see, and receive little recognition and no recompense for what they do every day.
That’s why one of the first things you can do to become a fountain of love is to celebrate people. Notice how some people are giving love all the time by their steadiness in relationships, their devotion to an aging parent, or sibling, making sure their needs are met. Let them know that you notice.
Another great stride to take toward becoming a fountain of love is to let go of being right. Ditch it. You can either be right or in relationship. There are as many different points of view on this planet as there are people, and being right doesn’t help anyone.
Become complaint free and you will be upgrade your life tremendously. Surrender the habit of judging and comparing, and you will begin to see the good in yourself and others.
Flow more. We are all rivers carving a path to the ocean of Love.
Be grateful for your life—all of it.
