“If you could get rid of yourself just once, the secret of secrets would open to you. The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe, would appear on the mirror of your perception.” Rumi
Seeing with new eyes
As human beings we are a complex web of interconnection, an eternal unified field of consciousness. The simplest way to explain that is that we exist in a space in which the observer, the process of observation, and the observed, are all one. We are not separate from all that we have created, and this realization can awaken us to the power we possess individually and as a collective to create a magnificent and desired future.
When you realize by seeing with new eyes that everything you think is “out there” is really a reflection of you, life takes on a new wonder. You no longer experience yourself as separate from all that is, which is out-dated programming based on what Einstein called an “optical delusion of consciousness….a prison.” He said that “our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”
We are the future
If you stop and think about it, everything that exists now has already been created. The world around you, the people in your life, the house you live in, your business. It is all the past.
We are continuously evolving and changing, weaving the fabric of our lives with threads from our experience. We pull some from the past, let some go, and are asked now to create new threads that weave a yet unformed fabric. Together.
Illusion
In Sanskrit, Maya means “illusion.” In Greek, Maia means “Good Mother.” the power by which the universe becomes manifest; the illusion or appearance of the phenomenal world.
The geometry of the phenomenal world is changing from a third density to a 5th dimension, and the very structure of what we have called reality is collapsing. We see this as political, educational, financial, medical, legal systems cannot hold up in the face of the potent force of evolution. The Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine energies are coming into balance, to create the conditions for the birth of a New World
Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, who discovers that there are no real wizards and that the greatest wisdom of all is found within the home of her own heart, we are seeing the illusion for what it is.
We can use illusion as a pathway to transmutation. We can recognize that we are at a pivot point in the evolution of humanity, where we take back the power of creation that we put into the illusion, to create something entirely new. For this we must let many outworn habits fall away—habits of disregard for the whole of existence, for our mother earth, and for our very own bodies.
Letting things go
We must let ourselves feel and face the fear of the transition that the death of the old ushers in. When we resist facing this fear, we create the prison that keeps us repeating the same old story over and over.
In this poignant message by New Zealand poet Nadine Anne Hura, called Mother Earth, the struggle to change is put in perspective:
People always said it wasn’t possible
To ground flights and stay home and stop our habits of consumption
But it was
It always was.
We were just afraid of how much it was going to hurt
– and it IS hurting and it will hurt and continue to hurt
But not as much as you have been hurt.
A collective grieving process
We are in the midst of a collective grieving process, which is not a straight line to acceptance. Rather, it is a spiral journey through 5 stages of awareness: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross discovered in her groundbreaking research on people grieving.
This is an elegant model, showing that there is a descent, or what Kubler-Ross called depression. in order to arrive at acceptance. This descent is out of synch with our masculine forward-driving culture that wants to take a pill so that we can continue to race upward toward some imaginary finish line.
It is a feminine path, a reaching down into the fertile soil of who we are, in order to arrive at a full acceptance of our true power, which is Love itself.
Eckhart Tolle says in The New Earth, “eventually suffering destroys the ego—but not until you suffer consciously. . . . In the midst of conscious suffering, there is already a transmutation. The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness.”
Like the magnificent lotus that rises up out of the mud, our personalities are often polished in the process of grieving, or conscious suffering, leading us to be more humble, kinder, more empathic, wiser.
Overcome all bitterness
During a time of my life when I was doing deep healing work, I recall that the depth of my grief felt insurmountable at times. I balked when I heard the adage that we are never given too much to handle. Right?
It was during a time of feeling bitterness in my marriage, juggling 3 children and graduate school in Social work, and recovering from childhood trauma. Of course now I know that this time was preparing me to become a therapist who could hold others in their grief without turning away or thinking there is something wrong. It helped me to trust in the Love that is inherent in every crisis, and in all things.
I turned inward and discovered “friends” on the spiritual path, like Rumi, Hafiz, and Carl Jung. I began to realize the depth of love in my heart, and slowly but surely, my grief transformed into a beautiful capacity for acceptance of what is.
During this time, I placed this quote by the Sufi teacher, Vilayat Inayat Khan, on my bathroom mirror so that I would see it every morning and evening:
“Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, each of us is part of her heart and is, therefore, endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain.”
Deep acceptance
Deep acceptances of what you have been entrusted unleashes a great power. It allows you to see beyond the mists of illusion to the perfection in all things. It allows you to truly say YES to life.
Acceptance is not passive, but rather a process of passionate surrender. The Universe is incapable of saying “no” to your intense yearning to be free. 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.
You want joy, be joy.
You want love, be love.
You want abundance, be abundance.
You want peace, be peace.
As within, so without.
As above, so below.
And so it is.
Love this, so timely as I grieve.