One year ago, I published a post on Chronic Illness and Self-Acceptance. I wanted my fellow bloggers to understand when I wasn’t unable to visit their blogs as often as they did mine. I wanted my fellow authors to understand when I was unable to read and review their books as quickly as they did mine.
My condition hasn’t changed, but the state of affairs in my country (U.S.) has. I mention this because stress has a profound effect on inducing flareups. Not knowing from one day to the next if I’ll continue to have health insurance or a roof over my head has challenged my inherent optimistic perspective on life. Also, the cold of winter tends to exacerbate symptoms.
So I’m writing this to let all of you know I might be a little scarce over the next couple of months. But truly, I just don’t know. I never…
Have you ever stopped for a minute to consider how much you do because of other people? Not for others, but because of them? There’s a difference, and it is a big one. Doing ‘for’ can have many motivations; love, duty, obligation, care, to name but a few… But what about the ‘because’? And how easy is it to separate the two? The lines between are often blurred and what we grumble that we have to do because of others, we may be doing for them… while things we think we do for others, or even for ourselves are often motivated by more subtle reasons.
I was discussing the question with Ani as I was tidying up today. She is an intelligent listener and a great leveller of ego. My housework always used to be done first thing in the morning… I’d get up early to make sure it was…
It’s a tough one, this. I love technology and I have a lasting belief that it has brought us a lot of good… but a nasty feeling that we are touching some of its ‘dark edges’; brought on, not because of the technology, itself, but because of the motive for profit and dominance inherent in the power that a few mega-companies wield.
Such companies are ‘enablers’. The real threat is the big money that has seen the potential for manipulation – global manipulation.
It was a 19th century historian and Cambridge professor, John Dalberg-Acton, 8th Baronet, who said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
It’s a quote many of us know, but what he went on to say in the same speech is less well known; “Great men are almost always bad men…”
We all like to believe in ‘great men’ (and women). Many of the The…
“You are beautiful.” “You are love.” “You are light.” “Whatever you can imagine can be yours.” I am fed up of reading these feelgood assertions, offered as a placebo and generously sprinkled with glitter and fairydust. There is nothing wrong with the words themselves, but I grow increasingly frustrated by the way they are often used.
They have become buzzwords that frequently appear in articles designed only to reassure and placate, to stroke the ego. They often come with a promise of enlightenment to the reader while implicitly asserting the spiritual superiority of the writer. They are understandably popular concepts and they are everywhere.
Such articles can be demoralising, having the opposite effect of how they appear to be intended. Reading many of them, you could be forgiven for thinking that you are at fault for not having already realised your full potential. All too often, they seem to portray…
This is a post I have been wanting to write for quite some time, but have put off because it can be such a controversial topic. I don’t wish to offend or demean anyone, and I think this is why I also feel so compelled to write this. There are such strong opinions on this topic that it often spurs a “holier than thou mentality” for some and a defensive response in others.
I do not believe, morally speaking, one is better than the other. Some of the wisest and most reverent individuals I know are omnivores. I don’t believe they are better than anyone else, and they don’t either. They share a belief in the Native cultures on Earth, which is one that I share as well: That all life is sacred. The consciousness of Life moves through each of us, just as it moves through the animal kingdom, as well as the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom. It moves through water and fire. When you live in reverence for all Life, you realize all life becomes an eventual sacrifice to continue the existence of Life itself, yet the essence of all Life never dies.
“When you eat, do you give thanks to the life you are consuming,” were the words spoken to a group of us over a meal. They came from a shaman who had been chosen and trained not for monetary reward, but because he was destined to share ancient, sacred teachings. He is not a vegan, nor is he a vegetarian, but each time he places nutrients in his mouth he gives thanks to the sacrifice, whether it be the water he drinks or the body of the plant or animal life that has been sacrificed so his life can be continued.
When Native Americans, for example, take the life of a deer, they connect with the spirit of the animal by looking in its eyes and offering a prayer of gratitude. No part of the body of the deer is waste but repurposed with reverence for the life that has been sacrificed.
I have found, through my own journey in life, that I cannot place a hierarchy on the value of one life over another. I feel the energy of a tree as acutely as I do a dog. I have discovered that an apple tree shares different wisdom than a hemlock, just as a tiger does versus an ant. When I place my hands on rocks, I am often graced with the wisdom they hold. In fact, the most profound and humbling experiences I have felt have been through this very act. Water, which is recycled over and over again as the life-giving force in each of us, is also, to me, sacred. I have learned more through my conversations with water than I have through most people I have met. Therefore, who am I to place a value on one consciousness over another?
As I learn and continue my journey of Life, I have had to face the sacrifice that is Life, over and over again. There is guilt, along with reverence. When I feel the life force leave a tree, it can bring me to a state of intense sorrow, even though I realize that the essence of that Lifeforce still lives on. When I first learned Reiki, I instinctively hit a mosquito, then Reikied its body back to health. It’s not an easy lesson to learn: That all life is ultimately a sacrifice to Life. That we are born into life and death and exist through many deaths.
It is my belief that all life is sacred, and when we strive to honor it as such, we realize how connected we are to everything. That the consciousness that flows through you flows through a beetle, a cat, a daisy, a rock, a tree and the water that is recycled through the body of Earth and in you. Living in gratitude and awe of Life is something I try to practice with each breath, as even the air we breathe carries Life. Without it, I would not exist in this body.
My latest take on Sue Vincent’s #writephoto prompt. As usual, I’m never quite sure where her photos will lead me. They seem to take on a voice of their own. If you would like to participate, please click here.
Mary watched the blue and green diamonds of light scatter the shadows around her. Outside, the vine wrapping her home held two crimson roses even though it was winter.
“Life has a way of enduring,” she thought as she tucked the folds of the blanket tighter around her child. “Even through death,” she whispered as she kissed his still-warm lips.
She knew everyone would expect her to weep, and perhaps she would in time. For now, though, she was focused on the peace of the light, which haloed her beloved son like a crown of jewels. Instead of sorrow, she felt hope.
For Sue Vincent’s weekly #writephoto challenge. To participate, please click here.
Learning to step aside and allow the unfolding of the self is, I have learned, a multilayered process. There is a shedding of the old in all of its preconditioning through past events held largely in the grasp of Fear and the many cloaks it wears. It’s almost funny in its irony. Holding onto the guise of protection only serves to limit the energy of the true self. Who, or what, then are we protecting?
When I started asking the question “How can I serve?” I found I needed to let go of the preconditioned self. And, I also needed to let go of the envisioned path. When I added the words, “Show me the way,” there came with it a relinquishing of conditions. I have found, although others may disagree, that The Secret to life is not to hold a vision so firmly in one’s mind and being so that it manifests into one’s reality, but just the opposite. The Secret to Life, at least one lived through the True Self, is to do the opposite.
The will of the mind, when removed from its throne of power, provides a seat for the soul to flourish into true being.
It’s a terrifying process, this becoming naked from habitual wraps, and the relinquishing of the mighty reign of the mind. There comes a moment, or progression of moments, when one must return to the stage of birth in all its wonderment and vulnerability. What we have hidden within the folds of our donned garments becomes exposed before it is shed as an aspect of the false self it protected.
Just over one year ago, I walked the hills of Ojai, California hoping for, if I am brutally honest with myself, one of those transcendental experiences of mystical enlightenment that many of us read about, but few of us experience. Instead, what I got was the still, soft voice within urging me to embark upon the path of yoga. It wasn’t vague, and it didn’t speak just once. Instead, it crept into my thoughts often throughout the course of several days and nights, always speaking the same words, “enroll in a yoga teacher training program.”
And so I did.
I signed up for my first yoga class more than twenty years ago while I was living in southern Massachusetts and working toward a doctorate degree in molecular biology. The yoga class, I told myself and the instructor, was my outlet. A means to destress the stressed mind. I had no intention, twenty years ago, or even one year ago, of ever teaching yoga, but just practicing it from time to time for a little more balance and peace as I went about my daily life.
The funny thing is, the inner voice, as it always is, was trying to talk to that much younger self who thought she was going to be a geneticist one day. It was not soft, though, but loud. It would wake me from sleep (I was too stubborn to hear it by day), stepping outside of my body to press against my ear before it yelled whispered my name, Alethea!
For Truth.
We don’t truly hear the voice of the true self, though, until we are ready to. And, thankfully, I don’t regret not listening to it those many years ago, because I know I was not ready to hear what it had to say. There was too much learning to do. Too much holding onto before I let go.
Now I find myself sitting on the sofa, with two dogs I never thought I would have as beloved companions bookending me. I am typing away on a computer while my stomach flutters with excitement. Tonight I will be teaching my first yoga class to teens. I am only halfway through my 200 hours of yoga teacher training, yet this is where the asking, How may I serve and Please show me the way has brought me. It feels like home. I can’t tell you what tomorrow will bring, or even what later in the day will bring when I am standing in a room filled with thirteen and fourteen-year-olds. What I can tell you is that it feels like Truth.
The Light Behind the Story 