Earth: A Love Story

When I was a child, I would lie on the ground with my face to the sky so I could feel the heartbeat of Earth. In those quiet moments I felt the gentle pulse of energy that radiates from the body of our planet rocking my cells, as I stared at the expanse of sky above me. It brought me peace and comfort, and, at the same time, filled me with an awe of my “small” place inside this vast womb we call home.

Some days you can still find my flat on my back, gazing into the atmosphere. Have you tried it? I hope you have. I hope you will. In our over-industrialized culture we often forget the source of our life force, choosing to drive through our days inside the fog of technology. We hardly stop to think of the impact on the Earth and ourselves as we strip the land of its resources to add speed and “comfort” to our days. We can do this because Earth is a forgiving mother. She keeps feeding us, she keeps offering her oxygen for our breath, and she continues to quench our thirst with her reservoirs of water.

Earth: A Love Story

Yet, when we allow ourselves to observe the body of Earth we see that we have stretched her belly to the extend that she has well-exceeded her capacity to carry a healthy womb of life. We have contaminated her waters, air and soil with our waste, so that not only is her health compromised, but the health of all of her children. Just as a fetus is affected by the nutrients (or lack of) a mother takes into her body, and by the toxins she ingests, so too are we affected by the conditions of this womb of Earth we live inside.

I didn’t set out to preach in this blog, really, I didn’t. Rather, I set out to make a plea for a collective understanding. You see, for me this is a love story. A love story between our planet and us. And some days, like today, I am reminded that it is still taking a very tragic turn. When I logged onto Facebook (no, I’m not denying that I am also slave to technology) this morning I was greeted by a wonderfully beautiful testament to Mother Nature in the form of a friend’s painting. And, I was also greeted by a shared video of an island filled with dying albatross, whose bellies are bloated by our indigestible waste. The bellies of some are so filled with junk that they cannot harbor viable life. How many more decades, I wondered, will I be looking at these heart-wrenching images? How many decades can we afford?

Nature's Love by Karen Kubicko
Nature’s Love by Karen Kubicko

When will we collectively awaken? When will we heal this mother that gives us life, and, in doing so, heal ourselves? We can start by feeling her heartbeat inside our own. Everyday.

Community

This is the word, or concept, that keeps appearing to me when I think of the shift of human consciousness that we are experiencing. The word community has two basic meanings. It can define a group of people living in one geographic area together, or it can represent a population that shares the same values. I think the true definitive though, melds the two.

With our myriad of technological devices and options for connecting to others that seem to negate geographical distance, no longer is there such a need to physically exist in a shared space. Space, in a sense, collapses when we open up our Facebook walls, connect to our loved ones through FaceTime, or send a text message on our cell phones. With the push of a button we are instantly brought together. Or are we?

Although I have found these methods of connection limiting, I have slowly come to embrace them. There are moments when I sit alone on the couch sending out my words, or reading the messages of others, when I feel the lonely pull to physically be with the people I am connecting with through the internet. No amount of blogging of FaceTime can replace the energy of a group of people sharing a space, especially when that space is filled with their collective joy.

So, while I cherish the ability to easily connect to friends and family who are not living near me, as well as the opportunities I have found to form bonds with individuals I have yet to met in person, I can’t ignore the void created by distance.

I am sure I am not alone in my sentiments. What does this mean for our evolution? How will we successfully collapse time and space to share in this new era, which some people call “The Golden Age.” I think some of us are discovering that it is not enough to seek community through the airwaves.

Of course, travel too has become easier and more efficient over time (perhaps not the more recent time), enabling us to move to places where we can find shared values and beliefs. I have a good friend who, through circumstances beyond her control, moved, and found that she and her family landed in a community that was wonderfully suited for them. So much so, that it seemed predestined.

I, myself, often feel the over-whelming tug to hurry time and finish the space I am building inside my home, which will allow me to more easily host gatherings of people who seek a community of shared truths. We are not, after all, a solitary species. Humans, by nature, thrive and multiply through shared love.

Yet, I think, sometimes we forget this. Just as a child will suffer the physical and emotional symptoms of neglect in an orphanage, so does the individual who shuts herself off from interacting with others, or chooses to interact with people out of shared pain rather than love.

When we seek community, or choose not to, it behooves us to examine why. Jealousy and a strong competitive drive can cause us to be drawn to others who appear to have less, or in some way make us feel superior, therefore feeding our fears of not being good enough. Sometimes we are so consumed with our own toxic love-affair with pain that we can’t help but shut others out.

If you don’t know if you are attracting the right community, ask yourself these simple questions: Do my “friends” or family bring me happiness? Do they lift me to joy? There is, after all, nothing that matches the collective vibration of love.

Love

It’s one of those words that is as complex as it is simple. Love. Last night, in the moments before sleep, I thought about love, and what it has meant to me in this lifetime. Overcome by a sudden wave of emotion, I realized my soul was asking me to release still more of the dense energy that I have accumulated as a barrier to allowing a complete, unobstructed flow of love energy.

Although I work with the energy of love to heal others, I am also still healing myself. Even though love is the ultimate state and expression of the free soul, many of us carry with us the energy of fear. We are, quite simply, afraid to open up completely into what our egos tell us is the vulnerable state of love. We fear rejection. We fear that we will give love unconditionally and it will not be returned, or worse, we fear we will be betrayed by our love. Our fear creates patterns that are hard to break.

As a child I accepted that love was something that must be earned, even at the sacrifice of my inner truth. I wanted, like all children do, to be loved at all costs. To whom I gave my love to was a choice that I thought was not my own. As a result, love turned into a concept that was muddy and confusing. Love, for me, was complex and dangerous, and it often resulted in pain.

I traded love in for loyalty. I traded love to survive. Yet, still I loved in my desperate and silent way, sacrificing my inner-self along the way. I found myself loving the “wrong” family members, the “wrong” pet, the “wrong” friends and the “wrong” boys, and as a result I welcomed in the greedy energy of betrayal and pain. I was an easy target. When we consistently send out the message of, “I love you, but I must not deserve your love in return,” or “I want to love you, but I am afraid to,” we cannot fully receive the pure energy of love without the trappings of fear.

Through fear we impose a complexity to love that does not exist when love is in its pure, unconditional form. Although love is the highest, purest frequency of energy that exists, it often takes great courage to live in it fully. We, as humans, have complicated our world with fear and all its restraints and conditions. Breaking away from them can make us feel vulnerable, when, in reality, it opens up our inner strengths. It frees our trapped voices. It leads us to our pure, divine, essence.

When we embrace the truth that love is our truth; that love is our divine right to give and receive in pure form, we open ourselves to all of its gifts. Through the family I have created I have learned (and am still learning) this lesson. Love ripples back. It attracts to equal frequency. Pure, unconditional love, frees the soul’s truth. When we get there, we realize there are no constraints. We realize that there is no rejection or pain. We realize that it does not matter that our love cannot always be “returned” to match our frequency, not because we are unlovable, but because a fear exists that may not be our own.

Love, in reality, opens doors, it breaks barriers. When we live in the frequency of love, we free not only ourselves, but raise the collective energy of the world, helping to release the sticky web of fear.

Toxic Energy

 

 

Sometimes in life we encounter energy that is so wonderful, it transforms us into a state of pure joy. While in that energy, and hopefully for sometime after, our own energetic vibration is raised to match the frequency of the being that is emanating this bliss. This could be a person, a group of people, an animal, or even a place in nature. I need only to walk into the woods with an uncluttered heart, and I feel lighter and happier than I was when I left my house. The energy of love is always nearby, we just need to allow ourselves to tune into it.

Sadly, some people are so consumed by their lower vibrating emotions that they rarely, if ever, allow themselves to harmonize with the frequency of joy, or, what I like to call, pure love. The lower vibrating energies of anger, fear, hate and pain weigh our bodies down, and they leave their shadows behind, even when their source as moved elsewhere. Have you ever walked into a place, even if it is devoid of people, and felt an over-whelming sadness, or maybe even a flash of anger? I remember years ago, walking along the trail of an old battlefield and feeling consumed with despair, even though it was a bright sunny day. I was having a nice outing with my husband and young children, and had no logical reason to be suddenly sad. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was feeling the energy of grief and despair left by people who had lost their lives at that site, lingering, still, centuries later.

For those of us particularly sensitive to energies, we easily reap the rewards of being around high vibrations, but also suffer more from energy that is dense. In some cases this energy is even toxic to our beings. This has been a tough lesson for me to learn, and I am, to this day, still dealing with how to know when to remove myself from energy that feels toxic to my body and soul. And, then, there is the question of how to cut the cords.

As I suspect is true of most empaths, I could safely say I started feeling and absorbing the energies around me even before birth. Studies have show that an emotionally and/or physically stressed pregnant mother is more likely to have a baby that is colicky, under-weight, and/or will suffer from emotional dis-ease in life.

 

If a child is brought into the world knowing the energies of fear, and then finds that her world outside the womb is filled with the same, she will need to figure out, instinctively, how to survive inside an environment that is in many ways toxic to her health. I use the world health in the broadest sense possible.

Those of us who know, too well, what it is like to live in energies derived predominately from fear, are likely to have a more difficult time cutting their toxic cords. Until we learn that these energies cannot have a hold on us, unless we allow them to, we will continue to encounter their desperate grasp.

I find this idea complicated by having a family and being in circumstances where I need to recognize how a situation, or an individual(s), is affecting no only me, but my young children, and sometimes, my husband. I find myself asking the questions: Is this person or situation only toxic to me? How are my children reacting when they are around this energy? Is there a benefit to being around this person or in this situation, and, if so, does it out-weigh the cost(s)?

Here is where it gets particularly tricking, because I truly believe that underneath all that heavy energy, there is pure love. If I allow myself to enter a meditative state and align with the soul energies of people who appear toxic in my life, I am able to see them in their true essence, and always their higher-selves vibrate in the energy of pure love. Yet, this alone does not solve the dilemma of what to do in this life with the dominate energies we allow ourselves to receive from these people and circumstances.

I have learned to wear stones and crystals, to seal the holes in my energy field, and, if need be, to clear the imprints of dense energies, yet I have to admit, I would prefer not to. I’d love to life in a world where I only encounter (and, I should add, send out), the frequency of love. Sadly, this world, on Earth, does not yet exist.

As I write this, I long for an easy, or at least a clear-cut answer. Perhaps it is there and I have yet to find it. For me the answer is complex, as there is always a loss. Someone will often suffer from whatever decision I make (at least in my mind), and I suspect it’s that nagging guilt that I so easily align to, that keeps me from making a clean separation.

 

Surrender

surrender

The concept of surrender keeps appearing to me, during my days and nights. It comes cloaked in the words of my friends; it creeps into dreams on the back of nightmares; it shows up in the mirror.

My energy healer brought surrender to my attention recently, citing her own struggles, while gently nudging me to recognize mine own. Over the past week the call of surrender has appeared in myriad forms, making me aware of how universal its voice is.

When I explore the idea of surrender, I think about what binds us. Surrender, quite simply, is the opposite of resistance. Consider the pull of gravity as you climb a hill; consider the push of oars as you paddle your canoe against a strong river current; consider the tug of a child wanting to run free of your clutch.

What does it feel like to resist? What does it feel like to let go? What are you holding onto? I find what I am holding onto each night in my dreams. Here I struggle to let go of my fears, and some nights I experience the bliss of letting go.

We resist out of fear, and the impulse to control our fate and the fate of circumstance that are ultimately beyond our control. Resistance creates knots is our stomachs, our shoulders, and our necks. It quite literally traps the flow of our energy centers, densely packing pockets that bind. Resistance creates imbalance both internally and externally. The flow of energy inside of us is impeded, as well as the energy that we give and receive externally – that beautiful state of balance our souls seek to achieve with the universal flow of energy.

Consider the effects of letting go – of surrendering as you go about the day – and notice what is causing you to constrict the easy flow of your energy. Perhaps your trigger will be a misplaced phone, being late for a meeting, a beautiful home you see in a magazine, a jar of pickles that you are sure you purchased, but never made their way into your pantry, or the feeling of illness trying to manifest itself inside your cells.

What is it like to experience your triggers of resistance? How do they make you feel? When I think of the opposite of resistance – surrender, I see an eagle or a hawk soaring with the currents of wind; I think of a leaf, floating gently down a stream; I think of a healthy, radiant, balanced body. For me these are images of absolute freedom, and represent the beautiful, natural flow of energy.

Many spiritual leaders are calling our attention to the surge of flu outbreaks and other widespread illnesses that our occurring right now, as a reminder of what we are individually and collectively holding onto. For, when we let our fears bind us to tightly, we make an easy host to illness. Now, more than ever, as we seek to move into higher frequencies of existence, we are being nudged (sometimes not too gently), to let go of resistance. It all, of course, comes down to fear, and sometimes it’s so deep-seated we don’t know where to begin to untie its cords. Yet, with each snip of release – each surrender to what is beyond our “control” – we move closer to a state of peace and freedom. We move closer to the harmonic frequency of love.

For a wonderful (and soothing) example of the harmonious flow of energy, please watch this Bird Ballet video:
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/01/bird-ballet-thousands-of-birds-dance-in-the-sky/

Lament

This morning I find myself sitting beside  a stove where fire melts wet wood, and provides a warm contrast to the wonderfully white world outside my window. I am thankful for the heat, the beauty, and the quite solitude that blesses my morning, yet here I am writing about lament.

Lament was the subject of the poem that came to me as I gazed at the falling snow. I barely thought about its meaning as I scribbled down the flow of words. Moments later, I paused to check Facebook, and there it was, a friend’s lament over missed chances; over not heeding her inner voice, until, she feared, it was too late.

Of course, it’s never too late.  The voice is still there, waiting to be heard. There is only the present to retrieve our gifts. The past is but a memory, reminding us of what we still can be. Of what we still are, if only we trust enough to heed our inner voices and become our truths. Does lament for lost opportunities, or lost “time,” really serve us? Perhaps it can, if we let it, spur us into action. Perhaps we can use it as a nudge to push us over possibility. The Now is the time to follow your heart and heed that inner voice. Once you realize that you are in control, that only your fears hold you back, you can start chipping away at them.

Last week, I launched my dream to help others. It took, I’ll admit, a large dose of courage to get there. It took a lot of chipping away and healing, and there was more than an once of doubt trying to taint its sweetness, but I did it. What is your dream? Here’s mine:

inner truth healing http://innertruthhealing.com/home/

Protesters Unite

Part 2

after the storm
spread
 
relief
a stream
shuttled to
desperate areas
 
“Attention!
…they
do it for free”
 
see a need and
fill it
 
line
bandages and bottles
behind a tattered curtain
 
retrieve
 
phenomenal
community

Another erasure poem adapted from The Associated Press article, “Wall Street protestors unite to help victims of storm,” by Meghan Barr