WELCOME 10

Let’s not forget the wisdom that is called to us in the beginning this chapter—“Welcome” is a command and manifestation, calling to us the loving presence of the beings who are leading and teaching  us all along this path of transformation. Not only are we calling them into our consciousness, but we are also reminding ourselves that we are not alone.

It is so often that we get caught up in our personality selves and play games such as “Ain't it awful; nobody understands me; this will never end; I can't let go of fear, blame, anger.” I become so lost in my individuality that I forget—I am not alone in all this.

As I sat with our work this week I became aware that all of these hurdles that we are working with such as blame, judgment, non-forgiveness are all forms of separateness thinking. They all come from a sense of identifying with this limited personality self.

Separateness can be disguised in many ways—blames, shame, guilt, fear—

but the effect is the same—when we are in those states of mind, we are buying into the idea that we are different—separate— buying into that superficial veneer of who we are—again the ego or personality self becomes our truth.

I do not wish to deny the discomfort or challenge of attempting to transform the limited perception of our personalities into that of a deeper divine reality, but it is just as this we are being called to work on.

“So how do you move beyond blame? How do you learn a new way of being? How do you decide something different in a new way when what you have known, when what you have been taught, is to blame somebody else for what occurs in your life? You decide that you can. “I know who I am, what I am, how I serve” will bring you, once again, into alignment with your true nature. When you know who you are, you know that you are the one accountable to all of your choices, and that includes how you respond to anything and everything that has occurred historically that you would decide has created your problems.”

Here is another lesson with regards to our personality self and our divine nature. We do not deny blame for or fear but we understand that those forms of separateness come from a limited perception of the self. By claiming the truths of who we are, we align ourselves with a higher reality. We also do not suppose that even though our consciousness dwells in a higher reality that those lower reality vibrations will simply disappear. They are still present for us to choose or occupy if we decide.

We spent a good amount of time and energy exploring the idea of someone, including ourselves, “doing the best we could do.’ This gets a little tricky because I am never going to be able to apply this notion of someone “doing the best they can” unless I am also willing to apply it to myself. It is only when I embrace that “I am doing the best I can” that I can be open and willing to accept about another.

(To the personality self, “doing the best I can” does not fit. There is always going to be judgment and comparison).

We have been taught that there is something wrong with us if we make a mistake. If we were to step back for a moment and be gently honest with ourselves, we would begin to realize that what we are calling a mistake is really a piece of information that comes into our awareness that we did not have before. So often we realize that an action we might have taken even though we might have deliberated on it for a while turned out to be the “wrong” one. We would never have followed through with that particular action if we already knew the consequences. Even the best of us in the best of circumstances have weighed and deliberated over certain actions and, as best we could, have predicted the outcome that we expected. If we had known the outcome would be different or difficult or not what we expected we would have taken a different course of action.

Now doing the best we can do is not an encouragement to be irresponsible. If I made a mess, even though I did not intend to, cleaning up that mess is my responsibility. Now here is another tricky piece because being responsible requires a higher form of awareness. There are many who might not have this level of awareness and so the mess that might be made through a faulty decision might blamed on someone or something else.

It does not seem fair, at least to my personality self, that there might be messes produced by someone else and yet it is still my responsibility to clean it up. I am reminded of that great one-liner from Spiderman “With great power comes great responsibility.” What we are doing here is replacing the word “power” with the concept of awareness. “With great awareness comes great responsibility.”

There will be times when we wish that we weren't so aware, when we would have loved to pretend that the mess is either not there or somebody else's problem. I am not speaking of codependency here; there are certainly going to be times when we need to allow the other person, whether they are aware of it or not, to be responsible for their actions. On the other hand, however, if their actions are messing up other peoples lives, I might have some responsibility here.

Please do not start playing the “what-if” game. These are not intellectual concepts we are talking about; they are reflections of our openness to our heart’s wisdom. There are no rules or regulations here. I want to be aware of where and how my heart leads me.

I continually come back to the challenge of deeply believing in the transformational power Love and to recognize that truly loving is the most meaningful thing I can do for myself for others.

I will close with the question:

Can you hold the light for those who cannot hold it for themselves/???