When we open our hearts in compassion there are all sorts of emotions that get stirred up inside of us. In what I am going to say next, I am asking you please do not this do not use this information as a form of judgement. The essential elements of our “study” are awareness and healing.
Although, initially, it seems, as we open our hearts in compassion, that our feelings or our emotional response is towards the other person, and I certainly do not deny that piece. However, for the most part, what is triggered off within us are those aspects of our lives that need to be addressed and therefore they are brought to our attention so that we might be able to work on and heal them. Certainly not alone/by ourselves. There are times when we might need the help of therapeutic energy so we can move through some stuff that might be deeply embedded. There are other times when prayer and meditation is called for. There are other times when other forms of catharsis might be helpful. Not only speaking to another person, but sometimes writing down or even speaking it outloud, what is going on with us. It allows us a certain amount of objectivity and through release, we create a way of moving some of that anger fear and desolation through us.
As we have said before, we cannot fix another, but we can be prayerfully attentive to their needs. Another piece that I learned so powerfully from a therapist friend of mine when I started entering the counseling field myself, he said, very simply, “If you find yourself working harder than one of your clients, then there is something out of balance with this picture!”
Many of the questions that arise in our spiritual search and which are open to healing have no definitive answers. Or perhaps the answer we get today is not the same as we will get tomorrow. The personality-self would love to have an answer to everything so that all of my conflicts, my desires, my wishes, my hopes, my joys, and my fears could be all wrapped up in a nice neat little package and I wouldn't have to deal with them anymore. That might be a great wish, but it is not how most things work.
Just because we are becoming more aware of our spiritual trip--that does not mean that we ignore or deny our emotional and psychological needs! I will leave that one up to you
There are two chapters from Kahil Gibran’s book The Prophet that I was being called to share with you all: Pain and Joy and Sorrow.
These are not explanations but more like meditations. Sit with them; even with conflict, let the readings pass over and through you. Allow the Solutions and the healings to emerge from your own heart, because that is where they begin and that is where they end.
On Pain
Kahlil Gibran
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.
On Joy and Sorrow
Kahlil Gibran
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.
“You true soul’s yearning, we say, is to be embodied in the Christ manifestation. That is the true soul’s journey for all men. The times that you stand in now offer the opportunity for a rising, for an escalation of consciousness in a way that has never been possible on this plane. And the choice that each one of you makes to incarnate at this level supports all of mankind in doing the same.
We must say this one more time for the reader who becomes frightened when we speak of the Christ manifested. The Christ, as we describe it, is simply the aspect of you, seeded by your Creator, that seeks realization as you. And the Divine Self you are, you must trust, knows his own path, knows her own path, and may know more than you know as you sit in your chair deciding what things should look like.”
This is the essence of today's lesson. In the Now moment there is no “this or that, up or down, right or wrong, good or bad.” There simply IS. Far from the now moment being empty, it is the moment of pure potential, when we have the ability to create and to choose.
We can always choose a higher vibration. What that will look like? How that will affect us? How might that influence the people, places and things around us? We do not know. So at the moment of creation, this now moment, we are also releasing and letting go of all preconceived notions of what we think this should look like or how we think it should be. Again, far from being empty, it is the openness to the realization of the Divine truth within us.
I emphasize this again and again because of my own need to remember. We live in a world of created duality. even our language is set up to be dualistic by comparing everything. If there is one side of a coin there has to be another; if there is a right there has to be a left; if there is an up there has to be a down; etc. The essential difficulty lies in how we define or perceive ourselves. Our language divides us into a human and divine, and, of course, the mind likes to think that one is better than the other, but we are neither one or the other; we are both; one is not better than the other.
I am a Divine Being expressing myself through the human energy of my body, my mind, and my personality. Because of that, what I refer to as “me” is a unique expression of the Divine here in this atmosphere of the planet Earth. Even when I leave my body behind and my personality or my ego consciousness is no longer a necessary part of my being, because I am an aspect of creation, I will continue to be a unique expression of the Divine. When my intellect no longer interferes or attempts to define me, I will be in that mysterious place where I am both the unique expression of the Divine and One with the Divine as well.
Can you get a sense of that? We probably all experience that one way or another. I know there have been different ways of describing this, what Joseph Campbell calls “being in your bliss,” but there are so many opportunities and times when we have found ourselves being “out of time” in a place of joy or playfulness or wrapped up in artistic beauty or some other way or form that does not have to be dramatic at all. And yet the separate sense of self, for whatever reasons, has dissolved and for a moment, at least, is no longer an attachment.
So much of what we have talked about and discussed is also an examination and healing of different aspects of the self. We do not deny anything and so there are times when it is extremely important that we might find a way to heal emotionally so that we might be able to live more spiritually. We are never about denying physical or emotional needs. They need to be cared for; not only are they part of Who We Are, but they are also part of our chosen Journey here in classroom Earth.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING
May all beings be at peace; may all beings be free of suffering; may all beings remember who they are.
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