The poem illustrates a melding of two beliefs: there is no place where God is not and Abraham’s idea that you can never get it wrong.  Hence, life or love never fails — you never fail.  God is with you always no matter how exhilarated you feel or how low and unimpassioned you feel.  God is with you in both the simplicity and the complexity of your lives.  God, Spirit, the ineffable, the mysteriously indefinable, is that which courses through you continuously without end.

image locale

I have fallen between the cracks
and landed in the spaces
where love never fails

Beloved, you are my captor
and I am bound by your love

I hear you whisper softly
don’t speak. words fail here, just listen

churning on the seas of your desire
I am the rising and the falling

the beginning and the ending
the fullness and the emptiness

journey to the furthest point of your yearning
I am the anguish and the exaltation

I am the grain of sand awakening the pearl

I am the morsel you are tasting
be it bitter or sweet

quench your deepest thirst here
where you think I’m not

I Am.

©heartsdeesire

I leave the meetup, get in the car and immediately call home, since the plan is to now go home, pick up my daughter and leave for a concert.  Back story is I don’t like to be late and I don’t like to be rushed.  So I’m checking in with my husband on the status of our daughter getting ready, since we have to leave in one hour. Not only does she have to get ready but she has work to be done before we leave.  My husband says that my daughter’s not up yet.  It’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon.  I’m gobsmacked.   I’m telling my husband we’ll never make it on time.  Not only that, I’m saying she often does this, she’s rarely on time lately.  I explain how I’ve been struggling all week with getting her out the door on time for things.  And then I’m thinking, I just know she’ll do a half ass rush job at the work she has to do.  And who sleeps ’til 3pm?   Wait, there’s more … if we don’t get there early, parking will be hard to find, I’ll be stuck in concert traffic, yada, yada, yada.

I hang up the phone.  And then I just said STOP.  For crying out loud, just STOP.  I stop and take a deep breath and remember I just left a meetup.  What did I just learn in the meetup?  I will tell you what I just learned and how I used it.

What actually happened here?  Just the facts.  What are the facts and nothing but the facts, m’am?

FACT: I called home and was told that my daughter is not up yet.

That’s all that happened.  That’s the facts, period.

All that other stuff is just blah, blah, blah.  A story I made starring me and my unwitting daughter and the script went like this — well you heard it all already.  Did any of it serve me or her?  Are they giving out any awards for the one person who can get their panties in a wad quicker than anyone else?  And if they were, would I even want that award?  Well I might, for you know what and giggles, but no, I don’t really want to be the fastest panty wad twister on earth.

Here’s what I want.  Here’s what I always want and that is to feel good and happy and clear.  So I just learned a new tool to do just that.  And I like this even better than Byron Katie’s: is it true? because it just by passes all of that.  I’m still asking a story if it’s true in the BK model.  Why get vested in the story at all, why not separate it out altogether and get down to the bare minimum.  What are the facts?  The rest is all a choice I make to have it mean this or that.

Immediately I realized how this could help a friend who doesn’t really get along with her boss.  Every time she gets an email or a phone call from this boss requesting such and such, she goes right into the story of what that means. And it’s often a story that doesn’t serve her; it’s a story that leaves her feeling less than and wanting to change jobs. So what do you do in that case?  You take the facts only.  Boss calls.  Boss wants to review my document.  Boss has made these changes to my document.

What does it mean?  It means nothing and everything, depending on what you tell yourself about it.  Strip it all down to its bare minimum, just the facts.  Before you, me, we get caught up in the whirlwind of what it all means, just stop, take a deep breath.  Ask yourself: what are the facts?  Look at the facts and decide, choose selectively, mindfully what you want to make of it, if anything at all.  Or choose just for this one moment, choose to have it mean nothing at all.  You can always come back to that subject and plaster it with all the meaning you want, but for now consider halting all the story about what *anything* means.  Feel the pure relief in that.

Thankfully I drove home sans the irritation over potentially being late or rushed because I realized it was all a resistance, filled to the brim, story.  And by the way, we got to the concert, no traffic, found good close parking and had plenty of time to spare.  We had a great conversation standing in line chatting with people we’d never met before but found so many crazy synchronistic things we shared in common, including the names and breeds of our dogs, the names of our kids, it just went on and on.

Things just flow and line up so much easier when I take the time to line up myself.  In my heart, I always want to be in my corner.  In all of our hearts, we all want to be in our own corner, our own good friends.  Just the facts and nothing but the facts, is a great and easy, user friendly tool to use and is definitely a keeper in my tool box.

“Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight.”
~Mary Oliver~

What do you love?  This was a question from the powerful weekly question.  G. K. Chesterton wrote: praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul.  And I say — yes, yes, it totally could be!

Many years ago, I watched a soap opera, The Days of Our Lives.  It had a tag line: like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.  Today I would like to “bogart” that phrase and say — like sands through the hour glass, so are the Days of Our Love.

It’s a brand new shiny day stretched before you.  What shall you fill it with?  How about noticing what you love?  What lights you up from the inside out?  What delights you?  What makes you smile?  Notice and nurture it.  This is the essence of animating this life we are living.  And to feed and water what we love in life is to flow energy in the direction of that which feeds our heart and soul.

There was a book entitled Happy For No Reason.  It speaks of giving out awards, not necessarily literally but noticing and praising, either out loud or silently.  The best smile of the day.  The most beautiful flower of the day.  The most vocal bird of the day.  The most engaging store clerk of the day.  You get the idea, noticing the little, simple things.

While up in the Cascades I noticed there was a variety of pine that we don’t often see in the lower elevations.  Their needles were inches upon inches long.  One evening I watched as the sun went down, how the light hit the pines just so.  How it glistened on the tips of the needles as a gentle breeze brought forth clusters of sparkles.  I loved that moment of noticing just that and I’m still milking that one tiny moment.

It’s the simple things in life calling us to it.  Some days we want to run and leap into its arms.  Other days it calls us gently, softly with a whisper barely audible but always there, beckoning us forward.

Breathe deep and gather in the fragrance of all that lies before you today.  For none of it means anything until, with our own unique brand of attention to it, we give it dimension and depth.  Perhaps the richest discoveries of all lie in the simple, the trivial, the once easily overlooked.

]]> http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2010/08/09/days-of-our-love/feed/ 4 Beth/Bethie getbent http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2010/07/12/poking/ http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2010/07/12/poking/#comments Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:20:59 +0000 heartsdeesire http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/?p=2877 ]]>

Been listening to Abe, the most recent, for just a bit today.  I wondered how long I was going to poke around in the problem/solution before I was done.  Then I thought I better quit poking unless I want said problem/solution bigger.

Then of course it occurs to me this “better quit poking” is all about control/fear.  I cop to all of it being about control/fear.  I get up in the middle of the night, open the shades to check outside and make sure there isn’t what? a boogeyman out there.  Some new contrast to come bite me in the ass, when I’m not looking, so if I look it will bite less? :)

This whole idea that I have to glean some message out of what happened, learn the lesson, grok it, understand it, make sure I expand out of it, is also all about control/fear.  As if, if I really get the lesson, I pass go and I won’t be sent back to contrast jail.  Perhaps I’ll visit but I won’t miss my turn.  So there.  :)

I am still poking around, I guess.  When my Mom said don’t touch the stove, it’s hot, I had to check to make sure.  However, this is not the same as putting my hand in the fire.  I am just checking/poking around in temperature levels, got that Universe?  Good.

Bless my little pea-pickin’ fearful self.  What I really want to do is pluck the full ripe blossoms and let the juices spill out over the corners of my mouth.  I want pea-pickin’ fearful girl to fall away and slip off of me like so much of nothing.

This side of heaven, where do you suppose this side of heaven is?

“It’s not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It’s far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain.”

So said the rubyslipper-ed one just before she sung that unforgettable song: Over the Rainbow.

Behind the moon, beyond the rain…is it really that far away?  Or is it found within each of us?  Is it found in between the spaces of
judgment about ourselves – that field that Rumi spoke of?
Is it found in opening to our innate creativity?  Is it where our
dreams lie?  Where imagination comes alive?  Is it in the little
forgivenesses we give ourselves and others?

Is it in that moment we took to consciously take a breath?  Is it now, when I end this entry, step outside, look up, look around, point my face to the sun, breathe in the beauty of today and stay there for a good long time?

Unencumbered
Free
Free to just simply
be

“… flare up like flame and make big shadows I can move in …” ~ Rilke

I was noticing that trust and truth share the first three letters “tru”.  I went searching for the origins and etymology of both words, trust and truth, and found that they share in common one word — faithful.  I began to explore then how trust and truth might be linked and to what and whom is it that I am faithful.

Recently I’ve written about how I’ve diminished my own authority in the world.  This is to not trust in the truth of who I am, it is instead to negate it.   And here’s the rub: I have so much authority that I even have the authority to diminish my own authority.  I have had all the authority all along.  I am the author of my life.  I have the power to play it small or play it big.  I have the power to make myself weak or strong, meek or bold, broken or whole.  I can choose to self censor and diminish myself.  I can choose its opposite too.

So I’ve been playing a little game of smoke and mirrors.  I’ve been so powerful I could pretend I was weak.  It’s a myth I have created that I was ever less than, a myth of my own making.  I have both the power to bind myself in chains and the power to relieve myself of them, too.

I had it a bit backwards when I said in my 30 day challenge I would speak my truth, I would honor it, I would not defer it, explain it or stuff it.  I put the proverbial cart before the horse.  Guess what?  I can’t really know my truth until I know myself.  And I mean “know” myself in terms of not denying myself.  This means trusting in a greater truth, trusting in the fullness, the wholeness of all that I really am and remaining faithful to that truth.

Joseph Campbell has said the privilege of a lifetime is in being who you are.  I am feeling that life is too short for me to deny myself that privilege even for one moment longer.

I went to see Karate Kid yesterday.  It’s not the usual genre of movies that I am attracted to but I did enjoy it.  Yes, it is a tad bit predictable, even so I cried and cheered as I often do for the “underdog”.  The movie has many themes: strength, stillness, focus, discipline, attitude, and respect yet it was the backdrop of Eastern spiritualism that caught my attention the most.  Here are three ideas from the movie that I wanted to expound on:

1)  You see with your eyes you are easy to fool.  Don’t see it, feel it.

Yes, “feel it” this is the sixth sense, also known as intuition, gut instinct.  It means moving from a deeper sense of who we are, not limited by the five senses but expanded through our knowing that we are connected to something greater, something on the side of goodness and beauty, something both wonderful and mysterious.  Through Spirit, daily we are moved upon.  Only when I forget, when I think I have to tough it out all on my own, do I suffer and separate myself from all that is good, beautiful and working on my behalf every moment of every day.

2)  Kung Fu lives in how we treat people.

I love this and I would add that it’s also in how we treat ourselves.  Are we friendly to ourselves, do we respect ourselves, do we honor ourselves, our truth, our needs?  Is our inner world a friendly one, a peaceful one?  As within, so without.

3)  When life knocks you down, you can choose to get up again.

I might say it a little differently — there is what happens in life and then there is who we are when the stuff of life comes knocking at our door.  Who are we when we answer that door?  Who are we when life throws us a ball out of left field?  Who do we want to be then?

This is who I want to be — one who remembers nos. 1 and 2 of her 30 Day Challenge.  Whatever it is, let me greet it with an open heart, allow me to remember I am right where I am supposed to be.  Let me know from deep inside where it counts, that the Universe has my back always, no matter what.  Grant that I be ever mindful of a Universe that sometimes turns left to go right.  Who knows what is in store for me when I am willing to suspend judgment that something bad is happening.  Allow me to trust in a Universe that is continually expanding and unfolding.  Grant that I remember no fact, no circumstance has the power to compel me to hand over my personal Well Being.

If life should knock me down, grant that I remember I am held and supported by something much greater than mere circumstances.  Let me know, as I walk into what may sometimes feel like the void of the unknown that I never, ever walk alone.

It’s Juneuary in Seattle. I kid you not.  And I knew I would have to let in my sunshine before the sun actually did shine and I did and it hasn’t but I have. LOL.  But first I got in my car and screamed as loud as I could, f@*k you rain over and over again, until I felt better.  But it was only a little better.  Eventually I had to let go of needing it to be different for me to feel good.  And let go I did.  Again.

My sun loving self has been here before and maybe I’ll be here again.  What. ev. er.   What. ev. er. is my new I’m-an-up-and-coming-allower phrase.  So next time you guys are sweltering, think of me, fires lit, homemade soup on the stove, finding the sweet spot anyway… in Juneuary.

While out visiting family in Pennsylvania, I found a great store with a huge purse collection and decided it was time for a new purse.  There was much deliberation, read — I was in there forever.  These things do take consideration. It’s practically a marriage, albeit a temporary one, purchasing a new purse.   Finally I settled on one.  It was smaller than what I had been using but so adoreable I just had to have it.  I convinced myself I didn’t need everything that was in my current purse.  Little did I recognize at the time just how much I would have to downsize with this new, small “adoreable” purse.

As I was downsizing and sorting piles of keep this and don’t keep this, I came across an old collection of what I affectionately call “well being cards”.   Those of you who have followed this blog since forever have read a couple of posts related to well being cards.  I was surprised to realize I had been collecting a version of well being cards since my days of trekking over to the Kripula yoga center in the late 90s.  Anyway, my point and I do have one, is this one card I found — it’s Abraham and it really got my attention, it was a keeper for sure.  It reads:

“Focus on what you are flowing instead of what is being flowed to you.”

Later in the week, I had an issue with a relative.  I dubbed her a “taker”.  Since it was me having the issue with her and she’s a taker in my mind, then what does that make me?  A victim.

So now I’ve got my panties in a wad over this and I’m never content to stay there.  I pondered where do I go from here?  Should I make a list of her positive aspects?  Oh no, in that moment, I was so far from being able to genuinely list any positive aspects about her.  That’s when I remembered the quote.  Focus on what you are flowing instead of what is being flowed to you.  The moment I remembered and practiced it, it brought me instant relief.  It led me back to my center.

Reacting to the stuff of life, people and situations is what my teacher calls “too much with the world”.  Too much with the world is a highly reactive stance.  It’s the proverbial blade of grass blowing which ever way the wind blows.  It knocks me off balance every time I allow myself to be too much with the world.  It’s living life from the outside in instead of living it from the inside out.

A reactive response to the world is to give my power away.  Focusing on what I am flowing over what is being flowed to me is an empowering stance.  It is to pull back and reclaim my power.  And so that’s what I practiced.  Then it was easy to see her positive aspects.  I didn’t however, have to sit down and make myself list her positive traits.  It just flowed naturally, once I practiced focusing on what I was flowing.

My husband was upset about something today.  Bless his heart, he doesn’t listen to Abraham or read any of the metaphysical stuff I do but he is always open to it.  I told him about the quote and how I applied it, he also found instant relief.

Remembering a recent quote I posted here from a Carlos Castaneda book: “Before you choose a path, ask yourself if the path has heart.  If it does, it will go well.  If it doesn’t, you’ll destroy it, to start again.”  Living life from the inside out is my path to personal freedom and most definitely a path that has heart.