In Hebrew, the word Noach (Noah), means “to be comfortable.” This should already tell us a little bit about the energy that exists in the cosmos this week, and how we can grow spiritually from it.
We read in the Torah, “The earth was also corrupt before God, and the earth was full of violence. God looked upon the earth and saw it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their ways.”
There are a great many acts the people of the world were engaging in during the time of Noach that had separated them from the Light of the Creator, but if we were to wrap it up in a single word: comfort. They had given up walking the spiritual path. They wanted something easier.
One of the things we learn in our classes at the Kabbalah Centre is that we cannot make spiritual progress when we remain in our comfort zone – when we look forthe easy way out, gratifying our ego instead of listening to the longings of our souls.
To step out of our comfort zones so that we may progress spiritually means something different for each of us. For instance, one who has combative nature, always trying to get their point across and getting in someone’s face, may need to get a little uncomfortable by standing down and allowing others their way without needing to interject. Yet, for one who is prone to letting people walk all over him or her, their spiritual progress would be made by speaking up and standing their ground.
The sages teach us the flood which happened during the generation of Noah was named after him. Why would the Creator name such a disaster after a righteous person? Because even for Noah, the most righteous man of his generation, there was more spiritual work to be done. Noah may have done everything the Creator told him to do. He may have said all his prayers, but he did not cry for those who were destined to die in the rising waters.
There is an energy in the cosmos during these next seven days that can give us a push in a new direction. This week, we have the ability to go outside of the boxes we create for ourselves, and to take our first step into a big, beautiful new world. All that is required of us is that we step out of our comfort zone and walk in the direction of our spiritual growth. If you are prone to isolation, try being with people this week. If you are always multi-tasking, try giving the important things in life – like your family, kids, and interactions with others – your full attention. If there is someone in your life you have been judging harshly, make the effort to give them the benefit of the doubt.
It takes courage and determination to walk the spiritual path, and yes it is often uncomfortable, but it also leads to a much more enduring sense of fulfillment.
This week, let leaving the comfort zone be your true North.
Wishing you a blessed week,
Karen
Monday, 31 October 2016
Freedom
"Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice one is not a person but a member, an instrument, a thing." Archibald MacLeish
Spirituality involves the freedom to change. Growth requires a variety of choices. My past addiction was a life of slavery because it removed my creative choice and left me obsessing about drugs and alcohol. My life, conversation, and thoughts revolved around the bottle, and I was oblivious to the true meaning of life. My freedom to experience the spiritual power of God's creativity was lost in the mindless craving for drugs. In this sense, drug addiction is slavery. Today I am free to see God's world in people, places, and things. Now I make the choice to live, love, and laugh.
I am growing in my awareness of Your multifaceted love for me.
We Are Beings of Light (OM)
Beyond the Physical
It is through our connection to our light that we know things
beyond what the visible world can tell us.
We are all beings of light. Put another way, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. As children, most of us know this, but other human beings who have forgotten what they really are and who cannot help us to know ourselves train us to forget. As a result, we are led to believe that magic is not real, that our invisible playmates do not really exist, and that we are limited beings with only one earthly life to live. There is enormous pressure to conform to this concept of ourselves and so we lose touch with our full potential, forgetting that we are beings of light.
At this time, many of us are reawakening to the truth of who we are, because we are living amidst such large-scale changes in the world. We need to access this light in order to not only survive but thrive as we shift into a new order of consciousness. As the changes around us proceed in rapid progression, we will want to be able to trust our own ability to sense what is happening and how we can best respond. We are no longer living in a predictable world in which we can trust external authority figures and prior ideas about reality to guide us. We need to be able to access the information that will help us navigate these uncertain waters, and the ultimate authority resides in our awareness of ourselves as beings of light.
It is through our connection to this light that we know things beyond what the visible world can tell us, and we see things beyond what the physical world reveals. In order to access this wisdom, we can simply allow ourselves to remember that we are not limited, as we have been taught. In fact, we are filled with divine grace and power that is ours for the asking. A daily practice of tuning into this vast potential, conversing with it, and offering ourselves up to it opens the door through which we can reclaim our true identity, taking ownership of the calling that the time has come to create bliss on earth.
Stranger Things meets Peanuts! {Hilarious Mash-Up}
Oh. My. Goodness.
when I saw this headline today, I had to click immediately: “Stranger Things Meets Peanuts in Christmas-Themed Video.”
I’m a huge Peanuts fan (I mean, really, who doesn’t love Snoopy?), and I also recently enjoyed watching Season 1 of the Netflix special Stranger Things. (Creepy show with homage to 80s horror flicks—plus Winona Rider? I mean…)
Oh, this is just too much fun, quirky goodness:
**And bonus, random tidbit—per the Peanuts Movie facebook page: “Did you know that the voice of Charlie Brown—our very own Noah Schnapp—plays Will Byers in “Stranger Things”?! Coincidence?!? Stranger Things have happened (see what we did there…).”
Well, my oh my, that is indeed a bit uncanny! Who else can’t wait for Season 2? (And the next Peanuts parody, heh.)
~
Nine Things to get us Through the “Worst Time of our Life.”
A young woman I know just went through an overwhelming crisis.
It wasn’t life-threatening, but it was lifestyle-threatening, life-as-you-know-it-threatening, and life-may-not-ever-be-the-same-threatening.
It involved lack of employment, lack of wages, lack of health care, lack of a vehicle and even lack of housing.
Let’s just say that, in the great American way—where so many people have so much to lose—she’d lost everything.
It was overwhelming and terrifying and caused many people around her to freeze.
She, however, did not freeze. In fact, as the saying goes, “When the going got tough, she got going.”
I’ve known this young woman for a long time, and I don’t think she ever thought of herself as tough.
While she may not have been quite ready to hear about her strengths, so relieved was she to have made it to the other shore that all she wanted to do was rest there for a while. But I made a note of these strengths so that I wouldn’t forget.
May it be a guide to others in times of crisis:
1) She took one step at a time, asking herself, “What is the next thing that has to happen and how can I make it happen?”
2) She just kept putting one foot in front of the other, even if she didn’t seem to be gaining much ground. I remember her telling me, “If I stop moving I’ll fall. I don’t want to fall.”
3) She kept it simple. “I’ll just do this,” she said many times. “It’s a simple, easy thing to do.”
4) She swallowed her pride. “I had to call on my family for help. I never thought I would have to do that, but in the circumstances I was in, it was the only thing I could do.”
5) She didn’t criticize anyone or blame anyone else. “What good would it do to be angry with this person or that person?” She said, ”It won’t solve any problems. Maybe later I’ll get angry. But now, it won’t help matters.”
6) She never felt sorry for herself. Never said anything like, “Why did this happen to me?” or anything of the sort. If she thought that, she didn’t give it voice.
7) She surrounded herself with people who didn’t blame her or criticize her for being in the situation she found herself in, distancing herself from anyone who didn’t in some way help keep her lifeboat afloat. “I just can’t be around those people,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to keep from going under emotionally.”
8) She watched for indications that she was in the flow or that she would ultimately get where she was going, and she didn’t question the signals. When she got a green light, she celebrated: “Can you believe it? The guy said he would wait to get paid for the car repairs!” When she got a red light, she turned and went another direction. “The rent on that place was too steep and they wanted a credit check. I’m not going down that credit check route, it will just depress me.”
9) She had resilience. Rather than letting failure overcome her, she “found a way to soldier on and rise from the ashes.”
I myself have never been through such a thorough stripping of everything that was familiar to me. I’ve been divorced twice, but each time I had a soft landing. I’ve been without a job, but each time it was of my own choosing. I’ve even been without my health, but not in a way that left me without hope.
I was inspired by her.
“You’ve really come through something,” I told her many months later when the storm was over.
“I don’t know how I did it,” she claimed.
I believe that one day my friend will look back on what she called “the worst time of her life” and acknowledge the woman she was at the time and just how many personal strengths and gifts it took to get her and her family to the other side of the ravine.
I believe that one day she will look back and see that as a result she has become a mighty woman, the woman she is today.
I believe that she has been changed forever.
~
Author: Carmelene Siani
Four Pieces of Buddhist Wisdom to Put an End to Suffering.
“As within, so without; as above, so below.” ~ Hermes Trismegistus.
Last year in India, I stayed with a family in Leh Ladakh for one month.
I spent most of my time with the mother of the house, Tsewang, and her mother-in-law, Padma. Padma has been ill for seven years. She sat still all day long in her chair. She wasn’t even able to communicate with others. If she needed something, she’d moan for help.
One day, as I was having tea with Tsewang, I asked her about Padma’s illness. Tsewang chuckled and said:
“She’s fine. It’s all in her mind. Her sickness is her mind.”
I was startled by Tsewang’s answer. Then, she added:
“She can talk, walk, and eat by herself if she wants to. But, she doesn’t want to. She’s always worried about her family. Her mind is sick, not her. She’s physically okay.”
As I spent more time watching Padma, I figured out that Tsewang was right. I could actually see that at times Padma would eat by herself or talk.
In other words, she was happy when her mind was happy.
This year in India I learned more about the powerful instrument that we possess—the mind. It is believed in Buddhism that the mind is the object that creates our reality, including our health.
Buddhism ascertains that the cause of disease is our mental defilements.
I researched this idea during my stay in Tushita Meditation Center earlier this year. I read a couple of books about Lama Yeshe, the founder of Tushita.
Yeshe died in 1984. I felt a strong urge to investigate his death and to apply what I’d learned about the cause of disease from the Buddhist point of view. One day, I stumbled upon an old newspaper in the Gompa that tackled the story of his death and his reincarnation. It turned out that Lama Yeshe had severe rheumatic heart disease. Patients who live with this disease, have a very short period of time to live as the blood isn’t correctly distributed to the rest of the body.
Lama Yeshe’s doctors suggested replacing the damaged valve with an artificial one. Lama Yeshe refused the treatment, and to my surprise he lived for 20 years after he was first diagnosed.
In one of the discussions of Lama Yeshe with his students, he said:
“Since a long time Western doctors have said I’d be dead three years ago but they know nothing of psychic energy and this magical illusory body. I’ll be here for a looooong time!”
Lama Yeshe’s story stunned me and I could actually link it to Padma’s case. Padma wasn’t physically ill and yet, she was unhappy. On the other hand, Lama Yeshe was actually physically ill, but happily; he lived longer.
I asked myself: Why is one person healthy and the other unhealthy? Why is one person happy and the other sad? Why is someone successful and another one a failure?
Truth be told, some are in control of their minds whilst others are not.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Lama Yeshe’s student, explains that in order to understand physical, mental and emotional suffering, we must first understand their prime causes. Any problem, even sickness, is the creation of the mind and it will manifest if we don’t heal its cause.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche gives an example about skin cancer. It is believed that skin cancer is caused by prolonged exposure to the sun. But, if this notion stands true, then all of us would have skin cancer. Exposure to sunlight is a condition for skin cancer but not the main cause. The main cause is internal and not external: it is the mind. For people who have the cause of skin cancer in their mind, exposure to the sun becomes a condition to develop skin cancer.
When we understand the nature of our mind and accept that it’s the main cause of suffering, we can better understand that healing also comes from the mind.
Buddhism explains that healing through external means isn’t the best solution because the cause of suffering isn’t external. Since the cause is internal, then the cure must come from the inside.
Lama Yeshe’s wisdom on how to put an end to our suffering:
1. Have faith. In order to heal on any level, we must believe that we will be healed. When we hear the word “faith,” religion directly comes to mind. But, in fact, faith has nothing to do with religion. In The Power of our Subconscious Mind, Joseph Murphy puts it this way:
“The Buddhist, the Christian, the Muslim, and the Jew may all get answers to their prayers, in spite of the enormous differences among their stated beliefs. How can this be? The answer is that it is not because of the particular creed, religion, ritual, ceremony, or offerings, but solely because of belief or mental acceptance and receptivity about that for which they pray.The law of life is the law of belief. Belief can be summed up briefly as a thought in your mind. As a person thinks, feels, and believes, so is the condition of his mind, body, and circumstances.”
2. Stop labeling. Buddhists believe that everything verbal we say becomes a reality. The reason is that words pulsate with vibrations, and the universe (with its bigger cosmic energy) responds to these verbal vibrations. It doesn’t matter whether they’re good or bad, or whether we want them to happen or not.
Anything that we label, we bring to life. Everything is created through labeling, even disease. To stop disease from manifesting, we must refrain from creating it through verbal labeling.
3. Meditation. The best cure for any kind of suffering is to use our mind correctly. Let’s take sickness, for example. Some diseases have no cure at all or are difficult to cure. But, those who practice meditation will definitely see some results. Even if they’re not entirely cured of their disease, they at least live longer (like in Lama Yeshe’s case). The reason is because meditation works on the level of the mind and the mind is essential for healing if we wish to eradicate the causes of our sickness.
White Light Healing Meditation can also be very effective during times of physical suffering.
4. Be compassionate. Never underestimate the power of compassion. Lama Zopa Rinpoche ascertains that a compassionate person heals himself—and others—simply by existing. The proof is that when we’re sick and a compassionate person visits us, we feel quite happy and healthy; it is because we have picked up his positive vibrations that are full of compassion.
Being compassionate makes miracles. When we’re full of love and kindness, we automatically remove any shortcoming that is causing us suffering.
~
Source: Ultimate Healing, Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
Bonus:
~
~
Author: Elyane Youssef
You’ll Never want to Go to the Grocery Store Again.
The 100-Mile Meal Challenge.
An awesome book came out a few years ago, written by a couple who lived just a short boat ride away from me.
They were environmental enthusiasts and foodies, and also two very cool people who wanted to leave less of an impact on our beautiful earth.
They set out to do something they called the “100-mile diet.” This meant that for one year they would only consume foods that came from within 100 miles of their home. The book described their journey and how their lives evolved because of it.
I was inspired.
I decided that for one delicious meal I would give myself and my family our own “100-mile diet” challenge and source every single ingredient this same way. I, too, wanted to be gentler on my planet, and I was curious to have a conversation about the food I was eating in hopes of more mindfully digesting the connection between consumption, sustainability and community.
To begin my 100-mile meal, I went down to the local Saturday farmers’ market in late September.
As I strolled to the market, I thought about the impact of globalization on our food consumption and security, because let’s be honest, it’s easy to pop into the grocery store and buy whatever we want when we want it, but this choice has some negative ripple effects.
Farmers’ markets have been a regular stop for me throughout my adult life. While the prices are higher than at the grocery store, the benefits to buying locally run way deeper than nutrition.
I once brought a friend with me who couldn’t get over the fact that I spent eight dollars on one squash—while later that evening I watched him spend 70 dollars on his non-local dinner and drinks…
Anyways, back to the story.
For my 100-mile meal, I purchased a beef roast, a kabocha squash, garlic, onions, an organic salad mix, zucchini, Japanese turnip and red and yellow peppers.
Several of the farmers at the market are acquaintances now, so we chatted while I bought their goods and I listened as they describe how hard and lovingly they worked to grow them. I understood how my purchase directly supported their livelihoods, which is a different feeling than promoting massive grocery store chains.
There I saw the connection of land to food and livelihood, and I felt a web of potential community building.
Small-scale farmers are able to feed and nourish their entire families with their own nutritious bounty, no matter what is going on in our economy. Now that is food security. On the island where I live, we only have three days’ worth of food stores to live off of if our outside sources are cut off, so our local farmers are a precious commodity.
When I got home, I prepared my local beef by stuffing it with garlic and placing it in a roasting pan with sliced onions. I made a salad with the rest of the vegetables, sprinkled local sea-salt on it and later tossed it in a bit of the jus from the roast. I knew not to worry about the lack of spices, as freshness and quality lend plenty of flavor.
As we ate this 100-mile meal, my mother and I talked about what we tasted: the red peppers were pungent, the turnip was aromatic, the beef was rich and the lettuce was moist. Besides that, we spoke about the farmers we both knew, how they were doing and what eating local food grown by our community feels like.
When I tallied up the miles of each ingredient for our meal, it worked out to 122—not bad when we consider that just one tomato from Mexico travels over 1,000 miles to get to our grocery store (now that’s a carbon footprint!).
One of my horticultural friends once said to me, “The most revolutionary thing you can do, Sarah, is to buy locally-grown food.” I didn’t entirely understand what she meant then, but I did think about it while participating in my 100-mile meal challenge, and I’ve tried to dissect it.
When we make the choice to purchase locally, we step out of the mass, globalized food industry. We take our money and energy and we put it directly back into our community instead.
As we choose to keep our resources close to home, we foster deeper relationships with each other and our environment. We make a difference to our planet, our community and local economy by the consumer choices we make.
Are we up for it, this opportunity to make positive change?
If the answer is yes, why not try your own 100-mile meal challenge and see what it brings—it may make you feel so good you won’t want to shop at a grocery store ever again!
~
Author: Sarah Norrad
Lessons of the Leaves: For My Son in Deep Autumn.
The air is crisp but not cold, the perfect in-between of autumn.
My seven-year-old son’s hand finds mine, like a reflex. I smile at the automaticness, the naturalness of it, then instantly wonder—how much longer will this last? How many more times will he hold my hand? 200? 33?
Leaves crunch under our feet, and my eyes take in the river we walk alongside. The smooth water reflects the pumpkin and lemon hues of the turning leaves—smudges of orange, green, yellow and crimson. I’ve forgotten how much I need the woods, the way my breath deepens, my heart slows and my mind calms when I am cradled by moss and sky instead of dishes and to-do lists.
These are the moments of parenting that we wait for, the sweet hours of grace that make all the hard moments worth it—the stilted sleep, the tantrums, the encroached edges of our patience. I am doing something I love with my boy, and it is worth the wait.
“Race ya,” he says, dropping my hand, then darting across a wooden bridge. His voice returns me to the moment. I jog across after him, our feet clapping across the bridge, but he’s too fast. “I win,” he says, a wide grin stretching across his face. Somehow, over the last year or so, he’s outpaced me.
His skin is lighter than mine, but still holds the easy tan of summer. I think of how alike we are: our intensity, our sensitivity, our single-mindedness. And how different—he is fast and physical and observant—I am slow and dwell in my own thoughts so often I could barely tell you what color our house is.
Minutes later, we come to another bridge, and again he’s too quick for me. Over and over again we race across the bleached bridges. “Be careful,” I want to say each time, but each time, he avoids tripping over snarls of roots.
He is growing up.
He is not the baby who cried and cried, the toddler who scooted instead of crawled, or the feisty preschooler. He is not even the kindergartner just learning to make letters into words, into stories. He is seven: he makes plays on words, he talks to adults with ease, he knows more about football than I do.
He is becoming himself.
We all do this, but never have I watched it up close like this before, never have I been both blessed and broken by it.
We stop for a few minutes next to the river, and he finds a tiny lavender piece of chalk perched on a boulder. He writes his name with it, then hands it to me. I write my name next to his. I wonder if this rock will hold this memory of us, this day, this gratitude, this rushing love, after the next rain falls, after all the leaves crush into the ground, then vanish, forgotten.
Back on the trail, he spots another bridge and sprints toward it. I start to run, my son’s backpack slapping against my shoulders. I feel my middle age in the pit of my spine, knowing I will feel it even more tomorrow. “Punk,” I say, laughing, when he beats me across the bridge again. “Punk,” he says back. We slow our pace back to a walk, saying, “punk” to each other over and over again, sliding into our own language out of the simple four-letter-word. We belong to each other, I think. For always, of course, but like this? This sweet, funny, racing across bridges, this seven-year-old version of him? This 42-year-old version of me? That is only ours in this moment.
I have never loved like this before. I am struck with the urge to tell him all of this, but there aren’t really words, so I tuck it all into my heart, I quietly beg my body to remember these beautiful, green moments deep in my bones, to remember the fullness, this season of love and sweat, that will never come again.
I want to tell him how we all shed ourselves over and over again, just like the sweep of trees above us, and that I will hold this version of him, the one who runs across bridges and has a whole conversation using only the word punk, who still holds his mama’s hand—I want to tell him I will hold him always. I will remember this for him, or at the very least I will write it down. I want to tell him that the trees make shedding ourselves look so graceful in the last cling of autumn, so luscious, that you don’t see the ache of bald branches where the leaves used to be. You don’t see how hard it is to let go, over and over again.
I want to tell him all of this but it’s not time.
Instead of words, I reach out my hand, and he takes it.
~
Author: Lynn Shattuck
Sunday, 30 October 2016
NUGGETS OF WISDOM - 60
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"You are not to attack the old ways; you are skillfully to
put the leaven of new truth in the midst of the old beliefs. Let the Spirit of
Truth do his own work." - The Teachings of Jesus
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· “A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”—William Shakespeare· "True goodness is like water in that it blesses everything and harms nothing. And like water, true goodness seeks the lowest places, even those levels
which others avoid." – Taoism· “There are good ships and wood ships, ships that sail the sea, but the best ships are friendships, may they always be!”—Irish Proverb· "The life after death is no different in the essentials than the mortal existence. Everything we do in this life which is good contributes directly to the enhancement of the future life."· “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”—C.S. Lewis· "The fetish of factualized truth, fossilized truth, the iron band of so-called unchanging truth, holds one blindly in a closed circle of cold fact. One can be technically right as to fact and everlastingly wrong in the truth."· "[It is] the quality of unselfishness revealed in disinterested labor for the welfare of one's earthly fellows, particularly worthy beings in need and in distress, that is the real measure of planetary greatness. And the manifestation of greatness on a world like Urantia is the exhibition of self-control."· “Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.”—Etty Hillesum· “Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.”—Albert Schweitzer· "Spiritual assurance is the equivalent of your personal religious experience in the eternal realities of divine truth and is otherwise equal to your intelligent understanding of truth realities plus your spiritual faith and minus
your honest doubts." – Jesus· “Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.”—Dr. Wayne Dyer· "Every mortal who thinks righteously, speaks nobly, and acts unselfishly shall not only enjoy virtue here during this brief life but shall also, after the dissolution of the body, continue to enjoy the delights of heaven." - Buddhism· “We look forward to the time when the power to love will replace the love of power. Then will our world know the blessing of peace.”—William Gladstone· “It is our purpose and destiny to bring a new dimension into this world by living in conscious oneness with the totality and conscious alignment with universal intelligence.” - Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth· “I am the reflection of my Source, which is magnificent in all ways.”
Nature
Nothing is evil which is according to nature. -Marcus Aurelius
Oscar Wilde once said that a book is not good or bad; it is either well written or not. Sometimes we think that something is evil because it is different. Gay people have suffered from prejudice, as have people of color. Today more people understand that what God created is not evil. Our true nature is never evil. And there is a wonderful tapestry to life. This is the theme of Say Yes to Your Spirit. The things from God are true and real; they are blessed.
I embrace the full implications of my nature.
Let’s Get Intimate: Hate is Ruining my Relationships. {Adult Q & A}
.
Q. I am 22, and for the last two years, I have started hating humans so much that I don’t see anything attractive in anyone.
This is hard and negative for me because I feel so much loss of community. It’s like I do not want to talk to anyone or make any friends. I’d rather talk openly with the old ones. I just can’t trust anyone. Can you help?
.
A. To begin, I would ask if you recently experienced an opening of your heart to someone who was not able to receive you?
To put it bluntly, were you emotionally hurt by someone? The renunciation of human interaction doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Nor does it happen overnight. Somewhere along the line—and not that long ago—it’s likely you reached out for connection and were denied.
What happened over the last two years?
The answer to this question is likely the key to your problem. Since I cannot sit with you and hear your answer, I hope that you will find a mental health professional you trust who will sit with you and listen. What I can do here is offer you a few general ideas about the lack of faith in other human beings that might lead you to the dissolution of trust—and how to create it again.
What’s love got to do with it?
First, I need to address that this is a relationship advice column. Perhaps some readers might wonder what the inability to connect to others has to do with intimacy. The answer is: everything.
In many of my articles, I stress that the first step to loving others is to develop love within yourself. Not an easy thing to master or even undertake as a project, but it is key. When we do not have self-love, we seek approval and connection with others as a substitute for the foundation of love. It’s a bit like building a house for humans using the base materials for a bird’s nest. It works well for the bird, but by borrowing someone else’s source of strength (in this case, bits of string and twig), your human house will become faulty and weak—especially as it grows in size and more strain is put upon it.
When we seek fulfillment from outside ourselves as the main source of connection to others, we are bound to be disappointed. No one person or group can reflect the positivity we need to see in the world. That basic fulfillment must come from within.
Inside out and outside in.
Once we are generally in communion with ourselves and our place in the world—using the anchors of connection to nature, the divine, the grand scientific schema, or whatever roots us in existence—we are ready to venture out into the world of communion with others. We bring on our hero’s journey the kitbag full of sustenance (e.g., self-awareness, joyfulness, healthy boundaries, values and morals). If we take this adventure into the world of others without these supplies, we are left defenseless and vulnerable to suffering.
With our self-developed strengths in tow, however, we can meet other human beings where they are. We can see their pain as different, but equal to our own. This is compassion. We move, in effect, from inside out to outside in.
The tried and true.
You mention that the people with whom you prefer to talk openly are your old friends. In all honesty, I see nothing wrong with this. In fact, I would count these tried and trusted friends as part of your armament of strength. These are the human beings (I’m assuming they are human!) who have been there for you, been your support and source of affirmation.
I will remind you that there was a time when you did not know them. In other words, they too were once strangers to you, just as the new people you are encountering now are strangers to you. Your approach may need to shift, your expectations may need to adjust. But you can make connections. You did it before and will do it once again.
Granted, not every person is able to meet us where we are. Not every soul is compatible with us on our path. That doesn’t mean we need to lose faith in all of them, however.
Be the seeker.
Your job, if you care to accept it, is to keep your feelers reaching out for those who speak your soul language. Find your people. It may take longer than it did in the past. That’s because you are older and wiser and the world around you has changed. Keep searching for your circle. Likely, they are looking for you as well. When you find each other, person by person, celebrate and cherish each other. Let your strength radiate outward and be a salve for those who are suffering.
Instead of expending energy in hatred of others, turn love inward on yourself. Let it fill you, spill out and move you on your quest to unite with like minds. Your gut will know which ones are worth investing in deeply as friends, which are better suited to gentle, distant acquaintanceships, and which are not ready to be part of your circle at all. Take this path deliberately and with love in your heart, and is likely that you will then rediscover community with your human siblings.
Happy loving!
~
Author: Rachel Astarte
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