Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Seeking Truth

Tonight's astrological insight: "Hectic emotional energy.  Your emotions are not in tune with the more sensitive and private areas of your life."

I have a lot of Mars transits happening simultaneously.  Which simply means my energies are high - a little too much so, in that there's a bit more going on that I can process in my usual way.  And this happens from time-to-time, and always offers its own unique challenges. 

I can only stay in a place of disquiet for so long, nurse my insecurities or uncertainties or hesitancies so long, and then it's time to move forward and move on.  I am a Libra, and no matter how out of balance I get, it's always time to swing back in another direction.  I cannot stay stagnant and stuck, even in my own creation.

I need the fresh breeze of change, the new air of challenge, the possibility of something that had never been before becoming reality.

I am not a thrill-seeker.  I don't seek out adrenaline rushes or excitement.  But I love the sense of adventure in uncovering the truth, of discovering the hidden reality behind appearances, of sleuthing through the way things seem and finding out the way things are.

It it scary and exciting and liberating, this truth-seeking.  And it is satisfying down deep in my soul.  And I can see the places where I'm attached to my own desires when I'm afraid of the truth, but sometimes that is just how things are, and I'm ok with that too.

I have no need to be brutalized by the truth - to be scarred or wounded, and mostly it's my friend, giving me insight I crave, even if it's sometimes at the expense of comfort.  But mostly it's only at the expense of things that are ready to fall away in my life anyway. 

I hope I am not reckless or feckless or otherwise careless with the things requiring the utmost care, that my love for truth isn't in opposition to genuine care for the heart and soul of another human being.

G*d resides in Truth, pure and powerful, and also a place of the greatest love, gentleness and comfort, so I know this is possible, to experience all of it together.  I just have a lot more to learn before I can manage all of it myself.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

G*d's Presence

With a great deal of hopeful enthusiasm, I gave my heart and soul to G*d at a young age, and like any naive young woman feeling completed by love, I surrendered it willingly.  And while I took it back a time or two, the purity of surrender to G*d seemed to make everything required for that surrender worthwhile.

And then I realized that in what I had considered surrender to G*d, I had also surrendered so much of my self.  Not that I had given it to G*d, but simply that I had let it become almost transparent, almost invisible, so that I was a shadow of myself, not the more full and complete vision of who I could become that I had had so long ago.

So I gathered myself up and collected everything I could find, every shadowy grey, every bit of what was left, and began breathing life and color back into me.  Like some deflated balloon being filled with air, I have been returning to a dimensional self I'm not sure I have ever been.  And it's been very good.

But now - now I find that it isn't just about my life with G*d versus my life without.  It's about inviting G*d's presence into this life, not choosing between the two, like some artificial requirement to split the spiritual apart from the rest.


The energetic cord of connection that binds me so deeply to my humanity is the same energetic cord that elevates my very same humanity in spiritual communion with G*d.  While you can distinguish the roots from the stem from the leaves in a plant, and they have their own separate function, they are all part of one whole, without which no life whatsoever would be possible.


At the same time I am planting myself more deeply in the rich soil of life, I am reaching up fully to embrace the warmth and light of G*d's presence, and I can see how completely I am nourished by both.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Inspired

The presence of the pure creative process, leaving aside self-censorship and self-protection, and coming from a simple willingness to share possibilities without limitation, is intoxicating. I love talent, but I think I love even more the willingness to express creatively. It always leaves me inspired.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Collaboration

I have limited myself the most in life by thinking that whatever I had to do, I had to do alone, that I couldn't trust others to collaborate with me.  But I can see that not trusting others is a kind of cowardice.  Trust doesn't give others power; it gives you access to talent and resources and support beyond what you alone are capable of, and allows you to offer the same.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Self Protection

We human beings work very, very hard to protect ourselves emotionally.  And with good reason.  The ways we can be hurt are many, and it doesn't take much to get through our defenses, when we are so fragile, in so many ways, and with such thin resources most of the time.

Most of us, most of the time, are just barely on the other side of well-fed and well-rested, let alone centered in a space of reflection and refreshment.  And so many of us have no place of solitude or renewal to replenish our hearts, minds and spirits.  So the world and the people in it, can be draining and difficult even when we care deeply for them.

I see this in myself too.  A little extra tiredness, too much hunger or overwork and my emotional balance, usually so strongly present, begins to wobble.  If I'm lucky, I can just rest and come back to myself, but it's not always so easy.  And often, I have to do some real soul searching to see where I need to be and how, and what needs to change to come back to a place of 'ok.'

I am trying to build a habit around something I believe deeply.  Not simply to protect myself emotionally, but to build a foundation of real strength internally.  And that habit is to ask myself at every turn, is this what I am choosing?  Do I understand that whatever is happening is a result of my own choices, my own thinking and my own decisions.  And that I cannot blame others for the consequences.  And if I don't like where I'm headed, then it is my job first to change direction.

I would love to think that if others love or care about me enough, that they will know how to take care of me, that they will silently rescue me, but I know such pure fantasy is just the stuff of little-girl dreams.  That the other people who we share this planet with don't have the capacity to save me, no matter how much they love me.  That this isn't what we can offer each other.

And there are no guarantees.  There are no guarantees in love or relationship, so you better be sure you are in it for the right reasons, the reasons that matter to you, and that you check that at every step.  Because beyond that moment, the moment of the present, nothing is certain, nothing is for sure, nothing can be promised.

I love the optimism that we can promise each other true love forever.  But I prefer the reality of offering love for real in every moment that it can actually be offered, instead of investing in a promise that may be impossible to keep.

I'm not sure if that makes me a cynic or a hopeless romantic.  And I'm not sure it matters.  I think we've bought into some psychological mythology about what relationships should look like and how they should work and what we should need and want and how to get it.

But I don't care for the way modern life has sucked the magic out of most of what we do.  I don't love the deconstructed reality of talk shows and sound bites.  I don't care so much for the self-help books that give me steps on improving everything, as if I'm some to-do list and my nature and future are so easily managed and defined.

I am ok with not knowing how everything is going to turn out, and I know there are lots of risks involved, but there's no way around that actually.  There's no way around what being human looks like and staying open to life's most profound experiences, and needing to be safe and secure at every moment too.  Something's gotta give.

On some level, I've always chosen risk.  And I've never been sorry for at least trying.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Love

I would say this to you.  That you will feel love in your heart and want to share it completely and without limitations.  You will want to share it purely and sweetly and with all the enthusiasm that you've ever felt, and you will want to give and give and give.  And I say, do it.  Because there is great joy in this giving.  There is great satisfaction in being able to love, to be loving, to be a receptacle of divine love, and then sharing that in all the ways you are pulled to share.

Don't ever worry about being heartbroken by the limitations of human beings.  They will always exist, and if your ability to love depends on overcoming those limitations, you will never be free to love, you will never be free to share what is truly in your own heart.  Your own limitations and the limitations of others define so much of relationship, but not necessarily so much of your capacity to love. 

G*d has made us to love.  He has made us to feel the highest calling in loving and being loved.  Do not be careless with love.  Do not confuse other emotions for love.  Do not be tricked into accepting things that look and feel like love but are not.

But when you feel love, share it with joy and acceptance and kindness and authenticity.  Accept its power as it moves through you and spills out into the world.  It can change you in ways you never imagined, and build bridges to those you never knew you could reach.

Love doesn't make you weak.  Real love strengthens your heart.  It is only in parsing it out with too many strings that its power is lost.  It is only in confusing love with the specific dynamics of relationship that its power is lost.  It is only in mistaking your own needs for love itself that its power is lost.  Accept love.  From G*d.  From others.  From all the places you experience it.  And share it back in full force.

It will be your power.  Your liberation.  Your key to yourself.  And if this love is for a specific person, and if the relationship doesn't bear the fruit you expected, the power of that love will live on inside of you anyway, and nourish your soul even in the midst of sorrow or disappointment.

Do not reject the offer that love brings, to soar higher than you imagined, to dive deeper than you thought possible, to taste the sweet juiciness that life contains.  Do not let fear be bigger than love.