Never put anyone out of your heart.

I’ve been absent I know and I apologise. It is partly because of school holidays and the call of pool volleyball, shopping and movies, but mostly because I have just been so busy being, well, happy… (aaand it’s gone). So I’ve returned because now I have something to write about that doesn’t involve my family pool games and my superior serve!

For some time I have been working with purification of my ego, power centre and intent –well really we all have been, whether we know it or not. There’s no magic formula to do this and certainly no right, wrong or moral righteousness that one can cling to. Purification is a process that emerges in grace from a deep heart connection to the unique, intimate journey each individual is on – a journey that appears to be shrouded in confusion and injustice for most of us.  However, our higher self orchestrates this process through the events of our lives and accordingly, we truly need to turn into all our circumstances, rather than away from them. Hence spirituality is nothing more than opening to all aspects of the human journey- as it is. This is the only way we can recognise the opportunities that abound in every now moment, each offering us a doorway to heal our own injustice and confusion. As we seek our higher awareness we begin to realise that it is also seeking us – everywhere, in the here now of life. 

The past year has been challenging for almost everyone I know. For me, it has been a dance between the, at times unbearable intensity of the purification fire and the wonderment of rebirth. I have marvelled at the open hearted awareness I have anchored. I have wavered in the integrity of my responses of course, however have been delighted when I could disconnect from power plays, reach out and connect when my heart guided me to and soften the ego’s protests and judgements with a simple willingness to be vulnerable. I felt that I was beginning to live, for the most part, (traffic not included) a more loving awareness and perhaps had even managed to solidify one or two higher responses patterns. At the same time, my life reflected a calm grace that was a delight to witness and was greatly appreciated.

Through the inevitable triggers and initiations of this period, I remained mindful of a one sentence utterance from the Guru Maharajji - “Never put anyone out of your heart.” While simple to contemplate, in practice this statement is particularly challenging, revealing and humbling. It definitely helped me to stay present and focussed every time I wanted to condemn someone, even when their actions were deplorable and the ego felt justified; but it also created an ongoing experience of groundlessness that I admit I have been struggling with.

There is no doubt that certain people in my life need to be removed and in addition, there are others who will choose to remove themselves from me. Okay I accept that, it’s all part of life as we bump, push and whack each other while we fumble through our purification pathways. The groundlessness for me arose from two considerations:

1.       How do I throw someone toxic out of my life without resorting to throwing them out of my heart like I really want to, and

2.       How do I let go of someone I love who leaves me and avoid the pain of continuing to carry them in my heart? My lower response wants to make them bad so that they take the love with them when they leave.

So these questions have been on my mind and yet they can’t be satisfied there – believe me I’ve tried! They can only be answered with the heart, because that is where the love is. Where I have continued to love people, even while they harm me, my life becomes darker, complicated, harder and fraught with deceit and betrayal. When I have opened to the love I feel for those who have thrown me away, the pain of abandonment was excruciating. So I sat in that groundlessness, looking for an authentic way to experience the truth of Maharajji’s command, without burying or projecting my feelings or condemning others. It was all pretty sticky.

All I could do was surrender and keep looking for the higher self initiations as they entered my normal day to day life, revealing the doorway into my own inner wisdom. Of course, just when I thought I had a handle on things, it all changed and I was reminded, somewhat brutally, that initiation can never, ever be pre-empted. For this reason, I have never been so convinced of the need to know and understand our core belief and the patterns that feed it in order to open in worthiness and awareness to our own unique ascension roadmap. Once again, knowing my core belief and recognising its manifestation in the physical has allowed me to open to my life events – and grow. 

This initiation was physically benign compared to the police stand-off I recently found myself  and in which I was relatively unphased. Ironically however, it triggered a tsunami of feeling and verbal accusation in my response that came from the depths of my inner child and roared its way out for the first time in 50 years! I imagine it was like an exorcism. I was shocked by my outrage, my hurt and my utter disbelief and just as I was about to condemn myself for failing to hold my light amid a toxic situation, spirit gifted me with the following quote:

Only the heart can contain both our perfection and our humanity ~ Jack Kornfield 

Thankfully it changed everything.

To be continued ….

 Namaste Sally

www.yourbeautifullife.com.au 

Victim, creator or witness? Instalment 3 of 3

Cont’d

I wanted to be ready to heed any instruction from the policeman so I fixed my gaze upon him, despite his attention never leaving the perpetrator. As I continued to observe the situation, I witnessed, to some degree, his story playing out in the moment. I sensed his adrenalin, his frustration, his anger. I watched as his police training of restraint wrestled with his human desire for action and justice. I thought of his Mum, his loved one’s and wondered what made someone want to face these situations as simply another day at work. All this was racing through my mind...and I didn't even think to lock my car door, because I wasn't actually fearful. As I continued to stare at him, I sensed that the wrestling match was over, the decision made – and he wasn’t going to shoot. Within seconds, the guy in the car must have sensed it too, because he made his getaway, menacing pedestrians and traffic as he sped away. I learned later that this chase began at 4am and only finished at 5pm that night and - you guessed it, it was all about drugs. The incident I was involved in was at 10.30am – who’d be a police officer hey?

After the car sped away, the policeman walked away without acknowledging me. Time stood still during the stand-off but the instant it was over, the traffic moved again as if a spell was broken.  The carnage that this driver had caused was ahead of me and was the reason I had stopped where I did. There were several smashed cars strewn on the road that bore testimony that this had been an ongoing pursuit. While I was of course, affected by this incident, as I said, I wasn't frightened. Instead I was deeply compelled and fascinated by the co-creation, what it meant and why it happened. I knew that it was the third physical manifestation that I had been waiting for. The lesson couldn’t have been clearer if I scripted it my self – oh hang on - I did!

It demonstrated that we have no control over the surface day to day ego level of our lives, even though we cultivate the illusion that we do. As I realised that lack of control, the concept of 'witness' anchored, a concept I had been working with for some time. There was nothing I could have done at an ego level to prevent me from being in that place at that time. In fact, it was a seemingly benign and innocent ego urge to count my k’s that actually put me there! My car was originally parked about 50 metres away from where the smashes occurred. Even if divine timing had returned me to my car when it was all happening, I still would have been outside of the event rather than right in the nucleus of it. 

All I could do in the moment was witness what I had co-created and be open to what it was showing me. I accepted the truth that I can’t stop life happening to me, the good, the bad and the ugly. All I can do is open to the divine truth that weaves through all experience and then let the will of heaven flow through me. It could all be over tomorrow, so I don’t want to waste today with worry. In truth, in terms of our mortality, we are safe nowhere if our time is up and safe everywhere if it is not. As I sat in my car I knew that there was nothing I could do to influence the events in which I found myself. There was no action that would ensure my safety, no affirmation that would influence the outcome, so I just opened to the experience. 

Despite the fact that I was temporarily powerless, I could sense that it was actually only physically. In my soul, I was free to surrender to the moment by cultivating true presence, rather than aligning with victimhood, fear or fate. Massive changes were occurring within my energy and I became acutely aware of my ego attachment to outcome, control and right action - and felt it all let go. My response to this situation was a microcosm of how I should approach my whole life; in the moment, in willingness and surrender.

I will no longer judge things gone wrong in my life as punishment or evidence of my ineptitude. Instead I will cultivate awareness that no matter what we face, it all originates from Divine Will and hence I will mindfully  try to rise to meet its perspective like the eagle. There is no pain in spirit, so we come to Earth where it is rampant. No matter how hard we try to push it away, it will always find us and there can be no doubt that it opens us in ways that joy, while glorious, does not.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional said Buddha. I now understand. This incident did not clear my angst around my health, but it did absolutely put it in perspective. When I am having tests, fear is a normal response and I should allow it rather than suppress or deny. However, I need to allow it to wash over me and breathe into the next moment until it flows away. The key is to not cling to the fear once that moment is gone. I could have died in that incident – and didn’t. I could have died through ill health – and didn’t. Life is a moment to moment experience for us all. Right now I am full of hope, love and a contentment that I have never before been able to hold. It is beautiful and I want to try to flow with that and continue this empowered journey to its depths

.

I will always manifest what I need to grow and it won’t always be palatable to the ego. Sometimes when I contemplate my lack of control I feel the seeds of fear popping. I’m trying hard not to water them. Fear is a waste of energy and stops us from learning what we are here to learn. Was it Gandhi who said “Fearlessness is a prerequisite of a spiritual life?” How ironic that I have walked the path for nearly 30 years and am just now cultivating a prerequisite. I look forward to 2016 – whatever it brings.

www.yourbeautifullife.com.au 

Namaste 

Sally

Signals in the physical - instalment 2 of 3

So to continue from where I left off with my beautiful crab friend who signalled I was in a shift that was sourced in my feelings – no surprises there for a YBLer!

During my next beach walk, I was courted by a magnificent sea eagle. He followed me for some time, effortlessly riding the thermals, demonstrating his expanded and higher view of life. Eagle is a messenger for the Divine mind that enables us to rise above fear and uncertainty and see the ‘bigger picture’. 

I was delighted to walk with eagle because I know his beauty well. I didn’t even need to read my oracle definition when I returned home since I had opened to his message during our sacred connection in the moment. He demonstrated that I can only open to higher perspective and purpose if I let go of the ‘safe ground’ under my feet from time to time. I knew that the heart awareness that crab had signalled was now seeking expansion to open my mind to higher truth. Again, I didn’t feel the need to do anything but I was acutely aware that this was a second sign that had manifested physically in my reality and that such things always came in threes for me. I intended to remain open and grateful for the journey, trusting that when the final experience manifested, some form of new understanding would be mine to embody. In truth I was really quite desperate to anchor that awareness because I was tired of where I was.

In recent weeks I had been plagued with concerns over my health – for good reason. For me though, the rub is not about ill health as much as it is about how it might be linked to my soul and the journey I am trying to consciously walk. Let’s face it, none of us consciously manifest ill health and many actually take action to reduce its likelihood. However in the end, no matter how we have lived, our bodies will fail all of us, so why do we take it so personally?

I cut my spiritual teeth on a diet of cause and effect and was taught that blocked emotional states manifested as physical symptoms in the body. While it is undoubtedly true that all four of our bodies; emotional, physical, spiritual and mental are connected and the physical is indeed the last frontier to get our attention, I believe it  erroneous to consider that we can halt all of these symptoms simply by changing something at an ego level or applying spiritual ‘rules’. It was this that was making me uncomfortably groundless. I initially threw myself into spirituality in an effort to eradicate suffering and I thought spirit would save me if I just responded appropriately to my life. Despite understanding the futility of this notion and giving it up years ago, I could feel myself reaching for ‘right’ surface action and responses whenever I felt the fear connected to my health rise. It bothered me because I believe ego control is an illusion and selling spiritual truth as a means to control our lives might even be a true definition of ‘blasphemy’. It was frustrating to me that my reality wasn't expanding, but instead was contracting.

During my next beach walk I didn’t have any animal companions join me. By this time I was definitely preoccupied with the lack of control I have over my health and was tired of the constant nagging thoughts that I could not seem to quiet. Despite my best efforts, I was hardly embodying the higher mind of eagle!  I have walked these beaches for years and while I have always measured my time, I have never measured the distance. When I returned to my car, instead of doing a U-turn and heading straight home, I decided to drive ahead along the esplanade that runs parallel to the beach in order to measure how many k’s I walk. I cannot tell you why it mattered to me on this day, when it has not mattered one iota in the past.

I followed my route, noted my distance and then did the U-turn to return home. When I approached an area about 100 metres from where I usually park my car, the traffic ground to a halt. There are many pedestrian crossings so it was neither unusual nor concerning. The beach was on my right, the shopping strip on my left. There were gates padlocked with a chain on my left perhaps blocking off access to the rear of the shop. Suddenly, they burst open; the chain and debris flying as a huge twin cab 4wd smashed them open, swerving onto the footpath at the last second, to barely miss me. It came to a halt parallel to me, still on the footpath facing in the opposite direction. It was a surreal experience that my mind was trying to make sense of, when I heard a man yell with an authority that would have made me move in an instant - “Get out of the f*#king car!” I looked up and was astonished to see a plain clothes policeman with his handgun drawn across the bonnet of my car and pointed directly at the occupant of the 4wd. 

I was transfixed. We all know that police don’t draw their handguns without good cause. Since there were banks nearby, I wondered whether the 4wd contained an armed robber and if so, whether I was about to be caught in the middle of a shoot-out. At that thought my instinct was to duck, but I immediately realised the futility and even the humour of that. If bullets began flying, there was nowhere for me to hide. As the officer continued to demand the perpetrator “Get out of the f*#king car” he moved to stand in front of mine. If it all turned to shit, I had no escape.

I will not make you wait long for the completion of this experience. Until next time...

Namaste

Sally

 www.yourbeautifullife.com.au

When nature divas play...we grow instalment 1 of 3

I have struggled once again this week to write this blog. Initially, I berated myself for what I supposed was a lack of discipline, but now I understand that my absence has been more about lack of personal clarity around the events of my life, rather than any kind of reluctance on my part to write. 

Since the last time I connected here, I have encountered a whirlwind of experience that has triggered feelings of deep polarity. Some of what has surfaced I haven’t wanted to look at, some of it has ignited my passion and some (perhaps the most disturbing of all) I am deliberately pulling in from the past so I can soak in old pain like some kind of masochist. I have been buffeted between resistance, longing and self-sabotage and the resultant groundlessness has been quite difficult to embrace and stay present with. 

Amid these shifts and changes there has been one level of consistency that has undoubtedly emerged and that is the rapid speed at which energy now moves through my reality. Movement is so quick that it is difficult to hold anything long enough to embody it so it can then be crystalised it into writing. Just when I get a handle on it … it’s gone. But today… today the absolute impermanence of physical life has never been so present in my awareness, hammered home by an astonishing event that rocked my world…but more on that later. 

To communicate this message I’ll have to set the scene of the past weeks that have been characterised by my struggle to find clarity. I will write this blog in instalments, just like they sometimes do on Humans of New York…I can only hope to be equally interesting so that perhaps you’ll stay tuned.

It began a week or so ago when I was taking one of my regular morning walks along our beautiful Hervey Bay beaches. It’s a good time to contemplate spirit and I was using my love of nature to open my heart and hopefully intuit inspiration for this blog. I’ve had some pretty huge milestone physical events over the past month (not that I’m blaming them for my scattered energy; as any YBLer will tell you – the feelings give rise to the events, not the other way round) but I will share some to illustrate where my focus and confusion has been sourced. 

Susie and I are on the threshold of exciting new opportunities for our book Your Beautiful Life (YBL) and the dream that we have nurtured for 15 years appears to be tantalisingly within reach. My eldest daughter finished year 12 completing a beautiful evolution in our relationship that began a few years ago. Thoughts around my health are a near constant shadow that can easily drag me into dark places and I recently turned 50 (the celebrations were as fabulous as my friends). Also, like many people, I have been confronted by the sobering events of global violence. Those events have been made all the more poignant due to the ‘divine justice’ focus our guides gave us in the November newsletter. While these events might have occurred  thousands of miles away, there can be no doubt that they impact our heart and soul and I was grappling with what it was showing me about my reality and what seeds my responses might be planting – but in the early days, I had nothing much more than sadness.

My own mortality, my response to my aging body, my changing family circumstances and the bewilderment in contemplating the taking of life for any reason let alone for an idea, all crowded my mind as I walked and swam that morning. I couldn’t find my common ground in feeling and I wanted, no needed; a sign. I walked up the rise of the beach to the treed reserve and picked up my towel to find a large grey crab underneath it, comfortably nestled on top of one of my thongs. I have never seen crabs so far from the water before and he didn’t run when I exposed him, but instead merely raised a claw as though he was shielding his eyes from the sun. Having spent several years in shaman circles I am always delighted, humbled and grateful when the animal or elemental kingdom make themselves known in the physical. I went straight home to read and contemplate the medicine of crab.

Crab is all about emotions, water and the moon. It assists to manifest the heart’s desire (bingo). It clears patterning that prevents us from feeling safe (pow). It delves deep in to the emotions to create alchemical changes to create physical balance and healing (whack). It pulls up old emotions so we can clear self destructive tendencies (okay that’s four for four). I’m really listening now! 

Of course the message from crab didn’t miraculously clear my energy and angst. In fact, if anything it opened the door for more dark ooze to rise. What I took from crab was the awareness and acceptance that I was working in the emotional plane, hence all my neurosis were coming from a depth of self that I should allow and honour so they could be released. Further I understood that any projection would thwart the process and dam the flow. I stopped being so hard on myself and allowed my stuff to rise, in thought and action; the good, the bad and the ugly. I became curious about it, witnessed my patterns rather than judged them and waited on the will of heaven. 

When nature is working with you via manifesting encounters as signals, it is easy to accept that you are on the threshold of a major shift in consciousness and the best thing you can do in those times is stay out of your own way. I knew I was in the middle of ‘something’ and that trying to understand it was futile and so writing about it pointless. At times like this, I feel like a cat on a hot tin roof as I struggle to be patient, willing and open while waiting on the will of heaven . It is seriously shaky ground for me. Thanks to the powers that be for red wine huh?

So that is the first instalment…an awareness that my emotions are stirring, from the vast beauty of joy to the dark recesses of fear. I am so grateful to crab for helping me hold it. I am also grateful to you for checking in...until next time.

Namaste

Sally.

www.yourbeautifullife.com.au