I will there be light.

"I will there be light." We have come here to anchor in the frequency of light and unconditional love into our bodies and this planet. We are only beginning to understand what these words mean. It is so much larger than we think. To do this we first bring the shadows to light. They are no more and no less than ourselves inverted. Love will burn through the layers of personal and collective trauma so that a new reality will enter. This is our task and this is what we are here to do. 

(Quote from A Course in Miracles)

Spirituality is not an excuse to bypass the state of the world

I have come across two types of spiritual bypassing when it comes to dealing with suffering in this world.

One type claims that the world is so full of fear and suffering, that this is the true nature of this physical world, that there is nothing we can do about it and that it is not our job to change it. In this view, the only way to escape this suffering is by making sure that when we leave this physical world and body we will not return but instead ascend.

It says in ACIM: "The world is not left by death but by truth, and truth can be known by all those for whom the Kingdom was created, and for whom it awaits." The kingdom of God or the state of heaven is reachable in this world and is created for all of us as our birthright. This state is the state of infinite love, which is the truth of who we are. We cannot erase what we are but we can put up blocks to our true reality of love. So thinking that we are powerless and separate from the consciousness of the world and that we need to leave this world through death to transcend the suffering is really just another type of separation from source.

We are the only ones that can change the world. This will not come in the form of our individual selves changing the minds of every other person on the planet. It is much more intricate than that, and has more to do with energy than with physical interaction. God did not create this physical reality of seeming separation and suffering, our minds did and we can undo it. In ACIM the first step in this undoing is creating a happy dream. This means that the physical world, the dream, will still be our reality but the suffering will be gone. We all have our individual place in this salvation and it starts with seeing ourselves for who we are and having infinate compassion for others.

The second type of spiritual bypassing claims that this physical reality is not the ultimate reality anyway so we do not need to do anything about the suffering that seems to exist. Alternatively we just need to spread love and light and leave it at that. This view tries to sprinkle artificial love and joy over everything and refuses to look at the shadows. Of course most of us know that this does not work, since looking at the shadows and dealing with them is necessary in order to release them and get to the true love that lies beneath. It says in ACIM that "The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance."

Anyone who is practising Transcendental or Vedic Meditation has been taught that seemingly negative feelings will surface from time to time and that this is part of what the meditation is for, to release old stress and to transcend. To do that we need to accept these feelings arising and look at them. When we do, they are released. This can work on a micro level as well as on a macro level, individually as well as societally. The state of the world, the corruption, racism, sexism, violence, war, environmental destruction and the leaders that we are unhappy with represent suppressed shadows of the collective consciousness that need to be looked at, worked through and released.

Spirituality is not an excuse to bypass the state of the world. Quite the opposite. The people who can see most clearly have a responsibility to fix it. One miracle at a time, a miracle being a shift from fear to love.

Lady Death and the Healed Relationship

In Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés there is a chapter about relationships where Estés talks about the need to invite Lady Death and the Life/Death/Life nature within us into our relationships. She says there is a fear of the death aspect of this process, especially in western cultures. One relationship goes through several cycles of death to be followed by new life, "the necessary deaths and startling births that create true relationship".

Estés writes: "We pretend we can love without our illusions about love dying, pretend we can go on without our superficial expectations dying, pretend we can progress and that our favourite flushes and rushes will never die. But in love, psychically, everything becomes picked apart, everything. The ego does not want it to be so. Yet it is how it is meant to be, and the person of a deep and wildish nature is undeniably drawn to the task."

A Course in Miracles talks about the need to give our special relationships to the Holy Spirit to turn them into holy relationships. This is a process of letting go of our ego illusions about the relationship. The Course likens the special relationship to an ellaborate picture frame, filled with grandiose illusions of what we expect the relationship to be. If we are willing to give these illusions up, the Holy Spirit will transform the relationship to its highest possible potential.

Both books make it clear that many relationships fail or are broken off at the point of it starting to be transformed into a 'true relationship' or 'holy relationship'. The task at hand is simply too much to take on for many people. The Course says that the relationship can seem aimless and disorganized in this process and that the ego at this point tends to want to substiture the seemingly 'failing' relationship for another relationship which fits the former goals that the ego has set out. It takes strength, wisdom and fortitude to continue on and having faith in that the relationship is in fact not failing but has been saved.

In Jay-Z's video 'Footnotes for 4:44' he mentions that Beyoncé and him had built this mansion of a relationship that wasn't built on 100 percent truth. When they realised this they decided to tear the existing relationship structure down and start again. He also says that this is by far the hardest thing he has ever had to do and that most people would give up and walk away instead.

When we realise that the structure of a relationship has illusion in it and that we are focusing on an elaborate frame instead of the picture, the picture being the person, we need to tear the structure down. This means tearing down our ego expectations and let our fancy images die so that a real relationship can take place. This is what Lady Death will do and this is why she scares us. We often don't want to look at the person or ourselves as we really are, in fear of loosing what once was or seemed to be. Nevertheless, it is necessary. Lady Death reminds me of the Hindu goddess Kali who helps us usher in the necessary death of certain things in order to reach the highest good. She not only does this but she also births the new and is the source of all creation. She personifies the Life/Death/Life nature within us.

Lady Death is Kali, and Kali is the Holy Spirit that takes our lives and relationships under her guidance and brings transformation. All she needs is an invite. Without an invitation she cannot do anything for us. The process will not be comfortable and it requires patience, strength, forgiveness and faith. but it is the only way forward towards real love and real connection with ourselves and others, in whatever form it will take.

Who walks beside you...

"Truth has rushed to meet you since you called upon it. If you knew Who walks beside you on the way that you have chosen fear would be impossible."

(A Course in Miracles, Text p. 378)

Tapestry of True Vision

This life is a thread of holy instances if we choose to look on them. Between them are intermittent periods of illusion.

These instances weave together to become a tapestry of recognition and true vision, where only love remains.

These instances connect us to our true selves but it involves recognising the beauty in the other. It requires a radical forgiveness where we insist on the innocence of our companions even when the ego is screaming out their guilt.

There is no escaping this practise. We cannot deny our sister or brother and expect to find ourselves.

The task is to draw out the lines between the points of true recognition, which is unconditional love, until we see the shape of our true essence appear. 

"I kill with my heart"

I'm a warrior of love.

Not oversensitivity or clinginess, but a fierce love that burns through every layer of illusion that you have upheld and sees the core of truth in your defensiveness.

I'm a priestess of compassion, not to be mistaken for weakness. The kind of compassion that sees you to the point of uncomfortableness. 

I'm the alchemist who tears down the barriers and walls that no longer serve their purpose.

"I do not kill with my gun. He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart."

I kill the part of us that still believe deception is real. I bring down the illusion of fear, until truth remains.

(Quote from Stephen King, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger)

Embodyment

As a student of A Course in Miracles I sometimes use the phrase from the Workbook that says "I am not a body. I am free." to soothe myself away from overidentification with the physical world including my body. I have come to understand that the body is not bad or good but it has no meaning except the one we give it. It can be used for 'holy' or 'unholy' purposes. In other words it can be used to extend love or uphold the illusion of fear. It's our choice.

At the same time I am part of several growing online communities of women who value the divine feminine highly and who approch spirituality through a divine feminine perspective. In these groups the body is often looked to as a highly intelligent spiritual temple that should be celebrated and that can introduce us to our true selves if we listen to its messages.

I have found it hard to reconcile these two perspectives but after thinking about it I have found that they are very closely connected, only expressed in different ways. The Course teaches that the body can be a "beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion is". The balance is to try to not go down one of these two paths: overidentification with the world/body or denial of the world/body. Neither is useful. The former creates stress in the body that it is not built to carry and keeps us from realising who we are. The latter keeps us from expressing our full potential in this world and from extending love through the body since we deny the usefulness that the body can have if it is used for these purposes.

So how do we know if we have gone too far into one of these extremes. It says in The Course that "The ego separates through the body. The Holy Spirit reaches through it to others". The Holy Spirit meaning our inner divine guidance system from beyond the physical world that connects us with our divine selves or God. If we ask our inner guidance system, or intuition, how we are meant to use our body for the highest good, guidance will come often in the form of impulses or inspired action. It may also come as emotions, which can be felt physically. This is what listening to the body's messages mean. These messages originate from beyond the physical but is interpreted by our physical body as emotions and sometimes physical sensations.

I had an angel reading last year and the woman who did the reading told me that I need to come into my body more fully. There are different reasons why many people might shy away from fully embodying their physical bodies and fully feel through the body. They might be afraid of the repressed emotions that can come to surface if they allow themselves to be fully in the physical body. Or they might have a misguided view of spirituality that views the body as bad. She told me something along the lines of 'You are not fully in your body because you don't want to feel the feelings of being fully in a human body. Your soul is very harmonious and peaceful but you did not come here to be a lightbody. You came here to show up as a powerful being, or you would not have come here, but you need to actively engage your energy body. You need to allow yourself to ground into your body.' I had been mostly in the state of denial of the body but I know I have also experienced overidentification at times as well as balance.

Marianne Williamson refers to the balance of navigating between the physical and metaphysical worlds as 'Allowing ourselves to dwell within the illusion but carrying with us wisdom from beyond'. In other words, grounding into the physical and being fully in ones body while still knowing on a deep level that I am not of the body. The more I experience that balanced state the more I realise that there is no contradiction in honouring the body temple while still saying "I am not a body. I am free."

"Decide for truth and everything is yours."

I, like many others, want to have more financial freedom. I want to have passive or nearly passive income to be able to have the freedom and time to do the things that I am convinced that I need to do in this lifetime and to give of my gifts freely to others without constantly worrying about income. A recent opportunity that did give me passive income for some time, has proved to not work out in the long run. When reflecting on this I realised that I did get too attached to this particular source of income. Of course when I opened A Course in Miracles on a seemingly random page a couple of days later I got this message:

"Idols are limits. They are the belief that there are forms that will bring happiness, and that, by limiting, is all attained. It is as if you said, "I have no need of everything. This little thing I want, and it will be as everyhing to me." And this must fail to satisfy, because it is your will that everything be yours. Decide for idols and you ask for loss. Decide for truth and everything is yours." (ACIM Text p. 630)

When I am looking for specific answers for situations in my life I tend to find that I get exactly what I want from the Course or some other source. Bear in mind I often open it up on a seemingly random page nowadays and this time was no exception.

Around the same day I was reading Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda where his guru quotes Matthew 6:33 "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."

Let's just say, I got the message quite clearly. To live a satisfying life, physically, materially, mentally and spiritually, it is best to not get attached to specific outcomes or sources of material satisfaction in this case. If I do, I am asking for loss. These are principles that I have heard over and over again from different sources, but nothing teaches us as effectively as personal experience. It is counter-intuitive to some extent. By not controlling or becoming attached, there is a higher chance of receiving exactly what we need and truly want.

On the other hand we often hear in business and self help circles to 'focus' on what you want to manifest. We can do this but if we are not open to the different forms of how it can and will manifest we limit our capability of receiving it. If the one channel that we are focusing and depending on doesn't work out we have to expand and make ourselves receptive to a wider view. "..it is your will that everything be yours" and "seek ye first the kingdom of God,..., and all these things shall be added unto you" means that if we focus on our true will, which is to know that infinate love is the ultimate truth and and that we are that truth just having a 'physical' experience, things will flow more easily and without too much strain. The more this truth sinks in, the more free I am and the less I limit myself, the higher the chance of being able to receive or give everyting needed at any time.

Wolf Moon

Wolf Moon, sister of Kali, bring forth the woman beneath the surfaces of doubt and false perception.

She is the spirit that knows no doubt, fully embodied yet beyond bodily limitations. She is my truth, always with me but obscured by false expectations.

Let her rise and burn through the layers. She is age old and all knowing with the curiosity and eagerness of a child.

She is blazing fire and the freezing winter wind howling through my consciousness, calling me to wake up.

I am not a body. I am free.

I am not in this body. This body is in me, to be of use as my holy altar for a definite amount of time in the midst of eternity. It is a temporary tool, animated by spirit, used for the purpose of altering this physical reality by reaching into it. Reaching down only to lift up. This body is fully me if I let it be, but I am not it.

ACIM Lesson

"Let me not see myself as limited"

(ACIM Lesson - 250)

---

Mother Moon

Mother Moon

Instill in me your light

Your translucence

Your wisdom and compassion

Goddess of the Sea

Fill me with your depth

Your vastness

Your darkness and power

Let the light and dark of the feminine merge

As the moonlight reflecting in the ocean

---

Lilith rising

Lilith rises like a Phoenix from the ashes.

She rises not in revenge or bitterness, but in playful redemption. Her wings reaching up and out.

She is there, was there, always will be.

Never left, patiently waiting for us to realise her presence.

She is not here to destroy but to merge the true power of the feminine with the true masculine in all living beings.

She was demonised but never cared much, nor will she care when they try to douse her fire again and again.

Her fire is the eternal life force. Always was, always will be.

Ask and you will receive, but what do you truly want?

I am a student of the law of attraction as well as A Course in Miracles.

I love observing and playing with the law of attraction and recognising that I really do create my own reality, for better or for worse. It gives a sense of personal power.

A Course in Miracles expands this principle and at the same time simplifies it by saying that we do choose our reality, but there are only two alternatives to choose from: fear or love, love being the only 'real' world and fear being an illusion. Fear puts us in a state of mind where we do not feel enough and need to compensate for it by ego manifestations. Love being the state of mind where we trust in our highest becoming, however that path will unfold, and trust that we will have enough material things to support us along the way.

If you limit yourself to only what your mind can conceive (which is still a lot) you are partially blocking off the possibilities of attracting the highest possible expression of your life experience, your highest possible becoming. Our source (Goddess, God, universe, Spirit, you name it) without exception has a plan that is beyond what our limited perception can begin to imagine and conceive.

I appreciate the nicer material things in life as much as the next person but I don't usually bank my happyness on it. If I ever do, I am in trouble because it will never be enough. We always want to experience more, have more, be more. This is not a bad thing if we can move through these experiences while having an underlying feeling of joy as the basis, not the product, of the experiences. At the same time, when things are not going well we do not identify too much with the adversity. It's not that we should not have these things, but true value should not be applied to it by us. As it reads in A Course in Miracles: "You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness".

This is not some moralistic sermon about materialism and its traps and how people are lost in consumerism. That is a different, although important, conversation but it can too easily turn into judgment and arguments on how we 'should' live, who acts 'right' and who doesn't. The ego (small separated self) revels in this. We have not come into this world to agree to one way of living and tell each other off when we break the rules. We have come for collective and individual expansion and to live our highest potential. This means vastly different things to different people.

So by all means manifest those material possessions, career and life that you dream of. There is nothing inherently bad about this. After all, if it's attained through questionable means I am convinced the wealth will either not last or it will cause you more problems than joy. Greed is one thing, joyous manifestation is another. The former feels restricting (after the initial rush) and the latter feels expansive. Either way you will get back the type of energy that you put into it within this lifetime. There is no need to wait for a fearful afterlife judgement since I am convinced we come from unconditional love and will return to it, as well as experience it in this life if we choose to.

Remember the only two choices are fear and love, although these can have many expressions. So next time you want to manifest something into your life and you are not sure if it's the right choice, ask yourself if you are doing it out of fear of not being or having enough (restriction), or out of true inspiration and love for life (expansion). The clue is in the feeling.

Note to Self

Rest into nothingness...

Burn pride and insecurity, both, in the fire of truth.

Accept your earthly limitations and your heavenly limitlessness all at once.

Rest into not knowing, letting go...

Tell your small self

This is not about you. This can't be about you.

Release...

Be comfortable in the perfect non-security of it all.

Give way for the Self, that comes with no security and no insecurity, defenseless, perfect yet holding no standards of perfection.

Give it space and it will expand.

Give it time and it will crush all concepts of time.

Now rise...

Taking responsibility for ourselves

I have just declared to myself to never again take my low energy to interactions with people around me. Let me explain what I mean by this. First of all this is an intention and when I say 'never' I am fully aware that this might be ambitious, but we have to aim high to get somewhere new. So when I am feeling generally off, negative, argumentative, ego tripping, jeaolus, (the list goes on), it is never, and I mean NEVER a good idea to start bringing discussion to others about how we are feeling or what we think we want, unless we are genuinely asking for help with getting out of it.

Now, I am not suggesting that we should suppress it or ignore it. Instead I am suggesting we need to own our negativity. Look at it for a while. Try to be alone at the earliest possible opportunity to reflect, meditate, journal, run, walk, do yoga, anything and everything you need and can do to work through it, transmute it and most importantly release it. As A Course in Miracles suggests 'look at the cross but don't dwell on it'. 'The cross' being our pain (negative emotion), which is nevertheless a part of the human condition.

This taking of responsibility for your state of mind also means making a conscious effort to not react to other people's shit. It's a radical taking of responsibility for our own energy grid and sometimes we need to fake it until it comes naturally. I know, as much as anyone, that in many situations all we want to do is argue back, attack, blame. Don't get me wrong, sometimes the person or people around us might seemingly be in the wrong, but us pointing that out and lowering our energy does not serve anyone. It definitely does not serve yourself.

This is hard but it is the real work, and if we stick to it it's able to deliver us to states of being that we may only dream of. When I say 'low energy' I also mean the ego (small separated self as described in The Course) or the pain body which can be called a number of other things. To be clear, as explained in A Course in Miracles, this is not where we are bad it's where we are wounded. This means that self-compassion is the first and foremost way to approach it, as well as understanding and compassion for others.

Blessed Be.