Like Jumping off of a high dive, until you reach bottom you will not ever be able to push off with your feet and swim back up to the surface. This is what I experience every time I meditate. I now meditate for an hour three times a day. I turn the phone off, I do not answer the door. I am at once healing myself, and then slipping back into real life where I struggle like everyone else to find balance, but I continue to work toward living a loving, peaceful, and open-hearted existence where I can reach out and heal others, feeling the tenderness of their hearts and sending them silent loving energy. You cannot see me but I am there...
The Esoteric ~
The Place I Touch Down On In Meditation
You cannot see me, and yet I am very much with you, for when I am meditating I am at one with the Universe, filled with love, and breathing it out into the world around me. I am at the loci where past, present, and future intersect. This is difficult to describe and comes after very deep healing sessions for weeks, working one on one with a teacher who does transformational healing, and preparing for Reiki 1 attunement. A healer must heal herself first, find an inner peace where the past is let go and the present is the Divine. It is there that I reach you, and yet, for now, you cannot see me. You cannot fathom the place that I am, it is hard to verbalize, and yet I will tell you this -- without it you will not walk in this world healed, whole, and spreading the seeds of love in every step you take, through the journey ahead to the end of your days.
The Mundane ~
My Days Are Just Like Yours
Ah, if only I could carry that state of grace with me throughout the day...
I meditate, I pray, and for a time I experience a state of near bliss, calm energy, soft air, silence, but then I open my eyes and come back to the world. Back to the knowledge that there is a sink and counter full of dirty dishes because I have not washed them in 3 days. This is not a spiritual path. I am not in balance. It is not a good thing to meditate so much that you float about distancing yourself from the sacred daily chores. Meditation can be a drug. Balancing spiritual practice with daily life is vitally important. I needed to do all that I have done to get to this place where my life as a healer will continue on on a deeper level. I will cut back to meditating twice a day, morning and evening. I will do the dishes.
I Have Barely Left My House In More Than A Decade,
I Am Beginning To Take My First Steps Out Into The World...
The Way Of The Lotus is the way of unconditional love. It is non-denominational, it speaks to every living being. This is the life I have chosen. This is my work. For a long time I did not speak of this to a single soul because I knew they would not understand. Now I have let go of fear because it does not serve me, and I am here to serve. We are all here on our own path and I trust and love those around me enough to know that they are on their own journey and that does not include them understanding mine. I send them love and bless them on their journey. I pray that they find peace in a way that suits them and their life. There is no one way. I believe this to be true.
The lesson of the lotus is the lesson of our ability to transcend all that came before and bloom, in this lifetime, no matter the outer circumstances. The lotus rises from the muck and the mud and becomes a beautiful flower. Our feet are eternally in the mud, the difficulties of daily life, of relationships that are difficult, of human worries and woes, but spiritual practice, in whatever form it takes, even if you don't call it spiritual practice, even if you never sit in a church but perhaps like I do sit in the garden or with a small innocent animal on my lap and meditate and pray and breathe and smile, or perhaps you just walk down the street and smile at a single human being, changing the whole course of their day, you are practicing kindness, the root of all things. I practice kindness. I try.
Finally the need to serve supersedes the need to hide, and yet I know most of my life will still be lived in solitude and silence. That part of me comes not from fear but from a desire to continue to go deeper so that I have more to give. My writing is a vehicle for healing, and I am with you wherever you are in the world. Sit with me now...
Close your eyes. Take a deep breath, take another, and another, breathing in, and as you breathe out let every bit of tension in your body slide down into the earth. Notice how much lighter you feel. Now as you sit with your eyes closed, breathing in and out, you feel a lightness in your body. Feel a presence sitting opposite you. This is very real. It is the transference of energy from where I am to where you are. Do not open your eyes. Let your senses take over. Keep breathing and feel the warm gentle energy. You are not in this space alone.
I reach my hands out, palms up, and ask you to put your hands above mine, not touching, just barely above. Keep breathing. Feel the heat from my hands. Feel the energy. Feel the warm glow surrounding our hands. That warm vibration is love.
Now allow your hands to rest very softly on top of mine. We are barely touching but we are connected, from where I am, to where you are. In this moment we are not separate, we are not in different places in the world. This is the Oneness that is spoken of. There is an infusion, a transfusion, of gentle, loving harmony flowing out from me, through my hands, into you, through yours. Feel that energy. Feel it flow through your body from the palms of your hands to the soles of your feet, circling round and up your body to the top of your head and beyond.
This is real. It is possible. It happened. As you draw your hands away, lying open on your knees, you feel a cool breeze. I have slipped away but you are filled with a river of love, of golden light, you are shining, shimmering. This healing energy did not come from me, but through me, as a channel for God's peace, love, light, hope, and joy. I pray for this every single day, many times a day. We have touched each other. Now you will carry that beautiful energy with you into your day, if only for a few moments. The moments will stretch out over longer periods of time. But we are human, we are imperfect, we will slip in and out of this state of grace.
Meditation, prayer, whatever path one follows that takes them to the Divine is all that is needed. Perhaps for you it is at the height, the peak, of making love. I want to make love to the world, through the opening of my heart, and hands, and the spirit that I allow to enter and flow through me. This is my task, and it becomes easier each day. And yet...
I Am Human, I Am Afraid...
We never stop feeling this you know. Even as I write this I think, "They'll think I'm nuts. They will never read anything I write again. They will think I am full of ego and they've had enough." But then I remember. I am releasing fear and following what I know, for myself, to be true. I cannot and do not expect everyone to feel as I do, to think as I think, to accept all that I accept as true and real in my life, and it doesn't matter. I am not responsible for another's thoughts, actions, or opinions. I am only here to offer what I can, and show the love that is in my heart.
Even when I slam my toe in the door and shout obscenities as it bleeds and hurts and I limp down the hall to clean the wound and take care of this human body, too heavy, hidden from the world for the most part, in that second I don't feel a spiritual bone in my body. But then two pugs come down the hall. They look up at me with huge, bulging, perplexed and worried eyes, and I laugh as I bandage my toe, and their innocence and sweetness brings me back. I hug and kiss and squeeze them and limp on into the kitchen to feed them. I am only human, and I will be so all the days of my life, but it is in remembering those moments of grace that lifts me back up again.
I sit, I take up my beads, I begin to breathe, I meditate, I connect to All That Is. This is the balancing point, the teeter-totter we ride in this life. Up and down, up and down, the goal of a spiritual life is to be more up than down, but we have plenty of times that we tumble and fall to remind us of our own fragile flawed nature. Having a practice brings us back. Meditation is a practice for me, as is writing, as is gardening. Sitting here with you, as I did earlier, is a practice. You don't see me, but I am there.
I have written this to share my journey with you. My shape, the shape of my writing and my life are shifting. I have crossed a threshold. The liminal time has passed. I move forward with certainty even though I have a long way to go, even knowing that this path I have chosen will call for daily practice and that I will fall from grace many times over. The goal is not to try to avoid falling from grace, no, the goal is to keep picking myself up and moving forward. That is the ultimate goal. To open more and more, to have more to give, to learn more each day and to infuse my life and teaching and writing and healing with the knowledge gained, grounded in prayer and meditation, in cooking and doing the dishes, of kissing and feeding pugs, of banging my toe and shouting words I will not use here, of cancelling appointments over and over because I am afraid to leave the house, and then sitting down to meditate and starting all over again.
This is real life. The spiritual life is not one that raises one up above flaws and faults and foibles, it is simply a continual reminder to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get back on the path. And I am trying.
I love you. I really do. And I am sitting opposite you, hands outstretched, breathing with you and allowing a healing energy that comes from a place beyond me to flow through my hands to you. Close your eyes, keep them closed, keep breathing, relax your body, and stretch your hands out, resting gently on mine. You cannot see me, but I am there...
The Mundane ~
My Days Are Just Like Yours
Ah, if only I could carry that state of grace with me throughout the day...
I meditate, I pray, and for a time I experience a state of near bliss, calm energy, soft air, silence, but then I open my eyes and come back to the world. Back to the knowledge that there is a sink and counter full of dirty dishes because I have not washed them in 3 days. This is not a spiritual path. I am not in balance. It is not a good thing to meditate so much that you float about distancing yourself from the sacred daily chores. Meditation can be a drug. Balancing spiritual practice with daily life is vitally important. I needed to do all that I have done to get to this place where my life as a healer will continue on on a deeper level. I will cut back to meditating twice a day, morning and evening. I will do the dishes.
I Have Barely Left My House In More Than A Decade,
I Am Beginning To Take My First Steps Out Into The World...
The Way Of The Lotus is the way of unconditional love. It is non-denominational, it speaks to every living being. This is the life I have chosen. This is my work. For a long time I did not speak of this to a single soul because I knew they would not understand. Now I have let go of fear because it does not serve me, and I am here to serve. We are all here on our own path and I trust and love those around me enough to know that they are on their own journey and that does not include them understanding mine. I send them love and bless them on their journey. I pray that they find peace in a way that suits them and their life. There is no one way. I believe this to be true.
The lesson of the lotus is the lesson of our ability to transcend all that came before and bloom, in this lifetime, no matter the outer circumstances. The lotus rises from the muck and the mud and becomes a beautiful flower. Our feet are eternally in the mud, the difficulties of daily life, of relationships that are difficult, of human worries and woes, but spiritual practice, in whatever form it takes, even if you don't call it spiritual practice, even if you never sit in a church but perhaps like I do sit in the garden or with a small innocent animal on my lap and meditate and pray and breathe and smile, or perhaps you just walk down the street and smile at a single human being, changing the whole course of their day, you are practicing kindness, the root of all things. I practice kindness. I try.
Finally the need to serve supersedes the need to hide, and yet I know most of my life will still be lived in solitude and silence. That part of me comes not from fear but from a desire to continue to go deeper so that I have more to give. My writing is a vehicle for healing, and I am with you wherever you are in the world. Sit with me now...
Close your eyes. Take a deep breath, take another, and another, breathing in, and as you breathe out let every bit of tension in your body slide down into the earth. Notice how much lighter you feel. Now as you sit with your eyes closed, breathing in and out, you feel a lightness in your body. Feel a presence sitting opposite you. This is very real. It is the transference of energy from where I am to where you are. Do not open your eyes. Let your senses take over. Keep breathing and feel the warm gentle energy. You are not in this space alone.
I reach my hands out, palms up, and ask you to put your hands above mine, not touching, just barely above. Keep breathing. Feel the heat from my hands. Feel the energy. Feel the warm glow surrounding our hands. That warm vibration is love.
Now allow your hands to rest very softly on top of mine. We are barely touching but we are connected, from where I am, to where you are. In this moment we are not separate, we are not in different places in the world. This is the Oneness that is spoken of. There is an infusion, a transfusion, of gentle, loving harmony flowing out from me, through my hands, into you, through yours. Feel that energy. Feel it flow through your body from the palms of your hands to the soles of your feet, circling round and up your body to the top of your head and beyond.
This is real. It is possible. It happened. As you draw your hands away, lying open on your knees, you feel a cool breeze. I have slipped away but you are filled with a river of love, of golden light, you are shining, shimmering. This healing energy did not come from me, but through me, as a channel for God's peace, love, light, hope, and joy. I pray for this every single day, many times a day. We have touched each other. Now you will carry that beautiful energy with you into your day, if only for a few moments. The moments will stretch out over longer periods of time. But we are human, we are imperfect, we will slip in and out of this state of grace.
Meditation, prayer, whatever path one follows that takes them to the Divine is all that is needed. Perhaps for you it is at the height, the peak, of making love. I want to make love to the world, through the opening of my heart, and hands, and the spirit that I allow to enter and flow through me. This is my task, and it becomes easier each day. And yet...
I Am Human, I Am Afraid...
We never stop feeling this you know. Even as I write this I think, "They'll think I'm nuts. They will never read anything I write again. They will think I am full of ego and they've had enough." But then I remember. I am releasing fear and following what I know, for myself, to be true. I cannot and do not expect everyone to feel as I do, to think as I think, to accept all that I accept as true and real in my life, and it doesn't matter. I am not responsible for another's thoughts, actions, or opinions. I am only here to offer what I can, and show the love that is in my heart.
Even when I slam my toe in the door and shout obscenities as it bleeds and hurts and I limp down the hall to clean the wound and take care of this human body, too heavy, hidden from the world for the most part, in that second I don't feel a spiritual bone in my body. But then two pugs come down the hall. They look up at me with huge, bulging, perplexed and worried eyes, and I laugh as I bandage my toe, and their innocence and sweetness brings me back. I hug and kiss and squeeze them and limp on into the kitchen to feed them. I am only human, and I will be so all the days of my life, but it is in remembering those moments of grace that lifts me back up again.
I sit, I take up my beads, I begin to breathe, I meditate, I connect to All That Is. This is the balancing point, the teeter-totter we ride in this life. Up and down, up and down, the goal of a spiritual life is to be more up than down, but we have plenty of times that we tumble and fall to remind us of our own fragile flawed nature. Having a practice brings us back. Meditation is a practice for me, as is writing, as is gardening. Sitting here with you, as I did earlier, is a practice. You don't see me, but I am there.
I have written this to share my journey with you. My shape, the shape of my writing and my life are shifting. I have crossed a threshold. The liminal time has passed. I move forward with certainty even though I have a long way to go, even knowing that this path I have chosen will call for daily practice and that I will fall from grace many times over. The goal is not to try to avoid falling from grace, no, the goal is to keep picking myself up and moving forward. That is the ultimate goal. To open more and more, to have more to give, to learn more each day and to infuse my life and teaching and writing and healing with the knowledge gained, grounded in prayer and meditation, in cooking and doing the dishes, of kissing and feeding pugs, of banging my toe and shouting words I will not use here, of cancelling appointments over and over because I am afraid to leave the house, and then sitting down to meditate and starting all over again.
This is real life. The spiritual life is not one that raises one up above flaws and faults and foibles, it is simply a continual reminder to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get back on the path. And I am trying.
I love you. I really do. And I am sitting opposite you, hands outstretched, breathing with you and allowing a healing energy that comes from a place beyond me to flow through my hands to you. Close your eyes, keep them closed, keep breathing, relax your body, and stretch your hands out, resting gently on mine. You cannot see me, but I am there...
© 2011 Maitri Libellule
All Rights Reserved
3 comments:
There are the days when we take large confident strides forward on our Journey...and there are also the days when it takes all of our will to move forward one-half of one baby step.
All I know is that it is an honor and a deLIGHT to be sharing the wild and crazy Journey with you, my sister. :-)
Blessed Be,
VSD
WOW...I loved the spirituality and the essence of awakening in your words..What meditation can do to your thoughts and soul!! Beautiful..I liked what you write about being human, being in fear!! Nice post!
You are right, what was I thinking.
Great job and a good theme. And thanks for the mention.
Thanks for the kind words and the plug. Much appreciated.
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