During challenging times, such as the one we are currently experiencing, it is often quite difficult to remain calm and centered. Fear and anxiety dominate the collective consciousness, and we start to slide into negative thinking and feelings of overwhelm. We forget that at our core is unshakable calm and peace. We were born with that inner essence. It lives within our hearts and souls, and we can access it at any time. Take a deep breath and join me in connecting to the calm within you: the heart of peace.
Author: spiritflower
Writer, author, lightworker
One Earth—Peace Within Crisis
The coronavirus has come at a time when the world desperately needs a shift in consciousness. The planet is barely surviving because of wars, hatred, and environmental destruction. The divine hand of circumstance has stepped in to halt our disconnected slide toward implosion. This virus is slamming us hard, forcing us to allow the walls of separation to fall away completely. It is showing us clearly that there are no borders or boundaries between us. There is no other. Around the world, thousands are dying. Italy is especially hard hit, and it now stands as a global example of extreme loss as well as resilience and hope.
The Italian people are reaching out to the rest of the world, saying, “This is what we did and didn’t do—learn from our unknowing but fatal mistakes. Pay attention and take drastic precautions now. Stay home; self-quarantine.” Simultaneously, in the midst of their pain and grief, the Italians are demonstrating the most amazing grace and capacity for love. In their separate apartments, they stand on their balconies and sing to each other. They sing life into one another’s hearts. Throughout the world, people watch videos of them, and their hearts too are touched and uplifted. Those beautiful voices singing out into the night remind us of the beauty of the human spirit and our connection at the deepest level. Are we returning to harmony and balance at last? Are the divine scales being repositioned so that humanity has another chance at compassionate cohabitation on this planet?
Like so many of us, I have believed in my heart that this time would come, when a paradigm shift would change everything and bring us back home to our souls, our divine/human selves. I am acutely aware of the fear, uncertainty, and sadness that is currently circling the globe. Yet something else is happening as well: kindness. People, especially health care workers, are reaching out to help others. A friend of mine, a retired nurse in San Francisco, gives out homemade hand sanitizers and other supplies to the homeless. Helping is hardwired in her training, her DNA. So many others like her. Another friend in Boston takes an empty subway train across town to volunteer at the Food Bank. We are a compassionate species, we humans, in spite of our conflicts and cruelties. Perhaps this is the moment when love definitively phases out hatred and fear because no other choice remains.
As I watch unprecedented world events unfold, I can feel a tremendous letting go within myself. In the past year, I have had to surrender attachment to any plans, preferences, or certainty again and again. Now the dial on “Surrender” has been turned up so high globally that none of us can ignore it. No one knows what will happen next. For me, it feels as if there is nothing I can do but live mindfully in each moment, with gratitude for life itself. That’s all that’s possible. And there is a peace in that, the peace at my core, in my soul. Perhaps that is what we are all being moved toward: the “peace that passeth understanding,” the divine thread that connects us to something greater than our own individual lives. In truth, crisis comes to give us that gift, to show us that the most beautiful experience, and most profound truth, of our human lifetimes is oneness with our fellow beings and with God. Peace on Earth, at long last.
Love or Fear
Living love instead of fear, in terms of the coronavirus, doesn’t mean disregarding self-care and community health or choosing your own well-being over someone else’s. It means following practical precautions (e.g., washing hands; taking herbal supplements that boost immunity; staying home, except for necessities—completely if you have low immunity or any cold/flu symptoms), but also not living in daily terror that the apocalypse has arrived. Filter out fear-based news reports and choose to pay attention only to those that are responsibly informative. Remember that fear can be used as a control mechanism by those in power. Avoid the daily media drama. Whatever happens, this is your life: how do you want to live it? Reach out and help a neighbor, perhaps someone who is elderly or has a compromised immune system and can’t leave their home. Speak words of comfort, peace, and kindness to those in your life, friends and strangers alike.
In the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, a good friend of Anne’s and mine passed away in Boston from cancer. We have lost several friends to this disease in the last year. It is heartbreaking. Nothing else seems to matter but the love you feel for them and the friendships you have shared over a lifetime. But the tears that continue to flow keep your heart open and connected to what is really important. Ultimately, you can shut down and try not to feel at all, or you can allow the salty tears of loss and grief to cleanse your being of anything that would keep you closed. You can live in fear of cancer and viruses and heartbreak, or you can live each day fully open to all of life, the pain and the beauty, the loss and the love.
Anne and I are doing our best to consciously choose the latter. It is not a one-time decision; it is a daily opening of the door to our hearts and living love over fear, again and again. You can spend a lifetime mourning the tragedies and “unfairness” of life, or you can fully feel your sadness or fear as it arises but then choose to remember the power of the love in your heart and soul. You were born in that love, and it is the guiding light within you. Don’t allow it to be blown out by circumstance or the waves of fear and unease that are rolling over the planet. At the deepest level, this is a time of tremendous transformation, change, and coming back into balance. You and I are here to make the difference. Reach out with love each day. Smile from your heart. Be kind; be grateful. That is your birthright and your destiny. Each time you do so, love rises and fear falls away. And the blessings of life are remembered and celebrated.
Hide-and-Seek with God
Over the past decade, I have experienced divine connection in a variety of ways—in Nature, in solitary or group meditation, and with spiritual teachers who helped facilitate that falling away of form into formlessness. In spite of any longing on my part to hold onto it permanently, however, my experience of God came and went, arose and then receded. Repeatedly, I vacillated between the appearance and disappearance, almost as if I were playing hide-and-seek with God. Then Ram Dass died.
His longtime friend Krishna Das wrote a memorial tribute and mentioned Ram Dass’s mantra “I Am Loving Awareness.” He said that now Ram Dass would be found in that “loving presence” that lives within us all. Those words affected me profoundly. All day it was as if the mantra “I Am Loving Awareness” came to life within me. My mind’s filtering and perceptual judgments, pro and con, had dissolved, and there was just, well, awareness. Awareness that did nothing but receive the world around me with love. And gratitude. Tears ran down my cheeks. Yes, this was God, but it wasn’t a powerful rush; it was a quiet presence, a gradual awareness of awareness itself. And with that came the knowing that the rising and receding was only in my human perception, which had made divine presence seem as if it appeared and disappeared instead of being always at my core.
Now when I feel as if God has fallen silent and I am alone in the universe, there is a deeper loving awareness within me that reminds me that I am never alone and that God lives in the silence. It may take a few moments to come to the surface, but that awareness is my companion now. It has always been encoded in my very cells, but only my own soul’s journey could eventually bring me to the point of continuously recognizing the truth of God’s ever-Presence. We humans vacillate in our experiences and perceptions on Earth. God, however, remains constant, permeating the universe with divine light and love. When we pass from the Earthly plane, our souls will merge completely with that light.
Each day my experience of God/dess arises from the world around me, especially in Nature. The quality of the golden morning light, the vibrant colors of the flowers, the stunning blue of the sky–all of these awaken divine awareness in me. I remember who I am, who we all are, and everything around me seems to flow seamlessly in a sweet rhythm of being and becoming. We human souls are part of that. We came to Earth to embody divinity in physical form, to experience ourselves as God in the material world. We are God experiencing both Godness and humanness as one. It is a beautiful dance.
Ram Dass spent a lifetime coming into oneness with his mantra, the “loving awareness” that filled his soul. Just like all of us, he faced difficult human challenges, particularly the stroke that he learned to accept with such “fierce grace” over the last years of his life. In a photograph taken toward the end of his life, you can see the holy light of “loving awareness” shining from his eyes. Though I never met him in person, in the days following his death, I felt his presence in the sacred words of his mantra. It touched my heart and opened me to the loving awareness within myself. I stopped playing hide-and-seek and just rested in the infinite beingness that is God.
Open Heart, Open Soul
If your heart opens completely, everything else within you also opens. Your heart becomes an expressway to your soul. And your soul is the designated navigator for this lifetime. Not your mind or your physical body. Before you were born, your soul was downloaded with the customized codes for this particular life journey. God’s cosmic plan is miniaturized within your cells. As soon as you open your heart completely, those soul codes light up and go into super-connectivity mode. Everything starts to flow seamlessly within your conscious awareness, within your physical form, and thus within your life.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that day-to-day life is without challenges or ups and downs. It means that no matter what happens, if the pathway between your heart and soul is wide-open, your consciousness will register peace and acceptance. That’s because you trust, at the deepest level, that everything is unfolding as it’s meant to for your soul’s evolution. The love that emanates from your open heart and soul guide you in all that you say and do. Your life begins to flow, your eyes to shine, and your connections with others and the world around you multiply and feed your soul’s further expansion.
This is life on Earth at its optimal best. It is why we incarnated at this time. Many of us are already having the above experience at certain accelerated moments in our lives. It is amazing, extraordinary. Then it fades, or disappears completely. We feel lost or confused. Yet we know that it happened, and we long to get back there. How? Well, the key is to repeatedly remind yourself to keep your heart open no matter what is happening in your life or in the external world. What does that feel like? It feels like accepting everything that arises and allowing any accompanying emotions to be experienced without getting lost in them. It feels like becoming a transparent window of glass that the world flows through. It feels like equilibrium, balance, peace.
It’s not magic; it’s a practice. A practice made up of an inner commitment to ongoing conscious awareness. A practice based on the core wisdom that whatever you or I are experiencing outside us is a reflection of our individual inner soul journey. And that journey is divinely guided. When we come to that realization, we no longer mistrust the people and events in our lives. We surrender to life, and in the process, our open hearts and souls become bridges of light, both for ourselves and for everyone around us.
Thus is the collective heart and soul of the world opened. We have entered a new decade, and now more than ever before, each fully aware divine/human being on this planet is contributing to the greater evolution of conscious awareness everywhere. It is a time foretold for millennia, and we have the great honor, gift, and responsibility of being among those who have incarnated to be part of it. So keep your heart open in every circumstance, and your soul will guide you perfectly into a world that is filled with openings.
Spiritflower 
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