Category: Soul journey

From the Heart

In her recent DNC speech, Michelle Obama urged listeners not to complain but rather to “do something!” Yes, and to that I would add “Be in your heart as you do.” Because being is as important as doing in this world, maybe more so. How you go about “doing” infuses your life energy into what you do. If you complain or criticize, you may negate all that you do. If you are optimistic and hopeful, you amplify your doing with positive energy and inspire everyone around you. The power of open-hearted human connection.

Another word for life energy is soul, who you are at your core. Your soul doesn’t have opinions; it is pure peace, pure love. That energy can break through walls. As Amanda Gorman wrote in her poem “This Sacred Scene”: “While we all love freedom, it is love that frees us all….empathy emancipates.” The loving compassion in your words and actions frees the love in the hearts of those you encounter on your life’s path. One seemingly small expression of love can have a huge effect. For example, Tim Walz’s teenage son Gus, who tearfully said “ I love you, Dad! That’s my dad!” from the audience as Walz accepted the Vice Presidential nomination at the DNC. Gus’s image on video opened hearts around the globe when it went viral on social media.

But you don’t have to be famous or in the public eye to touch the lives of friends and strangers alike in your life. Telling those close to you that you love them is the most precious gift you could give them, which they can then pass on. One smile and kind words to a bus driver or cashier can make their day and ripple through person after person as they share their uplifted spirits with others. Does that sound like a Disney film—too good to be real? Well, try living in that awareness for one day and see how it affects not only others’ feelings but your own. The proverb about the movement of a butterfly’s wings in China affecting weather in North America is not as far-fetched as you may think!

Whatever you feel called to do in your life—volunteering at a Food Bank or animal shelter; activism for human rights or environmental awareness; voting; recycling; donating food or funds; creating art, music, writing; helping a neighbor or family member—is a pathway to active being as well. True soul-to-soul connections. When you consciously live from the heart, you are creating waves of loving-kindness and generosity of spirit wherever you go. You are being and doing simultaneously, and your full human potential is shining out into the world—from your heart.

Rewriting the Lyrics of Our Lives

Songwriters sometimes rewrite their lyrics to expand or change perspective. Today, we are all called to rewrite how we see ourselves and our lives in the 21st century, to be more truthful, more inclusive, more expansive, more heart-centered. Not only in the U.S. but everywhere in the world. We think we belong to countries, to nationalities, to races, to religions, to belief systems. In truth, we are none of those. We are immigrants on this planet, traveling here from somewhere in the cosmos to sing our human songs. We think we have identities as we move from place to place. Those identities arrive at birth and depart at death. What is left is a soul, traveling light. In a rewrite of the lyrics of our lives, the words will fall way and there will be nothing but that light.

The longer I live, the less I hang onto. Even the language I use to describe my own feelings and thoughts flows through me but doesn’t really stick. It is spirit speaking in the mother tongue of my soul, and I am just a vessel through which it pours. Each of us is. We are souls passing through. We speak and listen, but it is our hearts that discover the deepest wisdom, in silence, in love. Human/soul connection beyond lifetimes.

When those we love pass from this dimension to another, life can take on a limitless, ethereal quality. Memories are both close and distant, bright and dim. Everything merges into one somehow. I miss my parents and friends who have died, but they are also with me. Life on Earth is what we shared, but there is something larger than those lives that holds us together in ways that are outside of language or description. Infinite consciousness.

In recent years, I find myself floating in the intangible: something as fleetingly beautiful as a morning sky or a summer’s sunset. And it is not just one thing. It is everything. I walk but really I am carried. Music carries me. Birdsong carries me. Poetry carries me. Love carries me. I speak but I am speechless. The lyrics of my life rewrite themselves without any effort on my part. They are both vivid and neutral. They shift with the changes in light and sound and being.

In the end, it is grace that carries us. We are part of something we can only sense but not fully articulate. Early in life, we are immersed in the wonders of living. Death is distant. Then it comes closer, perhaps touches us in a sudden unexpected way. It is then that we begin to see a wider view. The lyrics we have written to describe our lives no longer entirely fit. We realize that at the deepest level, all of us, no matter our background, race, or beliefs, share a common destiny and are woven from common threads. The tapestry of life on Earth enfolds us in its wondrous complexity. When we finally see that fully, “lyrics” fall away, and there is nothing left but the grace of being and interbeing.


What’s the Rush?

Why are we often hurrying from one place to another, from one experience to another? Where are we going, really? Your life span and the ultimate finish line (what we think of as death) will remain exactly the same no matter how fast you go. There is so much more at play here, like an entire universe. You and I perceive ourselves moving through time, but time is only a human-created concept. It’s as if we are on a treadmill at the gym watching a TV screen that shows scene after scene of unfolding events, some mesmerizing, some boring, some happy, some sad. We think we are moving with the events, but we are actually running in place. We believe we are participants with choice and control, but we are observers at the soul level. And we have a larger destiny within Spirit.

This is life, and there is no hurry about any of it. Our souls came to Earth for the experience. God experiences human life through us, and we experience God through human life. We are colorful pieces of glass in a giant divine kaleidoscope of light and sound. Magical, beautiful, fathomless. No reason to speed up or slow down. It’s all unfolding with absolute synchronicity, beyond your ability to make adjustments to what is occurring…or to pinpoint a destination. If you relax and let go, you experience each moment without any need to either rush it or make it last. It is perfect just as is.

Labyrinths, which wind circularly from a beginning point towards a center and then back out again to the start, have been viewed historically as life paths that people symbolically walk for insight and awareness. From one’s Source back again to one’s Source. Or Spirit taking form, journeying through life, and then returning to Spirit once more. I have walked several labyrinths in different locations, and there is definitely a deeper sense of moving and yet remaining in one place. The beginning is the same as the end. That is, birth is the same as death. We travel in time while remaining timeless. We are both finite and infinite. Mortal yet eternal.

Difficult to describe what is essentially beyond description. This is the landscape within which I continually find myself these days. I am moving while standing still. And trying to find language for the indescribable motionless motion of my life, of all of our lives. Poets and songwriters come the closest to capturing the feeling. In the musical flow of poetry and song, listeners often experience moments of touching the intangible, inhaling the transcendent.

It is also possible in the simplicity of daily life, through slow, conscious breathing. With each breath, you and I encounter God in all we see as well as in each other. If we are in no hurry, we can meet within the timeless. Rushing, we miss each other…and everything else. In one single moment is life, death, and eternity. Pause, breathe, and that awareness opens up inside you and all around you.

Writing as Release

I have expressed myself through writing since I was a teenager. I always kept a journal, and after college I began to publish articles and poetry in feminist and political publications. Later my writing became more focused on spiritual exploration. In 2012 I began an ongoing online blog in which I write about a variety of subjects, mostly framed within my own life experiences. I write both to give voice to my inner thoughts and feelings and to connect with others. Only recently have I begun to see my writing as a way of processing all that I am living through day to day and year to year. It helps me to resolve my feelings and to see a bigger picture.

In multiple situations and events, such as moving state to state or the passing of friends/family, I have written my way to peace of mind in the midst of uncertainty or sadness. In the last 12+ years, I have felt the presence of spirit within the words that come through me to be written. It is not my mind that chooses what to say but my soul. It is guiding me to align with an inner peace that always exists within; it is showing me wisdom beyond anything I could discover with mental efforting. When I let go completely, the sentences flow from somewhere outside my physical form. In that letting go, I experience my life flowing in the same way.

More and more now, I see that the realm of infinite consciousness is the source of all I am and all I express as a human being. Soul presence embodied on planet Earth within what we have named time and space. Sounds nebulous perhaps but my experience of “something greater” in my life becomes more vivid and all-encompassing with each passing year. Especially when I sit down to write. Often it is the ups and downs of daily life that move me to sit at the computer and allow that greater something to speak through me. Ultimately that is exactly what brings me comfort and release. At the deepest level it is spiritual connection, or God awareness.

Not everyone thinks of life in terms of a God or Source energy. To some, belief in divine intelligence is a human invention and arises from our own fears and inability to accept uncertainty. Perhaps. Yet throughout millennia, sages and explorers of consciousness have come to profound wisdom about the nature of life/death and eternity within a spiritual framework. Actually, at this level, words and explanations become unimportant. What is discovered/experienced is entirely outside the realm of language and interpretation. What my/your soul experiences is nonverbal.

So then how does writing come into it? For me, as I write, something within me translates the nonverbal experience of God and infinity into human language. It is not literal but an approximation, meant to evoke the feeling of soul connection, of heart-centered awareness. A living metaphor perhaps, just as a poem or piece of music brings to life some ineffable something within us. Not to put too grandiose a spin on it, but this is the closest I can come to describing what writing is to me. It is a sacred activity. It brings me home to my own soul and the soul of all things. It releases what I have held separate and makes it one with all beings and Being itself.

Happy Now

Life is a mystery, a composite, a kaleidoscope. You win, you lose; you cry, you laugh; you grieve, you celebrate. The door is closed; the window is open. You can go through life experiencing only one of these possibilities, or you can experience them all. Most of us are in the latter group, but sometimes we get stuck on one side or another of a polarity. We need to be reminded that life on Earth has many sides. That’s what our loved ones do for us.

A month or so ago, a longtime friend of Anne’s and mine died suddenly of a heart attack. He and his husband had been together more than 40 years, just as Anne and I have. It was shattering to hear the news, especially since we recently lost another friend who had been with her wife almost 50 years. I found myself worrying about Anne and me, as well as about everyone we know—future illnesses and deaths, impending grief and sadness. I was stuck on the side of fear and depression, which can happen, especially at night (“night mind” we call it in our house). This was when Anne stepped in with the perfect comment: “We have plenty of time to be depressed in the future. Let’s be happy now.” I laughed. Thank you, dear Anne.

Such a wise truth, that. One I sometimes forget when my emotions sweep through me. I inherited both sides of optimist/worrier outlooks from my parents. For example, I can recall my father staring out the window one morning and saying, “I hope that’s not poison ivy on that tree.” My mother, on the other hand, pointed out a nearby trumpet vine with bright-orange flowers. They both had worries, but my mother’s inclination was always to put a positive spin on things. My dad used humor for that spin. He was a very funny man. When I was tearfully suffering through an existential dilemma of not wanting to die or live forever, he paused thoughtfully and finally said (with a twinkle in his eye), “Well, you just can’t please some people.” We both laughed. My parents looked to each other for the gifts of humor and positivity. Anne and I do too. Together we give one another balance at key moments.

I can’t control life’s vacillations, but I am learning to accept them. When upsetting events occur, I rely on loving friends and family for a shoulder to cry on or laughter to balance the tears. With time, a larger overview brings perspective. From my soul’s point of view, life and death are one, a guided journey through infinity. The course of our lives takes us to that vantage point. Every life event opens the door wider to the cosmos and our place in it. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s excruciatingly painful at times if a parent, friend, or life partner dies. Yet, in the midst of our grief, there are often one or two human angels who appear, to provide solace and peace of mind.

I have encountered such angels—sometimes strangers, sometimes friends—at times of loss in my life. Even now, as I feel apprehension for the future aging and passing of those I love (and myself), there is a part of me that trusts in something greater than I can even imagine with my human mind. It is my soul that trusts, beyond all lifetimes, in the presence of Spirit (or God) in all things. Love as well as sorrow can open our hearts to the soul’s wisdom, the soul’s light. In loving one another, we experience all of life, and it passes through us with such divine beauty that how can we be anything but grateful? And “happy now.”