Tag: connection

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.


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.

Bird’s Eye View

Anne and I live now in a third-floor condo overlooking an expanse of woods. In the past, we’ve always lived in second-floor apartments, so this is a change of perspective. We are at bird level. Blue jays and robins fly past our windows. We see more of the sky and continuously changing cloud formations. The sunlight moves into the trees at sunrise and fades to shadow at dusk. From a distance, we see flocks of birds land on the tree branches. As they fly through the sky and perch in the treetops, birds take in a multi-level overview of their environment. From our windows, I am coming to know a bit of how they experience the world.

I’m a birdwatcher/birder, so I love to see birds close up, but I am learning more about their sounds in living here. Now I often hear the birds before I see them. Because I am familiar with many of their calls and songs, I can usually identify which birds are nearby (e.g., nuthatch, chickadee, goldfinch, flicker, Carolina wren, cardinal, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers); I recognize them from their sound vibration instead of the visual cues. As the weeks go by, I am finding my hearing is becoming fine-tuned. I hear the bird calls and songs more readily and more distinctly now. My experience of being with birds has become as much sound as sight, like listening to an invisible avian orchestra in the trees.

There is a legally blind woman who visits Mt. Auburn Cemetery during the spring bird migration, as I do. She has been a birder for more than 30 years, and as her vision declined, she learned to identify birds solely by sound (after two cochlear implants for hearing loss). In fact, her ability to recognize bird calls and songs is so highly developed that she often hears what others can’t yet see. Or is able to identify a bird that some are hearing but can’t find in the trees. As her physical circumstances changed, her life experience also shifted. She meets the world in a different way now, through sound.

The Maya calendar symbol Tzikin stands for “vision” and is represented by the eagle, who sees a vast panorama of Earth from the skies. Intuition and clairvoyance are traits associated with this sign. Thus, “vision” can mean inner seeing in addition to outer. I would add that it can also mean sound as well as sight. Flying overhead, owls hear the sound of a tiny mouse beneath the snow; robins hear earthworms moving below the grass and soil. We may not be as aurally skilled as birds, but how we each experience the world depends on our own unique physical abilities and life experiences. All of life involves an inner/outer process, so every time we move from one place to another, whether a few feet or many miles, our perspective shifts. Also, as our physical form changes, so too does the way we perceive and receive life.

My “bird’s eye view” where I live now, on an upper floor, includes a wider lens in many ways. But it also includes a deeper listening at every level. Taken together, I experience the world in a more expansive way. Each day I am reminded how the universe is composed of an infinite number of interconnected fractals, which give me and all living beings the opportunity to encounter worlds of wonder in every sight, sound, scent, taste, or touch as we move through our lives.

Survivors

There are imitation “survivors” like those on the contrived TV show. Then there are real ones, such as those who have survived cancer, stem cell transplants, heart surgery, or another extreme health challenge. Surviving these involves courage and physical stamina unlike any other life experience. On the other side is relief, gratitude, happiness, but also, unexpectedly, sadness. The latter is invisible to others and almost unidentifiable at first to those experiencing it. It may have many sources, such as loss of “life as it once was” or the realization that one’s own mortality is inevitable, sooner or later. Unexpected tears arise for no specific reason, except perhaps the poignancy of life. I am a breast cancer survivor, and these issues came up for me. I am finding that they come up for others as well.

I just finished reading Suleika Jaouad’s book Between Two Kingdoms, Memoir of a Life Interrupted (and listened to her powerful TED talk), in which she describes her reactions to surviving a leukemia diagnosis at 22. Her prognosis was dire, and she went through almost four years of difficult treatments to finally emerge cancer-free.* She too then felt both relief and sadness, at times an unshakable depression. Yet she eventually came to great wisdom about how the two “kingdoms” of health and illness are not inseparable but “porous.” We all move back and forth between them in our lives. There are always “interruptions” of every kind.

The breast cancer treatments I received lasted about six months, and the prognosis was good, so my experiences were very different from hers in significant ways. She faced setbacks and brushes with death over years. Indeed, each person who lives through a difficult diagnosis or illness has a very unique experience. For the most part, after initial shock and fear, my experience became one of trust in my soul’s path and accompanying inner peace because of that trust. This helped me through any discomfort/pain that accompanied treatment. I had moments of extraordinary spiritual epiphanies throughout the surgical, chemo, and radiation treatments, ones that expanded my view of my own life and all life. It was only after the completion of treatment that an inner sadness appeared.

I must add that all this took place during the first years of COVID as well and brought up general issues of health and growing older. Looking ahead to one’s eventual death can happen at any age, young or old. It is something we each face. Those experiencing health challenges may have it handed to them unexpectedly, but we all eventually must come to terms with our own mortality. There can be fear, sadness, acceptance—or all simultaneously. It is never just one thing.

To be completely honest, thoughts of death and infinity have been with me since childhood (as those who read my blogs or books may know). I have carried background grief about the nature of life/death all my life. Yet, as I’ve explored a more spiritual path as an adult, those fears have shifted; a new balance has been created with deeper trust in the wisdom of a greater universal Intelligence. This is where I was when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Eventually that took me to the next level, an indescribable expansion into the unknown which gave me a broader acceptance of both the tears and joy that is life on Earth. Yes, I’ve had sadness and emotional ups and downs after recovery from breast cancer, but I’ve also had amazing moments of connection to the spirit that exists everywhere. I became aware that at that level, life and death are One.

So, to be a real survivor (as opposed to a TV one) is to recognize that the deepest survival happens at the soul level, because the soul is eternal; it never dies. Our human bodies may survive illness, disease, trauma, heartbreak, loss, and other life crises. Our souls survive beyond all those physical experiences, even, or especially, death. Sometimes that’s how we learn this wisdom, through the challenges of our physicality. God shows us irrevocably that the form may “die”, but spirit never does. We are ALL soul survivors, every one of us—butterflies of light.
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*Suleika was recently diagnosed with a cancer recurrence after ten years. She has moved once again through a successful bone marrow transplant, with her husband Jon Batiste by her side (as seen in the film American Symphony). Their mutual journey is very inspiring.