Anxiety is a dizzying fretfulness that alientates us from our lives, from others and disorients us from our truths. It can insinuate it's way into our thoughts in ways we do not recognize until it really has a grip on our consciousness. Anxiety often starts with a question that is asked in our minds. It is often a good question, but the key is that it is asked with a sense of unbridled worry that at first seems innocent, but once it takes hold can spring into full fledged panic. Suddenly the floor becomes slanted, the walls start caving in and all we can think about its looking for a window to jump out of! We are desperate for a way out.
There is no truth that can be found in anxiety. Not only this, we are allowing our lives to be stolen from us with worry. These are precious moments that we live and it is so important that we stand up and claim our lives back from this unbridled fretfulness. Spirit has given us THE NOW and we must embrace it fully, enjoying every color, every scent, every sound. We must not overwhelm ourselves with the details of the future. We were not designed for that!
We all have to find our way out of these webs of confusion. Here is what I can offer...I have found that taking a deep breath, a moment of pause to be grateful to God for our blessing, and for all that God is to us can be the first step out of the maze of worry. Then, when our beings calm we can trace our steps back to what that question was that insinuated its way into our minds. We can address that question with a balanced mind, not a fretful mind. We can open up to Spirit and allow It to help us to answer that question with a Life Giving answer. So often the answer is simply TRUST and KNOW that I am God. Simply trust in the loving, supportive hand of Spirit...that Spirit will help us and lift us to that higher ground when we need it, when we are ready. That whatever may befall us, Spirit will be there, ready to provide us with what we need. What an incredible guarantee! What on earth are we so afraid of!
When we release anxiety, when we make the decision that we will not allow our moments to be stolen from us. We become fully present and our worlds will open up to us. We will be free to experience it not as our fear would frame it but as it truly is, without bounds!
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A beautiful poem a friend sent to me about that shining moment the Spirit rescues us from those dark, mysterious places our humanity can take us to has made my heart sing....
SONG OF THE SUMMONING ANGEL
When the Summoning Angel appears, you'll know.
A just-opened rose with its glistening raindrop
will astonish, will shake your being to the core.
A handful of starlings skittering across the sky
will unsheathe you from your body into thin air.
I've been there. I've tasted this Wider Reality.
Everything I ever loved rolled into a single ball
of almost unbearable Radiance--an entire world
transformed--and my tiny, foolish stupefied self
burst apart like the milkweed pod, spilling seeds.
God's Summoning Angel is a Holy Terror, no lie.
Utterly exposed, all barracades smithereened,
I prayed for mercy! I begged for more! But Love
at its first declension is not human. It's always
heartbreaking. Our thudding hearts are too small!
The command was simple, overwhelming: change,
grow, awake, become! Yet there's nothing harder
than letting go of my addiction to old wounds.
Goodbye and goodbye and goodbye, dark familiars.
I turn with new eyes toward the breaking dawn...
***
-- Bob Savino 10/31/99
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Choosing The Spirit's Perspective
Challenges tailored specifically for our weaknesses come to us each day in different forms, not as an act of punishment from Life to us, but as an act of Love. Spirit knows the positive impact our being stronger in these exact ways will have on our lives. These instances have the possibility of making ancient wrongs within our beings, right, and forging brave, new ground. There is no chance for failure here as we continue to press in and apply ourselves, passionately responding to The Absolute’s overture to us.
When each challenge comes, we are presented with an opportunity.
Our highest objective is to embrace the challenge when it comes, accepting the agitation it may create in our being, asking ourselves, "What can I learn from this? How can this strengthen me. How can I better my life or the lives of others involved in this?" It is this acting out of a sense of inward attentiveness that can help us to make the utmost progress.
In the face of adversity it is easy to be wrapped up in our humanity...that voice that says "I am afraid of...I am angry because..." It is like seeing our lives through dirty glasses.
But if we would relinquish our ego and open ourselves, even for a split second, to see with the eyes of Spirit we could see our situations, our lives as they truly are. Suddenly those dirty glasses are removed and all forms appear in crystal clarity. We are then able to act out of a sense of understanding, peace, love and abandon.
Spirit sees all things as an opportunity and if we choose to see as Spirit sees, we are able to begin to see things that way, too. How differently we would feel and act if this truth grew roots within us!
Today I long to see things as Spirit sees them, and not with the narrowness of my humanity.
When each challenge comes, we are presented with an opportunity.
Our highest objective is to embrace the challenge when it comes, accepting the agitation it may create in our being, asking ourselves, "What can I learn from this? How can this strengthen me. How can I better my life or the lives of others involved in this?" It is this acting out of a sense of inward attentiveness that can help us to make the utmost progress.
In the face of adversity it is easy to be wrapped up in our humanity...that voice that says "I am afraid of...I am angry because..." It is like seeing our lives through dirty glasses.
But if we would relinquish our ego and open ourselves, even for a split second, to see with the eyes of Spirit we could see our situations, our lives as they truly are. Suddenly those dirty glasses are removed and all forms appear in crystal clarity. We are then able to act out of a sense of understanding, peace, love and abandon.
Spirit sees all things as an opportunity and if we choose to see as Spirit sees, we are able to begin to see things that way, too. How differently we would feel and act if this truth grew roots within us!
Today I long to see things as Spirit sees them, and not with the narrowness of my humanity.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
A New Chapter...
Pray for your Own Discovery, Thomas Merton
From "The Seeds of Contemplation"
"There exists some point at which I can meet God in a real and experimental contact with His infinite actuality. This is the “place” of God, His sanctuary—it is the point where my contingent being depends upon His love. Within myself is a metaphorical apex of existence at which I am held into being by my Creator.
God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of Himself.
A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it.
But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of Him I was meant to embody, I shall be full of His actuality and find Him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere. I shall be lost in Him: that is, I shall find myself."
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This passage has always truly inspired me because Thomas Merton has a such a way of putting sacred things into words that crystallizes them in the mind, and yet does not limit them, as they cannot be limited. Additionally, I have always sensed that he reached such a depth to his spirituality that it found itself at a place that was beyond definition. That is something I deeply admire.
From "The Seeds of Contemplation"
"There exists some point at which I can meet God in a real and experimental contact with His infinite actuality. This is the “place” of God, His sanctuary—it is the point where my contingent being depends upon His love. Within myself is a metaphorical apex of existence at which I am held into being by my Creator.
God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of Himself.
A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it.
But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of Him I was meant to embody, I shall be full of His actuality and find Him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere. I shall be lost in Him: that is, I shall find myself."
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This passage has always truly inspired me because Thomas Merton has a such a way of putting sacred things into words that crystallizes them in the mind, and yet does not limit them, as they cannot be limited. Additionally, I have always sensed that he reached such a depth to his spirituality that it found itself at a place that was beyond definition. That is something I deeply admire.
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