We need a total reset. How do we come out of our self-centeredness and acculturation in order to have a personal and collective reset? We who are the edge dwellers who dance around on the edges of time hoping to usher in the new age that is coming whether we take the ride or note: this is an invitation that is coming in for us all to do what is needed to get what's needed. Will we allow for the revolutionary shifts that actually want to happen? How do we find our way to yes? 

HOW TO SUPPORT SOMEONE IN PAIN

In this Wisdom Wednesday, we are addressing something fundamental to life itself – how to support someone who is in pain. Recorded from my “hall of mirrors” we address the reflections we give to those who are close to us and who are in pain, whether it’s mental, emotional, physical or even spiritual pain.  When someone, especially someone we love, is in pain, our first thought is to try to help them get away from it.  We may try to fix it, to help them get distance from it or we will simply sympathize with them and take it on ourselves.

But none of this is truly supportive, and the person in pain can feel more frightened and alone than ever.  In order to really support someone – or to be supported ourselves if we are in pain – we have to come out of conflict with the pain itself.  Pain is not necessarily bad, or something that we need to “fix.”

​Pain is the body, or the mind warning us that something is out of alignment.  It is signaling a healing process that is either underway or that needs to happen.  To support someone in pain means to not make the pain wrong, but to help them take the ride with it.  Even as anger or deep fear or hopelessness might arise, support means witnessing more than it means fixing.  Helping is about reminding the person that you have their back in the process but that it is a process that needs to be lived and engaged with.

THE GREAT UNDOING. Do you ever feel like you’re coming undone? You start becoming aware of the thousands of pieces that have to work together to make you work. And then suddenly they all feel like they’re at war with each other. The results can be devastating, mentally, physically and spiritually, depending on where the misalignments are. We live in a time of undoing, with many of the institutions, belief systems and norms of our society falling apart, and even coming into conflict with each other. Times of change are perilous but necessary.

This undoing, whether it’s personal or societal, needs to happen. As painful as it is, the process of undoing releases all that is not in service to our highest needs. Coming out the other side of a great undoing requires opening to change. Personally, the undoing asks us to let go of everything we think we know, to come to a place of openness and healing.

As a society, we are being asked to let go of so many of our old ways of being and thinking so we can come to a whole new way of life with each other.

​Please join me today to explore the ways we can allow this Great Undoing to be a healing process.

LOVING WITHOUT EXPECTATIONS. What would it be like to love purely, fully, unconditionally, without needing to receive anything back?

Imagine loving another person, or perhaps a group of people, or maybe even the whole world of us without any personal attachments to the nature of that love. Imagine love fully unleashed – love without judgements or fear or agenda, only the pure awareness of love.

So much of our loving is transactional – we give and we get – or we try to keep those scales balanced. The next level is to let go, to be able to open our hearts and love simply for the sake of love.

At the Tuesday Spirit Lab someone mentioned the situation in Afghanistan, but instead of anger towards the Taliban or grief and shame that could make her look away, she only felt love for the Afghani people. She is reading their stories and feeling a connection that is more powerful than the noise machine being generated by our own helplessness and guilt.

​It is the love she is feeling that truly supports, that will motivate whatever actions are aligned with her truth and her spiritual connection.

WALKING ON A SPIRITUAL PATH. A conversation about walking the path of spirit with Marina Qutab. There has been a massive shift in our relationship to spirituality, as the tectonic plates of our religious belief systems have been moving and sometimes disappearing.

Many of us have abandoned religions and spirituality altogether, only to feel at some point our hearts pulling us back towards God. “I’m not religious but I am spiritual” has become a mantra of sorts as we explore a more personal relationship with the Divine. What we come to is that true spirituality is not a belief system at all, it is more a path that we walk.

Sometimes the way ahead is not visible, and we are asked to walk into the unknown with our hearts open and trusting that our feet will land on solid ground. Other times we get to a fork in the road and we know we need to make some choices in life and also to deepen our spiritual engagement.

​This new spirituality asks us to keep clearing and healing old emotional and psychic wounds so that our path is one of evolvement and opening to life and experiencing true love here.

When pain visits – whether it’s emotional or physical, we tend to cope with it by either rising above it or finding ways to get rid of it. Products and services that help us deal with pain and the fear of pain are huge industries. And we are conditioned to believe that pain is part of something evil.

But, like everything else right now, the idea of pain as an enemy that we must fight needs to be reevaluated.

What wisdom can we add to the thousands of books already written and the words of so many teachers and all the drugs and methods of dealing with pain? When something hurts, we want to make it go away. But what if there was a different kind of relationship with pain?

​What if we learned how to expand our consciousness to not create an enemy out of pain in ourselves or others? Join me today to open this up in our hearts and minds and see where the future is trying to lead us.

​HEALING THE OTHER PANDEMIC...Many of us experienced life as we knew it unravel and disappear over the last year and a half. We witnessed up close, or from a distance, the ravages of a virus dealing death blows to hundreds of thousands of Americans and countless millions around the world. It’s far from over yet, but we are beginning to emerge from our quarantines and see each other’s smiles on unmasked faces for the first time. 

The battlefield littered with the detritus of this war is still there and is home to the other pandemic of lostness. It’s equally as debilitating and distressing as the COVID virus and unlike the first one, it shows no signs of letting up. It is affecting all ages and all people.

The emotional toll it has taken on us is growing like a cancer. It’s fueled by political polarization, fear, and mistrust in all existing institutions. Many of the structures set in place by the industrial revolution of the 20th century are breaking down quickly. People don’t want to go back to soul sucking jobs and children are questioning whether they can return to classrooms where they feel stifled and unseen. Emotional issues are flowering into full-on psychotic breaks and other mental illnesses. And many of us are on the edge.  

There is no vaccine for this epidemic, but there is medicine. We have to find ways to support each other to heal and to move on from old ways of being. Join me today to open this up in our hearts and minds and find a path ahead.

​We are asked in so many ways, from the time we are very small, to believe in things we cannot see, like God or faeries. Our religions ask us to believe in the paths they set out for us, the way to define right and wrong, good and bad. Our countries ask us to believe in our governments and our founding documents. We say we believe in freedom, in equality, but do we even understand what that means in relation to our own unique lives? 

The demand to accept and follow a set of beliefs dooms us to a life of limitation and imitation. This is especially true with our spirituality. And if you think you are not part of this, because maybe you don’t follow any organized religion, look around at most of the newly emerging spiritual groups and you’ll see the same structures building up with a new set of words, rules, beliefs and leaders to follow.  

Beyond belief is true knowing. When you tell a child he must believe in God, you are taking away something he is already deeply connected to, something his heart already knows. Please join me today for a dip into the clear cool waters of knowing, where the true story of your divine connection awaits you.

​YOUR WORDS ARE SACRED. We do a lot of talking all the time. If we’re not talking to someone else, we’re talking to ourselves. Sometimes we talk back to the TV or to our pets. Often we try to talk to God. Sometimes we try to listen. We are communicators, and we tend to throw our words out like lassos, trying to connect or to defend or to explain.

What we don’t realize is the power of all these words. Words can go all the way from the profane to the sacred. Mostly, we use them towards the bottom of that ladder. The words themselves may sound sweet, but the energy that comes with them can be aggressive and cutting.

Even in spiritual work, words can be thrown out like memes, and phrases become trendy. The casualness of the way we use the words actually blocks our growth and connection to what is real and true.

It’s time to bring a much greater consciousness to language. Words are sacred emanations of our hearts and minds. Slowing down and connecting with our words means connecting with what is motivating these words from deep within us.

We are surrounded by mystery and we are not alone. The great paradox is that while we are beings programmed by some inner radar to reach out and connect to all that exists, including what we can see and touch and what we can only sense, we have created so much perceived distance between ourselves and what we call Spirit or God that most of us don’t really make a true and ongoing connection.

We may feel like actors on a stage, as Shakespeare said, being moved around by a force we can’t know and often fear. And we seek guidance from a distant shimmering force. A greater truth is emerging as spiritual energies and beings are moving closer. We realize that what we have thought of as Spirit includes many others - beings from other planets, galaxies, universes who touch in here to observe and to see if we are ready to communicate in some way. The energy fields around us are full of spirit beings of all kinds, and our challenge is to learn and intimately know how viscerally present they really are to us and how eager they are to know us.

​The convergence of our spirituality and our science depends on our willingness to be part of a great matrix of intelligence and to enter a conscious state of communication through our thoughts and hearts that reaches out with grace and love. Please join me for an experience in contact.