Month: December 2021

Pencil illustration by Ele McKay https://www.elemckayartist.com/landscapes

Life is a playground, a workshop where the Master hones us into perfect diamonds. All the makings are inside—light, clarity, brilliance. Each hardship and heartbreak like a facet making us more gorgeous. We just don’t know it yet, don’t feel it. But in the quiet and solitude of meditation we become conscious of union with what is, with that perfect self.

Perhaps you were abused as a child, born into poverty, experienced the brutal arrows of racism, suffered illness, experienced brutality and loss. Life is harsh. We are powerless over it. But as the Star Trek Borgs say, resistance is futile. I say resistance is painful, and yet it is normal to resist pain. Eventually, we learn to go through the pain, to breath with it, endure it, accept it, and then it changes, dissipates, revealing yet another sparkling facet that lets in the light and makes our hearts and souls shine with the love they naturally hold, releasing that light in dazzling brilliance and color.

I embrace this grand human experience. I say let me know you Lord, Goddess of Wisdom, Source of All. Let me give thanks for the lessons You teach, bitter though some of them are. I am not alone. None of us are. The illusion of isolation evaporates when we reach out to one another with love and compassion and when we reach into our own souls and love the precious jewel that we are.

Open our hearts,

That we may hear Thy Voice,

Which constantly cometh from within.

Disclose to us Thy Divine Light,

Which is hidden in our souls,

That we may know and understand life better…

–Khatum by Hazrat Inayat Khan

There’s a concept in the ancient practice of Qi Gong, which translates as “energy work,” that our bodies are bridges between Heaven and Earth, conduits that channel energy from the ground up through our feet through the crown of our head to the heavens, and down from the heavens through our crown to the Earth. We are the connecting tissue. We are physical substance and pure energy combined.

I love to think of myself in those terms, to think of all humankind as bridges that channel sacred energy, the entire universe to this world.

What do we do when selfish people forget or never realize their function and purpose in life and hurt others?

I can worry about the stupidity of others and create anxiety for myself, or I can accept my powerlessness over the actions of others and chant the following phrase from the Rig Veda:

“Guard me against the grief that haunts the life of the selfish.”

The grief that haunts the life of the selfish.

That’s certainly been me at times, creating my own grief and causing grief to others in my pain and ignorance.

As a friend recently reminded me, self-awareness, self-knowledge, and good old shadow work are necessary to gain consciousness, to become more aware of the divinity that surrounds and permeates us. And that we let go, surrender everything we know to God. We are God’s channel, God’s conduit to one another and back to God. It takes getting rid of a lot of crud to become so.

It’s good to have friends, angels, and guides to help us along our way.

I am here to offer witness, presence, and company. And strength and hope in my capacity, as well.

Guard us against the grief that haunts the life
of the selfish. Lead us from darkness into light.

We will sing of your love as it was sung of old. Your
laws change not, but stand like the mountains.

Forgive me all the mistakes I have committed.
Many mornings will dawn upon us again. Guide us
through them all, O Lord of Love.

--"God Makes the Rivers to Flow," from The Rig Veda