Author: Polly Hansen

“Thank you” and “I love you.” These are my two favorite prayers. Thank you for this precious state of being, for awareness and consciousness. I love You who gives it.

I am in love with God. I am in love with myself. That’s what we need to do—fall in love with ourselves, with God, so that we treat ourselves and one another with kindness, patience, and tolerance. Fall in love with our imperfections and grace. Fall in love. Fall in love. Fall in love.

That is all for today. And quite enough.

Blessed be.

 Living on Love
  
 Living on love is banishing every fear,
 Every memory of past thoughts.
 I see no imprint of my sins.
 In a moment love has burned everything…
 Divine Flame, O sweet Blaze!
 I make my home in your hearth.
 In your fire I gladly sing:
     “I live on Love!...”
  
 Living on love is keeping within oneself
 A great treasure in an earthen vase.
 My Beloved, my weakness is extreme.
 Ah, I’m far from being an angel from heaven!
 But if I fall with each passing hour,
 You come to my aid, lifting me up.
 At each moment you give me your grace:
     I live on Love.
  
           --Saint Thérèse of Lisieux 

drawing by Ian McKay Hansen

Shame is not a character defect. How I respond to shame might be. I might go away and hide, or maybe I’ll think obsessively about the incident, or try to please the person who triggered the shame, get that person to like me or approve of me. When I do any of those things, I am not practicing self-love. What would be a more loving way to respond?

I’m exploring these questions now with a tender small group. We talk about shame and explore our responses to it. If in my typical response to shame I feel the need to hide, okay, I give myself permission to go ahead and hide under the virtual table or bed. I’ll come out when I feel stronger and safer. Maybe I can approach the situation or person that triggered that shame response in me and explain that I felt misunderstood by so-and-so’s reaction. Certainly, this is difficult to do and challenging, but such an act is also filled with self-love and compassion and gives the other person a chance to respond with compassion as well.

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. What are your shame moments? What causes them? How do you deal with them?

Let’s share and help one another.

Love,

Polly

The Path

I know the path: it is straight and narrow.
It is like the edge of a sword.

I rejoice to walk on it.
I weep when I slip.

God’s word is:
“He who strives never perishes.”

I have implicit faith in that promise.

Though, therefore, from my weakness
    I fail a thousand times,
I shall not lose faith.

                                      --Mahatma Gandhi

Let us be gentle with one another.

There are so many of us there is no way we can please everyone. Even when I have the best intentions, someone will take issue with it. I will insult someone through my blindness to their needs or because my needs run counter to theirs.

That person has every right to say then how she feels about my action. I can make amends if I wish and feel that is appropriate. Or I may feel grounded in myself and not judge myself as out-of-line. I can say I hear you, thank you, and leave it at that. But I don’t have to bend backward in apology or abject criticism of myself saying bad, Polly, bad just because someone is unhappy with my decision or self-expression.

Criticism by others of me hurts, but unmerited self-criticism hurts worst.

Sure, there are times when I benefit from taking stock of my bad habits that are harmful to me and others. Maybe I gossip. Maybe I poke my nose in other people’s business when I should focus on myself.

But aside from honest self-examination, habitually thinking I am rotten or have something wrong with me because of what I want or who I am harms me profoundly.

So, how do we stop doing that? How do we control the old messages that say, “I’m not good enough,” or “There’s something wrong with me,” or “I am a mistake”?

You are not a mistake. I am not a mistake. We are glorious beings created by God, Goddess, Divine Light, Self, Brahman, learning how to be.

And because we are human, learning how to be is difficult. It’s painful. Why do it alone?

Let us explore the wonders of being human together. All the joy, pain, and shame we feel, we feel together. We are not alone. We feel the same things. Come out of isolation.

I’ll be here. Join me.

Errors by my hand or foot,

by my speech, or body,

by my ears, eyes, or thought;

whether by what I’ve done or failed to do,

dear Lord, forgive all these.

O ocean of mercy, God of gods,

bestower of blissful peace,

victory unto you!

— Soul of My Soul, by Shankara, 8th century Hindu monk

Shame has been a kink in my spiritual flow of abundance for years. Of all the emotions, it’s the most uncomfortable one for me and, I suspect, for many people. Shame is ancient. It’s one of the first emotions mentioned in the Old Testament; Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden, fig leaves at the ready. How humiliating.

That’s what shame feels like – utter humiliation.

Most of us who feel shame try to hide from the emotion. We avoid thinking about the act or situation that brought on the embarrassment. Our spirit grows dark as the shame kink tightens the flow of abundance in our hearts.

But what if, instead of hiding from shame, we honored it? What if we gave the shame in our hearts space and attention? What if we invited it to teach us lessons about ourselves, lessons that point to our bright spirit, telling us of the depths of love and beauty within rather than seeing shame as a crippling wound of unworthiness?

I would love to collaborate with others in creating a ritual to honor our shame and release it. I believe that by sitting together perhaps in silent or guided meditation and holding a sacred space around our shame, the tight, hot ball of it will loosen. Shame will release its lessons to us, and the flow of abundance and love will expand in our hearts.

Perhaps we can drum and chant together, sing together, write stories, draw, dance — whatever creativity the released flow of energy draws forth.

It could be a ritual of a couple of hours or more. Or maybe even less! We could offer the celebration in a series, each ritual building upon the other.

Please comment here or reach out to me if you are interested. I realize I may be alone in this. That is my fear, and it feels like shame! But if that is the case, so be it. I release my shame to the universe! I speak my truth and the Self I claim to be.

Much love,

Polly

“That which makes the mind think,

but cannot be thought by the mind,

that is the Self indeed.

The Self is not someone other than you.”

— The Kena Upanishad

Realizing our powerlessness over another person is a good thing. When we keep the focus on ourselves, we face less strife. If I don’t try to manage everyone else’s life, I’ll create more peace in the world by taking care of myself and not everyone else.

I can say what I need, not, “I think you should_____.” I can say things like, “I’d like to talk about what just happened. Would you be willing to put down your book and talk with me?”  I could also say, “I wish you’d stop reading your book and make some comment about what just happened.” The later shows less ownership, less self-voice.

Mother Theresa wrote, “Even God cannot fill what is full,” and “We need forgiveness to become empty.”

I am finally becoming emptier. I have less of an agenda. I am able to forgive myself, and thus I am able to forgive others. I have more room for God. There is less me taking up space. I like that. Less me, please.

It’s paradoxical. I focus on taking care of myself instead of trying to fix, manage, and control others. I become emptier by focusing on powerlessness.

We are wonderful, beautiful, sacred, deeply spiritual beings. Despite our pain and suffering, we are splendid and divine. I don’t know why I have lived the life I have, raped at age five, attracted to an older man at age 14, sex trafficked at age 16. I felt validated through sex until I didn’t. I felt shame. Many of us have and do, but we can put that suffering behind us. We can forgive ourselves and heal together. We can recover the purity of our souls, our being, we can find blessedness in who we are together. I reach out in love and compassion to you who may still suffer from whatever shame you feel or once felt that haunts you still. Forgiveness and unity are truly the answers. Suffer not in silence.

“Let your love flow outward through the universe,

To its height, its depth, its broad extent,

A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.

Then, as you stand or walk,

Sit or lie down,

As long as you are awake,

Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;

Your life will bring heaven to earth.”

The Sutta Nipata – a Buddhist scripture

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Somehow sexters, people who send explicit sex-related texts, have gotten hold of my cell phone number. Two or three times a day, I get text messages from these people or this person. I’m reasonably sure it’s the same entity each time. I don’t know if it’s an individual or a room of people hired to send these texts like mass spammers. The first time I received such a text, I felt violated and enraged. How dare they! How did this happen? I took it personally, not realizing there’s nothing personal about it. My phone number is on a list, that’s all.

There’s no way for me to get off this list unless I change my number, which I’m not about to do. So instead, every time I get a text, while I’m swiping the red delete banner, I send a prayer to that person and bless them, hoping their distorted, confused hearts and souls will open to divine love and heal. It may not happen in this lifetime, but I don’t want to add to their misery by cursing them.

Once, I, too, was blind, but now I see.

Thank you, God.

So the next time you feel powerless over the careless actions of another person, try praying and blessing that person instead of cursing them. It’s an opportunity to spread love in some small way. And who knows, maybe it’s a critical way, in the end.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now I’m found;

Was blind, but now I see.”

When I was nineteen, I knew everything I needed to know about my spiritual self — that I was good. Only I didn’t believe what my heart knew instinctively because I was in too much pain.

Here’s what I wrote back then:  “I tend to make problems for myself. I‘m not used to thinking and acting as if I were truly good. It’s probably due to hanging on to feeling bad. Intellectually I can say I am good, but why can’t I feel it emotionally? That’s what I’m searching for—the goodness in me.

“I speak of God—inside me and all around me and in other people—that’s what I want to see. Despite my pessimism, I am beginning to love myself, a manifestation of God, of a spirit within me, within this whole phenomenon of life. It’s just too much to ignore! I could go crazy over that, or I could be calm knowing the power of the truth.”

Forty-six years later, I marvel at what I knew and appreciate the truth in my youthful words: we are all okay. No matter how much pain we are in, we are good; our souls are bright and loving. It’s just that the truth is hard to know when we feel lousy.

Oh dear ones, listen to your heart. You are magnificent! Believe it! You are an expression of Her creativity—golden, warm, and loving.

Here is one of my all-time favorite prayers:

“When thus I lose myself in thee, my God,

Then do I see and know,

That all Thy universe reveals Thy beauty,

All living beings, all lifeless things,

Exist through Thee.

This whole vast world is but the form

In which Thou showest us Thyself,

Is but the voice,

With which Thyself Thou speakest unto us.

What need of words?

Come, Master, come,

And fill me wholly with Thyself.”

–Tukaram, a Hindu mystic of the 17^th century

So here it is spoken plainly: “All Thy universe reveals Thy beauty…”

That includes us! We are Her universe! We reveal Her beauty! Isn’t that grand! Isn’t that miraculous!

Enjoy the day!

Hello, dear friends. Sorry I missed posting last week. I am so busy trying to finish this book I’m writing about my teenage years when I was lost and frightened and on my own.

I think we all feel that way sometimes and don’t realize that we aren’t alone. God is always with us.

But what if you don’t believe in God? What if you feel like God isn’t there for you or doesn’t care? Once upon a time, I screamed at God for not helping me. I was enraged. She just stood there as silent, unhelpful, solid, and unmovable as the tree at which I screamed.

I felt no help then, but how do I know that tree didn’t help me just by standing ground, by receiving my anger?

Believing in God, believing we are loved is a decision, a choice. It opens our hearts to the possibility of healing and hope. It is a choice I make every day to love and be loved, to feel whatever shows up–sorrow, rage, hope, joy, love.

Listen carefully to your heart. If it aches, pour that ache out to God and or some healing soul.

Take heart, have hope. Spirit will guide you.

“Listen, listen, listen to my heart’s song.

Listen, listen, listen to my heart’s song.

I will never forget you.

I will never forsake you.

I will never forget you.

I will never forsake you.”

Write to me; I will listen.

God brings certain people into my life to teach me lessons about myself.

God brought a woman into my life who would not listen to me. What I learned was I often don’t listen to people.

This woman started our conversation with something I didn’t want to talk about and told her so. She talked about it anyway. I got angrier and angrier. We ended the phone call.

My husband and I are planning to relocate. We are discussing how to proceed. Sometimes when we talk, I find myself feeling angry; I don’t want to listen to his opinions and walk away or ignore him.

I began to notice all the times I do this to people. Refuse to listen. It starts as a slow burn and becomes a physical resistance in my body – increased heart rate, rigid muscles, clenched teeth.

I talked this realization over with a friend.

“You feel self-righteousness,” she said. “I get it. I do that, too. I don’t want to listen to someone who has strong opinions opposite from mine. It’s tricky.”

I realized I owed the woman with strong opinions an apology. I thought she had not listened to me. But I had not listened to her. I failed her as a friend. I called and apologized. I said I had done a poor job of listening and could do better. She said, okay, but she’d rather not be friends anyway. We weren’t close, but still, I was disappointed and sad, but it showed me the effects of my behavior.

I don’t want to live my life turning away from people whose opinions I don’t like.

God says I can be grounded in love and wholeness as I listen. I don’t need to spout my opinion in return. I don’t have to engage in an argument. I can listen. I can accept the information and let it rest.

I apologize now to my husband. I say, “I will listen and try not to walk away.”

He says, “Thank you. I will try to do the same.”

Maybe King Solomon was considered wise because he listened. But he prayed to God for the gift of wisdom, for the gift of listening.

“Therefore, give to Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people, that I may discern between good and evil.”

I receive everything from You, Higher Power. What someone else thinks or says does not take away what You give me. God, grant me an understanding, listening heart.

And dare I say it, keep the lessons coming.