What emerges from the shadows?

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“I see through a mirror darkly” . . .–N.T.

The more light I experience, the more sorrow I feel when I come across someone whose inner light is hidden by the dark smudges of negative thought.  I used to be like that person.  I know what it is like to live in a darkness out of which I cannot find my way.  Dealing with someone who dwells in that kind of spiritual darkness can be very frustrating.  I have been experiencing everything from sorrow to frustration to anger.  Keeping my perspective has been a real challenge.  I know how I want to respond, but often that is a far cry from what ends up happening.  So, as usual, when I am struggling with an issue, God in his all-embracing love, follows me around taking notes and puts people and print, music and the comics–his world is my training ground–anything and everything in this universe to work to express His guidance to me.

 

Today was a little different, though.  Today, a woman got up as a guest speaker at church and began talking about a woman she knew.  She described my life verbatim for the past seven years.  Word after word she outlined the details of my life.  She described a woman who became ill to the point of being practically bedridden and wheelchair bound.  Then her mother got cancer  and this same woman was able to get up out of bed to take care of her mother, but afterward, became even more ill than before.  This woman’s husband was even a truck driver.  I looked at my daughters and they were staring back at me mirroring the same open-mouthed expression of astonishment I could feel on my own face.  I had never met or conversed with the speaker.  What is more, she was talking about someone else.

 

She went on to relate how this woman had come to her for healing from many of the same problems that had beset me.  The speaker told the woman she was an extremely powerful creator to have formed a reality so negative that it left her bedridden.  Not that it was her fault, just that with our thoughts, we impact the circumstances of our own lives positively or negatively.  She asked the woman to think about it.  Two weeks later when she met with the client, this woman said she remembered exactly when she created her reality.  She was a giver to everyone; Never said, “no.”  But she felt very unappreciated.  In fact one day she spoke out loud the words that her family probably would never appreciate all that she did unless she was so ill she was bedridden.  (They’d be sorry then, huh!)

 

Love

Image by Noël Zia Lee via Flickr

Talk about God hitting you square between the eyes with a 2×4!  Listening to this story, first I was astonished, then I was overcome with sorrow, guilt, even shame.  But as this good woman spoke, she said that if this bedridden woman could create such a powerful reality from negative ideas–just imagine what she could create when she applied herself consciously to making a positive life for herself and her world!  Then my heart popped open inside my chest and swelled with such gratitude, I was overwhelmed.  This was my awakening, not to the idea that I could change my own life with my outlook– (I knew that!)–but that others were unaware and in such darkness, and I can love them and affirm them to a better place!

If I am powerful enough to evoke such healing in my own life by my mindful acceptance of what God has always had and wanted me to have, how much can I change the reality of my world with my light and love?  As I move myself out-of-the-way, who knows what God can accomplish through me?!  And when I come up against someone who just pushes all my buttons; I can learn to stand and hold to my own space and light and truth.  I have the choice not to participate in the negative.

 

I also don’t have to voice my “lofty opinion” to those who don’t want it or would disagree.  I can just walk in my own truth and look for a way that I can pour my love on the person and shift the negative energy to positive.  When I do not judge–yeah.  I know.  Easier said than done.  I am so good at convincing my self-righteous self  I am not judging, until I fall on my face in  all the crap I’m shoveling.  You probably never do that sort of thing yourself, but I’m good now; so we can share!

So, when I do not judge, but hold peace, I can shine my light and truth for others.  Then in their time–wow, not mine?  Really?  Okay?–they can find their way along their own spiritual path.  When I accept I am not responsible or in control of everyone else in my world things get so much easier.  Deep breath.

Love Love Love

Image by Gregory Jordan via Flickr

Breathing in the very breath of God here in my crystal room, I realize that love is born in fire.  Fire is great for light.  But if you’ve ever used a hurricane lamp, you know that if you turn that flame so high that it is licking the glass; the result will be black smoot that blocks the light from shining forth.  Turn it up higher and things eventually begin to melt, even that black smoot.  It burns away.  But the glass, although a different shape, is left behind sparkling clear.  I don’t need to back away from hurting people.  I just need to patiently stand until our fires burn clear and our lights meet, and more love is born.  One by one we can change the world.  Imagine. . .

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