I Can't Breathe

 "I can't breathe."  These are famous words now.  Words we will never forget, uttered by George Floyd just before his life was taken from him.  He said it for himself and he said it for all of us.  They are words I utter too often these days, in regard to myself.

I have experienced varying levels of asthma since my late twenties.  I'm seventy now, so that's over 50 years of difficult breathing.  The masks we must now wear because of Covid exacerbate my breathing difficulties.  I feel like I'm suffocating all too often.

Energetically, the lungs are affected by grief.  It has not gone unnoticed by me that my buried grief has been expressing itself through my congested lungs for most of my life; that my grief is so overpowering that it inhibits my breathing.

The grief I carry is complicated and many-layered.  I've managed to process some of it, but not enough to free my lungs from the burden they carry.  I might or might not ever manage it in this lifetime.  But, I continue to focus on expanding my awareness into my grief in an effort to see it fully for what it is, accept it, and love it free.  It is a life's work.

Lately, I've been thinking about Covid in regard to collective grief.  Covid is a virus that affects the lungs and stops people from being able to breathe.  "I can't breathe."  We put them on respirators, hoping that a device will be able to bridge the gap between not being able to breathe and being able to breathe on their own.  It works sometimes, but not all the time.  Sometimes the lungs just can't manage it anymore.

We each carry a lot of collective sadness.  We have perpetrated a lot of horror upon each other throughout history.  And, most of the time, life has just continued on without even a small pause to consider what has happened.  Cultures rise and fall, governments come and go, belief systems form and adapt and crumble, and all the while, the sadness just builds underneath it all.  Generations and generations of sadness.  How often has a culture or a government that rose out of horror and blood turned around to acknowledge the devastation left in its wake and to say we're sorry?  We misperceived a situation and overreacted.  We took offense to something and overreacted.  We perpetrated cruelty, pain and death over those who believed differently for centuries.  We thought we were better than those we conquered, ruled, suppressed, and enslaved.  We thought it all belonged to us.  We lacked the ability to care for our fellow human beings and all other life upon this planet.  We wanted to think we were the best.  We wanted to have it all to ourselves.  We wanted others to work for us and do our bidding without being compensated for their efforts.  We wanted to own land, people...everything.  Mine, mine, mine.

The collective shame and grief associated with millennia of aggressive greed and narcissism is a lot for all of us to bear.  It occurred to me that maybe Life gave us a pandemic that affects the lungs as an effective way to release a lot of the grief that has built up within us, all of us.  And, that a virus might be an effective way to affect and upgrade our collective DNA.  We all carry all the grief.  None of us are outside of it.  We've all perpetrated the horror.  None of us are outside of it.  It's in our genes, our DNA.  It's passed on through the generations.  We've been on both sides of the horror.  We've experienced all of it.

It might feel too big to be able to acknowledge and take responsibility for what has gone before and what is happening now.  We question what we can possibly do to affect change, release the sadness, and relieve our continuously weeping wounds.  There is a practice that I've used for many years now that is sublimely simple, yet profoundly effective.  It is called Self-I-Dentity Ho-oponopono.  It comes from Hawaii through a Hawaiian shaman named Mornah Nalamaku Simeona, who is no longer in the body, and through the work carried on by her student, Stanley Haleakala Hew Len, who is still living.  There are books and videos about it, if one is interested; but, I will give the basics of it here, that anyone can use to great benefit.

No matter what is occurring within oneself or within one's surroundings that is disturbing one's peace, sit with that in mind.  Center the self by taking a few focused breaths.  Then, the first statement one says is:  "I love you."  The "I love you" opens a field of love in which the process takes place.  The "I love you" is said to oneself, to whomever or whatever might be disturbing one's peace, to all Life.  It opens the heart.  Sometimes I have to say it a number of times before I feel I can continue to the next step.  The second statement one says is:  "I'm sorry."  The "I'm sorry" is all encompassing.  I'm sorry for anything that exists within me that would be causing this situation, disagreement, ignorance...whatever...all encompassing.  It's how we take responsibility for whatever is happening.  If something didn't exist within us, it would not be able to show itself in our 3D reality.  So, "I'm sorry."  Truly sorry.  Sometimes, at this point of the process, I weep uncontrollably for a while.  I let myself have this release and truly feel the "sorry" before moving on to the next step.  The third statement one says is:  "Please forgive me."  The "Please forgive me" is to oneself, to anyone or anything that one has been blaming, to all of Life.  Please forgive me.  And, the last statement one says is:  "Thank you."  The "Thank you" accepts the process being done and complete.  It gives thanks to oneself, to anyone or anything that one has been blaming, and to all of Life.  Thank you.  All is well.  It is done.  Thank you.

I'm not saying that using this process will reap instant results, although it can.  This process can be done over and over, if need be, until one finds peace.  And, if peace comes after using it once, then so be it.  There is no timeframe that can be superimposed onto it.  Peace comes in its own time.  If you have no resonance with this process, then move on.  You will find something that you will resonate with and that will be effective for you.  We have a bottomless toolbox from which to choose.

No matter what process any of us use to process our pain or help us through difficult times, I would posit that it would be beneficial to all of us if each of us could acquaint ourselves with our sadness and take responsibility for our collective situation.  It's so easy to blame someone or something else for our pain and hardship.  It's easy to blame one man, or one group of people, or one country, or one situation, or one pandemic; but, the blaming won't get us any further down the road.  The blaming will only keep us stuck.  None of us like to see ourselves as guilty, and yet we are all guilty.  We are all innocent and we are all guilty.  We are all things.  We are all capable of great compassion and love.  And, at the same time, we are capable of deep hatred and alienation.  No one is all good or all bad.  We are all wounded.  And, our unaccepted and unloved wounds cause great difficulties for the entire collective.  As we each accept and love ourselves, in spite of and because of everything we carry, we will help the collective to find peace and acceptance as well.  One person at a time.  One step at a time.  I love you.  I'm sorry.  Please forgive me.  Thank you.

The Transcendence of an Exceptional Book

I finished reading "The Garden of Evening Mists" by Tan Twan Eng this evening.  I read it slowly, until I got close to the end.  It's not the kind of book to be read quickly.  It is a book that wants to be savored, both for the writing itself, and for the story.

Some books transcend the ordinary, and this is one such book.  Both through the language and the story, one feels uplifted by the reading of it.  It is a book that triggers deep thought and that pierces deep emotion.  It is a story of love and memory, of tragedy and healing.  It is a story that has its way with those who read it, in a way that only few books manage.

I wept my way through the last few chapters.  Not because they were sad as much as that they touched my own truth and experience so deeply.  The tears were tears of surrender and recognition.  Tears for myself and tears for all of creation.

Our world is one that holds such extremes of experience.  There are times when my love for the world and the experience we are afforded by our time here is so strong that my being finds it hard to contain.  Reading this book has illicited this deeply loving response from me.  When I reach this place within myself, the love I am filled to overflowing with is unlimited and all inclusive.  I am able to look at the world with total acceptance and gratitude, both for the beauty and the horror.  It is a place within me that is able to see and receive all that life has to offer.  It is a place that is strangely quiet, with no edges or angles, only complete expansiveness.

The book reminds me of all those whom I have loved in my life and the gift each one has been to me.  Those who have gone and those who remain.  Those I have walked away from and those who have walked away from me.  Those who have hurt me and those whom I have hurt.  Those who have given to me and those who have taken from me.  Those who have enriched me and those who have left me empty.  This love extends to everyone I have ever come into contact with and had interaction with, no matter for how long or how briefly.  Each one has contributed to me in ways I have not always understood or been able to receive.  And, my life would be less without each and every one.

A book that takes me to the depths of gratitude and remembrance that this book has taken me is exceptional indeed.  It is not often that we are gifted with a book that transcends the dimensions of life and allows us to access our unlimited nature of being.  This book has done that.  This book has changed my reality.  This book has changed my perspectives and modes of thinking.  This book has lifted me up and helped me to see differently.  This book has left me better for the reading of it.

We forget sometimes how we are able to affect each other.  How what we say to each other is able to either uplift or crush the receiver of our words.  We forget how impactful our actions can be to another.  How we are able to increase them or diminish them with what we do.  We forget the power of our love and our attention.  We forget the impact of small kindnesses.  We forget the scars we are able to inflict upon another due to our carelessness and our selfishness.  We forget the wounds our own unhealed wounds can cause in another.

We are living in a time when many people have forgotten their connection and how their actions and their words are able to affect the entire collective in very hurtful ways.  In such a time, it is of primary importance for those of us who are able to remember our connection to all life, and our ability to lift each other up instead of tearing each other down, to help remind all of those who have forgotten.

It is my dream and my prayer that we are all able to remember how powerful we are and how deeply we affect those around us and the whole collective.  None of us exist in a void.  And, it is my dream and my prayer that through the remembrance of each of us we trigger remembrance and awareness in those who have forgotten.  May we all align with the oneness of all Life and live our days in love and acceptance.  May we each see this Life for the gift that it is and live our days in that knowing.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.     

Peruvian Banana

Today, I ate a banana from Peru.  I'm in France and the banana came all the way here from Peru.  It was perfectly ripe and beautiful.  I was so struck by the miracle of that that I wept.

I'll admit that I'm in a bit of a vulnerable state.  I'm at the end of a particularly difficult migraine episode.  When that is happening, I can't eat, for the most part.  My body won't take in any food, and there are only a few things that I'm able to get down, a banana being one of them.  I haven't had any, and finally felt good enough to go to the store today and get some.  In the store they stood out to me, like someone had dramatically lit them in special light.  But, no, it was just their own internal light shining through.  Beautiful, yellow, ripe bananas.  I stood there speechless while I took in their gorgeousness before picking a bunch to take home.

I'm not always so emotional about my food, but maybe I should be.  I don't always remember to say grace before eating, but I know it makes a difference to do so.  I am so grateful for all the people who grow and transport and sell the delicious food that reaches me and allows me to support my body with nutrients that sustain my life.

I'm fully aware that the bananas that came to me in France from Peru were grown by some corporate farming entity.  And, I'm grateful to that entity.  I do think that corporate farming has gotten too big and out of control, and I know there's a balance in regard to making it work at its best that we haven't reached yet; and, that said, I'm deeply grateful for the food that's grown for the collective of humanity by corporations that have forgotten the fullness of the sacred service they provide and have let greed take over.

We're in a process of the crumbling of the old paradigm.  What we built wasn't working in the highest good for most of us.  And, new systems and ways of doing things that are better for everyone need to be put into place.  But, we don't necessarily need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Some things will need to be created anew from the ground up.  And, some things can be adapted and improved upon while utilizing what's already there.  Corporate farming needs a big overhaul, but there's probably a middle way that will serve us all the best.  And, I think it's probably a good idea to try to follow a middle way in regard to all the changes that must take place in our world in order for us to come back to a way of living that supports the planet and all life upon her.

Grocery stores are miraculous.  Farmer's markets are miraculous.  I can't thank the people who produce, transport, and sell the food most of us eat enough.  And, I'm also very grateful for all the people who grow their own food.  There's not much that's more essential than food production and transportation.  I look forward to the day when all the food is grown organically, and is plentiful, and we collectively make the decision to feed the whole world.  I look forward to the day when starvation is a thing of the past, when no one on the planet ever has to go hungry.

For now, I'm grateful for my beautiful Peruvian banana and all the food that nourishes me.  Next time you eat something, give a moment of thought to what it took for it to be in your hand, or on your fork, and send out a "thank you" to everyone who had anything to do with it.   

The Gift of Acceptance

I'm reading "The Garden of Evening Mists" by Tan Twan Eng, reommended to me by a friend.  Before that, I read "The Gift of Rain," also by Tan Twan Eng, and also recommended to me by the same friend.  These books have touched me deeply and, through the labyrinth of their words, ordered and organized in their particular pattern, and carrying the energetic transmission of their author, have triggered awarenesses in me that are new and revelatory.

In "The Gift of Rain," a couple of sentences uttered by the character of Aunt Yu Mei, stopped me in my tracks:  "Who can look back and truly say all his memories are happy ones?  To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation."

As all of us do, I have memories that are painful, shameful, and regrettable.  I have judged these events, and the memories of them, and judged myself for actions taken and decisions made and carried out with less than loving intentions.  I have allowed myself to feel like a victim, to feel helpless and hopeless, and to blame others.  I just couldn't stop myself from judging the past, even though I know it to be destructive.  I've been haunted, limited, and paralyzed by certain memories for my whole life.  Those memories, and my perception and judgment of those events, have entrapped me.  My journey into energetic healing was prompted by my desire to free myself from these entrapments.  I grew through it, expanded through it, gained some relief through it, and gained some acceptance of myself through it, but didn't find the freedom through it that I sought.  The wounds lived on, and the physical reflection of those wounds continued.

What it's taken me most of my life to realize is that we never heal, at least in the way I had thought of healing.  Healing doesn't mean we are able to let something go, to release it, or to move on from it.  Healing, as I see it now, means to accept the wound, to give it space, to love it, to honor it, to incorporate it.  Our acceptance of ourselves, and everything that has happened in our lives, all of it, is the key to peace, which I see as healing.  Acceptance is the gateway to gratitude, which leads to peace.

I've struggled with acceptance.  I've struggled with what it is and with how to do it.   There are things in my life that I just couldn't find acceptance for, until I read the sentences uttered by Aunt Yu Mei above.  Somehow, those sentences managed to slide past my resistance and judgment, and acceptance opened up for me through the grace of those words.  Suddenly, I was filled with gratitude for everything in my life without judgment.  The gratitude just came flooding in, unbidden.  And, thankfully, it has not abated.

There is a line from "The Garden of Evening Mists" that struck me, contributing in the same vein as Aunt Yu Mei's sentences from "The Gift of Rain."  A character is remembering a quote from a poem recited to her by a character no longer living, but which has stuck with her for many years, since the moment of the recitation:  "Though the water has stopped flowing, we still hear the whisper of its name."  And, it made me think about how the whispers of our pasts can be so numerous and so loud, that living in the present is not possible.  Our unaccepted wounds, and the memories of them, refuse to be forgotten and pushed away.  They whisper to us so we won't forget them.  They whisper to us asking for acceptance.  They whisper to us asking for space, to be acknowledged for their contribution to who we are in this now.  Until we are ready and able to hear them, really hear them, and acccept them, we remain prisoner to their whisperings.

We think of memory as being linear, but it might be more helpful if we could allow it to be circular.  The shape of our galaxy, and of our energetic beings, is a tube torus.  It's like a big donut, and the energy cycles through it, never ending.  Each and every experience we've had, throughout all creation, gets added into our energetic field, our tube torus.  We are increased and expanded by everything we experience.  As humans, in this 3D frequency we currently inhabit, we tend to judge experiences as good and bad.  We want to hang on to the "good" ones and forget the "bad" ones.  But, without judgment, everything becomes unburdened experience and expansion, contributing to our growth through our acceptance and inclusion of it.  Memory is the way we value what has happened, in the way that grief is the way we value the loss of what we love.  Memory helps us to be grateful for all that has contributed to the creation of us being who we are.

When humans come to the end of their embodiments, they often seem to focus more and more on their pasts.  If you sit with someone at the end of their time here, they often want to reminisce about their life.  It is a great service to them to listen, to really listen.  By their reminiscense, they are honoring their experiences and the shape of their embodiment.  And, by listening, we are able to give them validation and acceptance.  They are passing on their knowledge and their wisdom through the gift of sharing their memories and, by hearing their memories, we are expanded and increased.  We become recepticles for what should not be lost.  We accept and allow their stories to then live in and through us, to contribute to us and to the whole collective.

The scientist, Nassim Haramein, says that it is memory that creates time.  And that, without memory, there is no time.  That might be true.  But, I think memory exists outside of time.  I think our memories, once accepted and incorporated into our being, always exist in the now.  The core and the essence of our being, the part of us that is eternal Life, is forever increased and expanded by our experiences, and the memory of those experiences is the repository of their value and contributes to our wholeness and the upliftment of all creation.

With true acceptance, forgiveness is not an issue.  Through acceptance, forgiveness happens.  It is a by-product of acceptance.  Acceptance overrides judgment, resentment, and blame.  Acceptance frees us and allows the full flow of Life to move through us unencumbered.  Acceptance brings peace and gratitude.  Acceptance brings understanding and compassion.  Acceptance is inclusive, honoring and loving.  Acceptance opens the space for all the split-off parts of us to come home.  Acceptance happens in the now and is the essence of truth.

When one is at a point where one is able to receive a knowing, that knowing will come to us through whatever means necessary and possible.  Grace uses everything to bless us.  Since all Life is sacred, all Life is a vehicle of and for the Divine.  The vehicles for my ability to finally understand and expand into acceptance were two books recommended by a friend.  It is never too late.  We are never past redemption.  We are never lost.  We are never alone.  Peace and grace are always there.  We are never abandoned.  And, we can open into acceptance in an instant.  One tiny shift in perception and we are there.