FINDING HAPPINESS IN DARK TIMES #4
"It must be a poor life that achieves freedom from fear." Aldo Leopold
"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." J. Campbell
The Hero/ine's journey must incorporate fear to be real. Fear is part of all three stages;
Separation - Threshold - Incorporation.
Fear is a good thing if it catalyzes positive action in seeking one's core strength and finding in it, how to give back. Fear creates two kinds of stress and we must seek the good kind, or "eustress."
The causes of fear have been described as the deep, the dark, the steep, threat to life, limb, organ or function, religious and superstitious and the biggest one of all - the threat to our ego - the small self, our persona - how we look to others, rather than to our higher purpose. The former is what drives most of us with the help of our monkey mind and shadow. We should rather fear losing connection with our Higher Self and mission and seek to enhance this.
A byproduct of the journey into the positive aspects of fear can be meaning and happiness.
To have courage is to have fear and do it anyway.
There are only two feelings, love and fear. The military uses fear in their training by increasing the threat level, increasing the consequences of failure, decreasing the time it takes to carry out the task and giving as little information as possible of what is to come. The hero's journey has some similarities - are we going to fight or,
take flight, freeze or fein death.
Which of these Four F's inherent in the stress/fear response will we choose?
The journey is about love of Self (the true Self) and love of others.
Love of others is not a sentiment or an emotion but a commitment.
A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave. M. Gandhi
It is courageous to be vulnerable. For many - to be vulnerable is their greatest fear.
Fear is the underlying theme in Paul Simon's song - I am
a rock - I am and island. The words are the antithesis of vulnerability and true courage. The individuality we admire in American culture can be a recipe for being invulnerable and for fear rather than love. We can see how it has worked against us in the fight against Covid.
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We are all have been, and especially are now "in the soup" of a potential hero's journey which holds possibilities for huge spiritual transformation. Once we take time out and take a risk with the right intention, receptivity, love and vulnerability we have the possibility of Incorporating not only our future experiences but better actualizing our past ones as well.
Until we recognize them and "bring them home" to make them truly ours, they are only memories and not fully part of us. We have all been through many warrior's journeys and some hero's ones too. If we review these - the positive and the negative and find new meaning in them we can realize the grail in not only our past successes but also our mistakes and become more of who we truly are and could be. We tend to want to forget, trivialize or rationalize some of the epic moments in our past - bad and good. We can actualize and extend their lessons into the future for our own and the benefit of others. The more toxic ones are indelibly fixed in our memories and rather than choosing to leave them behind we should recognize to what extent they have made us who we are in the best possible way by making them part of ourselves.
Sometimes it takes pain to learn most deeply and ...
It can be better to experience the learning than to learn the experience.
The Ancestors
Take our suffering and make something useful out of it.
The worse the experience, the more the potential for change. Instead of being ashamed of screwing up we need to see the potential in the trauma.
We need to realize, forgive, let go of the pain and turn it into energy for a new path. Forgiveness of others also begins with forgiving ourselves.
To err is human - to forgive - Divine.
I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. Failure makes me work even harder." Michael Jordan
REVIEW and RENEW
the past and look to the future
or as the Ancestors say;
Take from the past what you need and leave the rest behind. Then live in the moment.
Incorporation
Renew and review in a positive way, take it into the future by integrating it, and maybe look to another journey - a new adventure that will enhance the renewed you.
In doing so it helps to have someone you trust to witness and reflect with. Moreover, without spiritual practice and support we may fall back into monkey mind, shadow and self-judgment.
Spring cleaning of our material "stuff" also helps to get rid of clutter and find the new you. Anything that is not useful for your path or that does not enhance who you are is best discarded or stored out of sight. Attend to needs not wants.
If you have found something to do that helps others and brings you joy, learn to live in two worlds. If necessary - keep your day job and the supply lines open while giving service without pay.
Its best not to talk about your journey to those who will not understand and will judge you silently or verbally. Do not place your intentions on the mantle piece for others to see and trivialize. Let them rather see a change in you - walk the talk - do not talk the walk. If need be talk about context and not content.
"I only went out for a walk and finally decided to stay until sundown, for going out, I discovered was actually going in." John Muir
Well Being and Nature
“Let your life dance lightly on the edges of time like dew on the top of a leaf.” Tagore
God’s rivers of pleasure and good are not placid waters of insipid purity. They have currents of all strengths, frequently forming into wild twists and turns alongside gentle flows, all churning and tumbling into swirling pools too deep to fathom. They are for reflecting, playing and rejuvenating and then continuing endlessly onto their source.
Behold all creation with awe - seeing into it its sacredness.
Sacred mystery is to be experienced in joy and with awe - not to be deciphered. To be entered - not to be decoded.
The Ancestors
Nature is a magnificent edifice - the Creator's masterpiece on earth for us - with many doors and windows to spirit that can help us shift a negative into a positive experience very easily. It is also a preferred environment and a sacred space for a hero's journey. Consider renting a cabin on a lake or by the ocean or going on a retreat into the mountains. Acknowledge the three phases of the journey. We can also find the “Magic of the Ordinary" all around us without going into wild places.
But there are every day wonders unheard and overlooked far remote from wilderness – the sound of rain, a fallen feather, a spider’s web.
These are unheard and overlooked and seem far remote from wilderness until we realize how perception of the smallest bit of wild can connect to our higher Self. Nature reveals, inspires, encourages and shows the way.
“To sanctify the ordinary” is to recognize and acknowledge the sacred in every created being whether still or growing, wild or angelic or human... Learn the mystery, savor the wonder of it all. There is nothing that is empty of the divine, "to sanctify the ordinary" is not to make it holy but to be aware of it as holy ... The Ancestors
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01_The_Four_Beings.mp3
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is that nothing is a miracle and the other that everything is a miracle." A. Einstein
Live the miracle that you are with all the blemishes that now have enhanced, not diminished the real you.
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