With a little help from my friends.
So many friends have written or called this week with kind words – sorry that I have been saddened or in pain – concerned that I am all right. I appreciate it because believe me, in the midst of the drama no one feels sorrier for me than I do. However, the reason I am so explicit and exposed in my experience is not to kvetch or whine, but to share an experience as a map out of the tangle of the Little Drama and into the vast and beautiful landscape of our own Big Picture.
When I seek prayers – it is not so others will weep with me, but so that with the collective outpouring of love through prayer whatever is needed will find its way to me – and to those with whom I am engaged in the drama. We are all gathered to learn something about ourselves and then to choose which road we will take into our respective futures. The choice is either to stay in the Little Drama of anger, resentment, judgement, victimization and turmoil, to see that the Big Picture beckons all souls to the peace and pleasure of being whole and at ease with their true nature.
Sympathy is dangerous because it is a bellows to the sparks of the parts of ourselves – our broken selves – who would stay hurt. In the “Bhagavad Gita”, Sri Krishna shares these famous words with Arjuna:
“The Self cannot be pierced by weapons or burned by fire; water cannot wet it, nor can the wind dry it.”
“The Self cannot be pierced or burned, made wet or dry. It is everlasting and infinite, standing on the motionless foundations of eternity.”
“The Self is unmanifested, beyond all thought, beyond all change. Knowing this you should not grieve.”
Those of who seek real freedom – from a life of reaction to a life of proaction and true co creation within a beneficent universe, must be willing to heal from the inside out and release all attachment to any other outcome other than the higher understanding of their Selfhood. We cannot avoid the difficult, the painful, the acting out of damaged people or life itself in its beginnings and endings. We are all damaged in one way or another or we wouldn’t keep recreating dramas that keep us enslaved to a secular world.
When we come up against some demon in our life – some person that means us ill, you can be sure that this person is only activating a broken part within yourself which desires healing. It’s the whole plot of “The Wizard of Oz” , the “Bhagavad Gita” and innumerable other parables trying to guide us to self actualization and mastery. No matter how painful and out of your control it may seem, the answer is how you embrace the opportunity for personal growth. Will you throw yourself on the floor and beat your feet and fists until someone comes to protect you or will you face your fear, anger, shame – feel it, interact with it and release it?
Many healing modalities and energy based practices offer the individual access to the scripts and broken bits that keep us enslaved to deleterious relationships, habits, or practices that effect our health and our happiness. It’s fairly easy to drop down into those dark corners, but what happens then – when the tears of rage or shame or sorrow rise up through the body memory? The wise practitioner will stay impartial. Will not reach out to soothe; will not attempt to distract the soul from the cleansing of its own emotional release. To do otherwise is to jam a sliver back into an infected finger.
I know it is counter intuitive when someone we love appears to be suffering not to reach out and say, “There, there.” But it is the truly loving and healing response to stay quiet and centred and supportive while the little self breaks apart and the pearl of the Highest Self shines through.
On the day my darling husband was told he had only weeks to live, we had a lovely two martini lunch and spoke in quiet voices about the future. The future that day was two or three weeks hence. We were clear and strong and loving with each other. We held hands and rested our foreheads against one another’s.
George went home and I went nuts. I was frantic. My pact with God – as I read it – wasn’t panning out. And the one whose arms I would rush to and whose shoulder I would weep against was the one who needed to lean on me. I knew I had to share this grief and this terror with someone, but I knew intuitively that this was a monumental passage for my own enlightenment and who I sought for counsel was vitally important.
That very hour I called and went to the one who I knew would see this in its magnitude – the one who taught me about Arjuna and the teachings of Krishna. I arrived at my beloved teacher’s house and after a quick embrace at the door, she took me into the kitchen and made tea. Sitting near me, Gita held my eyes while I spilled over in tears of terror, anger and fear and rage. I wanted her to hold me. I wanted her to comfort me like a child and tell me everything would be all right. But she didn’t. Everything wouldn’t be all right. My life was about to change dramatically and would never again be the same.
What Gita knew was that I was not a child, I was a soul in training. She also knew that I would be walking a path of great challenge over the next months and for me to transcend by this amazing opportunity for love, compassion and acceptance, I would have to be more than strong. Strength in ‘Earth’ terms often means stoicism, denial, diminution of real events. Strength in soul terms means awareness and understanding that is unshakeable against the storms of life.
The only way we plumb the depths of Life with our roots of love and understanding is to have the experiences that cause us to reach deep. Deeper than sympathy. Deeper yet into the inexhaustible pool of love that every soul on Earth has access to.
After I dried my tears that day with Gita, I went home. My surrender wasn’t instant but rather than skim over the real events, I was completely engaged. It was a time when I gave up my ego self that could bargain with God or fix things. I surrendered to the fact that my darling husband was dying and that I was powerless to do anything but be a witness and to minister to that inevitability with simple acts of love.
My latest drama this month was just another opportunity to peel off a layer of what was not serving my highest good. Yes, I got caught up in the pain and suffering. Within us all is the fearful child. The one afraid of being abandoned or not loved or not liked. I asked for prayers because I know that I am not a child in need of solace, but a soul in the deepest yearning for freedom, peace and happiness.
Growing up in soul is a challenging journey as we seek out the ways to fulfill our highest nature. Facing witches who would take our puppy is the greatest fear – but nothing a little courage, and a splash of cold water might not fix. Dorothy did it with the help of her friends, the lion, the tin man and the scarecrow.
The world of the Little Drama is full of small hearted people acting out behind a screen of power. Those of you reading this know that the only real power is the power of love. And when we claim that power for ourselves we are freed.
Thank you all for standing witness and supporting me in what I need to do – to be all I might be.
With love,
Marilyn
