Hold the brokenness near

At times, disappointment will appear as your highest teacher, breaking your heart so that an old dream may be liberated and provided safe passage into the other world. It was never going to turn out the way you thought, but it is only by way of dissolution that new forms of love may emerge. Hold the brokenness near as the womb of new birth circles around you.

Trust in the fire of your own direct experience and in the intelligence of the somatic world. You are always being guided and shown the path, though in ways the mind may never understand. Release yourself and those around you from the burden of resolving the ways of love, for love will never be resolved. It is too vast, too creative, and too alive for all that.

It is in the embodiment of this realization that you will find the rest you are longing for.

Art by Helen Klebesadel
 

Trust in the fires of disintegration

There was an idea that as you awakened you would feel less. But you are seeing that love continues to ask you to feel more. You hoped that as your heart opened, your vulnerability would diminish, but you are more raw now than you’ve ever been.

As the veil parts around you and your vision becomes clearer, you wondered if you would be more detached, not care quite so much, and rest as the “witness” beyond it all. But, alas, everything matters so much in the world of love that you are burning up within.

Something new is being born inside you, but something else is dying. The invitation before you is to stay present to the uncertainty, the chaos, and the groundless reorganization. While it may be terrifying and disorienting to the density of the mind, the creativity of the sensual world is overwhelming and outrageous. Trust in the fires of disintegration.

While you have been longing for this level of openness, it will often be accompanied by a certain fragrance of sadness. But this is not the sadness of the mind, where something is perceived to be missing. It is the sadness of pure love, pouring out of your exposed heart. 

You are willing to give your heart to others and to this world, for you are seeing that this is why you have come here.

A lonely Christmas moon

With the moon as your witness, renew your vow to no longer postpone your full participation here, for even one more moment. Just as it is rare for the lunar one to offer her fullness on Christmas day, it is rare for one human being to allow in the implications of what it really means to take birth in a star where love is alive.

Whether your life is taking form as the crucifixion, as the resurrection, or as re-organizing transfiguration, you are being held within the womb that is the essence of Christ. While it may appear that your sensitivity and your heartbreak are obstacles along the way, look carefully and see they are forming the light strands of your journey in every moment. Within the embodied temple of your heart-essence nature, everything is utterly valid, outrageously intelligent, and overwhelmingly creative.

Without you and your vulnerability – without your unique gifts, your courage, and your willingness to give everything for the call to intimacy with all things – this realm will never know the burning essence of timeless and eternal love. The oceans, the galaxies, the snow-capped mountains, and the translucent stars… these and the erupting lunar transmission of a lonely Christmas moon: they are counting on you, for it is only through you that love can enter into this rare world of time and space.

May love pour through you on this new miracle day, awakening your cells, your organs, and each and every strand of your sacred DNA. May it open you to the magic of the sacred world, re-wiring everything in its wake with its signature and fragrances of aliveness. May it make use of your eyes to see the truth, your hands to touch another sweetly, your body to feel more, your words to speak kindness, and your presence to shower healing upon everyone and everything you encounter.

May the mysteries of separation and union pour out of the unseen and take form as your body, your nervous system, and as the flow of thought, feeling, and emotion within you. And may you be crucified, resurrected, and transfigured in the heart of Christ, crafted as a vehicle of grace to seed this world with the wild, creative particles of love.

Photo by Patrick Kobersky
 

Illuminating the narrative

It is all too common in contemporary spirituality to be anti-story, to devalue any sort of narrative about one's experience. Often when I speak with people, the first thing they will say is - "Well, I mean, not to get into my story or anything, but...". As if it were something to be shamed about, to 'have' a story, to have some way of organizing or making meaning of their precious, lived experience.

We're all telling a story. We're all storytellers. This seems to be a unique expression of being human. It is nothing to be shamed about or seen as 'lesser' or 'unawakened' or of a ‘lesser vibration.’ Perhaps one day we will end the aggression of spirituality. Even the great 'powerfully' 'awakened' teachers have a narrative (even if it’s a narrative about how they no longer have a narrative). Just get to know them a bit or ask their spouses or their kids. Things are not always as they appear.

As long as there is any sort of identification left with the story of 'me,' it is an act of kindness to become quite familiar with what your narrative is, with the story you are telling about yourself, others, and the world. Rather than pretend you do not have one or that it is meaningless or a mistake – or evidence of how ‘unspiritual’ you are – perhaps you could infuse it with presence, with compassion, and with care, honoring the relative brilliance of what it means to be sensitive and alive.

And from the clarifying ground of acceptance, holding, and non-shame, you can then decide if you'd like to update your story, weave a more integrated or cohesive narrative, or tell one that is more accurate and more representative of the truth of what you are. Not because you are flawed or something is wrong with you - or your identity is on the line - but because you care so much, because your heart is so raw and shaky, and because you are so committed to being a vulnerable, tender, human being.

Yes, from the perspective of the ultimate, the story of you is empty and will never touch the majesty of what you are. While honoring this, you can also honor the relative truth of the dream, of the unfolding of your holy brain and nervous system – not discarding it with spiritual theories and narcissistic aggression – and with kindness allow your narrative to unfold, illuminate, and transform in an environment of love.

A new solstice has been given

Somehow, by some unfathomable grace, a new solstice has been given. One more opportunity to know the activity of love as it emerges into this rare world of time and space. While we may never know for sure, perhaps this is the only star of love, where the journey is not so much about how to get more for me, about how to complete some mythical spiritual journey, about how to wiggle into some 'higher dimension,' or about the dream of traveling from 'here to there.'

Perhaps the gift of the beloved, as she takes form as the miracle solstice, is to unfold the journey from 'there to here,' to reveal how love will make use of this body, of these words, of these senses, of these arms to touch and hold another. About how love will weave itself into the cells of this heart, the strands of this DNA, and into the synapses of this brain so that it may set this world ablaze with its light.

May you take the risk on this day to see how precious it really is here, to dare to see that your body and your senses are pure revelation, crafted of the stars. And to do whatever you can to help others – to speak kindness to them, to hold them close, to listen carefully, and to love them with all of your heart. Allow the beloved to disassemble you, to dissolve everything that is less than whole within, and to illuminate your sacred tenderness. For this is your gift to the world.

Give yourself fully to this new day. You need no longer postpone your wild, embodied participation in the unfolding miracle, waiting to first feel safe, to heal your past, to get ‘enlightened,’ to be in a ‘high’ state of vibration, or to manifest all the things you want. Love is here now and is longing for you. But only exactly as you are.

Allow yourself to be taken to the ground by the solstice sunrise, by the holding transmission of the moon, by the lunar revelations of the oceans and the rivers, and by the rare opportunity to know the color blue for the first time. Enter the phenomenal world as you would your lover and fall into the miracle that is forming around you.

But please know that this opportunity is only being offered in this very moment. There is no tomorrow. There is no future solstice, no future full moon to gaze at, and no future lover to play with. For we never know when the beloved will call us home.

Photographer unknown