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"White Mane" by Donna Bernstein,
(Used with Permission; www.donnabernstein.com)
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Okay, maybe that’s the crux. Despite efforts to the contrary, my needs were put on the “back burner.” I’ve been in a shift for years.
When my body first got sick, this lesson came: “Be she who is Sacrificed, Martyred or be the Server.” With early life training in the first two, I thought I had transformed.
As samskaras go, this complex was formidable. (Samskaras: Sanskrit word meaning inherited previous-life tendencies that are the psyche’s impressions.) It was quite a storm.
This past year has found me receiving. Receiving love, grace, gifts, generosities, acknowledgement, wisdom and encouragement.
A week ago, I found a gift of desert-colored socks in my mailbox...along with a beautiful card with a horse on the front. My friend wrote: "Let this gift be a symbol of a universal law; 'Ask and you shall receive.'”
Dan Fogelberg wrote this in a song: “Changing horses in the middle of a stream gets you old.” That’s true. It gets you worn and hungry, too. And through others’ love and faith in me, it's getting me free. Old, it turns out, is a temporary condition.
I once saw my life five to fifteen years out and was given road maps. Now I sense opaque openings of light and hope that guide me into new moments.
Before, my practice was breathe in and breathe out. Notice. Be aware. Imbue uplifting passages into my mind and heart. Discover my place of belonging. Relish relationship harmony.
Now it is different. Breathe in and breathe out is not mine to do. It does. I allow. My highest calling is love. Love to me. Love to you. Love to our world. Love to the cranky neighbor who complains. Love to the Navaho Nation, the trees, animals and their people:
Love to people who curse life. Love to those who don't. Love to family. Love to birthdays. Love to animal stewards. Love to those who kill. Love to the peacemakers. Love to organizations hoarding money. Love to new work honored. Love to wading into new pools together.
I wrote this poem in praise of this fresh air that is blowing through me:
Winds Countenance
Winds countenance
Deliberate, swaying,
Gentle in freshness
Of airs
Wiser than I it seems
Who lies best
Happily always
Fully embraced
By penetrating heat
Of Mother Sun
The wind awakens me
This hour
To freshness of day
Hints of dewdrops
An invitation to climb
Wind calls me from my place of rest,
Covered as though I am
In spiritual words that drink me
I know their cup of
Freshness needed
Reawakening vast souls,
In modern light
Hopkins, Chief Seattle, Jane
Goodall, Thoreau, Emmett Fox
Twelve steps, twenty and eight
No wonder I need breeze
Welcomed stirrings
To pull me out
From my den
My old life passed on to where all incarnations go when complete. So did the personality structure that housed it. Chunks of me disappeared. I do not need to divorce or harm my ego to gain new ground. That is not the way.
LOVE is the STRONGEST of all POWERS...ego, fully embraced, gives way as rivers merge into the SEA. Love is bigger than all negative conversations, images and events.
We need a renaissance. That is what I learned, stripped down. We don’t need to fight for the animals, the world or ourselves. We all do need infusions of love.
How about you, Reader? When has your life been stripped down, transformed? When you were infused with the sweet breath of fresh air?
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