Opening to greater love - clearing the heart

Well that was a punchy moon! A much needed one too. She gifted many lessons in her wax, and a realisation of many things on her initial wane.

I know many of you were working through the same themes around security and rejection and opening to greater love as a number of clients were heading into that territory on the day of the moon herself. Fortunately after a deep dive into the darkness and with the help of a timely book and the honesty of a friend, I was finally able to see through the illusion of all of this - it’s been a long time in coming!

And yes, the heart being cracked open with the bike fall allowed a deep healing of suppressed feelings of betrayal, grief and indeed broken dreams, let alone a final surrender to one’s love for self. We can pussy foot around this theme our whole lives but at some point we have to dive in, clear away the mud and the weeds and all the resistance we have from finally accepting, our own wonderful and beautiful essence.

Once we’ve cracked through the other side, we might wonder why it took us so long. What could be more amazing than finally valuing and loving ourself. It amazes me actually, the many ways we give ourselves away and give more of ourselves to others than we give to ourself as if it is somehow selfish to love and care for ourself as if we are somehow neglecting others or upsetting them if we put their needs before our own. Bonkers really, but this is how society conditions us and it take time to shift that perspective.

Anyway, what I noticed when I deep dived into all this, mainly because the universe had grown impatient and clearly it was time to finally succumb to it, was the many ways we distance ourself from our heart simply because of our fears around being hurt. This feeds in beautifully with the whole rejection theme, which is a huge one really. We have a whole heap of behaviour patterns the arise when we feel in any way rejected. Yet are we truly rejected?

The truth is, we feel rejected when we reject the reality of a situation. Someone says they don’t want to meet us and we feel rejected. The reason we feel rejected has nothing to do with them really, albeit we’ll kid ourselves that it does, but mainly because we are rejecting the reality of being told that that person doesn’t want to meet us. We do not like the situation one little bit, so rather than just accepting it and going, ‘ok so they don’t want to meet’, we go into full on wounded mode and get upset and close our heart and maybe sulk and become grumpy and defensive, which just feeds more of that energy and indeed patterning.

As for security. Ha. When are we truly secure? It’s an illusion to believe that money gives us security as it can be taken from us in any moment. We might feel we have a lovely secure job and then a recession comes along and our job is no more. Anything external to us cannot really provide true security because even when we have money we can date so much energy stressing about it being taken from us, the stock markets crashing or being taken advantage of. We can still suffer with mental stress with or without money so there has to be more to it.

True security then, must come from within. It’s about owning who we are, at heart, standing on our own two feet, centred in ourself (not centred in someone else) and treading OUR path with trust and faith and being ok with uncertainty, because ultimately it is ALL uncertain, and yet we are always trying to make it certain. inherent within this is overcoming our fear around safety. This fear causes us to do all sorts of silly things like try to micro manage and control ourselves and other people to the detriment of family members and those who we might manage in the work place. This can get critical at times and end up in addictions, eating disorders, OCD, high level anxiety and general loss of mental wellbeing.

One of our inherent fears is around uncertanity

It’s difficult to change this though, until we deep dive into the feelings that our fear creates when triggered. Thus when triggered, rather than turning away from it and following one of our many well trodden paths to avoid feeling, or to distract ourselves from the situation or create some drama around it, we need to own it, step into it and be with it, however uncomfortable it feels, and start to notice, be super, super conscious and aware of what lies under it, why that might be and how we can change it because it is all an illusion anyway, the way that our mind thinks and perceives the world, not a truth then, despite the fact the mind will try to convince us otherwise.

Ultimately all of this is a lesson in trust and faith. Trusting in the earth to provide all that we need and having faith in our path and in our heart and truly leaning into all of this. Also inherent within this is accepting our reality as it is. I have noticed a tendency in me and of course in others, to imagine how life might be lived differently. Or to get carried away with the notion of dreams. But dreams can only ever be based on what the mind knows and therefore on the past and the reality is, that the universe often delivers to us more than we could ever have dreamt possible, beyond the control of the mind! And it’s all very well to imagine, but this prevents us from accepting our reality in the here and now.

Thus, the spiritual texts are totally correct in saying that there is only this moment. And to constantly take us out of it, by clinging onto the past and re-living it over and over again because of the limitation of our mind to know anything different, even if we believe that we are dreaming of a new future, is pointless really. This in much the same way as constantly imagining a different future when everything might just fit and we have truly learned to love and accept ourselves. If we can’t do it NOW, what makes us think it will be any different then?

At some point we have to truly accept our really as it is and if it isn’t how we want it to be then we have the choice in each moment to make it different, not by changing the external necessarily, but by changing the internal and letting go of the thoughts and behaviour patterns that are causing us to be frustrated by, or react to our reality in this moment. It sounds easy but isn’t always so easy in practice, but this is where the practice is helpful, because we practice our way there, and one day it just clicks and we land in the now.

Mainly though, we have to stop chasing our tail and looking outside of ourselves, pushing, being busy, trying to control and make things certain and secure, filling every single moment with something for fear of…

What could be more amazing than just being. Our wonderful self. In this moment. With all its wonderful uncertainty.

And this is what it’s all about. Really. About being and loving. This was made very clear to me the other day, a dusk walk in nature and seeing and feeling into the energy. Nature is love and being. It is not trying to be anything but what it is, it is not trying to achieve anything, gain anything, control anything, it is just its wonderful self, loving.

But of course for us humans fear gets in our way and this is the reason it is always so helpful if treading a path of heart to get to the root of the fears that prevent us from truly opening to love…unconditional live at that. It reminds me once again of Marianne Williamson’s poem, which I share with you below.

All I can say is how grateful I am to the universe for shaking things up for us and taking us to darker places because it is only by going to the dark that we find the light and sometimes the universe has to intervene to re-align us and help us to chip away at the defences that prevent us opening to greater love and the insecurity that prevents us from the simplicity of being. Our body knows the score and will get our attention when we are off course and need to go deeper to clear away those out dated modes of being and relating because it gets sick of holding the pressure and tension of repressed emotions, unhelpful behaviour patterns and an unresolved relationship with self and reality.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking, so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

xxx