|
Avoidance of what was happening in life and spiritual behavior that swept me heavenward. I felt I had no legitimate right to be human, a human who makes mistakes, who is afraid, who is not always optimistic. I had a childish na"ive concept of "sacredness" and felt that if I'd received a sacred gift, I had to act accordingly. For there are rules of behavior in a synagogue and other rules for the street and I thought I was in a synagogue, constantly standing before the Torah.
On one hand, this sensation filled me with self worth and gave me the recognition of being special, but the image of a sacred Temple did not really allow me free movement.
I thought the challenge was to rise above my humanity. Being a young woman in her twenties and channeling Moses seemed to be a reversal of terms, as if, as I saw it, the channel was required to be a great priestess, an impossible definition that could only exist through emotional experiential disconnection. The old man spoke through me, becoming a part of my life.
"Dear child, it is only by feeling that feeling can be created. You know by now that states of disconnection serve defenses."
"Actually, I feel deeply and I don't really understand why you say that I am disconnected."
"Yes, you do feel, but you don't know how to create an experience of feeling. You don't jump into sea waters, you jump into an indoor heated swimming pool that is clean and pleasant."
"But that's what I want, I want warm and pleasant and safe, not the storms of the sea."
"Yes, dear child, the sea is the pool of the great, the sea is dynamic, it has movement; sometimes it is as calm as a pool and sometimes stormy, demanding your abilities in a storm."
"I don't understand. It's as if I'm not given to emotional storms."
"No, sweet child, you are not in storms, you throw stones into the water, and they create minor movement as if practicing for the storm at sea."
"So maybe I'm afraid of the storm at sea."
"I did not say that the sea is stormy. I said the sea demands skill."
"I'm willing to learn, willing to take risks."
"What are you willing to risk?"
"I'm willing to enter the sea and swim in it, I'm not afraid to swallow salt water, and I want to experience the special currents of the sea that don't exist in a pool."
"Tell me please, what are you willing to do?"
"But I've just told you. I want to be sure of my ability, of the freedom of choice, of my inner truth. I don't want to be dependent and I want to trust the life process and myself. I want to live in abundance and love."
"But you, after all, are in a pool. And how do you think your reality would appear in a real storm at sea?"
"In the reality of a storm I disappoint, stumble, make mistakes, am afraid, disappointed, frustrated."
"And, dear child, how does one behave in a storm?"
"I think you yell: ’save me!’"
"And what skill do you depend on? That of the life saver?"
"No, I'm willing to rely on myself, react wisely, be attentive and alert, not to run away, but to continue to swim."
"And when the sea is again calm and safe, what happens to you then?"
"Now I'm afraid of the next time. I make my movements smaller, more cautious, abstain perhaps."
"So, after the storm you are afraid of it?"
"Yes".
"And why are you afraid, after all, you emerged from it without a life saver, your own ability took you out of the storm."
"That's true, but how do I know that I'll be able to get out of the storm next time?"
"You don't know, dear child. But if you believe, you won't be afraid."
"I'm smiling now."
"The embarrassment of understanding."
"Yes, the embarrassment of understanding and the joy of willingness."
"Thank you."
"Thank you my teacher. Thank you."
I was willing. I was willing to enter the waters of the sea, I was willing to deal with life and live it. At that moment, I did not know what I was willing to do. This dialog took place a long time ago, more than ten years. Then I was willing, today I am beginning to understand what I am willing to do.
I signed a life contract. I wanted to live life with everything it offers me, with fitting inner fullness and joy. I was willing to learn and take on the challenge of life; I was willing to commit myself to the path of the soul. I was willing to do all of this and did not know how to do it. Today, I know a little more than I did then. Today I know that the path is long and that I am only at the beginning.
"Honor Thy Father And Thy Mother"
We are asked to honor and respect our parents. It is our parents who have given us life and in honoring them, we honor our lives, the wonderful gift we were given.
The previous commandment teaches us to sanctify the consequences of our lives, to contemplate them, give them a place and, through them, learn about ourselves. The previous commandment defines the Sabbath and teaches us how to sanctify our lives; the present commandment emphasizes feeling. Honoring and respecting our lives constitutes feeling, not action. Honoring our lives means honoring our first starting point, the choice to be born, and our respect for the parents who fulfilled this possibility for us. Before the soul manifests in the physical body, it chooses its lesson for that lifetime and, having defined the lesson, it chooses its conditions.
The conditions refer to the environment in which it chooses to be born and, of course, the physical body. Beauty, for instance, is an early choice that serves the lesson of the soul as does our choice of parents in defining primary conditions for life.
Honoring our existence means first and foremost honoring our body and health. We are asked to honor our body, treat it lovingly and give it the care it deserves.
Taking care of our health depends on the right nutrition, physical activity, listening to our body and caring for it.
When the essential starting point of our lives constitutes honor and respect, we perceive our lives as cherished and valuable and we behave in accordance with this starting point.
The custom of honoring our lives means honoring the process of life and ourselves.
We are sometimes preoccupied with trifling issues of no real importance; however, we devote a lot of energy to this preoccupation. Someone who respects himself and his life knows how to distinguish between the essential and the non-essential. For example, we all know situations when, after leaving an important meeting, we invest a lot of energy in thoughts of how we were and how we should have been and what the person we met thought of us. We are drawn into this situation by a lack of confidence in who we are; we do not honor ourselves by fully accepting who we are, but are busy with the non-essential, that is, with what others think of us and how the meeting will affect our lives. Dealing with trifles means dealing with the future, asking what the future holds for us, having a need to control out of fear. Dealing with trifles also means being preoccupied with judging and criticizing the lives of other people or even being jealous of them. This preoccupation does not take us forward, but is mostly connected with assumptions and suppositions, which has little value for us and is harmful to moods and self confidence.
The ability to respect and honor our choices is what creates the ability to forgive; the ability to forgive enables us to avoid accumulating toxins in our body and to strive to be a clean vessel for giving, for living out of love.
Our parents constitute the encounter with humanity. Through them we learn the starting point in relation to concepts of love.
We relate to ourselves as our parents did.
Parents who abandoned us teach us to abandon ourselves; parents who cared for us without trusting us teach us how to live in fear.
Our parents constitute the source of our first innate belief in love, which is how we learn to relate to ourselves.
The environment relates to us in the same way we relate to ourselves.
When we learn to honor the source, when we learn to find our inner ability to forgive our parents, we learn to forgive ourselves.
Honoring the source of life means honoring life, which means living a long life on earth, because love and the ability to forgive prevent illness and suffering, which is an expression of anger at life.
Honoring our mother and father constitutes the ability to honor someone else's way of giving.
We sometimes judge what we receive or do not receive from life. We have complaints and we do not honor our initial choice of parents and body.
Honoring life means to be aware that we receive what is best for us, even if it doesn't seem so at the moment; if we honor our life unconditionally we can see it as a source of growth and change. For instance, if someone rejects our company, it is not an indication of our worth, of whether we are "worth" more or less. It would be better to see that this person is not part of our path and thus there is no attraction.
Giving and receiving are in fact negotiating love that begins with the starting point whereby our parents give us life.
We negotiate with life as we negotiate with our parents.
If we are angry with our parents, we are angry with our lives and behave accordingly. If we learn to forgive and accept them, we learn to honor our lives and not feel deprived; the opposite, we will feel self respect.
We ask for love and are required to see its various forms, thereby honoring surrounding sources of giving.
We want to be loved as we define love and when we are locked into a specific definition, we both prevent the various forms of love from reaching us and our acceptance thereof.
For example, a woman who received valuable gifts from her father during her childhood learned that buying gifts is an expression of love. She grew into a young woman who fell in love with a man who loved her but she didn't know how to feel love when he stroked her hair. Her expectation of getting valuable gifts to prove his love for her prevailed.
When we request something of the universe, we should be open to the various forms of giving; when we are very specific in our definition of how, we sabotage the request.
If we ask for love, the universe will give it in abundance. If we ask for a particular person, it will be difficult for the universe to give us exactly what we have asked for.
When we ask from the high, inner source of the soul, we honor ourselves and our lives, so it is a broader request which enables us to create in accordance with our higher good. Sometimes, what we expect a particular person to give us is not in his nature, we cannot determine another person's manner of giving, just as we don't have conscious control over our parents' natures.
Understanding other sources of giving means to honor the giving of others in a way that is characteristic of who they are. We will receive more if we are open to different forms of giving. Honoring ourselves and our lives is to honor others in their giving. Honoring the choice of the soul is also the basis of a higher self love. If we have chosen a round body and not that of a fashion model, we should see the advantages of our body in our lives and not judge ourselves in comparison with a model who is irrelevant to our path.
Dependence is conditional love.
Unconditional love is meaningful in that it opens up the heart without any specific expectation, thus allowing love.
Someone who doesn't know how to honor himself as a source of love will remain in constant fear of losing another source of love. Someone who doesn't know how to honor his life will pursue the respect of others and be constantly trying to please.
When we feel we are a whole source, we will embrace cherishing love; we will not be nurtured by external love and respect and neither will we be dependent on this.
Someone without an inner stable source of love is someone who does not know boundaries and so is not embraced. Embracing love is supportive love, love that reinforces emotional security. Emotional security exists only when we are not dependent on people around us to provide it.
The stronger, the less dependent we feel, the easier it will be for us to respect ourselves and behave honorably in our lives.
Honor our father and mother is in fact the key to releasing ourselves from beliefs we have accumulated from childhood deprivations and that continue to serve our inner child.
When we honor and forgive we are able to give thanks for what our life holds, for our past, and thus we are able to grow and discover what we in fact asked for.
Before we were born, we chose parents who could reflect our lessons in the best way possible. If our purpose is to learn to rely on ourselves, we will choose parents who worry and who will reflect the lesson and thus we will know what we asked to correct.
We can thank our parents for giving us life and facilitating our lesson.
We are frequently angry with our parents [and other "fateful decrees" into which we were born]. Anger for a brief period of time is not negative. If anger serves as a means to a state of forgiveness, acceptance, and a state of honoring our lives, then anger ultimately constitutes a positive impetus. When we experience anger, we are usually positive the anger is justified, and we usually blame someone else for our pain. If we pay attention, situations whereby we blame other people for our difficult feeling are those in which we have a need to feel right and we need proof of this; they are not situations in which we honor ourselves.
We welcome difficulties into our lives that will activate anger so that we can heal those parts of us that are unresolved, parts that make it difficult for us to honor ourselves. For instance, someone who is miserly and who does not like this quality in himself will be angry with someone else for being miserly. The anger and the emotional activation come from difficulty in accepting one's own miserliness. Negative qualities that we know and accept as part of who we are won't annoy us! It is our resistance to these aspects of ourselves that evokes the anger, for it is with ourselves that we are usually angry.
And another example: someone who has been exploited will be furious with the exploiter because of his own qualities of na"ivet´e and innocence, or even his tendency to be a victim.
To honor and respect ourselves means to take responsibility for our bodies and our lives and stop feeling like a victim of circumstances and blaming the environment.
A process of honoring constitutes the ability to shift from a situation of self pity to the frequency of self love.
A process of honoring constitutes the ability to shift from a situation of judgment and anger to one of accepting reality.
Self love reinforces our choice of life.
When we choose ourselves in any life situation, we will not fall into self pity; we will honor our choices and take responsibility for them.
To honor our source means to honor our belonging.
We can honor belonging when we honor separateness. When we honor ourselves as individuals, it means we know ourselves to be whole; we know our boundaries and we accept who we are; we can honor our belonging without becoming confused. Sometimes, people who are close to us embarrass us in public [this happens a lot to children who are embarrassed by their parents' behavior], a situation in which we don't see ourselves as distinct from them, but become confused by a symbiotic situation, feel them to be us and so find it difficult to honor their presence and our belonging to each other.
When we are born into the physical world, we receive an identity card. This identity reflects where and to whom we belong. The identity card is the basis of our belonging, the name of the father, nationality, country of birth, etc.
Our physical identity is determined through our parents and honoring them means honoring our choice of identity.
We love and even take pride in some aspects of our identity, while there are others that we want to change and about which we even feel angry. As long as we are angry with aspects of ourselves, we do not accept or honor ourselves or our lives.
To honor and respect our belonging is to honor and respect who we are without becoming dependent on this belonging. Dependency means to hold onto an attachment, to a lack of self definition; when we have no self definition we define ourselves through our environment. For example: someone who holds onto to his birth religion as a primary, sometimes sole definitive identity. He honors and respects the religion but does not necessarily honor himself or his independence.
Our lives have great value and we must honor our first choice to manifest in a physical body; to honor this choice is to honor our people and our parents.
|
