Clear Path to Peace

Recently I’ve been playing with a solid gold coin. It’s a quarter ounce gold piece – round, shiny, and dripping with golden abundance. I’ve been holding it in my hand as a way to bring the gold into my life, both on the inner plane as a holy blessing and on the outer plane as prosperity in all I am and all I do.

A few days ago, I lost the coin. I couldn’t find it anywhere, though I did all the sensible things -checked my pants pockets, retraced my steps, etc. I began to feel sad that it had disappeared, and angry with myself for losing it. Damn!  I liked that coin!  I saw my attachment, my assumption about what it meant to me, my annoyance with my irresponsibility. And the little thing is worth about $200, on top of it all.

Anyway, the next day I taught my first Uncovering Your Inner Rumi devotional poetry workshop. A wonderful group gathered in Mount Shasta, CA, to explore writing devotional poetry together. Since I was thinking about the gold coin, I wrote about a poem about it during the workshop.  Here it is:

O Beloved

give me back my gold!

I lost it…yet could I ever lose it?

Jesus, your golden grace

coalesced in my hand

Lakshmi, I prayed for your help

Gone now

poof! it flew into the Mystery

Here is the teaching

if I dare:

never lost,never taken

this golden glow of mine.

Well, I really prayed that the coin would reappear, since I’d now gotten the lesson. A friend helped me search once more, and lo and behold – I found it!  Where, you might ask?  On my altar, where I’d placed it for safe-keeping, beside an image of the Hindu Goddess Lakshmi, goddess of grace, beauty and abundance.I had to laugh. Lakshmi had me covered – the whole time!  Another life lesson:  Divine Love holds my golden grace, even when I’ve forgotten it, and forgotten where I’ve put it.  So good to know.

One of the ways that we can live a generous life is with empathy – and with compassion, humor, laughter, and joy as well. We don’t have to reach out only when times are bad, thinking, “Oh, it’s a crisis; I’d better reach out.”  How about simply connecting with each other because it’s more fun to live on a planet where we share the good times, the medium times, and the bad times – all of it?

We can share a smile, a wink, a sunset, a poem, a rainbow….

Envisioning a world in which we all live this way comes from our own desire. We do it simply because it’s natural. There is no neediness, and no feeling of being drained or exhausted. Instead, there’s a playfulness to it, so that when we travel away from home across the street or across the world, we’re recognizing equality in all beings. We feel safe to stop and chat, to look people in the eye, to share love and art and beauty with them.

Lay forgiveness on your mind

and let all fear be gently laid aside

that love may find its rightful place in you.

— A Course in Miracles (T198)

Being generous is part of our true nature.

There are false generosities:  “Does it look like I’m being generous?” For women and girls, “Am I being a good girl? Am I being ‘ladylike’ in giving?”  For boys and men, “Am I showing my status and my power by having enough to give away?”

Another one: Giving out of guilt. “If I can just give enough, I won’t have to feel so guilty for being born a white American, or a wealthy European, Australian, or Japanese.”

Let’s weed out false generosity so that we have a clear path…not a path full of deception and debris.

True generosity is really something quite different. It is a feeling we get when we are so overflowing with divine love that the only thing left to do is to give it away. The only thing we want to do is give it away. It’s easy, fun, satisfying, enjoyable, and natural. This is a generosity of compassion and empathy.

Why not imagine a world where everyone is saturated with divine love? A world where the best part of our day is when we give love away…to each other and to the Earth..

Being generous – the way we are meant to be.

It was summer.  I was on a river trip with a group of women; all of us adventuring together on the Klamath River in far northern California, near the Oregon border.  I was paddling my kayak, happy with the day, the beauty, and the sunshine.

Underneath, though, I was worried.  What if I get tossed?  Every serious river runner has to deal with this fear at some point or other.  I’d been kayaking the Klamath for years and had voluntarily jumped in plenty of times. I’d also been quite handy with my kayak, managing to stay in the boat through countless rapids.  I’d only “gone swimming” once before, years ago. I knew that at some point, the river would take my little body and propel it out of the boat, because that is just how it is. You can’t do a lot of river rafting without that experience, and the more I kayaked, the closer I came to the inevitable.

I was lucky – the day was warm. Coming up to a class 3 rapid, I paddled hard in preparation.  I needed to align my boat with the perfect slot in the rocks ahead. As usual during river rafting, the slightest drop in my concentration would be my undoing.  I looked quickly to “river right”, making sure to avoid overhanging branches, then put my attention back on the slot ahead of me.  But that glance cost me one micro-second too many, and the river wasn’t waiting for me. I went over the rapid and into the river so fast I couldn’t even think about it. I was swimming, and I had no choice.  I was wet, the water was moving, and my boat was bobbing somewhere close by.
Here’s the magical part: after the first shock of surprise, I realized that the Klamath River was embracing me. I felt absolutely safe in its arms of love, and I began to cry. My salty tears met the river water and we celebrated the truth that, in that moment, there was nothing wrong, nothing scary, nothing to be avoided…just warm water carrying me downstream.

The river was so strong and steadfast! Except for my upturned face and knobby knees, it completely covered my body. It took me. I relaxed into the safety of it, still crying with relief and new understanding. It was a moment I will never forget.

River rafting can be a dangerous sport. Every toss from a boat will not be as ecstatic as the experience I had that summer day.  Just the same, I gained a powerful lesson from the Klamath. It taught me about the river of love, the river of life itself.  All of my fears, hesitations and assumptions were exposed and laid bare in one moment of my heart’s relief, when I got wet and realized they were not true. The lesson moved me because I was so aware of the metaphor: this water was alive and teaching me to trust – just as the water of every moment is also wet and alive and welcomes my trust, even if it doesn’t look like I’m in a river any more. I am. It is the river of life.  That day, I found out it’s also the river of love.

I recently had the great blessing of traveling to the Indonesian island of Bali. It was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to be there, and I came home deeply moved by the beauty and spiritual depth of the Balinese people.

One day while I was in Bali, I had a wonderful stretch into new territory for myself. I was learning how to scuba dive, and I asked my teacher, “How many dives have you done?” He had to think about it and then he said, “Well, within the last 20 years I’ve probably done at least 4,000 dives.”

Here I was in the pool, basically a raw beginner. I admitted to myself that I didn’t know what I was doing, and my gratitude for his experience, trust, and confidence went very deep. I thought, “How wonderful to have someone who’s had the experience of 4,000 dives to guide me.”

My dive master held onto my body, anchoring me while I floated around, explored my equipment, and tentatively began to relax into trusting that I could breathe under water.

Like my aptly named dive master, Siddhartha, I hold onto people and guide them through emotional waters. At the same time, I, too, am learning.

I came to understand that my gratitude for this man and his expertise is also the gratitude that others have for me in my work. I felt soul satisfied at the thought.

I began to think about what I do and how I am a guide for people in the deep tides of our emotional lives. Knowing how much I have committed my life to this work and how much I’ve done it on my own, I realized, “I’m a dive master!”

I’m an inner dive master, demonstrating the connection between our Spirit and how we live in our emotional bodies, and of course, our mental and physical bodies as well.

We dive in all of these bodies, and very often we’re in denial of the depths to which we need to go in order to find the truth about ourselves. It can take a while to realize how much sincerity is required in order to dispel what is not true, to see what we have been holding as a veneer, and impressing it upon the world.

When people ask me, “What do you do?” I use this metaphor and it helps explain the territory and the journey. I help people to dive within. I guide and support; I hold their hands.

I learned to scuba dive as a gift to myself, so that I could have my own experiences with the animals and plants of the sea.

I help my clients to have their own experiences in their interior, personal aquatic environment, given as a gift to themselves. They learn to accept and include all of it – the amazing corals, the tropical fish and the Loch Ness monsters that may be living down there.

Once we’ve learned to dive, we may then return to the light, into the Oneness that we are. Just traveling around under the water is not the full picture.

Offering what we discover on our journey to the One Life Essence…to the One that creates us, and gives life…this is the full picture.

When I told my dive master about my realization, he said, “Yours is a much bigger ocean.” He’s a wise man. That’s why they call him Siddartha.

Thank you, Siddhartha, for showing me the way.

I am inspired by Australia’s foray into the mostly uncharted waters of national apology. This week, Kevin Rudd, prime minister of Australia, apologized to the indigenous Aborigine tribe for the horrors done to them through racism in the name of “progress”. In particular, he mentioned the Stolen Generation, referring to the estimated 10-30% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were taken from their parents to be raised and educated in white households, from 1910 until 1970. (partial text of Rudd’s speech is below).

As an American, I’m reminded once again of the massive denial that lives in our national psyche in the areas where apology has not yet been made. The Native American tribes of this land suffered full scale genocide at the hands of pioneering settlers and the US government. Healing between the tribes and the white majority here has not yet occurred. Sorry – on a national scale – has not yet been said.

The other wound that comes immediately to mind is the pain of the African people who were brought to this land against their will to be sold into slavery. No one has heard the word “sorry” about that tragedy from a President of the United States, that I know of. Please correct me if I’m wrong about this. I’d love to be wrong about it.

I think Australia is showing us the way….and like some people in Australia, some Americans are hesitant to open the door to “sorry” because it will also open the door to compensation. Yet an apology means nothing if there isn’t action to back it up. No one cares about words if they are just words, and nothing else. The Golden Rule reminds us – let us treat others in a way that we would like to be treated. Compensation in many forms, including educational, medical and employment support, is justice in action. It brings meaning to the words of apology and makes them real. Let’s not be afraid of this; rather, let’s say Yes to healing on every level of our national and global society.

We must make our inner healing real if we are going to be in any kind of shape to heal the Earth…together.

Partial text of Rudd’s Sorry Speech

Wednesday February 13, 2008

“Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations – this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.”

There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.”

Later, Rudd states, “We are…wrestling with our own soul…it is just the truth: the cold, confronting, uncomfortable truth – facing it, dealing with it, moving on from it…

I know that, in offering this apology on behalf of the government and the parliament, there is nothing I can say today that can take away the pain you have suffered personally.

Whatever words I speak today, I cannot undo that.

Words alone are not that powerful; grief is a very personal thing.

I ask those non-indigenous Australians listening today who may not fully understand why what we are doing is so important to imagine for a moment that this had happened to you…

…Our challenge for the future is…to embrace a new partnership between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians – to embrace, as part of that partnership, expanded Link-up and other critical services to help the stolen generations to trace their families if at all possible and to provide dignity to their lives.

But the core of this partnership for the future is to close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians on life expectancy, educational achievement and employment opportunities.

This new partnership on closing the gap will set concrete targets for the future: within a decade to halve the widening gap in literacy, numeracy and employment outcomes and opportunities for indigenous Australians, within a decade to halve the appalling gap in infant mortality rates between indigenous and non-indigenous children and, within a generation, to close the equally appalling 17-year life gap between indigenous and non-indigenous in overall life expectancy…

…Let us take it with both hands and allow this day, this day of national reconciliation, to become one of those rare moments in which we might just be able to transform the way in which the nation thinks about itself, whereby the injustice administered to the stolen generations in the name of these, our parliaments, causes all of us to reappraise, at the deepest level of our beliefs, the real possibility of reconciliation writ large: reconciliation across all indigenous Australia; reconciliation across the entire history of the often bloody encounter between those who emerged from the Dreamtime a thousand generations ago and those who, like me, came across the seas only yesterday; reconciliation which opens up whole new possibilities for the future.”

Full text:http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/kevin-rudds-sorry-speech/2008/02/13/1202760379056.html

The desire for healing is very strong in many people right now. The booming healing “industry” will deliver any kind of modality you could ever want. But what makes healing, and who does it?

My experience is that no one heals anyone else. The only healing possible is surrender to our shared, divine essence. When we offer up our burdens of pain, guilt, shame and terror, we receive their opposite in return. Goddess is purely generous in this way.

As individual human beings, we are taught to think of ourselves as separate and alone. This simply isn’t true, but it looks and feels very real. Since birth, and perhaps through many births, separation from God and each other seemed to make sense. We have separate bodies, and everyone and everything around us teaches us that we are our bodies; therefore, we must actually be separate units, doomed to isolation forever.

With surrender, we turn our backs on this logic. We open up to another possibility. What if there is a vast and mysterious Power of Love that we can rest within? What if we can lay our burdens down and give away the storehouse of pain we’ve accumulated? What if it only takes an instant? And what if, when we experiment with this notion and actually try it…we discover that we are already resting inside this Generous Grace?

There is no way to know about surrender and the miracles that will follow without direct experience. It is not something we can “study up” on ahead of time. Only sincerity brings us to this humble place of honesty, openness and willingness.

I offer you the following method to support you in experimenting with surrender. It is a barebones version of the steps I use in my own inner life. They work. Give it a try….

If you’d like to experience surrender, open yourself in simple prayer. Use whatever religion or non-religion feels real to you. Choose something specific and ask for healing from God, not from another human being or from changing circumstances. Offer your pain and place it in front of the altar of the Divine. Or into the lap of the Divine Mother. Or into the hands of God. This is surrender. Use a relaxing breath, focusing on exhaling slowly and consciously. Allow your feelings to flow and release…not to get rid of anything because you hate it….but to cleanse and open yourself to make room for Love. Feel your feelings….tears are great at this point. Welcome them with an open, tender heart…

When you feel empty and your release is complete, fill the emptiness with Love. This Love is your own Life Force! With powerful inhaling breaths, drink this Love deeply into your body, and give thanks for the invisible, potent miracle of life that is arriving into every cell and place between cells in your body, your heart and your mind.

After these steps, trust with all your soul that what is happening is, in fact, real. More real than the world around you and the circumstances of your situation. Close with a prayer of thanksgiving and praise. And remain open to the levels of healing that will begin to unfold! Relax, and watch expectantly for miracles to appear!