Reflections Upon The Year That Has Been – 2015

As the New Year marches on filled with challenges and surprises it is probably a good time to reflect upon the year that was – 2015.

As I sit in quiet contemplation I find myself not wanting to see so many truths that God has been gently guiding me to open my soul to for such a long time.  And I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to have such patience, such compassion, such understanding and such love, as God has, for everything and everyone despite our flaws and weaknesses.

How different would my life have been if truth and real love had been the governing factors throughout my life and not just in the past six years? Sure, I have attempted to live my life from a place of acceptance, tolerance and love – at least since I was old enough to make conscious and meaningful choices for myself.  But in all this time the real driving force has been a desire to be loved; a desire to be understood; a desire to be accepted.  And in coming from this place of addiction I have automatically been out of harmony with love.  It has taken some very hard lessons to begin to crack open the tough exterior shell around my soul.  And looking back now I am grateful for those hard lessons.  But there is still so much work to be done.

Upon reflection I can see now how much of my life and the choices I have made have been driven by fear of rejection.  Until I am able to really get to the heart of the cause of these addictions it will be very difficult for me to feel truly accepted, truly loved and truly valued.

What would life be like if we learnt to live from a place of acceptance and tolerance; acceptance of ourselves as we truly are in this moment, and tolerance for our faults, hurts and injuries?

What would life be like if we truly learnt to love as God loves – unconditionally and totally, with respect for our free will and compassion for the injuries that drive our unloving choices?

What does real love actually mean? What would real love actually do?

The clue is in the above statements about how God loves – unconditionally, totally, with respect for the free will of every person regardless of their injures, and tolerance for their/our unloving choices whilst having compassion for the hurt child locked deep within and wanting to find his/her voice.  If we look around at our natural environment in its pristine state we can see little clues everywhere.

God does not give us everything we want.  God sees beyond the here and now.  He sees deep into our souls to the very core of our being and He understands what drives our thoughts and actions – those in harmony with love and truth and those driven by fear.  He knows WHY we say or do the things we do and He has total compassion for our brokenness. He also knows what would happen if He gave in to our demands and unloving addictive behaviour.

Since the beginning of time God has been observing the rise and fall of the human soul.  Watching our journey with compassion and understanding as we grapple with being mind-dominance and compete for power and control, trying to avoid our deeply buried hurt and pain, and setting up a chain reaction which continues to reverberate down the ancestral lines. He has consistently sent us many teachers and messengers who have had more courage and more understanding of Love than most to show us the way over this time – the great prophets, Jesus, Mohamad, Budda, Ghandi, Mandella, Mother Theresa and many others have been shining a guiding light upon earth for many millennia. Sometimes we recognize these great teachers and sometimes we don’t.

The problem of course is that Love and Truth will always confront error and addiction and this results in pain.  We have a tendency to run away from pain.  We have in-built pain receptors in our body which act as beacons sending warning signals and when these are triggered we mostly learn to avoid the painful stimuli – like sharp knives, hot saucepans, fire and a host of other painful stimuli.

But what do we do with the painful emotional stimuli, the ones which tell us what is going on in the soul? 

Mostly we ignore them.  We want to avoid feeling our sadness, our despair, our hopelessness, our fear, our grief and especially (for me anyway) our rage.  We have been so conditioned to believe that in order to be a ‘good’ person we must sacrifice ourselves in order to please others and keep the peace.

But what about me? Surely in God’s eyes I am just as important as anyone else?

Why then has this false concept of self-sacrifice taken hold and spread throughout humanity like an uncontrollable wildfire? 

The only logical answer can be that in response to sacrificing ourselves in order to gain ‘love’ and ‘approval’ we perpetuate the error by unconsciously demanding that others meet our addictions to help us avoid our fears and make us feel better about ourselves.

As children we rely on adults for our survival and it is easy to understand why we quickly learn to sacrifice ourselves in order to feel safe, protected and loved.  Some children never feel safe, protected and loved.  And so, without even thinking, as adults we naturally begin to demand from others that which was taken from us as children.  We become selfish without even realizing it.  Most of us wander through life in this half-dream state. Gradually shutting down to our hurt and pain while at the same time ramping up our demands that others help us avoid the hurt and pain within.  We are seeing more and more of this in society with increasing incidences of dementia, Alzheimer’s, suicide and mental illness.  What we do not yet seem to realize is that it is the soul which drives our lives – not the mind.  The soul – not the mind, is the powerhouse of the real me.  When I honour my soul, the sensory apparatus which houses my passions, desires, longings, emotions, memories, humility, love, intentions, personality, free will, instinct, energy, and more, I am honouring my real self – my half of the soul.

In order to grow in love I must first grow a desire for truth. Facing truth exposes the errors in my soul – the hurt, grief, fear, shame, anger, rage and so on which must be felt and released in order for Love to flow in.

From a very young age we are taught to ‘behave’ ourselves, to not feel what is often perceived as negative emotions – hurt, fear, sadness and so on. Often we have been punished (emotionally through ridicule, condemnation, judgement and / or physically through violent ‘correction’) for expressing our real selves.  Boys have too often been bullied into being strong and ‘manly’ as they helplessly learn to be tough, hard and ‘unemotional’. Girls have too often been coaxed into being subservient, passive and compliant. And woe betide anyone who dares to try to break free of these moulds and unloving expectations! And thank God that there have been people throughout history who have had the courage to show us a different way forward.  People like Jesus, Ghandi, Mandela, Mallala, Patch Adams, Steven Jobs, the Suffragettes and many, many more.

In every community, in every corner of the world there are people with the courage to question society’s expectations and push the boundaries of the ‘accepted’. You probably know many in your own local community.  We need more of them.

How different would our world be if from birth children learn that they are God’s child, created perfect in every natural way, and that the soul is the real you?

What if in school we are taught that it is not only OK, but it is encouraged to express the real you; and the means is provided for the safe and loving expression of all emotions – especially emotions of anger, rage, fear and grief.

What sort of society would we live in if children were taught from a very young age that it is not only OK, but it is encouraged, to feel and release their fear and unloving emotions in a loving way which does not harm any other living thing; and that when they do they will feel lighter, happier, more self-confident and loving. They will then soon see that love and laughter are infectious. But in order for children to learn this we need adults to show them the way.

Over the past six years I have slowly been opening my soul to Love and Truth.  This past year, 2015, has been the most confronting year yet as I begin to challenge addictions – physically, emotionally and in relationships.  It has been hard.  I often feel like a fish swimming against the current, but unlike the salmon, I have not yet learnt to jump waterfalls in order to get to the calm safe pool beyond.  Well, maybe baby waterfalls or rapids which lead to shallow rocky pools.  As I slowly gain the courage to challenge addictions and honour my soul above all others I am being shown little cracks in the prison that I have constructed for myself and more light and love begin to trickle in.

My challenge for this year, 2016, is to confront fear and let go of judgement – especially judgement of myself. If I can face the truth about WHY I judge myself and anger so harshly I have a hope of making some progress towards Love.

Judgement of anger is a HUGE emotion for me and I don’t understand it. I have HUGE amounts of resistance to feeling the rage that remains deeply buried within my soul and this rage is keeping me fat and in constant pain.  This has to change. It is time. It is time to let go of false beliefs and finally learn to step into God-reliance and trust that God knows exactly what I need to learn. When I finally learn to see the blocks that I have to trusting that God knows and understands the pain in my soul, and that She wants to nurse me through this pain then, and only then, will I be able to step into God-reliance and move through the painful emotions and errors in my soul.  And when I do learn this, true and permanent healing will begin.  All I have to do is to soften to the pain (without judgement), open to humility and Trust that God loves me and wants to help me through this pain. 

As I learn to pay attention to what the Law of Attraction is telling me, both positive and negative, I will learn to read God’s signs and let go of any pre-conceived notions I may have about what is right and what is loving.

My prayer for 2016 is that I may grow in humility so that I might open my heart and soul more fully to God’s Truth and God’s Love.  This is my prayer not only for me but for each and every one of my brothers and sisters, both here on earth and in the spirit world.

I wish you an enlightening and rewarding year ahead.

Reflections on Death

Recently I was fortunate enough to spend a few weeks in Tasmania with my beautiful husband and a few old friends. Like most visitors to Tasmania we favoured the natural environment and spent several days exploring some of Tassie’s pristine forests. It was after one such visit that these thought came to me …….

What is this thing we call death? Is there even such a thing? Or have we been duped into believing in ‘death’ because of the fear and lack of faith in others? Every day we confront ‘death’ in some way.  Most days we are so detuned from ‘death’ that we don’t even notice it until it touches us personally in a deep and unavoidable way.

Our cat catches a mouse and tortures it before killing it to eat. Dead animals litter the shoulders of our highways, victims of this fast-paced life we live.  A bug lands on our skin and we swipe at it intent on killing it. The wood we use in our fireplaces was once a vibrant living tree providing shelter and possibly food for many creatures. 

But is there really such a thing as death? Or is death simply a means of transformation, an opportunity for growth in a different direction?

Whilst we were exploring the many beautiful natural wonders of Tasmania I noticed that everywhere we went life was abundant and beautiful.  In the Franklin-Gordon Wilderness Area we came across the remains of an ancient Huon pine. Some would say that this tree was ‘dead’. It certainly wasn’t living in the form that most would identify as a Huon pine. And yet the remains of this magnificent old tree – hundreds of years old – was bursting with life.  Over 160 species of trees and plants have now been identified as emerging and thriving in the remnants of what once was an ancient giant of the forest.

So is this tree dead? Or has it simply been transformed into something new?  It is certainly providing a fertile bed for a vibrant and diverse colony of life.  The evidence is there for all to see.  So is this tree ‘dead’?

And what about those unfortunate animals which have fallen prey to our fast paced lifestyle and become road kill? Their remains are now transformed into food for the many scavengers which are drawn to the freshly killed carcasses. Without these scavengers we would by now be buried beneath the burden of our own waste, our own carelessness.

But the forest provides the clearest example of the cycles of life, of ‘death’ and rebirth. A tree fallen in a wild storm crashes to the forest floor where it begins the process of rebirth. It is no longer the magnificent tree that it once was as it reached for the warmth of the sunlight.  It has now reached its lowest point and it slowly begins its transformation into something else, something potentially more beautiful, lighter, and more vibrant. 

As time passes this ‘dead’ tree becomes host to a multitude of living organisms – fungi, lichen, moss, insects, grubs, each one working in tandem with the others to transform the tree into something more beautiful than it was before. Eventually this fallen tree will support the continuation of growth and life of all around it.  So has the tree really died or is it simply being transformed?

We are generally afraid of death because change makes us feel uncomfortable.  Think of a time in your life when you were forced to change? A job redundancy, marriage, the arrival of children, moving out of home, illness, travel to a foreign country and so on. How did that feel? And did you emerge from this changed circumstance (whatever it might have been) exactly the same as before or had you changed in some way?  Change makes us feel uncomfortable but it almost always leads to growth if we let it. For most this growth will be in a positive direction but some get stuck in old patterns and growth either stops or reverses in a negative direction. The choice is up to the individual.

Change is all around us.  It is the one constant thing in this world.  Every day every one of us witnesses dozens of small changes – from the way we have brushed our hair, the clothes we wear, the direction of the breeze, the ever changing skyscape.  Change is all around us. Everyday. And yet when it comes to the biggest change of all, ‘death’, we become frozen. Often paralysed by fear of the unknown.  But isn’t God trying to show us through our natural environment that there is no such thing as ‘death’?

In order for us to understand this concept we must be able to acknowledge that we are not who we think we are.  We are not our physical body.  We are a soul having a physical experience. Many religious philosophies teach this. And yet if we truly believed this we would also have to acknowledge that the ‘death’ of the physical body simply marks a transition to a lighter and more ethereal existence.  Of course, the big problem with acknowledging this is that the ‘death’ of the physical body necessitates change. The person whose physical body has decayed and ‘died’ must get used to residing in a lighter form. And unless they were particularly tuned to this more ethereal existence prior to their ‘death’ they will have difficulty communicating with those left behind, especially if their loved ones have not yet developed the ability to communicate across the great divide. The person who has ‘died’ now has an opportunity to learn and grow in a different direction and perhaps be transformed into something with far greater potential that previously imagined.

Perhaps for us ‘death’ is like the tree which has fallen in the forest.  We have now reached our lowest point and must learn to surrender to the process, to the truth of the universe around us, in order to learn and grow and eventually transform into something potentially much grander and greater than we ever would have imagined possible. Like that grand old Huon pine in the forests of Tasmania, we all have the opportunity to allow ‘death’ to transform us into something greater that we ever thought we could be. But to do this we must be willing to surrender everything we thought we knew about ourselves. And we must be willing to learn to see ourselves through God’s eyes, will all of our potential and promise. Then we must be willing to let go and let God show us the way forward.  And who knows where he will lead us? And we can begin this process long before the ‘death’ of the physical body.

Death is not the end.  It is simply a new beginning.  Nature shows us this every day.  All around us.  We just need to wake up and pay attention.

With the end of the year fast approaching perhaps now is an appropriate time to reflect upon our own feelings about 'death' and ask ourselves "What 'death' am I wanting to face before the new year begins? What 'death' must I face in order for new opportunities to bloom and thrive in the coming year?"

Clouds

I wrote this a little while ago but now that I re-read it I realize that it is as relevant today as it was then. I am still struggling with a deep causal emotion that I have been slowly working through over the past few months.  How little I understand about God and Her /Divine Love.  I want this to change!  I pray for the courage and the willingness to step deeply and completly into my fear and grief so that I might fully let go of all of my errors and and allow God's healing Love in.

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Clouds are rolling in across the valley floor now, floating softly through the air and forming a curtain of mist disguising the ridges behind them and temporarily changing the landscape.  But they do not sit still as they softly glide by, creating new vistas with every change as they rise up to meet the thicker band of cloud that is sitting atop the mountain and blocking it from view. 

It is darker now in the valley, grey and dull, but above the clouds a light shines through and a tiny speck of blue reminds me that nothing in God’s universe is permanent and that change is inevitable, even welcomed. 

So why then do I hold on so tightly to the things that cause me pain, not trusting this process, having no faith in the potential gain?  And yet right before me a transformation is taking place as soft clouds roll through the valley and lift gently over the mountains with such effortless ease and I am wondering what prevents me from gliding through this process of transformation of the soul?  What prevents me from embracing the changes in my soul, from grasping hold of those glimmers of light that have the power to lift me from the valley of despair and carry me over the mountains of doubt and fear into God’s loving embrace?  Why do I hold so tightly to the errors that cause me pain and keep me anchored to the valley floor?

As I silently observe God’s gifts unfolding across the sky I am greeted by a soft breeze, cool and fresh, lifting the clouds out of the valley so that they might merge with the vast sky and I can’t help but wonder what truth this is revealing to me?  Will God’s Love carry me out of my despair and beyond the restraints of my own soul to new heights where anything is possible?  Do I trust that this is possible?  Have I not already experienced the joy of soaring high on God’s Divine Love?  Why then do I still not trust this process unconditionally? What fear keeps me from relinquishing control to the Supreme Commander and allowing His Love and Laws to lead me where I need to go?

There is as yet so much that I still have to discover about my own soul, so many pains to feel and release and so much joy to experience.  I pray that with God’s help I will learn to fully embrace this process and to rejoice in the release of each error so that I might allow my soul to lift gently out of the valley of despair and learn to soar high upon the wings of God’s Love from where anything is possible and love and truth rule the day.

with love

Linda

Resistance and Change

The last couple of days I have been travelling, praying and feeling into some emotions that are coming up for me.  At the moment I am recognizing just how much resistance I have in me to unlocking the truth of the errors in my soul.  I am also recognizing that the desire that I thought I had for God and truth is really very small and I feel like a failure at the moment - like nothing I do will ever be good enough.  Yesterday on my way home from Uralla (having been to a talk at Kyabra the previous night) I stopped at Giroween National Park near Stanthorpe in Qld.  It was here as I sat and watched the water flowing over the huge granite boulders, some of which have worn away creating cracks and crevices in the river bed, that I received the following message.  I am sharing it here with the understanding that I do not consider myself to be a medium and am still very uncertain of the accuracy of these messages.  Please recognize that this, and any other such messages that I post here are received through the filters of my own errors and may not be 100% accurate.  I encourage you to feel into the messages and make your own assesments of the level of truth contained therein.

Received 15^th December at Giraween National Park. Qld

Have you ever considered how a free flowing stream will eventually wear away even the toughest rocks?  So it is with God’s Love. When you allow God’s Love to wash over you soul He will wear away the resistance of even the most hardened heart.

Allow God’s Love to continually wash over you.  Pray for His Love to enter your soul and eventually all of your resistances will crumble and wash away, just as the toughest granite will eventually wear down to mere grains of sand as the gentle stream washes over it, until it is completely broken down and the landscape is made anew.

God’s creation is all around you.  Observe it.  Learn from it.  For surely that which He does for the lowliest of His creations He will do for you, the greatest of His creation and even greater things.

Learn to bend and adapt just as nature does.

Do not offer resistance to change for change is an integral part of God’s landscape and that includes you and all of His children.

Learn to trust this for you will need to be able to rest in the certainty of this truth in the coming months and years.

With love

Margaret