The world that I remember and have carried within my heart since eternity is coming closer. The ancient voices that speak to me, tell me that to feel is to pray. If we are not feeling, we are not living.
Most of us have forgotten what it's like to really feel. We know what anger, ...The world that I remember and have carried within my heart since eternity is coming closer. The ancient voices that speak to me, tell me that to feel is to pray. If we are not feeling, we are not living.
Most of us have forgotten what it's like to really feel. We know what anger, frustration, anxiety, stress, hysteria, jealousy, boredom, happiness, excitement, and embarrassment is. These are but a few of our human emotions. But they are not feelings. They are more like agitated states of mind. To feel is to move and to dance to the rhythms of our heart. To feel our lives, every inch of it, is to experience the divine. From the agony to the ecstasy, it's all an expression of what is holy within. Our heart is the chalice that holds the sacred elixir of life. To drink deeply of its wisdom and its achingly beautiful grace, is to know God.
Where else can we come to know the meaning of our existence, than through the mysterious chambers of the heart. This is the passageway to infinity, and it is through this beating, rhythmical, ancient vessel of feeling - the love and the pain - that we know we are alive.
And yet to truly feel often becomes the very reason why most of us want to remain numb. To feel can be scary. And yes, some of us can even be more frightened to feel love than fear. In fact, I believe that most of us are so used to feeling fear and pain, that to open ourselves and our hearts to love is our greatest fear of all. And yet, this is our only salvation.
We've all danced intimately with pain and sorrow. We know that dance. Our movements are robotic and lifeless. We remain in the darkness of our perfectly controlled lives. Every second accounted for, every decision perfectly planned far in advance. Our fatal error being, we've turned the switch of life off. In our efforts to not feel any more pain, we've become our own jailers. Imprisoned are we with the keys to freedom in our very hands, the keys that will unlock our hearts and allow the thaw to begin.
If we are moving through our lives rooted in the fear of feeling the full range and magnitude of our own greatness, our own divinity, what kind of prayers do you think we are offering up to the world? If feeling is praying, and our feelings are the energy behind all our manifesting and creative power, we can begin to see the grave error of our ways. To live in fear is to pray for fear. To live in numbness is to pray for numbness. To feel nothing is to not pray at all.
This is what the ancient ones want us to know now. This is why we are starting to wake up and remember the ways of old. This is why we have a heart. That we may feel it all. To keep our feelings trapped inside is to flirt with disaster. Feelings are life force. They create movement. When they are unexpressed they create stagnation. Stagnation creates blockage. Blockage is frozen life-force that creates mass. Where there's blockage, life force cannot flow. If life force cannot flow, the poetry of life disappears from view, and our very existence becomes compromised.
It takes courage to let our hearts thaw, to feel vulnerable enough to let the tidal waves of pain and suffering flood and wash away our fears. But the more we allow ourselves to unravel and unwind these bands of restriction, these frozen sorrows, the sooner we become amazed at how short-lived the movement of emotional pain is, how quickly it rushes out and away, freed at last to be transmuted into life itself, and we're left stunned and wondering why we held on to it for so long.
When we give ourselves permission to feel uncomfortable feelings, (which is a massive act of self love) we are opening up the gate that leads us down the road to freedom. It is here, as we walk along together, as we cry, as we let go, as we mourn, that we begin to feel something else. We begin to feel little glimmers of joy. We begin to notice the person walking next to us. We notice we are no different, that we want the same thing - to be free - free to love, free to feel. We begin to see the beauty of the trees as we walk on, the dance of the wildflowers as they sway in the breeze, the warmth of the sun as it gives life to every living thing, the hush of the sky as we look upward and give thanks for the greatest realization we've ever come to know...that WE are the silent peace of God, our hearts the dwelling place for this unfathomable, benevolent power. Before we know it, joy is welling up inside of us and spilling out. We know it's impossible to contain it. We know it must be shared.
And with this profound knowledge we begin to believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the fate of our world, and our freedom to craft a life we love, is up to us. We begin to trust in our ability to use the energy of love to create unity - within ourselves first - by gently emptying our hearts to the silent peace of God, who's been waiting so patiently for our return.
This is what it means to feel. We cannot separate ourselves from pain, though we do our best to bury it as deeply as possible. We cannot separate ourselves from the Divine. The two are one. God is everything. Pain and sorrow. Love and joy. The more we try to repress how we feel, the more we build walls to block out the light of love. But this light continues to shine. It cannot be put out. It cannot be extinguished. It shines on into infinity, loving us, healing us, supporting us, whether we're aware of it or not, whether we want it to or not. We can turn away from it, we can shut our eyes, we can build the walls. We can do all this in an attempt to feel separate, to feel in control, to align ourselves with only that which is practical, responsible, factual, and safe. But all this holding together, all this fanatical energy exerted to keep ourselves and others fooled, will eventually weaken our perfectly put together lives, and a crack will slowly
begin to form.
And as legendary poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen once wrote, "it's through the crack that the light will get in."
There it will be. Shining upon us. There it will be, no longer hidden from our hearts by our long held beliefs that we are powerless and worthless. Why else would we have chosen to turn away from it? To let it in would illuminate the lies we've been telling ourselves, and this would be painful. As long as we remain shut off from it, we can feel safe that our false beliefs about ourselves are true, that our identities remain intact and anchored to this world we've become so comfortable living in. This is the underlying payoff for remaining asleep. Comfort. Security. Indentity. The known.
The great awakening is about all of us cracking open. There's no point in continuing to try and hold it all together. The truth about who we are and what we have the power to create in this world IS going to be known. We can either let go and accept this evolutionary process we are going through, and move through it with relative ease and grace, or we can hold on tightly, resisting our true selves every step of the way, causing great discomfort, struggle, and chaos.
What would it mean to know that we are powerful and worthy? What would it mean to know that we are the creators of it ALL - that we are that powerful? What would it mean to know that we are in fact, the light of God?
This is where we are being asked to go. Into this new world. Into this new identity. But that is a frightening prospect for many of us. If we are to believe that what we've identified with for eons about ourselves is untrue,then who would we be otherwise? Loss of identity can be terrifying. If we are to give up such long-held, deeply ingrained beliefs, how will we survive? Will we survive? Can we withsatnd our hearts breaking open and feeling the pain of our ignorance and the joy of our new-found salvation?
This is where many of us fear to tread. We think we won't survive our feelings, our power, our worthiness. But we will. It is written. It is our destiny. The world of duality, the only one most of us have ever known, is coming to an end. And it's ending in our minds. No, the earth is not going to explode and disappear. It is ending through the power of our minds to create something else. Something based on new beliefs about what and who we are. Something that feels more like oneness and unity, and less like fear and separation. As we move into this new awareness, like magic, our eyes will begin to see a new world. It is here the ancient prophecy of old telling of a new world, a new people, will come to light. It is US. It is WE. We are emerging from the chrysalis of transformation to a freedom beyond our wildest imagination...
Copyright 2008 Heather Fraser
**Author's Note: It is my intention that this message reach as many people as possible around the world, so please feel free to share it, intact, with my blessings. If we find ourselves in crisis with our backs pressed against the wall, there is nothing else to do but let go and unleash the tidal wave of emotional fear and pain that we have been trying so hard to bury. It is this very fear and pain that has blocked out the light of love. It is the dam that has been holding back your every joy. We will continue to be pushed to the precipice of our fears, (our very survival being the deepest one) both collectively and individually, until we are willing to FEEL our fears, instead of avoiding them through whatever distraction of choice we have been using. When there is nowhere left to hide, Love will finally find us. Imagine THAT world. We are heading there.**
Heather Fraser is a writer in Ontario, Canada who has come to understand the meaning of her life as an expression of the sacred and the soul of everyday living. For more information you can visit her website at www.sacredscribe.com