Shadows

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There was something I needed to do, my inspiration told me.  It wouldn’t be difficult technically speaking but would require great courage and a strong will to change the status quo that had become my world of late.  So, I lit the white candle at the alter and I sat down, took a deep breath and closed my eyes.  In moments, I saw two of my guardian angels, Jacob and Aaron.  Jacob asked me if I was ready and I said, “Yes, let’s do this.”   Just then, my beautiful friend white owl showed up.  We climbed on her back and we were off then to soaring through the night sky and then into the mouth of a cave at the bottom of a mountain in the desert.  We were headed to the underworld. 

The underworld is often greatly misunderstood and so let me clarify that by underworld, I do not mean Hell or Purgatory or anything biblical by any stretch.  The underworld is a different plane all-together and is most convenient for inter-dimensional travel when one is properly prepared and guided.  I’ve traveled the underworld a good number of times when called by my intuition to go within and begin “seeking” for answers.  This time, it wasn’t an answer I sought but an aspect.  An aspect of my own existence I could feel living and breathing inside of me…a creation of sorts.  I had created an inter-dimensional being, a monster you might say, one called rage.  She came to see me many years ago and has wreaked havoc with my sanity a time or two over the last ten years but I didn’t know what she was entirely or where she came from.  All I knew was that she was one very powerful creation who captured my attention so completely at times.  When we first met she hit me with energy so hard in my heart I was unable to move.  I faced her briefly but all I held was fear and bewilderment.  I didn’t have the wherewithal at the time to understand.

The last time I saw her I was in meditation and she leaped at me in my mind’s eye and in that moment I both saw and felt the strength of her power.  She was hideous, terrifying, flaming matted red hair, yellow orange eyes, shrieking, long dirty nails, pale bloodless skin and dark stripes that were similar to tribal tattoos.  This was many years ago and I was in no way prepared for that encounter.  I shut down my meditative practice not understanding that I had only just met an aspect of me, a representation of repressed pain, anger and hurt that was left to flounder on its own unrecognized.   When you get closer to peeling away the layers of the beliefs and lies you’ve been handed or created about your own life, sometimes your own shadow sides will call to you.  Mine did and I answered that call.  I understood the hows, the whys and what was that I had to do.

We traveled through the underworld fast but I caught glimpses of the beautiful light, crystals and different worlds carved into the sides of the cave walls that acted much like live picture frames that you could step into.  With my intuition I guided the owl straight ahead to a tiny perfectly round tunnel where I saw moonlight.  Snowy climbed the tunnel for miles until we arrived on a plane that appeared to be not unlike the Earth but it was some place a little different.  The scene was serene but the energy was not at all so I knew we were close.  Up above a night time sky appeared as it would have on Earth and before us a large black glassy lake that reflected the light of twinkling stars now and again.  A great oak tree rose large and looming across a short field of flat grass and I knew somehow that was the meeting place.  We gathered twigs and rocks large enough to make a safe fire ring.  We lit the flame and we waited.  I held hands with my guides and said a prayer that I be given the strength and the courage to hold nothing but love and compassion for the being I needed to meet.  No sooner had I finished the prayer and felt the pure peace of it washing over us when my guest arrived.

She was animal like, lithe like a cat and she suddenly sprang animal like from the darkness to the far side of the campfire’s light.  I spoke to her then, “Come, please, I will not hurt you.”  I could see her eyes glowing in the darkness and I felt her anger hit the space of peace we had created.  Knowing her heart as I did, since it was the one beating inside me, I put more force and focus into expressing love non-verbally from the center of my heart.  I spoke to her again and asked, “Would you like to join us and sit for a time?”  She seemed to bristle a bit but then stood upright taking slow and deliberate steps closer.  She was strong and fearless in her power and Jacob and Aaron both gripped my hands a little tighter no doubt for reassurance.  I spoke to them intuitively to ask them to let go of my hands and just hold a space of love while I worked.

I took a deep breath and visually embraced the fullness of my own creation.  She was terrifying in appearance just like something from a horror movie but I was not afraid.  I'm not exactly sure why.  Maybe it was that  I could feel the heart of her because it was my heart.  I knew she would not hurt me somehow even though she was angry enough to destroy me.  I stood my ground, looked her in the eyes and let loose nothing but the energy of compassion and then I broke the silent tension between us.  I asked her if I could come sit beside her.  She didn’t speak but made it clear by her demeanor she cared not one bit for me.  I knew better but didn't let on.  Bolstered by strength and sheer determination I walked carefully and slowly around the campfire and I sat down next to her.  With everything in me I focused all of the love in my heart on her, surrounding her, supporting her and fully feeling and ultimately knowing her.  I asked her to look at me sensing her great discomfort.  She looked at me with eyes glazed over still angry, still in the fullness of her emotional rage but nonplussed I pushed forward anyway.  I saw the black stripes on her arms and legs, her back, her body and I reached out slowly and touched one on her left shoulder.  It was not a stripe but a scar.  When I touched it and sent it love, it disappeared and the scars in her arm returned to normal looking skin.  She was shocked but felt the healing.

I paused a moment to let her consider the thought I sent her…I can bring you great healing if you would but let me.  She snarled, “Why should I?  You were the one that created me.  You were the one who ignored me, my needs, my desires and left me behind without a single thought or care.  Why in all of God’s creation should I trust you to bring me anything but misery?”  I answered, “Because I created you and I have nothing but love to offer you if you would be willing to explore and to understand all that has truly transpired.  I reached then for her right shoulder and where the scars were I touched them with my hands bright with pink light and her other arm returned to normal.  I did the same when I touched her back and all the scars disappeared replaced by normal looking skin.  When I felt the back of her heart, I knew she wanted nothing but freedom, just like me.  Seizing the opportunity in her moment of doubt, I moved quickly before her and knelt in front of her face to face, surrendering and yet completely in control.

We stared at each other eye to eye for long moments.  I reached out and touched the black mark scars on her forehead and where I gently traced with the intent to heal and ease her pain, they too disappeared just like the others.  She let me then hold her face in my hands and I whispered, “I love you” over and over again until her pale skin changed to pink and scar-less.  I smoothed back the wild flaming hair and at my touch it turned smooth as silk.  She released into me the anger she held and she sat there in the fire as I clothed her and spoke to her softly words of understanding, words of apology, words of honesty and understanding compassion.  She looked me in the eyes completely transformed and she wrapped her arms around my neck and she cried.  She cried for what seemed an eternity and her tears filled the lake behind her and I knew that she created that lake with angry dark tears.  I told her that there was no need to be angry any more.  We talked of specifics, of scenes from the past and in lives past.  I asked her to let me know when she was ready to join with me and become whole once again.  She said she was ready now on one condition.  I agreed and then asked her to state her condition.  She then said, “You must always stand in your own light.”  She held out her hands then and took both of them in mine and we were instantly transported to a place in time I spent as a child.

Outside of a small church located in a local amusement park I had been to many times we materialized.  We sat there in the sunlight under a tree near a lake.  She had transformed the former scene where I had originally found her.  We spoke then of happier times and she relayed to me the things that hurt her, the things that made her angry that later turned to rage.  I helped her understand the truth of things beyond what she perceived as a child, young woman and then later an adult.  In that moment another aspect arrived and then another.  With each we joined together after spending time to understand, cry, laugh in the sunlight and release the smoky untruths we held as perception unquestioned.  We merged then into one being, one heart beat in peace and in love.

The next scene carried an intensely powerful moment with my own mother, of love, of words, of truths in a long line of angry and troubling relations passed from mother to daughter and daughter to mother.  I felt so much love for my own mother, the same love I felt for my daughters and I whispered “The path to healing you mom is to return to your own mother’s love and so on and so on back through time for time is meaningless and proximity is not as important as you think.  I told her I absolved her, loved her and wished her every success in her journey.”  I was pulled then back to my present reality.  With eyes closed still and feeling nothing but peace and love, I thanked the Divine Mother for such a healing journey.  After a moment of silent pure gratitude I opened my eyes. The lone candle burned still flickering in the darkness on the alter, seeing Snowy, Jacob and Aaron fading from my mind’s eye at peace.  Stunned by my own courage, stunned by the depth of my own love I knew the healing of my own shadows had begun and in that healing the real work had begun.

© 2014 Jaie Hart (photo and words)

Breaking Free From the Frame

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I’ve been unable to write for a little while.  I’ve been focused on finishing some things that I started.  In the finishing, I begin to understand what I have truly been trying to learn the whole time.   I go back now to the moment of questioning. In all of my questioning and states of misunderstanding. I realized the question contains also the answer.  This is not my concept but one spoken by many a great teacher.  I just didn't understand it or how it works.

Life seems full of one paradox after another.  The thing you rail against the most is the thing a part of you wishes to embrace.  In other thinking, the things that revolt us in others are the very things that we judge as revolting within us.  The beauty and magic we see in this world can be seen only because those things are within us; a part of us all.   The acts of injustice we cry out the loudest against are acts we too have committed unnoticed perhaps by anyone but our quietest most inner selves in one form or another.  Multiple disciplines can explain to you why.  We can argue semantics into oblivion and it will not change the fact of truth beyond the limits of our manufactured perceptions.  Perception itself is an illusion.

My focus of late has been disentangling myself from the images that others held of me and what it is that I should be to them and for them.  Breaking free from the picture others hold of you and the way you should be in the opinion of others deeply internalized into unconscious belief is no easy thing.  But, I'll tell you something...I love it...the act of breaking free and then knowing that freedom always was and is all there is.  Feeling the truth may be uncomfortable.  So then shall discomfort be the thing I endeavor to embrace always for therein lies my deepest of dreams.  Deconstructing self-manufactured illusion in the absence of understanding is no simple matter.  That is the only thing I know and nothing more but I cannot help but observe the results and how the ego lurks at near every turn to judge this or that as wrong or right; my own very quick to judge me in kind.

I imagined one of my most difficult challenges in all of my existence within this frame very recently.  All of the things I thought it meant in reality turned out to be nothing but smoke and mirrors.  The message, in truth, was created by me for me in an attempt to get me to wake up and see the divine order of things.  Source bless all great teachers recognized and not for the part they played in this most difficult of lessons.  The thing of it is unimportant but the Source of it is perfect as are all things if we could but see with a clear heart and spirit.  I’ve learned that I know nothing about a good number of things and one might think this would be a painful thing but as it turns out, there is a freedom in knowing there isn’t a thing you can be certain of in the outside world.  What we see is merely a projection of what we expect there to be.  But there is more, so much more.   

The pain of shattering illusions is thin and the pressure then builds to shatter some more until there is nothing left but a tiny light in the darkness.  And knowing that tiny light and the darkness are one and the same as are we all-- one and the same.  We just don’t clearly understand how and so fight in our separation, grieve it unconsciously and deliberately until we drain ourselves of precious energy.  Then we may be blessed with a feeling…a feeling so true more than any other and that feeling is a powerful desire to surrender.  To surrender self to Self is an amazing, frightening, exhilarating and terrifying thing all at once.  You’d think it was painful the way we fearfully fight it but it isn’t painful at all.

The process is so liberating, so freeing and when you can find a way to wrestle joyously through the difficulty a subtle shift occurs.  It is so subtle you cannot pin point it easily but then those things that have hidden the truth and blocked the flow of pure love floods the mind, the heart, the spirit and soul.  Again without understanding what’s happening we revert to the familiar fears and controls that got us into the mess we've made of our lives and we stop and start and then stop again.  We reset by questioning what happened and then again that beautiful feeling flows in and says, “Shh, don’t be afraid, trust, go, you know what to do and so go and just Be.”

Our questions tell us the answers.  Our doubts can point to our truth.  We each must find our way there in our own time and know, we have lifetimes.  My most prevalent thought as I consider it all is, “Why wait?”  But take my thoughts with a grain of salt and instead consider your own on any given subject.  What is the subject?  What drew your focus to it to create it?  What did you want to get from it?  What are you getting from it?  Are you getting what you want or need?  Are you satisfied, happy, mad or sad?  Step back and get out of your head for a moment.  Shut down the mind and let the heart find the way.  It knows the way.  Trust that.  Don’t “believe” it.  Belief is nothing.  Knowing is everything.

I’m off to explore now free of the frame.  Blessings of great love, tenderness and strength for your journey beloved souls.  Just remember that everything matters and you are important.  Not in a narcissistic way but in a spiritual way as a blessed part of the Heart of this beautiful, infinite and amazing Whole.

© 2014 Jaie Hart (photo is not mine but a very fortunate internet find: www.mymodernmet.com)

Ode to James Kavanaugh, You'll Always Be Remembered

"I will probably be a searcher until I die and hopefully death itself will only be another adventure. To live any other way seems impossible. If anything has changed over the years, and it has, I only feel more confident now about what I wrote then. I am far more aware of the power that guides each of us along the way, and provides us with the insights and people we need for our journey. There are, indeed, men and women too gentle to live among wolves and only when joined with them will life offer the searcher, step by step, all that is good and beautiful. Life becomes not a confused struggle or pointless pain, but an evolving mosaic masterpiece of the person we were destined to become."

UNAFRAID TO BE FREE

"Finally unafraid to be free,
Ready to surrender all the illusions of
recognition and external securities,
Living off the sky and earth like soaring
eagles and braying burros,
Trusting in a Power even beyond Dow Jones
and hoarded retirement.
Finally ready to live like the noble animal that I am-
Without masters or servants, with dignity dependent on no one,
Content to know that I am God's child, and
only good has been prepared for me.
When I am not afraid to release all that my life
and culture taught me to prize.
To abandon fears once and for all, to discard the
anxieties of a lifetime like a suit that no longer fits,
To be afraid of no one, beholden to no one,
dependent on no one
Save the few who know and love me as I am,
and the God Who alone gives meaning and joy
to the madness of my life."

James Kavanaugh (May you rest in peace beautiful soul)

Excerpts appreciatively excerpted from  http://www.celestineview.com/kavanaugh.htm (much thanks to this site owner for sharing the beautiful works of a beautiful soul).

The Highway of Life

Sometimes the highway seems too much of the same while traveling.  The same white or yellow lines broken up by an overpass now and then or traffic merging on or off.  Sometimes the monotony is broken up by the big white truck ahead of you going 20 mph slower than you were causing you to brake, change lanes, change gears and refocus.  Sometimes I think life is like traveling a highway and we just keep going in the same direction missing the signs, doubling back, going in circles sometimes or missing the scenery and beauty altogether.  There are amazing places to stop and find a road unlike the highway or a place unfamiliar with no roads at all.  There are important things to see along the way too but if we're moving too fast or not paying attention, we'll miss them.

The monotony of life lived day in and day out in the absence of understanding is pain-filled and hopeless having one experience after another judged or perceived exactly the same way you have always judged and perceived.  One day twenty years has gone by and you can’t quite remember exactly how you got there, where ever "there" may be or how you might have missed the things you knew where there all along but never took the time to look for or were afraid to see.  It may seem a morose observation I weave tonight but I assure you it is far from that where I am sitting in this now moment.

In this now moment, I hold tears of joy for discoveries made, lessons finally realized and putting down this ridiculous projection of having to figure it all out myself.  A very dear angel (several actually of late) reminded me I’m not driving this highway alone and in fact, I’ve begun to leave the highway altogether.  There will be no more monotony of ignorance, lacking understanding or sleeping at the wheel.  In this moment a bitter emotion may pass before me a few seconds only to remind me I am in mourning of not one or two but so many illusions.  Even the beliefs I once held have all been blown up by the last emotional land mine I decided to step right on top of.  I sigh a little and then smile at the same time.  Our co-creation here is so far beyond perfect down to the very second of occurrence of everything.

I went for a walk outside with my partner last night and gazed up at a beautiful sky I had all but forgotten existed of late.  So mired in emotion and self-disappointing thoughts I could not articulate or understand.  The clouds were high and thin giving the moon the most ethereal and amazing glow.  In that moment, I had all but forgotten the moments just before when it felt like the last of my world was crumbling with worry, anger and fear.  In that moment I saw my favorite constellation, Orion…Sirius, Rigel…how perfect I thought that they should be overhead at this particular moment.  The walk and the view cleared away so much of the emotion from the mourning of destroyed illusions and disintegrated beliefs.  We must do that at times, mourn the things we’ve given up that we thought we knew or even understood.  It’s part of being human but when the process is done, the moments of greater clarity come and you suddenly realize you’ve lost nothing of importance at all.  But, what you’ve gained on your journey is worth so much more in fact I'd say, "Priceless."

I’m suddenly grateful in this moment to realize how fully I am not on this road trip alone.  I see all of the human and ethereal angels around me who have been so supportive while I make my way through this foggy part of my journey.  I’m grateful for each and every one, so grateful. Thank you, every beautiful one of you.

So, I’ve traded my illusions and traded my beliefs (at least those I am consciously aware of) for nothing but a simple and beautiful barely audible hum of a knowing.  A knowing that there is more, so much more and I cannot settle for what is not meant for me.  I’m free to create things so very differently as always I have been.  I just didn’t know and I didn’t understand.  And now, now the journey truly begins.  I take a deep breath as if I’ve not taken in air for a thousand years and I let it out slowly.  Life is truly amazing as are all of our creations, the dramas and plays, the colors we paint our lives so beautifully with.  Life is a sweet treasure to be fully enjoyed free from anything that traps or binds you and nothing does that more than blindness, ignorance and lack of compassion for self primarily and others too.  It’s time to fly.  Sweet dreams beautiful dreamers.  May the angels surround you with every breath and step.

 

© 2014, Jaie Hart (photo from dreamstime.com)

So It's Over, Now What?

So, it's over, now what?
That thing you thought was everything
Whatever it was and whatever you thought it would be
It's over.
So now what?

Will you lie there defeated, deflated and wounded?
Will you hate, seek revenge, sink to the depths of despair?
Will you calculate, seek to commiserate and drive the wounds in deep?
Are you the victim of a villain?
Are you a victim of circumstance?
What are you in this? 
Have you given it thought?
You look back at the days and weeks
But do you see what happened?
Do you truly comprehend the purpose of the experience?
You didn't want change did you?
You wanted to take this one thing and possess it, hold it there for eternity unchanged
Did you think that was reasonable or realistic to hold a thing static to appease your fears?
Really?  Was that a reasonable expectation towards your serenity?

So, it's over, now what?
Will you sort through the facts or hold to your provisional truths
So carefully created with environmental and spiritual psychology?
Will you stand in the darkness?
If so, for how long?
What will it take to propel you toward your intended transcendence?
What will it take to reveal your own hand in your seeming undoing?
Think about it.
Things in this world do not happen to you randomly to wreck your world while you're out there just trying to have a good time.
Things in this world you experience are created by you, for you
Either consciously or unconsciously.

So, it's over, now what?
Is it time yet to look again
And see what was really there in the absence of hate and fear or rejection?
Is it time yet to embrace the lesson you  just couldn't see?
Is it time yet to wake from your deep and dark slumber?
It can be if you want it to be.

So, it's over, now what?
Can you take the steps towards the light on your own two feet?
Can you realize you created the scene so perfectly?
Can you comprehend the bad thing can be a good thing in terms of your own soul's growth?
You can but free will dictates that concept, that pure and beautiful action
Is entirely up to the manner of your choosing.
You can remain mired in the darkness
And like a black whole let it suck all the life out of everyone and everything to validate you and vindicate you from responsibility…
Or, you can seek the deeper meaning, gain understanding and embrace the change
That was inevitable to bring alignment with your soul's trues desire.

So, it's over, now what?
Stand up, live, love and breathe...
You are that powerful and there is nothing
Or anyone that can truly take you down but you.
So, it's over, now what are YOU going to do for YOU?

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© 2009, Jaie Hart (photo, moneynow.com)

The Ego is the Veil

What if the “veil” isn’t out there somewhere but rather inside of us right here in the form of our ego?  I wonder.  We talk of many things as if they are “out there” outside of ourselves and as we learn and live this life, understanding begins to dawn and we come to realize that as above, so below…as within, so without.  During times of meditation or selfless service, the veil seems to thin for us and we feel bliss or true love.  When we thin the veil of the ego, we begin to feel the truth from the core of our being without the ego arguing for pole position in this situation or that situation.

I think the veil; the thing that separates us all is the ego.   The ego and/or veil, has a perfectly good purpose.  I don’t think either was supposed to be destroyed or in anyway eradicated.   Instead, the ego and the veil it seemingly creates should be understood.  We can thin the veil thereby minimizing our egos by setting our intent, turning our ego-self over to the greater Soul-Self thereby piercing the veil and all sorts of amazing things are then possible.  Things we could never have imagined from within a thick veil of the ego can then be created positively.  Consider, if we over-identify too much with the ego in an unhealthy way, (and oh goodness are there oh so many unhealthy ways), the veil is thick around us and we are cut off from not only Source but each other as well.  The conclusion I come to is that the thicker the ego or veil, the greater the disconnection from Source and others.  This can unwittingly occur due to unnatural beliefs or other unhealthy means and can be a very challenging way to learn in this life. 

So, I come to understand that all is truly perfect as it is whether or not I judge it thickly veiled with my own ego or not.  Even the ego and the veil are perfect.  They are perfect for each soul’s journey regardless of the dimension of the ego or veil.  All things in good time come through the thinning of the veil or ego, like love, compassion and understanding.  I wish to explore this “thinning veil” concept a bit more.  I didn’t come up with this idea entirely on my own.  It was a little nugget of a puzzle I was left with as I some how managed to thin my own veil and a trusted guide from somewhere seemingly not here and yet right here left me to ponder…and ponder I will.

 

© 2014 Jaie Hart, All Rights Reserved

(photo, beautiful random google image find)

Life - The Journey Continues Series

I've completed my latest series of books.  These represent a collection of my favorite articles from this blog and other articles I have written.  This series represents my thoughts on various topics we deal with in life and the ways in which we might look at them in a way to reinforce the benefit of seeking silver linings, searching for understanding and grasping the meaning of life and it's many lessons.  If you're interested in any of these works, please visit my website at http://www.jaiehart.com.

Blessings of infinite love and light!

Jaie