Spaces Between

How many stories can one life hold?  As I consider the stories that make up my own, I cannot help but wonder.  There is still life in me to live in this realm and so it goes that there must be even more stories yet to come.  I think some how perhaps, those to come shall be different than those that came before.  Those that trail behind me like the wake on a river as a boat moves forward have shaped the reality of my presence in ways indescribable.  It wasn’t the events so much or even the people but the spaces in between.  I come back to the sky again and see the similarities.  Perhaps it is the darkness itself that holds up those stars where they hang so beautifully in the sky.  The space between, the space between…my thoughts trail off and stop.

The space between may seem empty but it isn’t, not by any stretch of the imagination.  It seems that it is only those sleeping unaware of their slumber that do not realize the importance of the space between.  The intangible knowings and etheric nature of the all of everything knits together understanding and the seeing of themes as if one were connecting a constellation or two or three.  All of life has meaning in terms of what it is you secretly wish to learn.  I say secretly because there is an unconscious part of our very being directing and attracting those things the deepest core of us most wishes to learn.  In that space between where feeling becomes thought and thought becomes charged with emotion to magnetic energy and then directed through perception, assumption…

The stories and events, the people involved are intrinsic aspects of our own nature and being and we just do not have the where-with-all to understand precisely how.  It matters not at that level alone.  What matters is learning to understand the clues to our own life purpose while standing in the truth of one’s own light.  But you’ll not find that light reflected precisely in the gaze or interactions of others here in a three-dimensional Earthly focus.  You must become aware of your own lack of awareness and begin to choose, begin to live consciously from the feeling parts of you beneath what we consider consciousness to the true all-encompassing Cosmic Consciousness of existence.  Then the entirety of the universe opens up and reflects right back into your own heart.  Shutting down the perceptions and senses of the physical world doesn’t close you off but opens you up to the unknown changing belief into the truth through experience turned to knowledge.

So, how many stories can one life hold?  I’d say surely there must be as many as there are stars in a clear summer night’s sky.  And for what purpose can they truly hold but to teach us the meaning of life in the form of the less tangible lessons learned.  It isn’t just the things we see but the things we haven’t yet learned to fathom.  The truth isn’t out there or just in here but some place in between.

 

© 2014, Jaie Hart (photo, random fortunate internet find.  Inspiration – A conversation with LJL).

Precious Souls

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What it is I felt in that moment, I can’t clearly say.  I was standing at the airport, baggage claim.  Not but maybe 10 feet away were four human beings.  The one on the left near 15 years old, long blonde hair standing so tall next to her big brother.  On the far right was the baby, now 11 years old and 1 day shy of finishing elementary school.  Just next to her left was big sister, just turned 24 eagerly awaiting little brother’s bag.  Little brother just to her left now stands over 6’0, just turned 18 a few months back and graduated high school just a few weeks ago.  I looked at them all thinking how much they've all grown and then the memories flooded my mind of the day each was born.  The four most treasured days of this life.  On each of those respective days I never could have imagined this one here today right now.  All the life that I have lived these past 24 years, it  seems as if I blinked and suddenly the beautiful hopeful and happy little toddlers all grew up --   two now adults, one soon to follow and the last, making her way in her own time.

I felt so many emotions standing there that I can hardly pick  a single one out.   Joy to have them all together for a short time, sadness for all the moments I missed here and there with this work project or that work project maybe,  all of the precious times and life lessons learned while keeping their spirits up and their hope alive that life would always be fine if you did one thing…follow your heart.  It is the heart that knows more than the brain can compute.  Not that every aspect of us isn’t always powerfully connected to Source but the main thriving connection is the heart.  When its gates are thrown open wide, that is when the miracle of love is not so much attained but fully realized. 

I was tired after a very long and trying day on the job where no matter what I do, I can’t accomplish enough to keep things going.  I realized a few months ago that to try would be insanity.  I had to give up perfection to accept reality and work within the constraints I have been given, the choices I have made and not one of those things that seemed so important over the past few months or years matters at all in this moment.  I worry a bit about the world I brought these magnificent souls into.  What will it be like for them when they reach my age?  So much life ahead do they have and as their mother I cannot help but wish for them to explore it, the deeper meanings of it so that they can learn much quicker than I the true beauty and purpose of it and then, yet, still find a measure of magic and peace within it.

These human beings I created with help, with divine love were they brought into this world and with divine love will they live each and every day of their lives as long as I am breathing and even then, beyond.  They are beautiful miracles each and every one and I’m reminded how this is true for each soul focusing their density here on the planet at this time.  Perhaps in the generation of my children or their children will the truth be better known in its simplicity without lacking an ounce of significant power.  All of creation is every soul's destiny to wield as he or she sees fit and the learning will come by the wielders and watchers alike.  Even bystanders observing are  enriched by a witnessed experience.  As a parent you witness much, scratch your head sometimes wondering how this or that occurred but then you’ll catch a flash or a string of words evidencing divine wisdom out of the mouths of your own dearly beloved babes and then you know your faith is restored, that you did your job well and they're going to be fine in this world no matter what they choose to create within it.  You hope for the best and teach them the skills necessary to deal with what they will  most likely perceive as the worst and love them.  Teach them to love and that it's okay to love.

I wish this were a more transparent world with even greater opportunities but I guess it's up to us and them to change that where we perceive it lacking.  Apathy is unacceptable when our lives are precariously placed in a single pointed focus here now.  As I sit here I realize that I know the emotion that I felt as I saw all 4 of my children standing side by side, it was love…pure and simple love.

May you find the love that matters most today.  Not the love that is given you but the love you willingly give away for in the giving you are receiving so much more.  Blessings.

 

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© 2014 photo/words, Jaie Hart

Conscious Awareness

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I am called by the name my biological parents gave me as well as the name under which I write but that is just a reference for my own personal point of focus here in the physical world.  You can label me with other words if you wanted to but that wouldn’t mean that you were accurate in your observation or perception of who or what you think I am.  In fact, you can’t know who or what I am in truth until you have that moment of crystalline clarity where you know who and understand what it is you truly are.

In your observations of those around you, you cannot see the totality of who and what they are.  You may only perceive that which you are able or capable of understanding and you will project upon them as you most need to.  You must realize that your perception is a filter from which you have experienced this world.  This means that with whatever or whomever you perceive stands before you, there will be a form of expectation in terms of what role you most need to cast someone into.  If you look even now in your world you will find you are surrounded by the industrious, the loyal, the betrayers, the theives, the wounded, the heros, the angelic, the gifted and even the tortured, dishones or villains.  But did you know that other people may not cast people in the same roles that you cast them in even if some others share your collective experience?  Did you know or even care to realize that what you experience in another, at some level, you wish to experience or you would not experience it at all?

What does all of this mean?  It does not hold the much overly simplified part of truth in this concept that says what is in you is in others so if you see bad in others it is because you are bad or if you see only good in others, you are good.  Think bigger, much bigger as this is a much bigger game you are playing in.  What you are is consciousness, what you see is consciousness, what you experience is consciousness in the manner of your own chosing.  That consciousness you observe around you existing within their own points of focus here in 3-D may be aware or unaware but it is or they are consciousness…or vibration if you will.  The entirety of the universe holds  consciousness and our points of focus that represent our physical embodiment here in the land of 3 dimensions most commonly understood (at least in general) as life on Earth and our consciousness has been limited by those who forgot who and what they truly are so they had no means readily available with which to teach you the truth. You can choose to become aware or not as is your choice and I am here merely to paint a picture of another kind.  And it is that picture that some will readily see and others will not.  That thought does not change the truth of who and what you are.  It also does not make real that which you perceive to be truth even if you “believe it.”

You can ponder and contemplate the nature of the universe and it will be a wonderful endeavor but not near as wonderful as connecting to the center most integral part of the core of what you truly are.  It would be wonderful if we could be so transparent that we changed the entire paradigm of our conscious awareness in this place in space-time perception.  But until all are aware, this is not possible entirely.  Consider the beauty and purity of what you truly are and as you consider this, know too the potential beauty and purity of all who stand before you exists regardless of roles you may have chosen to cast them in.  Seek understanding and test your belief.  Belief IS only untested hypothesis.  So, test your hypotheses (are they real and can you say so with 100% objective certainty) and then you will begin to understand not only the truth about you but the truth of the other conscious points of focus in this realm.  God bless each and every one of you as you make your journey of experience through this life.  May you gain the awareness that you came here to gain.  In love and in light, so it is.

Copyright 2014, Jaie Hart (photo and words).

Breaking the Veil of Illusion

Interesting it is how labels and accusations are so carelessly strewn about by some against others without understanding the truth.  You see, your observations can only ever be filtered through your own biases, experience and other psychological filters. These observations form a perception of a thing or a person, and your perception, no matter how much you think is the definitive truth, is nothing but what you want to believe projected outward from within.  This is done commonly and frequently with little understanding in the absence of understanding these projections upon others in the form of labels and names. The labels created are not really representative of "the other" that is the object of your observation but is rather more descriptive of something much more familiar to you.  Namely, what things lay hidden deep within you that you unknowingly project outward onto "the other."  The question those labelled often think in desperation is, "Why"?  Why would this person or that person label me in such a hurtful way? Conversely, people can label you in what you think is a helpful way and still they are no closer to the truth of you.  No person outside of you can truthfully determine your greatness or inadequacies properly without understanding the paradigm of The Whole.  And I'll tell you, there are few who truly understand the paradigm of The Whole.

Imagine, if you will, the internet of all things.  There are those who study it as if it is an organism in and of itself.  It may be a confusing concept, but come along with me a moment as it might help you better understand one of the many metaphors of our existence here in this frame in the way we project ourselves.  So, across the entirety of the globe (well in most places it seems these days), there are computer servers that are connected one to another through a vast physical network that creates the world wide web.  The world wide web is a mass connectivity vehicle for our ability to "tune in" to others in the physical world.  Now, each individual with a lap top, computer or smart phone taps into that source to connect and most definitely, individually project themselves into the whole of the world wide web.  We are not the world wide web but the computers we use are a part of it by virtue of an internet connection.  Does that make sense at least at a high-level?  Okay, so stick with me another moment and I'll take you down a curve in the road to a much broader application of this concept which is not new at all but very old and understood by the Ancients, the Mystery Schools and even some great religious/spiritual teachers dating much further back than our history documents.  There is a cosmic consciousness, a single Source that was the impetus for creation.  We each are like a tiny thought emanating outward from that Source but always and ever connected to that Source.  Through acknowledging connectivity with that Source we realize the connectivity we all hold similarly with each other.  In this way, we are all one in that we are all the same thing in a way, thoughts projected from a Source.  Now, this Source is infinitely powerful and creative and as you know from your own mind, your thoughts come from within you and once you create them, you send them "out there" and they become a thing unto themselves...energy, magnetic, emotion producing things we don't understand deeply enough.  We are very much like those individual computers that plug into the world wide web.  The thing is, we are never not connected to our Source and need nothing physical to connect to it other than understanding.  As we connect to Source, we too are connected to each other.

Coming back to labels now for a moment, as well as observations. If you observe with your thoughts another part of the connected Whole and ascribe labels to other parts of the Whole, in a way you are labeling yourself.  What you perceive is not necessarily the truth and doesn't necessarily stand up to the rigor of testing because your perception can be skewed by assumption taken as fact or truth when there is not a single thing underpinning solidly the formation of your assumption or perception.  But, because it seems to come from inside of your own head and maybe those thoughts generate some emotion or conviction behind it, it seems real enough and true enough. Given the limited set of facts within which most live and consciously operate, there is no reason to question the validity of your own assumptions, observations or perceptions.  Truth, however, cannot be readily understood without facts and understanding.  For ages people believed the world was flat and you could sail right off of the edge into oblivion.  That was the common perception and agreement at a certain point in our history.  That is, until some brave souls sought the truth beyond belief and sailed to the edge of the horizon and learned that the Earth was not limited in nature by being a flat 2 dimensional organism but in fact, it went on and on and around.  These souls came back and shared their truth in the form of findings and then it became readily acceptable that the world was, in fact, round.  Then there was the idea that the sun and the planets revolved around the Earth.  This was held as the only truth in the absence of facts.  Even when the facts began to surface, they were outright rejected and labelled blasphemous in fear due to many factors but primarily a complete lack in understanding.  But then, times progressed, scientific study progressed and new understanding dawned.  We learned that the Earth revolves around the sun, and the sun is just the center of one universe and that there were more universes with suns spiraling through space by some impetus and force (Source, if you ask me).  We then learned to go deeper within and study matter, energy and force and the things we took for granted or falsely held as belief were disproved by science. New windows and doors to the mind were flung open wide with new data and new horizons to explore and discover.

Now, considering all of this, what if I were to tell you that what we perceive as real here, is still just an observation based on the limited or incomplete "facts" we hold as our beliefs about reality and what reality is?  There is so much more than what meets the eye.  There is a world of consciousness we are not yet conscious of and the energy in the universe is connected and connected by the same Source that created all of it.  That means we are all an integral and important part of the Source, a collective of existence with individualized points of focus in an agreed upon reality.  The illusion of reality (life) as we perceive it is called Maya by the Hindus. (Check out the Rigveda for more understanding of the meaning of Maya).  Life as we know it is a grand illusion and to a great extent we are all delusional in our thoughts that what we see is real or that what we see, assume and perceive is representative of the truth of a thing or a person, is the truth.  If you look back at all the explorations into the various aspects of life, existence and conscious understanding, you will see that the truth is not easy to discern by relying on our projected senses, our projected ideals, our projected morals and representations of belief we hold as truth.  Our beliefs dissolve in the light of understanding.  Why?  Because we are growing and beginning to leave behind us the time of small-minded thinking.  Some of the Whole is aware of its delusion and thus seeks the freedom from it through understanding.  Some of the Whole is unaware of its delusions and strive all the harder for the security of making their worlds more than real without understanding how that undermines their own limited perceptions of and about existence.

Coming full circle, realize that to perceive or label a thing does not define its truth.  There is only one truth upon which we can rely and that truth cannot be defined by me for you.  You must learn to understand the truth for yourselves.  However, you will not find the truth of you in labeling your brothers and sisters who walk this Earth with you.  In either positive or negative labeling, by raising others up higher than you or lowering them beneath you, you actually cage yourself in a prison of your own mind.  The All is Mind, the Universe is Mental (Hermetic principal from the Kybalion).  This "physical life" is a construct of our making, collectively creating as we have been created.  Sometimes trying to wrap your physical and limited mind around this concept makes you feel "mental" in a whole different way. 

However, through patience, perseverance, allowing resonance, congruence, love, forgiveness, gratitude and an intent to understand, you can free your mind, body and soul from limited thoughts and embrace the whole of existence in a more liberating manner. The truth then is much better understood and the lesser acts of limited labeling or trapping yourselves in the veil of the ego would seem entirely insane.  Our assumptions and the need to label to begin with comes from illusion. The illusion of whatever it is the ego wants only seems real but it isn't.  The ego cannot tell the difference between a fact or an assumption and will line up emotions with either.  But, there is a deeper knowing part of your being whether you are in touch with it or not (your spirit) and it is the only thing that can guide you to the truth.  The truth is more intuitively felt than understood with limited human words.  We are by far above the limits of labeling even if we sometimes refuse to act like it.  Attempting to become greater at the expense of another (which is a colossal illusion with quite fleeting benefits for the greedy ego) is meaningless and doesn't support you or secure your stature in a meaningful way that is everlasting. 

If you tire of the victim-villain struggle for power, the only way to freedom is to understand you can't know what you don't know, so go and seek to understand the truth.  Learn that what you give out to this world becomes you.  Question the beliefs you assume or hold as truth.  Offer this world forgiveness and love, offer this world peace and understanding and refuse to play into old programs that don't seem to get you anywhere. You end up chasing your tail for an ego feed that will never truly fulfill your deepest needs.  Your deepest need is understanding, to belong (and you belong to a very big Oneness in Source alone) and for love.  You are love.  Let that come to your mind first before labels, before negative self or other judgments.  Seek understanding and it will come and if you embrace it, you will be free.

© 2014, Jaie Hart (photo and words)

Beyond Memories

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Beyond memories and a disappearing act.  A very curious journey within journeys to share.

The day began with a simple adventure as the impetus for motion.  I had the day off and really wanted to see the beautiful Huntington Gardens in San Marino.  My partner in crime and I had breakfast as per usual on a wonderful day off and headed for the local drug store to pick up a memory chip and batteries for my camera.  Seems like a simple enough task right?  Well, I got into the car and my intuition told me to check the chip and make sure it worked in my camera.  I really wanted to take pictures as I often do when off on my little adventures so it was important to me to capture my memories.  I reached into the bag and pulled out the box the chip was contained in.  I opened it only to discover the chip was not there.  I bought an empty box.  I found that funny on one hand and frustrating on another.  Grateful that I followed my intuition, I grabbed the empty box and my receipt and walked back into the store.  I went back to the checker who had just taken care of my purchase and explained to him my plight.  Without argument he told me to just go grab another and he apologized for the incident.  I checked the box at the register this time to make sure what I purchased was in the box.  With both the checker and I satisfied I had the chip, I went out to the car and snapped a quick picture.  It worked.  We were off on the journey.

Interestingly I discovered the night before that the easiest route to our destination was up Route 19.  This route was one I was intimately familiar with as it ran right through my hometown.  I knew this road and so decided to take it all the way up.  It would be a longer route as it had more lights but my intuition guided me that this was the right route to take.  I found that curious as the night before I had experienced some shadow work.  In fact the post prior to this one was about a scene still well within 24 hours of the moment I began the journey we were currently on.  I’ll share with you that I don’t care for returning to my hometown.  All the people I loved who once lived there are now gone, moved on to the other side of the veil or out of state but there was something important in the journey and the memories they would bring.  Considering my work the night before, I drove.

The journey is the destination is true for me in more ways than one.  For the first time I drove through my hometown without wincing in pain.  I took it as confirmation that my work the night before had not been in vain and it had much deeper purpose than I realized.  A funny thing happens when you let intuition freely be your guide.  The explorations seem to bring about much deeper and infinitely more helpful meaning.  Today was no different passing through my hometown.  I recalled the joys and sorrows associated with the place and I imagined releasing the energy of my own emotion from that place even if I wasn’t feeling it emotionally.  Energetically I was and the weight was heavy.  I didn’t want to leave my hometown adding to the heaviness so as I passed through it I soaked it up, cleaned it up and let it go.

We arrived after a time near our destination and after a few turns, the chills ran up and down my spine, my skin and bounced seemingly between my head and my toes.  I had seen this neighborhood before and I knew it.  You may or may not believe me when I tell you what I recognized and to be honest, I’m not sure I believe anything at all anymore.  But I’ll share anyway just for fun.  When I was 24 years old I had a bit of a nightmare.  It sat me straight up in bed and haunted me relentlessly for weeks.  I wrote about it in my book Expanding Horizons.  It marked the beginning of an aware spiritual journey…simply meaning I began seeking answers on purpose and questioning everything I had previously taken for granted while sleep-living.  I’ll sum this up quickly in that while in the dream I inhabited another body at another time and was in a strange neighborhood.  I pulled into the driveway of a strange house.  In the dream, I peeked into the window to see my ex-husband’s uncle, father and mother watching television.  I knocked on the old screen door and his mother answered.  She told me I shouldn’t be there and I insisted as I had come for my daughter who had been taken from me wrongly and I intended to leave with her.  My ex-in laws were not mean but were not fully compassionate either for reasons I could not recollect.  All I knew as that time was of the essence, freedom was my goal along with the liberation of my child.

After a short time my ex-mother in law took pity on me and told me to hurry because Jack would be home soon from work.  She handed me my near two-year old daughter wrapped in a fuzzy yellow blanket.  Our eyes met and I knew she understood how much I loved my daughter and how I feared her son and with good reason.  From woman to woman she chose to help me right a wrong.  I ran down the steps, jumped into the car and screeched the car in reverse and then down the street.  It had turned stormy and the wind was blowing the blanket my daughter was wrapped up in.  The neighborhood looked like it was somewhere in Los Angeles County but 40 miles northeast of where I grew up in this life.  The year was 1963.  The dream ended with great fear and me standing on the brakes with everything in me to stop the car.  I couldn’t stop the car and we hit another head on in a place where the streets were at odd angles.  My neck broke due to the speed I was traveling, hitting the windshield with such force that it snapped.  I was immediately outside of my body and my child, while injured, was safe.  I watched the scene flow frame after frame and I saw Jack at the hospital with our daughter.  I was angry, so angry.  I just wanted to be free.  With such rage I crossed over into the Meadow and there I sat for the longest time in the sun.  I was soon joined by my guide Jacob whose presence brought me great peace and healing.

The version I’ve told is part memory and part discovery with help.  I’ve condensed it for the sake of my little story and journey with memories.  So, suffice it to say that I found the neighborhood where the accident took place.  So much had changed but some not at all.  I noticed the feeling, the shivers in my spine and understanding that we’re more than just what we think in this life.  I let the thoughts go and found our present destination.  The accident in the dream took place in 1963 when I was approximately 27 years old.  I was born in 1966 in this life.  I cannot help but wonder now if it was my own selfishness and rage that brought me right back.  I realized it didn’t really matter.  A part of me wanted confirmation and I got it at so many levels if I consider what I had experienced within the last 24 hours.  But the confirmation didn't stop there.

The gardens had me mesmerized for hours as my partner and I were carried away by the beautiful scent of roses, watching humming birds and blue jays play, listening to waterfalls while walking through mini bamboo jungles on perfectly maintained and angled pathways.  The bridges and colors, contrasts and completion of beauty had me feeling as if I was back in heaven, in the Meadow…that same feeling of peace stayed with me all day.  My partner and I took turns snapping pictures of each other.  For some reason, I recalled every picture he took, two by the fountain, one just outside a beautiful building, one near a jade pond, another just outside the Japanese gardens with my hand on the head of a lion statue.  I saw the shutter open and close because that’s how I know it is okay to move again.  I was fortunate to gather a great number of shots.  Well over a hundred did we take that day.  Finally tired from hill climbing, we decided to return home going back the same way but with a detour running yet again through the middle of my home town.

It’s a long drive when you decide to go 40 miles down city streets.  But the memories came again.  I saw new buildings and old buildings in my home town and on the main drag where I had worked, walked and explored as a young woman, I noticed something.  The stores were all gone.  The shells were left only with no life left in them.  It was nearly an entire block of nothing but closed stores.  Oh the memories flooded of a different time in this life when this street was busy teaming with life.  The being there and gone stuck with me as a thought and a feeling too.  I detached from it knowing that here time marches on, things change, things decline and then disappear.

We had driven on our journey near almost every single place I had ever lived in this life.  That was not the intent but that is how intuition had me play it out and I don’t regret it living a day of a beautiful journey with superimposed memories happening at the same time and then disappearing the moment we hit Pacific Coast Highway, the road that would take me to my current and most favorite home.  My partner and I spoke about the concept of home and how perhaps it never really is a place after all.  We live here and think that Heaven is home and maybe it is.  But what if it isn’t?  What if heaven is merely the heart of us as we live and breathe consciously or don’t live but are conscious?  Home is inside of us all which means Heaven or the concept of it is too.

We stopped and grabbed some fast food as I was craving root beer (a common indulgence that’s been with me since I was a little girl).  Waiting in line another memory returned, one of being on the other side and wanting to be here.  Why would I want to be here and where is here anyway?  If my memories had taught me anything at all on this journey today it is that my brain can’t really tell the difference between a memory in time, a dream or physical reality from a feeling standpoint.  All evoke feelings in just the same way.  Fantasy and reality or memories and dreams, they all evoke feeling.  I let the thought trail away as I grabbed our order and we made our way the final block home.

I grabbed my root beer and my camera.  I opened it up and grabbed the chip.  I wanted to see the pictures we had taken.  I went through all 132 of them and not one of me existed even though several were taken where I saw the shutter open and close.  Simple explanations abound but so do others.  A metaphor in a day lived in my memory of memories within memories, confounded or facilitated through time or at least one common faculty…my consciousness.  I found all of the feelings of the day intriguing.  I was not happy or sad but curious.  So many whys I had floating through my brain all day and now, this final message of me disappearing from a place I thought I should be.  A part of me understands and a part of me doesn’t.  Perhaps its just more confirmation.  In another meditation I suddenly recalled a beautiful woman who came to me.  When I asked her who she was, she spoke in Japanese and said she was my memories.  Kiyoku (sp?) was her name.  But there is a world beyond memories that I can’t comprehend and I cannot hold.  I can learn, however, to just be even more present as these feelings collide and I ponder what an interesting journey this has been.

© 2014 Jaie Hart (photo and words)  A fun fact is that this is one of the places my picture was taken, I saw the camera shutter open and close as I touched the statue and when we got home, not a single picture of me was on the chip.  "Curiouser and curiouser," to quote Alice.

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)