Hello My Friend,
I thought it had been an intense month… wow – it could only prepare me for what was to come. How about you?
Every beginning has an end, and every end has a beginning – like seasons start to stop, to cycle yet again. Birth eventually meets death, and another life springs forth in its wake. Buds blossom, ripen, return to seed, to bloom yet again.
Since I last wrote you, my father suddenly passed away at 85. A proud and noble man, suffering wasn’t his style. His sudden passing couldn’t prepare us for the shock that’s still present a week later in echoes of disbelief. Easter Sunday he went to church fine, and died from congestive heart failure within 24 hours.
What’s left is deep surrender, and the gifts he continues to bestow. His heart was/is enormous, and continues to give. While grief underlies, his big love lingers and offshoots. Just like him to set it up this way, makes me smile, Dad was always joking around and cheeky. Receiving his generosity of spirit lightens the load, and brightens my perspective. His ability to turn weighty issues into something to learn from and laugh at, kept us from cracking to bits in life – and in his death. His greater faith, and consistent daily prayers at the crack of dawn were never missed.
Whatever you’re experiencing – is life asking you to trust, have faith, and forgive yourself and others? If so, how are you experiencing these gifts? Amazing how death teaches us to live, reconcile, and resolve what makes us dead to life – now. It reminds me, why not live now, fully? Though his soul knew, he surely didn’t expect to die so suddenly.
Perhaps Life can actually be trusted, and all else is just a bad habit that can be reeducated and retrained? Unmanaged, distrust in self and life degrades health and well being, and erodes growth and goodness. Indulged, that place only steals like a vampire, and sucks us dry – perhaps this is the ultimate Grim Reaper.
In my experience, witnessing and being willing to feel fear, while minding the gaps, with heavy doses of self-forgiveness is key. Worry has less stronghold and I can receive the bigness, miracles, and magic that exist beyond the myopic smallness that fear immobilizes me in. What do constructs of the mind mean on our death bed? May we live now, and not assume tomorrow.
Here are some things that help me with faith, forgiveness, trust – and Bali, or wherever this world traveler finds herself (now en route from the US to Spain)…
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The less I react, the more opportunity I have to respond (or be responsible)… this really help. Developing the witness is a great tool! BOS (breathe, observe, surrender).
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Stepping outside of emotions, my own and others (especially people I’m closest too), keeps things in perspective. Choosing to step off the emotional rollercoaster, breathing instead – gives us each space to feel our own feelings – and keep things from getting blown out of proportion.
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Take nothing personally. It’s not about you.
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Trust we’re all doing our very best.
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Doing biz in a foreign country (or for many of us in general), I cross-check sources of info, and take full responsibility to educate myself… and do what’s necessary to develop.
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Make a conscious choice to face and feel fear and worry, rather than getting too comfortable with them as habit and coping mechanisms. Be willing to feel discomfort!
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Fall back on faith in self, especially when in doubt.
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Be quick to forgive, life is short.
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Keep trusting the Bigger Picture of life…. like a teabag inscription says: “that which makes the planets rotate can take care of your daily routine.”
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Love myself anyway… no matter what.
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Paradise is a state of mind, more than a place.
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Reacting is optional, what’s are the other choices?
Fear to freedom, faith to forgiveness – energy goes where attention flows. Stress or faith, trust or suspicion, expansion or contraction – each are a matter of choice. Indeed a cycle ensues, wherever we concentrate our focus. They end to begin again. Like seasons. Where does one stand in a moving mandala that seemingly never stops – or starts? From the center point of course, smack in the middle, where homeostasis neither begs nor borrows… it just hangs out in equanimity, steady, grounded, stable. What a comfort to remember fear, anxiety, and panic are optional. We can simply make other choices, like deciding you’d rather have apples over oranges. May we try try again, until we break patterns of suffering, and instead create conscious change – because we posses the power of choice.
Thank you for reading.
Much Love,
Dr. Amy
