The Chain of Life

Loving yourself allows you to love other people.

"This could be compared on Earth to the most creative jeweler designing the ultimate in beautiful chains. Life is the ultimate in a beautiful chain. Each link grows from the last beautiful link until you have an unbroken circle of beauty. Within that chain of family and friends who love you is the strength to break the fear of separation and enhance the beauty of creation." (Joy of Health, 221)

I’ve been thinking about this paragraph since I read it a few days ago. With our first Online Course using Kathy’s third book, Sharing: Self Discovery in Relationships, I’ve seen the beauty of “sharing” energy in new ways. The art of communication as creation happens, as we live the changes inherent in life’s (creation’s) design, is teaching me, again, to enjoy the absolute beauty of creating through the energy of love. As a friend said, You know, truth makes a mind do funny things – it compels you to act! One phrase that Kathy said stands out in my mind: It is very important that we not lose our own voice. The ethical patterns of us, and within me, emerge as I let them, as I honor them.

“Diplomacy, democracy, grace, civility” – are words that come up often, and as a collective body we are struggling to accept and live, to understand. I recognize the tiny little energy bursts I feel as these “grace notes” reveal themselves to me in my mind, and my emotions dance around. Talking with my Mother last night fed that light of love within me in a way only a mother-love can. She had told me earlier that two of her new friends, staff at the Rehab Center where she stayed for a few months, called yesterday to say hello, see how she is. She laughed gently when she told me that upon hanging up the phone with one of them, she said, I love you. A minute or so later the woman called back and said, I love you, too, Mrs. Martin. Mom was amused at the fact that she had called back so quickly to say so. This brought tears to my eyes, because such a simple story reveals the way love heals, how change happens, how love expands as we communicate, simply. I felt “enlightened” because she shared her story. For that instant, in my own time and space, I felt the joy of that love shared. What a gift. I'm holding it within me, along with the infinite other moments of joy that have impressed themselves into my stream of conscious life.

Loving ourselves allows us to love others. Energy is real. Allowing the Spirit the freedom to be is the mind’s ultimate gift to itself. Acknowledging the love of spirit, of infinite energy, is appreciating the jeweler within each of us, and all of the “energy sharing” creation uses to fulfill its intention of beauty, freedom, love, and the truth of life as we live it.

Here’s another great reminder from Joy of Health, which brings me full circle:
“Good relationships contribute to good health and joy. They should be cherished and nourished, just as you would cherish any material possession in your world. Indeed, a good relationship is far more valuable to the world of man than any material possession could ever be. … A soul does not grow without the contact of other souls. The drama of life would not be much of a drama without the interactions that relationships provide.” (JOH, 254)

"If You Want To"

In the last Spiritual Philosophy seminar, this stood out: "If we miss how our life controls us, how will we be able to control our life?"

Remember the Rolling Stones' song, You Can't Always Get What You Want? The often-quoted "you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need" is relevant here! The song was recorded in London in November 1968, and features the London Bach choir. I remember my mother saying to me so many years ago, You can't always do only what you want to. Mothers and fathers learn this differently than those of us without the gift of having children.

When I heard the phrase "if you want to" yesterday it got my attention. I keep thinking about the idea that our growth develops from our own needs. From some mouths, the words "if you want to" may seem dismissive or unkind, and from others assured elements of an energy stream which honors itself, its "host" energy, and the reality of energy interaction.

As I have been constantly learning to "Know Myself," and to "know what I want," I love this lilting, playful pattern which shows itself to me as I grow and change. Memories flash into my mind of other times (and energies), when I lived aspects of some of the patterns I live today. Now I let them run through my mind, fleeting glimpses of boys I was, of girls, women with a harsh dictum of running a household because governance as a body politic was another realm to women in those times. I recognize the reflective nature of energy, and how we expand and contract patterns as our energy fields move and change. I recognize frustration as the compaction or suppression of my own energy, and a shadow of its former self as the volcano image inside which has to diffuse. This is how I came to the image of "the volcano inside" so long ago, and as I described in my book. I feel how my energy compacts in these moments, and I hear the sound of my voice more like "barking" than soothing, more like a rush or muted "fire and ash" than melody. The love of life slowly becomes the way a plant grows, delicate and fragrant in its expression, and delightfully part of all that inhabit its "universe."

Honoring the truth of "what I want," what we create as our reality, is one of the beautiful gifts a mind can receive, and give. Creating a comfort zone for ourselves as we live our lives, as days pass, as energy moves and changes, is an art form which is delightful, sometimes challenging, and always an amazing phenomenon of human consciousness. What I want is to always honor these memories which cherish truth, to laugh always as I enjoy these memory-fields, and as I honor those I love and the energy of life in its multiplicity of constant change.

It is minds that go beyond the "boxes" and bones of what we have already thought before that lead the way into the future of our past, which becomes our present. The simplicity of creation is only truly revealed when we understand and honor its complexity - or, the other way around. I feel like we are in Homer's odyssey, the journey of yet another life, and determined to know, to map, the sea, sky and shore. We are and we bear treasures! Love is eternal, and its expression is simply the most powerful energy field in the Universe.

"For a worthy quest always leaves good traces behind it, and more treasures are won by heroes than they visibly brin ghome in their own day. A more careful examination of the true office of philosophy may serve to show us, in fact, both why final success in it has been unattainable and why the partial successes have been worth the cost." Josiah Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy

Saving the Day

Saving the day 7-7-09

today,
I slip into surrender
Counting that loss as gift
Received

This discovery
This counting.
Saving the day.


by Mike Martin

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