Awakening to Life

He had been asleep for most of his life. Unawakened to the passion for creative expression that lay within him. The sleeping self existed in a twilight zone of knowing and not-knowing that the life he lived was only part of what he could do, part of what he could be. His heart, which in its original form was very large, when applied to his immediate surroundings and, indeed, to himself, had shrunk to something small, something far less significant than it might have been.

Awakening came both slowly and quickly. A friend's voice, a meeting with others about plans for creating something new, a sense of bursting within. Suddenly, what was sleeping was awakened, what was dormant cried out to be heard.

Awakening can come like that. Both slowly and quickly, corresponding to the changes in consciousness that can deepen within the self. Then one day, it seems impossible to continue on the path one has been walking on for years and lifetimes. And suddenly, a new reality is born.

On Remaining Invisible

I knew a woman several years ago named Miranda, who had many acquaintances but few friends. Few, if any, that is, who knew the darker side of what she faced within herself each day. This darker side was filled with fears, and not only fears, but terrors. These terrors were not phobias related to such things as crowds or heights. Rather, they were terrors related to being seen for who she was.

Being seen seemed to involve something for Miranda that made her want to run in the opposite direction. Being pleasant and coongenial were easy for her, but these aspects of her persona did not touch her depth. Indeed, they required her to leave her depth where fear and trembling were her own inner experience.

Many people are afraid to be seen. Often it is because they secretly feel that they are hiding something bad or unforgiveable within themselves. This something is protected, the ego-self imagines, by striving to remain invisible.

Invisibility, however, is a lonely place. In addition, in order to truly remain invisible, one must also not have strong emotions, for strong emotions definitely allow others to see past the surface to the depths. And so invisibility also requires an emotional cut-off - a large price to pay for a human being.

To penetrate these difficulties, as I explained to her, two things were needed: first, a willingness to turn toward Divine love and light in order to deal with fear and raise all hidden issues into consciousness, and second, a desire to live as a whole being.

While God takes care of the first part - the healing offering of Divine light and love, the desire to live as a whole being is up to each individual soul. For it is the embodied soul that must want to reclaim its own wholeness, and it is the embodied soul that must pay the price of living without the full measure of life.

A Tiny Voice

She barely spoke above a whisper, and when she did, it was difficult to make out anything that Melissa said. Her voice, unused for many years, had become tiny. It had started out as full-throated and supported by a strong sense of her own presence, but over many lifetimes it had become smaller through a sense that she carried of self-invalidation.

This constriction of voice was not only psychological. Her actual vocal chords and the mechanism by which she breathed to support her speech had changed as well. Once, she had been examined for nodes on her vocal chords to see if these could be interfering with her speaking, but there was nothing there. Nor were there any other anomalies that could be diagnosed.

Melissa's tiny voice reflected a constriction of breath, but it also reflected a constriction of life-force. When I met her, she had not yet decided that she really wanted to be alive.

Many people spend a good portion of their lives making this decision, most without awareness that this is the case. Some never firmly commit to being here in a body, but opt for a state of passive withdrawal in order to make an exit from the requirements of physical life. Melissa would not have acknowledged having these thoughts, but they were there on a sub-conscious level, preventing her from taking her place in the world.

When I met her, she was not in great distress. In fact, she had gotten used to being small. It was a matter of finding within herself the desire to live again with fullness, to speak with presence, to say out loud: "I am here." After some time spent reflecting on this decision, she said to me one day, "You know, if I am here, I don't really know if I have anything to say." The rest of her embodied life would be spent finding out about that.

The Man Who Could Not Find His Heart

I know a man named Eduardo who has great difficulty expressing what is in his heart. He has a beautiful heart, yet it is unknown to him. When he came to the Earth in the beginning, he left behind the sense of the sacred. Instead, he wrapped himself in the cloak of human pleasure, experiencing the joys of the world without limitation. These joys took him in the direction of excess. He found himself wanting more of everything - more wealth, more life, more youth, more power, more young women to adorn himself with. He grew so used to satisfying his wants that eventually his heart became lost to him. It became so well hidden that he did not know how to find it again.

When I met Eduardo, he was looking once again for his heart. He was beginning a spiritual search for love. No longer was he caught up in all the things that he once wanted, but instead, he was immune to wanting anything at all. Indeed, he could barely tell, from day to day, what he really wanted. His wanting had turned to numbness.

This is the way that it happens, sometimes, with the healing of a soul. What was once excess in one direction becomes lack in the opposite direction. The soul, in its wisdom, knows what kind of healing is needed and proceeds at its own pace to institute it.

Nevertheless, this beautiful soul could not easily find his heart though he looked for it. Mostly, he felt nothing. The path of return emerged out of this nothingness. It was the path of longing to be alive once more. The path of longing for love. As he experienced the pain of being closed down, the desire grew in him to open up.

This was the beginning of his true story - the story of the path of return.