Something truly human: choosing love

Esther by my chair

Last week I pulled a comfy, old, cat-scratched chair outside, and put it on my tiny porch. Having it there makes opening the door a challenge, but this isn’t the door that we use most of the time anyway. After I make coffee and feed the cats, I come out here with my cup of coffee and sit. I do something else too… I think about the people who have asked for prayer, and the people and animals that I love, and the ones I’m still struggling with, and I see each one as happy and fulfilled. This way, I have loving relationships with all.

I love this spot, but I know that it doesn’t matter if I am sitting on this little porch, or on a mountain top, in a church, a monastery, or a temple. The portal into the Divine realm, the place of Infinite Good, is in my own heart. It is such a uniquely human quality/gift to be able to do this; to choose to love,…and this is what I was born to do…this is my job while I’m here on this earth.

“Of all the fears that haunt us, from fear of the dark when we are young to fear of snakes and high places, there is nothing to compare to the fear that we may have wasted our lives…The challenge is not to rise above the level of everyday life by some superhuman effort. The challenge is to find something truly human to do everyday of our lives.“

Rabbi Harold Kushner (from the book, When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough)

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What do I believe? I believe the Truth, that “Only blessings will come from this”

Fred on a chair this morning

There hasn’t been any movement (on the outside) regarding the house we want to buy. The sellers have someone who wants to rent the home and they are going to give them an answer (yes or no) by Friday the 17th. This is a situation that I would have found unacceptable a few years ago. Even though I’ve always known (intellectually) that I couldn’t lose anything that was meant to be mine, I remember feeling almost unbearable longing (and unhappiness, tension, grief, anger) when I thought I was about to miss an opportunity. But this is not how I feel. I feel hope and happiness and freedom.

What has changed?

Right from the moment that I stopped sobbing (after initially seeing the house and feeling like it was ours), I started saying out loud (and often) “This house is a blessing, and only blessings will come from it”. Day and night, I’ve said that…even when I started to feel anxious. Especially when I started to feel anxious.

The past 15 days have been incredibly powerful for me. I’ve watched myself start to build unhappy scenarios in my mind. I’ve observed the effect in my emotions and body when I started to feel desperate for a specific thing to turn out a specific way, and I’ve used all of my focus to bring myself back to my mantra: This house is a blessing, and only blessings will come from it.

I was listening to a Byron Katie CD the other day and she was telling a story about going into a maximum security prison to do “The Work” (the name she gives to the process of questioning our unhappy thoughts) with some inmates. As she was walking through a corridor, she heard a man begin to scream and scream. She went on to say, “He is screaming because he is locked up with his thoughts…”

I could identify with the screaming man’s mind. Thoughts that tell me how wrong my life is, make me feel like I am in hell with no power to escape. When I believe that I can’t be happy unless I move, lose 20 lbs, publish a book, get a lot of money in the bank, have children who want to talk about the mystical universe with me, have parents that appreciate me, find the ring that I’ve lost, see someone I love recover from an illness, get a job, find my life’s purpose,….when I believe that something, anything, is unfair and wrong, and when I believe that I cannot feel at peace until it changes, I am living in hell.

The little house in Middlebury is a blessing. It doesn’t mean that I’ll own it. It doesn’t mean that I’ll ever step foot in it again. It has helped me see myself and my world through clearer eyes. Don’t get me wrong, I would be absolutely delighted to own that home….I can imagine writing a post, telling you how it came about. But I will tell you my  story anyway and it will unfold perfectly with blessing after blessing being revealed.

How can you love your life right now?  Just the way it is? You can start saying, “I love my life (which may include illness, debt, unemployment, unhappy children, no children, …whatever thing is feeling like a burden, or “wrong”). You can decide only to love everything. You can claim, “This is a blessing, and only blessings will come from it.” You can try this, even if it doesn’t make sense. It might be difficult, but you do have the power to believe a new story (one that feels better) and if you do, you will be amazed at what happens…to you. The Truth is that my life is being Divinely guided. The Truth is that all is well..and this is the Truth for us all.

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” Soren Kierkegaard (quote taken from page 129 , Proof of Heaven, by Eben Alexander, M. D.)

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Building a case….for a perfect life

My niece, Mary, when she was a little girl, holding one of her kitties (we are a family of cat lovers!)

One thing that I’ve noticed, in both myself and in others, is the tendency to build a case against the present “difficulty” in hopes of leaving it behind. Every romantic relationship that I ended, I first thought I needed to build a case against him: he was unavailable emotionally or too needy, too boring and unwilling to seek adventure, or too unpredictable……on and on.

In the past, the idea that a certain man, or school, or town, or home, or job, was “perfect just the way it was”, and that I was ready for something else, wasn’t a part of my consciousness. After all, if it was perfect, why would I want to leave it, him or them? So I built a case against my current situation, thinking that this was the only way I could justifiably leave. I told stories of why it was not good enough. I highlighted, in my own mind, its faults. I thought that loving and accepting the present situation meant that I wouldn’t have enough motivation to leave. My mind demanded, “Either you give me a good reason (i.e. what is wrong) or stay where you are and shut up!”

I equated acceptance with resignation and stagnation. The trouble with this approach to life is, it doesn’t work….long-term. Sure, we might leave the “old”, and  for a while, the new seems great; so different, so much better, so improved, but after a while, we discover to our dismay that we’ve dragged “what is wrong” right along with us and it shows up again, in the new (man, school, town, home, job). The world “outside” of us is just a mirror…a reflection of our state of mind. For permanent change for the better, I need to change (my mind) for the better, the good, the more expansive.

This is really up for me today, since we have found a new home and want to move. I’ve noticed my tendency to say (about our current home) “This house is too small!” or “I need to be in town, not in the country” or “I need to live closer to my family.”…..and all of these thoughts, in this moment, fill me with anxiety because in this moment, I am here, in this little home in the country, 2 hrs away from my son….and the reason that I know that these thoughts are not the Truth of my being is because they feel small, tight and restrictive. They have a desperate quality to them. They fill me with unhappiness. These thoughts are old, uninspired, and dead feeling. If I want to live more fully, I need only change my thoughts to ones of love, happiness, and beauty, for all that is in my life now.

So, I’ve started saying, “This is perfect. My home is perfect for us right now. I accept my life today, and I Trust the Divine, the Loving, the pure Goodness of the Unknowable All, that is working in unimaginable ways to bring more of all good into my life, in perfect timing, for the good of all”.

At night, as I’m falling asleep, I whisper, “I trust You. I trust You….” to this secret place of the most high, to the God that I do not comprehend but know lives within my heart, and the hearts of every other being in this Universe.

And I love the way that I feel when I do this. It makes me want to almost giggle with delight. It brings me back to a place that I only slightly remember when I was a little girl. One of wonder, delight, trust, and faith that all is well….and I am going to continue to do this; to sing forth the perfection of this Life, until I sing out my last breath…I may falter, but I will not give up.

“To attempt to change conditions, before a change in consciousness is to struggle against the very nature of things. Man can go round and round in the same circle of disappointments and misfortune, not seeing them as caused by his own negative inner talking, but as caused by ‘others’. To change circumstances, we must change from within first.” from a lecture given by Neville Goddard in 1955

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Resting in the Light

Fred in the grass

About 2 miles into my run yesterday morning, as I was praying for a friend, I looked down and saw a butterfly on the side of the road. It was so covered with mud that I almost missed it. I thought it was dead but when I picked it up, it moved a leg. As I gently put it in my hand, it “righted itself” and slowly all four of its little legs began to move and it grabbed my finger and held on.

I turned around to run back home, wondering if I should stop by a stream and wash the mud off? Put it down?…the intutitve answer to both was no. So I kept running. Its wings were closed up tight, but as soon as I ran into the sunlight, it thrust them wide open to reveal a deep red tone with blue dots. Resting in the sunlight, with its wings wide open, they begin to dry out and some of the mud flaked off in my hand.

When I got home, I put it on our open porch, but it fluttered to the lilac bush and was out of sight.

I’m not sure how much longer it will be on this earth plane, but it had a message. This morning, I got the knowing that this message wasn’t only for me or my friend, it was for “us”….

“Even though you may have felt ‘stuck in the mud’, something is about to move you…something you could never have imagined…don’t push, don’t pull, don’t fight it. Just step into the Light and let things unfold!” message from the butterfly

Have you been fighting and struggling with something that seems impossible? How about taking this weekend to “hold onto the invisible hand of Love”…let it carry you for a while, let it hold you,….you don’t need to know what this “thing” is, you don’t need to understand it to be helped. Just relax into It and see what happens!

 

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No more battles

Luke resting in the grass

A few days ago, I became  anxious that I hadn’t heard from someone (who I knew was going through I rough time). I’d called him, but he didn’t return my call (which was really unusual) so I waited for a day and called again, feeling very “concerned”. He answered the phone and was cold, distant and abrupt. Later that day I thought, “He was feeling my energy of fear (worry, anxiety, and concern are all just dressed up words for fear). I had been imagining him as unhappy and closed off so I took it upon myself to come to the rescue, and was rewarded with exactly what I deserved. Who wants to be looked at in this way?…not him, not me.

As soon as I realized what I’d done, I started imagining him as happy and feeling at peace. I saw the God in him. I let go of all anxiety or need for him to contact me. The next morning, he called and we had a wonderful talk.

“My friend, the battle you are trying to fight is not yours, but God’s. Be still. Let go. The battle is God’s, not yours, and because it is God’s battle through you, God desiring to manifest through you, victory was on your side before the battle began (in your consciousness, for that is the only place where there is any battle). Some who doubt will say, ‘Yes, but I must have money today’, or ‘I must have relief at once’ or ‘this salvation will come too late to be of use, and besides I do not see how!’  Stop right there, dear friend. You do not have to see how. This is not your business. Your business is to ‘stand still’ and proclaim, ‘It is done.” From the essay, Trusting and Resting, by H. Emilie Cady, published in 1903

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The open door of intuition: The Spirit of Truth

Noah heading out into the garden this morning

Have you ever just known that something was right? Even when it didn’t make sense? Even when there was no way that it was possible? And have you ever held your belief anyway; persistently turning away from those voices of doubt and reason (the voices that were really in your own mind, but seemed to be coming out of the mouths of people around you…the ones who didn’t want you to be disappointed or deluded enough to believe in something that you couldn’t figure out the “hows” of?).

I love hearing stories of how others did just this: held their vision and came to see it become their reality. If you have a story that you would like to share; a story of hope (when things seemed hopeless), faith beyond your ability to understand, or healing, please tell it here. There are an awful lot of stories that we hear everyday of “senseless” violence, loss, and hatred…and I know that there are so many, many more stories of “senseless” (we can’t understand how this wonderful thing happened) blessings, recovery, and Love.”…..Grace, Goodness, and Love may not make sense to our small, limited selves, but they are who we really are at our centers.

“Faith does not depend on physical facts or on the evidence of the senses because it is born of intuition, or the Spirit of Truth, ever living at the center of our being. Its action is infinitely higher than that of reason. It is founded on Truth, while reasoning or intellectual argument is founded on evidence of the senses and is not reliable.

Intuition is the open end, within one’s own being, of the invisible channel ever connecting each individual with God. Faith is, as it were, a ray of light shot out from the central sun, God, one end of which ray comes into your being and mine through the open door of intuition.” from,  Lessons in Truth, by H. Emilie Cady (1848-1941)

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Home

Fred admiring the bouquet I picked yesterday

I’ve been so moved by the book, Proof of Heaven, that this morning, I decided to look up Dr. Eben Alexander’s schedule thinking that I would love to see him in person sometime. As it turns out, he is speaking TONIGHT in Liverpool NY which is about a 3 hr. drive for me. “This is truly amazing!” was my first thought. It is, for me, another affirmation that everything is moving exactly as it should. When I need, or want, something (want from my higher self that is, not necessarily what my ego thinks I need in the moment…a big difference!), it shows up. It presents itself for me to say yes (or no) to.

We are constantly getting guidance to move forward, wait, or to take a different direction. The more aware I become of the larger dimension of My-Self, the more I recognize the constant, loving, guidance that is as close as my breath, my beating heart, my deep desires.

This book, although recommended to me by many people, didn’t really make it into my consciousness until Wed. afternoon, when we arrived back home from looking at the house in Middlebury. As I walked back into our current home, feeling all sorts of emotions; hope, excitement, doubt, and anticipation, I saw it on our coffee table (having just borrowed it on Sunday from my future daughter-in-law) and opened it up…. and didn’t put it down until I went to bed.

After Jack and I had seen the home in Middlebury on Wed., we took a walk through the downtown and talked about going out to breakfast, but  I was so deeply moved emotionally, that I felt I needed to ground myself and re-center, so I suggested that Jack get a bagel, and I decided to go to my new favorite Middlebury thrift store. As I walked into the store I thought, “This is good, I can get my mind off the house for a half hour or so, calm down, and stop this flood of tears” that had begun welling up when we were going through the house.

I am not opposed to crying, actually I think it is wonderful, but it isn’t something that I do very often. It isn’t my usual reaction to life. So when we walked though that home, and I started to feel like I was about to burst open with tears, I was surprised. But when Jack and I got into the car to drive away, and I broke into sobs, I felt a bit like I was coming unglued. So my trip to the thrift store seemed just the ticket to bring me back to myself….or so I thought.

Within a minute of walking inside, a new song began playing on the radio. The tears started again. Really? In the middle of the thrift store?…the name of the song was “Home*” by Philip Phillips, and one of the lines is,”….just know you’re not alone, cause I’m gonna make this place your home.”

OK, I guess I was not meant to “center myself”…I was meant to give in to this flood of feelings, emotions, grace, love, divine coincindence….I’ve been crying in bursts since that moment inside the house…..tears of love and happiness and wonder….and I know without a doubt that none of us is ever alone.

“Without recovering that memory of our larger connectedness, and the unconditional love of our Creator, we will always feel lost here on earth….God is present in us at all times…and loving us without conditions….we are connected as One thorough our divine link with God.” pg 161, Proof of Heaven

Sending you all blessings this weekend of hope, courage, and renewed faith, that you are right where you are supposed to be, surrounded and cradled in the arms of Love.

The video to the song Home is below….it is wonderful!

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Heaven is now, when I remember that all is well

Fred resting on a book that I’m reading called “Proof of Heaven” I did stage this one! (and this is a wonderful book!)

As many of you know, Jack and I have been hoping to buy a home in Middlebury VT, for about a year. Yesterday, we went through that house. As soon as we walked in the door, it felt like home. One of the owners gave us the tour (as her sweet toddler followed behind, happily playing with a very life-like toy snake). She talked about why they needed to move closer to their jobs, but how much they loved the house. We were not, in that moment, in a position to make her an offer (and there was another couple coming back right after our appointment, for the second time). I made several phone calls when I got home. One of them was for prayer.

As I sat outside, early this morning the thought came to me, “This house is a blessing and you are going to learn more about who you are as you go through the process of waiting to see how the money will manifest, how doors open, how perfectly everything is happening.” That thought brought me to tears, but the next one surprised me even more, and it was, “I pray that the home sells quickly so this little family can move this summer and get settled.” Maybe we’ll be the buyers, maybe not, but I know that it will be perfect either way.

One of the spiritual truths that I Know is this: If something (a job, home, opportunity, relationship, …any thing) is meant to be ours: if it is for our highest and best good, it will be. Our part is not to figure out “how”,  it is simply to know what our hearts desire, and then to hold that vision, knowing that all is well.

“The message had three parts, and if I had to translate them into earthly language, I’d say they ran something like this: ‘You are loved and cherished, dearly,  forever. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong.” from the book Proof of Heaven,by Eben Alexander, M.D.,  page 41

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need a smile?

A friend just sent me this video commercial for Evian water.  If you need a smile then I suggest you watch it. Have a wonderful day!

http://www.youtube.com/v/pfxB5ut-KTs

“The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions–the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

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Growing through life: my gift to the world

Eleanor enjoying the wheatgrass

I notice people’s gifts. And another thing that I notice, is how many times, these very obvious gifts are almost completely ignored, minimized, or even disliked by the person possessing them. Even when someone points them out, the person will often times dismiss the compliment with a comment such as, “It’s no big deal.” or “There are tons of people who are better at ‘this’ than I am.” The feeling behind all of these statements is, There is nothing special about me.

We’ve been taught that this is humility, but it isn’t. If this thought is backed by self-doubt, hatred, insecurity, or fear, it is just the other end of the egoic spectrum; one end is boastful, cocky, and falsely proud, and the other end is timid and cowering… both are ego-centric.

If we are (as I believe to be true) temples of the living God, points of Divine consciousness, individualized expressions of the Spirit of the Universe, how can we be nothing special?  You and I and everyone could not be more unique, special or gifted.

Sometimes, our gifts are so close to us that we don’t see them as gifts, and the problem with this is that these things we are ignoring, dismissing, or brushing away, are not really valuable gifts until they are given away; until they are shared.

One of my gifts is the deep desire to understand who and what I AM. Not just who Mary Muncil is in this lifetime, but the part of me that isn’t confined to this body or to the “objective” world. The me who sees and knows beyond what is apparent. I’ve always had this drive within me….but I didn’t always see it as a gift to the world, or a gift at all.

Even as a teenager, sitting on the banks of the Hudson river with my best friend, drinking way too much, involved in a continual drama (of my own making) of too many drugs, boyfriends, and stupid risks, my friend would tell me (years later) that I made her promise me, if she ever figured out what God was, that she had to let me know.

Something within me just knew that the concept of God that I was raised with wasn’t the Truth, and through my periods of fearful “devotion”, atheism, scepticism, secular humanism, anger at religious authority, indifference to religious authority, …banging my head and pounding my fists on these doors that I was told led to God, but only seemed to lead to more contraction and confusion, I never gave up my search.

I didn’t look at myself as a researcher. I thought that field was limited to scientists and inventors, but in the world spiritual thought, a researcher is what I am. I always wanted to understand a deeper truth, and felt like there was a veil across it made up of all sorts of esoteric (or downright stupid or impossible to obey) rules and regulations. But this journey, and all of the dead-ends and wrong turns, is a part of the gift that I have to share.

Tell me who you are. Tell me what you Know from living it, struggling with it, even hating it, and then tell me what you’ve learned about yourself and life. Our gifts are what we have gone through and transcended. When I’ve been through hell, and have come out more whole and more real, then I am standing in the place of the true alchemist; changing base metal (life’s struggles) into gold (freedom), not only for myself, but for anyone who wants to stand in this place with me, and this is true of us all.

I’ve always wanted to understand, and I wanted to live it, and I wanted to know how others were living it. I don’t care about theory. If you have never been in the grips of alcoholic obsession, then you probably don’t have much to tell me about how to put down a drink. If you’ve done it, and not white knuckled it (but have gone beyond it) then just being who you are, your presence, will change me… if I want to change.

We help the world by becoming more truly ourselves: by leaving behind the limited concepts of what a spiritual person should look like, say, or do, and by accepting the perfection of who we are (even when we think that we are very far from any concept of perfection).

Your unique life’s journey, who you are, through all of the pain and struggle, loss and despair, is your gift to this world. It may come most to light through music, art, writing, medicine, gardening, law, praying for others, cooking, speaking, sewing, politics, healing work, or it may not seem to have a very focused “channel” or any defined “career path”…none of this matters.

You may be the one who can walk into a room where there is a distressed animal, and just by your presence, it instantly relaxes. You may be the one who always says, “Let me hold her or him” to the mother with the fretful baby, and the baby immediately calms down. You may be the one waving to the drivers passing by while you stand (or dance!) in the road, holding the STOP SIGN, and just your smile, changes a person’s life. You may be the one who simply held a friend in your mind with a loving thought, and you found out later that this person had a radical change for the better on that same day.

Your Presence, is your present to the world.

“The only part of our religion that is real is the part we express in our daily lives. Ideals that we do not act out in practice are mere abstract theories. Actually, such pretended ideals are a serious detriment, because they drug the soul. If you want to receive any benefit from your religion, you must practice it: and the place to practice it is right here, where you are; and the time to do it is now. A writer on prayer said; “Kneed love into the bread that you bake; wrap strength and courage in the parcel you tie for the woman with the weary face; hand trust and candor with your coin you pay to the man with suspicious eyes.’ This sums up the Practice of the Presence of God.” Emmet Fox  (1881-1951)

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