About Living from the Heart ~

We live by stories passed on for generations about who we are
and where we should be going. But these stories don't always let us live our best lives, because they aren't our personal legends.

Living from the Heart is about discovering our own stories. Choices with Intention. It is the journey to be true to ourselves and to dare to be all God and the Universe made us to be.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Affirmation Versus Loving Admonishment


The world seems full of duality. In seeing everything in duality we define life as as good and bad, pleasure and painful, united and separated. What if we see it as merely Ying and Yang? Two sides of the same coin? To walk away from the 'right' path and suffer pain, is it truly 'bad'? Or merely consciousness versus unconsciousness? We talk of pain being necessary for growth. We talk of darkness being necessary to appreciate light. How do we know the beauty of one end of the spectrum without allowing the other? I am on this journey now.

I spent 10 years in church faithfullly learning to see black vs.white, good vs.bad. Hearing messages of love balanced with admonition to stay on the path. But what is 'the path'? We see one man's ruin, but 10 years on he may be a totally different person, far more loving than before as a result of his suffering. The world will say he finally returned to 'the path'. But what if it was his own individual path from the start and the seeming deviation in my eyes was merely part of his road to take him to his personal destination. I may not prefer the same road but does that make that road 'wrong/bad'?
Both my husband and father are examples of men categorised as 'unwise'. And i was filled with pain looking at them from a duality view of 'good' vs 'bad' choices. But only after removing duality could i see that they both have their own wisdom and that life had to be that way for them and that no wrong road was ever wrong in the end. It was wrong for me in my shoes, but it need never turn out bad in the end IF we have love, affirmation and those walking alongside us who KNOW that each of us have Shadows we cannot escape and need not fear those shadows. Embracing those shadows, even if it be the trait of being slow to meet wisdom on her terms, is what makes us whole and connected to each other. How many times now have i frozen my opinions on my daughter's choices that seemed unwise to me only to be so glad later that i did. With my love and affirmation, what seemed a 'wrong/bad'poor' choice of hers turned out good BECAUSE she had me there to love her through it and that awakened her to meet wisdom eventually.

I am left wondering, after
many years of having to be healed of the scarring effects of duality thinking in my childhood and later in church , if it's possible for there to be only messages of love and affirmation that AWAKEN consciousness rather than promote duality. And enlightened mind can easily see the words that sound admonishing but has hidden pearls in it, but simpler minds only see the admonishment and their hearts are not fed.

Even as i share this, i know that we are all different and while many can be happy with the encouraging messages framed in duality, my heart sees a need for these lovely messages to be also 'translated' in a non-dual affirming way for the too many people out there scarred by a century of ego-based upbringing and systems and are thirsty for affirmation after years of 'loving admonishment'. They can fly but are too afraid because they've been warned far too much of the 'dark side' they must beware of. Time to tell them - "Believe and Jump! Your heart is pure and that's all God sees. He won't let you fail because darkness and light are alike to him and even if you have a fall and get bruised, it's not the end. It's part of the adventure." No admonishment, just affirmation that erases all possibility of fear so they can dare to LOVE and LIVE their dreams.

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