Day 11 of 40: Serve God continued…

A story and a shift in consciousness.

Continued from Day 10.

Today was quite a rollercoaster ride with crazy twists and turns in energy levels, hunger pangs and mental clarity! From clear-headedness to dense sluggish fog, from bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to super ravenous to being so exhausted at parent’s evening that I was terrified to close my eyes for fear of drifting off!

The ‘story’ that broke the camel’s back.

I love Rachel Naomi Remen’s writing. She is a master storyteller. http://www.rachelremen.com/ I recall a quote she shared that went something like this, ‘Sometimes we need a story more than food’. (Apologies, I know for sure Rachel said this, but I cannot remember exactly where I heard it said.)

I also love stories. I’ve experienced stories that have shifted a personal paradigm and had me in tears of awe. Stories that have gratefully burned an indelible mark on my psyche and whose impact and power have continued to compound, ripple and percolate over time. Stories that have expanded my consciousness and transported me to a whole new vantage point, where everything looks completely different.

For me, stories are spiritual circuit upgrades.

I believe they tap into the world beyond right and wrong, beyond words and the compulsion to understand, to the world where mystery is embraced and a state of grateful awe is the norm, where there is nothing to explain, excuse or justify.

Stories take me to this field.

I experienced one of these stories today.

A friend shared that there was a particular author and therapist she enjoys and respects. She heard this story on a live call she dialled in for.

There was a woman, let’s call her Debbie, who came to see this therapist. She was unhappily married with several children. She had reached a point where she felt she needed to try one more thing, one more time, to work on her marriage. As she embarked on this journey she rated her marriage as a minus four out of ten.

She explained that there was an aggressive, abusive dynamic between her and her husband around money. Her husband would never engage in a calm, reasonable discussion around their finances, budgeting or anything else linked to money. In fact, he would not engage in any finance-related conversations at all. If she ever raised the subject he would yell and scream irrationally about how she was, killing him with the money! Saying things like ‘Look what you doing to me, I work so hard, it’s never enough! What’s the matter with you? You’re killing me!’ It was relentless.

There were two things that the therapist found curious:

• Debbie had an irrational fear of opening mail;
• She also experienced an irrational terror when she heard her husband’s footsteps coming down the hall.

The therapist referred Debbie to a colleague who was experienced in past life regression work. It was his speciality and he had developed a technique whereby the person he was working with would still retain a consciousness of who they were in this lifetime while tuning into past life experiences.

Through their work together they made several past life discoveries:

• In one lifetime, Debbie lived in Constantinople. She was in a significant unresolved money dispute with a man (her husband in her current lifetime). She reached a point where she saw the only way out being to poison this man, which she did. She was found out. In those days the punishment for murder was death by hanging. She received this news in the mail. She was hung in the town square.
• In another lifetime, Debbie was a young male apprentice to a powerful, highly successful yet brutally ruthless businessman (her husband of today). There was a time, the apprentice was desperate for a certain sum of money and surmised a plan to steal this from the businessman, who found out, and hired a group of torturous thugs to beat up the apprentice. The young apprentice was beaten to death.
• In a third lifetime, Debbie lived in a cave, practising her skill with stones. It seemed she had the ability to guide people through working with stones, and people would book sessions to work with her. There was a man dating her sister. She didn’t like this man very much and wanted to get him out of the picture. He would come to her for consultations. She used to confuse him so much in these sessions, that it drove him mad and he committed suicide. (That man, her current husband and that sister one of her daughters in this lifetime.)

Debbie discovered all of this over years of working weekly with this therapist she had been referred to. And processing these discoveries was intense and challenging. She would come home from a morning session exhausted, at times vomiting and experiencing other physical manifestations of her digesting and cleansing as these layers were brought to light.

Debbie’s perspective started to shift. She no longer saw herself as the victim in the story. From seeing her marriage as an imposed punishment, she now was grateful for the opportunity to finally work through and take responsibility for the consequences of actions through lifetimes past. She was grateful for the opportunity to heal dynamics and relationships in this lifetime. It seemed to me she was now relating to the work to be done with her husband and daughter in this lifetime as an opportunity to serve, the theme for Day 10 continued today…

Day 10 theme: “Make up your mind to serve your G-d with your gifts and talents. Impact lives, be a catalyst of change and transformation and access each window of opportunity to serve.”

As Debbie’s perspective shifted, so did her husband’s behaviour. He started to invite her into financial discussions, budgeting and planning. Their interactions and engagement in many different areas improved. She was now rating her marriage as a six out of ten.

As my friend shared the story, I was engrossed, mesmerized, and by the end felt like I’d just been through some sort of intense energetic rewiring. It’s not like this was the first time I’ve heard a past life story, but hearing this one at this time was hugely significant.

I called this ‘the story that broke the camel’s back.’ It felt like one that served as a catalyst to a barrage of insights, as so many ideas I’ve resonated with previous seemed to connect, as if instruments all participating in the grand climax of a celebrated symphony!

What impacted me most?

I can get so completely lost to the drama and illusion of my separate self, my rightness, my own safety and protection. All this thinking from a place of fear, scarcity, you versus me, right versus wrong. So lost that all I seem to do is keep that pendulum of revenge and retribution swinging, masquerading as justice, relentlessly back and forth.

How many more lifetimes must it take? When is enough? When can I just stop, step back, take ownership, take responsibility and from a place of deepest sincerity just say,

“I’m so sorry, please forgive me”.

An apology and request for forgiveness much deeper than for the ‘actions’ that can be judged as right or wrong. Rather an apology and request for forgiveness for getting so lost in the illusion of a fear based thinking that I created and kept that pendulum swinging in the first place, that I even believed the pendulum was real.

This story gave me a whole new appreciation for the ho’oponopono prayer…

The ‘thank you’ now being for a shifted perspective, a vantage point beyond right and wrong, where questions cease to exist, and where we touch a state of sublime awe, gratitude and peace.

I believe stories have the power to help us touch this place. That they can be a lifeline to reconnect. I believe through sharing them, we help one another reconnect, and peel away another layer of the illusionary dirt, the fear-based thinking that supposedly coats our vision.

Transcending victimhood and judgement.

When the story began it was easy to see Debbie as the victim. And no doubt there would have been daily events and experiences she could have brought as evidence to substantiate this point of view. To keep that pendulum swinging.

As the events of previous lifetimes came to the fore, I experienced a stepping out of the pendulum. In seeing more of the picture I was experiencing a compassion for her now-husband, and feeling a shame for the actions Debbie had chosen to take, and then a compassion again for Debbie and a shame for her now-husband. I entered a place of deep compassion for both of them.

Natural consequence, not punishment.

If I drop a glass onto a hard concrete floor, it breaks. This is a natural consequence. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s just a consequence of that action, unless of course it was my favourite glass :)

And if I happen to drop it accidentally, no amount of ‘why’ and ‘how’ and ‘I should have’ is going to change anything. At some point the focus needs to shift to what I can be learned from the accident, that can serve me going forwards, and to get stuck in cleaning it up.

If I plant an apple seed, the natural consequence will be an apple tree bearing apples. You would consider it ridiculously senseless if I planted an apple seed and came to bitch and moan about how there weren’t any apricots to pick. It’s such a ludicrous scenario, you wouldn’t even entertain the discussion with me. An apple fruit is the natural consequence of an apple seed being planted.

A new perspective…

What if I could see challenges I experience in this lifetime, simply as a natural consequence of events that transpired in previous ones, without all the emotional intensity, the victimhood or reprimands, and simply as the “mess” that needs to be cleaned up. What if I could see these challenges as the bits of broken glass from a glass knocked over in a lifetime prior?

It would help me for sure!

It’s helped me already.

I could relate to Debbie’s story in my own life. Times when I have felt like the victim being brutally and relentlessly psychologically tortured. Times I have felt so completely alone, lost in my victimhood, lost in the noise, the drama of scarcity and fear-based thinking. Times I’ve felt it all happening to me.

When I heard Debbie’s story, I felt a stepping back and out of the pendulum swing in my own life, in relation to some of my most challenging relationships in this lifetime, and in relation to prayers I have felt have gone unheard. There was no longer a ‘this is happening to me’, but a shift to ‘this is all simply a consequence of what has gone before, what I’ve played a part in creating, there is no one doing anything to me.’ I experienced myself offering that pure heart felt apology I described earlier, naked of excuses and validations.

The task is simple.

If I need a time to vent, to pity party, to give expression to the emotions coming up, then by all means, I give myself permission to let them out, without holding back. Making sure not to hurt myself or others. At the same time, I set a reasonable time frame for this self-indulgence. Then I question the value of bitching and moaning about an inevitable consequence and get stuck in cleaning it up, while being mindful of the actions I take, the seeds I plant in each moment, knowing that they will in time bear fruit of their own. What am I choosing to plant?

Today’s theme was a continuation of yesterday’s, Day 10:

Serve G-d

“Make up your mind to serve your G-d with your gifts and talents. Impact lives, be a catalyst of change and transformation and access each window of opportunity to serve.”

I now relate to this service as being for me to:

• Take full responsibility for my life, using my gifts and talents in mindfully engaging challenges (natural consequences)
• Impact lives and be that catalyst for transformation through my own example, by honouring my commitment to living consciously and using every moment that life presents as my opportunity to step out of the swinging pendulum, to take ownership, clean up and plant from a place of love and surrender.
• Remember to also be patient with myself, willing to celebrate my moments of clarity while loving allowing for my getting lost in the illusions of doubt and fear, open to the lifelines offered by G-d, many a time through others who journey with me, in the form of their presence and vulnerable sharing. ‘We are meant to journey together.’
• Also remembering to engage more lightheartedness, more humour, more smiles and less seriousness!

Thank you Day 11! Continued on Day 12.