Often, early morning times are when I become aware of visions and messages from the other side. This morning I felt awake in my vision, watching, listening, feeling, using all of my senses. It was a colorful experience of matrixes and stones.
I was asked to speak to two adult community groups back-to-back. I had images of what we look like beyond our dense forms, beautiful smooth colorful stones of differing shapes and sizes that ultimately fit together at the end of our time on Earth nestled nicely into a jigsaw puzzle.
As humans, our awareness and our bodies grow to help define what we like, who we are and what we want to do. We learn lessons that define our individuality. Each life lesson inherently holds part of the matrix of our polished stones working towards the whole picture.
Year after year, we grow and change based on the foundations we start from, keeping in mind the foundations vary by the environments we grow up in, but the essence of who we are stays the same, still beautiful smooth polished stones of varying light and colors.
Each group holds the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. Each group values growth and awareness. Each group understands the arc life takes as we grow and learn. There is one distinct difference between the first and second group. Neither group is more important than the other. Members often move back and forth between the groups.
The first group has awareness that life is a challenge and circumstances happen that cause pain and suffering. They have experienced deep pain and loss. They acknowledge the need for support and community and want to deepen their life experience to find their individual richness while standing in community. They want a stronger sense of self, self-worth and help with confidence as they live their lives. Religion is not part of the discourse. Spiritual awareness is the key to help one grow individually as part of a loving community in an environment that helps people discover their beauty and potential. This group of adults represent a loving and learning cooperative community with members who can explore and discover who they are based on these values while experiencing pain and loss, triumphs and rejections in community.
The second group has awareness that life is a challenge and circumstances happen that cause pain and suffering. They have experienced deep pain and loss. They acknowledge the need for support and community and want to deepen their life experience to find their individual richness while standing in community. They want a stronger sense of self, self-worth and help with confidence as they live their lives. Religion is not part of the discourse. Spiritual awareness is the key to help one grow individually as part of a loving community in an environment that helps people discover their beauty and potential.
The one varying factor in this group is each member lives a daily life of suffering whether it be from mental or physical chronic illness or a violation of a human right. Like a cloak that covers their beautiful colors, they are shrouded with chronic sorrow as they navigate through life lessons. They lean into their community remembering to be loved and to love are inherent to their worth and dignity. They sometimes feel less deserving and isolate away from community and eventually find their way back to the fold because of guidance from their inner light. They know their tendency to hide. They choose to come back to the light over and over because of their deep desire to overcome. Chronic suffering manifests fear and pain.
Both groups live in cooperative learning with each other. Valuable learning is based on experience, with no judgments, no elitism and no discrimination. We all have what we need to survive and thrive as we live our lessons and love one another.
Two groups, same purpose to grow and learn, both on similar pathways, both going in the same direction, both learning and experiencing. both wanting to be loved and to love.
Like our meditation group, each one of us has a heart and a mind. We deserve to be loved and accepted no matter what we look like, who we love and our life circumstances. We each have the capacity to honor the inherent worth and dignity of every being on this Earth. We practice this capacity every day by loving ourselves.
We have experienced pain and loss of epic proportions. We are in community moving forward together as we face uncertainty. We want to be loved and to love. We want to share our triumphs and sorrows by finding our aha moments in our lessons. We learn about ourselves as we listen to each other. Part of living our lives is feeling the doubt and the fear, feeling the confusion and the loss, feeling our emotions and they are always changing.
The most important concept to hold in our hearts is to be gentle with ourselves. We are learning and growing; we are living and loving; we are polished stones uncovering the matrix of our lives one lesson at a time. Be patient. Be kind. Be present. We’re in this together.
Participants’ Reflections:
Thank you for the writing and reading today. I thought it was very thought-provoking. Not only was it a love letter for our own community that we share here, but it also brought up an exploration for me regarding what is real communion. What is communion of the human experience and how we are all on the same journey coming at it from a different perspective. I am going to sit in that question today. It was beautiful. Thank you.
Thank you. I’m very visual so my journey during the meditation was very visual. I saw myself surrounded by light and then all of us surrounded by light. It broadened, kept getting broader to those here today and those who have been part of our group. Then each one of us were stars. The light going out from the stars reaching folks we know, people we love. And then it kept growing, almost like a supernova. That’s what I got. It was lovely. Thank you.
I was thinking we are each one of those stones. And life polishes us, our experiences polish us. But we also polish ourselves. Then I thought of each of us as a prayer bead in a way.
That was an absolutely profound vision you had. Thank you for sharing it. I loved the idea of the two different groups. During the meditation, I kept asking myself what does it take for me to be out of the second group and in the first group. It is a dedication and intention to stay out of suffering at all costs. It’s so easy to fall into the suffering and stay there. It’s a challenge at all levels and at all times, no matter what I am feeling, to not wallow around in the suffering, but to feel it and let it go. Many years ago, I had this image: if I try to stop an emotion like suffering or pain, then it hits me like a brick wall. But if I just feel the feelings and let them go, the feelings go through me like the wind. I always try to be like that, letting feelings go through me like the wind. That’s what your reading brought up for me.
I think it’s important to point out too, in my case, suffering was not my choice. It wasn’t that I was stuck in it, I was living it. I experience life in both groups as we all do at one point or another. The key word for the whole reading is chronic sorrow. I found that term forty years ago in my process of researching to become a family therapist. It defined for me what I was living. I couldn’t get away from it because of my commitment to being a mother.
The chronic sorrow—I’ve been in that for many years. I certainly understand that. One of the words that stuck out for me today was gentle. I have a blanket over my face because I am chilly. It is soft and gentle. I think in general I’ve tried to be gentle with people throughout my life, with animals, with nature. But I don’t think I’ve been gentle with myself. I am just beginning to learn that. The term chronic sorrow, not to use it as an excuse, but I can’t escape it, with my commitment as a mother. Maybe because of that I need to really be gentle with myself, because I have to keep going and it takes a lot of energy to be in chronic sorrow. I was also thinking that there is so much gentleness in animals, they have feelings. They are so gentle, their soft fur, their babies. When people say that’s a mean cat or dog, I know they weren’t born innately mean. It’s fear, it’s from how a human treated them. Below that fear is a gentle spirit. That can happen in people too. It’s fear underneath.
Thank you for receiving my words however you take them in. Thank you for the pleasure of your company, for knowing each of you and seeing you and hearing you. Thank you for being part of this community. I wish you gentleness today. I wish you peace and awareness of your breath as it brings you back to yourself, step by step. Have a good day.