I believe there is a force within each of us that longs for expansion, to know and experience new and better things beyond our current awareness. I think this urge was built into our program when human beings were created. You could even call it the spark of life within us – the fire, the inner creative force that activates this impulse.
Perhaps you have felt that urge in your own life. Maybe it starts as dissatisfaction with the status quo, a discomfort for life as it is. It can also feel like something is calling you, calling you out of your complacency, like an inner voice saying, “isn’t there something more, something better?” When we recognize we can co-create our lives rather than wait for life to happen, then a new energy source is unleashed and we begin to see life differently.
One of the reasons I teach exercises working with the four elements is because it links us with this unseen creative force. When we lie down on Pachamama (Mother Earth) and give her all our heavy energy – the heavy emotions that keep us trapped in our stories – she uses it like fertilizer and transforms it into new growth and new life. The Water soothes and balances us. The Air purifies and enlightens us, helping us to expand our consciousness, to see things from a broader perspective. The Fire transmutes our anger into passion and compassion; it changes coal into diamonds.
Two weeks after my husband Christer’s passing in June, 2011, I was back in Pisac teaching a lovely small group from Texas and Argentina. They all knew about what had happened, some of them following the daily hospital messages I’d posted on Facebook. It was such a gift to re-enter my life at Paz y Luz in this way: teaching and doing the exercises with the elements to help me transform all the heaviness into light.
When we can release the limitations of the past, we clear the way for a new refined energy to enter which helps us recognize we are co-creators, not pawns or victims. We may not be able to choose all the events we encounter in life but we can choose how we want to respond to them. That’s how we transform difficult situations into opportunities and gifts.
I have a friend Emily who has written a book called Cancer Healed Me. When she found out she had breast cancer five years ago, she decided not to treat it using the tradition medical model. She pursued several alternative options which have enhanced her life in many wonderful ways.
I wondered after my own experience with Christer if I was deluding myself in some way because I wasn’t feeling devastated or depressed. But the more I look into myself and discuss the subject with others, I realize challenging, painful, sad, difficult events have as much (or maybe more) potential for creative expansion as do the events of our “normal” everyday life.
Exploring this idea, I asked myself what were the pre-requisites enabling us to respond differently from the expected norm? While Christer was in the hospital, I was not aware of consciously choosing to stay open-hearted and present. So I presume it happened because some part of me was already pre-programmed by my spiritual practice. However, I was aware the one day when my heart closed down, because it made my experience so much more difficult until I was able to open it again.
It was my belief for a long time that death is a natural part of our existence. It is sad for the people left behind to no longer have the physical presence of the one they loved. But for the person going, it is a transition to another plane of existence more beautiful than the one they are leaving behind. This was my belief.
But that belief had never been tested by reality. No one close to me had ever died (except my 99-year-old grandmother). I thought that test would come with one of my parents. I certainly didn’t think it would be Christer. I met my soul mate when I was 54 – how could he be gone a mere four years later? That should be tragic, right?
Well, you could look at it that way of course but the surprising part for me was that I didn’t experience it that way, then or now. Perhaps I had done enough healing of my inner wounds that I was able to be present to the situation without feeling sorry for myself. Remarkably, I didn’t feel angry at Christer or God. I wasn’t resentful, even on that day we should have been flying to Jamaica. I didn’t feel abandoned or betrayed. I was sad but very grateful for all the support and kindness around me.
Maybe the deepness of the soul connection I felt with Christer is what made it possible for me to be so present with him in the hospital and help him pass over. I don’t know. But the experience with Christer in the hospital definitely shifted something in my consciousness that now allows me to focus on human warmth and connection more than the stressful practicalities of daily life that before seemed so important. Of course there are certain business things that need attention but they don’t require as much emotional investment as they did before.
So, in many ways I am better than I used to be, which I find extraordinary. I would have much preferred that Christer was still with me and we were living our special life together. But since that’s not what happened, I am glad to have some unexpected benefits assisting me through this transition.
So, what are some of the prerequisites?
1. Heal your wounds, release your shit.
I mentioned before Pachamama receives all our heavy energy like a gift because for her, it is fertilizer that she needs in order to make things grow, to nourish and sustain us and all life. This exchange is the created way of things, the law of nature. So it is with our created selves: we eat and drink to sustain ourselves. The body uses what it needs and eliminates the rest. If we don’t eliminate the waste, the body doesn’t function well. It gets clogged and the systems start to break down.
It is the same with our emotional, spiritual and psychic bodies. We need to release things we no longer need, that no longer serve us. When we clear out the blocks, the energy can flow freely and we can respond in healthy ways to whatever circumstances we encounter, to create a grace-filled experience.
I had a friend Joe in South Africa who was an anti-apartheid activist for 30 years. He spent six years on Robben Island in the ‘60’s. In 1977 he was detained by the authorities and tortured nearly to death. When Joe felt he was dying, he called on a God he hadn’t believed in since his childhood, to take his soul. At that moment he heard an inner voice tell him, “I have given you life and they will not take it away.” Then the torture stopped. He told me an extraordinary story of how he then became friends with one of his guards. When he was eventually released he began working with the Justice and Reconciliation department of the South Africa Council of Churches. He said to me when we met in 1990, “Our God is a foolish God who asks us to do foolish things, like love our enemies.”
I doubt Emily wanted to get cancer or Joe wanted to be detained and tortured. It is not the circumstances themselves I am suggesting are welcome events, anymore than I wanted Christer to have a pulmonary embolism that caused his death. But the most liberating beautiful truth we can know is despite whatever challenging circumstance we may find ourselves in, we can use our co-creative abilities to turn it into something growth filled and powerful.
2. Open your heart.
I learned the importance of keeping my heart open during my relationship with Christer. I learned that all things are possible with an open heart and conversely, when one’s heart is closed, those possibilities are hidden behind locked doors. When Christer and I were having an argument early in our relationship, I asked a friend for assistance. He worked with us for a few hours but we weren’t getting very far. Then he gave us the key to our locked door when he asked us to remember the love we had for each other. He invited us to tune into that love and put aside our differences.
Holding hands with our eyes closed I became aware I couldn’t feel the love. It was only then I recognized my heart was closed. It no longer was a matter of solving the problem between us. The dilemma shifted from outside circumstances to inside me. How could I reach the love I knew was there? How could I free myself from my self-created prison? When Christer reached out to me, the prison door flung open and so did my heart. Love poured out of it and into it. Everything that before seemed broken and irreparable, melted away. With our connection to one another restored, we were able to prepare for the workshop in a matter of minutes. In an outward sense the circumstances causing our problem had not changed but the situation between us had changed completely, thereby resolving the problem.
3. Accept what is.
There is a very fine line between accepting reality as it is and creating the reality you want. Emily had breast cancer; Joe was a prisoner; Christer was in a coma in the ICU. It was important that each of us accepted those realities before we could begin to create our conscious responses to those circumstances. Acceptance is about being in the present moment. It means we acknowledge our limits. Acceptance is actually a form of liberation; it is a letting go, a pause, a release.
Accepting Christer was in critical condition permitted me to be fully present with him, which was an amazing gift. Wanting something to be different than it is, is not what creates a new reality. First we have to accept what is, then use our creative abilities to make of that circumstance an opportunity for growth. Wanting something to be different than it is, takes us out of the present moment which is the only place that we can create anything. Having a clear intention for what we want to create is important, but releasing that intention into the creative field is a necessary part of manifesting it. Letting it go gives us the ability to stay in the present.
The hardest day I had in the hospital was the day I resisted the reality that Christer was choosing to go. It was the day I closed off to my sister in law and wanted my far-away friends to be there instead. The day we moved Christer to hospice and did the ceremony helping him to pass over was beautiful and grace-filled because I accepted what was happening and opened myself to experience it fully.
There are times when I feel sad and lonely. I remember back in the early ‘90’s living in South Africa, my friend Joe used to tell me to “count your blessings” when I was feeling bad. At the time I rejected the idea thinking he was suggesting I deny or cover up my feelings. I thought expressing my feelings was a healthier way to be. What I know now that I didn’t then is there is a difference between reacting to our feelings and being consciously aware of our feelings.
For example, just because we feel angry about something doesn’t mean we have to scream and shout to “express” that anger, which actually keeps us in an angry state. On the other hand it is important to be conscious that we are feeling or holding anger, which is toxic to our system, so pushing it down and not letting it out is not a good idea either. Rather we can release that anger by giving it to Pachamama or let some flowing Water wash it away. We can breathe deeply, with our eyes closed in a relaxed state to let it go, release it. Or we can count our blessings; see the glass half full instead of half empty. We can shift our consciousness from what we are feeling, toward what we want to be feeling. But it does involve conscious awareness. It is a process.
Five weeks after Christer passed, I traveled to Sweden to bring some of his ashes to his family. His three daughters organized a very moving memorial service in a small rustic chapel on the edge of a forest. Inside that womb-like space I cried more than I had since the days in the hospital. Surrounded by Christer’s five beautiful grandsons and daughters, his mother and the rest of the family, I sobbed and sobbed – for my loss, for their loss, for the unexpected turn of events that bound us so tightly together. The love flowed as powerfully as our tears, allowing us to feel a deep supportive connection with each other, Christer’s spirit and Divine Source.
My feelings of sadness ebb and flow. I remember the process and keep working on the prerequisites. I went to Cusco the other day to buy supplies for Paz y Luz and take care of other business. Christer and I used to go together once a week. That day I asked Christer’s spirit to be with me. In the physical he was a big strong guy who always carried the heavy supplies. Rather than bemoaning his absence, I called on his spirit for assistance. A station wagon taxi pulled up just as I exited the store, overloaded with packages. I was about to get in when a cute little boy opened the front door and hopped in. Before I could say anything, the driver smiled and said, “My son”. He had stopped to pick up his son, not me, but he gladly took us both. I had to laugh as I thanked Christer.
On the way home, I was listening to a Carole King CD and was struck by the lyrics of the old 60’s song, Up on the Roof: “When this old world starts getting me down and people are just too much for me to face, I climb way up to the top of the stairs and all my cares just drift right into space. On the roof is the only place I know, where you just have to wish to make it so… At night the stars put on a show for free and you can share it all with me. Up on the roof, everything is alright.”
I wonder if Carole King and Gerry Goffin were aware of any spiritual metaphor when they wrote that song back in 1962. For me the words are a beautiful illustration of how important it is for us to go higher when every day realities seem to be limiting our creativity. It’s important to let our cares drift into space, to see the beauty above and around us even when situations are difficult. These are the moments that can become our most valuable opportunities to ignite the God-Light within us; to co-create the world the way we want it to be.