Giving and Receiving Our Talents


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Rights, Freedoms and Responsibilities















Healing and Releasing Painful Memories

Painful memoriesSomething I have personally learned is that when people are hurt badly by an experience or a person they tend to cling to it and even begin to identify themselves with that pain and that experience to a large degree. It is not possible to stop forming your identity around that pain and that experience until you forgive the person or persons and let go of the experience that caused your hurt. It has to be released before it will stop hurting you over and over. It is the only way to really care for yourself and heal. Purposely going back and revisiting painful experiences and holding onto hurt feelings is dangerous. You are recreating that pain anew each time and this is only destructive and will lead to anger.

Memories may resurface, but there is no need to dwell in them. Very painful memories can tend to flood us with overwhelming amounts of emotion and it seems to only grow stronger over time when we allow ourselves to stay with the thoughts. Our perception of the memory is not the same any longer. It begins to take on a life of its own and this is how we can form our identity around it. When children have started forming their identities around painful memories, like loss, then it is even more difficult for them to comprehend how to break this cycle and heal. This understanding must come as an adult for them, and it will be a struggle as they continue to cycle back through the pain, thinking they are doomed to live in misery forever. This thought itself perpetuates the cycle and leads them into more difficulty.

Not continuing on with thought processes or speech patterns that follow this cycle can help break it and that is an important thing to do for healing to begin. As long as a person continues to feel that they were wronged, or that something should have gone a different way than it did, that person will continue to feel miserable. Railing against your loss or your suffering in anger and sorrow, no matter how long you do it will never change what happened. It only makes feelings of suffering and anger stronger and the experience of loss or suffering is essentially being relived inside. This can only lead to further harm. It also leads to us creating many incorrect perceptions based on the flooding of pain from previous life stages and previous states of perception. It becomes very difficult to see the peace and happiness that can be found in your present if you are looking at things through a lens of altered perceptions fostered by revisiting painful memories.

However, starting in the present moment and recognizing good things with gratitude is helpful and begins the process to healing and breaking the cycle of going back to pain. Focusing on the small things, like breathing, gradually brings awareness back to what you are feeling right now. This awareness can be used to acknowledge and accept the feelings as they come, learning how to feel them and let them pass without holding onto them. Emotions about very difficult events arise and these emotions are not easy to feel without dwelling, especially at the beginning. Taking five or ten minutes of quiet time in which you can sit alone and let these feelings come is helpful. This is short enough to not be difficult to find in a day and to not allow time for ruminating on the feelings that come up. Each one comes, is recognized, and then is let go. This begins to allow for sorting. The recognition will also come that thoughts and emotions arise but they also fade to the background. This can give a sense of peace that the true inner self is not truly as rocked by external events as we tend to believe.

Expanding our view of Divinity (or don’t put God in a box)


It is impossible to put the Divine in a human box. God can’t be defined with a label, words, or ideas. Our minds, as amazing as they are made to be, are not capable of conceiving of That which is part of them, which they are also part of. It is like asking a drop of water to understand that it is made of ocean and still understand the entirety and complexity of all the oceans. Impossible! The Divine that we come from is so much more immense than that. Yet humans actively frame the Supreme in small human context.

This must be forgiven because we are, after all, human. We think like humans. We put things in human terms. It is easier to understand when we do this. Fear of things we can’t understand and can’t control contributes to this tremendously. We can only see and control what is directly in front of us, right now. And often that is difficult. This is a really hard thing to let go of sometimes. But think of the drop of water. It floats in the ocean and rests, even when it’s getting tossed around on a hurricane or a tsunami. It just knows it is water, all the time, wherever it lands. Water eventually returns to the ocean. You are always a soul. You will eventually return to God, no matter how rough the ride or how long it takes. Don’t let yourself feel too separated due to fear.

It seems that we can easily fall into the trap of believing that we have the only right or true way of understanding the Divine, or that we know the only true name by which to call Him. Many cultures and religions have fallen under this spell. So much hatred, death and war have been perpetrated under the illusion that it is possible to place the Supreme into a human concept and know Him precisely through a single unique truth. But how can we say that God is infinite, everywhere, All, if we limit the Energy that flows from Source to only where we can see and clearly understand and define it? Each of us is created with this same energy, just as all things are. We can’t say that one person is less made of God Energy and is therefore less worthy than any other. Nor can we say that any creature or creation is less worthy since it is all created from the same Source. Behaviors may not be desirable, emotions may not be pleasant. These are fleeting and can be changed. That should not be forgotten. The essence, the energy from God remains the same, always. Behaviors and emotions only cloud this and disturb our ability to see it clearly. Like clouds we can wait for them to pass. There are also methods to assist them passing more quickly, like meditation, tai chi, qigong, yoga and energy medicine techniques.

If you understand God to be capable of doing anything and being everywhere, and you believe that He loves all and distributes Divine Grace, regardless of merit, then you seem to have removed all limits from God. These are the ways I understand the religions of the world to view the Divine, regardless of what name they refer to the Lord by, or if they choose to use a name at all. Ultimately God is limitless, and far beyond our capacity to grasp what that might mean. Each soul perceives the Divine through its own filters. The filters are many. There is the filter of your own unique soul’s personality, your “youness”, the filter of your experiences and woundings, the filter of the culture you are raised in (which includes your parent’s views and the religion you were exposed to), the filter of your education, and on from there. But part of God’s wonder is our unique and individual ability to experience God through the window of our own mind, body, and soul. We are each expressions of Him/Her/Life. This includes everyone, even people that do not believe or not like the term God. It doesn’t matter what the language is! We all believe we are alive! We get too caught up in words and they trip us up. Let others experience what they need to and appreciate that they are pushing through the clouds just as you are.

I am in awe of the Universe, and I easily accept that God appeared many times, in many cultures, to so many different people and in as many different ways as needed to help humanity learn and grow. I believe He is in many different places at one time, manifesting eternally. Our fear has taught us to look at only what we see right in front of us, but now, through technology, books and travel, we can see so much of the world that we can see that God has been blessing ALL of His people, forever. He does not neglect some while He spares others. He has been sending teachers with His message for all ages. I have no doubt that the Lord Himself has walked among us and taught far more than just the man called Jesus in Galilee. He continues to do so. Many texts have been written with accounts of these teachers and Saints. They all teach the same message. No matter the culture or the time. God is Life Energy, and is Ultimate. We must accept this and stop trying to place our own images on everything. We didn’t create any of this and we don’t control it. But we are souls and we can simply follow Jesus’ prime commandment and love God first and foremost and each other as ourselves.

All people seem to be seeking God in their own way, even if they are not comfortable calling it by that name. In the end, the journey is theirs, and maybe we all need to have a little more trust in each other and the Ultimate that we need not mold everything the way we believe it needs to be. None of us knows how it is supposed to be, really. Some struggle differently on their path than we do on ours. Help them, love them, heal them. If you can’t do that, then at least don’t harm them. We are all lights of Divinity, no matter how we come to understand that, or how long it takes us.