This past Tuesday I was really resistant to the message that came through as my blog. But I’ve learned that when I’m resistant, it’s usually something I really need to do or to hear. So I wrote it — and when I got to the end, I knew the message was an important one.
So I proofread and edited it, hit save and. . .poof! It all disappeared.
I had two big deadlines that day — and I just didn’t have the heart to rewrite it. So I listened to that too. I’ll do it tomorrow or the next day I thought. But then other blogs came through those days.
Now today is the last day of this month of the heart-centered practice of wholeness — and I woke up this morning knowing why this blog had to wait until today. The reason made me laugh out loud. (You’ll see at the end of this blog.)
I share all that because I spend a lot of time talking about leaning into and listening to Love. But do I do it all the time? Of course not! I talk a good game — same as everyone else. But then I get distracted or overconfident or fearful or anxious or busy — and suddenly I’m right back in the throes of human will.
That’s why I call myself a heart-centered practitioner. Because what do practitioners do? We practice. I practice listening to and leaning into Love instead of fear and human will and anxiety every single day.
This is a reconstruction of the blog that came through the other day — in today’s incarnation. And that’s a heart-centered practice, too. Because I need to let go of the idea that the old version was “the best” or “perfect” or “the right one” — and instead let what needs to come through today come through.
So, here goes. . .
Remember when you were a little kid and you went swimming? Suddenly you had to pee! And you thought to yourself, is it okay to pee in the water? Maybe you looked for an adult to ask them. But if one wasn’t around, then you tried to reason it out yourself.
If you were swimming in the ocean, you thought to yourself: Oceans are huge. What does it matter if I pee? It will just float out to sea with everything else. If you were swimming in a river, you thought, rivers flow. It will just flow downstream with everything else. If you were swimming in a lake, maybe you thought, well lakes are full of lots of gross things anyway. What’s a little pee? Besides, pee is all natural. And if you were in a pool, maybe you thought: Chlorine will get rid of it. That’s what chlorine is for. And then you made your decision and either did one of two things: You peed in the water. Or you got out of the water and found someplace else to pee.
Have you ever been on a boat and seen the wake it creates? How it ripples out and hits other boats and seems to go on and on and on? How cool, you may think. To see the effect of our boat just roll on and on and on. But maybe you’ve been in another boat or been on water skis and experienced a wake roll over you. Or maybe you’ve been underwater, swimming or snorkeling, and you’ve felt that wake rock you. Or you’ve heard the sound of the engine or even smelt or seen the pollution from the engine. And then maybe, instead of thinking the ripples were cool, you were irritated by someone else’s pollution of your space or your stillness or your silence. Only to realize that you, too, probably got to wherever you are in some kind of motorized conveyance — a boat, a car, an airplane — all three. Suddenly the ripple effect had a very different meaning.
When these examples came to me the other morning, I realized what I was being asked to hear:
Everything that any of us does has consequences.
But here’s the other thing I was being asked to hear: We have all become past masters at pretending it doesn’t.
We have all peed in the water and then either pretended we haven’t, pretended it didn’t matter, or pretended it was a totally normal thing to do — even though the person right next to us or just downstream might beg to differ.
We have all contributed to the pollution of this planet and then been alarmed as climate change rocks our little part of the world. But are we all driving electric cars and buying locally and growing our own food? Am I? Nope!
We have all peed in the water. We have all contributed to the pollution that is destroying this planet. Just as we have all acted in thoughtless, judgmental, disconnected, hurtful, angry, unfair ways toward our fellow human beings and toward the flora and fauna of our planet.
Everything single thing we do has consequences, but we’ve all gotten really good at pretending it doesn’t.
This disconnect has to stop! Whole, wholeness, holiness, health, holistic and healing all come from the same root world. True health is wholeness. We cannot be healthy if we are not whole. We cannot heal unless we understand the whole consequences of everything we do or think or say. And we most certainly are not holy if our thoughts and words and actions are not wholly holistic and healthy.
So what do we do once we recognize that we have a problem?
Well, if I’ve learned anything from heart-centered practice, it’s this: If we keep looking at the problem, all we’ll see is the problem. If we’re afraid of the problem, we’ll stay afraid of the problem.
To use the metaphor of the day, the more you think about peeing, the more you have to pee. We all know that’s true.
Instead of staying focused on the problem, we can choose Love.
The heart-centered practice of wholeness trains us to recognize the ripple effect of every thought we think word we say, choice we make, thing we do.
The heart-centered practice of wholeness knows that everything is connected — and by beginning in Love, it rolls out in Love and then ripples out as love so that love is its only effect and consequence.
This is not pie in the sky. This is not some Hallmark card. This is not pink paint and fairy dust and unicorns.
In everything you do, ask yourself: Am I listening to Love? Am I being guided by Love? Will the effect of this choice or action or inaction or purchase or word be love? Am I rippling out love in myself? Will the consequence of this be Love?
When we do this, everything begins to shift. We suddenly realize that thinking only from “I” is an illusion. We recognize that when we pee in the water, pee goes into the water. The water changes. That water touches fish and algae and earth and air. Our pee is out in the world and the world is different as a result. When we’re on a motorboat, the pollution from that boat, the noise from that boat, the energy from that boat changes its environment for miles and miles and miles around it.
We understand that there is no me in isolation. There never has been. There is only a we. And we can either go on thinking that only me matters. Only me is real. Or we can choose to be holistic heart-centered practitioners of wholeness means always seeing through the eyes of Love as we instead of me.
That’s why tomorrow, June 1, my new monthly heart-centered practice of presence (because that is what I am doing each month is attempting to practice presence — which is my intentional word for 2020 — by focusing on a different aspect of presence) is the heart-centered practice of we.
What do I mean by that? I mean that I am going to spend the whole month practicing making the center and circumference of my thoughts we instead of me. I am going to see myself as part of a whole and make my choices as led by Love. By listening to Love. Living Love. For the healing and health of the whole. Of we.
And that, my friends, is why this blog had to wait for today to be shared.
Because from here on out, this heart-centered practitioner is going to learn how to (wait for it. . .):
We We We all the way Home!
Join me. . .