This is your way now.You are the way of Love. This is your true potential.
I’ve been struggling, as one does, with meaning - and the purpose of my life. This is something that happens so often that I have a rhythmic sort of relationship with it.
The coming and going of doubt (Why am I doing this? What does it all add up to?). The inevitable criticism.
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if only I worked faster. If I was more organized and intentional
if only I was younger, with more life ahead of me — or, paradoxically, if I were older and more experienced. If I’d finished school, started out with more… money, confidence, connections
if only I was prettier, smarter, thinner…
I’ll stop there. It’s just toxic.
I used to believe that this rhythmic litany was hormonal. Now that I don’t have a menstrual cycle, I can see it’s more phases of the moon-like than chemical, a natural cycling of expansion and contraction.
The problem turned out not to be a problem at all. Which is how these things work.
I used to have a teacher who said, “Your problem is your best friend.” To which, I always replied (in my head), “Maybe your problem but my problem is no friend of mine.”
Which was funny, not funny and also, completely missed the point. Then, I grew up a little and thought that I understood: Oh, I see. My problem is my best friend because it is a teacher, a way shower, some sort of guide of pain.
Later still, a little more grown up, I think about this differently. My problem IS my best friend now - but so is everything else: my laughter, my tears, my belly, which carried two beautiful babies and these feet which are asking me to sit down and rest. It’s been a long day. Everything is my best friend now. Maybe this is because I don’t need to be perfect any more. And in that discovery, I can let the world off the perfection hook too. Mostly, I think it’s because I am my best friend. Finally.
Writing that, I smiled. Look at that! Who knew?
Any way, I have these conversations with myself - in my journals, in the middle of the night. In dreams and open landscapes of my own interior.
At first, I thought I was talking with God or an angel. Later, I thought that I was channeling a wise old soul - someone wider, deeper and far more generous than I. And I was - and I am. It’s just that the wise old soul is me.
That’s because all of this - the angels, the gods, the guides who hold the lantern as I place my feet - ARE aspects of one consciousness. A ginormous Me times a million billion. A Me that includes the stars in the sky and the clams on the bottom of the ocean. Also, this Me includes bananas. Even though they are too high-carb for me to eat right now. They are still included. There can still be bananas.
All of this makes me aware of my own participation in Me - that wide and deep generosity —and gives me a glimpse into what I am actually capable of, what I already actually am. It helps me to strip back the self-criticism and the need to live up to my potential. This is my potential and I am the space for it. My job, I’m starting to understand, is to let as much of it through as I can…. when I can.
And when it’s too much — it’s okay to rest.
If there is a book in me (and there is) it is certainly about perfection and potential, about gentleness toward the tender child of the deep self. I see this book. It’s already here and forming itself. It’s made of those same waves — the rhythmic struggle, the self doubt.
The struggle is my response to the invitation, as the moon pulls back its light, leaving the unlit and empty sea of darkness. A darkness that is all for me —one wave at a time, it invites me out of hiding. When my response is welcome, I find in the darkness, invisible light - and a grounded joy I did not know was possible.
When my response is resistance, I find … well, more hiding places. What am I hiding from? My potential. (More accurately, my illusions about my potential.) For I’m discovering that ‘my potential’ is nothing like I expected it to be. Not fame, not publication nor membership in some tawny literary club. Rather, it seems, I’m headed for the potential of the darkness - the wide open sea of the unknown.
I trust this darkness now. I know I will be guided, not by some heavenly light, but by the star of love that burns (and always has) inside my own heart.
And so, here’s a message I received from Love a few years ago, back when I was struggling with the very same challenge, the very same question I always struggle with.
Dear one: You are a blessing to me in all of your ways.
Nothing you could do or not do could or would change that, for I am Love and it is my nature to love - and you are part of me and therefore, love is your nature. You began this lifetime in me and you will end this lifetime still in me. You will emerge back into me for we are one love.
Yet I know that sometimes you feel outside of love and distant from me. When you feel outside, you are always welcome to return. The way back is to ask and discover that, as always, I am here and you are here with me. And you are inside of blessing, in the kingdom/the queendom/the landscape/the world/the body and soul/ of Love.
You do not need to prove your devotion to me through worship or sacrifice. You need not earn my miracles. Only live inside of this love, which I freely gave, which I continue to give, and which I shall never withdraw.
You are never separate from love.
The fear that you have broken with me, that you have broken a promise, broken my trust, broken my commandments, and now will be exiled is not true and it is no longer your way. Your way is love. You are blameless, you are shameless, you will never be punished. You are never separate from love.
If you regret an action, do not spend a minute, an hour or a day lamenting your ‘sin’. There is no sin. Simply come home to the nature of your own heart. You need not prove your goodness, need not repent, nor spend your days demonstrating that you understand your error - I already know.
I know because I made you. I know because I AM you. Return to the way that you already are and always were: the way of love, moving and making your way in a world of love.
Shift to the way of love by breaking the habit of separation, of exclusion, of condemnation of yourself, of your brother and your sister.
Assume that the way of love is real. Assume the way of love is here where you are. Assume that the way of love is for you.
You are the way of love and all that you do is blessed. So it was and will be, forever more.
Of course, I understood and didn’t understand this. It was too strange, placing me too much in the story as an active participant. As an agent of my own journey. Love explained:
Your path is what you make it.
Follow love and your way is love. Follow fear and still your way is Love, only you cannot see it with your gaze trained on fearful images (fearful visions of the future, fearful memories of the past). You cannot see the images of love emerging all around you - and if you cannot see the world of love, you are unaware of its blessings, even as you are already always receiving them. For even when you cannot see or feel it, the world of love is here.
It must be clearly stated: there is no way of fear.
No one is born wicked. There is no inherent evil. There is only the way of love, occluded from sight by fearful thoughts. From fear, it is only a matter of turning and you are aware again, only a matter of opening your eyes and the nightmare ends, you are awake again.
For the way of love (and I) have never left you. I am here and you are here and we are here together. And this is the way (and the path) of love, which is the way to the experience of the world of love.
Love speaks through me. Love flows through me. I direct the movement of the flow of love with my mind - through my image and my action and my speech. And in this way, so do you.
To direct this flow, my mind sees, my ears hear, my body senses, my heart knows - and I know what to say, what to choose, what to build, and how to move. And in this way, so do you.
Some may see me in the shimmering of the light. Some may hear me in the song of the bird, in the endless return and return and return of the sea to the shore. Most will feel or sense me near. In a dream, in a time of sorrow or confusion. However you know me, trust what you see, what you hear, what you sense and know. What you always knew before you turned away. I am here, where you are. Wherever you are, love is. For you are love - and there you are.
You do not need to punish, to purify, to cleanse or to fix. You need only to turn (a single step, one choice - to privilege love over fear. One choice at a time. Small things add up to bigger things. A flow of rain becomes a trickle, a trickle swells the brook, the brook gushes down to the river and all rivers flow to the sea. For all waters are one water. And all life is one life.
In this way, one choice leads to another. Endless choices offered one behind the next. The choice is always here. Will you choose love? Will you privilege fear? A step becomes a journey, a journey leads to discovery, discovery leads to a new quest and new steps - and all of this adds up to build one lifetime, your lifetime.
As you walk the way of love that you have chosen, your way becomes a path that others may follow. As you carve the way of love into the world, you make way for love. Where there was wilderness, you find love.
You make a way and you become the maker of that way. As I made my way, now you make yours. For this is the way of the world of love.
There is nothing that is not love. Nothing that you see is not love.Nothing that you hear is not love.Nothing that you feel is not love.Nothing that you know or believe is not love.Nothing that you do is not love.Even fear, at its root, is love.
Even vengeance, even what you would name bad, sinful, evil, is love attempting desperately to find its way back to love. It is love aching to be seen, to be heard, to be witnessed in its suffering (the illusion of separation) and forgiven back into blessing.
We all know right from wrong. We all know the bargain we are making with love. The ones you call ‘bad’ always believe they are doing the right thing - the less bad thing. And always, always, always, they are doing the bad thing for ‘good reasons’ - to feed their family, to right a perceived wrong, to help another, to save their own life. Inside of their circles, there is devotion, loyalty. There is, even in the darkest caves of the heart, the recognition of love.
Therefore, do not condemn others. Do not label friends, colleagues. sisters or brothers with shame names. Do not condemn your own children or mine as bad, ignorant, evil, foolish.
Hold no one outside the boundary of the blessing space of love. Make it your project to understand, to forgive them back into blessing. Ask for my support and it is with you. Remember, in a world of love, all is love - even those you do not agree with, approve of or understand. For there are no ‘bad guys’. There are only hurt children, misunderstanding what they are and unseeing what this world is.
In my notebook, the transmission ends with some drawings and then, at the bottom of the page, a final note.
This is your adoption day. I adopt all that you make and do. I accept and include all that you are. I call you into the fullness of the one family.
Now, you must use your own discernment (thinking/word/logos/action) to observe, see, hear and know when what you make or do or think overwhelms, depletes or undoes you (and me).
This is your way now.You are the way of Love. This is your true potential.
I wish you a week of wide open darkness - and all the blessings and the fullness of your own arrival. I wish you a sense of deep welcome, everywhere you go.
xxoo ~ Amy
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