Of Two-Way Streets and Enriching Dichotomies

  

Our world of apparent duality offers a wealth of disguised enrichment opportunities. Consider:

A cyber buddy who currently lives creatively without residence wondered why a stranger would open her home and heart to her. She emailed, "I don't understand why she's being so amazingly generous. I keep telling her she just blows me away."

I responded, "You never know what her own journey is…she may have needed to serve someone in exactly this way, and you are providing a golden opportunity, so it is a mutuality."

This is the way energy works. When my lifelong friend Ellie fell and broke her hip at 96, requiring a lengthy convalescence in a rehabilitation center and later at home, I initially despaired about why Spirit didn't simply call her Home.

Then I had a flash of insight: the enforced passivity enabled my fiercely independent friend to learn to receive, and blessed those who assisted her with the joy of service. I told her, "You would never have allowed it otherwise." With wonder and her trademark humility, Ellie exclaimed, "Amara, you're right!"

The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

What appears adverse can be advantageous. I needed to park my car on a different street due to an upcoming festival, and planned to be out of town the following week. I gave the young man who acts as my "car surrogate" the spare key, and asked him to please move the car back once the festival was over.

Unbeknownst to me, a road crew was about to repave the street; tow-away signs went up the day after I left. If the festival hadn't been scheduled (and, therefore, if I hadn't given Danny my spare key) my car would have been parked in its normal spot — and towed during the week I was away!

More profoundly: A dear friend was in a near-fatal motorcycle crash earlier this year. After a month in the ICU, he learned he'd need a walker once out of bed, and would have only minimal use of his right hand for the rest of his life (he's a southpaw, but still…). Eight months later, Rick says, "The accident was the best thing that ever happened to me."

During his convalescence he lost seventy pounds, and began exercising several hours a day as part of his physical therapy program; the combination reversed his adult-onset diabetes. He's grateful every day for the gift of life, and more open than he's ever been. He says, "I cry if I'm happy, I cry if I'm sad.

"And you know what? It feels amazing. I have nothing to hide now; what others think of me is no longer my concern. I can be emotionally honest. I feel like this is another piece of the silver lining surrounding that terrible trauma."

Sustained by his new outlook and the outpouring of love and support from friends and family, Rick's regained almost full use of his right hand, and returned to work — as a practicing physician. Practice makes perfect.

Once you've been through the fire, you're recast as pure essence; the superficial no longer holds sway in your life.

How Your Light Is Spent

Milton's sonnet, When I Consider How My Light is Spent, exemplifies the nature of life's dichotomies, and how we choose to interpret our time here. The full text reads:

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide;

"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"

I fondly ask. But Patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o'er land and ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.

"Apprehension" means both anxiety ­and understanding. If you apprehend the meaning behind Milton's final line, you will understand that simply being is what matters most.

Whoever or whatever your messenger is, listen deeply. Once you apprehend the message, invite yourself to let go, so that you may embrace this wisdom farther along life's spiral. Allow yourself to be amused by the alchemical nature of any apparent dichotomy that shows up in your life. And know there's an invisible cosmic trampoline beneath you, so you can rebound from pain's mirage, spread your wings, and fly.

© Copyright September 2017 by Amara Rose. All rights reserved.

Imagine Nation

"If I could tell the world one thing

It would be that we're all OK

And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful

And useless in times like these

I won't be made useless

I won't be idle with despair…"

~ Jewel, Hands

Here in the Great Turning, the predominant emotion is often fear — the same energy as excitement. What we feel is a matter of interpretation.

It's a time of incredible expansion, according to every cosmic weather report I've seen: an opportunity to compost our "harrumphitude" concerning Trumpelstiltskin (thanks to "mythic news" weaver of context Caroline Casey for these deLightfully winnovative words). If you have skin in the game vis-à-vis Trumpelstiltskin, this is the ripe moment to play your Trump card.

A Subtle Shift Makes the Diff

The key is our collective readiness and willingness to segue from living in Alien Nation to co-creating a global heart community, Imagine Nation. The shifts are subtle yet substantial: from thinking we're alone to realizing we're all one.  

In Alien Nation, self-flagellation is popular. "I'm the only one I know who can blackball myself in my own community," a woman despaired recently, explaining how, in angrily speaking her mind about an issue vital to her, she piqued the one person who might have proven most helpful, had she spoken with Spirit Tongue. I empathized, as I've often carried my own whips, too. Practicing self-love is the hardest task most of us will ever master.

Yet it's so apparent that everything is vibration: while food shopping in a happy frame of mind at my local organic grocery, trading quips from old Monty Python routines with the customer in front of me at check-out, I was bowled over when the young cashier offered, "Would you like me to burn you a CD of their skits?"

True Happy Hour

A New Yorker cartoon shows a man standing in front of a sandwich board outside a bar. READ MORE

29 Again: Wisdom from Your Future Self

The inimitable George Burns once made a movie called 18 Again, in which he magically switches consciousness with his 18-year-old grandson. With his 81-year-old wisdom in an 18-year-old body, Burns reinvigorates his grandson's life, transforming him from a fearful nerd into the class hero who, of course, gets the girl.

Would that we have the kind of wisdom in youth that we hopefully acquire by mid-life! Now that I'm living my second Saturn return — a huge wake-up call that occurs every 29 years — here's what I'd do at 29 (or any earlier life stage): READ MORE

A Subtle Shift Makes the Diff!

I'm a huge fan of subtle shifts. Sometimes just moving a letter, or changing where you place the emphasis, can completely alter the meaning and intention ~ and thus, shift your world.

Play with these pairings:

Scared ----- Sacred

Toxic ----- Tonic

Nowhere ----- Now here

Reactive ----- Creative

READ MORE

Tough Medicine

A work truck with an attached trailer drove by. Roped to the side of the trailer was a large teddy bear. Seriously.

I'm reading an extraordinary work by Active Dreaming creator Robert Moss, whose marriage of dreamwork and shamanism delivers a resounding "YES!" in every line. The Boy Who Died and Came Back might be a template for crafting a fully awakened life, using a lot more than whatever percentage of our gray matter is currently online. 

One of Moss's recurring themes, in his dreams and waking life, is communion with our animal kin. Even if we aren't familiar with animal totems, or don't consciously subscribe to the idea that animal medicine can support our growth, strapping your stuffed bear to the outside of a truck is symbolic of the way we live: divorced from introspection and wisdom, fearful of solitude or change, and suspicious of non-linear forms of healing — all of which Bear signifies.

The joy of how Moss lives and teaches is palpably freeing; each creatively named mini chapter is overflowing with dream wisdom and transformative ideas, amusingly presented by someone who understands the cosmic truth that Life is eternal, and the more we connect across realities and beyond belief systems, the more we expand our opportunities for Divine humor. I experienced this often on my awakening journey, which is only one reason Moss's work rings with verity for me.

I began cawing to crows and listening to their replies more than twenty years ago; together with Bear, Panther, and, of course, Snake (the ultimate symbol of transformation), Crow/Raven is one of my power animals. For a time, during my time out of mind, Deer was a companion, too.

Let's welcome our animal teachers home; they have much to share if we're willing to listen, as do the plant and mineral "kindoms" (that's kingdom minus the "g", illuminating how we are all kin; note how Kindom also contains the word "Kind").

Healing — and medicine — is only painful if we believe it needs to be. When we ingest the insights other realities and companions offer us, transformation can be uplifting, even wondrous — regardless of our physical state of health. I know.

I'll be delving deeper into Robert's work and where we are on our collective journey in the September issue of my inspirational enewsletter, What Shines, out next week!