Guiding Thought

Be fully conscious of your own Loving Presence which seeks expression through you. Your own Loving Presence Knows your heart and Knows your happiness. It Knows how to fulfill your heart and bring you joy by placing you in right situations, with right people, at right times where you may fully express your purpose. Submit your mind and heart, all your thoughts, words, actions to your own Loving Presence to be lifted to her/his vision and plan for your life.

Sharing

Every person and every interaction is an opportunity to practice, and to share love. And/Or, every person and every interaction is an opportunity to heal or transmute what is unlike love into love.

I’ve had both of these opportunities in the past 24 hours.

Scenario #1, sharing love:

The East Coast of the United States just had about 10 hours of heavy snow. This was my backyard this morning:

The state had issued a “your car will be towed if you get stuck” edict. Obviously, they wanted people to stay off the roads so plowing would be easier, not to mention how dangerous the roads were.

I was outside the front of my house doing a survey of the neighborhood, and was near a bank with an ATM; the street was not plowed. A van on a side street had stopped in traffic, and a guy with a bright orange and yellow vest got out of the passenger side. We walked toward each other.

As he approached, I asked… “Are you with the city (I thought maybe if he was “official” I could get some information on the state of things around me; he kind of looked at me funny)…or a citizen”? He said, “Yeah, a citizen…” and we passed each other.

I am aware of a particular dynamic in the United States between people with dark skin and people with light skin: There are lots of scenarios where white people can discriminate against people with darker skin, even unintentionally. I am white. The man was black. I thought, as we passed, that in that simple interaction, he could have perceived it as a prejudiced accusation by me, such as an implied, “what’s a black guy doing here if you’re not ‘with the city’?” even though I live in a racially mixed neighborhood.

I got to the end of the street and turned back around, to find him now walking back toward me. So when we passed, I said, “Is everything ok?” He said, “Noo, they towed my car last night, and I have to get it out of impound…and the ATM is down.” I said, “that sucks…” He said, “You work around here?” “No, I live across the street.” He said, “I’m going to see if I can get to the ATM inside” as he walked past me. I said, “Is there anything I can do to help?” He said, “No…(pause)…but thanks.”

I have found that offering help is a powerful way to show people, even strangers, that they are loved, cared for, and supported. It’s a way of saying, “I’m with you; we’re in this together; you’re not alone”. In this case, I also wanted to negate any perception of a micro-aggression, or inadvertent racism in our first pass. I wanted to let him know that even a (white) stranger cares. I would like to believe he felt it.

The thing is, if he had said “yes” and asked me for help– a ride somewhere, a loan…I would have done it. Sincerity is key. For most people, however, the offer is enough to convey caring–I’ve found that people rarely say “yes” to offers of help. I even found myself debating whether or not to offer to loan him money. But my inner voice said, “no, this is enough; this is his lesson”.

It was a small interaction, but I believe when the heart is sincere, a person feels it, and the love conveyed is real and powerful.

Scenario #2, transmuting that which is unlike love:

Without the details of the situation, here is what I wrote about my feelings, as I was working through this particular scenario:

“I have felt:

• really really angry
• seething
• full of hate and loathing
• disgust
• incredulous
• mostly just angry…and a part of me did (but not now, as I am writing) want to hate. I did not feel bad or guilty about wanting to hate. There was a part of me that wanted to embrace it.”

I have never been on such a verge. Here is the picture that came to mind:

I understood the Star Wars inner conflict so deeply emotionally that I could see how it speaks to so many people. We all (still…but this is changing) have this inner conflict between the dark and the light. Even me.

Even me. I was so taken aback with the intensity of wanting to hate, of wanting to embrace the anger, of forgetting everything I am and that I strive for daily, I truly did not know where these emotions came from. If my best friend had not been there as I was going through this, telling me to breathe, I don’t know if I would have stopped myself from succumbing to “the dark side”.

Let me be clear: I would not have become the new Vader apprentice. But energetically, if I had succumbed, I would have undone much of the work that I have done over decades. I would have set myself back, down into a hole that I have already climbed out of, and the hole would have been deeper this time.

This is the razor’s edge we walk when we do the evolutionary work of bringing in the light. The more light we bring, the more darkness comes to us for transformation. It does not get easier–don’t let people fool you and tell you that it’s all roses. At times, it gets harder, and your own personal stakes are higher. You must choose the light every time. And keep choosing the light no matter what.

This scenario was my reminder of this. So, I am now reminding you.

Thankfully, again due to my friend, I did not allow myself the luxury and ease (because in the moment, it would have been easy to just hate) of giving in to those emotions. I did some writing, I did some praying, I did a defusion*.

I found the core of those deeply buried feelings (which are almost always–for me–about my relationship with God), and I (and God) transmuted them. Everything cleared. I was able to forgive and move on/through. Thank God.

Bringing these two scenarios together:

As I was typing the second scenario, it occurred to me, you never know what a stranger is feeling, if they are overwhelmed with a feeling of anger or hate. It was my friend, being supportive, caring, and helpful that “brought me back” from potentially succumbing to the dark side. Perhaps being a “friend” to a stranger is enough for them to see the light, and transmute their own moment of anger into one of peace and forgiveness.

*Defusion: this is a technique that is based in the idea that emotional energy gets clustered and lodged in neural patterns. A defusion releases that dammed up emotional energy, then uses the pre-existing energy pattern, replacing the emotional “charge” with a new energy-association. For me in this scenario, the “charge” that was released was “hurt” and the new energy-association was “fascinated”.