Transcendence

     “a state of being or existence above and beyond the limits of material experience”

Just as we are all dichotomies, so we all have characteristics that can be viewed as both our blessing and our curse. One of those characteristics for me is my ability to feel deeply. My ex-husband would watch on with both frustration and awe as I covered the spectrum of human emotion in a matter of minutes, and then with ease, could carry on with the rest of my day. He once said the sky I saw was much bluer than the one he saw, but that the pain I felt was deeper too.

            Living life that way is a rich experience, and one that can enable a person to not fear what lay within him or herself. But sometimes when a person is handed too much over a span of time, he or she shuts down emotionally; a coping mechanism.

At the time I didn’t realize it, but it happened to me. I handled the experiences being handed to me with an “evenness” previously unknown to me. And so it was for several years, and it occurred to me that maybe I had learned transcendence; the ability to rise above and beyond the limits of material experience.

Then one night as I sat gazing at the stars, I realized my sense of awe was diminished. As I thought about many of the events I had faced over the previous few years, I also recalled that I had never shed any tears. The words to the Eagle’s Desperado played in my head-- “You’re losing all your highs and lows, aint’ it funny how the feeling goes away--” and I got it; I was numb. While the absence of the lows was nice, life without the highs is a flat life indeed. With that recognition, the tough exterior that shielded me for several years began to soften, and I got hurt. I sat on a friend’s couch sobbing, recalling how awful it was to feel something so deeply. Later that night, a favorite phrase from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, came into my mind:

        “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

            Gibran’s poetic wisdom both gave me pause to reconsider the concept of transcendence and reminded me of the richness that exists in this physical experience we have chosen. Human emotion is a critical part of that experience. With that awareness, maybe healthy transcendence is not so much about responding to what life throws our way by immediately rising above it. Perhaps it is ultimately about how we respond when we find ourselves in that deep well of human emotion.

Blessings,

Sheryl

Changing the World

I recently had a conversation with a lovely woman who is entering the field of energetic medicine and healing. She said it had been pointed out to her that her new work was really about changing the world, and what a big responsibility that was. This made me smile; her background was in a social work related field, and in my opinion, she was already changing the world!

I do have to agree, however; changing the world is a big responsibility. But is this monumental task left in the hands of a mere few? Echoing what I wrote last month in “Spirit Work,” our very lives are Spirit at work; yours and mine, from the Reiki Masters and gurus to the plumbers and cashiers at the gas station. Changing the world can’t happen at the hands of a few designees. It’s going to take everyone, or at least enough of us to create a critical mass.

This, of course, is part of the Paradigm Shift. The question is, how can we contribute to this shift? Sorry folks, we can’t all take to the vortexes of Sedona to live the life of the mystics. And what would happen to the world if we did?

The real answer to the question of how we change the world is not very glamorous or even mystical. When I say what I’m about to say, my sons would say “Mom is getting all Man in the Mirror,” but Michael Jackson’s lyrics were right: “take a look at yourself and make a change.”

The most critical place we can start is with ourselves. We can begin to get honest about our own inner conflicts, control dramas, and fears. We can begin to evaluate the realities we are creating every day and the hidden beliefs and assumptions we hold that create those realities. It is only then that we can begin to understand why “reality” exists as it does and begin the alter it- from the inside out.

That’s how we change the world.

*The song "Man in the Mirror" was written and composed by Glen Ballard and Siedah Garrett.