This Above All

                                                                                         

I took a chance. The cards I was holding so closely to my chest no longer felt like they should remain there. My heart had opened, and in order to be fair it was time to be honest, authentic and real.

It was not for a few days that I began to question my judgment. Awareness of my exposure slowly crept over me and as it did, it became larger than I was. In a tailspin of vulnerability, I took my honest words back; made it clear I had made a big mistake.

All of this was done out of fear, of course: Fear of playing the fool; fear of getting hurt. Sound familiar?

That day, as I went about my daily life, I came across Shakespeare’s quote “This above all: to thine self be true,” three separate times. I might mention that I don’t recall ever coming across this quote outside of an English Lit class, yet it came to me from three different sources in a twenty-four hour period. Even stranger was that its original source is Hamlet; a personal favorite of the person who I had courageously handed my “cards” in the first place.

I’m not a believer in coincidence. With a deep breath of acceptance, I closed my eyes and thanked Spirit for leading me to the information I needed to transcend the vortex of emotion I was experiencing.

How often do we miss the messages we are given; the communication from Spirit that shows up in forms we fail to recognize?

It is not yet clear what the outcome to my personal story mentioned above will be, but of one thing I am certain; “to thine self be true.”

Blessings,

Sheryl  

Becoming

“I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.”                                                    Albert Einstein

Such was the quote that I posted on the Timeless Water’s Facebook page. Based on the number of “likes,” it was evident that I was not alone in recognizing the degree to which I get in my own way when it comes to personal transformation.

In response, I posted a reference to the hidden beliefs that shape our lives and realities being like bars on a window. We look through the bars not even seeing them or realizing they are of our own making. I had hoped people would respond with the same shared recognition. No, not so much….

After writing Timeless Waters, rather than seeking to promote it, I spent the next few years considering what, after having this remarkable experience, I was really going to do with it. As I began to delve further into the reality I am creating in this lifetime and the parallels it holds with other lifetimes I can recall, it dawned on me that this lifetime is where the rubber meets the road. In fact, it’s really the only one I have to work with! So why not start there?

So why is it so hard to give up who we are in order to become what we will be?

The usual things come to mind: fear of change, not seeing an outer edge to our comfort zone, and old habits die hard. All so very true for me! But there’s more. To a degree, the person I hold myself to me is just a set of ideas rather than a fixed way of being, or change would be impossible.  That recognition then leads one to ask: what are these ideas that shape us and as well as our lives? They are beliefs; beliefs we often don’t even know we have.

The notion that we create our own realities is not a new one, but we most often operate in the realm of conscious thought when applying that idea to our own lives. Yet there is so much more behind our conscious awareness that is shaping who we are. Giving up what we are in order to become what we can be, in essence, requires letting go of the idea we have created about ourselves. That can be some tough work, and it begins with understanding beliefs.

Ram Dass wrote “there is a grief that occurs when who you thought you were begins to disappear.” But on the other side is the person we will be, and that is well worth it, is it not?

Blessings,

Sheryl

Look for Sheryl’s workbook, You Hold the Key to You: Beliefs, Reality and Your Incarnational Past, in early 2013.

Patterns

           If you have read Timeless Waters, you are already aware that it is a story of what felt like a space-time convergence leading to the discovery of three different lifetimes. These lifetimes spanned several hundred years and were all related to a specific location in New Mexico. What an experience it was! And while finding clues and documentation supporting my dreams and intuitions is what made the ride so unbelievable, it was the recognition of reincarnational patterns that has impacted my life the most. The stories, while relevant in their own right, are simply the backdrop; they are the vehicle through which the patterns are demonstrated. The patterns are what we carry with us through space and time, beckoning us to seek understanding.

            What I am still learning, however, is that just because I know about the patterns, and have detailed knowledge about other incarnations related to those patterns, it doesn’t mean I get to be finished with the pattern. The older I get, the more I see that life patterns are like an onion. You make your way through one layer of the human experience and shed your skin, only to find with the passage of time that—oh, there is it again in the next layer! And so it goes over the decades.

            One of my patterns is loss. It has come up over and over again in a variety of forms. Success in dealing with this pattern is not going to be demonstrated by the eradication of loss in my life and a cheer from above that I finally figured it out. Rather, it is about how I respond.

            I once heard someone say that life lessons are just that; for life. They are the crux of the work we as individuals are here to do, and no one is exempt. The challenge then, is to recognize what is happening when faced with your own particular pattern and each time you are, reach deeper understanding of the wisdom that can be gained from the experience—even when it renders you a pile of rubble.

            I write this as a reminder to myself as much as anyone else, as I am yet again faced with the challenge of one of my patterns. I know the past lifetime that the pattern relates to, and I even know the players. Yet I still struggle, as do we all. Does this mean we are failures or somehow less evolved? I don’t think so. It means we are here, having a human experience, engaged in the work we came into this life to do. 

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.

Spirit Work

There are those in this world who have chosen to take the “spiritual path,” by which I mean their focus and how they make their livelihoods is based in what we might call “spiritual work”. A part of me yearns to be one of them, and has for the better part of two decades. As a result, I became a massage therapist that intuitively incorporated energy work, I learned Reiki, I taught meditation groups, I have written a book. For heaven’s sake, I’m writing this.
 
But you know what? I am a social worker by education and profession. I love it, and quite frankly am good at what I do. Most important, it pays the bills! I am a woman torn between two lovers; torn between the reality of supporting my family and a life I view as the equivalent of communing with the divine while living on a mountain top away from stress, …..Deep sigh.
 
Snap out of it, Sheryl! The reality is that our very lives are Spirit Work.
 
There have been years that my connection with Spirit was blatantly evident by the amazing experiences I was having; Timeless Waters as a prime example. Then I have had years of what seemed like very little connection to Spirit; on the treadmill of life, day in- day out responsibilities. These are times when Marilyn (aka Malory in TW) would ask if “anything was coming through” psychically or if I had been working on Timeless Waters. My answer would be “No, I guess I’m just living it.”
 
Every part of our lives is Spirit made manifest; from mowing the lawn to answering the email from your boss to paying the water bill to tucking your kids into bed at night. And on the many days that I am rushing out of the house at 7:45 in the morning to get to work without the opportunity to meditate, I find myself in the car saying “Spirit, I didn’t get any time to connect, but I am you made manifest—help me hear you today.”
 
It’s when we realize that the very fabric of our lives is Spirit Work that life gets richer. It’s where we find empathy for others. It’s where we find wisdom and understanding, and it’s where we begin to get a glimpse of what it means to live a physical life on the earth plane.
 
Rich work indeed.

Journey of Self

There are forms of adventure that are the opposite of thrusting one's self outward.  They are quiet, perhaps unobservable to the outside world, and sometiems so subtle that one doesn't know the magnitude until  it has already passed.  Such is the journey of Self - the multidimensional self; the totality of who we are.

A Little About My Book

In a nutshell, I visited a location in New Mexico, and it was no universal coincidence. I had some small, but interesting experiences during my brief stay there, but upon returning started having dreams. In these dreams I had vivid experiences from someone else’s perspective. I got names and relationships that I was able to validate with US census data from the 1800’s. In actuality here were three, what I have come to understand as reincarnational existences.

The reason I wrote this story is because I believe that knowing and understanding our multidimensional selves is our birthright. Think about this—we may not be psychics who can set up a table and give readings to other people, but access to ourselves? Yes, that is our birthright.