Quiet Reflections and Prayers
It took a little practice, but I learned to remain in my heart. I learned to honor all that was painful while holding space for tenderness.
I began to sink into my heart a little more each time I remembered I had the option to remain there. Experiences that seemed unhealable at first glance began to reflect the softening in my own heart.
I found all things eventually reached the point where there was no real option but to let go and trust in a higher wisdom. Trying to hold on too tightly never really worked out.
Again and again, I was faced with increasingly complex experiences where my only hope was to trust I would be met and guided by my healer self with each step. In those moments, I wasn’t depending on my own limited sense of self in a separate body. I was in a state of listening prayer.I was deeply present and receptive to higher inspiration, wherever it came from.
I let go of all forms of thought that didn’t feel like higher inspiration. All stories in my mind that reinforced separateness had to be set down — if only for a moment.
There was pain in returning to wholeness. It was painful to reach back to parts of myself stuck in the past. And it was painful to begin to feel the pain of others as my own pain.
But there was no turning back. There was a tenderness in tapping into truth that I was unwilling to let go of again. And so I continued to meet each unfolding moment from a state of prayer — trusting in life to meet me. It felt like a huge risk, but I had been in that place before.
Maybe it was seeing the stories on the surface become unbearable that made jumping into the unknown seem less scary for a moment. Perhaps it was having been touched so deeply by the sharing of others or the desire to play a part in the shattering of old patterns of suffering. Perhaps it was a combination of these things that caused my heart to make a gesture to future generations through healing and softening my own heart a little more. How could I not?
Healing deeply meant finding a way to reach in to parts of Self — where it would have been easier not to. It meant reaching a place where surface responses and insights were no longer an option.
It meant becoming humble enough to reach into the unknown space within my own heart for guidance in each moment with the resolve to find my way and remain there and in a world finding its own heart again — no matter what.
I learned that creative processes held an element of messiness. I couldn’t really know when the pieces would come together — forming something more beautiful and tender than I had imagined.
It was tempting to look at the pieces and see only the mess. And so I practiced looking from a little higher view.
What Now was a gentle way of continuing on. It meant being okay with where I was. It meant being okay with where others were as well. It meant letting go of the need for outer stories to go a certain way, while still being present and offering my part
I found What Now to be a good place to focus in each moment. It was a saving grace to learn to keep my focus on the unfolding step in front of me. No matter what I wished I had done before or understood a little sooner, it mattered that I was taking the step in front of me. I liked the way this new found sense of self felt as I dropped the old stories in my mind and focused on the step in front of me.
Healing deeply was a little different than I had first expected it to be. I had to learn to hold and let go of all the pieces of my heart.
I learned to reach for my own inner healer — listening beyond stories and thought — holding space for all that was unhealed in me — respecting the tenderness, authentic beauty, compassion and peace I found there that couldn’t have been taught.
I began to notice all the ways I had tried to reach this place that had actually taken me in the opposite direction. Instead of trying so hard to work out the stories in my mind, I learned to be in my heart — where unresolved pieces turned into pieces of art and honored wisdom. Whatever was needed began to unfold a little more gracefully from there.
And so I learned to reach a little further into my own heart. I learned to reach for a little hidden magic and a quiet prayer to hold for as long as it took — until the softness I felt there began to spill over.
I learned to reach for healing words reflecting silent spaces in hearts that knew the sacredness of the journey back whenever old wounds showed up again.
I learned to soften my path a little more with each step as I continued on.
One day I realized the peace I felt had come out of the quiet moments, the insights that came that couldn’t be shared or explained. It had come out of whatever remained of the grief of being within a separate self and the grace of having found my way back to my whole heart.
It was the non-verbal kind of feeling my way through life that had saved me. It was the wisdom beyond stories and questions and answers I found in the silent spaces within that nothing else could reach.
It came out of the willingness to wait forever for words to form and outer forms to match the love I knew in my heart.
Laurie's Notes 