by Marcy Heller

Even though it’s been such a scary, sometimes disorienting and totally unpredictable six months for all of us, this is where we have landed – more expanded, amplified and evolved!  Never before has so much changed so quickly and most dramatically. We have all learned and now know without a doubt that the evolution of our Expanded Self is no easy task.

Who would have thought that last year it was decreed, from Lorna Bevan, herself, “In the eye of this perfect storm, in 2019 – 2020 you are being handed the biggest get-out-of-jail free, cosmic pass of your entire life. What to do with it, that’s the question? When you surrender, when you reconcile yourself to things you cannot change, you set in motion a sequence of events in a whole new direction.”

So in this Spirit, along with this new world, is the realization that nothing can or will ever be the same. For those of us who are still entrenched in the old ways, this could be the most freeing and yet the most difficult time that you have ever had to face. It is so humbling to free ourselves from the belief that simply because we have done something up until now and for so long that there seems to be no reason to continue doing what doesn’t work any more!

For myself, my desire to be well-informed is conflicting with my desire to stay sane. Yes, that sums it up! It is easy to feel like we are waiting for all this to go away. However, if we are waiting for something to be different, nothing changes. It is only through these challenges and crisis that that we wake-up. There is so much that can be causing fear and anxiety in these uncertain times (before this anxiety was affecting almost 20% of all beings). What I have come to realize by trying many different things is that the only way that seems to have some merit is to meet these spiritual messengers (distress), with presence that will give rise to love and compassion for myself, and then begin to act from that vantage point. To paraphrase the Buddhist teacher, Tara Brach, is that if we want to evolve as a species it all depends on how we respond to the anxiety and fear that is arising. According to Brach, unprocessed fears give rise to even more separation. So if we want to create a more loving world we need to pay attention to what our bodies are calling us to love even more. She invites us to allow these difficulties to wake-up our compassion. To meet whatever that is distressing us with presence, instead of burying it deeper into our psyche! To allow whatever that is causing us distress in the moment to give rise to love in action and allow it to serve us to awaken in our hearts and minds.

According to Andrew Harvey in his book, ‘Savage Grace’ he writes, “There is a new global culture being called for—and that means that every country is going to have to surrender its selfish nationalism and open up to a global community. The earth has moved from tribe to group to country and then to international trade laws and international connection—and now even these systems are too small.  We are moving towards global community, and in the process narrow [nationalistic] loyalties will have to be surrendered to the larger whole. It is crucial that we allow Marion Woodman’s words to sink in: And if there is no ritual that people believe in—and ritual in this context means undergoing a [psychological or spiritual] death, a period of being in the dark hole of chaos, followed by a rebirth—then people don’t truly grow up. Only suffering can compel humanity to embrace the path of Reconnection, Resistance, Resilience, and Regeneration and to commit to Lion Hearted Leadership and the celebration not only of spiritual values but of the regeneration that we are endeavoring to bring to fruition. For years, we have argued that humans are experiencing a planetary rite of passage or initiation by way of the global crisis. It is compelling us to surrender to an initiatory ordeal in which we are forced to descend into the dark night of the globe collectively and the dark night of the soul individually so that the transformation of collective and individual consciousness may occur, for as Carl Jung insisted, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”

Through these difficulties I have gained so much more than what has been deleted from my life and it’s is creating the desire to want to help even more. At times I bow to the ground with gratitude for the awareness, compassion and ability to see where I have been asleep. Every time I step out of a familiar reacted trance wishing or wanting things to be different, I know that this is my spiritual path. How do I know that? Because it is happening now! All this has made me so much more courageous and resilient. Consequently, I too am learning to reclaim my true nature in this wild and wonderful new world!

Courage is required to stick around at such a time as the Sufi mystic Hafiz put it, “When God turns us upside down to shake all the nonsense out.” As we all are aware of a whole bunch of nonsense needs some shaking out today, much of it  has separated us from ourselves and one another. I am learning to be open to things I don’t expect.  As one Master wrote, “What the great mystics of all the traditions who have survived terrible passages tell us with one voice is that when we come to a dark night, we have only one resource:  To remain open in a state of radical unknowing. This will have two effects. It will crucify the false self’s perpetual hunger for certainty, and it will flay us humbly open to the guidance that can only come if we are totally receptive to it with no preconceptions.”

In closing I will share from Martha Beck’s ‘Finding Your Way in a Wild New World’, “This is the way we save the world; one peaceful word, one act of compassion, one long sweet nap, one burst of laughter at a time. And if you embrace this way of living, even in the most ordinary and prosaic-looking ways, word will spread. Your purpose may be only to find your own path, but others will feel calmed and healed by your art, your way of creating it, your simple presence.  The message you broadcast through the energetic Internet, as well as in the world of Form, will spread far and fast.”

Onward and upwards my courageous and wonderful Way-Finders, Light Workers, Warriors of Light and Star seeds. You are not alone. Thank you for continuing to show up on a daily basis. As I write this, know that there are beings of Light on the earth plane as energetic beings assisting us and making an impact in dismantling that dark screen of consciousness. I have heard that the amount of power of Light that is working on our behalf would blow our minds. The unrest is going to play out and we have a choice what we want to believe in. As we are taking our power back, remember even though we can’t see it the dark side is not going to win. It might get louder; however it is going to dissolve. The Light is going to win  It will not dissolve without a fight so we must be as courageous as possible. The Force is always with us! Remember as we shine our Light, a critical mass of human beings are arising because of our Work! We have to Trust. We have to Choose. We have to Believe.