FaultsOrWounds

I think that prayer and meditation is something like making love. First the foundation is the relationship with the good communication. For me this comes from the openness of journaling, where my feelings crawl out from denial, hiding, or half-hiding, and reveal themselves. I use journal pages I've calligraphed, and made into journals, and they remind me of what is calling for attention from my body, mind, emotions and Spirit (and anywhere else - image is jelly fish oozling through a tank in an aquarium). [For info on buying journals contact me at Penofgold9@sbcglobal.net, put Journal in subject line]. Here I also get in touch with gratitude, and honoring myself for the efforts I've been making. (This has been paying off - last night in my dreams again I heard a message that was positive that I imagine was from me to me, or from someone to me - I'll take it).

Then, on a good day when I don't turn on the Internet immediately, I read. I believe we are part of a Universal Mind, and others have traveled some interesting, inspiring places in it. I sign up for a cruise: today I went on the ship Sacred Moments. There, on the calendar page for June 9 I came across a quote I was wanting to find as recently as yesterday. It is from Sophy Burnham (http://www.sophyburnham.com/):

I have learned in recent years that my faults, the defects that keep me from creating the work I want to do, are not flaws or failures. They are wounds. The merest shift in the word shifts attitude. As failure, flaws, defects, I want to crush them underfood, smash their noses in, impale their heads upon a pike and mount it on the tower wall. But this is my very soul I am impaling there, the essence of my heart. Block, the inability to proceed, signals not a defect but a wound exposed; and curiously in our wounds lie our divinity...healing comes from tenderness. Embrace the wounds, wash them, bandage them with loving care...

That was an h'ors d'oevre. I was touched by the synchronicity of life bringing me a quote I'd been wanting to find. Next I read today from Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah. Baha'ullah was a mystic who was imprisoned and exiled for 40 years for his teaching about the oneness of humankind and eliminating all prejudices. But his writings are full of Spirit, they are like energy efficient 15 billion watt bulbs. I didn't even know from Spirit until I read Baha'ullah. (Here is recent NPR story on national elections of Baha'i Faith inspired by Baha'u'llah: http://chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=24887
If you follow a spiritual path, whether Buddhism or Judaism or Christianity or Hinduism or Islam or another faith or follow a teacher or guru or believe in the Higher Self or Yourself, you know what it is to be mystically inspired, and you have books that inspire you in this way. The analogy here is to slow touch, where you are able to savor the moments, in this case, what you are reading. You are as receptive as you can be at that moment, opening up your view of the world to another's as much as you can manage at that moment.

Frankly, at some point, I often find myself saying inside something like Amen, but in me it comes out: Holy Shit! It is as if I get something that I didn't quite understand before, and I have to let go of some previous view of myself and the world to embrace it. It is like the imact - meteor hits earth. What I read this morning that impacted me had to do with that our connection with the Creator, the favor we receive in communing, has nothing to do with our own merit. I started to feel like everything I had and was was from the Creator.

After that reflection I wrote:

O Grace, thank you
O Benediction, thank you
O Guidance, Light,
Help, thank you
Everything
I owe to you,
Even my
ego
which
surrenders
before
its
Source


Maybe the Holy Shit is the orgasm.

Or maybe the orgasm lasts all day or as long as you hope it can because you are making love with life and the people you see in your day from a new vantage point.

And then there is being quiet and letting in understandings, or praying for direction for the day and listening, and, on a good day remembering to listen on how to be of service. I think going to clean my house is my next item on being of service today. I suppose quiet time could be compared to the bond with a partner (or oneself) after making love. As one woman I know referred to making love with her husband, it helps us "be in the same camp."

Have a wonderful day. Please comment because I want to see if putting myself out on a limb is reaching anyone putting themselves out on their limbs, too. Or if it helps motivate you to reach out from your favorite limb. Thanks. Camber from Think Fabulous (www.thinkfabulous.com) and I talked yesterday about saying what is really authentic and how that is so much more connecting with people. So this is my experiment.

Have a wonderful day of embracing those wounds when one rears its head. It is fabulous to have an embracing relationship within oneself. And to make love with the Creator through reading, prayer and reflection.

Claudia