Journal of Sacred Work

4 responses to “Day 322 – The Continuous Beauty of the Soul”

1. 

   ~liz Wessel

   November 17, 2008

   This makes perfect sense to me. I believe those who turn to the dark side perceive the world through fear based eyes filled with thoughts of scarcity and lack. They see themselves as separate and they have forgotten their origin in Love. Since all action begins with thought, I try to cultivate and nurture Loving thoughts within. In order for this to occur, I must recognize that Love in others. The Journal provides a daily seed to help nurture Loving thought towards action. We must be vigilant and aware to avoid falling asleep. My friend wrote this e-mail to me the other day after having attended by brother’s funeral. I share it because I think on some level it connects with today’s meditation.
   “As we drove home we both had the same reaction to Johnny’s service. What would people say about us! There is an exercise in Steven Coveys book where you project into the future your own funeral and think about how you would want to be remembered. Then you build your life around that. When I hear the word legacy I sometimes wonder if it misses one important element. What was the motivation driving the behavior that created it. Love, or giving to get love? My personal experience envelops both and they are so different experientially. Early life was definitely from the needy side so it never felt fulfilling. Early mid life, pretty much aimlessly wandering — not really looking not really giving just sort of observing. Now I often feel the enormity of the necessity of completely building a life around Love for my sake and the sake of the planet and I am temporarily paralyzed .Big picture/small acts seems most useful at this stage.”
   I love my friend’s honesty. Similar to my friend I felt mostly self-absorbed trying to survive when I was raising my children and working full-time. Considering the vastness of today’s world conflicts one can easily feel paralyzed and overwhelmed. Yet, the individual level is within our ability to affect change. That is why I say, raise the white flag and surrender! Let go of the drama and conflicts in this life. They really do not matter and they are not real anyway. There is only one way to live life, loving it away.

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2. 

   Diana Gallaher

   November 17, 2008

   I think realizing that we are all capable of all of it is essential in opening our hearts to great love. I am just as capable of evil as I am of good. I think this understanding helps me to get into the skin of another person, seek to understand why they respond in the way they do, and cultivate love instead of hate or fear.

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3. 

   Victoria Facey

   November 17, 2008

   I woke up today in the aftermath of several horrific fires the happened in Southern California this past weekend. My heart goes out to many victims who lost homes, lost memories and personal affects; this likely gave them more hardship than they were probably dealing with in these hard times.
   If we can remember to put ourselves in another person’s shoes, I think we can enhance love’s pathway through our souls.

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4. 

   Xavier Espinosa

   November 17, 2008

   This article serves to remind us that we need to become ever vigilant of our tendency to place a value on things that need to remain “ineffable”. The dictionary describes it as “incapable of being expressed or described in words; inexpressible: ineffable joy.”
   The concept of the “soul” can be argued back and forth- the ego or the id? The Christian or the cross burner? The animal who some say has no soul- or the inhabitants the inter-kingdom where our pets and loved ones wait to meet us as we cross over the bridge to eternity?
   We visualize the soul as something tangible because we need to be able to see something so that we can believe better. Did Hitler have a soul? How about Mother Teresa? Gandhi? Martin Luther King Jr? The Martyrs? Stalin? Mussolini? The answer is YES. They all had a SOUL they all had VISION. A mystic told me “The Soul is the place of greatest integrity” And integrity means whole, complete or “the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire.”
   The “soundness” of the integrity is what we question. So we place a relative value on the “empire” that Gandhi was empowering and refute the “empire” that Hitler was trying to prosper.
   The soul meant love to Whitman, to Schweitzer perhaps to each of us and that is the context of the soul with which we care to identify. But we are all different and because we are different we need to respect the differences in others.
   In the context of what we have chosen to do with our lives- being care givers- we have chosen to identify with an integrity that is “sound” and giving and has altruistic attributes. What we need to examine ourselves from a closer perspective and evaluate what our reaction would be if suddenly one day as caregivers we are assigned to take care of Hitler as our patient. What would our reaction be to dealing with “evil”? This is the test of our “soul” because it challenges our integrity. What is our commitment to our “soul” Is an evil one not deserving of our commitment? Do we differentiate who is worthy of our “soul commitment” Do we turn off the healing we so proudly profess to dole out because someone is “different”? “If it is different it is wrong”
   This is the crux and the dilemma that every true hypocrite must face. When it is time to step up, the ones with the true soul not only show up, they do so fearlessly. They work with those who they may feel are “evil” but they do so with the same vigor and commitment and integrity that they apply to everything they do because that is their commitment. A friend of mine once said that he believed that everyone who has been killed for a cause died in a state of fearlessness. They did not dread the assassin because they all spoke to the same Spirit. And this Spirit said to them “If you are going to die, then die. You knew it was a possibility when you undertook your mission. But if you are going to live, then you need to live with the same commitment as if you were going to die.” Their mission, their vision had integrity. No bullet or knife would diminish that goal. The ones who lived in fear were those who did not vest their everything in the soul as the one they chose to follow.
   And that integrity that these Saints, Heroes, Villains maintain in their soul is what makes them Saints, Heroes or Villains; and what serves as a constant reminder that keeps us envisioning what we can do in our own lives.

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