Spiritual Warriors ~ Welcome, Love

Author: Kathy Wyner


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My fractured ankle is healing, and so am I. This is going to be a challenging post to write because I know that whatever words I choose, they will be unable to carry the power of the awakening I am experiencing. I will have to entrust that task to the energy that summons and carries the words from my heart to electronic presses, this warm energy in my heart that moves like a fragrant tropical breeze through my body, mind and spirit, welcoming me Home.

It feels both fragile and exciting, this new relationship to Love. I feel the urge to speak of it so as to give it roots, although I know that Love is doing that very thing, becoming rooted within me, without any effort on my part. I must trust that the effort has been made, first in the decision to make this walk from fear to love, then in the subsequent unfolding stages of the Process. This part, Integration, feels as if it is more about allowing, surrendering to, and receiving. It is still work, but work of a different kind.

For me, as for many other Path travelers, Integration took me first on a doubled-back route to the previous stage of the Process. There was more letting go for me to do, and my soul wanted to be certain I did not miss the opportunity to make the most of it. This startled and dismayed me at first. It would be like thinking (and hoping) that the garden you have been weeding is all cleared out, you are now excitedly getting planting tools out of the shed, and then discovering a whole section of the garden, older and perhaps more hidden, that you have missed weeding.

I found myself thinking, as I got the digging tools out again, “How deep does this (letting go) go? Where is the bottom of it?” Those, it turns out, are appropriate questions. Any gardener could tell you that if you are wanting to rid your garden of crabgrass, you must not be satisfied to pull out only what appears above ground. You must be diligent, dig deep, get to the roots, and follow those roots to other roots, not stopping until you have done the very best you can to get to the literal bottom or origin of the matter.

I was able to do this once I let go of being startled or dismayed, and simply accepted that my soul and Love were in charge, and surrendered to that trustworthy leadership. I can see, in my mind’s eye, a moment in time when I felt this surrendering, and in that moment, Love moved in.

There is more work for me to do, a whole final stage of the Process to unfold, and probably at least a little more of this current one. But today offers me a moment of peaceful victory, quiet celebration, gratitude, and pure, simple joy.

Filed under: Integration, Kathy Wyner, Letting Go, Love, Self-Love, Spiritual Warriors, The Path, The Process, fear , Love, The Path, Self-Love, fear, The Process, Spiritual Warriors, Kathy Wyner, Letting Go, Victory

Spiritual Warriors ~ The Body as Ally

Author: Kathy Wyner

I am happy to announce that I have successfully given birth (let go), and have now entered into the first postpartum stage of the Process, Integration. To use the gardening metaphor of a past blog, (5/30, “Spiritual Warriors: A Postcard from the Path”), I have successfully eliminated what crabgrass I could at this point in time, and am focusing my energies on tending to plants and seedlings now more free to grow. I am also readying myself for an abundant harvest, renewed enthusiasm (and expanded space) for planting, and the simple joy of hanging out in my beautiful, peaceful garden.

Or if you resonated more with the closet-cleaning metaphor, the vehicles required to cart away the burdensome discarded items must have come while I wasn’t looking, but gone those items are. The departure seemed to happen almost magically when I finally was totally clear and firm about parting with them. I had some second thoughts, fear kicked up a big fuss and tried to assert its protective-but-paralyzing authority, but ultimately I trusted Love to pull me through. The logic and wisdom of my own words in this blog came through to support me too – I did not want to put the sorted-and-ready-to-discard items back, only to find myself facing the same challenging task of actually letting them go at some point in the future. I was half-way through; I chose to complete what I had begun, and I chose to do it now.

I got help from another unexpected source too – my body. In my considerable number of years of being on the Path, I have come to respect and listen to my body more and more. Melana speaks eloquently about this very subject in an interview for “People You Need to Know” and “Spark Plug Radio” now posted on the “Melana On The Path” podcast site. It is called “Loving the Body For Better Health.”

For me, loving my body has been a gradual process of coming to embrace my body as an ally in my own spiritual growth. There are times when holding this truth is easier than others. When illness or physical injury strikes, it is particularly challenging, isn’t it? We can feel more “derailed,” from our brilliant plans, and as if our bodies are betraying us. A line from the John Lennon song, “Beautiful Boy” – “Life is what’s happening to you while you’re busy making other plans,” – seems perfectly apt here.

Over time, though I may have either internally railed against illness or stoically given in and waited for it to pass, I began to listen to what my body had to say to me. In the beginning, I relied upon the work of Louise Hay and others who have faithfully chronicled the “voices” of all manner of aches, pains, illnesses and parts of the body, to suggest to me what my body might be telling me. I remain grateful for this information, and though I still use it, I have also been both internalizing this wisdom and personalizing it. Though my body speaks to me in the language of all bodies, I have been developing a personal relationship with my body that supports my own growth.

So when I rolled my ankle a week and a half ago, falling from the edge of a low jogging trampoline, I knew as I was lying there unable to move, waiting for help, in tears from physical pain and something much, much deeper, that my body was assisting me somehow in Letting Go.

It is an interesting place to find oneself, this awareness coinciding with a real mourning of what is now lost. Who really wants to be laid up with a fractured ankle for six weeks in the middle of summer? Since loving the self means honoring all of our feelings, I had to allow myself both the space to be sad and the knowing that there were gifts here.

One gift I could claim immediately, as evidence of my own growth over time, is that not for a second did I blame or judge myself for what happened. That may seem like a small thing or an obvious product of learning to love the self, but believe me, it took work to get to that place. I support anyone reading this to stop judgmental thoughts and replace them with the powerful statement “I accept myself,” the next time you blame yourself or your body for any illness or injury.

Saying these words as a blanket statement, covering you and all of your parts, known and as yet to be revealed, “puts you into alignment with You.” (Chakra)

It is good medicine, and neither over-the-counter nor prescriptive; it is within our power to give to ourselves, and it is an important precursor to love, for we cannot love what we cannot accept. I support you in saying it whenever you feel like it, for it is a medicine on which you can neither overdose nor develop an unhealthy addiction; it simply works.

Besides assisting me in letting go and showing me how far I have come, this injury will, I am certain, bring me more gifts. I expect I will be able to tell you more of them as they reveal themselves in the stage of the Process I am now in, Integration. Stay tuned.

Filed under: Chakra, Kathy Wyner, Letting Go, Love, Self-Love, Spiritual Warriors, The Body, The Path, The Process , Chakra, Kathy Wyner, Love, Self-Love, Spiritual Warriors, The Body, The Process

Love Yourself 101 ~ Where Is The Love?

Author: Melana Plains

Our birthright is ours, to have and to hold, to become and to unfold, to live and to die with and, in that passage, to relinquish and to pass on. In the story of being a human being, birth and life, living and sharing, growing and surpassing, cresting and reflecting, our birthright, the energy we are endowed with, to fuel such an ambitious journey, is love. Why love? Because love is the perfect energetic food, fit for human consumption, digestion and expression. It’s a synergistic match to our essence, our soul, the spiritual aspect of ourselves that links us to the Source, to the true Mother/Father of us All ~ to God.

Love nurtures us, embracing all that we are, without exclusion or judgment, while instilling in us a sense of the positive and the possible, the willingness and the doable, the creative and the expressive, all the ways in which we can shape and manifest a reality built on the joy of being alive. This ‘birthright love’, is the original, umbilical link to our true home, to the wholeness of who we are, and to the Oneness of all living beings. It is the place, beyond this life, where we shall all return, to the Source, to ourselves and to each other. This ‘birthright love’, this pure and true love, is the love we lose when we are born into this reality of fear. What we are offered, to replace our loss, is love based on fear, which in truth, is just fear dressed up to look like love, but underneath, it is only fear, and not love at all.

When I was a little girl, age 10, I wrote my first ever piece about love, very much like this one, to my parents. It was in the evening, after dinner, when I asked them, with tremors of trepidation, and a glimmer of hope, if I could read something to them that was very important. Something I was certain would change all of our lives, forever and for the better. What I was about to share with them were my feelings about love, mine for them and theirs for me. Hoping, that once they knew, that I knew, that they did not love me, they would be free of the terrible burden of pretending as if they did. I was certain they would experience such relief in knowing that I no longer expected them to care for me as their child. Simply put, I told them I wanted to leave their home and go to the place where the love was.

As I was reading, I felt such an unburdening, a letting go of a secret I had been holding for the past five years. It was at the age of five, when I first realized that things were not as they seemed to be and my parents were becoming strangers to me. Their love felt like lies, something false given to me to cover up something else I did not recognize or understand ~ their fears. The more I read, the more excited I became at the prospect of leaving, of finally being able to be in the presence and under the guidance and protection of people who understood me and my sensitive nature. People who would welcome and be proud of the loving and caring young woman I was soon to become.

Well, needless to say, with applying just a little bit of imagination, anyone besides my 10-year old self, could have quickly assessed how this was really going to turn out. The first response was from my father; his anger and rage spewed forth a litany of harsh and cutting words, the very ones I was seeking to escape from. You’d have to know my mother, to understand why she would pick that time, of all times, to point out to my father that, at least the writing was good. As far as he was concerned, it was too good and his final words to me were to forbid me to ever write another word ~ other than my homework ~ while I was living under his roof. Scorned and punished for my poisoned and wretched heart, I was sent away to spend many long days and nights in the prison cell of my room. Although it was not my intention to do so, and they would never let me see it, I’m sure my parents were hurt by the things I said. It was at that point I realized my feelings were dangerous, to me and to others, and for everyone’s protection, I would no longer allow myself to feel them. So, my life did change, forever, after all. It was at that point, I began to think my way through everything, including my feelings.

My parents, like many parents, kept us clothed, well-fed and made certain we took advantage of any and all educational opportunities we were presented with. We had a stable home and a predictable and reliable schedule that fostered a certain continuity and constancy in our lives.
Parents clothe and feed their children, educate and discipline them, instruct, guide and protect them, to keep them safe and out of harm’s way. All of these acts are their offerings, their evidence that they do, indeed, love them. And, these can, most certainly, be given and received as acts of love.

However, while children, as young beings new to this life, need to be taken care of, they are more aware of the feelings that are conveyed to them, than the things being done for them. It is the interaction with these feelings that begin to inform and shape their perception and understanding of what love is ~ and isn’t. Whether or not they are loved, and if they are lovable beings. As the light of their own ‘birthright love’ begins to dim and diminish, and with no one to teach them how to keep it alive by loving themselves, children start to view and experience love as something that can be scary, unpredictable, unreliable and unsafe.

This is especially true when it comes to parental discipline and the methods used to ensure a child’s good behavior. It is important for parents to ask themselves, whether or not, physically hitting, or mentally and emotionally debasing a child is a loving and appropriate act, and whether the damage done to a child’s feelings of personal safety, dignity and self-respect is an acceptable trade-off. Disciplining a child with these methods, in the name of love, sends a message that continues to be played out in abusive adult relationships. We tend to repeat the behaviors most impacting to us as children, and act them out in our adult lives.

As we develop a deeper understanding of where this fear originated, and when we were most severely impacted by it, we can now begin to look at what we can do to change our lives, forever and for the better. By learning to love ourselves, we are given the opportunity to return to our original, ‘birthright love’. By opening our hearts and embracing our own child within, we are able to take responsibility for healing ourselves and for choosing the kind of love that we want to share with our children, with our beloved ones and with the world.

Mx

Filed under: Children, DiRadioCast.com, God, JB Williams, Love, Love Yourself 101, Melana Plains, Self-Love, The Path, fear , Children, fear, feelings, God, Love, Love Yourself 101, Melana Plains, Self-Love, The Path

Spiritual Warriors ~ Remembering How To Let Go

Author: Kathy Wyner

Greetings again from my journey through the Process, the symphonic Path movement of my inner being from fear to love. This is my third week of Letting Go, and I will do my best to describe what it feels like to be here.

In last week’s post, I used the metaphor of cleaning a closet to describe what it feels like to be engaged in the Process, especially as it relates to all of the internal work that precedes letting go. The photo of sorted-through piles of stuff that accompanied the post suited where I felt I was at with this phase – all of the looking and taking apart and sorting had been done, but the piles were still there – separate from my closet, but still not gone from my house. This week I found myself wondering how I would know when Letting Go had been accomplished. I knew there would be no truck pulling up in my driveway to take away my discarded fears, and I knew I would not be able to look at the calendar and say, “Okay, that’s it, it’s been two weeks, I’m done.” And even though I am not new to the Process, I felt a certain uneasiness about whether or not I knew or remembered or could re-conjure how to fully let go of something that had been a part of me for a very long time.

The beauty of the Process, as Melana reminded me, was that I did not have to “do” anything. Doing has to do with thinking – we think and we get ideas and then we do something to act upon our idea, and we all are very familiar with how that process works. But being has to do with feeling – we feel, and we show up for what gets brought to us in response to that feeling. When engaged in the Process, one makes a specific and clear statement to oneself and to the universe each night before going to sleep. The statement activates and supports whichever phase of the Process one is in, and the rest just unfolds like a magical night at the theater. We just have to relax and allow it, show up, and trust that what we have set in motion will fulfill itself.

So this week I could feel, at certain times, a rain-like energy gently coursing through my being, from head to toe; it was surprising and gratifying to have a physical sensation of letting go, and to recognize it as being that. Even harder to miss was the quality of conversations I was having with people – and generally, for the most part, people with whom I regularly interact anyway – but something was different. I listened to them differently, they opened up to me in different ways, I responded to them differently when I spoke, and I was responded to differently as well. Sometimes fear was present – was I really going to say this to this person? Was I really going to show up so boldly, so much in the truth about who I am and what I believe? Was I really ready to take that step? But fear, although somewhat present, (perhaps I was hearing its muffled voice calling to me from inside one of those bundles) did not get to make the decision; I made the decision, with, as Melana says, the Path under my feet and behind my back.

And so today I celebrate. This is a good feeling, and I want to savor it a bit. Yes, there is more work to do, but I have remembered how to let go – and I didn’t have to “do” anything. It is mysterious, miraculous and joyous, as is any birth.

Filed under: Kathy Wyner, Letting Go, Love, Self-Love, Spiritual Warriors, The Path, The Process , Kathy Wyner, Letting Go, Love, Self-Love, Spiritual Warriors, The Path, The Process

Spiritual Warriors ~ Notes From The Closet Floor

Author: Kathy Wyner

I am still out here on my Spiritual Warrior journey, still in the Letting Go phase. Last time I wrote I compared doing the Process, this invaluable tool for spiritual growth, to tending to a garden, including, of course, identifying and removing its weeds. Another metaphor that works is that of cleaning out a closet or a garage – anywhere accumulated stuff is stored.

You all know how that task goes, I am sure. In fact, I use it for that very reason. In describing the steps of something so familiar, along with the corresponding desire and energy that carries us through to completion, I am also describing the journey from fear to love within a being. It will help me to do this, and hopefully it will make sense to you.

So the first thing is you have this messy closet. You probably have been avoiding cleaning it because the thought is overwhelming. It may be positively bulging now, with no room for anything new because all of the space is taken up. You can’t just take a bulldozer to it because there are meaningful things in there, things that you really want to keep, all mixed up with the old, worn out, ill-fitting things, or hand-me-downs for which you never asked. The trouble is you can hardly see or find anything, and you don’t even know or remember all that is in there. It is easier to just keep the door shut, if you even can.

But then one day you realize that you cannot avoid it any longer. You really want to know what is in there, and you want what is in there to be useful to you, to be comprised of things you like and want to wear, things that suit and express who you are now, not who you were ten years ago or never really were. So you are going to have to go through it all, everything, and make some decisions about what to keep and what to let go. You know that you will feel so much better after doing this work. You will be able to breathe easier, you will feel proud of your work, you will have room for something new, you may find a forgotten treasure or two, and, most importantly, your closet will be useful to you again. It will reflect, support, and help you express who you are now.

And so you begin, with great energy and purpose. You become extremely absorbed, less efficient than you thought you would be. There may be boxes on the shelves, and you have to look inside of them, and the boxes may be full of trinkets, and the trinkets full of memories. You sit down and take them out, one at a time. Each one has a story to tell, and some of the stories make you cry, laugh, or both.

Everything that was stuffed in the closet gets brought down to the floor. The mess has grown, it seems, and there you are, sitting in the middle of it. It is at this point that you can wonder whether or not this was such a good idea. You may even forget why you began such a task. Have you ever dived into such a task, become immersed in it, sat down with it because that is what it requires, and have someone – perhaps a family member – come along and ask you why you are even bothering with it? Maybe it makes them nervous; maybe it reminds them of a similar task that they have been putting off. In any case, you are probably equal parts annoyed by the question and wondering why yourself.

This is a pivotal moment. You are either going to remember, “Oh yes, I am cleaning this closet because it is time. I cannot feel free until I do this.” Or you are going to say, “This is too overwhelming. I can’t do it now,” and shove everything back in. If nothing gets let go of, it doesn’t really matter if the piles are neater. There still is no room for anything new, and the job gets put off for another day when it will be no easier.

But most times, you go on. Another energy kicks in now, a determined warrior energy that will carry you through to completion. You declare your intention to complete this task, (knowing you are the only one who can), take a deep breath and begin to sort: love it, used to love it, never did fit right, where did this come from, don’t need it, outgrew it, takes up valuable space – and as you sort and place things in bags or boxes, you begin to say good-bye to them.

There is real sadness in this, even though you know it is time and you will have so much more space for the new; these clothes or trinkets have been a part of your life, and served you well at one time. You can feel a little guilty letting them go, wistful, and also fearful that you might regret this bold action; might you need that blazer in the future, even though you haven’t worn it for five years and your body and tastes have changed?

That is where I am at in my Process of walking from fear to love. Letting go means saying goodbye. It is finishing the task of putting the old stuff (fears, beliefs and habits that do not support me in loving myself) into the boxes, ceremonially thanking them for helping me carry my life when I needed them, calling up the agency that will come and pick them up, and watching them depart. Soon I will wipe down the shelves, lovingly and with renewed appreciation put back what I am keeping, and delight in my accomplishment. I will be able to see what is there, know that I chose it all, and excitedly anticipate the colors and textures of new arrivals, for which there is now plenty of space.

Filed under: Kathy Wyner, Letting Go, Love, Spiritual Warriors, The Path, The Process, fear , fear, Kathy Wyner, Letting Go, Love, Spiritual Warriors, The Closet, The Path, The Process

Love Yourself 101 ~ Through A Child’s Eyes

Author: Melana Plains





Children are the brightest, the liveliest, the most promising stars of hope that God has ever sent to grace the human race. They are beginners and beginners are leaders; they have the freshest impression of every moment and they leave the clearest footprint in their wake, evidence of a free and unencumbered presence. They are royalty, pure of heart and filled with love’s innocence and the wisdom of love’s unconditional acceptance. Children know how to be themselves and delight in expressing the wonder and the joy of their own existence. That is, until someone tells them not to. That they are too big or too small, too loud or too quiet, too fast or too slow, too much or too little Too anything at all, and clearly, not enough.

Each one of us are those children, even still, as we navigate our adult terrain, promising ourselves that we will get it right, do a better job, not screw up, make them proud, flash a smile, and try our very best to be happy. Or, we decide all bets are off, what’s the point, there’s no pleasing them, why try at all, a losing hand will never win. And so, we go on creating lives and scenarios that rail against a hidden enemy whose guises are too numerous to recognize. We could blame a few, or many, the parents, the teacher or the siblings. Any one of them could very well have been the catalyst of the fear, that stopped us dead in our tracks, on our way to becoming us, and sent us in search of a better way to be. In that moment, we lost our freshness, our delight, our freedom and our joy and sought to become someone we didn’t know. We didn’t realize or have a clue as to how much of ourselves we would compromise, sacrifice and lose, in order to fit in, to please, to get along, to belong, to be loved.

Some acts are perpetuated on children with malicious intent to do harm. But mostly, it’s a lack of awareness of their own relationship with fear, and a desire to give their children a better life and fashion them into better people, that compels parents and caretakers to align with fear and rob them of their true identity. Some parents pride themselves in allowing their children full range of expression, free of guidelines and guidance on how to steer themselves in a mindful and balanced way. Others set limits and establish rules, while seemingly supporting their young ones to grow into who they choose to be. Then there are those who, with the heavy hand of fear-based authority, repress the very spirit of a child, daring them to express even the smallest sampling of who they are inside. In all these ways that parents attempt to ‘do the right thing’ by their children, one unavoidable and undeniable fact still remains: they will all teach them to be afraid. Good or bad, indifferent or focused, in whichever way a parent is driven to teach a child how to be who they should be, it’s always out of the fear of who they may or may not become.

Children are the hardest hit by fear; their openness, vulnerability and innocence is the antithesis of the oppressive, harsh and joyless distortion that fear creates in our human expression. It is at this point, when we are young, that our lives shift dramatically and we become aware of this foreign energy that seeks to take hold of our precious reality. Children are sensitive creatures, but they are also survivors. The first response a child has to this unwarrantable invasion is to protect the heart, the source of the feelings and the voice of the soul. They rescue their openness, vulnerability and innocence and hide it safely within. Closing the heart, and detaching from their feelings, they begin using their minds to think about how to behave and what to say in this new and strange situation. Most of all, they realize, that something is terribly amiss. That the pure love of their birthright was now gone, and something called ‘love’, fashioned out of fear, would now take its place.

When we begin the journey of learning to love the self, we must go back to that time in our lives and tell the story of the child. As adults, we will first look back, telling it over the distance and the time that has passed since we were there. With guidance, we begin to ‘be there’ and allow the voice of the child to speak the truth of his or her experience. The child, thus safe and supported, will begin to tell what really happened, all the things that were seen and said. It’s the child’s story that’s the most important of all. Without the threat of censure or judgment, the child will begin to reveal himself and sometimes, for the very first time, the person will get their first real glimpse at who, in the recesses of that hidden heart, they truly are. It’s at this point on The Path, that the true self begins to awaken, and the possibility of being loved for who we are stands within our reach.

Mx

Note:The first installment of this series, Love Yourself 101 ~ Healing A Legacy of Pain, can be found by clicking on the link. The Love Yourself 101 series is also the current topic of our radio show, Love Yourself, airing every other Saturday (tune in today, 6/6) on DiRadioCast.com, Past episodes of the show are also available on my podcast site, Melana On The Path.

Filed under: Children, DiRadioCast.com, JB Williams, Love, Love Yourself 101, Melana Plains, Self-Love, The Heart, The Mind, The Path, fear , Children, DIRadioCast, fear, JB Williams, Love, Love Yourself 101, Love Yourself Radio Show, Melana Plains, Self-Love, The Path

Spiritual Warriors ~ A Postcard from the Path

Author: Kathy Wyner

It has been many weeks since I said I would send you post cards. I feel a little like the kid away at camp, full of promises to write, full now of excuses why it hasn’t happened. Actually, there is only one: the journey within can feel both preoccupying and discombobulating. It is okay; that is part of how one knows it is working!

Then too, it can be so challenging to write or speak of the inner journey – the journey to uncover, remember, and reclaim the truth of who one is. It is, I remind myself, a worthy challenge, one to which I aspire, one to which my soul is deeply committed, even if some of my parts whisper to me that I might just want to skip it.

It would appear that those parts (fears) have been having the upper hand lately, in terms of whether to write about my own journey on this blog or to skip it. I have given myself a pass, which I realize now felt momentarily freeing, but not ultimately honoring or respectful of who I am and how I want to express myself.

Honor and respect, as the Path teaches, are two of the five foundational elements of love. In fact the other three – integrity, being real, and telling the truth – also work to show me that I can choose to keep my commitment or change it or end it, whatever reflects my truth about it. But to allow it to lapse or “give myself a pass” is to choose to avoid, to not confront, to hide from, and thus to let fear be in the driver’s seat of one of my soul’s deepest commitments. I am in the phase of the Process called Letting Go right now, and I don’t mind telling you that avoidance, not confronting, and hiding from, are old ways of being that are about to meet the broom.

Well now, as an accurate Path journalist, I have to amend that visual. It speaks to how I feel today, which is strong, clear and determined, so I’ll let it stay for that reason. But in truth, a more accurate visual would be that of a gardener getting rid of crabgrass. Picture me as the gardener; the garden as my life, with all of its seedlings and plants in various stages of growth; the crabgrass as fear; and love as the energy that holds, nurtures and sustains it all. In Acknowledgment (phase 1 of the Process), I got to see all of the places in my garden where the crabgrass pops up. I had dreams, memories, interactions with others, books, stories and insightful moments that made sure of that.

In Willingness to Let Go, I prepared myself for the work of digging up the crabgrass, and felt what it would be like to have it be gone from my garden. Even though I don’t want this crabgrass, even though it is choking the life-breath away from my beautiful plants and seedlings, I am used to it. I might miss it, and my garden will be a different place once it is gone. What will my garden then look like? Will my family, friends and neighbors be okay with the change? My plants will thrive, no doubt; can I handle that? It seems as if I’ll be very busy harvesting and sharing the bounty! It looks good; it looks wonderful, but really, am I up to all of that? And even, do I deserve to have such abundance?

So now we are caught up, and I am glad I finally wrote to you. I am really having a splendid adventure. I can see that more clearly, now that I have talked to you about it. I’ll let you know how Letting Go goes. I know the crabgrass thinks it is an important part of the garden, and will fight for it’s right to stay. So it is not going to be so easy. But love will support me and Melana and the Path will guide me. And I, after all, am the gardener.

Filed under: Kathy Wyner, Love, Self-Love, Spiritual Warriors, The Path, The Process, Willingness To Let Go, fear , fear, Kathy Wyner, Love, Self-Love, Spiritual Warriors, The Path, The Process

Love Yourself 101 ~ A New Path Series on DiRadioCast.com

Author: Melana Plains

(Click on image or link to purchase tees at the DiRadioCast Shop).


Love Yourself 101, a new Path series teaching the basics of loving the self, starts today on our Love Yourself radio show on DiRadioCast.com. The show, which airs every other Saturday, is proving to be the perfect vehicle for presenting the foundational what, where, when, why and how experience of learning to love yourself. It also allows us to reach larger numbers of people all over the world with the truth about love. We are sincerely grateful to Africa Allah and DiRadioCast.com for supporting our efforts and for giving us this opportunity to share it with an established and welcoming audience.

In our first episode of this series, we start with Love Yourself 101 ~ Healing The Legacy of Pain. We begin with an in-depth look at the original ‘pain gene’, fear, and how we can all begin to identify its presence in our lives. My co-host, JB Williams and I participate in a lively, thought provoking discussion about our different childhoods and the impact that growing up, with an inherited relationship with fear, can have on us as children. By the time we reach adulthood, this same fear has become enmeshed and ingrained in everything we feel, think and express about ourselves and who we are. It takes going back and recalling our first realization, as children, of its presence in our lives, for us to start separating it from our own perception of ourselves. It is then that we begin to understand that we are not our pain; we are not our fear. Fear is an illness that injures and distorts our true nature and our sense of who we are. Fear can also be acknowledged and let go of; its damage can be identified and healed. Love is the energy that provides the power, the tools and the medicine to facilitate this process.

I had a very interesting experience while listening to the show this morning. It was my fourth listen; I was checking to make sure that it was up and running smoothly. By the end, when JB starts playing our signature end song, Love Train by The O’Jays, I just started weeping! The most significant thing about this is that, in the show, I speak very clearly about the fact that we are purposefully presenting the information in a way to support and encourage people to open up and allow themselves to feel. If you present love in its pure and enlivening expression, it will sink in, beneath all barriers and layers of self-protection and defense, to induce a healing response. The first sign of that movement is the surfacing of your feelings. It took four times of listening to it for that very thing to happen to me!

Now, I’ve been learning, living and teaching the truth about love for the past 20 years. Although there will always be something new to discover about loving the self, the basics stay the same and become a part of our foundational reality. How powerful it is to be reminded that even someone like myself, so steeped, schooled and immersed in this truth about love, can be moved to tears by that initial and groundbreaking awareness that I am, we are all, worthy of love and have always been. That loving ourselves and each other is as natural and organic for us as breathing. Without fear to blind us, we become captivated, again and again, by the vision of who we all are in love. You never outgrow that moment…

Our next Love Yourself radio show will air in two weeks on Saturday, June 6, 2009, when we’ll present the second episode of this series. You can also catch our shows at Melana On The Path, my podcast site, the Sunday after they air. Join us for an incredible and unforgettable experience as we unfold this healing path to love.

Mx

Filed under: DiRadioCast.com, Healing, JB Williams, Love, Love Yourself 101, Melana Plains, Self-Love, The Path, fear , DiRadioCast.com, fear, healing, JB Williams, Love, Love Yourself 101, Love Yourself Radio Show, Melana Plains, Self-Love, The Path

Healing Body, Mind & Spirit

Author: Melana Plains

Healing any one aspect of ourselves will invariably and consistently involve every other part of our being. Our beings consist of a team of aspects that live, love and work together to co-create and sustain the life force of our existence.

Today, even as I write this, I am undergoing the last leg of my own healing journey. A particularly severe and painful breach, which interrupted the harmony and flow of my body’s intended course, sent me reeling inward to brace myself as I endured waves of gut wrenching pain, rapid weight loss and a cessation of any activity, save for breathing. This is a chronic condition that has gotten better over time and occurs with less and less frequency, but when it comes, it takes no prisoners. It consumes everything in its wake, every inch of me, all of who I am. Since I am its reluctant host who, after all, still has some need of it, (and it’s my need of it that keeps it coming), I must surrender all that I am to its demands. Only then, will it offer, in exchange for all that it has wrought, the truth, the vision, the understanding and the transformation that I myself could not reach without its assistance.

Thus, my feelings, my mind, my body and my spirit are all cleansed, revitalized and encoded with the purest truth of their highest capability and functionality. In other words, this harsh intruder is akin to ‘the cleaner’ shown in some murder mysteries; it comes in, unceremoniously cleans up the mess of my repressed actions, my unspoken truths, my doubts and fears, my blocked and unrealized dreams, and all the damaged areas where my own love for myself must further deepen and grow. As I continue to excavate and uncover more of who I am, the light of love will bathe and seep through, seeking to heal any new places of fear that are now exposed. If I am unaware, resistant or behave incapable of offering love my assistance, a ‘team’ produced illness will step in as a catalyst to move things along. Loving the self is an evolutionary process, whose perfection is revealed in the ongoing discovery of who we are, and in our own conscious intention to heal ourselves and all of the aspects of our being.

As I begin, again, to eat and sleep, to work and play, I am steeped in a peaceful gratitude for having endured the challenges of my healing and for blossoming into a newer, more true and real me. The need to suffer to arrive here will never be my conscious method of choice, as I abhor suffering of any kind for myself and all my fellow human beings. With God’s able assistance, I am working on ways to develop better tools, utilizing love and The Path’s teachings, so that we can evolve beyond this need to suffer into an unfettered willingness to grow and change with ease.

Mx

Filed under: God, Healing, Love, Melana Plains, Self-Love, The Path, fear , fear, God, healing, illness, Love, Self-Love, The Path

Spiritual Newborns ~ The Swish

Author: Kathy Wyner

Well, here I am, transitioning again, saying good-bye to Spiritual Newborn territory and hello to the territory just up ahead of Spiritual Warriors. New beginnings: it is a good thing I love them. Really, when seen from a certain perspective, new beginnings are happening all of the time in our lives. Each day, each moment, carries with it the possibility for saying, doing, thinking, believing and acting differently, more in accordance with who we really are, more in accordance with love.

“Karma can change with the swish of a horse’s tail.” Someone once asked me what I thought this (probably Buddhist) saying meant. I had to think about it for a moment; I have western sensibilities, and am not totally at home with the concept of karma. But when I focused on the visual of that familiar swish, I suddenly felt as if I did understand. Nothing is written in stone, especially our self-imposed limitations. Change, when it comes, is a shift, at once subtle and profound. The statement about karma changing resonates in the same place in me as Christ’s teaching that if we had but faith, we could move mountains.

When we apply these teachings to the inner journey, doorways of understanding begin to open. Most of us, perhaps all of us have had epiphanies, moments of clarity, what is sometimes referred to as “Aha” moments. We know that we can neither orchestrate such moments nor hold too tightly onto them. When we are in them, we have the sublime feeling that we have been touched by grace, and the very best we can do with that is to allow it, and to surrender into it. It is a speechless time.

Being on the Path means that one has made a conscious decision to go within and become Love’s dedicated student. Loving ourselves puts us in alignment with ourselves, with who we really are. “That is the only place inside yourself that no one can come in and mess with,” Chakra once told me. “They can change the scenery, they can change your clothes, they can change everything outside of you. But they cannot change what is in here (your heart). This in here will change what’s out there. It doesn’t work the other way around.”

For someone who had always looked for an outside-of-self reason why I could not do or be what I wanted, this was a powerful “Aha” moment of my own. Mountains must have moved (perhaps karma too) as I absorbed this truth because life has never been the same for me since that moment.

I don’t know exactly what Love will be teaching me now, in Spiritual Warriors, the “working” portion of the continually-spiralling journey of new beginnings. I have an idea of what it will be because, as a Spiritual Newborn, I have been looking around and paying attention. There are beliefs about who I am, what is possible for me to express and have, give and receive that need updating. That will be work, but joyous work. I’ll send you post cards along the way.

Filed under: Chakra, Kathy Wyner, Love, Self-Love, Spiritual Newborns, Spiritual Warriors, The Path , Chakra, Kathy Wyner, Love, Self-Love, Spiritual Newborns, Spiritual Warriors, Spirituality, The Path