Happy and Joyous Easter! The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. ~ Marcel Proust All healing, all flourishing comes from the story you tell yourself. ~ Dr. Christiana Northrup, M.D. Today in multitudes of churches, places and homes the old, old Easter Story will be told and celebrated -- in as many ways as there are participants. May y/our own way of entering and participating in the Story - the sacred meaning and mystery of life, death and new life - be natural, real, comforting and enlivening for you and in sync with the way it really is as you see and experience life. May y/our entering of the Sacred Chrysalis be metamorphic and transformational -- in positive serendipitous ways that enhance y/our life journey for self, loved ones and others. May y/our participation in the Story result in special sacred co-creation of meaning aligned with the unique creation which has your name - which is called you. May you become empowered to flip the script of long-held old personal stories of regret, loss, disappointment, and pain into new stories of gratitude, love, new opportunity, gifts of compassion and joy to share with others. May we embrace the givens within a larger framework of acceptance, understanding, life and love. May breakdowns become breakthroughs to vitality, new life, new ways of seeing, being, doing, living and loving. May y/our pain be transformed into fuel for personal, emotional, cognitive, spiritual growth, for creatively choosing and contributing in y/our own unique ways toward a world that works for all. May we continually come alive in new ways. May we break out of dark shadows, shed our cocoons and soar in the Light that enlightens all beings and our world! Blessings in the Great Mystery and miracle of Life! Ron Bell 4-19-14 P.S. For reflection: Stories are our human way of making sense, meaning, significance and purpose out of our lives, both individually and communally. The time may be ripe for asking: Whats my story - old and new? How do I want to script and co-author my story? Consciously or unconsciously, we are writing and rewriting our stories all of the time. (I love that T-shirt which reads: Its never too late to have a happy childhood! ;-) We dont just create stories, stories create us. Our narratives shape our memories, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, choices and the way we live. An empowering starting point can be captured in Howard Thurmans statement: Dont ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. ~ Ron Bell ============= What if the only thing you needed to do today was to be in the world by loving it? What would it look like to love it all- to pause & consciously beam love at the guy in the car next to you in the traffic jam, the cashier in the grocery store, the colleague who makes the meeting go on & on? Im not talking about sweet sentimentality, but a dropping down into our hearts & whispering within- May you be well. May you be happy. May you have what you need. To make this a practise today- how would that impact us? others? the world? ~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer ============= The purpose of intimacy is to massage the heart, to soften the muscles around our hardened places and keep pliant the places where we are already open. The circle of love is deep and strong. It can forgive mistakes and cast out error. It can foster greatness and bring forth new life...This is our function in each others lives: to hold the space for each others beauty, so that our beloved can leave us and we still feel in his (or her) absence how beautiful we are. ~ Marianne Williamson ============== Love all creation. The whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, and every ray of light. Love the plants. Love the animals. love everything. If you love everything you will perceive the Divine Mystery in all things. Once you perceive it you will comprehend it better every day. And you will come, at last, to love the whole world with an all embracing love. ~ Dostoyevsky ============== Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending ~ Maria Robinson After we make a new ending, we can make a new beginning. ~ Ron Bell =============== In the world to come I shall not be asked, Why were you not Moses? I shall be asked, Why were you not Zusya? ~ Rabbi Zusya =========== “You are beautifully enough. Your stories of ‘not good enough’ are fictional novels written by a culture still hiding its light under a bushel of shame. The REAL story, your TRUE autobiography, is one of inherent magnificence, courage and divinity flowing through your soul-veins. So you decide which book to read—the fictional novel written by those who do not SEE you, or the HOLY BOOK written by your glorious spirit.” ~ jeff brown =============== It’s not about living happily ever after. It’s about living authentically ever after. Not En’Light’enment, but Enrealment. Embodying a way of being that is genuine, that holds the space for the everything, that can embrace the shadow as it comes, that can see it through to the light-lessons at its heart. Showing up for all of it. Living fully, inclusively, honestly.. Living authentically ever after.. ~ Jeff Brown ================ BUTTERFLY PARABLE - STORY There is a beautiful story about a caterpillar that lived much of its life believing that it had come into being only to eat and sleep and do what the rest of the caterpillars did. However it was unhappy. Somehow it sensed that its life had another dimension not yet experienced. One day, driven by a strange longing, it decided to become still and silent. It hung from the branch of a tree, weaving a cocoon around itself. Inside the cocoon, although constrained and uncomfortable, it waited, sensing and aware. Its patience bore fruit, for when the cocoon burst open, it was no longer the lowly worm that went in, but a beautiful, resplendent, winged butterfly which dazzled the sky. It soared and flew, no longer limited to its worm-like existence, but free and unbounded. The caterpillar had been transformed into a thing of air and lightness, magic and beauty. Once the transformation had taken place, it was impossible for the butterfly to return to being a worm. In the cocoon, the caterpillar had become one with its inner being and in this union it reached its ultimate nature. What happened in the cocoon can be described as transformation. Transformation liberates us in the evolutionary process .... To evolve as a human being is to become aware of ones limitations; to strive, with intense passion, towards the transcendence for which we all have the potential. ~ Anonymous ==================== I believe we are verbs, human becomings, works in progress -- in metamorphic, life-long process of transformation. Our imaginal cells are co-evocative and co-creative. We can co-create life “spaces for growth”, for becoming – environments in which we feel relatively secure enough to risk, to stretch beyond comfort zones, to be vulnerable and authentic, to dream, to envision and to grow and develop into our best selves. We can create spaces for life transitions, for transformation, here and now -- perhaps somewhat similar to what the chrysalis or cocoon is to the caterpillar. The butterfly is a wonder-full and powerful archetype, metaphor and meme embedded in our being. May we follow our entelechy -- the dynamic force and purpose which moves us toward realizing our best, fullest, unique, true self. Barbara Marx Hubbard says: “Our entelechy is the oak pressing against the acorn to become a mighty tree. It is the power of the delicate green shoot breaking through the frozen ground in Spring. It is the butterfly silently self-organizing while hidden in the disintegrating caterpillar.” I love the saying : what the caterpillar calls an ending, the butterfly calls a beginning. May we each have, be mindful of and trust in Beginnings Without End! ~ Ron Bell ==================== If you watch a caterpillar you might catch the moment when the crawling stops. Delicate membranes attach to a twig, old skin is shed, pupal skin hardens. The caterpillar chooses the food the butterfly will need, chooses the exact space to later spread its wings. Without the space, the wings would never fly. The chrysalis is essential. It is the twilight zone, a precarious world between past and future. The grub will not emerge as a high class caterpillar. Does it know what will go on inside? Does it prepare for the winged beauty that slowly and painfully emerges, that will live by a new set of laws? I am trusting the mystery of my life, what is emerging, what is dying, I am willing to become Amen. ~ Onaka
Posted on: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 16:35:58 +0000
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