Learning to fly : remembering to shine

Part of me feels the fear of the fledgling bird that has still not tested its wings, to know or trust their strength. And part of me knows that until the fledgling tries to fly for the first time and continues trying it will not develop that skill or strength.

I just spoke to my Mum and when I came off the phone and read back my post the Ocean and the Drop I was aware that my soul is preparing to let go.  There is so much I have gone through, so much to have worked through.  There are so many ways I have held on.  So many times I was beckoned by my soul away to another journey but something deeply unresolved or unsolved in me drew me back to this place of family.  Now I am aware that my Mum is trying to prepare us for the fact that soon she wont be here any more and though I go through frustrations with my Mum and at times she becomes the all bad, rejecting mother, that is not really the sum total of who my Mum is, it’s just who she becomes in the painful moments when I am not mirrored.  We are separate beings..

I don’t think any one person of us is just one person.  I do think within us there are many different parts of self, rhythms, moods, desires and impulses.  I most certainly experience this in my mother.  Her mother part is just one part of her.  There are other parts of her, maybe many other parts she wishes she could have lived, just as there are these parts in me and all of us.

There is my mother’s child self which I think with age in some way draws closer to the surface of her being. For me this child self is the part of my Mum I feel I can see most clearly at times.  I relate to it and at times carry its wounds and deficits  : the shyness, insecurity  and reticence, some feelings of inadequacy as well as its strengths, the courage, the compassion, the part that loves to give to others, the part that loves her family, loves beauty and art, music and dancing, the part that is creative and warm, the part that is quite intelligent but never had its intelligence fully recognised or fostered.  So many different parts.

As I reflect on this today I am aware of just how I am living the journey onward not only of my mother’s unlived life, but of my father’s too.  There is a part of each of them in me, but there is also a part of my soul that is uniquely mine, a part that has its own dreams and ideas, a part that didn’t really find a good home in this particular family with these particular parents, but had essential soul lessons to learn even from that.  There is a part of me that is courageous and bold, that knows it can fly but there is also a part that fears it won’t stay airborne in flight but drop to the ground.  And maybe I must not rush this process, slowly, invisibly, incrementally I am growing, transforming, shedding and embodying.

I feel quite emotional at the moment.  I feel quite a profound mixture of sadness and joy.  I feel a sense of promise.  I am beginning to feel that the pain of the past is just one part of me and it isn’t the largest part, but it is a large part of me that I am being called to express and shed.  I know I will always carry the sadness of my losses but I do feel I am integrating them and they are making me strong.

I remember reading something an astrologer lecturing at the Centre for Psychological Astrology talked about in one of her seminars.  She said that each of us has a wounded part of us but we also have a place deep within that is not at all touched by any of these wounds or wounding experiences.  This is the part of us that can watch everything burn to the ground and remain unphased.  It is the part of us that just make the decision to leave the wounded part behind for a time to go off on adventures and find freedom from bondage or burdens.

Perhaps some of us only get access to this deeper part of our souls when we have done the necessary work with the wounded part to break free and wash clear and clean the wounds that have prevented the deeper spirit or soul from us in shining.  We have to break free from this conditioning that tries to limit us, to keep us in cages, that stops us from flying and burning bright.

It seems to me there are deep killing, hostile, wounding energies in our culture, forces that don’t want us to shine and yet it seems it is up to each of us to break free from or ignore these if we truly want to live free, happy, serene lives.  In some way we internalise these fears which can hold us back and which others can project on us.

Living free may not mean being pain free but maybe it may mean not turning our pain into unnecessary suffering.  For if we buy into collective myths which tell us we are not good enough or that our gold lies outside of ourselves we get lost and lose touch with our essence that essential part of our soul that must shine if it is to be true to itself and live with joy in this life.

I have only just started the first chapter on Thursday I bought the book What If This is Heaven by Anita Moorjani.  It is about what Anita learned both from her near death experience as well as the events that followed as she began to write and teach about it and her miraculous cure from lymphoma the cancer that was killing her prior to her NDE.

She expresses the thoughts that much of what we learn or are taught actually keeps us from happiness and truth.  It blinds us to our inner light.  The truth is that our essence is love, it comes from love and its true purpose is love.  This love is not conditional on us being or doing anything else than purely expressing the unique soul that we are.  Many of us were not taught this.  We were not loved unconditionally.  We were raised by or impacted upon by unconscious others who had their own wounds, biases and conditioning.

Many of us believe or have been taught that this real, true self is not enough. Anita herself was bullied severely at school, she had parents who didn’t affirm her.  As an Indian woman she was taught she was inferior.  She came to believe who she was was inherently flawed by all of this.  What was revealed to her during her NDE was that it was these beliefs which led her to develop cancer.  On the other side she met a force of love that was beyond anything she had ever felt or known on earth.

Her cancer was terminal, but when she died and passed over to the spirit side she had the opportunity to come back and she had an immediate and spontaneous remission.  I wont go into any more of her journey here as you can read about it yourself, but I do believe she has a powerful message.  I will close this blog with the poem she wrote which heads up her book, it says things to me I often feel as well as things I believe so many of us need to hear in this life.  Her message is often rejected but she lives its truth.  She lives in a way in which she never allows outer voices to block her to listening to her inner guidance system with helps her to find the truth within, that voice that got blocked by all of her conditioning.

When I was born into this world

The only things I knew were to love, laugh, and shine my light brightly.

Then as I grew, people told me to stop laughing

“Take life seriously,” they said,

“If you want to get ahead in this world.”

So I stopped laughing

People told me, “Be careful who you love

if you don’t want your heart broken.”

So I stopped loving.

They said “don’t shine your light so bright

As it draws too much attention to you.”

So I stopped shining

And became small

And withered

And died

Only to learn upon death

That all that matter in life

Is to love, laugh and shine our light brightly!