The Business of Healing

In the last several months, a vast amount of our collective energy in the United States has been engaged in a battle of opposing value systems.  Each party is hoping to Introduce legislation to further its goals.  And, failing that and, as a back up plan, there is a bitter battle ensuing over the issue of  the majority rule in the final arbitration of the Supreme Court on pending cases and those which will reach this level of jurisdiction.

The premise behind these actions is the philosophy of Might Makes Right.  And it is true that the party in power can legislate laws to compel obedience upon threat of penalty.  This is theory X:  heightened supervision, external rewards and penalties.  As, for example,  theory X parents can be certain their children are following their rules As Long As they can control their children’s activities.  

Fear rules.  Order can theoretically be compelled.  But, ultimately,  the heart is the source which drives behavior and, ultimately, it prevails.  It may take quite a while for it to finally speak and be heard.  But it will be heard.  And it must be heard for all lasting change marches to this Divine drummer.

The changes that we are all trying to achieve through legislation will not endure.  Ultimately, they will only be sustained through the healing of hearts. 

Which brings me to the business of healing.  The human condition appears to be a journey we all undertake to “remember“ Who We Truly Are.  And, on this journey, we all undergo difficult and painful experiences which color our view of ourselves and the world...and each other.  Our work is to find our way back to alignment with the love from which we are sourced.  The brilliant, beautiful love.  The Divine intelligence.  And to do this we all need to heal.  Every one  of us.  In both political parties.  And, most especially, President Donald Trump because his actions affect so many.

How do we go about this healing especially in the midst of such turmoil and suffering?  I believe we begin by asking ourselves this question every time we feel inspired to act:  What Would Love Do?

Our first instinct may be to fight righteously for our cause.  And understandably so.  But the problems we face are so overwhelming at this time that we need to move beyond our usual reactions and step into a greater version of ourselves.  By moving into love.   By understanding that the actions we all take are sourced by our experiences.  And that we all need love and compassion to confront and accept our pain and to grow beyond it to create a world where that same love and compassion become the norm for our interactions.

When we incarnate, we do so with brilliance and purity and light.  With reverence and respect for all life.  With delight for everything we encounter.  It is only after we are shaped by the cares of the world that we are shifted off that path.  We encounter the travails of life on earth.  We become lost in confusion...tethered to uncertainty.

And we must all find our way back to the essence of pure love from which we made our entrance into the adventure of life on earth.

We begin with caring and concern.  For ourselves and others.  We pray for each other.  We feel compassion for others’ painful experiences.  Love then softens our hearts and makes our lives so much easier.  Love finds a way.  And, when it does, we experience the joy and peace of true alignment.  

We do not have to know the way to repair the troubles of the world.  We only need to know that love knows.  In this difficult and perilous time,  let us all engage with open minds and hearts in the so important business of healing.

                                     Marie Helena 

image from pinterest 

Vanessa Saunders

Angel of silence inspirational art 

   

In the Evening by the Moonlight

  There shall be peace, wisdom  
   and harmony. Mankind's hope shall
   be restored in the beauty and
   magnificent wonder of nature...
   and of life.
                       Julia Altamar


I have this beautiful, new, summery white wicker chair.  It is so comfortable and relaxing.

I love to stretch out in it and gently lean into the supportive arm rests.  It has a delicate light beige and white pattern on the cushion.  Perfect for sitting on the porch on late summer nights.

Now there's something that people used to love to do...sit on their porches at the end of the day, sipping a light summer drink...nodding and smiling as their neighbors passed by on their passeggiata.
 
And it is not surprising why they engaged in this lovely ritual.  
                            

As the soft evening breezes wane and the trees gently flounce their leaves, there is a soothing quietness, a stillness...a nocturnal signal that resting time has come.  

A few delicate yet ambitious insects decide to ignore nature's curfew and make their rounds circling overhead.  You can barely hear their wings in motion but it's a delight to witness their sense of ambition.  

Before long the ultimate, sparkling "herald" of the night arrives in full majesty as dozens of ladylike lightning bugs flash their joy throughout the landscape, agreeably sharing their flickering rainbow radiance.

The gorgeous scent of summer...fresh, dew laden grass...rises fragrantly in the air.

And, all of this wonderment and beauty is merely a prelude to the liquid grace of Mother Moon Herself sailing serenely in the night sky. 



From my white wicker chair I gently rejoice at the exquisite fullness unfolding before me.  Only ONE breathtaking example of nature's peace, wisdom and harmony...


When will we recognize our greatest teachers?

                                                          Marie Helena

*Title borrowed from a song of the same name,
   In the Evening by the Moonlight
     music by James Bland
     lyrics  by Nina Simone


image from layoutsparks.co

Coloring Outside the Lines

As little children we were often gifted by family and friends with coloring books.

These books had very distinct pictures of people and places and things. The guidelines, no doubt, helped us learn about the many aspects of life and told us what to expect from our surroundings.


We were instructed by most of our supervising adults to color carefully inside the lines …and we learned to do so. This served us well for a time…but life proved to be much bigger and bolder and more complex than that original coloring book.

Coloring inside the lines is a careful response to what we have learned to expect. Stimulus…and reponse. Coloring inside the lines is often our goal. So precise, so clear…so easy to understand.

And we often carry this preoccupation over into adulthood into the world of interpersonal communication…anticipating that the people in our lives will fulfill our expectations. When they do, we know exactly how to proceed…what “colors” to choose, what the “picture” should look like.

But… when the people and circumstances and events in our lives don’t look like the pictures in our coloring books (our images of them), we can’t use this childhood process.

Coloring inside the lines won’t work because the people, places and things won’t stay inside them.

And this is not a bad thing.

In fact, it’s a wondrous, challenging thing. Admittedly, sometimes it is very, very difficult…and sometimes very messy. We have to color outside the original lines. We have to see what boundaries will fit each picture (and try to honor and respect them) and we can’t determine that ahead of time. We have to watch where the borders are each moment for they are constantly moving. We have to see how the whole picture itself looks and how it meshes with ours.

To put this in human terms:

If we have a certain image of someone or something and then we see that based on what is happening, the image we have is not holding, it is very natural to be distressed.  But the problem isn’t with the person or thing or circumstance; the problem is the fact that we are holding onto our old coloring book with a very structured mind picture we have created.

In doing this we are missing the opportunity to see what really exists in this LIVING work of art.

We are missing the opportunity to learn something new from each other.

We are missing the opportunity to be brave and adventurous...to engage in life and be fully present “in that Moment”.


If we only color inside the lines, we are missing out on one of the most profound and moving opportunities of life.

Let's redefine our creation to include the bold and bright colors that rush headlong into each other alongside the soft and gentle hues that open channels of converging energy with their loving interactions.

All are brilliant and beautiful.  All tell the story of how we come together and, sometimes, stand apart.

Perhaps the ENGAGEMENT with this colorful, messy, ever moving picture is an ART unto itself.  

                                                                                      Marie Helena

Proof Positive

5, 2014

Earth Life is such an interesting combination of the fascinating and the mundane.

And, often, we place our consciousness on those everyday tasks and responsibilities…cleaning, cooking, earning a paycheck, paying our bills (and our taxes), keeping up with the news and the neighbors.


What we often take for granted is the fascinating, the miraculous, the wondrous phenomena thatsurrounds us and quietly anchors our everyday life.


I am talking about the body…that same body that can get tired and feel aches and get a cold. We can become so caught up with these body sensations that we miss the message right in front of us.


And that message is:

The body is a work of art...a masterpiece.
This wonderful body that can process emotions…sadness, for example, that permeates our every cell and takes that sadness and changes it into chemicals that move through the body and release themselves through the shedding of tears.

This wonderful body that can harbor an embryo and nurture it so carefully on a beautiful heavenly timetable so that a fully developed infant is born with all of the chemistry and growth patterns intact to help it become a mature adult.

This wonderful body that can produce super-human strength through its resource of adrenalin, aiding a grief-stricken mother to lift machinery that weighs many times her weight to save the life of her child.


This wonderful body that can do all of this and much, more more has the capacity to heal itself...IF we don’t get in the way.

But it’s so easy to do that…and so human to get lost in the duality of our life and the problems we have taken on.

It is our work to see beyond the mundane and our suffering and to trust in the sacredness, the gift of life.  

It is our work to keep our hearts and emotions clear by acknowledging our feelings, accepting them, valuing and not judging them and speaking them in a loving way to ourselves and to others.

It is our work to clear the way for the body to do what it has been designed for…to provide radiant health. 


It is so very clear. There is  Proof Positive that our body has the capacity to do this if we look at the miracles that already happen.


All that we have to do is get out of our own way,
enter into the flow of life
and connect with the LOVE that governs the universe!

                           
                                                                          
                                                                                        Marie Helena

Divine Creatures

 




We are such beautiful creators, bringing into our lives whatever we give energy to!  Sometimes we flow in a beautiful space of peace and joy and gratitude and the things we focus on in that moment enter into our lives with elegance, beauty and exquisite timing. In their own unique wrappings, possibly not ones we could have imagined.   

Sometimes, though, we knock around in a space of frustration and annoyance, paradoxically angry with the world and the people in it for reflecting us to ourselves (a small bit of cosmic humor from the Divine Universe).  

When we finally awake to this strange but divinely inspired strategy, the “pesky” people around us no longer appear to be villains.  They are all very clearly delivery persons with very specific assignments.  (Perhaps we could even imagine them in their spiffy delivery uniforms.)  They have something to tell us.  A message about ourselves.


And the question is:  Are we listening? 

If we ARE listening…if we are able to see the lucid reflection of ourselves being beamed right to us, life transforms from a nest of annoying, varmints buzzing around to yet another inspired scenario (which, perhaps we do not feel quite up to perceiving...but the Universe knows our beautiful souls and senses our readiness whether we can feel it or not).

The message here is:  We are so loved that we keep getting the gifts we are “ready” for on a soul level.  They WILL keep coming.  For our learning.  For our edification.  For the spiritual evolution to be experienced on the earth plane.  There is no hiding Who We Truly Are...Divine Creatures catapulted into a world of adventure designed to WAKE UP and ENJOY every moment of this awesome experience.

When we do learn to see and appreciate what is being revealed to us about ourselves, we cannot help but be totally entranced at the existence and operation of such a mystical intelligence   And, when we eventually grasp Who We Truly Are…and revel in the brilliance of it…we begin to create from a place of JOY!  And, (here’s the magical part), because we are focusing on our JOY, we get MOREof it!


The Divine Gift that keeps on giving!  How beautiful is that!

 
                                                                                         

 


 
image from pinterest 
painting by Marc Allante

Yes, We Have No Bananas

  
 As a young child I remember so enjoying singing the first lines of a delightful song:

"Yes! We have no bananas.
We have no bananas today!"

The song tells the story of a fruit store run by a Greek gentleman.  Whenever he was asked about some item he did not have in the store such as bananas, for example, he always began by saying, “Yes, We have no bananas.” 

The lyrics to this song are light-hearted and paint a vivid picture of the fruit market and its owner.  I’ve included them at the end of this blog post so you can enjoy them.


However, a very important reason for me to remember the No Bananas song is serious.  I cannot even recall how I came upon it…and it’s possible I dreamed it up when I was trying to help someone solve a problem…but I know that I have used this story in my life many times to help me get perspective and have shared it with others so much that it’s become an integral part of my philosophy. 


And so it is my pleasure to share it with you now.

Let’s pretend you go into a fruit store and ask the clerk for some bananas.  The clerk replies that he is sorry that he has no bananas, but he does haveapples, pears, strawberries, oranges and kiwis.

You listen to his list of available luscious fruits and answer, “That’s great.  But I want bananas.”  He replies, “But we have NO bananas.”  You answer, “I don’t care that you don’t have bananas."

 

"I came into this store to buy some bananas and that’s what I want."

So you ask what is the point of this story…and it’s this:

Often in life we identify something we want from someone (not a physical thing but rather a satisfying or comforting emotion).  

It’s something we would really like to have in our life so we approach the person and either ask for it or drop hints…but…we never get the “bananas”because the person doesn’t have them.  

And, because our desire and need feel so great to us (no doubt because of empty spaces from other parts of our life), we lose sight of the fact that this person does not have what we want…perhaps because he is on his own journey and has not cultivated it yet. 

But our need for the “bananas” is so great that we have blinders on and cannot see that there are no bananas in that store.  Thus, we feel disappointed and alone and abandoned.  

The emotional need we have has blinded us to the bigger picture of what stock items (read many other luscious fruits) ARE possibly available and we stay stuck in our banana obsession.

Persistently looking for something that we know (on some level) is not there seems counterproductive and exhausting...albeit a very human reaction when we are in emotional need.

Have you ever searched for bananas at a store that doesn’t have them but insisted that bananas are what you want and must have?  

And have you ever been so upset and distressed when you couldn’t find the bananas that you missed all of the other possibly wonderful offerings that ARE available at that store?

Here’s to opening our shopping baskets (and hearts) to welcome in all of  the delights that HAVE BEEN cultivated and are waiting for us to partake of their pleasures!

                    Marie Helena

Yes! We Have No Bananas!

Folk Song written By: Frank Silver and Irving Cohn 

There's a fruit store on our street
It's run by a Greek.
And he keeps good things to eat
But you should hear him speak!

When you ask him anything, he never answers "no".
He just "yes"es you to death,
And as he takes your dough, he tells you...

"Yes! We have no bananas
We have no bananas today!!
We have string beans and onions, cabBAges and scallions
And all kinds of fruit and say
We have an old fashioned toMAHto
A Long Island poTAHto, but

Yes! We have no bananas
We have no bananas today!"

Business got so good for him that he wrote home today,
"Send me Pete and Nick and Jim; I need help right away."
When he got them in the store, there was fun, you bet.
Someone asked for "sparrow grass"
and then the whole quartet
All answered:

"Yes, we have no bananas
We have-a no bananas today.
Just try those coconuts
Those wall-nuts and doughnuts
There ain't many nuts like they.
We'll sell you two kinds of red herring,
Dark brown, and ball-bearing.
But yes, we have no bananas
We have no bananas today."