This energy

It's been a while since I wrote, and for that, I apologize.

Today a most interesting thought was shared with me. A person I met voiced the belief that every time we apologize, we surrender part of our life-force to another.

He also said that each time we eat anything — vegetable or animal — we cruelly and sinfully rob it of its own life force.

I am taking time to reflect on these thoughts. I do not agree that an apology is a yielding of energy — an idea that I've stumbled across in books like The Celestine Prophecy.

But I will say, it was a reminder to think about energy once again. Carefully.

And how it connects the apparently separate into One Whole.

Inner Peace ≠ Alone

For years I have thought
It happens alone
And I've also taught
this... but I have grown

I have taught that Peace
Is found in the soul
Or happens at least
When one meets the goal

Of being Alone
Of going Inside
I could not have known
But I found my guide

She isn't a ghost
Or spirit I see
She's whom I see most
She spends time with me

And so I am glad
And I've become wise
Whenever I'm sad
I think of her eyes

Nana's Dream

Yesterday a great old mystery was solved. My grandmother left me with a dream when I was a child, a dream from her deathbed — a dream that my mother transmitted to me when I was 18.

I'm 32 now. I figured out the meaning yesterday.

My maternal grandmother Rose dreamed that she was rescuing children from a burning building. Apparently, I showed up ...

(creepy part forthcoming)

... as a grown man.

And I said to her, "Nana, Nana, why are you doing this? You're killing yourself getting these children out of the burning building!"

And Rose said, in her dream, "I'm doing it for you, Rand, I'm doing it for you."

And Rose made my mom promise that she would tell me of the dream when I was grown.

"Tell him, I did it for him."

Never knew what it meant.

Yesterday I'm with Jen, at an intimate memorial service for her very dear aunt who lived with her for 18 years and was in many ways Jen's confidante and teacher.

To get a better idea of who her aunt was, I asked the family to pull out old photo albums and loose photos from long ago.

I was looking at the pictures of these kids — now grown — Jen, her brother Brian, her brother John ...

... the joy on her aunt's face in the photos ..

... the joy on the children's faces ...

... I looked up and I saw Jen playing with her little nephew. A kinder little boy, I've never seen. So polite. So curious. So well behaved. Prettiest eyes. A true little gentleman.

And all of this had time to sink in. And last night, I remembered my grandmother's dream.

When I was looking at those photos, I was filled with something — joy I think — seeing how cute Jen was as a kid, seeing her with her nephew, seeing the brothers all grown (Brian is several heads taller than me) ...

... It reminded me a lot of the childhood I had known, but forgotten. And the pictures of the kids reminded me of good kids in the world, unlike my own experience with kids recently. And ...

... I felt that joy, that hope, that ... something. I hadn't felt it in ... forever. Not at any point when I was married did I feel this feeling of, "Everything's OK. There is hope. There is a future to protect and a reason to protect it. This is it. This is why."

Now, I'm not going to have kids. My mind hasn't changed.

But I'm finding that there's a shift in me today. I'm just a little more future oriented, now that I know that my grandmother saved the children from the burning building ...

... my burning building ...

... that I might have hope. A lot of hope.

Awake

Awake, my Soul
Rise from dark
Break chains of despair

Now be free
You can see
You're no longer there

Here you are
Now you live
Breathe deep of the air

Love you have
Love you are
Love is just to share

Throw away
all the doubt
And do it without care

Soul you are
and you thrive
Here and everywhere

The art is Black Spirit Rising by David Boyd

Futures and Presents

We glance into the sky,
At times the energy swells, and our hearts are filled with joy.

We think into the future.
We imagine what it is like.
And we hope for the best.

But pain from the past darkens the sky.
We become confused, fearful and constricted.
The hope for the future — that bright sky — becomes clouded.

We assume we will only see what we have seen before.

If we assume this, we are right.

If instead, we open ourselves to experience —
If instead, we feel the Energy of the Present as it is —
Flowing, nourishing, embracing, reassuring, sustaining, binding —
If we can hear the Universe whispering to us, "It is all right. It is OK" —

We will have found the peace promised by the hope.
We will have found it — right now.

And we will carry it into the world around us.
Our Gift — the one we received —
Kept and given again.

Promise of Peace

He promised us peace
His Bow in the sky
Never again would
It rain, that we die

And so we survive
Hanging on a thread
Not His own evil
But people we dread

The power within
The great gift of Peace
Is a pursuit that
we can't ever cease

If God himself can
Put away His Bow
Why is it so hard
For us to do so?

The answer is just
We haven't learned how
So few of us living
In the here and now

Projecting our fears
into future time
Missing miracles
occurring sublime

Stop - look around - there
You see it? You hear?
Life is too precious
to waste in your fear

So just become strong
and know that it's true:
No greater power
than peace within you

Morning and evening

There is a reason the principles state that they should be repeated every morning and evening, during prayer.

The mornings help us motivate and direct our day -- and prayer is self-reflection. When we pray, the intent is most important. Coming before the divine with anything less than total honesty is fraudulent, and the victim is ourselves.

Likewise in the evenings, when we make meaning of our days. The review must be honest -- and according to the principles, if we are not acting with the absence of anger and worry, and are not walking in gratitude and kindness -- we will be missing our attunement to the divine energy that is available to all of us. -- In peace, Wolf