Beloved Community,
Is this not the best Spring ever? Beautiful days, gardens blooming, and it feels like our community is in full bloom as well. There are so many wonderful groups and classes being offered, fabulous music, drumming, Kryon coming, and a welcoming presence through it all. I think I am so filled because we just had our first opportunity meeting (really a community meeting) and I got to listen to what all of you feel we are doing well and your ideas about ways to make it even better.
Another part of "living together even better in full bloom" is finding practices to help us when we encounter disagreements. Too often, they are caused by old places of wounding where we do not feel whole and we project that pain on others, making them wrong. We have been working with the material from Gary Simmons' book, I of the Storm, which is about just this subject. I can hear us all practice with each other when one of those situations occurs. "Tell me more", we say to one another. This one little phrase and remembering that no one and nothing is ever "against us" are powerful tools for living our first two Unity principles together.
When you experience one of those "not feel good" places, remember it is not coming " at you" but "through you" to bless you - to find a missing piece of wholeness within yourself. I don’t know about you but I am getting some good practice at using these principles. Some of those missing pieces of wholeness feel so familiar within me - they have been part of me for so long that I would not be able to see them without that encounter with another saying, "Look here dear one - will you please open to this NOW ." " If not now, when?" The Talmud.
I saw a metaphor for this when I was out gardening this past week. I had not tended this part of the garden in a long time - so long in fact that there was a weed intricately entwined with the plant. In fact, I had not weeded here because I did not really know which was the weed and which was the plant. (just like some of those beliefs that feel so natural within, but don’t serve the highest and best part of me). With some help from my friend Kay, The Master Gardner, I was able to persistently and lovingly separate what I wanted to keep in my garden and what I wanted to weed out. So it is with the garden of our beliefs.
Our Master Gardner, God/Presence/Source/Divine Love, is always bringing us opportunities to weed out those beliefs that no longer serve the beauty of "our garden of being". And those friends/others that come to us and may feel like enemies, are really Christ in disguise. Another of my favorite ideas from this book was to use just that experience to open in compassionate love as if your very life depended upon it! And please remember, that begins with compassionate love for yourself.
I believe this is really a life long practice (at least for me) - letting go of seeing through the eyes of morality, judgment, right and wrong, black and white - and seeing through the eyes of a deeper Truth - only Love. So, I hold for us this summer, continued weeding of those old beliefs and behaviors that no longer serve us and living in the light together. Is not this what 2010 is really about - a new paradigm of living Love?
To help us continue this summertime walk of full bloom together we will be walking with the new powers Imagination and Understanding .
Wishing us all a happy summertime of full bloom together.
Abundance of Blessings,
Jess
P.S. Please read all of our newsletter carefully. There are so many wonderful opportunities happening here this summer you will hardly be able to believe it - classes, continuing groups, workshops, guest speakers, concerts, picnics, yard sales! We are an abundant, thriving community in all ways!