I have recently begun walking during the summer months in an attempt to slow down and breathe through all the changes that were happening. Before, I had always been a runner. My oldest son, Ethan, was leaving for college, COVID-19 was on everyone’s mind, protests and vandalism was hitting home in nearby cities, and wildfires were consuming the West coast. Life felt heavy. I found myself dipping back into my toolbox of tools I had learned over the years, through Ethan healing his own body, to help myself. Walking became a necessity for me. The societal shifts that were happening with all the stay at home orders and social distancing were pulling at me to take a deep look at my life and re-adjust my direction. I realized that the things that were put on hold, my job, my kids sports, Ethan’s senior year, our security, our financial stability, our perceived roles in our world, and all the things we had become actually felt good to put down for a little while. The breathing room felt enormously good. Still, through all the changes, one fundamental question remained for me, “What really matters in our life?” This wasn’t the first time that this question has come up for me. I’ve had so many of these moments throughout my life, beginning as a child and losing my mom at the age of 16. Conversations that typical people my age were having such as clothing, boys, and what they were doing on Friday night were irrelevant in my life. Distractions of the everyday didn’t exist for me. Hospital rooms, IVs, and my mother’s body that was wasting away in front of me was my Friday night. Among so many other issues that were happening in my life, I was always the one who did things differently. I didn’t have a childhood… I went from elementary school to adulthood school the moment I entered 7th grade. That is when everything changed for me and when a life that I thought I had just fell apart. I had to learn to see the truth in the reality I was having. At a very young age, learning to see, what really mattered, was something I had to do and there was never a normal.
So, now that there is a mass of consciousness having to wake up to a ‘new normal’ we have all had to face I understand it feels like such a difficult process for many of us to go through. Collectively, we hold on so tight to our thoughts and ideas about life. About our rights to what we have, what we deserve, and what we deem as just. We feel enormous pressures to get back to the way things were and we just want things to be the same. But I have to wonder… do we really want our lives back? Why do we feel the pressures to make changes and make people see our way? Are we really standing up for or against something in a way that is going to make the peace and lasting changes that we are looking for or could there be something else that we are not seeing, mainly within ourselves. For many of us it is a manner of justice, principle, and standing up for democracy in the way we believe life should be. I honor you and all those who have protected and served and have been the changing forces in our world. Your voices on every level of humanity have been necessary for our ever-expanding consciousness that is constantly growing and evolving. I am merely suggesting that right now, maybe we need to continue to take a breath. Maybe we need to take several breaths. Maybe if we continued to pause and took some time to contemplate what is truly happening within each of us, maybe we might see another perspective. I know that when my mom was lying in a hospital bed dying, I was no longer concerned with math and science and I certainly didn’t care about what score I received on the SATs. That wasn’t a loss for me… it was an opening to something profoundly greater than myself that I would have never found if I had not lived through that experience. I needed that experience to be able to open up to a way of being that is completely unlike normal so that I could think differently, be differently, and make lasting changes in our world.
I am suggesting that maybe the old ways that we have used to conquer and be the voice of change are no longer helpful. Maybe we need to spend a lot more time understanding what is happening within us and how to handle our inner resistance before we decide to go out there and change the world. Maybe what we see out there in our world is a reflection of what we are creating within ourselves. Maybe if we allowed ourselves to open the trunks of our cars and really cleaned out our inner selves we may begin to see all that remaining dirt and debris in there is the reason why we feel so much unrest. Maybe if we attended to what’s happening from within, and actually used the inner tools that many of us already possess, we may understand the true purpose of what is happening around us can’t be found out there. Positive or negatively related to whatever we see out there as our world, could be what we are supposed to look at within.
Many of the great Masters knew this and made strives to become this through their teachings. On the other hand, many authoritarians have done great damage in our society living out what they believed to be true. I am not in support of what these people have done but I do know that those capable of mass destruction out in the world are also massively destroying themselves from within. Will they ever wake up to see what they really are up to? Maybe or maybe not. Will we wake up to see what we are up to? Maybe or maybe not. Who’s to say? I don’t know. What I do know is that I have to come to terms with what I believe is within me to resolve and release within myself before I can help or make mass changes in the world around me. If I continually address what is happening from within, I may be able to make more of an impact on what is happening out there in front of me. This leaves out the desire to judge right vs. wrong or what to believe or not to believe. Maybe the fires of unrest that are happening out there that desperately want us to wake up are just a calling to see from within ourselves. Maybe there is another way.
I know & I feel how we all want big changes to come. We want things to get back to a ‘new’ normal. I question if normal is even what we want, or do we really need to look into the ‘trunks’ of our lives and clean out the debris that remains before the change is possible?
I know we have businesses to run, children to take care of, parents that need us, and lives that keep unfolding in new directions. Maybe, instead of hoping back on the hamster wheel of our life, maybe we need to learn how to move closer to the center of that wheel and really see what we are up to and what we truly want in our lives. Then maybe we can take what we know within our hearts in here and creatively bring that to our world out there with a new way of leading unlike that which has ever been done before; something radically different.
I believe that the Sandwich Connection will help us do this. I promise that this is a course that is completely unlike anything you have seen out there. It is a completely heart full and heart centered course based on completely coming from the heart. I really didn’t know what true love was until I laid eyes upon each one of my children. This is the kind of transformational love and heart full course that I am offering. I have a lot of faith in this course and feel it can help us collectively see that the mountains we thought were in our way were never there in the first place. Through this new perspective we can then make the lasting changes that we seek in every facet of our individual and collective lives.
Beginning in October… Wednesday Evenings at 7:30pm CST for 6 weeks October 7th to November 11th
The Sandwich Connection – a recipe for heart full manifestation
Will be offered. If you are interested, please go to the link offered here to read more and / or contact me with more questions.
Thank you for reading this passage.
In heart full gratitude,
Jennifer