Monday 15 July 2019

Journey to the golden city: Going Home

Journey to the golden city: Going Home: This month we are slipping into the ‘sweet spot’ of the summer and slowing our step as we feel the sun grind to a halt at the summer sol...

Friday 12 July 2019

Going Home


This month we are slipping into the ‘sweet spot’ of the summer and slowing our step as we feel the sun grind to a halt at the summer solstice (sol-stice meaning sun stands still) and turns itself around. This heralds the shortening of the days and longer nights to come.
The solstice invites us to celebrate and value all that we are in this moment and asks us to remember who we are and where we came from. We are the sum total of all those who have come before us and I wonder what we have to show for it?
It is my belief that we learn far more from listening to our elders than by breaking away and forging new paths. The only reason, in my view,  this might not seem such a great idea, is because as we have not listened to our elders for so many generations, there is the illusion that the wisdom has run dry. 
It seems that communities around the Earth who still hold their elders in esteem, have remained steeped in their spiritual beliefs. They have emotional wisdom woven into the very core of their essential ways of being; whereas I feel that we only inherit knowledge rather than wisdom.
I have long held the belief that anyone, born into the culture of the Abrahamic religions, who is seeking a spiritual path elsewhere, will eventually have to come home. This has been my personal realisation and was delighted to hear recently that the Dalai Lama has said something similar.
I remember talking to a friend, born of Christian parents, about the idea that Krishna, whom he had been seeking for so many years, is simply the same God appearing in the Eastern culture under a slightly different pseudonym. If he is to make peace with himself he will have to heal the rift between himself and his Christian parents that sent him on this pilgrimage in the first place. That is the story of the Alchemist, who journeys to find that what he was seeking was waiting for him at home all the time. He would only discover this when he is was ready to return for it. That thing is, of course, love, of the most unconditional kind.
For me, the rift isn’t between ourselves and our parents but the what the religion has done to our understanding of God. I do believe there is a vast gap between Christ and the religion we now call Christianity and healing this divide is the imperative.
The Cancerian crab, with his hard shell exterior and soft under belly, is inviting us to choose, to use the shell as a barrier between ourselves and our feelings or to go to that vulnerable place and do the work. Sadly, the latter, which is the most needed and what we will eventually discover is the gold, is the least trodden path.
It seems to me that what we fail to reconcile, the pain that we carry down through the generations, causes us to reenact the story over and over again. We try to cover up this pain and protect ourselves with a hardening of our hearts, creating divisions within, between ourselves and our own innate ability to love.
This shows up as our society starts to break down and compartmentalises. We see the division in our families as we disengage, with extended families breaking down to such an extent that single parent families appear to be normal. We have also experienced the break down of our spiritual journey from one holistic expression of God, even though he might have many different faces, to a completely divided church, with new denominations springing up with each new age. 
I believe it started with Cain and Abel. When (and of course I am talking metaphorically) Adam and Eve were thrown out the Garden of Eden, thinking it was a judgement of their wrong doing, it created a judgement of our head over our hearts. This was played out as sibling rivalry in the extreme and has run like a river all the way down through the millennia, till this time.
I believe, this is actually just our path around the galaxy, the human race as a whole on the Alchemist’s five thousand (or even twenty-six thousand) year journey, physically moving away and returning to the vibration that is God.
It is time and we are now being asked to choose to turn around, to find our power and recognise that it lies where we might least expect it. It lies in our vulnerability where, just like the sun that can change direction, we can discover and truly feel love and come home.

The question is, are you willing to forgive yourself and all those who have come before you? If we all, or at least enough of us to create a tipping point, said ‘yes’, I believe we would change this world over night.