I Bow To the Divine In You

 

 

Just Imagine

 

Several years into my awakening I began quite spontaneously 

to clasp my palms together and bow to people when 

my heart was especially touched in some way.

Just Imagine a world in which this is what we do

and what we teach our children

and what we remember.

Just imagine.

Namaste ~

Molly

♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥

Pema Chödrön: The Love That Will Not Die

The Love That Will Not Die

Spiritual awakening is frequently described

as a journey to the top of a mountain.

We leave our attachments and our worldliness

behind and slowly make our way to the top.

At the peak we have transcended all pain.

The only problem with this metaphor is

that we leave all the others behind --

our drunken brother, our schizophrenic sister,

our tormented animals and friends.

Their suffering continues, unrelieved

by our personal escape.

                  

In the process of discovering our true nature,

the journey goes down, not up.

It’s as if the mountain pointed toward the      

center of the earth instead of reaching into the sky.

Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures,

we move toward the turbulence and doubt.

We jump into it. We slide into it. We tiptoe into it.

We move toward it however we can.

We explore the reality and unpredictability

of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away.

If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes,

we will let it be as it is. At our own pace,

without speed or aggression,

we move down and down and down.

         

With us move millions of others,

our companions in awakening from fear.

At the bottom we discover water,

the healing water of compassion.

Right down there in the thick of things,

we discover the love that will not die.

~ Pema Chödrön

     

Rumi: Your Task

Photo by Molly

Your task is not to seek for love, 

but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself 

that you have built against it. 

 

~ Rumi

 

For Ron: In Celebration of Our One Year Wedding Anniversay

Ron & I marry on September 14th, 2013.

Robert Beatty officiates.

With all our beautiful children - Kevin & Kristin, Brian & Marita, Matt, and Alli.

Love, love, love...

 Treasure

One year ago today Ron and I married. It was a beautiful day surrounded by beautiful family and friends. Each of our four children were part of the ceremony. Many helped to make this day as extraordinarily special as it was. Heartfelt thank you to all.

It took me nearly 60 years to find Ron. My heart had been so devastated, so wounded from the earliest moments of my time on Earth. For a long, long time I simply did not know how to allow my heart to be open enough to receive and give love with any degree of consistency. Around my heart was a wall of protective defenses. At a very young age I had unconsciously vowed to not allow anyone in, not into my depths. It was too raw, too terrifying, too beyond my comprehension... to truly open my heart to love.

Years passed, many years. It has been a gradual awakening. There was no experience of poof!, now my heart has cracked open. Rather, this has been an amazing journey of allowing my heart - gradually, slowly - to experience the attending to, the tenderness, the support and healing needed to grow into the person I have always been.

When I talk or write about opening to the beauty of our true nature, I speak to this out of personal experience. What I have discovered along the way is that under it all - under the ocean of grief, rage, terror, confusion, and loss - is this Love that did not die. This Sacred Love that today I believe is the true nature of us all.

Yet, without the support, courage, and intention to heal, I would have continued to thrash about and be a stranger to the nature of my own suffering and separation. And there would be no Ron. And there would be no fierce mother who fought with all my being to learn how in the world to be the mother my three beautiful sons need, a mother I had needed but not had. I also certainly would not be capable of holding my own mother - and myself, my father, my twin, our ancestors - today with a heart of forgiveness, compassion, and love. The list of miracles go on and on and on.

Life is so amazing. So amazing! And especially with the experiences I have had, which all gift me today, of knowing what it is to be asleep and what it is to be on this extraordinary path of gradual awakening.

So today and each and every day I awaken to profound gratitude for this beautiful man I married one year ago. Ron is my treasure.

And today my life is treasure-full with blessings and miracles and mindfulness that only grows with each year I am alive. Truly, each time I have found the support, courage, and intention to allow my heart to break open, more space has been cleared for love. And after nearly 60 years, this path of Heart led me to Ron and Ron to me. Wow.

I love you, Ron. My heart overflows with gratitude.... 

And for us all, may we each increasingly root into paths of opening to life, opening to love, opening to the beauty that is our true nature. Blessed be.

With deep gratitude and love ~

Molly

♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥

Photo by Molly

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee: The Deepest Purpose

The deepest purpose of life is to reflect what is hidden, to reveal the unknowable essence of which we are all an expression. Separate from life, we confront only our own separateness, our isolation and suffering. Simply to recognize that we are part of life is to radically alter our perception of our self and our surroundings. We are then able to perceive the patterns of which we are a part, the manifestation of the divine which is our true nature.
 

- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
 
From his book: Working with Oneness
http://www.goldensufi.org/book_desc_working.html
 

from Working with Oneness 

David Abram: Living In Truth

Ecologically considered, it is not primarily our verbal statements that are “true” or “false,” but rather the kind of relations that we sustain with the rest of nature. A human community that lives in a mutually beneficial relation with the surrounding earth is a community, we might say, that lives in truth. The ways of speaking common to that community – the claims and beliefs that enable such reciprocity to perpetuate itself – are, in this important sense, true. They are in accord with a right relation between these people and their world. Statements and beliefs, meanwhile, that foster violence toward the land, ways of speaking that enable the impairment or ruination of the surrounding field of beings, can be described as false ways of speaking – ways that encourage an unsustainable relation with the encompassing earth. A civilization that relentlessly destroys the living land it inhabits is not well acquainted with truth, regardless of how many supposed facts it has amassed regarding the calculable properties of its world.

- David Abram

from Working with Oneness

Art by Bruno Torfs

Celebrating Full Legal Guardianship of My Mother in Washington State!

9.12.2014: With Washington attorney Jim Senescu. We love Jim!!

Mom, Matt, Molly - Three generations on the Oregon coast!

Family! Alli, Ron, Molly, Kevin, Matt, Nancy, Marita, Brian, & Kristin

May 2013: With Michigan attorney Roman Grucz & his wife. We love Roman & Karol!

Mom/Grandma Nan/Nancy spent her 88th birthday surrounded by loving family.

 It's Official!

Today was the court hearing here in Vancouver, Washington designating me full legal guardianship of my mother. This has been among the most amazing, excruciating, costly, stunning, and powerful experiences of my life.

This whole journey began in November 2012. There was my mom's separation and divorce, followed by a suicide attempt, followed by the fight of my life - and my mother's! - with a former stepson of my mother's for guardianship. There are way too many pieces to try to summarize here and now. And many of you know our story. I'll just say that it took nearly two years and cost over $230,000 in total legal fees, for all parties, to finally bring my mom home to her family for good.

And every tear shed, every dollar spent, every traumatic shocking turn of events, every single action that was required to get my mom here, home to her family - all of it! - was worth it!

It isn't so much what happens to us that matters most. I've found that what really matters is how we respond. What are the lessons learned? What is asking to be integrated into our being? What is deepened within us? Can we allow our hearts to be broken open or do we shut down? Again and again and again, I choose love. I choose love.

Ron and I are off now for a night away to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. I love Ron! I love my mom! I love my family and so much more! Yes, the grief of this huge fight is still something my heart is healing through. And my heart overflows with gratitude. Simply overflows with gratitude... for so much. So much.

Peace & blessings,

Molly

John O'Donohue: Preparing the Space For Blessing

When a blessing is being invoked, time deepens until it becomes a source from which refreshment and encouragement are released. As Yeats, says: Feeling I was blessed and that I now too could bless.

Wherever one person takes another into the care of their heart, they have the power to bless. There are things we never do, simply because it never occurs to us that we can do them. To bless someone is to offer a beautiful gift. When we love someone, we turn toward them with our souls. And the soul itself is the source of blessing.

A blessing is a form of grace, it is invisible. Grace is the permanent climate of divine kindness. There are no limits to it; it has no compartments, corners, or breakage in its flow. For the one who believes in it, a blessing can signal the start of a journey of transformation. It belongs to the same realm as the inner life - its effect becomes only indirectly visible in the changed quality of one's experience. Where before gravity and deadness had prevailed, there is now a new sense of animation and lightness. Where there was grief, a new sense of presence comes alive. In the wall of blindness a window of vision opens.

- John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us:

A Book of Blessings

Sharon Salzberg: Creating Change

Photo by Molly

If you’re reading these words, perhaps it’s because something has kicked open the door for you, and you’re ready to embrace change. It isn’t enough to appreciate change from afar, or only in the abstract, or as something that can happen to other people but not to you. We need to create change for ourselves, in a workable way, as part of our everyday lives.

― Sharon Salzberg, The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Programme for Real Happiness