Being
safe
To feel safe is
such a human need, especially when we delve into the loving and exacting power
within, where truth uncovers a process that makes us feel vulnerable …
where tears flow and anger erupts, yet we still know we are held in loving arms
of grace and deep consciousness. It is where “being” all parts of who we are
meets consciousness and transformation begins.
This book is an
inner journey, and I invite you to join me. It is a perfect time to be here in
Crete. I feel I am going out on a limb, risking deep changes in my life
path—“the shift” as motivational speaker, Wayne Dyer, calls it, “from ambition
to meaning.” It is a journey to the afternoon and evening of a meaningful life!
Dive
deep with me!
So as I dive daily
into the warm blue Libyan sea, I ask you to dive in too. The message in this
book is divided into a series of dives (some quite beautifully fierce) inside
to the “power within”! I know I need divine inspiration, which I ask for daily,
and moment-by-moment in my meditations and affirmation prayers. Let me tell you
a story about those hidden gifts we all have when we take risks to go into a
desert retreat.
I affirm you may
find this book similar to the story from poet, philosopher, and scholar John
O’Donohue in his book Anam Cara: A Book
of Celtic Wisdom.
The king and the beggar’s gift
Once upon a time there lived a king who was so popular that his
subjects would often bring him gifts just to show him how much they loved him.
They brought him exquisite ornaments, expensive jewelry, fashionable clothing,
exotic foods and spices. The king received these graciously, and felt very
humbled by the generosity of his subjects. One day, a shabbily dressed man
appeared at the palace. “I would like to see the king,” he told the palace
guard. “I have a special gift for him.”
The king wasn’t terribly busy that day and so the poor man was shown
into his presence. He bowed low before his sovereign, and taking out a melon
from his bag, he said: “Your majesty, please accept this melon as a token of my
esteem and affection.” The king thanked him politely, but since he didn’t much
like melons, he handed it to a servant and told him to throw it into the back
yard.
The next week the poor man appeared again, and once more he presented
the king with a melon. As before, the king told the servant to throw it away.
This went on week after week, but the king was too polite to tell the man that
he wasn’t eating the melons.
One day, just as the man was about to hand over the melon, the king’s
pet monkey jumped down from the window ledge where it had been sitting and
knocked the melon to the ground smashing it to pieces. When the king looked at
the mess on the floor he noticed on the floor a glistening stone. He picked it
up and found that it was a diamond; a bigger diamond than any he had ever seen
in his life. He immediately went to the back yard of the palace where the other
melons had been thrown, and, sure enough, in the middle of all the rotting
fruit, there were numerous huge diamonds.
What I want to
emphasize with this book and my story is the spiritual principle that the
things we don’t like often can contain the greatest treasures. Sharing our
negative beliefs, our tears, our lies, our angers, and our guilt can invite the
Source to heal the wounds we bear from these experiences. With one proviso, we
don’t become a victim to that pain. And you might ask yourself, when in your
life have things you thought were going to be awful, become a source of
healing, inspiration and happiness? I know I have made many mistakes by holding
onto lies about life and myself. Yet I know divine love holds me through those
dark nights of soul retrieval.
