We have mice, little gray house mice and brown, white-footed field mice. We have big mice and little mice. One day we opened the door leading down to the garage and found two baby mice, blind and shivering, hunched down on the threshold. They were tiny and supple enough to flatten their bodies and squeeze under the tightly fitting doorjamb. As we opened the door, they scrambled back into a tiny hole in the doorframe. Mother mouse was probably out hunting, hunting in our kitchen right next door no doubt.
Evidence of mice greets us every morning in the kitchen, little mouse doots all over the place, in the sink and on the counters. We leave very little food out, but the mice still come. I had three little red chili peppers drying in a small bowl on the counter. One day I noticed that one of the peppers was missing. The next day all three were gone, taken by the mice. I wondered what kind of mice we really had. They like hot chili peppers?
We hear them running up the walls to the attic. We even hear them knocking things over up there, thumps and crashes that make it sound like more than just tiny mice. When our girls are visiting they see mice scurrying across the bathroom floor. I’ve plugged up the most apparent entryways, but the mice still get in. We feel bad about killing any creature, but we made an executive decision to put out traps. We justified this by saying we’d feed the dead mice to the crows, one creature giving its life so another might live. It seemed reasonable.
Every morning we’d find mice in the traps we’d set out. I’d apologize and thank the mice for giving their lives, and then put them out on an altar-like stone ledge in the front yard. Soon crows would arrive and take the mice. It was a system that seemed to be working, at least on the outside. But inside I began to feel bad. I noticed that I had a swollen gland in my neck. I’d notice it when I was reading, my head bent at a particular angle to my book.
A sudden insight…
The other day—the day Hurricane Sandy blew inland and rattled our windows and shook our house with gusts of wind—I had a sudden insight while standing at the kitchen sink. I realized I had to stop killing the mice. It wasn’t right. As the rain pelted the kitchen window over the sink, I suddenly knew that the swollen gland in my neck was due to this killing.
“I have to stop killing the mice,” I said to Chuck. “Even though I’ve justified the killing, saying that it’s necessary and that I’m feeding the crows in turn, it’s still wrong. I’m absorbing the energy of those dead mice. That’s why I have a swollen gland. It may sound pretty farfetched, but it’s been bothering me for a while now, and I knew it had something to do with something that wasn’t quite right, that something was bothering me on a deeper level. Now I see what it is.”
Last night, I didn’t set any traps. My decision felt right. I had forgotten about my swollen gland, but a little while ago I noticed that it’s completely gone. The message that came in on the storm rattled more than my windows. I got a much deeper appreciation for how we are affected by energy, if we care to investigate ourselves on a deeper level. It’s what Jeanne mentioned doing in her message on Monday, and although I didn’t consciously follow her missive, the storm itself led me to investigate and resolve an issue, as the energy of nature, the storm, awakened a deeper unrest inside me.
The empty altar stone.
The mice came into the kitchen last night. I cleaned up their droppings this morning, but I feel no anger or animosity toward them. They are just doing what mice do.
What message of guidance do you have for us today, on this day of a great storm in the Northeast?
Remain the calm eye in the storm…
Welcome new energy into your lives, for this is the gift of storm energy. As it whisks away debris and untethered objects, so does it have the capability of doing inner clearing as well.
Prepare for change. Prepare to be surprised. Prepare for things to be different. In preparation remind the self often that change is good, change is necessary, change offers new opportunity.
Be calm in the midst of storm. Be grounded in spirit no matter what evolves outwardly. Be of calm mind, knowing that the material world has little importance in the grand scheme of things, that demise of tangible goods is normal and expected, that if the time has come for demise then the time and the demise are both right.
Do not look for explanation of events outside of the self, but turn always within. With calm mind and calm spirit, still the body, and meditate upon the storm within as you are confronted by that which comes to greet you. Whether it be fear, sadness, loss, or pain, find the real reasons for its presence within the self. No amount of storm damage will change anything if you do not allow it to impact you within.
If destruction comes into your life, find its necessity and its revelatory aspects, asking it to keep changing you in the myriad ways you need. Accept what comes without blame or judgment. Accept life, the inner and outer dimensions of it, as naturally unfolding in the direction that is now most appropriate.
If change comes, then know that change was needed. Be aware of inner self at all times. Read your own energy, even as you read the outer energy, even as you track the progress of the storm. Do inner work, asking the self the many questions that deserve answers: How do I feel? What do I fear? Who am I? Why am I here now? Why must I experience this?
The answers to all your questions do not blow in on the wind. The wind brings the questions, posing them as it buffets you from all directions, but the answers lie in the depths of your soul. Use this storm energy wisely and you will flourish. Be the calm eye in the midst of the storm. That is how to weather all causes of disturbance. That is how to experience outer change and innerly investigate the deeper self.
Anchor in calmness. After storm, do not pick up where you left off, but pick up where you find yourself and in acceptance move on.
Thank you, Jeanne! And good luck to everyone during this storm energy.
When worry comes remember that it is but a figment of imagination, that it does not exist except in your mind. If you attach to it, it will grow and fester, it will absorb your energy and become an enormous weight, it will burden you and make life difficult.
When worry comes visiting, do not let it in. Instead scan the body for issues and reasons for its presence, for normally worry arrives when it is time to shift. When it is time to take the next step on your journey you can expect your fears to manifest in some way. Keep in mind that issues that arise when you are flowing nicely along in your life are most often related to unfinished business within the framework of your human self.
Aside from the human self, however, is the energy self, the self who knows all, who sees all, and who pushes you to evolve. This is the self who teaches detachment and the process of growth, as its main purpose is to evolve.
Find your worries as signs of growth, asking you to go to the next level, to deepen your evolutionary task—in reality, your spirit requesting fearlessness and a deepening acknowledgement of the truth of the self as a being of infinite possibility.
When worry attaches, draw inward, and without worry guide your awareness to take you beyond your concerns to the truth of your spirit. You are being shown something important each day of your life. What is it today?
The answers lie within, waiting for you to discover, accept, and move on toward greater fulfillment. It takes work, this spiritual business, but the journey itself is most amazing!
Choice matters. Making the right choice, knowing the right choice to make, may at times appear impossible, as in certain circumstances the right choice may remain unclear no matter how much the mind attempts to make a decision. However, once a choice is made it becomes the right choice, for no choice is ever wrong as it leads one along the path of life.
The issues you must confront in life will appear in front of you not matter what choice you make; no matter what path you are on your core issues will arise again and again. So, rather than focusing so much on the choice to be made, on choosing what is right, focus instead on discovering your life’s core issues and work instead on resolving those.
In so doing, your choices will become clearer, for once you know what your core issues are, and once you begin the process of changing the self by addressing those issues, your choices will appear with great clarity. The choices that now cause such distress will appear as distinctly different choices, one as absolutely right and others as old and unappealing. Once your inner work is in progress you will find, almost immediately, that as core dilemmas are revealed they will direct you to what you must do next to really grow and change your life. And growing and changing, facing fears and resolving the deepest pain, woundings, and struggles, is how life evolves for everyone.
As one faces the inner self and resolves the cores issues, life begins to flow more easily, like a meandering river naturally taking the journey it is meant to take, en route to connecting with all other sources of water, meeting and joining, flowing around the world. So is life, a continual flow of energy constantly seeking connection will all other sources of like energy.
So you see, as regards choice, the ultimate choice may seem selfish in comparison to choices regarding the needs of others in your world, but in resolving ones core issues one resolves far more than just the problems of the self. One becomes part of a healing energy that is so badly lacking and needed upon that earth at this time.
I am with a person who is angry, her anger like a brittle encrusted shell. I note how grumpy she is, having overslept, and now she is angry at the world. Nothing is right. In everyone there is something to criticize. In every situation there is something to be angry about. In every idea there is something to condescend to. Every attempt to be positive is negatively dismissed.
During my time with her, I wonder if I should say something, as her anger becomes increasingly uncomfortable to those around her. The Buddhists say that one should not interfere with another’s process in life, that everything they encounter is necessary for them to encounter, even if one sees the foreshadowing of great difficulty or even death. It is not right to alter another’s path. I also know that we cannot tell another what is so clear to us, for they will not get it until they are ready and, as the Buddhists point out, this may take many lifetimes. I encountered my own states of anger, denial, and unawareness, during my recapitulation, as I wondered over and over again why I had never been able before to understand my own psyche and what it was trying to tell me. It was only then that I understood what it means to be ready to face ourselves and our deeper issues. And so I elect to study this angry woman instead of saying anything to her.
I see how she holds her anger back, keeps it under her hard shell, but there comes a point when she just can’t retain it any longer. Suddenly, she lets loose a barrage of angry words, stunningly harsh and mean, directed at a person whom has asked a simple caring question. Again, I want to point out to this angry woman that she is being inappropriate, that she is hurting the other person, yet I hold back, for I know that my pointing out her mood will have no effect, and may perhaps incite yet more anger. I also know that there is something to be learned in such a situation, for all involved.
As I observe this angry woman, it becomes very clear that her anger has nothing to do with the person she spews it at, but that it has only to do with what is brewing and stewing inside her. Projection is clearly illustrated here. This woman woke up angry. Perhaps she went to bed angry too. Perhaps she has always been angry. But what is so clear to me, as I observe her, is that she is blaming people and situations outside of her. They are making her angry! She even says this to me later: how angry such people make her, how angry such ideas make her, how angry certain platitudes make her.
The fire within…
Later, as I ponder my time with this woman, as I again feel her anger boiling inside her, I wonder how long she will allow herself to be controlled by this fire within. For I saw how it consumed her, as she was unable to enjoy a moment of reality. Encased in it, everything just made her angrier. She fed this fire within constantly, giving it enough fuel to last a long time, and yet she confessed to me how tired she was.
It was clear that she desperately needed something to shift her out of this fire zone that she had parked herself in, yet I knew I could offer nothing. I am sure she was receiving many signs that might help in that shift, yet so consumed by the flames was she that she could not see. She could not see offers of kindness, she could not hear words of concern, she could not accept gentleness. Nothing that was offered was going to change how she interpreted the world, or how she projected her inadequacies onto the world, and the people she encountered there. Until she was ready…
She has to be ready to withdraw her projections from the world and face the angry fires within, and find out why she is being consumed in this manner. She has to ask herself why she is so angry all the time, why so rude and condescending, why so unhappy. Just as we all must do, at some point in our earthly existence, she too has to ask herself when she is going to stop blaming everyone else for her misery and face the reasons for it within. When she is ready…
And so, I too, must ask myself to find that angry woman inside myself and find out what she has to tell me. I do a little inner work around this angry woman as I go about the rest of my day. I find that my angry inner woman is pretty well known at this point. I’ve dealt with her many times over the years, dismantled her bonfires over and over again, put out the flames, and taken her aside to have a chat. I could only do that when I was ready, when I no longer wanted to be ruled by her, when I no longer wanted the world to be a place of fear and misery. And when I was finally ready to take back my projections, the world did change.
And so yesterday, as I did my angry woman inner work, I discovered that she has softened to a mere inkling of her old self. She carries very little fuel these days, for she has learned over the years of deep inner work that anger is nothing, that it only exists when fueled. Instead, I have learned to face the fires of anger as they flare up and question them on a deeply personal level. Is this anger justified? Does it help me? Is it worthwhile, does it help my evolution as a spiritual being? Is anger ever appropriate?
In the past I have used anger, a good friend to me at one time. It often helped to shift out of a bad situation, as I would get angry at myself for staying stuck. And so I can truly say that anger can be useful, but only if utilized on the self in a positive fashion, not to remain stuck in blame, but to catapult to a new place along the path of life. If directed outwardly, in projection, as the angry woman in my encounter used it, it does nothing positive, for anger burns up good energy, keeps the focus on blaming others rather than asking the self to be a fully responsible evolutionary being.
What I finally found out about myself yesterday, as I faced that old angry woman inside me, now shrunk to the size of a teeny tiny specimen of her old self, was that she has very little to complain about these days. In fact, I turned to her and told her that I didn’t need her anymore at all, that I only want to live and embrace the life that she held me back from fully living and enjoying for so long.
Now I live!
As I took back my projections and used my energy to learn how to live the life I had decided could never happen—because I was too angry at the world to engage it—I changed, life changed, the world outside of me changed, inner and outer reality changed. Now my energy is my own, and freed of old issues, such as anger, that energy just wants to live! I am no longer willing to be held back. This is what I encourage my children and those closest to me: Don’t let your fears or your anger hold you back. You are alive now and there is so much to explore and experience. Find out who you are and don’t ever hold that true self back. Live!
I see anger rising across America, falsely taking its place in the minds of so many. As we go into the next month of preparation for big changes in our country, and the world, perhaps we should all look within and find out what makes us so angry without. In so using our anger and our energy differently, we may impact the results of the election.
As the Buddhists say, all energy is interconnected and every decision we make about how we use our energy affects everything and everyone else around us. If our energy is directed at changing ourselves, we change our reality—our personal present life and that of our world. I did it—in recapitulating my childhood—and it worked and continues to work for me.
Now I intend that my inner work energetically impact the world outside of me as well. I may not be able to directly influence every angry person I meet, but I sure as heck can rev up my energetic intent to do so!
I’ve set my intent to live totally unafraid, open to life in a different way, energetically connected.
Love,
Jan
