Rumi: The Cure for the Pain is in the Pain

Like it or not, physical, emotional and spiritual pain IS the ultimate teacher.

The Cure for the Pain is in the Pain~Rumi

I hate pain. I'm a wimp. I'll do everything to avoid it until I'm forced to realize pushing into and through the pain IS the cure. Ignorance isn't bliss when it comes to pain. Ignoring the problem only prolongs and often worsens the pain. But somehow that never stops me from trying to ignore it for as long as possible.

Like it or not--and I don't--physical, emotional and spiritual pain IS the ultimate teacher. 

If we fail to pay attention, and take positive action in a healthier direction~our wise bodies take out the ruler to slap us. There's nothing like a bit of discomfort to make us listen up--but sometimes it takes more than a few whacks to get our attention--especially for us 'enlightened souls'.

Recently I've been dealing with painful and weakened hamstrings (muscles on back of thigh). True to my nature (read the 'enlightened person's' path to denial) I've been trying to just relax and let my body figure it out as I continue in my 'normal' activities, including daily walks and trips to the gym . 

Wouldn't you know it, by unconsciously avoiding what hurts, suddenly I discovered I stopped going to the gym, stretching, and walking up hills. So much for continuing my normal activities. And guess what? The pain intensified.

These pains you feel are messengers. 

Listen to them.

Rumi

The Wimpy Pain-Adverse Enlightened Soul's Path 

Yep, I'm a wimpy pain-adverse enlightened soul who often takes a bit longer to take care of the painful issues due to my clever use of 'higher order' avoidance techniques. Time and again my body treats me like a mere commoner and slaps me back to attention until I give in to following through on jumping through life's hoops just like everyone else.

Like you, I indeed have everything I need inside of myself to handle whatever life throws my way--including the painful parts of it. The tricky part is getting myself to access that wisdom when I need it most. That's when this enlightened soul finds it helpful to apply Jack Kornfield's wisdom: 'imagine everyone else is enlightened except for you.'

By imagining everyone else is enlightened except for me I can reach back through the ages to tap the wisdom of those who've come before me, and also seek the sage advice from my peers today. Through this truly enlightening activity I can better open my mind to the wisdom that resides within me and act on it. My biggest strength is recognizing the wisdom of others--so why not use it?

Today as I let go of my greatly coveted inner title of 'enlightened one' my mind wandered to the advice I received from my sister-in-law, Lee, three months ago when I complained about my weak hamstrings: 'Have you tried stretching your muscles by resting your leg flat on the table with your knee bent?' '

'No, enlighten me.'

The minute she demonstrated the exercise I had my AHA! moment and began applying the helpful stretch. But somewhere along the way I stopped persisting--perhaps because I thought the issue was resolved or because the stretch was always initially uncomfortable as my shortened muscles relaxed (I told you I was a wimp).

You have to break your heart to open it.

You have to push into the pain to cure the pain.

You have to quit being sad for one moment to hear the blessings.

I Know You're Tired, But Come this is the Way~Rumi

The hardest thing for us wimpy enlightened souls to do is to push into the pain--and keep it up. We want our AHA! moment without the hard work of persisting through the life lesson. We want to look composed, relaxed, and be unaffected by life's little pains.

Years ago as I was dealing with an emotionally painful experience, I got my AHA! moment as I saw the pattern that existed in my life. I asked my good pal, Karen King, who I refer to as my personal guru, 'Now that I see the pattern, how do I make it stop?'

'You don't,' she replied. 'Now you sit in it.'

It's tiring dealing with persistent pain--whether physical, emotional or spiritual. Yet it is only through persisting...first through sitting in our awareness of 'what is' then taking action in the here and now...and also in the future that we get through the pain.

'I know you're tired, but come this is the way.'

Woman cleverly disguised as

an enlightened soul 

What Pain are You in?

💙  What Physical, Emotional or Spiritual Pain have you been dealing with lately?

💙  If everyone else was enlightened except for you, what words of wisdom would you pick up to help you push into the pain?

💙  If you were to persist in dealing with the pain, what steps would you take? Take one now.

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes changing easier than ever before.

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Mindfulness: Steal Moments of Attentive Silence in a Busy World

OPENNESS 

'What the world needs most is openness: Open hearts, open doors, open eyes, open minds, open ears, open souls.'

Robert Muller

LISTENING ENLIVENS THE HEART

'Whatever difficulty you face, there are time-tried ways you can listen your way through. Because listening is the doorway to everything that matters. It enlivens the heart the way breathing enlivens the lungs. We listen to awaken our heart. We do this to stay vital and alive.'

Mark Nepo

A LOVING SILENCE

'The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen.  Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention.... A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.'

Rachel Naomi Remen

MINDFULNESS OPENS THE HEART

'I counsel thee, shut not thy heart nor thy library.'

Charles Lamb

'Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.'

Carl Jung

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes changing easier than ever before.

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Rumi Wisdom: Within Tears, Find Hidden Laughter and Other Sage Advice

When you do things from your soul,

you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

Rumi

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

Rumi

Raise your words, not voice.

It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder. 

Rumi

Within tears, find hidden laughter

Seek treasures amid ruins, sincere one. 

Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrong doing

and right doing there is a field.

I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass

the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes changing easier than ever before.

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Heart to Heart: The Conversation Peace of Mind

💙 TO 💙~The Inaudible Language of the Heart

'Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.'

Martin Luther King, Jr.

What is right is always in our deepest heart of hearts

'In our deepest moments of struggle, frustration, fear, and confusion, we are being called upon to reach in and touch our hearts. Then, we will know what to do, what to say, how to be.'

Roberta Sage Hamilton

Only from the 💙can you touch the sky. Rumi 

'What is right is always in our deepest heart of hearts. It is from the deepest part of our hearts that we are capable of reaching out and touching another human being. It is, after all, one heart touching another heart.'
Roberta Sage Hamilton

When you feel a peaceful joy, that's when you are near truth. Rumi

Heart to Heart: How to Engage in Conversation Peace of Mind

Step into the 💙 of the Issue

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes changing easier than ever before.

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What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love

Sakyong Mipham

Tibetan Buddhist

Respond to the World with a Noble Heart

"Compassion is the unfettered yearning that responds to the world with noble heart, the understanding that others are just like us."

"Radiating from basic goodness like the sun, compassion lifts us above self-involvement and brings us out of the Dark Age."

"Just like the sun behind a cloud, it shines through our self-centeredness."       

You mean I have to be nice?

“Sometimes people feel disappointed when they hear about practicing compassion: 'You mean I have to be nice?' It's kind of a letdown."

“If you want to be miserable, think of yourself.  If you want to be happy, think of others.”

Sakyong Mipham 

Give the World what it Needs~Love, Sweet Love

💙   How are you willing to 'respond to the world with a Noble Heart' today? 

💙 How will you show your compassion in the world?

'When you choose to act with integrity and compassion, you are strengthened by your experiences; when you choose to act out of ego, fear, anger, retaliation or hate, you are hardened by your life experiences.'    Lightarted Sue

Choose Wisely 

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes changing easier than ever before.


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Life is Good and All is Well: Why It's Important to Stop and Start Over Daily

 Life is Good! All is Well!

Stop and Start Over

Still feeling unsettled by recent events and uncertainty over what the future holds? Me too. But that's why at least once each day I like to stop to touch bases with my gratitude for the life we do live. 

When we give thanks for all the good things and good people we have in our lives it renews our inner strength and allows us to move forward with greater resiliency. 

We do better when we face what we fear through action and approach each day knowing 'life is good' and 'all is well'. 

Each moment of my life is new, fresh and vital!

Refresh Your Spirit and Demonstrate Your Strength Daily

When you stop and start over you give yourself a moment to start fresh each day. The purpose of re-centering is to call on your strong self to take charge of your day, and then to purposefully set yourself up to take action on the one thing you think that if you were to act on it, it wouldn't make a difference. 

The biggest barrier to our making a difference is our own invisible belief that if we take action it won't matter so we fail to act. 

Choose to suspend judgment, cut off thinking, and simply take one positive action a day about something you care deeply about.

Love One Another

Plant Kindness; Harvest Love

Find a Way to Begin Building Bridges

This has been a contentious year with anger, hurt feelings and fear permeating the social environment.  We need to begin the healing.

When you're ready, consider reaching out to others with kindness. Find a way to build bridges with people who sit on the opposite side. Practice listening with compassion. 

No this is not easy--and none of us should expect to achieve healing immediately. But until we begin building bridges and reestablishing relationships with people we love and care about we will continue to be stressed and feel uneasy. 

You do not need to give up your beliefs or stop fighting for what is right when you choose to begin the healing of key relationships. By focusing on where you can come together with friends and family while putting the contentious issues aside you can begin the process of reopening communication. 

It isn't always easy to 'love one another'--especially when emotions run high. When you are ready to move forward, make the first move, and stay steady even if your initial efforts are rejected.

Life IS Good~and All IS Well~but only if each of us does our part to make it so. Find a way to access your strength, courage, and compassion daily. Stop and reset.

Follow the voice in your HEART

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes changing easier than ever before.


If you're interested in learning more about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, sign up for free e-mail subscription.

In the Sweetest Abyss of Solitude: A Poem by Tracy A Gibbons

A Poem by Tracy A Gibbons 

The cool water whirls between my toes

Jeans rolled up above my knees

Dirt from the pathway above trickles down the hill

Trees spinning in every direction

Protecting me in my spot

My territory

A bird in the distance echoes a sweet lullaby

I could almost dream to the sound

But I would rather stay here

Indian paintbrush spreads like wildfire among these ditches

It's as if you could pick it and eat it for dinner

Connecting with the universe

Through soil

My spot swallowing me whole

And I would not have it any other way

In the sweetest abyss of solitude

Alone at last

White noise of nature

A streak of sky through the tree tops

The waterfall only big enough for a fairy

I can see the remains of the dust from a previous visitor

Footsteps getting closer

Closer

I duck into my cavern among the sweetest lullaby and edible flowers

Only I know the password

Away from the outside strangers with nothing but bland points of view 

For the fairy in us all 

seeking solitude 

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes changing easier than ever before.

If you're interested in learning more about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, sign up for free e-mail subscription.

Heal Your Soul: Listening to Whisper's of the Heart

Whisper

Lee Bryant, Artist

Quiet Your Soul

When the ranting noise of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty escalate in your head--let that be your signal to stop and dig deep within yourself to listen to the whisper's of your heart instead.

You are a force of nature--filled with strength, gentleness, wisdom, and purpose. You are here to fully participate in life and make a difference. You need to nurture your 'force of nature' self by retreating from the noise of the world so you can return with strength, compassion, and confidence.

Arlo, the dog-cat contemplating 

the path of tranquility

Lee Bryant, artist

Slow Down to Calm the Noise

Seek a path of tranquility to quell your nerves. Shut the world's noise out until you find balance within yourself. Consciously choose the messages and images that find their way into your psyche. 

Let go of images that clutter your brain and that weaken your heart and resolve to do good. Consciously seek calming and uplifting messages. When something touches your heart, send it back out to the world to encourage and uplift others.

Choose to be a force of good in the world based in a strong, yet gentle nature driven by a calm passion from within.

Tranquility

Within your HEART keep one still 

secret spot where dreams may go....

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes changing easier than ever before.


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My Friends, Do Not Lose Heart~We were made for these Times: Clarissa Pinkola Estes

We Were Made for these Times

This lovely piece was sent to me by my sister-in-law Lee and written by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst, and author of Women Who Run With the Wolves. It deserves a slow, thoughtful read.

As always with the perfect pieces of wisdom passed on to me I am compelled to send this one back out to you--especially as it speaks to our strength to endure through difficulties. We all need to continue to support each other with love and compassion while encouraging strength in one another.

My Friends, Do Not Lose Heart

By Clarissa Pinkola Estes--American poet, 

post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst, 

and author of Women Who Run With the Wolves

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking.

Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times.

Millions of Boats of Righteous Souls on the Waters with You

Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

We Are Needed~That is All We Can Know 

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?

What is Needed for Dramatic Change is an Accumulation of Acts

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

Stand up and Show your Soul

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do. 

When a Great Ship is in Harbor and Moored, it is Safe~But that is not what Great Ships are Built For

There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

I know you're tired, but come this is the way. Rumi

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes changing easier than ever before.

If you're interested in learning more about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, sign up for free e-mail subscription.