So we began Sunday's call with each of us sharing the deepest we know that we have awakened to. The call was amazing. All three of us discovered much about knowing and how to live that.
For me the deepest knowing was an experience I call, "The Goldenness." It is a subtle realm of pristine clarity, delicate fineness, tender weakness, awesome power, endless depth, and most of all purity. In recalling this experience, I see an iridescent goldenness that is a touchstone for the deepest I've awakened to.
For my Sisters, one explained the deepest as an awareness of something so sweet, that it is beyond sweetness. It is subtle softness and also tremendous strength. There is a connection of love always going on. In that place she is connected to everything, especially to Nature, even food, her truck and other inanimate objects.
And for the other Sister, it is peace, a profound peace filled with love where she is at rest within and all is just as it needs to be. She feels that peace whenever she looks at or walks in the trees behind her house.
So the three of us clearly know a subtle place within that is profound and wonderful, and even how to find that place. But how do we stay put, stay grounded in the inner knowing that we love? With the challenges of daily living, all three of us keep pulling ourselves back to our surface lives.
Last week four people expressed concern to human resources, that sometimes when I communicate I'm too strong and intimidating. Talking with John de Ruiter, he suggested that I use my power and emotion to get what I want. And that can be very uncomfortable for people. It can make them avoid me or even lie to me. That was important, worthwhile input. And still, even with such insightful direction, when fingers are being pointed at me and I am seen as the difficulty, how do I stay grounded in my knowing of "Goldenness"?
One Sister's daughter makes fun of her, takes advantage and is critical, arrogant and cold. Her daughter is coming home with her husband and young son to stay for a week. The daughter, who is so hungry for love, resents her Mom showering her son with love. How to stay in that softness, that place of knowing in the midst of their visit?
My other Sister wonders how to be peaceful when she visits her bank to discuss their converting her IRA into a non-IRA instrument. Her bank made the switch without clearly explaining what was being done, and the tax consequences that would occur.
Well, the difficulties in our surface lives are clear. Where are the answers? We decided to look within for them. After a few minutes of silence, one Sister said if she was open and vulnerable, fully feeling her daughter's resentment, criticism or disgust, she believed she could stay in her knowing. If she was willing to feel those feelings, to experience the pain, her own brokenness, maybe she could stay in inner sweetness and strength. Mmmmmm.
In John de Ruiter's talk he confirms my Sister's solution when he says, "As awareness, your first realized relationship is with knowing (with the deepest that you know)....Know what you know. Be what you know. Do what you know."
The Sister concerned about her IRA saw that if she stayed peaceful, without an agenda, while meeting with her banker, that could be her best chance of really hearing the truth while staying with her knowing.
And for me, I learned something valuable letting in the pain and shame of being seen as inappropriate and ineffective with others. I learned that pain, just feeling it and letting it move, took me to a place of clear seeing. I could see how I created this way of using power and emotion with others to cover over the shaming from early childhood. Not measuring up in other's eyes was what I had spent a lifetime trying to control and not feel. Feeling shame, pain, others criticism, I have much less fear of peoples' disapproval. And the best part is that the feelings were a doorway into what I know, into what is deeper and more profound. What amazing "Goldenness." I'm deeply grateful.
Each of us clearly knows something much deeper and more subtle than our surface self. We learn from John de Ruiter that this surface self is a cover we have created to provide us with our wants and needs and protect us from feelings, especially feeling vulnerable. The way we can stay with the subtle, with our deeper knowing, with "The Goldenness," is to let in the feelings that arise in our surface interactions from an open and soft place. Let them go wherever they will, and respond from what we know deepest within. Over time, this will create a new self, a self that reflects our knowing.
John de Ruiter summarizes, "Knowing is what needs to be unstoppable. Made real with your choices in your decisions in it. What will break is the shell on your heart, but it will feel like yourself. You come into all the gold within that you have covered."
