Saturday, September 17, 2011

An End to Lollypop Love and the Launch of 'Live from the Heart' postings!

Just a quick note to those of you who wrote to me and said that you would like me to stop blogging:
I make no apology. I know that you aren’t into our teachings at all, but something we do talk about a lot (and I believe it’s a fairly highly valued feature of most people’s lives) is free will. Apparently some of you don’t recognise how this applies here, so I’ll try to break it down for you. Basically, you have and I have, this free will, which means – I am free to write what I want and you don’t actually have to read what is written here. I’m not spamming you with it; I’m not forcing it on you in any way.

Perhaps some of you are a little lost for other things to look at on the internet so maybe I can help you out.  I’ve posted some links that may be fun (don’t worry they don’t mention God, or the Divine Love Path... although I guess some of you just want to find more stuff about us so that you can rubbish us some more… and that, according to the free will concept, is totally up to you.. I must admit it seems like a bizarre kind of sport or masochistic pass time to find something you hate, but that doesn't actually invade on your life in any way, and to then spend your days immersed in it, attacking the thing or person.. when you could just go do something else..?? logic anyone??  )

Hope you all can appreciate I'm feeling a bit light-hearted about this issue today - and my comments are made in such a spirit!

Mary

FB & Me

My short disclaimer to precede this post is that what I am about to share is simply my feelings about my injured relationship with the social networking phenomena called Facebook, often affectionately referred to as FB. It is not meant to be a damning commentary on its existence or a blanket generalization about how everyone uses it!

A few weeks ago I deleted my Facebook  account. Facebook seemed very concerned to let me know that I could simply deactivate my account and not delete it – and was I sure I wanted to delete my account? I gladly checked the little box ‘yes’.

When Facebook fever first seemingly struck the world I was living in Scotland and I remember saying ‘My gosh, I couldn’t have a page devoted to my ‘face’!’ But one thing led to another. I sold it to myself as a way to stay in touch with the faces that I had known in far-flung places and to those that I was once near to.

As time went by I began to love seeing everyone’s photos and days so easily. In general I’m so interested in people – I love hearing what makes them tick, what they care about and how they change – and Facebook helped me know more of those things (or so I thought). I liked seeing infants grow into toddlers, and I could wallow in nostalgia as I clicked through shots of old lives and escapades.

Since then however lots of things have changed.

I’ve learned a lot about nostalgia[1]. I’ve moved the landscape of my life to a remarkably different vista. I’m changing and what I want is changing.

Lately I began to think about fairly floss[2] when I visited Facebook. Each visit was full of lightness and colour and news that used to give me a little sugary rush like I was ‘in touch’ with others and their lives. But there was a crash following the sweet high. There was nothing in my belly, or heart, only my head was buzzing with text and image. Instead of feeling like I was adding to my life by visiting my account, I felt was loosing life, loosing energy, loosing time.

I was 'keeping up' with the lives of people I cared about but it sure didn’t feel like being in a real relationship with them anymore. I began to ask questions like: I know the details about the lives of people I haven’t spoken to in over a decade, but does that mean I know them? Why do I spend ten minutes looking at someone’s wedding photos without communicating with them? More than that, why did I spend ten minutes on this and not on responding to an email or not digging in my garden?

Having all these Facebook friends was a lazy way for me to be a voyeur. I could visit photos or status, I could see what my ‘friends’ had done on the weekend, just through the click of a button but where was my heart connection to these people? Did we still even want to know each other?

And if I really did love these people, why wasn’t I calling them or emailing or visiting? It began to feel very fake and superficial.

How much of me wanting to ‘know’ as these people and see their lives on a screen headed with blue was actually me wanting to avoid my own loneliness?




When we eat a lot of refined sugar, our systems become exhausted because sugar actually depletes the energy of our system. In that process our bodies often crave more and more sugar. We crave the sweetness with increasing veracity to help us avoid the crash that inevitably comes to signal the effect we have just created in our body. We are actually starving for real nourishment. Our body is trying to tell us something but if we aren’t careful we end up feeding it with more and more junk and avoiding our own sustenance[3].

My relationship with Facebook came to resemble this effect. It was the way for me to avoid my emptiness and longing for real relationship.

I believe that we live in a world so depleted by a lack of true connection with each other, that hitting the ‘refresh’ button can feel like asking for another ‘hit’ of sugar to avoid the starvation signal our soul is emitting. At least that’s what it began to feel like for me.

I look around me and I see that much of society seems embroiled in a fast paced life where we are all so crazed to avoid the ‘crash’. It’s gotten so bad that we now require a constant news feed, like super sweet candy, a string of endless updates on what Danni is eating for breakfast, what Mike is wearing and where Anna is at, all so that we can feel like we are in touch, involved and yes even that we are loveable. Somewhere in the generation of cell phones and tabloid media and oh so much immediate gratification we have lost what we are truly here for – that is, to connect to true ourselves, to live from our hearts, to dream big, to create, (and to use the gifts of technology and progress to serve us in these pursuits).

On Facebook it’s easy to put our ‘best face’ forward. It’s easy to look great and have it all together. But my life often looks messy. I realised that my heart felt tired from my attempts to look all witty and wise. I was still trying to be hip and cool in a status update. This wasn’t helping me to be true, to be real, or to connect to my heartfelt dreams.



The internet has long been a place where I ‘numb’ out and avoid the hunger pains in my everyday life.  I’ve had the opportunity to spend quite a lot of time alone lately, in a place without phone or internet connection. This has helped me tune into my soul starving for true connection.
 
I am famished for connection with God and my soulmate. But often the loss of these things as I remember them, in their pure state, feels too painful to face. So I’d surf the net or Facebook as a way to avoid the emptiness. It was all a poor substitute for the kind of nourishing, sustaining connection I truly desire for my life.

I want to know God and my mate. I want my feet grounded in the earth, I want to feel the salt of sweat and tears on my skin and taste them in my mouth. I want to be present in this body and feel my own heart. I want to feel the spirit and soul of the people in my life. Most often I want to look into your eyes when I share with you.

In my alone time much is happening. I feel there is an integration occurring, of all that has happened in my past three years, and I am opening up to what is to come. I am becoming more and more sensitive to where my life feels empty and what my soul truly desires. The beauty of having more tolerance and openness to my empty feelings, my aches and lows, is that I want less and less to fill them up with false connections and fairy floss. Instead of ‘lollypop love’ I want to love in a way that is grounded in a joy, which comes from embracing my passions here and now. I want a love that lives when I look others straight in the eye, being and accepting exactly who I am in that moment and encouraging them to do the same.

So in tribute to grounded joy and nourishing our souls I plan to start weekly ‘Live from the Heart’ posts – sharing things I see that inspire me to live from the heart, to dream big and be creative. There are so many people who do this bravely out there in the world, but there are also those who do it in the quiet of their own lives. I want to share some of that good stuff here!

To start us off (in a small way):

This post from Emily which reminds me that, no matter what your day job – when you live from your heart you make art.

This song that I often sing goofily to my man…

And this note written by Sienna, aged 6. Sienna's mum came home from work one night to find it on her bed.




[1] Nostalgia no longer feels comforting or comfortable to me. When I really sat with my nostalgia I learned a lot about what it meant. Now my nostalgia says to me ‘I want to go back to a time that I thought was better or when I felt better or safer’. My next questions then involve ‘Why did I feel they were better?’ ‘What don’t I like about myself or what’s happening in my life now?’

If I live in nostalgia, I live in a place where I’m not loving or living fully in my present. When I go deep into what my nostalgia is about and resolve these things then I can look back easily and with fondness but I no longer have this burning sort of longing for times better or brighter. In the past nostalgia has helped me to avoid unresolved grief, conflict not dealt with in my present and fear of embracing my life in the present.

[2] We called it Fairy Floss when I was a kid so I’m keeping with my cultural idiom in the text! But for those overseas its also known as cotton candy or candy floss. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_candy

[3] I make no claims as a nutritionist here only as a reforming sugar addict… so I hope I’m ‘nutritionally correct’! …maybe one of you raw foodies reading can help me out on accuracy??

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

To Blog or Not to Blog....

**** For those interested in links mentioned in last weekend seminar and/ or ways to ask specific questions of myself or AJ, details are found at the end of this post *****


As I sit down to write there are many posts half written in my drafts box and yet none of them seem destined for completion. To be honest my heart feels heavy for other things. There is unfinished business between me and this blog, between me and my life and it is this ‘business’ that beckons me to words.

I started this blog sort of against my better judgement, or more accurately in spite of my greatest fears (which I used to call my better judgement!). I was inspired one afternoon after processing some fear that a blog was something that would be good for me to create. I had been praying heavily for weeks about becoming more authentic with those around me, and for the courage to share my heart more freely. When the idea came to me it filled me with such terror that I filed it in the recesses of my mind and labelled it ‘desire based upon error’. For a day I couldn’t even tell AJ (which is completely unheard of since there is barely a thought for either one of us that isn’t shared with the other). But the idea kept bugging me, it wouldn’t leave me alone and eventually I broke down and told AJ “I feel like I’m being inspired to blog about my experiences, but I know that is just a crazy idea, I just can’t figure out what injury is driving me…”

Of course when he gently smiled at me and said “I think that could be a good idea” I lost it even more. There was no way I could put my deepest feelings onto the internet. Because that is what a blog would mean… what good would it be if I shared half-heartedly? No, to do this would mean sharing all of my heart.

But then words just came, and made themselves into stories of me. I wrote my heart without much thought or revision.

After that more words came but I still didn’t think I could do it. I closed my journal and told myself that these words weren’t good words and that they couldn’t be shared.

Eventually the words won out and I put them here. I was still afraid but I opened my heart. In the past nine months, so many of you have welcomed my offerings. I feel so humbled by the love and encouragement you have poured over me. I can honestly say I didn’t anticipate it and I am grateful. Lots of times I still hold my breath when I click ‘post’ because I’m still struggling to love myself enough to honor my journey and my story no matter how others think or feel. Lately the comments I receive here have come in equal quantities. The hateful quotient of messages has risen to meet your grace-filled ones. I know that this is occurring because I still carry the injury that it is an offense to say plainly what I feel.

The reason I’m writing today is that I feel that somehow those nasty comments and the people who seem to circle our lives like vultures, always picking and implying and vilifying, seem to be winning in drowning out my voice. All my drafts are unfinished because my soul is fearing the hurt more than loving the process of writing and healing. Instead of grieving my injury and receiving the Truth that God wants me to own my experience, I am questioning my words and second guessing my own meanings. Meanings that God knows and sees are earnest. I question because I am afraid of being perceived as something I’m not and this is a vile affliction. I feel it sicken my belly and tighten up my sinew. For how can I grow to all I can be, how can I shed my inhibitions, and find a clear, strong voice, if I always seek first the approval of those who do not love? Surely someday, God, I will learn to seek your appreciation first? That I would learn to measure my worth in terms of Love and Truth and not in accolade or criticism from those who do not treasure these things as I strive to.

It’s true that at times I feel tired. My bones get weary and I just need to cry and feel like giving up for a while. But as always, after my rainclouds pass, I find God has renewed me. Once again I remember Love and Truth and the reason I love life so much.

The truth is I am on this journey because I love God so much and I want to know Him. It is like there is a vast, open valley inside my chest that longs to be filled with the Ocean of God’s Love. I have tried to live my life in avoidance of who I am. I tried to be just Mary Luck and not Mary Magdalene and it was crushing – I literally felt that my soul was drowning in denial. I have had to grieve (and rage) that I could never grow closer to God unless I allowed all of who I am, as much as that scared me. I’d be lying to say that there weren’t some days when I just plain wish I could live a life with a faith and belief system that others accepted and allowed me to be considered ‘normal’. Many days I do wish it, but I don’t wish it enough to sacrifice myself or my mate or God or the love that grows in my heart. These things are the best and most rewarding things I have ever known and I cannot let them die in order to placate my fears and please other people.

I write today because I need to remind myself. Instead of letting darkness and cruelty win in drowning my voice and my passion for God and growth, I need reminding of how truly magnificent God is and how His Love does sustain me.



Let me say in prefix to what I am about to state, that I don’t feel the need to spend loads of time justifying what I write or how I live my life. These are my choices. I know that God will not let me hide from the error in my ways or heart, nor will he overlook what love grows and motivates me from within. There is no hiding a heart from God. After what feels like a long search, that one Truth has the power to reassure and comfort me. I am content that by trusting Him, in humility, I will eternally grow. However in saying that, I do think its worth stating a few things, for the sake of explanation, about what I write and what happens here on the blog.

I made a commitment some time ago not to publish comments on this blog that were attacking, condescending, cruel or insincere. The internet is a medium so often used as a vehicle for people to be cruel and sadly it seems that when people can be anonymous and/or avoid face to face communication they find it easier to be unloving[1]. I personally believe in taking responsibility for myself, my feelings and being transparent and open. This is always my endeavor in any type of communication. I will not support others to be cruel either to myself or others and I believe there are other places on the internet dedicated to attacking Jesus and I. I don’t intend to create another! I happily publish comments that are sincere, questioning, reflective and/or appreciative. If you are anonymous and attacking, it won’t get published. It’s that simple. If you want to ask me a sincere question that doesn’t insult my ability to critically think and feel, please go ahead and I’d be happy to answer. (more about questions later…)

I have been accused of controlling the free will of others because I publish my feelings about things that happen in our life as it unfolds. I guess the best thing I can say about that is that comments like these reflect a poor understanding of the concept of free will. If I were to berate or bully others into editing their comments or beliefs about me (or any other thing) then I would indeed be attempting to impose upon their free will. By sharing the true events in my life and my feelings about things as they happen, I am merely reflecting my experience. This is simply an expression of my will. (Interestingly, people who try to bully me into not sharing my feelings and accuse me of affecting the free will of others as a way of pressuring me to shut up, are in effect trying to stop me using my will).

From time to time I mention my parents or people from my past in these posts. I am very sure that I only ever do so in order to honestly and accurately convey my process, and my emotions. It is in context of my story and not meant in any way to reflect theirs. I do not have the desire to blame, attack or in any way make a nasty point when I refer to others.

In our society it is very taboo to mention ones parents in anything other than glowing terms. The problem with such a culture is that it supports a conspiracy of denial of actual harm that has been done to us. This is especially difficult for those who have been physically and sexually abused by their parents. But it also applies to others of us, like me, where no such extreme treatment was endured, but a set of emotional contracts was set up in order that we would be ‘loved’.

Yes, I was injured by my parents. My parents also had parents who injured them, and these, my grandparents where also harmed by their parents. Anything a child receives that is not love will injure them. So it is inevitable that in a world, so injured in love, that we inherit injuries from the environment we exist in, most especially the people who raise us. It is an unfortunate fact that doesn’t go away when we ignore it. In fact I believe it makes it worse. A splinter ignored and denied can only fester and sting until it works its way out.

I certainly have compassion for the suffering around me. I know my parents did what they thought was right when I was a child, and in many cases tried not to repeat the pain of their own childhoods. My stating the truth about the multi-generational infection and injury that exists not just in my family but every family on the planet at this time is not out of judgement or blame. It is simply because I do not believe that one can heal an injured perception of love unless one first acknowledges that it is injured. I believe that sometime, some generation needs to stop passing on hate and hurt and instead turn around and face what has been coming down the line. We need to face the Truth that what we currently call love is not love but an injured mutation of it, simply so that it will stop happening and we may heal.

Stating and facing the truth of the pain in our pasts is the opposite of blaming, since to truly face the pain we must face that it is now within us, and only we have the power to heal it. But the crucial first step always remains acknowledging the truth. We cannot heal what we deny. No, if we want to heal, as I do, we must be brave enough to face what is inside of us as a result of this ‘injured substance often called love’ that we received. We must name it for what it is so that we can open to the pain of it and make room for God’s Truth to enter us. Once we have done this, we are healed, and we will not pass on this same love injury to others. This journey begins with facing the truth. I write as I face the truths of my past and as I grieve them. I write them only because they are a part of my story and I am learning, ever so slowly, to honor my story above the projections of others.

I am humbly aware God’s Truth may be different from ‘my truth’ or ‘my parents’ truth’. I also know that I can only find God’s Truth if I am prepared to relinquish my truth. And believe me I am down there amongst it, sucking back on many of my own errors (that I have held as ‘truths’) and praying to let them go.

When I began this journey I wanted dearly to hold onto my parents’ truth as The Truth. It took a lot of effort to face the pain that it wasn’t and be willing to change. But I did it because their ‘truth’ superimposed on my life was hurting me and holding me back.

The difference between my parents and I, is that I am in the midst of a process of giving up strongly held beliefs and emotions that have limited my life. Beliefs that I wanted to hold as truths because it felt so disorientating and painful letting them go. In the end though, to receive God’s Love and Truth I had to willing to give them up. My parents have not entered into such a process. I do not condemn them for this; in fact I know how difficult, challenging and confronting it is. I do not in anyway expect them to revise their beliefs or share my own.

I do not condemn them for not walking this Path, but I do not accept their attempts to control me in my desire to do so. And this is something which they have been attempting to do, quite vigorously, for quite sometime.

This is not a ‘me’ vs ‘them’ scenario. To me, it is about any of us, should we decide we want God, coming to accept God’s Truth and having the humility to be shown that Truth, whatever that is. None of us can blindly hold onto ‘No, I didn’t hurt my kids’, nor can we live in blame and avoidance of our own demands and addictions that may have caused us to be a spoiled brat, and expect to know God.

To heal we must find God’s Truth, definitive. I don’t proclaim to know it all but I do know that I’m the process of re-discovering it.

I’m writing today because the words stopped coming. I felt bullied by the darkness and pushed to forget what is most important to me. I have a long career as a ‘people pleaser’ and I know that my demons today are evidence of how much I still care about how others perceive me. I’m making progress but it still hurts to be misunderstood and maligned. I have been praying for a while because there are more words, even deeper and more personal, that have begun to tug on me to be written and shared. They are words about my first century life, about God. They want to tell you about my pain but also my increasing joy and passion. My body is heavy with posts, not yet at full term, about using the internet as a place to nurture and speaking out for Truth and Love. I know that the reason these words are not yet here is because my better judgement… uh hem.. I mean my deepest fears still rule in this regard. So I’m asking God to give me courage about the next phase in this space.

Before I go I wanted to invite you, especially those of you who I haven’t yet met in person, to send me any question you may have about me, Jesus, our life, the teachings, or yes, even Lady Gaga!! It’s for something new we are working on… I can’t guarantee that all questions will be answered but there is a small team of others who will do their best to have it so. Just pop questions in an email to mary@divinetruth.com. (Obviously keep in mind the same general principles about commenting apply to questions).

Also here are the youtube links mentioned in the seminar on the weekend…

Contradictions in Bible

Contradictions about God

God’s Actions

With love and many thanks for your listening heart,

Mary

[1] The movie “Blindness” could be viewed as an interesting metaphor for this phenomenon.