Let Your Light Shine!

I am short, 5.1½” or so these days. I often felt I was the ‘runt of the family’ growing up with my taller and more attractive siblings. A middle child, I often took the brunt of my father’s quick temper, though mixed with his occasional respect and care.  I grew up, altogether, as a rather introverted, self-conscious individual, harboring self-doubt even while I came to excel at most of what I set my heart to study or to accomplish.

In grad school, my PhD advisor, Betsy, once told me, “Don’t hide your light under a bushel.” She was referring to my writing style at the time: overly complicated and self-occluding.  I saw in graduate school how female scholars and academics are too often undervalued or treated dismissively, especially by male academic journal editors, some administrators, and (only some) students. Male grad students were more encouraged to publish, women to teach.

I have been fortunate that, despite such systemic—and generally unconscious—discrimination, I have been successful in most of my endeavors, and I have gradually learned that it is okay to be me; that I can make a contribution even if I still feel somewhat shy about stepping up.

images are from pixabay.com

So, let your Light shine!  No one else, ever, will have your particular outlook, your bright ideas, your spirit and character. Throw off that bushel, get rid of it! Be YOU, and step up to the joy and responsibility of making YOUR mark in the world.

Better Endings Story Seed:

Let Your Light Shine!

Have you sometimes felt like you had to hide your light under a bushel? Write in your Better Endings Journal (or any loose-leaf notebook) about your experiences when you felt muted versus when you have been allowed to shine. How can you step up in your life today to share your viewpoint and make your unique contribution to others?

Message in a Bottle

Beached. En route to a Far Country, my small ship was caught in a storm and tossed to the shore, breaking under the wave that brought me to land on this remote island. Enough to subsist on—shellfish, nuts and fruit—but my voyage suspended, I long to proceed to my goal: the three mighty mountains, perpetually snow-capped, pouring forth with the light of a thousand suns and the sublime sounds of heavens rarely won.

On the horizon line where sky and water blend into foam, something bobbing. As I strain to hold the energy to keep this illusion in view, to manifest the ideal, gradually, wave by wave with the incoming tide, the form of a bottle washes to shore, with—yes—something like a rolled canvas inside.

I retrieve the bottle, offer up my gratitude to its Source and essence; uncork the weathered bottleneck, use a flexible green twig to coax the canvas, swelled too large without love, toward the aperture. With delicate care—I have all the time in the worlds—I hang the bottle from a low limb, wait for sun and wind to dry the canvas until it shrinks in upon itself, enough that with my twig I can finally, days later, extract the rolled canvas from its vessel.

It is tied with a leather thong. There is a gossamer seal, a fine golden stamp to hold the thong around the canvas. Do I break the seal? Would it be but hubris to presume the message so lovingly bound might be for me? Mayhap I should replace the canvas, cork this bottle, find some strength to thrust the vessel far beyond the horizon again with the outgoing tide, so it may reach its intended one? But it is here; my dreams have manifested this harbinger of truth, this message in a bottle.

Build a fire, toast nuts and cook the shellfish. Sit on a water pounded rock by the edge of reach of the incoming tide. Chant a mantra, purify my thoughts, quiet expectations, still the wayward hopes and fears. It is time, feels proper, in harmony with the emptiness without and within. Now to break the seal gingerly, loosen the thong, allow the canvas to unwrap itself, feeling its own freedom as it expands to breathe the warming air by the fire, mist from the tide falling lightly on the canvas and on the beach around the rock; the bottle on the sand, canvas unfolded in my open palms.

The message: “Be-long toward Being.”

That is it; I am that It IS. Close eyes, look more deeply Within. Open the Heart of Being: Here-Now! The mountainscape soaring; all IS Love.

images are from pixabay.com

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Better Endings Story Seed:

Message in a Bottle

Imagine you are a castaway on a remote tropical island. A bottle washes in with the tide. There is a message inside, meant for you alone. Contemplate and journal about the meaning of your being a castaway in relation to your life right now. The message is for you. What does it say?

Music that Lifts the Soul

After last week’s post around the song lyric, “Don’t worry, be happy!”, I have been contemplating how music can relate to ‘better endings.’ Here is a list of ten more songs that come to mind as songs that foster ‘better endings”:

Over the Rainbow (esp. as sung by Israel Kamakawiwo’Ole)

Higher Ground (Barbara Streisand)

The Impossible Dream (from Man of La Mancha)

Imagine (John Lennon)

The Long and Winding Road (Paul McCartney)

The Highland Journey Home (as sung by MiMi Faithwalker and Amazonah Elam)

Winter Into Spring (piano, George Winston)

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (Barbara Streisand)

Bridge Over Troubled Waters (Simon and Garfunkle)

Michael, Row the Boat Ashore (Peter, Paul and Mary)

Every one of these songs has an alchemical quality that transforms the state of consciousness of the listener.  When I reflect about what these sorts of songs have in common I realize they move me—often with motion themes, or they are emotionally moving—and they lift me, as a listener, to greater heights of vision, hope, healing, or love.

Music can be therapeutic, illuminating, supportive, freeing of our deepest heart’s desires.  We listen when we want to gain a higher perspective or to reinforce unconditional love despite the hardships and troubles of the boxes we may feel ourselves bound to in our day-to-day life. In those boxes we may learn the lessons, gain the experience we need to pursue our dreams and develop our Soul; but the music is available always, to lift us up, to give respite, to remind us that we are so much more than whatever immediate circumstances we endure.

images are from pixabay.com

So, find a song or music that helps you to find your Shangri-La, your better endings. Even as I write I am listening to my favorite, Loreena McKennitt celtic music station on Pandora. The song I am listening to, “Into the West” by Annie Lennox (theme song for The Return of the King), transports me. Have a listen!

Music that Lifts the Soul

Make a list of songs or music that transports you to ‘higher ground.’ Write in your Better Endings Journal (any looseleaf journal) about how this music inspires you. Listen to a song or two, reflect on how it helps you to find greater calm, contentment, or wisdom.

Happiness Now!

We all know Bobby McFerrin’s iconic, even haunting lyrics of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy!” McFerrin’s song is a sarcastic and somewhat of a sardonic comment on social inequalities and the burdens they impose on those who are suffering from being economically or socially underprivileged.  For those in poverty, suffering from evictions or addictions or worse, the glib remark “Don’t worry, be happy!” comes down from those higher up in the power structure as if to say, accept your lot, “be happy” with whatever you can eke out to survive even in deplorable conditions. I am not sure how many listeners realize this is the subtext message of the song lyrics, but listen again, especially to the painfully sarcastic tone:

After listening deeply to this song one day on the radio while driving about, a day or two later I started realizing a basic truth in my own life or personality. First, I realized one morning how in so many ways, I am right now, already, truly, deeply happy! I have much to be grateful for.  I do not need to wait for achieving happiness as some lifelong, distant goal; which in some ways I have been doing, ‘working toward’ a greater, elusive ultimate happiness. Many people I have interviewed for the life mapping process I present in Your Life Path (2018, see side panel) have similarly expressed achieving happiness as their “Life Dream.” So, this realization that I do not need to wait for happiness if I can recognize it underlying the present moment was eye-opening. Then, I thought, I will blog about Happiness Now as this week’s theme.

Then, however, life happened (again, who knew?!).  With some unfolding complications in my day-to-day life, over the next few days I had a second realization: I am a worrier.  I live alone, semi-retired, with my dear dog Sophie who needs special care for diabetes and with my lovely cat Emily, and I feel a great responsibility to care for all of our wellbeing. I teach online and feel responsible to deliver a quality education to students. I rent a home and feel responsible for its upkeep. I also feel seriously about my responsibilities in my spiritual community, and to my writing projects. I take everything, in sum, “so seriously.”

When worries prevail, I am absorbed in problem-solving and fulfilling my responsibilities, caring for my pets, and communicating with my dear family, friends, and colleagues.  Once I can work out a pathway through a particular cause for concern and at least begin to take actions to alleviate the weight of a particular worry, my intrinsic happiness finds its way bubbling up to the surface again.  It is always here, beneath the burdens. Then I know I am as happy now, today, as I will ever be or could ever hope to be. 

images are from pixabay.com

The worries many feel who are oppressed or beset by difficult health or social conditions are certainly real.  But maybe McFerrin’s ironic words “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” are also a wise and compassionate call to the awareness that beyond one’s worries, happiness really does exist Now and can be found beneath (or, above?) the burdens and real obstacles one encounters. 

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Better Endings Story Seed

Happiness Now!

Here is a process you can use to excavate your present happiness:

1. List up to three (no more) current worries. Write about each of these in your Better Endings Journal (any loose-leaf notebook or journal will do).
2. For each of the worries you have identified, list 1-3 steps you can take now or that you can plan for doing in the near foreseeable future that will help you to address and alleviate key aspects of that concern. (Begin taking the first, most doable step. E.G.: Ask for help, create a budget, etc.)
3. Once you feel the burden of worrying about your most pressing responsibilities or concerns lift because you are taking actions to help address the concern, allow yourself to relax. Take a walk, get out of the home, maybe get together with a loved one.
4. Before sleep or when you rise in the morning, let yourself FEEL your deeper happiness, apart from your concerns. Contemplate what you are grateful for.
5. (Repeat)