What Are You Ready to Accept?

“Before you can do what you want,

You must know what you do.”

A therapist shared this quote with me many years ago, from a psychologist I am unable to find online today to attribute the statement to. Such wisdom here. As I contemplate the principle of Acceptance this month in pursuit of a larger quest for understanding how to manifest and sustain true happiness, I have realized so far that one of the things I do that limits happiness is to accept things as they are, for the most part, but without clearly expressing what I am READY to accept; that is, how much more abundance I am ready to allow in order to open my heart and consciousness with a greater capacity. At the same time, I am also realizing this month how we may also need to be clear about what we are NOT willing or able to accept, either in ourselves or our outer world of relations and life conditions.

What am I / are you READY to accept? I invite you to compose a list of positive affirmations (one or more actually) of the form:

I am READY TO ACCEPT ____________.

For example, I will share a small portion from my own list.

I am READY TO ACCEPT:

• Full responsibility for my own choices.
• A greater appreciation of Beauty, daily.
• The freedom to establish and define boundaries.
• The ability to communicate honestly.
• The capacity to realize my creative and spiritual goals.
• The time needed for stepping up.
• Abundance from all endeavors.
• Greater joy and gratitude in the Moment.
• Daily progress toward Fulfillment: health, wealth, wisdom, happiness
• humility, purity, vision

images are from pixabay.com

So, what are YOU ready to accept or receive?

Name Your Elixir!

After the initiatory achievement of Apotheosis (see September posts), the adventuresome Hero (you, for instance!) may partake of the Elixir of personal empowerment. Such Elixirs may come in many forms: Manna from Heaven— as my sister, the Rev. Lee Ireland’s guest blog discusses in last Sunday’s post; or Logos/the Word; Spirit essence; spirit waters; Ambrosia of the Gods; or more simply, an empowering sense of enlightenment or awareness that empowers personal Life Mission to serve Life!

I guess my elixir is, ideally, humility. To me, humility is the awareness that the “best that I have done” has been of divine inspiration and service. I like the phrase: “Love is all, and do as thou wilt.” (From Stranger By the River, by Paul Twitchell)  Love and humility are the best cocktail I could drink! They fuel an ardent passion to serve Life.

An elixir may be as pure and simple as an attitude, like humility, that comes with your  success in some endeavor or service that benefits the Whole. Some elixirs we might contemplate this month are:

Gratitude

Compassion

Empathy

Unconditional Love

Joy

Harmony

Balance

images are from pixabay.com

I welcome this month any suggestions of elixirs which you seek or from which you have benefitted.

So, name YOUR Elixir!

Threshold Guardians

After Heeding the Call and setting forth with your well-considered Departure, you are set to approach the first Threshold so you can Cross the Threshold into the full engagement with your Adventure to achieve your Quest. But wait! It is not quite so easy as that.  Approaching the Threshold of a deeply  significant transition or a personally meaningful adventure invokes Threshold Guardians!  Only if you can pass by these daunting agencies or meet challenges designed to strengthen your weaknesses will you in fact step across that Threshold better equipped to meet your challenges successfully and realize your dreams.

Threshold Guardians are common archetypal character forms found in many a mythic tale.  The Never-Ending Story represents them as monolithic, winged Gargoyle figures guarding the entryway to  Bastian‘s destination. He must pass their enigmatic questioning in order to rescue his Princess and prevent the Nothing from spreading to annihilate all of his mythical world.  Scylla and Charybdis are rocky shoals that block Odysseus’s path to complete his Quest and return to home to Ithaka in Homer’s Ulysses. Dorothy faces winged monkeys sent by the Wicked Witch to deter her progress.  So then, what are some of your own Threshold Guardians and how have they served you or how can they aid you in completing your own mythic Quest?

Boundary Gremlins

In Your Life Path (see sidebar), I will share a story about a significant dream from a few years ago in which I visited a ‘high altitude’  region inhabited by beautiful winged horses which I felt served God-realized Masters in the far reaches of the Heavens. As I approached the boundary of their realm, excited to witness this, suddenly Gremlins appeared! Honestly I had never even known what gremlins might look like until after I woke from this dream, but there they were: little, broad faced imps with huge ears. They popped up along the boundary to prevent me from stepping into this rarifed realm of the Horses of Heaven.

Recognizing that these Gremlins were doing their own valuable work in this realm I had stumbled upon in my dreaming, I stepped back and knelt down at a respectful distance from the boundary. I felt grateful to have witnessed this realm at all and content to just be there for a moment. The Gremlins were not apparent then but I knew they would pop up again if I were to try to advance.

images are from pixabay.com

Behind me in this heightened inner realm, two winged Pegasus horses arrived, returning from their heavenly missives. One, white-pink-bluish, knelt gracefully onto her front legs beside me. I knew this was her invitation, and so I climbed up onto her bare back and held lightly onto a shock of her white mane as she stepped across the Threshold of the boundary into her domain.

I woke immediately, humbled and deeply impressed by this encounter with the Horses of Heaven! I realized the Gremlins were Threshold Guardians.  I needed great purity of heart, deep humility in order to venture into this sacred realm.

What or Who Are Your Threshold Guardians?

Your Threshold Guardians will be appropriate to the Quest and to the Threshold you aim to cross so you can achieve your own heroic purpose. I invite you to share YOUR story of Threshold Guardians. What qualities do they help you better master in order to advance to realize your Purpose?

A Lesson from the Shadow Idealist

The Shadow of the Idealist archetype inverts positive Idealist traits.  One so affected might feel at odds with dominant worldly values and priorities, focusing on selfish or predatory ambitions. Two days ago I was beset by a group of Shadow Idealist types who aimed to scam me out of my financial stability by stealing everything I have in my bank account and more. I’m the sort who banks (pun) on positive Idealist values. I want to trust and am surprised whenever trust turns out to be misguided.  Without describing the scam let me admit they almost succeeded. Were it not for the intervention from a vigilant Moneygram authority and my own fortunate choice not to lie or be deceptive to that authority, I would have been robbed of all of my account holdings plus funds from credit.

I feel entirely humbled by this experience.  I would have thought I would never give out my account information online. I would have expected I would have declined the fraudulent offer to “reimburse” me for a service from two years ago that was really a prelude to deceive and betray my trust.

I am grateful for the intercession of the Moneygram authority. When later I called to cancel a Western Union account these low life perpetrators set up to further defraud me, the woman who  helped me had a wonderful last name of ANGEL.

If these Shadow-stricken thieves would turn their intelligence to doing good or altruism rather than invasive attacks on decency, the world might be a better place.  Meanwhile I can only express gratitude for the test and the lessons learned.  I am so glad that when it came to it, I would not lie. But I am dismayed that my human desire for material gain (the “reimbursal”) led me down a path that could have interfered wth my capactity to meet my immediate financial obligations.

images from pixabay.com

Humility takes on a new meaning for me from this experience. It comes from realizing how Spirit intervenes despite my own weakness or naiveté. It teaches that living by one’s higher ideals (honesty, faith, and humility itself) can trump deception, any day.

Invoking Divine Wisdom

As this is to be the final blog post for the January monthly theme combining the Life Metaphor “Life Is What You Make It” with the Elder Leader archetype, I feel it is appropriate to refer to the highest archetype of the Elder Leader, which is God Itself, or Higher Power, the Creator (Great Spirit, God, Allah, SUGMAD, Jehovah, First Cause, Intelligent Design, Nature, or whatever you choose to Name divinity.)

Not a day goes by that I do not find it helpful to appeal to Higher Wisdom for the grace and humility to make decisions and to understand and respond as well as I can to life’s challenges.  A poetic prayer I use many times on a daily basis is one I know from my spiritual belief system of Eckankar as “Lai Tsi’s Prayer”.  It is very similar to and is in fact a modification of one of the Psalms (25.4), as well.

Lai Tsi’s Prayer

Show me thy ways, Oh Beloved (God),

Teach me thy path.

Lead me in thy truth, and teach me;

On Thee do I wait all day.

Remember, Oh Beloved, thy guiding light

And thy loving care,

For it has been ever thy will

To lead the least of thy servants to Thee.

(from The Shariyat-Ki-SUGMAD, Bk.I, by Paul Twitchell)

This prayer song or psalm reminds me to be grateful for all good things. It helps me to keep my heart open to receive wisdom with patience. It lifts my Spirit to the realization that the ways of the divine are always in good order, Here and Now. It shows the way, thereby, to Acceptance and to right discernment. It expresses the willingness to wait on the will of Heaven.