Jenny, thank you for creating this thread. I’ve seen a few references to the RA/Law of One material here at Avalon, but I hadn’t seen anything about Wingmakers or Lyricus. And I’m glad you never lost your feel for magic and wonder; it can be very hard when we must fall asleep so deeply. I never lost mine either, but the connection got pretty strained for a period in my life. I’m grateful that the voice inside me never stopped talking.
It’s great to see members not only know about these teachings, but even pay it forward, teaching or sharing them with others. I’ve been drawn to these concepts since I discovered them, several years ago now, always keeping them close no matter how many other teachings I investigate (many—Zazen was one of my first, too).
I’ll answer the questions the best I can; I think they are important, and potentially very helpful.
How do you go about healing and maturing emotionally?
Something that’s helped me a lot is taking a serious look, finally, at personal responsibility. That phrase, “taking personal responsibility” gets thrown around a fair amount, but like many people, for a long time I kept it cerebral—at arm’s length from my emotions, my deep-seated beliefs, and my self-justifying “needs” on a daily basis to be seen as “right” and “good” and a lot of other things. I don’t even remember what triggered it, but one day I was struck between the eyes with the truth that I’m responsible not just for my physical actions but also every feeling, conviction, reaction, thought process, and perception I have.
Suddenly other people weren’t responsible for “making” me angry, or even for “making” me happy. Others weren’t responsible for “making” me feel certain groups were not to be trusted, or for holding me back from achieving a goal. Etc.—all of it, top to bottom, was mine. If it lived in me, came past my lips, or danced in my head, it was mine—despite whether it was an interaction from yesterday, or ingrained since childhood (since I’m now a cognizant adult and can re-design myself if I choose).
I’m still working with this, as old habits die hard, especially in relationships with family that go back a lifetime. But this was the first meaningful cracking in my victim mentality, and once I saw it, really felt the truth of it, I’ve never been able to go back completely. (Now I have no intention of giving up my self-empowerment, but in the first few years I did a lot of shuffling.) Gradually I realized that responsibility does not equal “blame”—that is part of the “victim” dance.
How do you go about evolving in feeling?
Shedding denial layer by layer like I mentioned above has helped me get in touch with thoughts and feelings and attitudes that were driving me around in circles, like knee-jerk reflexes, because I’d pushed them away. By looking at them I can see them for what they are: valid and legitimate, but mercurial—they change and pass away—if I don’t hang onto them. This has helped me to forgive, first myself, then others. For too long I believed that “forgiveness” and “acceptance” meant to just passively endure whatever was handed out; I know better now, and I thank the Universe for a glimpse of this understanding. For me the key has been unrelenting honesty with myself, but gently. Self-recrimination seems to add to the problem, not help it. And likewise recriminating others becomes less attractive, and not even very useful.
James’s paper “The Energetic Heart” helped me immensely in getting started with this on a real and practical basis, actually. It was a suggestion to feel our Creator at the heart, but not try to hang onto that love, but to let it pass through us. I use it as a mantra (nothing formal, I just remind myself in my head), “What comes to me flows through me.” This has helped so much in releasing fear, and remembering that we are all making choices 24/7, it’s unavoidable in a free will universe, and I don’t have to like everyone’s choices & decisions—I don’t even have to like my own. I can choose again. But this time with greater awareness.
Are you afraid of feelings, emotions?
I admit I still fear some emotions. They represent pain, in one form or another, so I guess that’s the feeling I’m still afraid of—the grief of loss, intolerable physical pain, perceived helplessness are examples. The one I’m facing increasingly is realizing that I can’t protect others from the pain in life. This applied to my closest loved ones first, but it extends farther and farther all the time—all of humanity (we’re all in this together and I do love us), the animals, the plants, the Earth itself. The pain I feel when others are hurting, or starving, or despairing, and I can’t heal them or take it away, is still difficult for me.
I think this fear is based on a certain amount of illusion, of my not yet fully trusting the truer reality that underlies these 3D circumstances. Because it’s painful, I have an uneasy relationship with it. I will not abandon compassion and empathy, so I’m having to untangle an internal lesson of balancing between assisting as I can and when it’s wanted, while respecting the sovereignty of free will. Not always easy. (Ha, to say the least.)
Namaste, and thanks again for an important thread.
