#novaluna

SoulCollage card by Michelle Villanti

Heartbreak is irrevocably life altering.  It changes the inner landscape of a person’s psyche and the outer world is seen through new eyes.  These new eyes see more shadow and shade...the contrasts are sharper and the divides wider.

To create bridges between the two feels like massive undertakings and cannot be traversed alone.  And yet it is a solo journey...the heart’s mending cannot be done using the old worn out ways.  Once a heart is broken, the needles of its mending must be larger and the threads so much thicker and stronger because they are pulling together parts of the heart that will remain forever asunder - never again looking as smooth and unblemished - or as innocent - as before.  

Heartbreak seems to be an initiation into a world that must be reinvented and re-occupied by a host of otherlings, some so foreign it’s as if one has arrived in an utterly new universe with otherworldly beings whose ways in this world are strange and not yet seen as wondrous, though in time they will be seen as such.  

Heartbreak does not discriminate - all are welcomed into this land if they chanced having an open heart that loved deeply and truly.  Heartbreak is only a temporary outpost in this greater journey that requires courage and the vulnerability of tears, grief and release.  There are no clocks in this world and the process and journey takes as much space as necessary before moving on - reborn...the new skin is in place, the inner glow evident.  

When gratitude is realized, then the next leg of the journey is possible and all manner of conveyances arrive to take you onward, inward, skyward, deep sea bound...you choose.  You know after all this you can choose them all because at the end of the world you find...there is no end of the world.

“Throughout the whole of Life one must continue to learn to live”, said Seneca two millennia ago. “And what will amaze you even more, throughout life one must learn to die.”

It is also clear that the farther one travels on the journey of life, the more births one will experience, and therefore the more deaths — the more joy and the more pain.

This wisdom brings me to the next sparklet of truth...Scott Peck defines love as “The willingness to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.

I have believed the above to be true about love since I read the Roadless Travelled for the first time in 1980. I have since re-read this book at least 30 times. Every time I re-read it I learn something more about myself and others. Since that time however, I believe I have only fully loved three people in my personal life this way: myself, my son and one other man. In my career as a therapist I believe I have done it over and over and each extension of myself has given way to a more expansive and compassionate version of myself. Extending myself in this way personally has been the most difficult, frightening and beautiful experience of my life! From this place I have made my most painful of decisions in saying “Yes” when it was an utter act of surrender and saying “No” when it was the greatest act of love I have ever given to someone in my life. 

I have experienced the deepest of sadness in giving up my ego, and my attachments to what my little self wanted in order to hold those I most loved up to the light of Source, surrender, humility and vulnerability. I could never have done it without going through the darkest nights of my soul. I say nights because if only it could have been one night... Night after night of staying with myself in faith, believing if I held to my truth in alignment with Source, it would be for the greater good of all. Believing through the tears that all would be revealed and all involved would be set free. I stood in my belief that we are all one and connected even though it looked and felt like my heart was broken irrevocably into many pieces. 

Death, rebirth...Love is never lost. Love is eternal.

I recently heard that in Japan there is a practice of repairing a broken plate with gold, which glues the pieces of the china back together. The plate is then considered all the more beautiful. In that case, I must be a glowing golden orb, given the number of times my heart has broken. Every time I figuratively picked up the pieces and glued them back together, it was a spiritual and emotional funeral process of honoring every break, every piece that had fallen assunder...the spinning plate that landed hard and shattered into countless pieces. Yet here I am whole and shining, like a beacon, continuing to illuminate the darker and darker recesses I am traversing with every dip into that well of love that grows ever deeper, ever purer. 

How is recovery effected? How does gold run through the marrow of our bones? How in living we experience loss and in order to grow, we must grieve and lay our sorrows to rest...deep in the fertile ground of deathing...redemption is born. Tell me how. You asked me. Here is my answer.

There is a process in Grief. It is not linear. It is not logical. Yet it is predictable like the waves of the ocean that ebb and flow: the full rush of high tide beating the shoreline...movement happens, scattering the crabs who burrow in the sand and all things move about, forever changed in their places. Then it ebbs and the tears stop, the raging dies away until the next waves of pain, sorrow, loss and anger rise up again to be reprieved by that deep breath of relief that for a time it has passed...It will surely come again until all of the edges are softened and the inner world of the Self has settled into a newness, a lightness...freedom born from change and pain. Such is the process and beauty of Grief.

Photo by Yi Luo, courtesy of Flickr

The following sparklet is a reminder to all that Nova Luna is a school of magic and mystery...think Hogwarts on Maui...the house and its grounds are enchanted. It reflects the wisdom and learning we seek to inspire in the world.

At Nova Luna last week, we gave a talk on body image. Within days we noticed a beautiful red cardinal beating itself against the side mirrors of our car.

We watched the bird over many days as it beat its precious, beautiful body against the mirrors over and over, attacking the image that it didn’t recognize as its Self. The bird appeared to find its reflection threatening and horrible, not only attacking itself in the process, but also defecating all over the car as it couldn’t pull itself away and take care of its basic needs. 

How metaphorically, this bird — like many of us — self-harm and harm the people and things around us out of not seeing or recognizing who we really are and loving ourselves.

It’s like attacking aspects of ourselves that we are seeing through a distorted mirror. The distortions are our parts that have in essence, a life of their own, taking us down the proverbial rabbit hole to the core wounds that have not yet been brought into the light. These parts have come to believe they are ugly, worthless, unloveable, intolerable, wretched, and despicable. Thus, like this bird, attacking one’s Self, because these parts believe they are threatened, threatening, and in need of obliteration.

How then to meet that beautiful bird — how to save it? How to facilitate it saving itself? In order to save our car in the short-term, we covered the mirrors with a towel; not really effective long-term. We aren’t going to kill the bird obviously. For that matter, the bird is effecting its own demise if it can’t STOP attacking itself. We can’t remove the mirrors. The mirrors in our lives are everywhere. We must address the internal distortions: the parts that see the illusion rather than the truth, the light, the beauty and brilliance of our Selves. 

That beautiful red bird is our radiant Self. It reminds me of my favorite Hogwarts bird Fawkes, the phoenix whose tears of love healed the most toxic wound from the serpent who bit Harry Potter. And remember Fawkes, as a phoenix, looked mightly sorry before he burst into flames and died — only to be reborn from the ashes of its old self. Radiant, Rising...In this process no one will tell you there is no pain, but we can promise you there is redemption, there is looking in the mirror of all that surrounds us and seeing that everyone is you, and that we are not “alone” — we are “all One”.

In celebration of ‘red birds’ everywhere, including the Red Sparrow (if any of you have seen the movie), Recovery and Redemption are possible and Oh So Awesome!!!