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Category: Spirituality

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Mindfulness Spirituality

Preparing you for what is next

Sounds True — September 14, 2013

Look close and see what it is that you do not want to feel, that you will do anything to avoid, that no matter what you… will… not… go… there. Your dependency. Your aloneness. Your hatred. Your utter despair. Your conviction that you are not actually lovable as you are.

Take pause. Things are not what they seem. For love is alive, and is all. Touch the earth. Look up into the sky. Call out for help. Crumble to the ground. Fall apart and give up the fantasy that you will ever, ever, ever be put back together again. Breathe this abandoned feeling into your heart. Hold it. Touch it. Let it unravel its secrets. Let it dance within you. Let it unlock each and every strategy, defense, and piece of armor protecting you. It will not destroy you. It has come as fierce grace to reveal how infinite you really are.

What you are is pristine, luminous consciousness itself. Even the greatest despair, the most terrifying fear, the most profound grief – these rise and fall in you, liberating in your awareness, in your care, and in your kindness. Your body and your heart are a sanctuary for love’s movement. Your body is a factory of grace.

See that there is nothing here working against you. Everything in this world is comprised of the same particles of love, which take shape as the galaxies, the oceans, and as the cells of your heart. They illuminate the strands of your DNA and the synapses in your brain. Love is everywhere.

Watch carefully how love appears as light and appears as dark, as wisdom and confusion, as joy and as sadness, and as human and divine, come only to prepare you for what is next. And what is next after that.

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Mindfulness Spirituality

This is your gift to the world

Sounds True — September 7, 2013

The fear of being abandoned. The terror of being lonely forever. The anxiety of being utterly dependent upon another. The panic of unbearable vulnerability and exposure. The dread of the looming death of yourself and everyone around you. These are the great fears that come as you wake, as you fall asleep, and as you dream through this life.

But perhaps the greatest fear of all is the fear of being loved. We don’t really see it this way, though. For when you are really loved, when you are entirely seen, when you are fully held, it is the end of your world as you know it. You will never be the same. You will never again be able to pretend that you are other than perfect and precious as you are. And that is terrifying.

Life is always seeing you in this way.

You long to be loved, to be seen, but please know that the implications are immense; they are cosmic. To allow yourself to be loved in this way a part of you must die. Everything you thought you weren’t must be surrendered. You must let go of the stories of the unlovable one, the awakened one, the special one, the imperfect one, and the despairing one. Love wishes to reveal your nakedness, to remove your clothing, and to burn away all that is false and less than whole within you. What you are is a raging firestorm of creativity, sensuality, openness, warmth, and kindness. Love will never stop until you know this.

In this way, love is a destructive process, for it comes to re-order everything you thought you knew. But will you step into this sweet annihilation? Yes, something will be shattered; actually, everything will be taken away. All that will be left is your wholeness and your raw, tender heart. This is your gift to this world.

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Mindfulness Spirituality

Interspiritual Invocation by Mirabai Starr

Mirabai Starr — August 26, 2013

I wanted to share with you the invocation given by our dear friend and author Mirabai Starr at the recent Wake Up Festival. Invoking the great wisdom traditions throughout our world, Mirabai led the community in prayer and gratitude as we opened this year’s event. Several of you mentioned that you were really moved by Mirabai’s words; we wanted make make a copy available here. May you drink deeply.

Beloved One,
Living Light,
Spirit of All That Is,
we give thanks.
Thank you for welcoming us
to this sacred circle.

We come from everywhere,
and we find you wherever we are:
inside the holy houses of each of the world’s faiths,
and out in the wild places of the earth;
shoulder to shoulder in the mosque,
bending to press our hearts to the ground in surrender;
in the haunting Hebrew melodies of our ancestors
as we call on the Shekinah to infuse us
with her indwelling feminine spirit;
in the communion bread and wine,
which we take in remembrance
of the Prince of Peace.
We hear your voice joining with ours when we chant the Divine Names
in Sanskrit and Tibetan, Tiwa and Maya and Maori.

We meet you high on alpine trails,
where we stop to rest among fragrant wild herbs,
beside a stream rushing with melted snow.
We feel you holding us when we float in the arms of the ocean
and she sways us with her breath.
We kiss you when we are making love;
we mourn you when an elder releases her final exhalation;
we soothe you when we rock a tired child in our arms.

We look for you in the pulsating emptiness,
search for your true form in the heart of formlessness,
unexpectedly recognize you when we give up and turn away.

You shine through the ecstatic stanzas of the poets and mystics,
each one singing your praises in a different language.
You well up in our aching hearts
when we cry out for the pain of the world.
You are the call to justice,
and the answering response of mercy.
You are in the wounding of the earth
and you are the only hope for mending her.

Oh Great Spirit,
Father-Mother God,
True Self and No-Self,
Invisible animating energy of Life:
We claim our place at your table
and find ourselves home at last.
Here may we eat and be filled,
drink and become unbridled,
lay down our burdens and take refuge,
drop into your sacred silence and remember.

And let us take this remembrance back out into our lives,
That we may truly be of service
in this broken and beautiful world.

AMEN.

-Mirabai Starr

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Mindfulness Spirituality

Your heart is love’s tavern

Sounds True — August 24, 2013

There is a brief moment when you imagined that your sorrow was working against you. For an instant there was the sense that your sadness, your despair, and your loneliness were obstacles on the path. But love is a shape-shifter. She will take any form she must to unlock a secret place within you.

Even in the center of your fear, right in the heart of your anxiety, weaved into the fabric of your most scary places there is a raging intelligence, a firestorm of pure creativity. Love is awakening those parts of you that have drifted asleep. This is not a journey into some transcendent, detached, and safe place, but into the heart of a wild, untamed groundlessness. You will feel so much more than you ever felt, care so much more than you ever thought possible, yet you will know nothing. Love will even convince you of her absence if that is how she must reach you.

It may seem like an ordinary Saturday, but what is happening here is far from ordinary. Stop. Breathe. Lay your hands on your sacred body. Touch the earth and feel the aliveness and the rare opportunity that has been given here. It will not last long, friends, for love will be calling you home soon. Every person you meet, each feeling that surges within you, every emotion that comes knocking at the door of your heart, every form that appears – love is sending its messengers to you, one by one.

Your body is love’s temple, your heart is its tavern, your eyes are its windows, your words of kindness are its voice, the way you sweetly touch another are its hands – for it is only through you that love can explode into this world.

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Music Spirituality

Free live stream from opening night of The Wake Up Fes...

Snatam Kaur
Sounds True — August 7, 2013

Dear friends, as we prepare the field for the upcoming Wake Up Festival, I am so happy to announce that we’ll be offering a free live stream of our dear friend Snatam Kaur’s opening night performance, on Wednesday, August 14. We’d really love to share this evening with all of you around the world and hope that you can join us.

To learn more and to register, at no cost, for the live stream, please see http://bit.ly/15tkdk9.

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Mindfulness Spirituality

Love would never ask you to hold it all together

Sounds True — August 3, 2013

There is a movement within you to hold it all together
To know how the journey will unfold
To know what the unknown will bring
But love was never designed to provide these things
Love is out of control and wants to show you everything
It wants your ordinariness, your humility, your broken-openness, so that it may finally reach you
Love would never ask you to hold it all together, for it wants only to take you apart, to show you what is waiting to be born within you

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Sounds True is a multimedia publishing company founded in 1985 by Tami Simon, with the mission of disseminating spiritual wisdom. The company is based in Lafayette, Colorado.

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