| INSIGHT | COLUMNS & GUIDANCE The Challenge by Aluna Joy Yaxk'in All you need is Love, so the Beatles crooned in the '60s. We all know the words and sing the song and feel the innocence of this time in our history. We all believe the truth of Love, yet why do so many run from the very thing that makes us feel whole and fulfilled? I consider myself a fairly heart-centered person. I spend time in traditions that I consider heart cultures, like the Quetcha people of Peru and the Maya people of Mexico and Guatemala. I am blessed to spend a great deal of time surrounded by heart people in conferences and pilgrimages whose purpose is to awaken the heart, mind and soul. I live in a town that is known for its awakening community. Yet, I am puzzled by what I see. I am puzzled by the walls we erect, the masks we wear, the games we play and the escapes we use. Even with all this protection, we are feeling tired to our very souls. We are beginning to realize that it takes a lot of energy to keep up the walls we use to protect our hearts. In the presence of powerful, awakening energies that are flooding the planet, we are feeling out of control, pushed beyond our comfort zones, into what the Star Elders call the year of the HEART. The Great Creator manifested this world with love, and IS love itself. Love is the Great Creator's divine creative expression. We are a part of the Great Creator. So that makes us love too, right? The Great Creator needs, desires and craves to express love. God would not be God if it were not for love. So why do we call it co-dependant to need, want crave love? Is God co-dependant? When we run from expressing and committing to love in all our relationships, are we running from God? ...And is that what we intended to do? Are we using new age teachings of separateness as an escape, for protection, and an excuse to not express deep, committed love? These are the questions that arise in me to be examined and I find myself challenged to live the answers. And yes, I have discovered many ways I used to run from love, because I too have been hurt, burned, crushed and crucified. But I discovered running is futile, because my soul craves love, just as yours does. We want enlightenment, freedom, openness -- and these can only be fulfilled with love. We also are human and we need to be nurtured and loved by our family and intimate partners. The fear we use to separate us from one another in wearing us out! It is time to acknowledge the challenge of our times, to acknowledge our humanness and live in Love, in ourselves and our relationships with each other. I have been to many conferences where in the last moment of a beautiful weekend, the group allows themselves to open fully and be totally vulnerable. I have watched groups let down their fears, walls, games and masks to really shine in these last moments together. This is a safe place to do this, no doubt, but they also know they will not have to maintain this open and loving state as their re-entry into the mainstream 3D world will allow them their comfort zones soon enough. We have all done this. We tell our friends how much we love and appreciate them just before we move out of the town. We let our co-workers know how much we love and appreciate them just before we quit our jobs. We will profoundly reveal ourselves to a loved one just before we pass over. Sometimes we will risk entering a powerfully loving relationship just before we move from the area. This list goes on and on. It is easy to share our hearts with a stranger on the street. It is easy to feel open and loving when we are helping someone out that we know we will never see again. It is even fairly easy to express love to our friends, because we can go home and shut the door. The real challenge is to deeply and profoundly love the ones who are in our face all day long, and that is usually our families and intimate relationship partners. These are the ones that have the real potential to open us, awaken us further than we have ever been before. Then there are the people who work daily to walk with a open heart and express love fully. These ones are challenged to create a place to really BE the living expression of God's love and in the ugly face of the 3D world. We discover that love is hard to maintain in a world of masks, games and walls. We discover that it is confronting to those we flow love out to. They become afraid of our openness and depth of love and/or they feel they don't deserve boundless love. Either way they run from it. Sometimes we are labeled dysfunctional and codependent for our openness and for allowing our human needs for love to be expressed. Many times we find this too painful to survive wide open, so we close down a little to fit in, or to be accepted. We become less than who we truly are. Many of us sell out for less, in shallow unfulfilling relationships, hoping that careers, homes and cars will fulfill the empty yearning spot inside that can only be filled with love. But we know these options fall way short of making us shine. Remember the time you moved from an area, or a friend was moving away? Remember the profound love you felt for them and felt safe to express it? Why is it that we find it challenging to live in this open state all the time? Love feels so good when we are there, and the freedom love gives is profound. So it is puzzling why so many will choose to shut down and basically feel the dull pain of separation all the time, rather than to risk loving fully. Yes, if we open to love, there is the possibility that we may get burned somewhere down the road. But is it better to hurt and feel lonely all the time? Or...is it better to dive into love's wonderful bliss and let it grow and expand in our soul? Who said, "It is better to have loved and lost that to have never love at all"? Do we believe this? Are we living this challenge in our lives right now? This is the challenge...to live in each moment as if it was our last and love with all that we have. Why? Because the only thing I know for sure these days is that LOVE is eternal. The gifts we gain by opening our hearts is the only truth our soul understands. Loving one another, in friendship and in our intimate relationships is forever. Allowing someone to love us completely is everlasting. It is the love expressed and received that is the only thing we can take with us when we make the journey. The tragic part and the only thing that will sadden us on the other side is the love we withheld because we were to afraid to share our hearts, and we will find ourselves wanting to come back again to do it right. Most of us we grew up in homes that were shut down, dysfunctional, drug induced, abusive and downright bizarre. We have had no education for opening and living fully in love as God loves. Our mothers and fathers, bless them, did their best. Our organized traditions and religions have done their best, too. Yet, we feel the lack in their examples and teachings. So this is the challenge that is between God and us. This is what we came here for. We came here to drop the masks, the games and illusions that we hide behind. We came to love fully just as God does. Did we actually think God holds back because he/she worries that he/she might get burned? No way, this is God! God is living truth and the only truth is LOVE. Love makes us feel profoundly alive and complete, but love is not for sissies. It takes total surrender and the willingness to lose yourself in love. God does! And a reminder: We were made in God's image! So this is the call, the challenge, the quest, to take a step beyond what we have learned from our parents and religions and even our past experiences. It is the time to surrender courageously into the light of love. Aluna Joy Yaxk'in is an internationally known speaker, author, photographer, clairvoyant and Sacred Site Essence Formulator. Aluna's work has been influenced by a life long interaction with the Star Elders combined with a series of shamanic experiences that accelerated over a decade of travel in Mexico, Guatemala and Peru. She now acts as a cross-cultural guide on spiritual pilgrimages and offers unique Star Elder Sessions. She is author of Mayan Astrology. Write her at P.O. Box 1988, Sedona AZ 86339, call (520) 282-6292 or go to www.1spirit.com/alunajoy Copyright 2001 Aluna Joy Yaxk'in |
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Oct 2001 |
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