The Giving of Receiving

I would be lying if I said this week wasn't challenging, and it was supposed to be a spacious week. I don't know the planetary alignment right now, but wow.It's par for the course when you are doing inner work the Universe immediately presents you with a challenge, so you can actually embody the work (or try to) rather than just read about it and by being presented with the challenges you get to see where the shadows are lurking, and surrender. As several of the teachers in my lineage say.

Life is the Initiation

So this week the work is to explore how I both give and receive warmth, nurturance, and unconditional love. Easy peasy right? Yes, when every thing is going well, sure. And even for me, as I dive into this I know that asking for help, receiving it when freely given, and allowing myself to be nurtured by others is a challenge. And receiving love means from self, the Mother and Father with the capital M&F- the Divine, and others. I also was asked to look at how much I over-give and how I can surrender and simplify.

The giving part can be a challenge because I am a huge giver, a generous soul, but my energy is not always that of the warm, nurturing mother, it is more the challenger, the loving truth teller, which definitely has its shadow side. So my work is to bring in more of the warmth...and I may have failed thus far. I still have two days this week after all. In fact, in doing this work my shadow challenger side came out to play as did a few Inner Mean Girls. Its all good, because I get to witness this, give myself love, surrender, and be called to call in exactly what I am trying to bring in more of.

So this week brought a student who dropped from a class because she did not resonate with me, after no-showing twice rather than telling me something was not in alignment. IT HURT. So my shadow side challenger came out to play and rather than just send her off with warmth and love like what I had been working on all week. The moment I got wounded I sent her off with love but not until I called her out on disrespecting my time. This situation brought several Inner Mean Girls out to play. First, the why? My mind wanted to know what I did, why things weren't in resonance, what could I have done better, what more could I have given? I NEEDED TO KNOW, until I didn't need to, because I just had to surrender to it, no matter what I did, I would not have been in resonance, not all the people are my people, it's OK . Then another Inner Mean Girl came out to beat me up for responding not in a loving, warm way, the thing I had been working all week on doing. And then I beat myself up for over-giving to this person to begin with rather than following my Inner Wisdom because I knew something was out of resonance from the beginning. And then there were a bunch of other situations this week, where people disrespected my time, asked me to drop everything to take care of something because they were doing last minute tasks, or people moving appointments on me last minute. I was being called out by the Divine on ALL THE THINGS that fire me up. So what does this have to do with receiving? It means I had to stop the mind madness and allow myself to receive my own love, and then love from others.

So I stopped, I breathed, I moved, I stood up and gave myself a hug and said sweetie, it's OK, you are enough, your presence is the gift and if someone else doesn't see that it is their story, not yours. You are pure love. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. What do you need to nurture yourself in this moment? So I sat down and began a practice called Sat Kriya, and then I made a collage. Just receive, receive, receive.

And so I came back into love, I reset my intent to bring as much warmth and nurturance to myself, but also to you, and yes to the people who triggered me this week. And I opened up to receiving all of those things back into my heart from others and from the Divine. There is an absolute truth that in order to receive love from others we have to receive it from ourselves first, and that I am sovereign in my ability to source love from within, I still need as do most humans love and belonging from others. And when I woke up this morning, I had some beautifully written reviews about my sacred work that moved me to such a place of gratitude that my heart opened more and more.

So I ask you this week, what do you need to open up to receiving love from yourself, the Divine and others. What situations challenge that, but in the challenges, the walls come down even more? How can I hold you in nurturance and warmth. How can we give and receive for each other? Because that is really what it's all about isn't it?