Liberation

“we are souls who have met for a purpose on this mysterious journey; that each of us is here for the other, and all that is required is to strip down to the marrow and to be present. To look into each other’s eyes and to search beyond the identity of victim and helper, sick one and well one, weak one and strong one—to look deeper and to find the dignified soul of each being, and to stand in solidarity as a fellow human who is striving to be free. This is how all of us can try to be with each other, every day—wherever we go and whatever disparities may exist between us.”— Marrow: A Love Story by Elizabeth Lesser

Last night, I finished Elizabeth Lesser’s’ book Marrow: A Love Story. The past weeks, I’ve scattered several quotes from the book throughout posts. It’s been the right book at the right time for me.

We have cues, clues, signs and directions right in front of us waiting to be seen and heard. Look and listen. Be bold and enter that quiet space within to hear that still small voice, your inner knowing, your intuition, your soul, your GPS, your True North. Beyond rules, assumptions, judgment, ego, offense, irritations, neatly-packaged narratives, the past and the future, there’s an open field ready to be explored, revealed and discovered.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.”― Rumi

Daily rituals and practices that pull us into that wide open field include meditation (Insight Timer makes it so easy to break old thought patterns and create new ones!), Morning Pages (Julia Cameron’s recipe that works wonders and fosters creativity and clarity), gratitude (count your blessings and gifts, take inventory) and movement (get out in nature, spin up a stretching class on YouTube, get your blood pumping). All doable and worth the effort.

“We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand – out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.” – Romans 5:2

Try one new thing today. Expand, engage, participate in the unfolding of your life. Repeat tomorrow, the next and the next. Wide open spaces.

“The goal of meditation is liberation. Liberation from the stormy weather occurring between our skull bones. Liberation from the war within. We meditate to become comfortable with whatever is going on in any moment. To engage with reality on its own terms.”— Marrow: A Love Story by Elizabeth Lesser