Cosmic Channel of the Week

What a difference a week makes. Or a moment. That moment you take to remember to breathe, center yourself and bring it all back to Love.

I find it fascinating that sometimes remembering this is like breathing, automatic and second nature. Other times it is like wallowing in sticky mud and I do mean wallowing.

As a result of my own personal wallowing, I continued to ignore my own personal needs and I ended up sick. Sick in bed sick.   Not fun. At all.

What I really needed to have done instead was simply say “I would love to help you with … but I just can’t right now. Or tomorrow. I have promised myself I would take better care of myself and I am making an effort to do so.”

But I did not. So here I am instead with Kleenex, and cold meds stuck on the couch with legs that need shaving. At least it wasn’t surgery this time, that happened in December.

(Full disclosure warning). I have a very difficult time allowing myself to take care of me. When I am tired, I push on through. If my family needs something, I am there. If a job needs doing, I do it. I don’t like to ask for help so I keep going until I can’t.

More and more frequently, however, I am being shown that I have limits and up until now, I haven’t listened as well as I might have. The surgery in December was a big wake up call and this episode is a reminder that I have to “do” my life differently.

We all do. The old ways of being aren’t serving us anymore. I am sure many of you can relate to my story and others of you have your own version of things that aren’t working anymore. As we continue through this portal into the new world, heartfelt authenticity is the only baggage we can take with us.

Read that again. Heartfelt authenticity is the only baggage we can take with us.

We are so accustomed to “who” we think we are that it can be difficult and uncomfortable to let go of those ways of being that have defined us but now no longer quite seem to fit. We often forget that the rewards of being authentic are worth the uncertainty of letting go of the outworn and no longer useful.

We forget how freeing it is to be filled with possibility instead of limitations, for, after all, don’t definitions of who we believe ourselves to be limit us? Growing up, I was the smart child and my sister was the athletic one. These very labels limited both of us from any possibility of being both or even something else altogether.

I have spent much of my adult life gathering and reclaiming the bits and pieces of me that were accidentally or deliberately lost along the way. And even so, as we are now facing the potential of astounding growth, I am still finding bits that were useful but no longer fit as they once did.

And so I am told:

The caterpillar believes himself to be the finished product. He experiences the chrysalis as death, and yet he is transformed in a way he could not have imagined, predicted or even known he desired. Humankind, indeed, is no different. Transformation is a gift to be cherished and embraced but never feared. Should you find yourself drawn to something new or old and familiar but long forgotten, embrace it and welcome home a fragment of Self. The artist paints with all the known colors of the visible spectrum. Why should your growth be any different? Why limit yourself to only certain shades or palettes? The purpose of limitations is so that you might become aware of them and then ultimately choose to disregard them and see yourself as limitless. Or all the colors of the rainbow. Open your hands and allow the pieces you cling to fall away. As you do, you make room for the multi-colored wings of a butterfly and so very much more.