Essay « Awaken Consciousness Magazine

April 2, 2010

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters!

by Amy Pierce

Heaven’s realm is not so far from you; experiencing its reality simply requires a shift in self-perception and a willingness by you carpenters, you creators of the human sort, to raise high the roof beam.

For eons, humans have existed in (and of) the belief in their separation from God, the Source of All Existence, rather than in their Oneness with It. Indeed, aspects of the belief as expressed for the past two millennia go so far as to purport that your very existence is “dirty,” that you are flawed by something called original sin. It is preached in places all over your globe that the only way “in” to the heavenly realms is by believing that one, and only one, of Earth’s many gloried teachers is the only child of God. The consequence, it is told, of not being a believer is exile from the realm of life into a living death, located somewhere within the fiery regions of the bowels of earth (which itself is just a waystation to be used, even exploited).

Over thousands of years, Truth has been distorted and bent by the will of those wishing to amass and wield power over others. One of the most damaging and destructive forces resulting from the separation belief, avarice, wears the false face of superiority and brims over with arrogance. Greed exists totally without thought for either one’s fellow human beings or their companion kingdoms.

Truth, so often distorted and bent, still remains. As the higher-reaching consciousness of many of Earth’s inhabitants continues to cast greater and greater light upon the fearful side of humanity, greed’s destruction and strength becomes more chaotic and visible. Such escalation is to be expected, given that it is in a fight to its death. Be assured, it will not survive in the times ahead. And while your generation will not likely see the end of the greed that has ruled much of your planet for eons, your great-grandchildren will be living in a time of Light, an era filled with love, compassion, and communion with all living things. Once more your planet and all its creations will exist in a state of true and grand harmony.

What each of you does everyday contributes to that coming era, everything you think and communicate and create is now, at this moment, helping to build that expression of total love, or At-One-ment. So just because you will not behold such beauty in your lifetime, do not think that your living at this moment in history has no bearing upon that time of the new Earth. In fact, if you are reading this message, then your living now has everything to do with what is to come, for your current generations are the wayshowers, midwives, carpenters, and architects of a new day. Those of you being the change are, in fact, creating the change, which is given life out of the shifts in your thinking and your ways of living and loving. As your consciousness moves to higher levels, you embrace At-One-ment first through genuine Self-ness and Self Love. Through this foundational shift away from the separation belief, you transmute the false, but deadly, energies of original sin to those of original love, the origin of your existence. In so doing, you raise high the roof beam, making way for “the bridegroom, taller far than any man.”*

Yes, you are indeed the architects of the energies giving rise to the new Earth where the old ways can no longer be supported. You are carpenters following the Soul’s blueprint to the fertile, fecund Ground of Being, which in truth you have never left, and to which you are innocently returning. Your inner healing, your inner “lightening” work, is the microcosm of the upcoming planetary macrocosm, in expression several generations hence. Likewise, the new Earth becomes the microcosm of the Great Macrocosm, the Heart of Love.

Know, then, that as you give birth to a healed human being, you create a healed planet, which amplifies and reflects the Mind of the Heart of God, accomplishing “the miracles of the One Thing.”** As above, so below; as below, so above.” Raise high the roof beam, carpenters!

Blessed Be.

*Sappho: Raise high the roof-beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man.

**Hermes Trismegistus: “That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing.”

Amy Pierce is an ordained Minister in Integrative Healing with a Master’s degree in Applied Healing Arts. She is well known in North Carolina’s Triangle region for her holistic, ecumenical approach to spirit mind body healing through her teaching and writing, as well as her counseling ministries. Visit www.authenticself.us or read Amy’s blog: In Spiritual Wonder.

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February 15, 2010

In a Nutshell

by Mary Dyer Hubbard

“Go out and let something in nature speak to you.” What a silly thing for a Retreat Director to say to a group of nuns! I walk aimlessly up and down the rolling paths, hardly registering the green fields, wild flowers and spreading trees. My fellow retreatants, mostly white-haired women dressed in black, eagerly search for some mysterious treasure.

Even though we’re in silence, I break it when encountering kindly Sister Margaret. “Did anything speak to you, Margaret?” I ask jokingly. “Yes, I just realized it! See those blue flowers up there? One of them is speaking to me and I have to go back and listen.” A little ashamed of her sincerity and my skepticism, I watch as she hobbles back up the hill.

I’m 35 years old, a nun since 18, and burned out. Like Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story I have journeyed from cloister to missions. I too have known: fervor, striving for perfection, willingness to suffer, working in impoverished areas, burning zeal. But the flame is dwindling and now I walk around with ashen heart.

Listlessly I turn back. I’ll be the one with no story to tell, no stone or twig clutched in my hand, excited to share its amazing personal message. With head down, I trudge along without seeing. But, that’s odd. What is that lying on the ground: small, brown and hollow? Oh, it’s a walnut shell – or half of one. Strange, there are no walnut trees around here.

I pick it up and study it. The inside ridges are more pronounced than the outer smoother shell; the inner grooves are pitted, sharp and dark. Imagine the nut pressed and squeezed until it matched those unyielding convolutions! Suddenly I drop the shell and gasp. Sobs follow and I’m on the ground cradling the shell in both my hands. This is me. Squeezed and pressed into a mold of perfection. Convoluted. Rigid. Never good enough. Try harder. Conform. But where is the nut itself? Where am I? What is left of ME? I grieve wildly for my lost self.

It’s a long time before I can breathe without pain and tears. Slowly, gently, I realize the shell has been cracked open; it’s half gone. Maybe the warm air and sunlight have already enticed my hidden self to start emerging. What would it take to shed the other half? But if I relinquish it all, I’ll be exposed, vulnerable. Who am I without the shape of the institution? I am alone. I am afraid.

I sit with my fears on a dusty path and wait to feel myself crawl back into my familiar shell but it doesn’t happen. Instead, something new begins to grow inside: hope. It won’t be right away. I don’t know when. But I will emerge all the way. Looking up at a nearby tree, I see a bird soar from its branches into the sky. Free.

Mary Dyer Hubbard was a Sister of the Blessed Sacrament for 20 years. After leaving the convent, she met and married Carl Hubbard and the couple lives in Horsham, PA. Mary Dyer Hubbard is a Licensed Professional Counselor and a therapist with the Samaritan Counseling Center since 1995.

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December 16, 2009

Just Say the Word

by William Bradley

I’m trying to think of a word. It’s a word that I’ve forgotten, that I suspect we’ve all forgotten. We knew it once, it’s on the tip of our tongues, something just reminded us. No, it’s gone. Love? No, no. Good? Well, close, but not quite.

It’s like, when I was born, wrapped up in a white blanket, and put to my mother’s breast, my guardian angel leaned in to me and, with breath reeking of Maker’s Mark and Marlboros, whispered it to me. He said “Here it is. Check it. Dude, it’s all that you need to know.” And I understood, and felt at peace. And I know that I won’t remember what the word was until my heart monitor stops beeping and they disconnect me from my respirator, and my guardian angel returns, pulling the pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his jacket and offering me that smoke I’ve waited so long for, since I quit in order to prolong my life on earth. He’ll hook me up with a match, light his own cigarette, then smirk at me with that arrogant, knowing grin of his. The dick. “You remember what I told you?” he will ask. “Almost,” I’ll answer. “God knows I’ve been trying.”

It’s the word that we’re missing from all of our common vocabularies, regardless of language. It is all parts of speech, but it is not a vulgarity; far from it. It is the word that connects one idea to the next, that links one narrative to another, that clears up all misunderstandings. The Christian, the Jew, the Muslim, and the atheist could find all that separates them made insignificant by its utterance. “Oh, that’s what you meant,” they’d say in unison, then have a hearty laugh over the misunderstanding. It all seems so obvious, once the word’s been spoken.

The word names the bond shared by all who live. It soothes us when we worry, it alleviates our fears. It is the name of the universe, and the name of the universe’s creator. It is the knowledge that brings us closer to the Supreme Person, it expresses the best possible tidings to those who have faith and do good works; in the beginning, it was there with God, and it was God.

My guardian angel will lean in closer to me, excited. “Do you give up?” he’ll ask. “Just give up. None who lives ever remembers the word, even though they all want to.” And then he’ll tell me, and I’ll shake my head and groan at my ignorance. It was there all the time. How could I have missed it? It will all seem so obvious, when I’m dead.

In the meantime, though, I’ll get by the best I can, with my ignorant, half-formed ideas formed by my insufficient vocabulary. Most of the time it doesn’t even bother me. Hardly at all. I stand in the kitchen, stirring the pasta and watching the clock. The house fills with the scents of the dinner that will be ready soon. These are the moments, I know, when my wife loves me most. This is when I love her most, too—during these relaxing hours after we have escaped from the office but before we start preparing for the next day’s labors. And when we’re loving each other the most, the word love seems insufficient. So my wife comes into the kitchen and stands behind me while I stir. Her left arm goes around my waist, and she stands up on her toes to kiss my shoulder.

“I love you,” she says with a sigh that indicates frustration with the word’s inadequacy.

“I love you too,” I say, sympathetic to the shortcomings of our language but content in the knowledge that we understand each other regardless.

William Bradley’s work has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Normal School, Brevity, The Bellevue Literary Review, and other magazines. He teaches at Chowan University in Murfreesboro, NC, and he can often be found acting like a know-it-all on his blog, The Ethical Exhibitionist (http://ethicalexhibitionist.blogspot.com).

December 2, 2009

Authentic Self: The Story Big Enough to Live In

by Amy Pierce

Oneness / Home

Evolutionary enlightenist Andrew Cohen writes, “And that’s what the world so desperately needs: mature, enlightened human beings who are willing to wholeheartedly take responsibility for the entire process, forever – to participate in the creation of the conscious universe, with and as the very force that created it. That impulse is . . . your very own Authentic Self.”[i] Authentic Self is that Spark of Divine Fire, that initial God-individuation that is the Greatest/Highest Self; Authentic Self is Oneness with identity.

Built into each of us, sitting in our deepest heart, is a longing for connectedness. Sitting alongside the yearning is a belief and fear that we are ultimately alone. The longing for connection is about Home, the Great Source of Being that many of us call God. The “good news” is to be found in the truth of the reality of Oneness – meaning that whether or not we know or experience it, we are literally One with All That Is. Every tree and tank, every hellion and healer, every bully and baby, are One and cannot be separated from the Whole.

That we exist here on this duality planet as unique individuals by necessity means that there exist many distinctly differing paths to bring us Home. What works for one will not necessarily work for another, and to me, this is part of the beauty and grace of Consciousness Itself, of Creator, of Home. Eventually, we will come Home to the undifferentiated Oneness. Yet we can also choose to come Home here and now as our Authentic Selves in form, which means that we must live and “behave as if the God in All Life matters”[ii].

The Keyword of the Times is “Change”

Huge changes are upon us. Time seems to be speeding up, and the consequences of the conscious or unconscious choices we make show up almost immediately. This instantaneous response lets us see that there’s no longer any room for doubting our authorship of the experiences we have. It’s time to wake up to the fact that we, like the God Who made us in its image and likeness, are Holy Creators who must now take authority over both what we will make and what we have made.

We are all in the movement of Life together. In fact, we ARE the movement, we ARE Life. Whether we are completely unconscious of this truth, or at the edge flirting with the idea of conscious evolution, or already immersed in the soup and fully engaged in creating a life of deep, profound spiritual responsibility and integrity, the times are calling loudly to each of us to take our place at the table and consciously create a new world.

For the Sake Of

Why the urgency? Because this Universe and our beloved Earth – a living, conscious Being – will no longer support our hiding behind the mask of separateness, another word for victim consciousness; we simply no longer have that luxury if humanity is to survive and thrive. You and I must really “get it” that there is literally no separation between us – you are another me and I am another you – and that every choice, every action, and every belief affects the Whole.

For the good of All, for the sake of the Whole, and in service to the One, we must look at what it takes to embody Authentic Self so that we will choose to live and behave as if the God in All Life matters. We must examine the ways and means of “healing the holdings of the heart” and look at how it is we create both the joy and suffering that we – and others – experience. When we take such a level of self-responsibility to heal ourselves, we help heal the world by becoming a healing presence wherever we are. From this embodied authenticity, we love each other back into our forgotten Wholeness by living as Authentic Self, that over-arching Aspect which has never left Home, and which holds the door wide open, waiting for us to remember who we are.

[i] Excerpted from Andrew Cohen’s “Quote of the Week,” http://www.andrewcohen.org/quote/?quote=132

[ii] Phrase taken from the title of Machelle Small Wright’s book, Behaving As If the God in All Life Mattered, published by Perelandra Ltd.

November 26, 2009

The Body I Am

by Kristin Blank

At my first Weight Watchers meeting in January 2001, my sister Jennifer and I waited to step on the electronic scale. I observed the other women waiting: some looked too skinny to be there; others looked just like me, massive, with flabby skin sweaty with the exhaustion of hauling ourselves around.

I’d been overweight my whole life, and at 21 years old, I was done being the “Fat Girl.” That day, I was racked with anxiety. It embarrassed me when even my doctor read the scale, but I closed my eyes and stepped up. The woman behind the counter filled in my “Starting Weight” box. 238 lbs. My throat closed. Oh God, I thought. Don’t cry, don’t cry.

I knew my body was larger than others. But seeing that number innocently staring up at me cemented it in my mind—I was fat, huge, massive. I can’t do this, I thought, this is too much. I pushed down these thoughts that I knew would make me fail before I even began. I glanced at Jenn’s paper and saw 220 lbs., then showed her mine, clenching my jaw to ward off the still-threatening tears. Neither of us could believe I weighed that much.

Later, I logged on to the Weight Watchers website and tried out the tools. I checked the charts that told what my healthy weight was: at 5’5”, I should weigh about 135 pounds—at least a hundred pounds had to go.

I clicked to find out my Body Mass Index. I needed to face the truth, just like I needed to face that Starting Weight box. I entered my height and current weight and waited for the computer to process. Your BMI is 39.7. According to the explanatory paragraph, a BMI of 20–25 is healthy and a BMI over 30 is considered “very overweight (obese).”

I scored nearly ten points above “obese,” which meant I was unbelievably obese, send-in-the-clowns obese, morbidly obese. I’d never defined myself by that term—who wanted to call themselves morbidly anything? Morbid means rotten, near death, overwhelmingly odorous, gruesome, or somehow psychologically depraved. The woman thought the man morbid because he pinned live insects to cardboard and watched them writhe. To be morbidly obese meant to be hopeless, disgusting, fit to be examined beneath glass but never touched with bare hands.

And then, I was thin. In hindsight, the transformation feels instantaneous. In reality, it took about a year until I was satisfied with my body. In hindsight, it seems effortless. I followed the program and weight fell off me in little bunches and that was that—the Fat Girl was gone. At least from the naked eye.

Once, I ran into someone who hadn’t seen me throughout my entire weight loss. He didn’t even recognize me until I spoke. Totally new person to him.

And yet, my grandmother said, “You look so much better than you used to.” Totally repaired person to her.

I never owned my fatness. I never celebrated it the way some people seem able to do. I never stood nude before a mirror and said, “Yes, this is me. I am the bounteous rolls of flesh, I am the thickness of supple thighs, the curves of soft shoulders, the roundness of these hips, the woman of these DD-cup breasts.”

Instead, I didn’t look at my body except in shame and told myself that I was just like all my thin friends. I was awkward in my fatness, because I didn’t wield it like the weapon it can be in the hands of a girl who doesn’t let the body she has stand in the way of the person she is. By getting thin, I felt I was excavating from the caverns of fat the girl I really was. With each pound gone, I felt I was getting closer to her, getting closer to me.

At size eight, one could say, I have arrived. I am at ease in public. I can concentrate on the book in my hands or the sidewalk beneath my feet because I don’t worry if someone is wondering why that Fat Girl can’t get control of herself.

In many ways, I have become invisible.

Yet, I am seen. I am seen for my dark brown eyes and shiny auburn hair. For my slender pianist’s fingers and rosy cheeks. For my easy smile and sense of humor.

For these things that were there all along.

Kristin Blank earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from American University in Washington, DC. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Vermillion Literary Project, and on BettyConfidential.com. She currently lives in Maryland.

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