December 2017

Dear One,
 
This has been an incredible year for me.  
Do you remember the first sentence of The Tale Of Two Cities?
"It was the best of times and it was the worst of times."
I feel this is true for me as I come to the end of 2017.

I teach a class called Master's Class In Love. 
For years I have been reading, exploring, meditating, and asking G-d to help me to experience unconditional love.
I found this quote by David Whyte:

"Unconditional love is experienced by a journey through disappointment, humiliations, the feelings of being a prisoner of someone else's behavior... through difficulties of heartbreak.  It is being vulnerable (AND TRANSPARENT)... and it is the exquisite pain to which we apprentice ourselves as we enter into an (intimate) relationship, in marriage, in raising children, (in friendship) and in a work we love and desire."

It has been through these experiences (many where I have felt betrayed) where I have allowed myself to polish the diamond, and to remember who I am.  This sentence rings true in my heart...
"I am that I am."
I have stopped pretending to be other than
I am in order to GET love.
I am profoundly grateful that I have encountered my true self, and know that all I will ever need is with me now. I have gone through the pain, I have gone through the loss.  My heart has been broken open... and the outcome is that:
I have fallen in love with myself... unconditionally.

Emmanuel told me: "You do not have to begin a lengthy and far-reaching search -- for the treasure resides exactly where you are, in the divine aspects of your true self in "this very moment of eternity."

I look back at this year, and into the experiences that brought me to my knees, that made me doubt my faith and to doubt my trust and intuition.
What I have learned through all of these painful experiences is that I have a choice. The choice is always between love or fear, faith or doubt, surrender or control and ultimately G-d or ego.
It is accepting all... and forgiving self and other.
I have surrendered my will to G-d and gratefully embraced the
"I AM THAT I AM."

In June 2005 I gave an intensive to a woman... and I found this note in my preparation:

"Right now is the opportunity to stop and tell the truth about the flame of consciousness that is the essence of your being.
To choose to deny it is to suffer.
To choose to surrender to it is the end of all your suffering. (suffering is caused by the betrayal of self, the denying of the source of who you are)
When you meet yourself,
When you love yourself,
When you recognize that this flame of truth that you love IS yourself,
You will have no need to search for love, or to try to extract love from another.
You are fulfilled."

This has been my experience this year, and my gift is accepting that
I am the flame.
My wish for you this New Year is that you ignite your own flame.

I find these words comforting:

"And even though it all went wrong,
I'll stand before the lord of song,
With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah."
~~ Leonard Cohen

For this Christmas and Hanukkah I wish you the faith to choose to be born again into the light of your own self-remembering.  Join me in a Hallelujah as we enter into 2018.
Amen,
Barbara