A sweltering St. Louis July afternoon, I enter the State License Office. Need I say more? I decide to Pause.
STEP BACK
Past experiences of License Office delay tell me that I better get out of my own way. In stepping back I can greet this as a New Moment!
STEP ASIDE
I have now allowed room for a helpful way to see this to enter my mind while renewing my driver’s license. A lovely woman standing behind a podium greets me at the door with a friendly smile. We sweaty customers crunch our paper numbers in our waiting.
Fanning herself the woman behind the podium blurts out, “Does anyone have some water? I am so thirsty.” I respond, “I’d give you my water bottle if I hadn’t already drank out of it!” She changes her mind, “I could sure use an iced tea.”
“How could I be truly helpful now?” I ask
LET INSPIRATION GUIDE
Inner Inspiration guides me to buy this woman an iced tea when I swing into Chipotle around the corner! I choose to follow. The License line went amazingly swift and so did the lunch line at Chipotle. I get 3 iced teas – 1 for me and 2 for her sweetened and unsweetened.
Twirling back into the License Office I hand her the 2 iced teas. She is surprised and truly grateful to have her thirst quenched and she shared the extra tea with a co-worker.
It’s a summer afternoon walk and I’m feeling out of sync, head drooping down, eyes staring at my feet as if they hold some enlightened solution to my discord. With my next breath, I call upon Inspiration, the Pure Presence of Peace. Scanning my emotions with radar accuracy assessing exactly what it is I am feeling. I feel it, and I say out loud, “I feel dissatisfied.” Just a twinge of dissatisfaction gnawing beneath the surface. What’s this about?”
I try to unscramble my emotional radar screen and decipher my dissatisfaction. Clueless in my deciphering I lift my head and notice a BIG SIGN in the Protzel’s Deli window that turns out has been there for 40 years which I’ve never seen before (page 140 Yellow book).
Say someone has different opinions than me on a particular subject. I needn’t condemn that person. (Though that can be my first reaction!)
I have condemned and it’s very uncomfortable because when I condemn another, I condemn myself. With PAUSE I am practicing laying my gavel down before I hit myself in the head . . . WHOA!
THANKFULLY this “another/myself” deal works both ways.
When I inspire another,
I am inspired too.
As I bless another,
I bless myself.
Works Both Ways
As I am willing to see you with my Inspired Self, YOU are now INSPIRED, whether you know it or not because INspiration is shared.
IN AN UNFORSEEN MOMENT, now that you have been seen truly by me, you will be moved to look upon another truly – without baggage.
You still may not agree with this person’s views, but you agree to see them without your baggage and their baggage, in a pause, just as you would like them to see you.
Without lifting a finger I can be truly helpful as I am willing to pause, step back from my me-character heart ÷ mind, and see you with myInspired Heart ∞ Mind > my mind with the LIGHT ON.
The peace of Inspiration is naturally extended. Now I feel Inspired because I am receiving Inspiration in being willing to give IT.
I haven’t lost anything in my giving; there has been no
sacrifice of any kind because Inspiration is Infinite
Yearning for tacos I hop in my car and swing into the local Mexican eatery. It was a late lunch and clearly, the guy on the line had seen better taco days ~ can’t say I blamed him. I simply paused, looked at him with my Inspired Mind ~ I saw him as so much more than the tired taco guy ~ then he saw me, as more than just a woman wanting her tacos! Truly, we both felt seen. You know that feeling, right? A recognition of our common ground? We both smiled. Truly happy eating tacos topped with Inspiration.
I haven’t lost anything in my giving; there has been nosacrifice of any kind because Inspiration is Infinitethere’s plenty to go around. page 134
The only reason we ask this question when the INspired Heart∞Mind is nudging us to wake up, is because we feel depleted and we are looking for something to fill us up.
ONE DAY we find ourselves no longer asking this question, “What’s in it for me?” We will be experiencing “What’s in it for me” in the moments of our being truly helpful (pg. 132-133).
Being the eyes, ears, hearts, hands, and feet of
~ Inspiration ~
WAKE-UP CALL – NOT me?
Have you ever not wanted to go to a social gathering, participate in a group of some kind, or lend-a-helping hand? I have.
Many years ago working as an occupational therapist in a hospital, I was part of a group with coworkers but decided to stop attending. A co-worker asked me what happened. I said, “Oh, I’m just not getting anything out of it.” To which in her good-natured way she replied, “Mary, maybe you’re supposed to be there for someone else.” My eyes were opened.
We experience, don’t we, an uplifting sense of spirit and purpose when we are present for others? Even if it’s in those moments of holding a door open, picking up something someone dropped, or showing up for an event and finding ourselves listening to a stranger sharing something, who needed someone to listen.
I Paused For LOVE this afternoon because I had become aware of a “wall” in my mind that was interfering with helpful communication – both understanding and feeling understood. In the Pause, I pulled out my legal pad and wrote the words, “simple, uncomplicated love”.
I became aware of a layer of grief rising to the surface. Realizing then that this grief was from a past brokenness that had become a wall. I was surprised as I felt I had fully grieved this situation. I began to write,
“What makes “love” so complicated is that I make it personal >
I love you, but I don’t love you. This isn’t LOVE.”
Then I received a gift of immeasurable delight. As I was grieving over what seemed irretrievably broken, I saw it to be sealed by LOVE, therefore incapable of being broken. In my mind’s eye I saw This Seal of LOVE over that which I grieved. A seal that cannot be broken, not a seal that we human beings think we need to try and fix or heal. The Seal of LOVE is Real LOVE and cannot be torn apart, hence it is in no need of repair. This is how LOVE is LOVE.
In my continuing pause, The Seal of LOVE wasn’t done with me yet. I saw how all of life, everything, and everyone are all held together by This Seal of LOVE. There is nothing we can do to change that. But I can change my mind about the “love” I misconstrue as Real LOVE.
It is my decision to turn away from the little love I make and turn towards This Seal of LOVE in whom I am received, heard, seen and whole. It is in This LOVE that the desolation of my wall is lifted and consolation takes its place.
In Real LOVE, we are not seen as unworthy pions,
but as one whom calls for LOVE
and LOVE responds.
In fact – and I can’t believe I am saying this – LOVE is impersonal. I’ve always hated when people said this because I feel LOVE so deeply. Impersonal is meant to mean that regardless of what we human beings do to one another – the atrocities we lay upon one another and the world, that are tragic in time – The Seal of LOVE remains in perfect Wholeness – FULLY and COMPLETELY INTACT. LOVE continues to love us no matter what and we can open to a personal experience of This LOVE.
