The Courage To Be Real

Thinking back to what I wrote in the December blog, when the little ones (of the gnome world) showed up during my massage and asked the therapist to tell me that I don’t need to work so hard to see them because “I already do”, I felt an immediate confirmation—that relaxing into “knowing” that comes not so often as to be taken for granted but often enough to stick in my heart as a guiding star. Barbara often says, “Now that the gnomes have us—have our attention—they’re not going to let us go easily.” And so I am grateful for moments of assurance, for gifts of synchronicity.

I have said enough times that although I have a “knowing” sense, I don’t usually see “in my mind’s eye” in the way I wish I did. I am coming to experience, though, that a sense of knowing can turn into imaginal seeing. I often ask the little ones for help in finding things like my keys. Usually the process is that I remember to ask, and then I go on with getting ready or cleaning up and suddenly my sight is drawn to a particular spot (last time it was down a crack by the seatbelt in the backseat of my car). I’ve come to feel confident that these misplaced items will turn up, even if it takes some time.

My 3-year-old grandson and I made an advent garden this Christmas season, Waldorf fashion. The third week of Advent is the time for the animals to come round, and each day I hid a little animal and then gave A. hints about where to find it. One day I simply couldn’t remember where I’d put the beaver. I started to look methodically about the house but then, when I asked the little ones for help, I immediately had an image in my mind of the small blue teapot on the bottom shelf. A miracle! That’s what I felt. Maybe it’s similar to a child’s stages of development, except in the opposite direction. Children grow up and normally (if temporarily) leave their “seeing” behind; adults have the opportunity to leave skeptical and inadequate feelings behind and grow up into a trust of the inner and invisible.

This trust in the imaginal realm is a trust in the heart forces. In Elyse Pomeranz’s telesummit talk (see December blog), a listener asked for tips to awaken the imagination, to help her begin trusting what she imaginatively saw and heard. She wondered if she might be wanting the connection too much, might be so attached to the outcome that she blocked the subtle communication with the elementals. I can discover myself in that dilemma especially when I’m in a group and perceive that everyone else is connecting more profoundly than I am. In my 70s I can still tense up and want to perform better or to fit safely into the fold! That freezing contraction interferes with the delicate energy flow that would allow my perceptions to move with fluidity and make the old worries irrelevant. Laughter, I think, helps unclog the blockages, by acknowledging that this is the work of a lifetime, and I am participating.

The work of learning to connect with those who have died seems similar to that of communicating with nature and elementals. Robert Sardello, writing of his wife Cheryl’s recent death, identified the old-pattern-finding work quite beautifully. “By far, Cheryl’s most abiding and deep interest and concern was that of learning to enter the process of remaining connected with those who have died and helping others learn to do so. It is a process of shedding, rather than adding on a learning, for we must contemplatively come to be able to really see the false aspects of ourselves, dispassionately, and let those fall away in order to be heart-present with those who live in the Great Life.”

Shed that in myself which is not true in order to hear a subtler, cosmic tone, or see an image that doesn’t need the eye! How many times, then, must I catch myself wondering if I’ve pleased someone or nicely fulfilled some request from the outside? Always. And yet I can consider myself beyond that habitual response, as well, and must also shed the dishonest modesty (not to be confused with true humility) that only protects me, falsely, from the fray of living.

“I realize now,” says Barbara, “that long before I met Mano and the Council they started subtly revealing to me what would be needed to work with them. The book Why Am I Afraid to Show You Who I Really Am? was given to me. The answer it offered was, ‘Because it is all I’ve got and if you don’t like it I have nothing else to offer.’ Next was the statement, ‘To be honest and open and free, to let you see who I really am, takes the rawest kind of courage.’ I immediately made a promise to myself that I would be that kind of woman. My heartfelt promise told Mano they could trust me to be real. So my training continued and I must confess that, 50 years later, the training still continues.”