Even though my book is edited, printed, and now available on bookstore shelves, my spiritual journey continues.
This new step along my path has already reinforced my belief that all spiritual openings, expansions, and awakenings lead to deeper and deeper levels of consciousness for us to explore. Each one like peeling an onion and revealing the next layer.
With the book for sale and finding its way into the hands of the people it was meant for, I now get to face within me any barriers I have to receiving. Receiving money, receiving support, and receiving comments of all kinds about the book.
What have I found as this layer begins to peel back? I discovered a stagnant pool of separation so deep that as I sank into it a fear of drowning in that muck bubbled to the surface.
This all started on the day the book was released with a simple expression of love from one of my yoga teachers. I took my Kundalini yoga class as I normally would and afterwards went and hugged her. She congratulated me on finishing the new book, told me how proud she was of me, and said she couldn’t wait to buy it. Immediately I said, “Oh no, I want to give them to you and the other teachers.” “Don’t do that.” she said, “I want to give you money for it. If I could, I would give you one million dollars to make sure this book gets into the hands of the people who need it.”
With that I began to cry. Not the slow tearing up of someone touched by a sweet expression of love, but a flood of tears and emotions that rushed up to the surface and out of me like the bursting of a dam.
The gift of my spiritual awakening is that now I know – at an experiential level –I am not my thoughts, emotions, or fears. These come and go like the weather and I can simply allow them. On the contrary, my thoughts, fears, and emotions are just energy and nothing to hide from.
As I allow them and feel them fully – even in front of people that might be shocked by them – and I let the energy move where it wants to, I am free. I am free to move to higher levels of consciousness. In that moment of release I was able to open the door to my next level of expansion. And I know it’s going to be a good one.
What I can see already is that there is a level of control I maintain when I am giving. When we give we can control our environment; who we give to, how much, and when. But when we receive it comes unexpectedly and so we are not in control.
In receiving I can also feel more stagnant energy around the ideas of worth and worthiness. Whenever I recognize stagnant energy it means it’s time to move that energy, because energy always wants to be in motion. Stuck energy limits our expansion.
But more than anything else, what I’ve learned is that as we open our hands to receive we allow the gift to be felt as a cord of love between the giver and the receiver. Giving cannot be truly enjoyed without receiving. One cannot be without the other. So from now on I will incorporate the art of receiving as one of my new spiritual practices.
To find out more about me go to: BethBanning.com/About.
To find out more about my book go to: BethBanning.com/Spirituality.