Sometimes when there has been a lot of pain in our lives and it has become the norm rather than the occasional tidbit, it's rather difficult to live in the reality that does not include that. Some might call that other reality Peace.

There have been many times when I have found myself straddling the gap between the old and the new. To have one foot still stuck in the matter on the land-locked side of the equation and the other foot softly starting to find peace and a new kind of comfort and love on a billowy white cloud where I know I am loved and I know I can trust.

But this mortal experience leaves so much on the land-locked side of the equation and it has to be painstakingly re-programmed and parsed through to sift and sort the tidbits that want to come with into the light-filled side and the big chunks that need to be left behind as distant memories of a life well lived but a treasure chest of experiences I've no mind to repeat or further excavate.

And sometimes when I'm in that place I feel like a child moving through a vast birth canal that is ripping and tearing and becoming bloodied by the sharp thorns of the old existence that still just somehow have not been plucked away. That's the hell of it for me. I thought they all the thorns had been removed. But then someone does something that triggers an old pain and I realize...there's a thorn there, still. And it seems that's just how it is.

So in these times I've had to learn over and over again to stop judging the pain, heartache, contractions, messiness and even bloodshed during the birth-canal times.

And a new take on it seems to be emerging where I am guided to ask myself: What if all of this is happening just simply because I am actually receiving the expansion that I've been looking for and wanting and craving for decades? What if THAT'S the truth of it all? What if it's that, rather than the flipside of that experience which might very well leave me thinking that all I have is trauma and drama and it will never end? Because believe me, in those times, it sure seems never-ending. 

I imagine that's what a newborn feels as she moves through the birth canal. It may very well seem like hell, if you think about it. After months of blissful existence in the warm waters of the mother, gestating and receiving everything to prepare her for the big transition out....well, then....a whole lot of pain and anguish and theoretic hell just to get to the other side. Sometimes forceps. Sometimes other interventions. Numbing things down. Screaming. Cursing. Crying. Tears of pain, tears of joy.

And what it comes down to is that it seems that peace is found in the allowance of all of it. And that response is, in fact, a choice.

There is always a choice.

And sometimes...even though we've grown so much, we get knocked back down and seem to have to sit on a lilypad surrounded by a big old stinking pool of muck and just re-ground ourselves because we are re-orienting in such a way that we can't even see any light, let alone the promise of a new dawn.

I guess I am realizing that that's just how life is.

Ebb and flow.
Dark and light.
Up and down.
Illusion and clarity.
Mud and pure waters.
High and low.

All of it is part of the journey. 

Peace seems to come from the allowing all these parts of the process of life as we birth and rebirth ourselves, our passions, our projects, our businesses.

I think finding peace comes from the re-framing when we find ourselves in times that feels inexplicably contractive. Maybe I'll choose this explanation at this time, and see what happens. So far, it seems just about right on.

I love you.

--Suzanne