in Honesty, Notes of Encouragement
“Every experience that you have and will have upon the Earth encourages the alignment of your personality with your soul. Every circumstance and situation gives you the opportunity to choose this path, to allow your soul to shine through you, to bring into the physical world through you its unending and unfathomable reverence for and love of Life.” ― Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul
Dear friend,
I am writing you this note of encouragement as I see you reeling from the loss of something you held on to for a very long time. I have been where you are, relieved to be beyond the point of Surrender, but bewildered at the stepping stones that led you to the Grief you find yourself navigating. Now it is time to begin taking inventory of the truth, retracing your steps and facing the reality of each point of impact to be rooted in a place of bold Honesty.
The night that The Former proposed to me, I knew it was coming. It was unlike him to take the initiative to plan an outing to Opryland Hotel to see the Christmas lights, a place to which I had dragged him each Christmas for the past seven years. We schlepped around Opryland for hours, lingering at various romantic spots, I, in anticipation of the sparkler I expected to receive, and he, looking very unsure.
Once he had stalled his way through the interior of the two-million-light display, he led me outside onto the lawn of the hotel under a magical grove of trees covered in white twinkling lights. My heart was nearly bursting! This would be the moment everything would be all right. Here it was, I thought: He had finally come around and decided to get with my program and begin our lives as Mr. & Mrs. Perfect. He grabbed my hands, looked into my eyes, took a deep breath, and then rushed me back toward the valet line.
As I was reeling and trying to wrap my head around what was happening, he got the nerve. Right there, just before the valet parking line, he dropped to one knee and said, “Well, I guess this is as good a place as any. Hon, will you marry me?”
Sitting here writing this today, I can see the relief in his face that he had survived this moment. We rode home in silence. I was already dreading the call to my parents announcing the engagement they had expressly disapproved. I walked the dogs while he went ahead to bed. No champagne, no celebration, no joy.
Over the next few months of wedding planning and pretending, I never once thought to be honest about what, intuitively, I knew to be true: I was fully aware that this relationship was a complete delusion. I was so convinced that he was my only option, that somehow this was my only chance for that perfect snapshot of a husband passionately kissing me beneath the sparklers at our send-off, and I wasn’t even thinking about a happily ever after. My lack of self-worth fed the lie that, if not him, there would be no one.
How many times had my Spirit tried to compel me in a different direction? And how many times had I blatantly ignored the warning bells ringing in my ears? How many times had The Former walked away but returned to my opened door? I was so badly broken, and yet I was holding on to this relationship out of the fear that there would be nothing else to save me, and I walked down that aisle in spite of it.
I began the Practice of Honesty the last time we ever spoke. After a few of weeks of separation, he asked if we could have dinner one last time for some closure. I guess that’s what we were looking for every other time we had broken up and then somehow gotten back together: an ending. He picked me up for dinner, exuding his usual “aw shucks” charm. We laughed and recalled happy times over our meal, and then in the car it came: would’a, could’a, should’a… But, maybe, could we possibly give it one more shot? My head was spinning with fairytale endings, but my stomach clenched, and I heard myself confidently say to him, “No.” There was much grief to come, but never again did I waver in my decision to leave him.
You will begin the Practice of Honesty when the space within the center of your being begins to stir, and you choose to listen and accept what it tells you as Truth. In Hinduism, this space is called a chakra, an energy point within the body where the subtle, or subconscious, is expressed. In my own faith practice, this is the place from which the Holy Spirit guides and protects me — what some call the Seat of the Soul. If you choose to deny the wisdom that comes from this place of Honesty, do so aware of the ramifications that are to come. It takes complete faith and dedication to begin to trust and act on the messages you receive from this place of bold Honesty.
You are loved!
Elizabeth