IN IT TOGETHER
JULY 2015

Hello Everyone...

Well, it looks like we survived June, though granted, we may have scored low on a "pop quiz" or two. But that's OK. Nothing wrong with seeing where we are in the current Universal Lesson of Being Compassion. AND, nothing wrong with not doing so well on a pop quiz - it's just a measurement of where we are on our Path, and not at all a measurement of us being "bad" (though I sure do know a lot of folks who judge the heck out of themselves when they aren't perfect - I'm among that crowd sometimes).

In the explosive energy of June, with the two energies happening at once, people were more irritable, impatient, prone to personalizing even the smallest thing, and absolutely more reactive than usual. Emotions were magnified to the point where a lot of people were crying out in pain and not even understanding what that pain was or why it was there. Because pain is often "disguised" as anger, it might not have been easy to remain in Love and Light and Compassion for our beloveds if we happened to be in the line of their "fire" as they released their pain-filled anger....or maybe we were the ones to release it upon our loved ones. Whatever the case may have been, hopefully we were either the recipient of a heart-felt "I'm sorry" or were able to say it ourselves to whomever we may have needed to say it.

The thing about pop quizzes is that they usually have an "extra credit" section at the end. In the current Lesson Plan - to Learn Compassion - we're being tested on our judgments and what we do with them. Do we make a judgment on someone (OR on ourselves) and stay locked in that judgment without any hope of redemption......or do we recognize that we are indeed judging and take responsibility in ourselves for doing so (meaning, do we process it in us to see what it is we're judging and WHY it is we're judging and then come to the place of understanding so that we can transform that judgment into Compassion)? The minute we catch ourselves making a judgment and then releasing it, whether about someone else or ourselves, I am certain Spirit awards us that extra credit so that we ultimately end up doing better on the pop quiz than we maybe thought we did initially.

I recently caught myself rolling my eyes because of someone's particular way of expressing their Being. (My rolling eyes were MY first clue that I was judging....ya think?) I found myself impatient with a young friend who was trying her hardest to appear to be sexy. My mind was thinking, "Oh, give me a break" as I viewed photo after photo of the same look on her face - posed and pouty lips, sucked in cheeks, a come-hither look on her face....and I absolutely was filling up with judgment big time. I wasn't filling myself with anything that felt good at all - condemnation leaves us ultimately feeling unclean. I swear, Spirit must have been shouting in my ear on that one, because all of a sudden I stopped myself and thought, "MY GOD, Marty.....so what if she's doing that? She obviously needs to be doing that or she wouldn't BE doing that. You did that when you were young, too, but now you are believing her to be bad in some way for trying to fill a need in her Being that does NO harm to you in any way."

WHEW - I got some extra credit points for getting to that place pretty fast, and I didn't get any points deducted for self-shame. Shoot - I did it, I recognized I was doing it, I understood it was a need for her, and I stopped it. End of story. If only ALL my judgments were that easy to catch (though in truth, we truly DO feel unclean in our souls when we've condemned....it's just a matter of being aware of how we're feeling at all times).

NOW - that example of catching a judgment was a simple one.....but oh my gosh, this world we're living in and the things we're seeing are really challenging for us all when it comes to getting past our judgments and condemnations. The one thing we have to try to always remember to keep in the forefront of our hearts and our minds is that we are all connected - we are each other in Spirit, and to judge another for their way of Being is to judge ourselves. We can and must condemn the actions that bring harm to others - but we have no right to condemn the Beings at all. We've all signed up for the same course of study in this dimension.....we've all come from the same starting point. Some of us are still in Kindergarten and some of us are taking our Exit Exams, and we've got all kinds of levels of learning in between.....but we're all doing the best we can for where we are in our Course of Study. And the "older" we are in our Souls, the more we're going to be tested on knowing that each of us has the Christ Consciousness (the term I use) within us. That's the bottom line - or should I say the top line?

We love to judge another's emotional needs. We simply do. We have disrespect for the Soul in an adult body who is always angry. We forget that anger is always a cry of pain. We have disrespect for the Soul in an adult body who is emotionally needy. We forget that they are emotionally needy because they haven't yet learned to fill their own needs. We have disrespect for the Soul in an adult body who is always bragging, or lying, or cheating or doing any number of things for which we disapprove, forgetting that they haven't yet learned the thing in their Soul that would teach them that they don't have to brag, lie, cheat or whatever. We simply expect them to act and BE different than they are because they now have adult bodies. We fail to recognize that in their Soul they are still young and haven't yet had some of the courses of study that we have. We don't condemn the kindergartner who isn't yet capable of graduating from college, but we sure do condemn "adults who should know better". No, they don't know better yet.....but they're working on it. It's so easy for us to forget that we are SOULS and not our bodies, isn't it?

One more paragraph or two to toss into this newsletter and then I'll sign off for the month. Just as we've been urged many times by Dixie to be aware of what's going on around us in our world and in our neighborhoods, I want to remind us all to be aware of where our friends and family members are mentally and emotionally when we're in conversation with them. So many people have been and continue to be greatly internalized right now and/or in their own deep worries and simply can't be present for us when we want them to be, and so we feel unheard by them....because we ARE unheard by them. They aren't capable of hearing us in that moment, and that doesn't say anything about us. Others are in great pain, and that pain can turn on a dime to rage in the volatile energy of these times.

I just want to caution us all to really discern where another is when we're in conversation with them so that we aren't blindsided by their reactive energy or so that when we leave their presence, we aren't hurt from their seeming lack of caring about us. Most often we can "read" our loved ones' energy well enough to know if they want company or not, but if we're unsure, there's nothing wrong with asking if they're up for companionship. We can be so focused on our own selves that sometimes we don't see (or we simply overlook) where another person is in their Being as we plow right on ahead with our stories or our need to process....or simply our chatter. It's a heck of a good time to practice being thoughtfully aware of others' emotional and mental states of Being.

OK, July - bring it on!!!!

Hold on to your Spirit...        
Marty