I have a new benchmark and shall never settle for less

The stone and shell filled with the goodness we felt and shared was slid into the sea. The prayers embeded were for all that is good that we shared be multiplied in our lives. This slow unplaiting of the strands that wove us together has resulted in another tapestry slowly being woven with colours so bright, our hearts so filled and this expansiveness that is Love has grown.

My Good Friend Gerri found this and it echoed the exact process I have found myself in, and am deeply greatful to Our Higher Selves that guided us into the Ceremony of letting one another go in a forest… and planting what was old and no longer accurate…

“The culmination of one love, one dream, one self, is the anonymous seed of the next. There is very little difference between burying and planting. For often, we need to put dead things to rest, so that new life can grow. And further, the thing put to rest—whether it be a loved one, a dream, or a false way of seeing—becomes the fertilizer for the life about to form.

As the well-used thing joins with the earth, the old love fertilizes the new; the broken dream fertilizes the dream yet conceived; the painful way of being that strapped us to the world fertilizes the freer inner stance about to unfold. This is very helpful when considering the many forms of self we inhabit over a lifetime. One self carries us to the extent of its usefulness and dies.

We are then forced to put that once beloved skin to rest, to join it with the ground of spirit from which it came, so it may fertilize the next skin of self that will carry us into tomorrow. There is always grief for what is lost and always surprise at what is to be born. But much of our pain in living comes from wearing a dead and useless skin, refusing to put it to rest, or from burying such things with the intent of hiding them rather than relinquishing them.

For every new way of being, there is a failed attempt mulching beneath the tongue. For every sprig that breaks surface, there is an old stick stirring underground. For every moment of joy sprouting, there is a new moment of struggle taking root. We live, embrace, and put to rest our dearest things, including how we see ourselves, so we can resurrect our lives anew.”

― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

We pay so much attention to beginnings, marriages, new jobs, new this new that. And in this process of letting my Beloved be Free into something that is far bigger than our relationship , her quest for self in another country that would have the right teachings for her soul… had me deeply aware of the process of honouring.

How about we all hold ceremony when we leave a country, job or Lover.

How about we do this gentleness and reverence in deep, deep thanks.

And how about we speak what did not work and set that free, and how about we speak about what was good and let it live?

And how about loving so big that it is a Free thing that is unfettered by ego?

I am also aware of the wisdom that great wounds require great healing and if this is done consciously, it will mend many things on so many levels…I am deeply sad, really grieving as if a Great Death has happened, letting go of someone that you Love unto a pathway that serves them best has been one of the most difficult things that I have done in this lifetime. It was not done alone, my Beloved also has found this painful, as we share a deep love for one another. 

Tears stream as I walk back to my home, the hill steeper than usual, heart heavier I suppose, yet, oh yet, the other side of this coin called love, gratitude and joy is equally close. We have loved well… I have a new benchmark and shall never settle for less…