The Mana'o Blog: Another way to look at things...

While it won't take away from the pain of our losses, we can look at them differently if we should take the option to...

"...lucky I'm sane after all I've been through...I can't complain but sometimes I still do. Life's been good to me so far..." (Joe Walsh's "Life's been good to me")

I will be the last person to tell anyone else how to deal with their losses and expect that the way that I deal with mine they can also deal with theirs. That is not giving other people their birth right of grieving, of being angry for the losses they have incurred, for being in the middle of a hurt that they could not have imagined coming to their lives. Not one of us on the planet does not go through some sort of loss in our lives. Sometimes those losses are torture, and sometimes those losses just plain old suck and are a pain in the rear end.

All the time, though, those losses serve us up with the option to do something about the pain, and by doing something about the pain I do not mean that a person needs to go out into the world and numb their pain by replacing the loss with some other thing...like overindulgence, addiction, self-mutilation. By doing something about the pain I mean that in that pain we have to think that there is a message in it for us, we have to believe that in that pain we are meant to grow forward, to show our Light through it all and still be able to lift our head in the morning knowing that we have a purpose in this lifetime and fully knowing that even though we have suffered any loss, Spirit has us. All of us. We have to know within us that there is a big giant reason that we have to experience the big giant losses, and believe it when I say that in this last month alone I have been blessed with people who have experienced losses so big and so ...gnarly...that to believe that any of them could have fathomed that they would be able to deal with their own pain in a way that blesses the world, including and most of all, blessing themselves...while I will not call it an impossible thing that they have turned their grief and their pain into the beginnings of a beautiful work of Soulfulness, I will call it a Miracle.

Miracles....the other thing that "happens"...

I have been witness to a whole lot of miraculous things happening, and this past week was not an exception. I saw a new client turn her brand new pain into something delightfully gorgeous in nature and totally giant in terms of Aloha. I watched over the last few months a client who is now one of my best pals turn himself from a mass of inner turmoil to taking the steps he knows he needs to in order for his life to become all that it is meant to be and it is a beautiful thing. I have watched yet another person, also a guy, go from being a target of verbal slings and arrows into the Soul Warrior that he was born to be. And the miracles, they just keep on happening.

The Miracles keep happening, and it is awesome to see that there are people who know this about themselves, and if they do not know this there are folks like me who are too happy to let them know that yes, indeed and in fact, you, me, we all are the Miracle waiting to happen, all the time, everyday. This might sound like it is crazy, but in the losses that we each suffer, big or small, temporary or permanent, lie the seeds of our own greatness.

The Seeds of Our Own Greatness

I do not even want to begin to compare my own losses to those of others, because my losses can be replaced, but there are people who read this blog who I know well of their losses, and their losses are huge and varied. Yet, it is in those very losses that we find the very seeds of greatness that beg to be sown so that the fruits of those labors can be seen, can be witnessed by all, and can be taken as a blessing that these people who hurt so badly can rise above their pain and their agony, become one with the thing that could have eaten their lives but the thing that would not be allowed to do that.

In their pain and in their struggle to feel something else, in their struggle to make sense of the loss, and in their striving to do what is right and best for their own lives, they rise. They rise like the very Phoenix from the very ashes which were caused by the fires of life. Yet they do not realize that in that fire they were made stunning by God. In those fires they were refined and made ready to be all the gift to the world that they were meant to be. These people...those who have been refined by the Fire of their lives...these people are the ones who have been called upon to be the leaders among us, for these have been the very ones who have fought their way back to wholeness and while they may not be completely and totally whole and healed at this point in time, they Know in the Bones of their Souls that they are going to get there and that they are going to make their lives the living testimony to the beauty which is borne, sometimes, from the losses.

We can only deal with so much before we are brought to a place inside of us that calls upon our ability to stare the pain in the face and stare it down, make it bleed and make it crumble like it made us crumble. We all strive for that, strive to make that one face, not to the rest of the world, but to our very selves, because sometimes, most of the time, in some cases all of the time, we are our own worst enemy and we are the very thing that causes the Miracle to be delayed in some fashion. The truth is that it is not delayed, but that it has fruitioned into something that we cannot understand, and again the process of refining us through the fire begins, and soon we can see in that fire the things that we dearly need.

The Fire

We are brought by Spirit through the Fire of Life, and it is so because we are meant to grow in this lifetime and are meant to be the very example of the All That Is. We are the representation of Life itself, and through us all are the lessons that are meant to be held true to, lest we bear those lessons again.

This post is not meant to be taken as my lessening the constant and throbbing beat of the pain within. It is meant to show all of us that through the fire we are meant to be made brilliant, meant to, at the end of the lessons at hand, shine brightly like the Sun even though on the inside the only thing burning, it seems, is the constant and ever glowing fire that rages. We rarely know what to do with that fire, with that heat, and most of the time we allow it to simply burn us, and eventually, we burn out.

Take this as being the thing that you needed, the catalyst to the healing of your own wounds and the utilization, rather than the quelling, of the Fire in the Belly....

Learn that you are not burning from the Fire, but that you are being made brilliant in the heat of the flames, like the purest of Silver, and being made more the beautiful Soul that you are.

It does not take away from the pain within...it merely makes it shine brilliant and gorgeous like so many diamonds.

So, shine on you crazy diamond...

I Love You All !!
ROX

Reverend Roxanne Cottell is the Kumu Hula and Creator of the Spiritual Hula Program for Women and the Co-Founder of Na Hula O Ka Wahine 'Ui. She is a blogger, book author, choreographer and Spiritual Adviser. If you would like information about "ROCK your NUPTIALS" Weddings or simply just to contact Roxanne for information about the Spiritual Hula Program for Women or information regarding private hula or Spiritual Guidance sessions with her feel free to send her an email.
(c) 2013 Roxanne K. Cottell. All Rights Reserved

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