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HeavenLetter #1756 comment on Religion and Spirituality

Re: #1756 August 26, 2005

G'MOrning...
A Line from today's HeavenLetter really struck home with me.

Quote:

You have taken your body very seriously and downplayed your soul, as if that too were an embarrassment, as if your body was to be covered up yet flouted, and soul to remain in a closet, hidden from view, and only whispered about on certain occasions.

Religion and Spirituality were rarely discussed in my family.
These subjects were almost as taboo as discussing sexuality. (which was never discussed... yet let's not go down that road here)

I still feel embarrassed discussing God or anything spiritual or even metaphysical. :oops: With my peers, as I was growing up, kids who were more outspoken about God or Christ were teased. The people in my peer group and in my parent's** peer group would roll their eyes if these subjects were brought up. (Oh! Look at the Jesus Freak!)

This was normal to me.

So normal that I married a man who still rolls his eyes and snickers at me when I happen to mention anything Spiritual or Metaphysical.

So... I am practicing coming out of the closet, and not hiding my light under the barrel....

and learning to just smile and bless the rolling of his eyes and his snickers....It hasn't been easy. Yet it is getting easier... Thanks to friends such as I'm meeting here....
Thank you.

Love to all.
Lauri

**My dad and I had some rare and beautiful discussions... he was a closet Christian too.... yet my mother's side of the family, the most prominent in my life... were athiests. (or agnostics at best)

HeavenLetter #1756 comment on Religion and Spirituality

Lauri, I sure relate. I'm afraid religion was a joke in our house. I always felt very separate from religion, like I don't belong. I still feel that way. God is another story, of course. I still can't believe I type God bless you!
God bless you, Lauri!
With love, Gloria

re: Lauri's post and religion thoughts

Lauri,
Your post reveals how many of us grow up in conflict about our childhood experiences with the R word - religion. My experience was that while my parents - mother especially - wished to give us all the good as they perceived it, how they lived life the other 164 hours a week gave us messages that often conflicted with that hour in church, an hour in Sunday School, 30 minutes a week at choir practice and 30 minutes studying what the adults told us. The fear messages that I heard from the pulpit covered the messages of love that surely were presented there somewhere (weren't they???). After all, God was a loving god, who only smote those who disagreed with him. (TRY THAT ON) as a loving enticement to stay tuned. When Mr. White coached us on our catechism classes he didn't really only describe how many ways we were imperfect enough to forever need 'the rod' were we?

Our parents (or at least mine) grew up in a time of little dissent. They worked and did what their employers told them to in exchange for a few silver coins, they believed what their government told them to (easier in those days), and they found the world a little less complicated than it has become.

Now, we have the gift of free will to examine how we feel about some of the messages we get, and at times it is freeing and at times it is daunting.

In the same light, we have the choice to review the spiritual messages we have been fed and to retain some and discard others. It usually comes in waves of growth. It leads us to try on various spiritual garb - and follow new thoughts which come to us thru others such as Glroria's Heaven Letters. It comes thru seminars, books, spiritual encounters, music, synchronisitic connections and messages within the heart.

I hold as a truism for me that a single book or messenger cannot possibly serve all of this world and other worlds. I believe that if God personified came to my door and handed me the Dead Sea Scrolls, it would be of zero use to me as I could not read them.

That is why I know we are being offered information from a wide variety of sources to taste what is palatable for us, digest it's nourishment and eliminate that which is no longer of use.

Your sharing is a lamp lighting the path for someone who is also seeking the light and we are blessed by your sharing.

Blessings,
Joie

Re: Today's HeavenLetter

Lauri wrote:

Re: #1756 August 26, 2005
So normal that I married a man who still rolls his eyes and snickers at me when I happen to mention anything Spiritual or Metaphysical.

So... I am practicing coming out of the closet, and not hiding my light under the barrel....

and learning to just smile and bless the rolling of his eyes and his snickers....It hasn't been easy. Yet it is getting easier... Thanks to friends such as I'm meeting here....

:D Yeah... I am starting to feel a lot like you are Lauri! It is the same with Sylvie (my wife) when it comes to my renewed partnership/relationship/communion in the last years.
Even more so that I tend to "not discuss" anymore some of my choices and new activities I decide to look into (Godwriting, Angel reading and ACIM are the 3 major ones I can point at).

Thank you and Bless you for showing to me that I should not be afraid, and that even more so since this fear may only be a reflection of my own fear in my abilities.

Hugs a plenty!
Serge

comments on heavens letters

Often your thoughts about your life and the world you think you live in pull you down. Of course, it isn’to life that does. It’so your thoughts. Sometimes your thoughts are like a plague, or, at least, like a persistent cold that you can’to seem to shake.
sadly it is true, how many of us each day, face the world thinking of only the negitive we face each and every day.i, have been ill for some time now, with the illness they call sever depression and anxiety. often, i, was told to just snap out of it. as all too often those with out the illness are able to comment upon. it was found in the last five years that my deppresion is part of the illness called fibromyalgia and cronic fatigue syndrome, both of witch, depression are symptom illnesses, that go along with this. i, had already been diagnosed with hypothyroidism, about 10 years earlier, but had not realised that the depression and anxiety goes along with that as well. and so i, had gone along time untreated.

add that together, with a childhood of abuse and very stressful,for a child.
well life as a teen did not hold a good out look, let alone as i, grew older.

but at a very early age my grandmother taught me about angels. and when she could she would take me to church with her. i, was a very sick little girl. having sever asthma, and ending in the hospitals every 6 months. the first 4 years of my life. and the carity hospitals in new orleans where ran by the nuns, in the 60's.

so, i, had a early awaking with earthbound angels as well as the angels that added in healing me as a child.

i, use to think as a child that there was nothing more beautiful then the nuns sing in latin, and or praying .the light that would glow and radiate from them, would spread across the church or room. my grandma would get that same look as she would pray. so, as i, grew older my faith had a strong impact in my life.

and the many times i, have felt like giving in, or giving up,i, knew in my heart of hearts. that it was not for me to decide when my time was up. and as i, have learned and grown. i, undrerstand. that we can live very full lives, or very simple lives. and one day, we will ether say or do something theist we do not realize we have done. and then, poof we are called home. and only until we fulfil that one thing we will be here.

so that no matter how anyone dies, the how or why, the where, or howcome, it is unimportant. it is the fact, you have completed your job. and even perhaphs the lesson of your death is the reason you have lived for.

so next time you think someone has died too soon, or the wrong way. think. it was meant to be, or it would not of happed at all.

blessed be
rev. genie

THE HONESTY AND BEAUTY WITH WHICH YOU WRITE

Dear Lauri, Joie, Serge, Rev Genie,

I hope I didn't leave anyone out. I just have to say how touching everything you write here is. There is something so good about just being honest. I discover how much alike we all are.

Thank you for posting your hearts here.

HeavenLetter #1756 comment on Religion and Spirituality

In reply to Lauri, Serge and anyone else who is finding their journey to discovery is not always shared or understood by others in their midst, your experience is not unique. The introduction to A Course in Miracles reads, "This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time."

I have experienced leaving people behind who did not understand my need to explore other pathways. Embarking on this journey is one of the most powerful and sometimes frightening choices you can make. Sometimes the path chooses you as a silent pull into opportunities which may even appear as anything but an improvement.

Leaving the familiar is usually difficult, especially at first, and there will be roadblocks, setbacks, detours, opportunities to touch base with home and familiarity, and times to rest and regroup. You will enlarge your mind and your heart, and you will encounter many souls who are also seeking their spiritual growth. Some will enhance your world and some may seem to complicate it, but in the overall view, your life will never ever be the same.

Be gentle with those who don't understand. You can encourage them to join you, but it is entirely possible that they are not travelling at your speed. In my own experience I had some tough decisions to make in what to hold onto and what/who to let go of, and my case was not unusual.

Some people manage to navigate this journey while maintaining a balance and a connection with their loved ones. Sometimes people catch up with you on your journey and sometimes they choose other directions.

It is all good even when it appears opposite. Most of all, be gentle with yourself as it is your time, when spirit beckons.

~Joie