Receptivity Opens us to Joy

Recently I wrote about the necessity of ecstasy for moving through these challenging days. 

I'm borrowing that word from author and spiritual teacher Andrew Harvey. Andrew Harvey is a sort of over-the-top mystical activist and teacher. I both love this about him and am challenged by this about him. Ecstasy is an over-the-top sort of word for an overwhelmingly positive experience. 

If that word creates some obstacle for you, as it does sometimes for me, just note that. There might be something there for you to explore, as I have found there is for me.

For now, though, I'm going to set that aside and ask you to do the same, and instead just offer us a work-around: an invitation to joy.  Is joy a more approachable word? Then let's go with that. 

As an enneagram 4, I have constructed an entire personality devoted to resisting joy. That is a very humbling sentence for me to write, but it is true. I have been consciously trying to deconstruct this personality for nearly two decades, and I will tell you it can be slow going. I need a lot of supports. 

Joy is the effervescence that springs from connection—with another, self, Creation, God, Reality. It abides at our center, a birthright spring of loving exchange with the Divine. Such fulsome connection requires both giving and receiving. While such sacred reciprocity is our very deepest nature, through wounding both of these dynamics have become fraught for humanity, in general, and me, specifically. Lately, I have been consciously practicing receptivity (thus my recent addition of the tip jar you'll see at the bottom of this email...a HUGE thank you to all of you who have used it!).

Today I am simply offering two prayers I am praying daily that are helping me to open to more of what Love has for me and for us, through me. I hope they may nourish you as they are nourishing me.

Prayer to the Mother
written by Andrew Harvey

Divine Mother,

Give me your eyes,
so that I can see myself through them
and see how holy in your eyes is my soul,
and how holy in your eyes is my mind,
and how holy in your eyes is my heart
and how holy and sacred in your eyes is my body.

Help me be as merciful and generous with myself as you would always want me to be.
Help me to honor myself,
as I have found, to my utter amazement, you honor me.
Help me to live and work and help from the peace and balance and compassion
from which you live and work and help.

Help me in these ways, Mother, 
so that I can at last truly become the revolutionary instrument you need me to become.
The sacred instrument of your compassion in action
that you created me to be,
and that I already am
in your holy and illumined eyes.

Allow Me to Receive
written by La Espiritista

Allow me to receive
like the shoreline receives the ocean tide

Absorbs her cleansing foam
and dampens each individual grain of sand
with a mother's love.

Allow me to accept
like the ocean accepts
the open vastness of her body

Nourishes the ripples of her skin
with kisses from the sun
always welcoming what she deserves.