Messages from beyond......

Beyond thought, imagination
Beyond matter, spirit
Beyond knowledge, wisdom
Beyond sight, vision

Beyond limitation, freedom
Beyond restriction, space
Beyond fear, love
Beyond belief, truth


                                                                     Beyond whom you thought you were
                                                                     the wonder of who you are
                                                                     beckons

                                                                    Beyond the impossible, all possibilities shimmer
                                                                    and lay themselves bare before you

 There is another life beyond the ordinary life that we encounter each day.  It is a life that is strong, resilient, permanent, faithful, and consistent. It is the Life that supports all life. It is the Source Life. All things originate from this Life. All sound comes from this Life. All movement originates in its stillness. This Life is non judgemental. It supports all things. It allows you to be you and me to be me. It has no expectations from either of us. It has no preference for either one of us. It doesn’t treat anyone of us humans differently but shows up consistently for us all day in day out. This Life doesn’t condone one type of behaviour over another nor does it judge one type of behaviour better than another – everything is allowed to exist and be just as it is

This is the life referred to in the song Over the Rainbow, ‘Somewhere over the rainbow way up high there’s a land that we dreamed of once in a lullaby' ...a land where the 'dreams that you dare to dream really do come true’.

This is the place Rumi talks about when he writes ‘beyond ideas of right and wrong there is a field I’ll meet you there’. This field Rumi talks about is an energy field; the field of pure Love energy that neither condemns nor judges; labels or corrects. This energetic field is the pure creative energy that brought all life into existence. This Life accommodates all it has created – nothing is excluded. This Source Life is totally inclusive in nature. It is Holy in the sense that it is whole – nothing is separate from it, nothing is disallowed. This Life is the very ground of our being.

Yet why can’t we feel this Life?

Why can’t we incorporate this Life into our everyday life?

Why does it feel so remote, so difficult to reach?

Why do we doubt its existence?

The answer is simple – we don’t allow ourselves to become still enough or quiet enough to feel it. Chloe Goodchild of The Naked Voice talks about the Deep Listening that Rumi says, ‘is a greeting from the secret ones inside.’

Deep Listening is listening from the heart; it’s listening with a felt sense to the deep Life beyond this life.

Have you ever noticed how when things go wrong in our world we tend to fall silent? We know instinctively that to try and understand our lives we need space to do so. We give ourselves space by being still and silent. We call this giving ourselves time to think or space to think in. We need to cultivate this space in order to feel the impact that our daily life is having on our ability to live fully from the heart, in the way that we intuitively feel we were meant to live. In truth we need space not so much for thinking but for feeling; for feeling our connection to soul or Spirit, to all that is good in this world.

If we allow ourselves to cultivate stillness when times are good as well as bad then we may find that the Source Life has much to teach us.

I have to keep reminding myself of all this because all too often I fall into the trap of ignoring the Deeper Life and the rich gentle wisdom it offers us.

I all too easily get side tracked away from the Deep Life. I become too busy to pay it any attention.  I become too preoccupied with the myriad of trivial daily traumas that stress me out. Then peace eludes me and I can’t settle. In this unsettled state I cannot think clearly or act calmly.

In this unsettled state I am often irrational, judgemental and over emotional. Without the benefit of feeling the reality of the Deeper Life I act from my small, weaker, less secure self and often this leads to defensive behaviour and a need to protect myself from everyone and everything around me. Needless to say those nearest and dearest to me are in adversely affected by this.

It takes courage to admit that I fall short of many of the things that I have come to see and believe to be true. I feel like a fraud writing about the Deeper Life when all too often its peace, joy and unconditional love are not manifested in my own life. My ego is quick to jump in and tell me that I am wrong, that there is no such thing as the Deep Life or that if there is it is for those people that are better than me - the saints and gurus of this world.

My ego loves to tell me that I have failed in my quest to seek this Deeper Life and it implores me to give up the search.

Yet just because I don’t fully manifest the beauty of the Deep Life consistently in my own life doesn’t mean that I have failed. I hear the call to live from the depths and I respond but my humanness is real too and if I am to be authentic I must acknowledge that there is no easy way to reach the rich depths of the Deep Life.

Deep listening is not always easy. It demands attention to detail, concentration, determination, perseverance and commitment to what has been called the ‘Narrow way’.

‘Often we must pass through the eye of a needle or else come to rest in the eye of a storm’ I wrote in one of my poems. Another poem advises ‘so too with joy/if you want to feel it/you must pass through your own sorrow’. It seems that I write about that which I need to embody deep within my own life.  

The Deep Life can seem mysterious and yet it is accessed through the mundane and ordinary. The rich, fertile world of the Deep Life is reached through our pain, our disappointments, our hardships and uncertainties, the ups and downs of our daily living. It is reached as much through the times when we want to give up and the times when we question what life is all about as it is through the triumphant times.

Responding to the Deep Life is often messy and confusing. Yet still in the quiet, in the stillness the Deep Life is gentle, loving, supportive and infinitely kind – to me and to all the people who inhabit this world.

Feeling this kindness is what sets us free to create a life of kindness for ourselves and others.

Feeling this kindness as often as we can is all that truly matters.

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