Love:

Inside – Out

Protection from the inside > out.

Have you ever wanted to wrap your arms around someone and protect them from harm? To imagine giant wings wrapping around them, shielding them from the ugly and the dark…

Yet when I just now imagined this, I heard, “Protection from the inside out.”

That protection doesn’t come from the outside, or from shielding. It comes from the inside. Like a seedling, ready to unravel and bloom into a great oak whenever it’s called.

And this seedling lives inside of every living being, and everyone has the power to call to that protection.

I can make the choice to see that seedling inside, that light that’s inside all of us, our connection to everything that we need.

So that when I do raise my arms to wrap around someone I love, I’m not doing so in the mindset of protection, but in the mindset of acknowledging their own strength.

This message has been coming through regularly these days, this pointing back to the Self. Back to every Self that exists.

It doesn’t mean to abandon people or not to help, it means to firstly acknowledge the light that exists in every living thing. That light calls to it everything that is needed.

It says, “I’m hungry, show me the path to food.”

“I’m thirsty, guide me towards water.”

“I’m listless, raise me towards purpose.”

So that when you look at someone (or yourself), you see that light first. The light that knows what is needed, and knows that it will be heard and seen.

And then look at your own light, what are you needing? Are you acknowledging that you are seen and heard? Are you demanding where or how your needs are being fulfilled, or are you letting the light guide your way?

And it’s the same with another, is there a demand to fulfill their needs…or is it a guided upliftment?

I was pondering something the other day, and I imagined well-being being delivered to everyone through some outside source. Little care packages dropping from the sky.

And all at once I thought, something isn’t correct about that scene…then a little vision came in.

We don’t reach outward to receive. We connect to receive. Think of billions of tiny dots of light connected to the same “main frame”. It’s much easier for each dot to communicate directly with the main frame, than to communicate and coordinate with billions of other tiny dots.

So each need, every call, goes directly over a very short distance to ask the “main frame” for what it needs. And it’s a quietly working system, where everyone and everything is plugged in.

The next time you need something, or someone you care about needs something, try to divert your attention from “getting it” from “out there”, to calling it towards you from “in here”.

Think of untying a knot, releasing the “pulling” sensation that sometimes arises when we need something. Release tension as much as you can.

Breathe and say things very calmly and peacefully like, “Come. This is what I’d like, in the best way, at the best time.”

I write these things today in the spirit of gratitude, because it’s a blessing to have the mental and emotional space for spiritual ponderings.

To feel safe enough to wander into the greater mind and see how it sees. Every day I feel gratitude for the strangest things.

Gratitude for angst, frustration, for the act of complaining. Because there’s a level of safety and well-being that allows for those things to exist.

I’m blessed enough to be able to complain, blessed to feel and express grief, blessed to feel ugly when I look in the mirror.

Because I’ve been to places where all of those things would have been a luxury. So now I see them for what they are.

And somewhere in my b*tching, I think, “Well isn’t this an upgrade!”

Not to say that it’s about being complacent in negative emotions, but to maybe say “oh thanks”, on the way to something and somewhere better.

With Love,

Heba

Do Not Follow Me

I had a reading recently that described me as a teacher or leader. Which I find funny because my one and only pillar as leader would be: DO NOT FOLLOW ME.

Never to follow.

In an imagined maze of life and ether, I would hammer in large flags on every path that read, “Do Not Follow.”

Create your own rituals, your own manuals, your own rules and guidelines. Make your sole priority finding the path within yourself, to your own inner stars of clarity, connection, and love.

The revelation of yourself, to yourself is the correct path. And even the most holy sage cannot lead you down that path, but they can watch and follow your movements as you walk.

And anytime you looked to me, I would point a giant finger back at you, and close your eyes.

There isn’t anything more beautiful than watching a person facing a dark, unknown field, and lighting up their own path with every footstep.

Imagine watching from the heavens, billions of people, lighting up a dark void with billions of points of light as they walk. What a beautiful, complex tapestry of meaning, discretion, and decision making.

Every step, a strong voice saying, “This way.” (Your voice.)

When you direct your attention to that ethereal space of light, clarity, and love, the place where your guides may reside, hoping or looking for guidance…

Know that your guides are not guiding you, they are allowing you to lead. And the revelations you receive, are coming from your own internal knowing. Your guides say, “yes, go ahead, we’ll follow.”

But it feels so clear and good, because you specifically looked toward (and with the intention of) finding light, clarity, wholeness, and holiness. In truth, you put yourself in a vibration of elevated thought and feeling, and from that place, your highest path was visible to you.

Your guides echo back to you that clarity that you just found. They affirm your choice with this echo, which is perceived as guidance from an external source.

This is a perfectly suited system of communion, because it mirrors our experience here in this reality. We’re constantly projecting what’s on the inside – to the outside. And then internalizing what we perceive on the outside, mostly through the story-telling of your lives.

And it all happens quietly and quickly, fast conversions of this seeming inside-to-out, outside-to-in.

That’s why so many taught practices deal with meditation, prayer, and awareness. These things provide a pause or slowing of the conversion process, so you get a chance to catch your breath. You get a chance to remember what we’re doing. Or to revise how you’re doing things.

As I write this, I’m reminded to rise into my decision making today. To reach less for guidance, and to stretch more into the embodiment of what I already know is good for me.

My prayer today will be, “Do not show me the way, rather allow for the light of clarity, joy, and love to lift my body, thoughts, and words to the highest path of my choosing.”

With Love,

Heba ❤

Hold My Name

I sat down several times over the last few weeks, ready to write. But facing the blank white screen, I would think: “Not yet. I’m not ready. I have nothing to say.”

But here I am tonight, ready.

I did something that makes no sense (which are the best kinds of things); I bought a gigantic bag of charms. Jewelry charms for making bracelets and necklaces. (I don’t make this type of jewelry.)

I had been eyeing this giant bag for some time. And every time I would think…what a silly purchase that would be.

But I wanted them. For no reason.

And finally, I took the plunge and ordered them.

I discovered something that maybe my heart knew before my mind knew – the importance of PLAY.

I dumped my new charms into 3 bowls.

And I plunged my hand into each bowl, swirling my fingers around and hearing the satisfying, metallic swooshing of the charms rubbing across each other.

I closed my eyes and grabbed a few, tossing them on my desk and seeing what I pulled.

Keys and gemstones, animals and insects, shapes and colors. The totality of what this gigantic bag of charms holds is still a mystery. I examine each one, weaving a story between the charms if I can find one. Otherwise, it feels like something I’d completely forgotten…PLAY. And playing “pretend”.

I used to love playing with fake food on the fake stove, ringing up imaginary customers on my plastic register. Relishing in the cut up pieces of paper “money” and bottle cap “coins”.

I tried to decipher…what is it that is so FUN about these little pieces of useless silliness?

But I couldn’t tell you. It brings up a joy in me that bubbles up from somewhere I’ve long forgotten.

Every move as an adult is decided. A patterned behavior, or something done with good reason. Even my play feels calculated. “Acceptable.” It has reason.

But this is reasonless. It’s colors and shapes and symbols, that I bought for no reason. And they bring me reasonless joy.

Yesterday I pulled a key, and then directly underneath it I pulled a heart with a keyhole inside of it. And my friend said, “maybe someone had the key to helping you open your heart.”

Not that they still hold the key. Maybe they just reminded me where the keyhole was.

The title of this blog entry, “Hold My Name”, is the title of a song by Ocie Elliot. A video of them came up on my Youtube and it made me think, okay, time to write.

The song itself isn’t my favorite, but it reminded me of how I’ve changed in such a short time. I listen to music that moves me these days. I hadn’t listened to this kind of music in years. Indie – folk, singer/songwriter type of music.

I’ve always related it to having deep human emotions, especially deep love for another person. And it’s felt so irrelevant for so long.

But recently, I’ve been sitting inside soulful, raspy words and the low hums of a stranger turning poetry into melody. And I’ve let myself be calmed and wooed by the softness of it all.

If I could describe love, the kind that intimately exists between two people…

I would say it feels the same way this type of music makes me feel. It makes me think of rinsing a bowl of white rice before cooking it. Seeing the grains turn the water a cloudy white. The sounds and the feel of the rice in my hand, being washed by the water.

Or the smell of open fields in the fall, after a harvest. The texture of corn husks and hearty winter soups.

This love lives on the ground, on bare soil. Warmed by the sun and held in the gaze of an open sky.

Tonight, I’m going to see live music that feels just like this. With added violins and notes of wet texture and fluidity. So I’ll end this entry here, so I can go get ready.

I won’t edit this one or check it for errors of mishaps. Let’s just leave it as is. Let’s see it as an invitation to sit again another time, and write.

See you soon.

❤ ,

Heba

Wild Things

It’s a wild thing trying to escape the ghosts of your past.

And as you learn and experience and grow… you wonder who were the monsters and villains, and who were the victims?

A fuzzy blur of twisted memories, seared into your skin by another’s hand.

“Remember.”

And you wonder, how did these scars get here? Which monsters lured me in, and which did I run to like a child running to catch the ice cream truck?

At last, it doesn’t matter.

Because all that you run from comes to meet you somewhere in the future.

You look back to check, “am I safe?” And turn around to find that twisted memory, smiling at you through a new face.

“But I ran.”

“I changed.”

I begin to wonder how long I’d been running.

Was it from a past life right into this one? Looking behind my shoulder to see…just to check.

I used to think, some day it’ll all be for something. It’ll mean something. It’ll make sense.

It’s hard to face a monster, or a faceless ghost. Because you’re facing your greatest fear, as well as the part of you that created that fear.

No longer can I hide behind my youth or my innocence. When you stop being a victim you have to face the monster inside of yourself.

The one that doesn’t seem like a monster, but it creates debilitating fear and will sabotage anything to protect and hide.

It’s hard to be abused for a long time and to be told that it’s your fault. You are the reason that someone is mistreating you.

That the truth you see before your eyes is not truth, that you should abandon what you know and observe and quietly and blindly follow another’s lead.

It makes your mind twist in strange ways, it makes you question everything that you are.

And countless years of untangling and re-tangling and untangling. It makes you weary.

I can say absolutely that all that is buried and ignored will rise again. And that one by one, all that is hidden must be faced.

Maybe then, as I face these ghosts, the past will recede into the shadows and not return.

As I pack up my things, I wonder if a ghost will follow me again, to my new beginning.

Or if I’ll be free at least.

I don’t know.

But I’m doing my best.

The Bank of You

Money doesn’t come TO you, it comes THROUGH you.

Looking outward into the vast distance of life’s possibilities, squinting to see if money is on the horizon, is a common misunderstanding.

Money does not come to you from an external source.

What’s most important here is a perceptual shift. If you think that money comes from far away and then makes its way to you, wiggling its way into your world, that perception can be refined.

Money comes from a well of golden light within you. At the source of you.

If I could point to this energetic opening to the well, I would say it’s near your lower abdomen, to the back, extending out behind you, and into the earth.

It looks like a wide and deep ray of light. It’s full of golden particles.

Some pull from this well all the time, others may never pull from it in their entire lifetime. And there’s whole range of “well-users” in between.

How does money come from the well?

This type of money is closest to “source”, closest to its source.

That source is You, and your source is the Breath-of-all-things.

When your perception is, “Money comes from somewhere out there, from someone else.”

That money is far from its source. [That source being You, and your source being the Breath-of-all-things.]

I don’t have to describe the attributes of that kind of money, because I know that you’ve experienced it before. I know that you know what “money that’s far from its source” feels like.

Shift your perception to, “Money springs forth from the well inside of me, it flows through me in beautiful, soothing golden light.”

The light will write checks for you, it will pay off loans for you, it will take you out to dinner, it will build you a house.

One of those dollars stretches and expands, as though it’s made of taffy.

The next time you’re thinking of when or where money is coming from next, notice where you are looking. Are you looking “out there”?

Try something new for awhile. When that “looking out” feeling arises, orient to your lower belly, your lower back.

Say, “I’m bringing my loving gaze to this well, the source. I’m picturing golden, beautiful light that is connected to me. It actually streams through me. It is whole.”

Say, “Beautiful light, beautiful wholeness, beautiful me…I’m asking for something. I need [say what you need].”

“Deliver it to me in golden light.”

And whenever you can remember, for awhile, keep reorienting your gaze to that well. Say, “I accept money from its source. Beloved and whole.”

Anytime you shift your attention from “looking out there”, to looking inside, to this well, you are changing your financial world.

Money [the energy of] will flow through you [as all life does] and outward, following a curve [bending reality] and returning to you in a new form.

Take note of how you feel when you receive money. In general, in any way that it comes, ask yourself how it feels.

How close or far from its source does it feel?

Remember that this is *perceptual*. If you feel [perceive] its far-away-ness, it might seem as though it spends very easily, or that you’re not paid what you’re worth.

The attributes that go along with that might look like:

-feeling small in your work

-acknowledging a hierarchy of “upper ups” in your company

-feeling like you’re “pulling teeth” to get enough money to pay your bills

-imagining that if you left your work, your bank would dry up, because the money comes from there

This all comes from a belief that money comes from “out there” and you can only receive it from “people who have it”, and those people will only give it to you under certain conditions.

Since we can’t change our belief systems [and all the other belief systems that overlap with them] overnight, we have to move one segment at a time.

You have to work with yourself to reorient, and build new beliefs that are closer to truth.

Shifting one segment at a time from “out there and coming in” to “up and through me and back”.

Ask yourself, “Hey Me, please make it clear and obvious when the money arriving is the one I streamed ‘close to its source.'”

Say, “I need to know what that feels like. I need to take note of it, so that I can begin to connect these new lines of understanding. Thank you.”

Up and through. Beautiful, golden light. Curving back around, to greet you face to face.

Money that stretches, money that is whole.

I’ll leave you with this mantra:

“Money that comes on the wings of self-love.”

I invite you to let that phrase dance around in your mind, and see how it feels as you speak it out loud.

Say to yourself and to the universe, “Show me what that means.”

With Love,

Heba ❤