Cristen Rodgers's Blog, page 15

One Love

As we begin to embrace the idea that we are all one, interconnected whole, we begin to see everything around us in a new light.  No longer can the world be neatly divided into good and bad, light and shadow, beautiful and ugly.  We slowly begin to realize that all things are playing an important role, sustaining the whole beautiful cycle – a lot like the way that all of the various plants, animals, minerals, and molds contribute to the health of the entire forest.

We realize that things are so much more than we once gave them credit for.  What was once just a tree reveals itself to be a living presence stretching her arms and fingers high in the air, forever reaching closer to heaven.  The wind becomes more than just the movement of air; it whispers to and caresses our souls.  Unsightly weeds and unkempt grasses become windows through which the laughter of God echoes out; and roadside puddles offer a glimpse of Divine artistry in action as a myriad of colors reflect off their surface.

The world remains the same, but because our perspective has changed, so also does the way we see, understand, and relate to it.  We realize that the Divine doesn’t live somewhere far away, gracing only a few, select beings with its glory – but that it’s here, now, surrounding us, and revealing its beauty in every tiny detail of the world that surrounds us.

©2016 Cristen Rodgers

The Secrets of the Deep

We are like waves rising up from the same great sea, you and I.  We gaze across the surface at one another and we see separate beings, but if we looked just a little bit deeper, we’d see that we’re intertwined – flowing with, merging into, and playing with one another.  We would see that, although we rise up in different forms, in spirit we are all the same.

So easily do we forget these secrets of the deep.  We forget that we are connected, that we are a part of the same, endless ocean.  We forget that we’re pulled by the same underlying tides.  We forget that what we judge in one person’s depths also lurks in our own, and that the beauty of distant crests is our beauty as well.

But the sea is always calling us back, calling us to remember.  It pulls us back into ourselves, beckoning us to dive once more into the sacred knowledge of the deep.

And so we transition between remembering and forgetting, ebbing and flowing, pulling in and rolling back out again.  This waxing and waning is what allows us to keep growing, to keep finding deeper understandings and reaching greater levels of awareness.  Really, it’s what we’re here for.  We’re here to re-learn and remember time after time until we arrive at that point where we understand on every level – in every cubic centimeter of our shared space.  Until we have all awakened together.

The spiritual path isn’t a line, or a circle, or even a spiral.  It’s a sphere.  We don’t approach ultimate truth only once, but neither do we just circle around it over and over.  We are that truth.  Our spirit plays with itself like a poet plays with her words.  Sometimes we look from within, other times we peer back from the outer surface, sometimes we circle around it and come at it from different angles and levels – but through it all we are the very truth we’re exploring.

So forgetting is just a playful part of what we do.  How often we sail along the surface and how often we dive down into the depths matters less than what we do with the time we spend there and how we react to what we find.  When we remember who we really are and what we’re really made of, do we fear the implications and promptly return for air?  Or do we dare to keep diving a little bit deeper?

The idea that we are separate, disconnected beings weaves itself into the fabric of our identities.  It works its way into our subconscious thoughts and our automatic responses; it colors our feelings.  Understanding what it truly means to be interconnected doesn’t happen in one moment of enlightenment.  True understanding takes time.  It reveals itself one wax and wane at a time, each carrying with it different implications, trials, and lessons.

Only by coming back, time and time again, do we begin to learn, not only what it means to be one in spirit, but to live that way.

In those moments of remembering – remembering that we share the same beauty and the same dangers, that we flow with one another, that we are inseparable from each other and from our creator – we have to stay with that truth.  We have to dive down below the surface of separation, and we have to keep going deeper even as the pressure mounts.  We have to allow that rising pressure to challenge our protective gear over and over again before we finally come to terms with the realization that we are those depths we’re exploring, we are that truth we are seeking, we are that god we are calling.

And this can be frightening.  As frightening as the depths of the ocean is to a land-dwelling creature.  It challenges every idea that we cling to about who we are, what we’re capable of, and what we’re made of.  But if we face that challenge, if we stay with it and give it permission to lay with us and whisper secrets to our hearts, it will change us.  It will help us see the world in a different way, think about things in different ways, and feel and create in different ways.  It will help us transition from fear to love, from judgment to compassion, from seeking to being.

The natural ebb and flow of remembering and forgetting isn’t the enemy – it’s a learning tool.  And the spiritual journey is about making the very most of that tool.  It’s about being open enough to understand ourselves in a new way as many times as it’s necessary, and sometimes that means forgetting.  Sometimes, the best way to appreciate the depths is to float up to the shallows for a while.

So don’t be dismayed when you find yourself feeling disconnected from what you thought you knew, don’t doubt yourself when you catch yourself in a moment of judgment or fear, and don’t be afraid of looking at things in a new way, because no matter many times you rise to the surface, the truth of your nature will always call you back into yourself, into the Divine, into ultimate truth once again.  And each time that you find yourself rising again, trust that you’re bringing a little more of that understanding, a little more of the sacred knowledge of the deep, back with you.

©2016 Cristen Rodgers

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The Spirit of the Forest

The spirit of the forest speaks in her own special language – a language that the natural world is fluent in, but that many humans seem to have forgotten.  In this unique tongue, she whispers a secret that’s so powerful it guides all the creatures of the earth as they turn along the great cycle of give and take that balances and sustains life.

When we uncover this secret for ourselves, it takes us through a perceptual doorway and into a new world –  a world unchanged from the one we know and yet somehow entirely different.  The mundane is suddenly steeped in mystery and magic, the world bursting with playful little expressions of beauty, ripe with spontaneity, and packed full of possibilities.

After crossing this threshold, a fog of uncanny familiarity settles over everything, arising from the wispy memories of early childhood.  It harkens back to a time when we were still well versed in the language of the forest, the time before this world wiped the fairy dust from our eyes and sucked the stars from our veins.

In childhood, we speak the language of the flowers and we understand the whispers of the wind.  We’re in tune with the subtle songs of the forest; we can listen to the trees, interpret the chatter of the rivers, and intuit the meaning of each sparkle of sun.

Like the small spark of a fire that once was, that child who could hear the forest and could see the magic of this world still lives within us all, waiting only for the right breeze to blow through and set it aflame once again.  And to relight that fire and unlock the ancient secret hidden within its heat, all we need to do is remember.  We need only find the stream of consciousness that we splashed around in as children and allow ourselves to be carried off on its current.  We have to tap into that simple awareness, the playful curiosity, and that spontaneous creativity that flowed so easily when we were young.

And that simplicity, that beautiful and inherent freedom, is the secret.

It’s what the animals understand and the oceans know; it’s what keeps the rivers flowing and the tall grasses dancing.  The secret that the forest is trying to share with us is that it’s okay to slow down and just drink in the miracle of existence, to find contentment in simple consciousness. She’s reminding us – through the songs of the birds and through the wind as it plays through the fingers of the trees – to take the time to appreciate what it means to be alive, not making a living or building a life.

She’s telling us to remember.  Remember what it’s like to get lost in the tiny complexities of a single dandelion flower or to search for tadpoles only to watch them scurry away.  Remember how to focus completely on, to be utterly consumed by, the magic of a single moment.  She’s pleading with us to let go of the mental constraints and social constructs that keep us running in circles, to let go and notice the color of the sky, listen to the birds, appreciate the warmth of the sun, and get swept away on the stars.

This is the secret that keeps this beautiful living sphere in balance, because this is what inspires creativity, what prompts deep appreciation; it’s what we’re really here for.  It’s the understanding that it’s not about building and doing and going so much as it’s about being and seeing and loving.

What the spirit of the forest wants us to know is that there’s nowhere more significant that you need to be and nothing more important that you need to do than to sit still and marvel at the patterns the sun paints on your skin as it’s filtered through the leaves, or allow yourself to be enraptured by the spectacle of a bee pollinating a flower, or lay on your back and look for shapes in the puffy, white clouds.

The spirit of the forest is showing us her beautiful palace and asking us to step inside and look at what it’s made of.  The trees don’t rush to get to the sky and yet they rise anyway, creating the most exquisitely detailed canopy under which her community dwells.  The mushrooms don’t envy the flowers their color and thus take on a unique beauty of their own that feeds the soft, cushioned floor of her domain.  The rocks don’t work to become bigger than what they are and yet together they house an entire civilization beneath their bellies.

This is her language.  It’s the whisper of the willow trees, the laughter of the daisies, and the screams of the lightning.  Listen and hear what they’re trying to say; watch and see what they have on display.  Slow down, they’re saying, slow down and be here with us in this miraculous moment of magic, mystery, and music.  Let go, they plead, and remember to live before your life and your chance fades gently away.

©2016 Cristen Rodgers

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September Affirmation

There is within me a bottomless well of love, hope, joy, and inspiration from which I drink deeply and fully every day.  My contentment and creativity are thus contagious.

©2016 Cristen Rodgers

War Cry

This is our war cry!  May it echo across countless years.  May it rumble through forests and course through cities, reverberate across valleys and sing off mountain peaks.

Let our roars be heard by the birds of the sky and the fish of the seas; may they tremble through oceans and kick up their own breeze.

Steadily our voices have simmered for years.  Now they have reached that pivotal heat – they’re rising up, bubbling from the depth of our souls.  May our sacred screams send shivers of shock up your spines; may our songs of rebellion resound and ring in your ears.

This is our cry!  Listen closely, daughters, sisters, and mothers of earth.  Wake Up!

Shake off the sleep induced by this world’s poisonous lies.  You’re not lacking, failing, or inadequate as they’d have you believe.  You are enough, you are whole; and you have nothing to prove.

You are a spring breeze just beginning to take flight.  You are the breath of God, the cradle of light.  You are formless, boundless potential as great as the sky all packed in a body that itself creates life.

Wake up and remember your true names!  You aren’t a title printed on paper, nor the contents of your head.  You can’t be defined through an accumulation of numbers on accounts, ratings, and scales.

Wake up, you stunning spirit hiding behind human clothes!  Wake up and join our roar! 

You’ve been cramped in that box for so long that to stand causes pain – but the time has come to break out and bravely walk through the ache.  You weren’t made to be just one kind of person, to go just one way, to believe just one thing.  You’re a well of potential that drinks from an infinite spring.

Your real power, true purpose, and unbridled passion eagerly awaits.  Remember who you are and break free from your social constraints.

You’re the bud before springtime, the sun before morning.  You are the raging river just before its dam breaks.

You’re here to create, not just to contain. 

Join us now, let’s hear your war cry!  Allow your natural passions to sweep you up and crash into this world forcefully, following your own flow unabashedly.

Rebel like the true artist you are – burn like the sun, flow like the breeze, and shine like the stars.

Stop walking that thin line as you balance their standards precariously – be slender but not thin, have curves but not thick; wear clothes that are appealing but not too revealing, be gentle and don’t get too grim.

Wake up!  Join us in our cry!  Light a match under their picture of what’s just right.  

These ideals and images are all a diversion, intentionally crafted to be impossible to meet.  It’s just an illusion, keeping us chasing the next new thing and separating us with the belief that we need to compete.

It’s time to stop wasting our power on fabrications, fantasies, and futility just because they’re dressed up to look like femininity.

Stop listening to this world that tells you that you have to work to be good enough for it.  You were sent here to mend, to save it.  You’re here to reform it! 

Remember who you really are, you glorious little glimmer of God.  Stop trying to keep it all in; stop letting this world make you pretend.  They taught you to be embarrassed to feel and trained you to hide it all away.  They made it an insult to be called by a feminine name.

But it’s time to wake up, to yell out, to reveal the lie.  It’s time to show your heart, your soul, your womb – the places where the true power hides.

You were made to feel things from the pit of your soul and to pull power up from the roots of this earth.  You feel pain as deep as the ocean and you burn with passions as hot as a thousand suns.  Your protective nature is as ferocious as a pack of wolves and the power of your love makes the earth shake.

You are a creature made to turn inside out – you feel the flesh of this world in the center of your bones.  Your compassion, your love, your sensitivity, your pain – these are your powers, your gift.

You are here to give voice to the mute and to be strength for the weak.  You are here to speak truth when the world is asleep.

Take down your hair, strip down bare, and let out a roar.  Clench your fists, throw out those heels, and let out a guttural scream.  Tear off the mask and show your tears; rip open your chest and let your heart bleed out for all to see.

Wake up!  We cry from the depth of our souls.  Wake up!  We roar at the top of our lungs!  This is our sacred voice and it will be heard.  Wake up and join us; let’s start healing this world. 

©2016 Cristen Rodgers

 

 

 

 

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The Solution

The solution to all that ails the world today has always been love, though I know you find that hard to believe.  The solution is love, because only through the eyes of love can we see the beauty latent in ugliness and only by the fires of love can we offer warmth in the coldness.  The solution is love because only in love are we humble, honest, and willing to hurt enough; and only for love will we take the risks and responsibility required.

The solution is to seek out all of those things we would rather not see – the sore spots and bruises, the blood and dirt, the places where neglect and repetitive damage have led to infection and decay.  It’s to find them, to forgive them, and to treat them with tender attention and compassionate care.

The solution is to start by acknowledging the wounds so we can finally get to work cleaning and stitching them.  It’s to stop confusing detachment with denial, and to stop mistaking activism for aggression.  The solution is to stop allowing soul-centeredness to turn into solipsism and permitting the fires of introspection to devolve into the ashes of indifference.

The solution begins with acknowledging the problem.  It’s to uncover our eyes and really see the sick, sad, and starving.  The solution is to uncover our ears and hear the cries, and listen to what they’re saying.  The solution begins when we recognize rather than denying the injustices, the destruction, and the dis-ease.

The solution is to throw the door to our hearts wide open and let the cool breeze of compassion run through. The solution is to stop hiding behind thick walls of judgment, fear, and blame – to let down our guards, to open the gate, to surrender our pride and allow the world in.

The solution is to recognize that, though we wear different costumes, answer to different names, and take different roles, behind the scenes we’re all just spirits playing at being human and hoping to make some lasting connections along the way.  It’s to strip away all of the labels and titles, costumes, roles, and standards that we’ve layered upon one another and empathize with the naked souls beneath.

The solution is to see that we are all woven together around the same common thread – the need for love, peace, and safety.  It’s to stop trying to peel that thread apart, dividing each little string so as to label one as worthy and another as not.  The solution is to weave in more connections until we’ve become a tapestry of unified strength – not to keep pulling pieces apart until all we’re left with is a pile of frayed fragments.

The solution is to recognize not only that this world is sick but also that no one is immune, that the same sins ailing others we are also carrying within ourselves.  It’s to stop handing out blame like we’re racing to empty our hands, tucking it in wherever it might stick, attaching it to other peoples’ beliefs, cultures, wealth, race, and class.  The solution is to stop and read for ourselves what we’ve so eagerly passed out to others.

The solution is to look within ourselves – in the deep places, the hidden places, the buried, dusty, and scary places.  It’s to recognize that darkness can only reign where we fail to look, that awareness is the light that dispels all shadows.

The solution is absolution; it’s to turn the spotlight of our attention on the corners of our consciousness and the hidden parts of our hearts and to forgive whatever comes crawling out.  The solution is to stop making the monsters hide and instead allowing them to show themselves so they finally have the chance to heal.

The solution is to focus on how we think and feel instead of pointing at what we hear and see.

The solution is to be in little ways what we would like to see in a big way – it’s to find peace in our own minds, to nurture love in our own hearts, to give forgiveness to our own enemies, and to share of our own goods.  It’s to understand that the big things are just echoes of millions of little things, that the world can be changed one smile, one donation, one pardon, one hug, and one understanding at a time.

The solution is to plant on the inside what we so desperately want to see bloom on the outside.  It’s to spend less money and more attention, to buy fewer things and more time.  The solution is to ask less to be understood and work more on understanding.  It’s to correct how we’re thinking about others rather than worrying what they think about us.  The solution is to give more soul and take less stuff, to appreciate nature rather than depreciating it, and to enjoy what is rather than always lusting after what could be.

The solution is to be normal in our abnormalities, perfect in our imperfections.  It’s to love ourselves just as we are, without ironing over the wrinkles and endlessly scrubbing at the stains so maybe we don’t have to point out every spot on others.  The solution is to be openly vulnerable, to show that sometimes we’re scared and sometimes we hurt, to be honest about our mistakes and forthcoming with our struggles.   It’s to give the world permission to be human by showing them that we are human ourselves.

The solution is to break out of our little bubbles.  It’s to poke a hole in the carefully crafted containers that keep our love condensed and keep others’ struggles out.  The solution is to let the love leak out and to let some of the world creep in – to help construct an atmosphere that we all can share.

The solution is to keep exponentially expanding our understanding of self until it includes every hungry child and hurting animal, every happy couple and heavenly star.  And we must continue to love ourselves with each outstretching along the way, because love has always been and always will be the only lasting solution.

©2016 Cristen Rodgers

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August Affirmation

 

May my life’s work be like a wind that stirs up love in every heart and breathes life into every hope that it brushes past.

©2016 Cristen Rodgers

 

It Gazes Back

I know how it feels to look at the world and see it struggle, and I understand what it means to touch the earth and feel her pain.  I too have trembled at the sight of the weapons and wars, the hunger, the hurt, the fear, and the frenzy.

I know what it’s like to turn on the news and find the dark face of despair staring back at me, and at times I’ve had to paddle wildly to avoid drowning in his gaze.

But I also know what promise looks like when it graces the morning sky with golden light, and I’ve beheld the beauty of a fresh bloom in the rain.

I’ve seen hope rise up like a spring from a once barren soul; and I’ve watched as newfound courage devoured the darkest of fears.

There’s no denying that this world is made of both shadow and light and is rife with both welcome and warning.

I’ve read both poetry and pain etched in lines across faces, and I’ve seen the glimmers of greatness and the shifting of shadows in their eyes.  However far we may fall is also how high we may climb, and the degree of darkness below is equally matched by the brightness up high.

But I believe that we have this mysterious way of magnifying whatever we look at the most, as if we were mirrors to the world, like the moon whose face reflects the glow of the sun.

When we look at something intensely, that thing looks right back at us – and if we stare long enough, eventually it will devour us so completely that it ends up gazing back at itself through our own eyes.

This is why the world is beautiful to a person in love, and why there’s danger lurking everywhere to a person afraid.  This is why you can glimpse a woman’s face in her lover’s eye, and why the top of a lake always reflects the afternoon sky.

And this is why I won’t succumb to the sadness and why I choose to stay centered in my soul – because if I am to gaze into something, I don’t want it to be those things that instill fear, frustration, separation, and strife.

If I am to become drunk on anything it will be inspiration, not these fabricated fights.  If I am to dive so deep that there’s no coming back for air, let it be into an ocean of love and not the murky waters of man’s modern madness.  And if I am to be devoured, let it be by the sensual song of earth’s creative soul rather than the recollection of her ruin.

I don’t deny that darkness exists – but I do deny that darkness the pleasure of extinguishing my light.

It’s not that I don’t see the newsreel spinning its violent images like a poisonous spider’s web across the world – it’s that I refuse to get caught in its sticky threads.  I won’t be devoured by whatever great darkness is lurking above it all, waiting to spin its fingers of fear around those who stumble into its trap.

I won’t deny that these tragedies shatter my heart as if it were made of glass, but I also won’t remain fixed on that mess, continuously cutting myself on the broken pieces.  If I am to be a mirror held up to this world, then I hope to reflect what’s whole rather than what’s broken.

I choose to reflect the beautiful things, like the sunlight glimmering on the morning dew.  And I want to magnify the miracles, like the way that the grass giggles when it’s gently touched by the wind.  If I amplify anything, let it be something sacred, like the subtle spark of divinity shining from the eyes of passersby.

I’m going to gaze into the light, regardless of what shadows may still lurk about, until that light gazes back at the world through my eyes, until it laughs through my parted lips and it shines from deep within my soul.

And perhaps then we will be one spark closer to collective change – to the kind that no one sees coming because little sparks seem so insignificant next to the depth of the night, the kind that starts slowly but eventually combusts and fills the world with much-needed light.

 

©2016 Cristen Rodgers

 

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Supporting Artists

Creative potential flows through all human veins, as much a part of us as the air in our lungs and the skin on our bones.  It favors nothing and no one, coursing through us all equally and without reserve – but we each must choose for ourselves if and how we will tap into this internal stream.

Most people are content to poke tiny holes in their creative veins, feeding one drop at a time to various aspects of their lives, using it with caution and always wary of its volatile nature.  But mixed in among this crowd are others, others who feel helplessly compelled to cut that vein wide open and let their hearts bleed freely until those creative waters wash over everything that they do.

These others are the people that we like to call artists.  They are the people who draw no lines between the internal and the external, and who thus have no fear of bleeding out.  They consider passion and purpose one and the same; and they breathe in life so deeply and so fully that their every exhale stirs the dead leaves of thirsty hearts.

By these terms, I am an artist – each morning I rip my heart open anew and I allow it to bleed all over these pages; and only by doing this do I make enough room to drink more of the rich and succulent inspiration that I find dripping from every inch of this world.  I write not only because I love to, but because I have to –  it’s either write or vacillate wildly between dissolving into nothing and exploding into galaxies.

I invest my most precious resources into my writing – I give it my time, energy, passion, determination, and I give it my hope.  I willingly lay my life at its alter in the hopes that my investment will be returned to me in similar form; and what I expect in return is as layered as my investment.  Besides hoping that it will keep me grounded somewhere in between disintegration and combustion, I depend on my writing to provide me with the freedom to continue spending my days immersed in my inspiration, to give my readers the pure blood of my creative veins, unfiltered by agents and free from the quantifying, monetizing, and categorizing of publishers.

Each time that I write, I stand naked before you and hope that you see the similarities between my uncovered soul and your own.  I hope that when my words shine you recognize it as the same light that burns within your soul; and I hope that when you read my shadows that you have that much more courage to face your own.  But I also hope that you recognize that we share the same dream – the dream that by working hard and staying focused, by trying always to learn and grow, and by giving whatever gifts we have to give, that we will be sustained enough to continue working, learning, and giving.

I have chosen, among many other such artists, to trust you with the power to keep that a dream or to make it a reality.  I believe that there are many who feel as if they are living in a world of plastic, despite the fact that just below the surface it’s made of pure gold.  And I believe that art often acts as a chisel that chips away at that plastic coating, revealing the true luminescence of what’s been hiding just beneath that outer shell.

By investing in artists, you are helping to strip this world back down to its true nature.  You are empowering those whose products can’t be manufactured and aren’t covered in plastic; those whose products don’t take like most others but instead they give something back – they give back the soul, the raw energy, the authentic feeling, and the relevant information that so much taking and molding and processing has smoothed over.

I ask that, if you have found inspiration, support, love, light, hope, or just enjoyment from my work, that you consider investing in its future by supporting my creative freedom.  By subscribing today, you can help ensure that I can continue to learn and grow in my spiritual understandings and that I have the resources and freedom I need to continue surrendering to my passion for sharing those understandings with language that’s meant not only to communicate but to inspire, to intrigue, and to breathe a little bit of life into a suffocating world.

I thank you from the center of my soul and the bottom of my heart for your continued support and I look forward to hearing from you on social media and blogs.

With Love,

Cristen Rodgers

Open Hearts and Closed Doors

Life can be a lot like wandering along an unseen path through an unknown wilderness – sometimes we are graced by wildflowers and guided by the stars, and other times we are pricked, scraped, and bruised by thistles, thorns, and other sharp things.

Life, it seems, is beautiful but can also be brutal.

Difficult as it may be, sometimes this brutality is necessary.  Sometimes the bumps and bruises along the way carry a hidden lesson – but it’s also important to remember that not every lesson requires bumps and bruises and that sometimes life is brutal, not because we need it, but because we allow it.

And sometimes recognizing this is the lesson.

One common way that we allow life’s brutalities is by sharing our path with those who lack respect for the journey.  When we walk side by side with people who don’t reciprocate our love and respect, the scratches and scrapes that we encounter along the way can quickly change from life lessons to fruitless frustrations – and our only lesson ends up being how to let go.

Letting go isn’t nearly as simple as it sounds, particularly when we’re letting go of someone that we love or care for.  For this reason, it’s important that we come to understand that keeping an open heart doesn’t necessarily mean that we must also keep an open door.

Ironically, it seems like we tend to close our hearts much faster than we close the door, which is to say that we tend to stop feeling faster than we stop letting someone in to our lives and our minds.  Perhaps this is because the messes that people leave in our lives are much easier to clean up than those left in our hearts.  Or perhaps it’s simply the fear of causing pain – whereas the heart is hidden from all but ourselves, the door to our lives is right out front where all can see; and the sound of that door closing can hurt, offend, and even enrage whoever is left on the other side.

These fears can lead us to believe that letting go is a selfish act, that being compassionate and caring means keeping someone around in thought and form.  But the truth is that holding on can often do far more harm than letting go.  The swift, clean severing of an unbalanced relationship is much easier to heal than the endless scratching and scraping of holding on.

And only after we heal ourselves can we hope to help others heal.

By allowing someone to continue hurting us, we are poisoning our inner world to protect their outer one – but what we often fail to realize is that what’s inside always finds a way to manifest outside, often infecting not only ourselves but also the very person that we fear hurting.

No matter how much we try to ignore, deny, or hide it, the soul knows when someone is poisoning it – and with time the soul will do whatever is necessary to keep that poison out.  This is why it’s so important that we be courageous enough to let go of the toxic people in our lives.  Because when we can’t close the door on them in the world, we will eventually feel compelled to close the door on them in our hearts – and while letting go may hurt for a moment, a closed heart will ache forever.

It really is okay to walk away from what’s causing you pain, and it’s not selfish to let go of those who are weighing you down.  But remember that letting go doesn’t mean shutting down.  It doesn’t mean that you stop loving.  You can care deeply for someone without investing your thoughts in them and without expecting anything from them; you can love someone without being with them and you can understand someone without extending yourself towards them.

Love isn’t conditional – but a place in your life, in your mind, and at your table should be.   You can love yourself enough to keep a well-lit and wide-open heart but still respect yourself enough to close the door.

©2016 Cristen Rodgers