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I know your heart! I hear it's breaking and groaning in a darkest night when you imagine yourself to be silently cast adrift in sleep. It speaks to me, that sacred heart of yours, whispering it's longing and bemoaning it's divine discontent. It knows when something is amiss! It's senses that something is not quite right as yet – there is a piece of the puzzle missing.
Even in its tremendous gratitude for all that is – and there is much gratitude and sweet appreciation in that precious heart of yours – there is a murmuring, a questing. It cries out to heaven. Vouchsafe me a blessing! I cannot go on! I am broken and in need of your tenderness for healing! I am empty and in need of filling, not with stuff and bits but with the most precious nectar of divine for fulfilment! Nothing else will satisfy me. Please, please restore me to wholeness! I can bear this missing piece, this broken disarray, no longer! I listen and I cajole that wise heart of yours. I praise it for its honesty and longing, for the longing is an irresistible perfume to the beloved, attracting the only slave that will suit the divine discontent of your truth-speaking heart – that of divine presence, absolute and unquestionable. There is a sense with in you – perhaps quite obvious to your conscious mind, or perhaps only dimly registered as an unnameable underlying sense of anxiety – that something in your life is not quite right. It may be the sense – even amongst so much gratitude – of a yearning yet to be met, a longing yet to be fulfilled and satisfied. This is the pain of the awakening heart. The heart is capable of bliss and ecstatic reverence for the sheer beauty and wonder of creation. Yet, as the heart matures, there will be a process of deep passionate longing that awakens for the Divine. It is the impatience for the caress of the great lover, for the presence of the Divine to come to you. Over time, that longing will grow from a mild inner sense of incompleteness, needing to become whole. It will develop into a holy fever, a sacred rage, a stamping of dancing feet, pounding of fists upon the altar, and a longing so deep and distressing that one may well break into tears at the impossible of bearing the pain of apparent separation for even a moment longer. "Where is my beloved?" cries the awakening heart. "I call for my beloveds and yet I am here, still waiting! I can stand this no longer!" As devotion grows and passion for the Divine intensifies, so to does this yearning, so much so that this may come to feel as though your heart is breaking for the Divine . Or perhaps you are not quite there yet. Your heart is attached to smaller gods such as your status, your job, your lover, your body looking a certain way, or being able to live your life in a particular way, these smaller gods are not necessarily an issue, yet you have drawn this oracle so it is guidance for you that the Divine wants to draw you closer. Sometimes that means we will have the meager meal wrested from our hand so we may feast upon something far more delectable and grand. The Divine is a fiercely possessive lover. If there is a face of another beloved preventing you from longing for the divine embrace, and if you cannot see that it is the Divine Beloved within your level that you are loving, well then, something will be done by heaven! So make your relationship sacrosanct. Seek the Divine in all things. When you cannot, when the power of lesser gods has you in its grip, acknowledge it. Bear witness to it. Do not chastise; instead, be truthful. Let your heart break and lie prostrate on the floor, hands clutching and head back out as though only your sadness and plight could stir the heart of the Divine Beloved into descent of succour and grace, saving you from a life far too bland for your exquisite epicurean palette. Just don't misinterpret the pain and think that something really is wrong! If you are surrounded by status and money and cannot understand why you should mourn, it is even more important that you allow yourself to do so! Mourning is to be felt; understanding is not so relevant! But if you must seek understanding, then know this, dear blazing angel: you are just waking from the deepest slumber and with your awakening heart you are realising the truth. A part of you - deeper and wider, vaster and more instinctive, truthful and intelligent than your mind – is lonely for the divine embrace. This is right. This is sensible. This is sanity. It is the pain, the real noble pain of the heart, that says, "There is something more than this in adequacy, this settling for plastic instead of precious gemstones, that must end now. I cannot be fed by pixelated sunset and animation upon my computer screen. I yearn to be blasted by so much radiance and beauty, by the real thing, that I've become stupefied! I must witness so much divine splendour that all I can utter is some incoherent grunt, my mind dissembles and my heart ignited by the presence of my beloved. I want to become a fumbling ecstatic wreck in the presence of my beloved. I want to allow this pain, this yearning, this divine discontent to guide me to my holy lover so my life may never be the same again!" And so it shall be. The discontent Divine growing within you is the beginning, not the destiny. Its purpose is to lead you into your greatest connection yet with Divinity. Do not resist it. Witness it! Do not dismiss it, trying to cover up it's the smell with a rose petal is. Let your rank discontent be the pathway to divinity. Look beyond what is, what has been prized and treasured, and is now found to be plated and not the precious gold it was once esteemed to be. Don't be sacred, for you are my sidekick on this great holy adventure! I am here, you see, just around the corner. I have you in my sights though you may not see me yet. I am holding a loaf of fresh bread, hot from the kitchen of the Creator, hoping to entice you with its wafting sent, tempting you to follow me on towards something of far more substance. If you are still stuck on pine-scented air freshener, imagine it is anything akin to the wild scent of the pine forests for real, then how can I tempt you? Let the stench be the stench, then the fragrance of God can be discerned; and together we can leave what is left behind, once and for all, grabbing, like hungry school children, for the divine bread with sweet fresh scent filling the air.
Place one hland on your heart and one on your belly. Say the following aloud: "Rumi, who loves me unconditionally, guide me now. I acknowledge the gratitude in my heart, genuine and fierce, and I acknowledge the hunger for the divine unfolding in my belly, the urging forward towards some unknown, indescribable sacred satiety [pleasant satisfaction]. Guide me to the holy table where the true feast awaits. I am no longer satisfied by stale crumbs or the remnants of another's feast I want to feast with the holy one, the great one, to know directly an for myself that I am divine. With your mercy, grace and wisdom, guide me there, dearest brother of my soul. I cast my soul into your care and follow my nose! I follow my nose towards the swetest scent of the holy feast." Rest or stand up and dance your prayer. Just be with your body and how it wants to be - to rest or move now. Whatever you choose, stay with your breath and with whatever feels truthful. Say aloud: "I release that which is not worthy for my soul to feast upon. I do not decide this for myself from a place of distrust or judgment. I surrender my attachment and I trust in the sacred workings of life to present to me what is needed. I surrender, I surrender, in sacred trust. I surrender. May my life be governed by love for the greatest good and in holy service to love now. So be it." You have finished your sacred honouring ritual.
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(c) Dianne Ames - 4starbiz.com
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