Not on sabbatical yet – love that word. Did not achieve the finished state upon the clock striking midnight on the 29th and started thus to despair but realized that calendars are made to be remade thus why did my sabbatical have to start on the 29th? Of course, I loved the symbolism of a month off starting with my birthday but hey, life intervenes. So my plan is to work today and Monday and then unplug.
I am so fried. I know I am fried when I am in hyper drive and have a hard time stopping.
Birthday was hard as it is also my parent’s anniversary and so Mom was having a hard time. Did get many lovely phone calls and emails from far flung friends and husband in Kona so that was sweet, sweet, sweet and last night Ann, Billie, and Mary feted me with a dinner fit for a queen and heart picked gifts and I opened my heart wide to take some of the love in… lots of feelings around deserving these days. I have been receiving such lovely and generous gifts from so many people and I realize it makes me a tad uneasy. Is it really okay to take this much? Do I give this much? Those are the thoughts that peel and wave in my mind. I asked my spiritual director Sarah Flick about this in an email:
I wrote: "I have to admit to having the feeling "Do I deserve this?" Interesting question, one to discuss one day… Deserving. What is it to deserve? How do we earn deserving?"
Sarah replied:
"In terms of "deserving," my own thoughts are that we "deserve" everything we can get, many times just because we get through the day–but probably a more "spiritual" sense of deserving in my mind is that gifts are really metaphors for grace, for the love from God that is ours (I believe). We are often crippled by keeping score interiorly of what we and others do and don’t deserve, but after all that is the message we are given from the time we are tiny. I would rather think about that bright calm spot inside each of us, where the spirit runs free, where everything is certainly and of course deserved…"
What is the next evolution here for me, for you, if this is an issue? Where do you sit, fit, feel about deserving gifts, praise, attention?
A related email exchange comes to mind between a wise reader Irene and myself. Irene wrote:
"We so often do not believe what plans God(s) have for us. What greatness we are made for in our little or larger way! I could site quite afew exmples from my own life. Recently I had a numerology chart made for me by Carol Andrienne and it felt so true, and I was so amazed and grateful. Yet I look at it and I wonder, how am I going to do this?
I think I understand how vulnerable you may feel following the past months’ ordeal. However, events like your dad’s passing help us illuminate and re-evaluate our lives, in a new perspective, under a new light.
Those questions that you ask are so fundamental for our survival and evolution as "spirits having a physical experience" , yet we refuse to answer them, seeking excuses, looking for "shadow comforts" and shadow have-to-dos.
You refuse to accept that you are a spiritual leader. You resist. It does sound too much, doesn’t it? And yet, dearest Jennifer, you are. Of course you are! Don’t you know what inspiration and guidance, what light and comfort your work and your personality, true and honest and loving, no claims, no frills, just warm like a womb, womanly, caring, nurturing, upbringing and unconditional, brings to many women’s lives?
Of course you do! So is this modesty,or is it a fear of realising your true nature and your potential and the implications that this realisation may have on how far and deep you may go?"
I wrote back yesterday (it took me weeks to respond!):
"I have chewed over it and reread it several times.You know, I don’t know what I do. That in itself is worth reflecting on- when we do what comes naturally, it can be very difficult to see it. I value what I do that is difficult- being patient with my daughter, making it to soccer games, dressing up, holding my tongue – but not doing whatever it is that I do that comes naturally. I think that is part of what makes it hard. The other aspect that makes is difficult is that being a spiritual teacher to me implies studying under a master for years and years -something I have not done. So there is a very true resistance on my part to not claiming anything like that."
So where /how does deserving and what is easy and any plan the Divine may or may not have for us collide or snarl or conspire? I am musing here and would love any responses – short and tart are good as well as long and strange… 
4 responses so far ↓
1 Helga Dec 4, 2006
Back to computer access after 2+ months, thought I’d share with you some personal notes I took on deserving through becoming a ‘gracious receiver’ from “Things Will Get As Good As You Can Stand” by Laura Doyle (2004, Fireside Books). Whatever else one might think of Doyle’s work, these hit home for me:
- refusing a gift takes pleasure away from the giver (with continued rejection, the gifts will stop coming)
- receiving creates an intimacy connection between giver and receiver
- vulnerability created by receiving comes from fear (assumption: if the giver knows our strengths, they also know our weaknesses and can hurt us)
- receiving takes courage – “All receiving requires that you have the courage to take at least some risk.”
- don’t reject a gift because you assume that the giver wasn’t really prepared to give (not up to you to assume that)
- receivng is not ‘taking’
- be willing to withstand attention
- gifts, such a compliments, may not match what we think about ourselves; refusing is a form of self-criticism.
And finally:
“Serendipity prefers the company of a recpetive woman.”
May the well-deserved gifts keep on coming to you!
2 kathybinns Dec 4, 2006
On deserving – I believe in the Law of Attraction. You are receiving loads of love because you are giving loads of love. There’s nothing to be earned. You are simply getting back what you put out there. And you put a whole lot of good stuff out there. Recognize what is coming back to you for what it is – a reflection of you.
And don’t believe for a second that using your gifts should be difficult. The fact that it comes naturally is the surest sign that it is what you are meant to do.
You ARE a spiritual teacher by virtue of the fact that you have helped countless others see into their own hearts. A teacher only requires a single student; and you have thousands. I am so glad to be one of them!
3 berni darnell Dec 9, 2006
It is so hard sometimes to believe what you are doing is living up to your perceived standards of ‘a spiritual teacher’ whatever that means to you. At the end of the day, you are wonderful woman with all the imperfections that brings, just tell yourself what you do is from the heart, if it inspires people (which of course it does, even if you have a hard time sometimes knowing that!) all the better. We are not here to judge ourselves so harshly, we can just do the best we can do and let it flow whatever happens. You know that right now, you are feeling vunerable, you are probably taking stock of your life and wondering what it all means, just yield to your thoughts, don’t try to analyse too much, save your precious energy for feeding your soul, and know that what you are feeling right now, will not be as intense in future. We are all splendidly imperfect creatures, who yearn to help the lives of others, yet we must learn to accept helping ourselves first, receiving, nurturing you know all those things you so beautifully write about, then we have the energy to share out to the world. Take it easy on yourself, be kind to yourself and know you are only human, which is what makes you so real. x b
4 Licia Berry Dec 13, 2006
Jennifer,
This may qualify for the “long and strange post” category!
I can relate so much to what you are describing. I am in process of allowing myself to be what feels like my “divine path”, and it has been a long road!
I knew as a child what I was supposed to do in the world, well maybe not “supposed to” because that implies no choice, but more correctly what my gifts to the world were. But in my upbringing those were not seen as gifts. So over time, for my own survival, I negated myself in the ways others negated me. It has been an amazing journey back to myself! At age 41 I am almost full circle again.
My path is spiritual teacher/leader as well, although I too experience discomfort with the label, probably because it has been traditionally associated with giving one’s power away to the teacher/leader. I have sat at the feet of some teachers (physical and non), but mostly what I can rest on and feel very secure about is my life experience combined with my self-reflective nature, my internal trust and a fierce and passionate loyalty to myself…it has made me a Wise Woman.
My sense of you through your voice is that you do indeed lead and teach others;I see you drawing on your own life experience and self reflective nature. What more responsible and holy way to assist others than to have lived through something and share what wisdom you have garnered? In the shamanic realm, we say that our efforts in the journey are magnified when we can come back and share what we have learned with the people, benefitting the Whole of life.
So I am claiming my role as spiritual teacher/leader, and I encourage you to do the same! WAHOO!!!
XO
licia berry