Spiritual Life Archives - Page 4 of 4

In Personal Growth, Relationships, Spiritual Life

A Good WOE

Julianne HarveyAugust 25, 2015Leave a comment

Last week, a friend was going through a busy, stressful time, so I decided to text her a daily WOE (Word of Encouragement) to help her finish strong in her commitments. She let me know that these morning WOEs served their purpose by motivating her through the lowest ebbs of her week, but I was surprised by what they did for me.

I found myself slowing down and turning inward to find something creative and specific to tell her each day. If I got quiet, drawing long, deep breaths and picturing my friend in my mind, I was able to connect with an intuitive sense of what to say. It reminded me how powerful our subconscious is, when we make the attempt to tap into it.

Offering a WOE to those we love doesn’t cost us any money and only a small investment of time. But it does require vulnerability (the willingness to be seen as our true selves) and courage. We offer up a portion of who we are, a radical act of bravery in a culture that tends to value self-reliance above all else.

I started writing handwritten appreciation letters to my friends and family in January of 2015 because I was longing to connect, to belong, to tell those I am in relationship with what I most love and appreciate about them. It has been a wonderfully satisfying exercise in growing my friendships. I needed to step out in vulnerability, for the health of my own soul, as much as my loved ones needed to hear why I am specifically grateful for each one of them.

These new WOEs, via email, Facebook or text, are the same. They are an intentional bridge to intimacy in my relationships. They can bring a tiny shard of light into someone’s temporary darkness. They remind us that we are not alone. We are all in this struggle together. Any time we can help someone shoulder a heavy load, it is good for our soul to step up and offer a few kind words.

My friend sent me a personalized WOE in the middle of the week. I think I read it about fifteen times. Every reading brought a lift to my spirit, tears to my eyes and a smile to my face. Encouragement truly does have a spiritual power. It lights up the darkness, providing a dose of motivation when we aren’t even aware that we need it.

Who do you know that could use a Word of Encouragement today? Take this small step, letting your friend or family member know that you are thinking about them. Feel your soul rise along with theirs. Risk a little bit. Invest in the people that matter to you. And see what happens when you give away a good WOE.

In Identity, Personal Growth, Spiritual Life

Finding Stillness

Julianne HarveyAugust 4, 2015August 4, 2015Leave a comment

Learning to be still is a skill. It’s not something we can think ourselves into. Stillness is a state to be experienced, felt, lived. It’s a choice. No matter how chaotic the world is around us, we get to control what happens inside of us. And stillness is a decision.

Our culture doesn’t really support stillness. With technology, we speed up instead of slowing down. It feels like we go against the grain when we work at a quiet interior space. But it’s so healthy for the soul. It’s similar to cleaning a clogged and dirty filter so that everything functions again the way it is meant to.

Meditation is a part of stillness, but I find it challenging. I love it when I’m doing it, but it seems to get pushed aside in favour of other things. A friend just shared a meditation app she uses called Headspace. I’m planning to give it a try to see how it works.

Getting to a place of stillness requires concentration and effort. If it’s not a priority, it won’t happen. Breathing is an excellent path to inner calm. The more we can slow down each individual breath, the better our physiological response will be. Long, deep, relaxing breaths recalibrate our inner rhythms, helping us return to our true selves.

We are so much more than our schedules, our anxieties, our regrets about the past or our fears for the future. We are now, we are here, we belong to this moment only. It’s far too easy to miss this ideal present. We can be pulled in so many directions at once, feeling fragmented and lost, but the task at hand is to gently return to where we actually are.

I know I’m on the wrong track when the squirrels get running in my mind and I forget to anchor to here. This moment is the one that matters. Other people and specific circumstances can churn and stress and grind ahead, but I can choose to slow down and search for stillness inside of myself.

I know that the benefits of this are well worth the cost, but yet I wait too long to get intentional about serenity and peace. It’s an area for me to grow into. I believe that when we move toward stillness for ourselves, other people sense it and benefit from this radiated calm. It offers permission for them to slow down and move in the direction of stillness.

I want more of this quiet. More of GOD (either a higher power or simply Good Orderly Direction). More of the certainty that I am enough, that I have enough, and that in this present moment, I lack for nothing. Worrying is a dead end street. Stillness is a healthier choice. Inching toward it is preferable to not recognizing it at all.

In Identity, Parenting, Spiritual Life

Perfect Peace

Julianne HarveyJuly 28, 2015July 28, 2015Leave a comment

My relationship with my dad was thorny, messy and difficult. It didn’t start out healthy and then deteriorate, nor did it flounder initially and then improve later. It was simply a brewing storm from the day I was born until the day he died halfway through my twenty-ninth year of life.

He’s been dead for thirteen years now. This May, I went to a friend’s house for a workshop on intuition. At the end of this perspective-shifting day, we did a group meditation where my dad appeared beside me. He handed me a note that read, “I’m sorry.”

Those words did not pass between us when he was alive, at least not in any meaningful way, but to hear them in that meditative setting seemed entirely right. They sewed up a wound that needed attention since I was a very young girl. In that quiet, contemplative place, something special, healing and transformative occurred for me.

I came home from the workshop and allowed myself time to let it settle. Soul work has its own rhythm and schedule. Thirteen years is nothing when it pertains to the soul. When we are ready, healing comes to us, with no amount of cajoling, forcing or urging on our part. I didn’t know it when I walked into that workshop, but I was now in a place to reconcile with my bipolar, alcoholic, lost father. And he was ready to return to me.

In one of his final letters to me, a few years before he died, he said that he would like his tombstone to read Perfect Peace. This request seemed at odds with his turbulent life, but I’ve come to see that my dad never stopped searching for peace. It may have eluded him while he was alive, but a part of me feels at rest when I dream about him finding it at long last through death.

It’s always bothered me that there is no physical marker anywhere of my dad’s life and death. In the last few years, I have come to understand that most of my core character attributes passed to me directly from my dad. It was hard for me to claim these while he was alive, but now, with a daily reminder in the form of my son, I see evidence of my dad’s DNA in me and around me. And I feel so grateful.

The older I get, the less I demand of myself or of others. We are all doing the best that we can, on any given day. I think it would be quite different if I could sit down with my dad today and have a conversation. After my profound experience at the intuition workshop, I wanted to give something back to my father; to show that his time here on earth was valuable and important. It mattered. He mattered.

Because of him, I am who I am, and those same character qualities exist in William. We are a chain of DNA, stretching out into the future, and I wanted to say to dad, “Look at what you have done. I love you, I have no more hard feelings, and I think you would be proud of me, my husband and my kids.”

I ordered him a bench plaque and chose a picturesque spot in our hometown that holds special meaning for both of us. It was a healing experience to visit the bench with Jason and the kids on a beautiful summer day. I cried when I thought about dad, in that beautiful spot, and I experienced the perfect peace he spent his whole life pursuing.