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Grace in Light and Shadow

Sarah Elizabeth Malinak

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Downsizing Downright Hurts

Grace in Light and Shadow Posted on August 20, 2014 by Sarah ElizabethFebruary 22, 2023

Downsizing is painful. It’s no wonder people sometimes put it off until it becomes someone else’s responsibility.

Christmas Angel beige Mom's

Following the loss of both parents last year, I got inspired to downsize – to simplify my lifestyle by beginning the process of letting go of as much of my stuff as I could bear to so that getting rid of the whole of it would never become someone else’s responsibility. I don’t have my own children to pass my things down to; and though my step-children might like a few things, this collection of stuff that I’ve made sacred in the collecting of through the years shouldn’t have to be theirs to dispose of one day.

More painful than letting go of my own stuff is Mom’s. As much as I love her, I can’t keep holding on to her childhood tea sets, for instance. I’ve had moments of overwhelm going through her various collections, art work, craft work, clothes, jewelry, pots and pans, trying to decide what I want to hold onto, what can be given away, and what needs to be thrown away. Sometimes it feels as though I’m throwing away and giving away pieces of her. And with what I choose to keep, the choice for those things doesn’t adequately express her value in my life – the woman who gave me life.

Cybis bust shotAnd then there’s my own stuff. This downsizing of the things I’ve collected – much of which she contributed to through the years on birthdays and at Christmas – represent the various decades (epochs) of my life. I really don’t need to continue to hold onto everything but letting go of any of it feels like a stripping away of identity. If this collection of books, that collection of prints, and countless knick knacks go out the door – even if they might bring pleasure to someone else – won’t part of me, part of my heart, expressions of me and who I believe myself to be and to have been exit with those things?

I’d love to procrastinate this job, never actually getting it done, except that the thought of leaving it for someone else to handle bothers me. And my modus operandi is to not be a burden on others.

I will admit I sat down to write this essay in order to take a break from packing up a certain amount of my stuff. (A “certain amount” that is – I’m not giving everything away!).

It is true that there is a plus side to reducing the amount of stuff in my life – something for which to be grateful and that is making life simpler – emptier of stuff but fuller with living.

Between beginning this essay and editing it, I took a load of stuff to a local charity and while there chose to bring back one of the things I was going to give away.  (For clarity’s sake, the thing I brought back would neither feed nor clothe anyone. It is something of sheer sentimental value.) I told myself, “I can do this in stages. It does not have to happen all at once.”

windchimesIn other words, I don’t have to prepare right this very minute for my eventual demise…I can tackle it in stages, every stage making it easier for whoever comes after me to undo what remains.

Perhaps with each successive stage I will unravel less and less as I get used to this shedding of self, of ego, of the things outside myself that I have made sacred.

Why put myself through the pain and hurt of getting rid of any of it? Because I know how it feels to be left with a loved one’s countless belongings to make decisions about and because with the spiritual path I’m on, why not? Why not embrace another and an especially large opportunity to allow the ego’s hold on me to soften and weaken. And finally, I never did need the number of things I’ve collected, held onto, and made sacred. It’s time. If not now, when?

Posted in Grief | Tagged downsizing, simplify

Ego’s Tap Dancing on the Way to Enlightenment

Grace in Light and Shadow Posted on June 10, 2014 by Sarah ElizabethFebruary 22, 2023

gilda-grayMy ego is a 1920’s flapper wearing tap shoes, dancing like mad, and singing at the top of her lungs trying to pull my attention away from soul work, back to the illusory dream.

I quit school six weeks ago. Life is just now settling down to the new normal and my ego is protesting. Down on one knee singing and pleading with me to just go back to sleep! Just let her lead the way and everything will be all right.

The program I withdrew from was a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. At fifty-three with a Master’s of Divinity degree under my belt and a Bachelor of Arts in Religion prior to that, quitting school doesn’t carry stress and guilt. I weighed the decision very carefully before I made it, I sought counseling and support for it, and I can always go back to it. However, whereas before I made the decision I was conflicted about staying in school, since having withdrawn, I have only experienced peace and contentment about it.

Here’s the kicker though that has my ego wanting to kick me in the tushie. I haven’t replaced school with anything requiring that level of focus, concentration, and seriousness. I have intentionally and with forethought not replaced school with some equivalent goal and my ego’s been pitching a fit about it. If I’m not striving after a worthy goal, if I’m a Master’s level drop out, I’m “nobody” as far as my ego is concerned.

And, truth be told, I am no-body. Though I haven’t yet had a robust experience of it but have only had tiny glimpses – just enough to get my attention – I know that who I really am is one with God, in unity with all that is. I know that I am not this body or this mind or anything my ego or others can latch onto that puts me in a box with a label. I am not “the striver” or “the woman who’s made a career of returning to school.” I am not the sweet, kind, funny, sometimes silly person people perceive me to be. I am not even “the writer,” “the author,” “the relationship coach” I’ve set out to be. What I am, the thing I’ve tasted every once in a blue moon, is the love that naturally feels compassion for all.

Gilda Gray elbow on knee head in handThe ego doesn’t like this conversation or the decision to quit school. But the weakening of my ego (the ego’s death) began long before I started school. It’s just that quitting was big medicine – enormous medicine – on this awakening path.

She’s stopped tap dancing…stopped singing at the top of her lungs. She’s sitting on a wooden box with an elbow on her knee and her head in her hand. She sighs and smiles a knowing, mischievous smile. She will accompany me as long as she can and that’s fine. She too is medicine on the journey of awakening from self to Soul.

 

 

GILDA GRAY. "SHIMMY". BY ALFRED CHENEY JOHNSTON. 1920's

The photos are of Gilda Grey. I actually developed the metaphors for this entry and then found photographs that were a near perfect match.

Gilda was a Polish immigrant who was a famed dancer in the 1920’s, she created a dance called “the shimmy” that was widely used in theater productions in the Roaring Twenties. F. Scott Fitzgerald references her in The Great Gatsby when her understudy shows up at one of Jay Gatsby’s parties. She went on to have a movie career and has a star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame.

( IMBD. Gilda Grey: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0336660/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm)

 

Posted in Spiritual Awakening | Tagged death of the ego, ego death, enlightenment, soul work, spiritual path of awakening

Taking Responsibility for Our Lives: a Spiritual Practice

Grace in Light and Shadow Posted on March 24, 2014 by Sarah ElizabethFebruary 20, 2023

F
Cherry tree blossoms and stems soaked in rain (c) Sarah Elizabeth Malinakor years an essential part of my spiritual practice was taking everything negative or bad that happened to me and getting real serious about taking responsibility for it. Whatever showed up in my life, I had created that. I was taught this in a psychospiritual school back in the late-1990’s, and back then it did transform my life. The goal of the work was to transform us students from identifying as victims to identifying as creators. Though empowering, it turned out to not be enough and, on some level, it wasn’t real.

I discovered two things on that journey. 1) It was easier to take responsibility for the negative. For one thing, getting real serious about taking all that responsibility sometimes meant wallowing in it a bit longer. And, well, sometimes wallowing just feels really good. It doesn’t satisfy, but it can feel really good! 2.) I never really practiced taking responsibility for the positive. The positive felt like such grace and such a gift that it seemed arrogant to declare, “Oh, I created that too!”

That school and what I learned there was part of my spiritual journey. It lead to the path I am currently on, the path that I believe is just beneath the surface of all the others I’ve walked. That path is the path of awakening. I imagine that enlightenment is somewhere along it, but whether or not I reach enlightenment will be all grace, all gift.

Hydrangea in shadow (c) Sarah Elizabeth MalinakTwice a month Joseph and I sit in satsang with our current teacher, Alaya. She has given me a new way to perceive and experience the shadow side of my life. When it shows up, whether in the moment or in memory or as a projection into the future, it is showing up to be healed. She says, “Grace leaves nothing untouched. Nothing! Be tender with all of it.”

Which means just be present to whatever shows up: don’t resist it – don’t celebrate it – don’t embrace it – don’t identify with it because all those things keep one locked in separate self. The shadow arrives, just be. If just being with it brings me to my knees in grief, so be it. If it creates a sense of equanimity, restfulness, and peace, so be it. If feelings around it fall flat, so be it. This, by far, is the most peaceful and healthiest response to the shadow I’ve ever been taught. It is the main reason I chose her as my teacher.

brown leaves in snow (c) Sarah Elizabeth MalinakTo say a little more about the psychospiritual school and why I found their teaching of how to take responsibility for our lives to not be enough – to even be unreal. In that school, personalities and who was in good standing with the teachers mattered a lot. It mattered too much. There was a great deal of attachment to processing feelings. Those of us who could really dive in deep, pulling out all kinds of toxic emotions, were held in high esteem. It invariably resulted in students sometimes either faking it or manipulating themselves and acting out but, more importantly, it kept us all strongly attached to our egos and our ability to perform well. Nevertheless, it transformed my life to the degree that it was the first time I was given full permission to feel my feelings and to do that in a community where we all did love and support each other. I will always be grateful for the school and its place in my life.

These days, though, life is showing up differently for me. This awakening path is all about recognizing the illusion of separate self – the death of the ego, if you will. One of the ways Alaya puts it is when anything shows up as a choice for or distinction between “this or that” then we are in the illusion of separate self. So focusing my attention and energy on how I created everything that shows up in my life means I am attached to the illusion, to separate self. It’s an ego conversation to spend energy, brain power, and emotion trying to take responsibility for everything that shows up, invariably judging it as good or bad so that I can create less of the bad and more of the good! That practice seems superficial and it no longer satisfies.

Cherry tree blossoms dripping water (c) Sarah Elizabeth MalinakThe farther along this path I walk, the less interest I have in ego conversations or separate self. Taking responsibility for my life by acknowledging that I am not separate from any of it requires a courage that runs deep and wide. It means I’m free to dive really deep without manipulating myself or anyone else!

Joseph and I were already on the awakening journey when I met Alaya. I chose her because her teachings speak to my soul and support this awakening path in a way that contributes to easy, natural breathing and beingness. And, like a healthy teacher, she says when a student no longer needs her, the student stops attending her satsang. No codependency there! It’s all Grace.

Posted in Spiritual Awakening | Tagged death of the ego, ego, ego death, enlightenment, path of awakening, separate self, spiritual growth, spiritual journey, spiritual practice

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