Love | Ramblings of Light

The Voices Within

Posted on April 9, 2017 by Light Within

No human being gets through life unscathed. Our experiences, and how we choose to integrate and relate to them, make up a huge part of who we are. Each of us chooses how we work with our experiences. This, for me, is an Absolute Truth. I grew up in a household with 4 children. Two of us had almost identical experiences within the household and yet we are complete opposites. We chose to integrate those experiences differently. Our own unique Divine Sparks chose to relate to those experiences in the ways that would benefit us the most in our lives. You see, that Divine Spark had a plan for your life, long before you ever drew your first breath.

My Divine Spark has always been something of a rebel. Even as a toddler, not even two, I seemed instinctively bent on defying the status quo. As a child, I always followed my own sense of right and wrong with no thought or care for the consequences of that. Standing up to my parents, friends, siblings, and teachers anytime I felt that something was unfair or just plain wrong. Of course, this wasn’t a behavior that was appreciated or accepted by the adults in my life, especially my father, but we will get into that more later. As I moved through childhood and into adolescents I began to curb this instinct much of the time. I was being taught that my nature, my essence, which can be seen unhindered in every young child, was incorrect.

My Divine Spark would always show itself when it was truly needed. Even as a teenager I never stopped fighting for what I felt was truly right, but in my family, this carried a very heavy price. I had a constant battle within my mind between the Voice of Light and the Voice of Fear. This is how I choose to see the warring thoughts we all hear and deal with. For me, both Voices carried heavy prices, I learned to choose wisely. I learned to analyze a situation and the emotions involved in it from a very young age. Failing to analyze things correctly could have violent consequences. Though the Voice of Fear won at times, the Voice of Light always prevailed.

This Voice of Light held me during my darkest moments, encouraged me when I was drowning in fear and failure. This Voice helped me free myself from my father’s home at 13, even as the Voice of Fear screamed my imminent death for doing so. Though 13 seems so young and innocent to me now, for me, it was long past a time of childhood and innocents. This Voice lead me out of a nasty marriage at the age of 20. An absolute snap of clarity led me over 400 miles from everything I knew, little did I know or understand then, the perfection of my Divine Sparks timing. Shortly after my trek across the US, two things happened; 1. I figured out that I could be completely on my own and the world wouldn’t end, I wouldn’t somehow end up dead and I wasn’t standing on a street corner. These were the things I had been told would happen my entire life, first by my father and then by my husband and my father. 2. One of the greatest blessings in my life, I learned that I was going to be a mother. I learned this life changing fact on Christmas Eve, 1999. Thanks, Santa!

How eerily fitting is it, that as the world was facing the imminence of Y2K, and all the hype and Fear that went with it, I was choosing to destroy my life as I knew it, the Fear feeding my destruction, became my salvation. I stood in the mountains of Pennsylvania under the light of a million stars as the world hurled into the year 2000. I watched the sky explode with fireworks. The smell of gunpowder and the sound of gun fire oddly comforting, a reminder of where I came from. A life I would ultimately begin leaving behind from that time forward. I was no longer my past. I was now creating a new life, both figuratively and literally. As I stood Fearlessly, waiting for the world to end, I knew that My Strength was greater than My Fear. I knew that I would give my life to protect the life that grew within me. I knew that my Divine Spark was in full control, even when I felt out of control. There were times when that belief wavered, when I believed I must have surely lost my way, but each time my Divine Spark would show itself and I would pick myself up and get back to work. The Voice of Fear lead me back into those old haunts and old problems through the years, but it could never make me stay. The Voice of Light and the promises I made that night, to myself and to my child, would always bring me back and have me building anew.

Though the Voice of Light always won the big battles, the Voice of Fear tended to win most of the small battles. Even now I struggle with that nasty Voice as it tells me I cannot accomplish my goals, that I’m undeserving. It is never silent, for anyone, some just listen to it more than others and when it comes to self-doubt, my Voice of Fear works overtime! Knowing this is half the battle, because I know it, I can also subdue it, I just have to see it for what it is, Fear. It is within my nature to face Fear, to feed on the adrenaline and push the limits. For me this becomes a driving force to prove myself, and anyone else who doubts me, wrong. It feeds my Voice of Light and it keeps me striving to improve.

My Divine Spark knows no Fear, only my frail and fragile physical body understands and feels that emotion. It makes it no less real, no less daunting. We are all within a constant struggle between our Divine and our Human. One knows only our course, our purpose, and our absolute beauty; the other only knows our pain, our fear, and our ugliness. We choose at every moment, with every decision, which of these we nurture. Sometimes we choose to nurture the Fear and sometimes we choose to nurture our Divine, but we never choose incorrectly. Even our Fear and our ugliness are beautiful when looked at through the scope of our Divine Spark. These negatives can lead us to the most life altering experiences in our lives, teaching us in a way that only struggle, pain and loss can. The results of these experiences change our realities for better or for worse. The great part though, we can always choose HOW they affect our future experiences. It doesn’t matter how young or how old you are; we can always choose to turn it around. That is the beauty of the design. We can always choose to feed the Voice of Light, the one that tells us that there is something beautiful waiting at the end of this storm, the one that tells us that there is still Hope, the one that tells us we are good and worthy.

The Voice you listen to the most will always be the loudest, if that is the Voice of Fear, it will be harder for you to hear your Voice of Light in the beginning. It will get easier but it is a constant process, it is a constant searching for that whisper in the beginning. When I got in my car on that faithful December day in 1999 to leave my marriage behind, the Voice of Light was barely a whisper, so buried under the years and the weight of my Fear. That tiny whisper was my life-line. The long journey wasn’t without peril and it had more than its fair share of scary moments. My car was old, the heater didn’t work and it decided to completely overheat and stall out at the top of a mountain in West Virginia at about 3 am. I can’t tell you how many times I thought about turning back, that I wondered if I was completely insane, wondered if I would even make it to my destination. The Voice of Light, so quiet that sometimes it was only a feeling within my mind that I can’t really explain, it never stopped telling me it would be okay. Even as I stood on the side of the road in the freezing December cold thinking that surely the semi barreling up the mountain wasn’t going to see my car in time and all that I owned would be gone within a few moments, I knew, somehow, I would be okay. Once again Divine Timing stepped in.

A very sweet lady, I never got her name, just happened to be behind that semi and as he shifted lanes and sailed on by, she stopped and helped me push my car to the side of the road. She gave me a ride to a 24-hour service station a few exits up. She was on her way to work, a shift she typically didn’t work and she was already running late so she chose to take the highway rather than her typical back roads route. Though my Voice of Light was barely a whisper, the Divine was loud and clear in its signs and signals. I knew right then that no matter what happened or what I had to do, there was no turning back.

With my car repaired, I headed out anew, the Voice of Light was just a little louder now. I let out a giggle and knew that I would be okay. I knew that I was protected in a way I couldn’t explain and by something far greater than I could have ever imagined. I remembered the Love I had known as a child and I opened my heart to allow in the Hope of feeling that Love again. Today, my Voice of Light is like a dear old friend, I hear it as clearly as I hear my own voice and I follow it with all the Love and Passion I can! Until next time, Keep Growing!

Which God Are You Following??

Posted on March 30, 2017 by Light Within

Occasionally, you hear something that just strikes a chord deep inside of you. This morning my daughter came in all excited and asked me to watch a video she found because it discussed something that I talk to her and all my children about all the time. It was a video of Chris Crocker and he was talking about accepting other’s and not trying to push your beliefs on others. He asked a single question in this video that got me thinking. He’s question was this:

“Are you loving the God that made Man or are you loving the God that Man-made??”

Okay, let’s think about this for a second!! We know that there are certain things that every faith has in common; helping your fellow man, loving one another, Karma/reaping what you sow, etc. These are the things that each religion has. We all know that these are the things that are absolute. These are the things that the God that made Man asked for. The Bible and Holy books can be a bit confusing, sometimes they say love and care for one another and other times it says that we should shun and turn away from some people. Man, wrote these books, with all his flaws and all his own agenda’s. Of course, it contradicts itself at times!! You cannot have several people trying to write the same book and expect it to all fit together properly. God tells us even in the Bible that it is written in riddles, He speaks in riddles and that “Those with eyes to see and ears to hear” would be able to unravel the riddles. I think that this is talking about being able to discern the difference between the Word of God and the Word of Man.

So, we know that the God that made Man talks of unity and caring for one another. It talks of accepting and encouraging one another. We are told very clearly to not judge others or that we will be judged. The entire message of Christ was about being selflessly in service to your fellow man. He did not perform wonders and miracles for his own benefit, he performed them for the benefit of others. Just as those of us with Spiritual Gifts, such as prophecy, cannot use them on our own, we can only use them for the benefit of other’s. Healing and discernment are the only Spiritual Gift that I have found which we can use on ourselves. We know that LOVE is the ultimate gift that we are given, and the ultimate gift that we can give.

Then what comes from the God that Man-made? Well, those things should be very easy to spot, right? They would be the things that DO NOT promote unity and love. We have such a hard time seeing that these things are of the God that Man-made! We stand within our churches and our homes and we judge other’s in the name of God. We tell people who to love, what to think and believe, we tell people that they cannot be different, they cannot follow their own heart’s calling. We tell people that we will not love them if they do not fit into our image of what is Godly, but are we really doing the things that are Godly? Are we discerning the difference between these two Gods? Do we even see that there is a difference? Sadly, a majority does not.

The God that Man-made tells us that we have a right to hurt other’s. People are disowning their children, grandchildren, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, life-long friends, and mentors, all because they are worshiping the God that Man-made! We believe that we are justified in this behavior because they are doing something or practicing something that we don’t agree with or that we don’t like. We tell ourselves that it is okay to try to force the people around us to follow our way. We make excuses for our bad behavior. Behavior that they would judge harshly if it was happening to them. Can you imagine it? What if you were shunned because you DID believe in Christ? Turned out of your family and your home because you loved someone of the OPPOSITE sex? Would we be okay with that or would we begin to yell about prejudice? Where would religion be if Christ had treated everyone the same way that we are treating people now? Do you believe that he would deny healing to an AIDS patient just because they loved someone of the same sex? Did he place conditions on his miracles? What if he had been told that the Leper was a drunk and a cheat, do you think he would have denied him healing? I don’t think he would have either!

Let’s look at one more thing, the God that Made Man teaches (via Christ) that He came here to help and minister to those who were lost and forgotten. He wanted the meanest, most troubled people because they were the ones that needed LOVE the most. If that is the case then by judging other’s and shunning them because they are different, we are going completely against what He taught and we are worshiping the God that Man-made. We cannot reach people through hate, history has shown this repeatedly, so why are we still practicing it?

Please don’t mistake my message here, I am not telling you that you shouldn’t worship the God of your choice. Follow the calling in your heart, but do not get caught up in the judgment and negativity. LOVE and know that you do not need anyone else to justify that belief. You do not need to hurt anyone to prove your Love for God. You do not need to shun anyone. You do not need to push anyone to believe as you do. Use the discernment of your Heart and your Spirit to know that anything that creates pain and negativity cannot come from the God that Made Man. The God that Made Man asks nothing other than for us to LOVE and to BE LOVED. Until next time, Keep Growing!!