#154 The Eye of the Needle called LOVE

We all say we want to love full and deeply, but do we? I have found the eye of the needle to be quite small! Not love itself, but the eye! Every time I am threaded through, it burns away another part of me -- and can be painful! So... ask.  Are you ready?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Lucid Has podcast where I explore everything because I believe everything is connected to everything else. And as I get started, I'm smiling to myself because although I am posting this audio only, I often record video as well. But I'm laughing because as I started this recording, I could see the previous recordings and I look exactly the same. I'm sitting in my sitting in my kitchen with my black hoodie. So anyway, you're not missing much by not seeing that video, is all I'm saying. So today is an idea I had last night when I was sitting quietly before retiring for bed. And I sat for a while and just thought, and I guess it was a moment I would call recalibration. You know, life is constantly changing. We're constantly being asked to uh, well, yeah, we're invited to recalibrate to the changes in our life. And I feel a lot of shifting and changes. And one of the things was I thought back to um when I started Lucid S, which I can't remember the year. I'm gonna guess 2023, might have been 2022. So three to four years ago. And when I did it, I knew I needed to write, you know, what it was about. And I wrote something, and then maybe it was a year and a half or two years later, I went back and I reread what I wrote. It's posted on the website, it's still on the lucidas.com website. Um, and I thought, that isn't it isn't really me anymore. Maybe I should change it. And then I thought, no, it that's who I was when I started Lucid Us, and that is the reason I started it, and I'm gonna stick with it. I'm just gonna leave it. I'm gonna leave it. I'm not that person. I wouldn't write that anymore, but I'm gonna leave it. And at the time though, I was like, oh, but there's still one sentence in that whole thing that I am still 100% sure about, um, that that still resonates with me, so to speak. And last night I was thinking about it, and I was thinking, and I haven't read it in probably a couple of years, so or at least a year. And I'm gonna read it to you now. Um, and I haven't still haven't read it, so I'm curious. But as I was thinking about it last night, and I thought, you know, if I read that now, I probably am even further away from that person, just recognizing how much I've changed. Um, and yet I thought there's still that one sentence, and that one sentence still rings true for me in a in a deeper way. So I'd like to read to you what I wrote when I started Lucidas. And I'm gonna let you try to guess the one sentence. We're gonna read this, and there's just one sentence that's really important. I'm sure there's a lot, I'm sure there's lots of good ones. I don't know, I haven't read this in a long time. We'll see. Okay. The story of Lucidas by Shelley Sawyer Jensen. Before, this isn't my first rodeo. Before Google, Facebook, and YouTube. Oh, before Google, Facebook, and YouTube were digital babes in their fathers' minds, I studied a 1,000-page HTML book and hard-coded an e-commerce website. Each page I created was from scratch. Every comma, bracket, slash, period, and letter was perfect. It had to be. One wrong symbol meant complete failure of the code. To my minor knowledge, I was one of the first successful e-commerce entrepreneurs, plus a mother, a woman, a sister, a wife. I code websites, create medicinal tinctures, build adobe homes with mud, straw, and grit. I'm trained to harmonize energy through the arts of gin shinjutsu and yoga, and I've taught cycling and kickboxing for over a decade. I've knit hundreds of filted hats and slippers as gifts and facilitated sensitive conversations in community settings. I hold a Bachelor's of Science in Mathematics and a master's in herbalism. I've spent countless hours studying scientific research and years healing myself through indigenous medicine with shamans. I don't fit into any known box, and I like that. Quote, she was some sort of cross between a hummingbird and an earth mover. End quote. This is from the book Angle of Repose by Wallace Degner. Okay, and then it continues. Then Lucides was conceived in the liminal space between sleep and awake. It wasn't a dream, it wasn't a thought, it was an inner knowing. I felt my soul called to me, quote. The call was not to tell the tale of my ancestral trauma, nor my life trauma, nor my challenges with mental wellness. It was to share my healing of these, and mostly of how I found joy within myself. From the depths of science to the depths of soul, lucidess is the distillation of my profound healing. If I can pass through the eye of the needle, the one which burns away anything that prevents a life of joy, then you can too. And the greatest wisdom I share comes from studying at the feet of masters for over two decades. You see, my stroke of genius is being a mother, and my two children are my master teachers. Through them I've learned one of the most sacred and difficult lessons. What was that lesson? Let's go back a few years. When times were at their worst, when I was certain I could not stay alive one more instant, I looked into their eyes and heard a whisper from the depths of my being. This whisper became my guiding truth. A mother must protect her children from her own grief. I repeated this over and over for years, and I stayed alive for my precious children, to protect them from my own grief. Today I remain alive for me. I found joy inside this broken and bruised vessel. It was here all along, and nothing is actually as broken as I imagined. Now, it is my hope that the joy I found within, plus the deep connections I formed with my children, family, and friends, inspires you to discover and create the life of your dreams. Healing into our personal genius is not only possible, it is happening. One lucid and meaningful thought at a time. Okay, so these are the words on my website, what I wrote when I first did this, which I don't know, 22 or 23. And actually, a lot of it is the same. More than I thought. When I read the last time I read it a year or two ago, it didn't resonate as much with me, but more resonates with me now than it did then. Um, which is funny because I often say um life is a well, this is because I was one of the shamans I studied with said this. He said life is not a circle, it's a spiral. And each time you spiral around, you might think you're coming back to the same spot because it looks and feels familiar, but you're not, you're actually in a deeper part of the spiral. So you have to imagine the spiral moving through space and time. Uh, it's moving through time as well as space. It's not just, you know, it's not a circle, it's a spiral. So maybe the last time I read this, I was like maybe on a farther end of the spiral, and now I've spiraled back to a place that's closer to where I first began. Um the the sentence, of course, you probably picked it up, but the sentence that I was thinking about last night was a mother must protect her children from her own grief. And I was thinking about it last night as my children are nearing 30 and really stepping out into uh their own lives, very in very independent from me, but also becoming more independent from each other. They still share such a close bond, which is something I I really fought so hard to nurture. And I have to say, there's times where I feel left out because they're so close. I'm like, oh, and my son said to me once, he's like, Mom, you got your wish. Like, we're like, we're like the best of friends. I mean, we are so close. And I'm like, I know I did, but I kind of left myself out anyway. So, you know, as I see them moving more and more into that, um, you know, this whole notion of a mother must protect her children from her own grief, it just becomes more and more clear to me how true that is. But as I see them step into their own life, I think I see, I'm like, oh, they they have their own personal griefs that they are going to need to deal with and confront. Um, they have their own ancestral um griefs, which are not the same as mine. Um, you know, there's a their they have a different father and mother than I have, right? So they they bring in a whole new uh ancestry, you know, they carry half of their ancestry didn't belong to me. Doesn't belong. I mean, it you know, I don't know. I can't say too much, other than, you know, they have their own ancestral griefs that they're gonna carry. Uh they'll carry their own societal griefs because society is different than it was. Um, the same but different. Um so as I see them, you know, growing into their own person and and beginning to taste a little more of the depths of life and and and what it means to mature and be human as you as you are a being. Um just understanding that there are so many griefs that I I can't protect them from, I can't even fathom. Um, I don't really have anything to do with. They're gonna be part of their journey, you know, whether they share them with me or not, is is up to them. Um, but it remains true that one of the most sacred wisdoms I was ever given that a mother must protect her children from her own grief. And at last night, as I was thinking about that, I could see the enormous, enormous ways I protected them from my grief. And I was I'm I'm I was actually uh quite very humbly proud of it. Like I was like, oh my god, I did so much, and I did, I protected them from so much grief. Um and plenty got through. But but I just wanted to start with I protected them from so much grief, and I'm I'm very proud of that. And and I was a little amazed. I was like, damn. But I have to say, more and more recently, I feel both of my parents, and I feel them working together, which is something that they did brilliantly when they were married. Um, and it was also something they did terribly when they were married. So when my parents worked well together, they were absolute brilliance. They were magic. And when they didn't work well, they were complete, just hideous disaster. But more and more they're both past. Um, they're no longer in physical form. I don't know what that means. I'm not saying they're alive somewhere else. I have no idea. What I do know is I sense my parents working together. And it's really, it's so beautiful for my heart. There's so much peace in that. And I also, in their working together, I feel more and more the possibility of me working together with, you know, in the intimate relationships on in my life, not only just, you know, romantic, but all of them. And I also see, no, I don't see, I can't see it. I feel more and more the weight of the grief that they each carried and did their best to protect me from. I don't know that it here's the interest, and this is, I think, the reason I'm I'm feeling and and experiencing it the way I am now, is because my children don't really know what I protected them from. Like they don't know what I have held and carried and and what I did to protect them from that. Like you can't know because you don't you only know I only know because I felt it, lived it, experienced it, did it, right? It was a visceral lived experience and process of protection. Um, and it wasn't just protecting them, it you know, the protection came from there was a a form a level of protection that needed to be in place while I learned to digest, compost, transform, whatever, right? The grief into something that could be a living process of joy. Um so I so of course I couldn't know, and I probably still don't know all that my parents held inside of themselves and protected me from. But I sense it more and more. I sense that there was a lot, and I sense that they both did all they could. And and not only they didn't just do all they could, my son and I were having a conversation the other day, and we were saying, There are days when when what you can say is I did the best I could, and that's all you can say. And there are days when you can say, I did the best I could, and it was really, really good. Um I I had you know been for a while I've been able to say my parents did the best they could. I can now say my parents did the best they could, and they did a lot. They did a lot to protect me and and my siblings from from what they carried. But you could you couldn't see it, and that's what I'm realizing is my children can't and don't and and may not ever see all that I did to protect them from the grief that I carried. But as they learn to carry their own, they will know they will come to understand that. They will come to understand that the way that as I learned to carry my own, I've come to understand that my parents did the same for me. And it's really beautiful, it's it's really beautiful to to see that. And I recently had a my brother and I were talking, and we were, I can't remember really if we were talking about both my parents or one, but um, you know, he just pointed out, oh, I think it was we were speaking about my dad and some of his siblings and the the differing personalities within my dad's family. And also, I guess we were also talking about my mom and some of her siblings, and we both could see how because of sort of the the uh the difficulties of some of their other siblings, we saw how much our parents did for us because we were like, wow, they they weren't like that. And um, and and granted, they may not have been born like that, right? Like who knows, nature versus nurture, who knows? But it was it was easy to see that there were similarities between the sip between my parents and other siblings, uh, where it seemed like it was that a choice was made not to be like that, not to be like that. And those choices are not nothing. Those choices are not nothing. The smallest choice can grow to be uh an oak tree, right? The smallest choice is a seed, the tiniest choice is a seed, and it can grow into an oak that is so strong and powerful and stable and protective and nourishing and all the things that that a tree is. It's it just it can't be understated how powerful a choice is, and in the moment it's it's not, you know, in the moment that choice is the power in the choice comes, is not known until it's nurtured through time and space. So I wanted to share that um because I want to acknowledge all the people out there, all the people out there, all of all of those living, all of those who have lived, all of those who will live. I don't know time, it's just all those who have in their own way held their grief in an attempt to try to protect others from it knowing that what they held inside there was at some point it has to stop. It has to stop somewhere with someone. And if not you, who? Right? If if not you, who? Your children, your friends, your like your neighbors, uh like all the places we spew are negativity and hatred and judgments and all the places that we uh don't want to see. All the places we hide we hide from ourselves because we don't want to see them in ourselves. So I just want to acknowledge all the people that are doing what they can. Yeah, and and acknowledge that's I'm just gonna leave it at that. I don't even have to make concessions, just we're so many of us are doing not only all we can, but we're doing a really great job. A really great job. And we get better and better at it. That's the other thing is I recently kind of had a having one of my conversations with those that be, whoever those are ancestors, guides, guardians, god, whatever universe, I have no idea. But in it, um, kind of felt this pull, you know, to learn a deeper lesson of love. I tell you what, don't don't ever sign up for love. It's like the most wretched teacher in the world. I'm just saying. It's like it's like constantly dragging you through the fire, just burning you away. And it was like, you know, I felt like I was being called to learn a deeper lesson of love. And it was just like, I just feel like you're sacrificing me again. Like this, it's just another sacrifice, just burn just sacrifice me so everyone else can be, you know, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, I just I swear love is just continuous sacrifice. And of course, when I was like having my moment, like, oh my God, I have to learn this. And I did say, you know, and so whatever I was speaking to, the question came back, well, is this something you want to be able to do in your life? You know, like what I was being, this lesson I was being taught would allow me to behave a certain way, you know, in the arena of love, so to speak. And I said, yes, I want to be able to do that. I do. I just don't want to learn it. That's what I said. I don't actually want to be threaded through the eye of the needle. I just want to be like already done. You know, I don't want to have to go through the process of learning because it's, you know, some of these, some of these lessons in love are just so painful. And the funny thing is, is nothing's even happened. Like there's nothing even going on in my life. I was like, there's no drama, there's no, like nothing's even happened. It's just the idea of, you know, coming into a situation that doesn't even exist yet, but preparing to come into a situation where I can be the even bigger person, so to speak. But to not do it as the bigger person, right? If you do it as the bigger person, I would not call that love. That's like, that's like some kind of that's kind of some kind of trip. But when you really show up in the situation and you're an equal with the person, but you're able to hold something they can't hold, that is love. I'm gonna say that again. If you come into a situation and you're the bigger person, I don't know what that is, it's not love. Arrogance, pride, I don't know. You you choose a word. I don't think that's love. When you come into a situation and you can hold what someone else can't hold, and you're both equals. That is love. That makes me want to cry. That is love. To hold what someone else can't hold in a situation and be their equal. Is love. That is love. And for me to be able to do that will require some threading of the needle, meaning some burning away. It hasn't even happened. It's not even happening. But it's something that I want to be able to do. I just don't want to learn it. So this today is a deepening of understanding. Of some of the greatest gifts we give. Some of the greatest gifts we give are not, are never seen. And I should not say never, are rarely seen in the moment. Often not ever seen, but more and more I see the gifts my parents gave. And I'm deeply touched. I am deeply touched. And my hope is that my children see the gifts that I gave, which are often very hard to see, but they see the gifts I gave. Maybe before I die. That it doesn't take my death. It took both of my parents' death for me to really. That's not true. I saw my dad's. I tell my dad's in the last few months, some of them. I did not see. I didn't see my mom's till she was dead. But I didn't, I was, it was like I was waiting, and I don't know why, but I could feel it. My mom was very different. It was like something in me was just waiting. It was just like, just wait, just wait. You know, my I knew my process with my mom would really take off once she passed. And that has been true for me. So but it would be nice if we could, if we were more clear about all that's happening, so that we could see the gifts given when they are given. And these gifts have nothing to do with the material world. Nothing. You know, these are energetic gifts, they're spiritual gifts, they're gifts of love, truly gifts of love. And to be able to see that transpiring is a gift, and it's uh something that I hope we can all cultivate in ourselves. So hope you all have a beautiful day and dare to step a little more deeply into the eye of the needle called love. Be well.