Miracles & Soul-Scrubs
To kick off Mother’s Day, my 11-year-old Katy and I got up early and paddled our kayaks out into the middle of our lake. We’ve found it to be the best spot for talking to my mom, who passed away last November. With a gorgeous sunrise reflected in the water and love-filled Mother’s Day wishes pouring from our hearts, we listened. We both felt my mom directing us to go down a particular finger of the lake, so we silently paddled that way. As soon as we cleared the corner, we spotted a familiar shape on the water — a duck Katy had previously befriended and named “Flipper.” We paddled closer, and simultaneously realized that Flipper was being followed by a brood of fluffy, brand-new, unbearably sweet baby ducklings. There were at least 20 of them — I had no idea they came in sets so large! Flipper swam in sweeping, serpentine loops to show us her joy, and the whole batch of babies followed in sync with her every move. It was breathtaking to watch. (Thank you, and Happy Mother’s Day, Mama.)
So, how is your soul-scrub going? From the bottom of my heart, I appreciate all of you who have been sharing your soul-scrub stories with me! Nothing makes me happier than hearing how these steps are serving you. I, too, have experienced a few happy miracles since we’ve started this process. One of those happy miracles has me feeling especially juicy-joyful and tingly today!
For this third and final week of your soulful spring-cleaning, we’re going to look at the beliefs you have about the world around you. If you followed last week’s suggestions, you’re already well on your way to shifting any stagnant old beliefs about yourself that needed spring-cleaning, so now it’s time to look outward a bit.
One of the most useful rules-of-thumb we subscribe to in Juicy Joy Training is this: Adding is always easier than subtracting. (In math class, and in life, too – lol!) A spring-cleaning program implies a purge, and most of us feel the sense of freedom in that concept. But the truth is, nature abhors a vacuum. You can’t successfully delete anything from your life unless you simultaneously replace it with some new, better thing. It ties into the whole “energy can neither be created nor destroyed” logic. But energy can change form. That’s why, in the JuicyFeel process you did last week, instead of focusing on banishing your unloving thoughts about yourself, you instead focused on solidifying some better thoughts to replace them.
Here’s a parallel: I’ve found that when I want to drop a few pounds, the best way to accomplish that is NOT to plan deletions from my diet — (I don’t do well with restriction of any kind!) — but instead to deliberately add in more healthy, nourishing, alive foods. When I do that, the less nourishing, more calorie-dense foods naturally fall away.
The same is true with our spiritual spring-cleaning. We could approach our soul-scrub as an attempt to banish our destructive thoughts and feelings, but that sounds a bit like “resistance,” no? And we all know what happens when we resist . . . (In case you’re just dropping into this community for the first time: What we resist, persists.)
So a far better approach is to add in the thoughts and beliefs we do want, so that everything not in alignment with those energies can naturally fall away. It’s all about breaking habits. Are habits easy to break? Hell, no. Can they be broken? Absolutely.
I’m sure there are things you like about your world, and things you don’t like about it. And I’m sure you know that focusing on the things you don’t like will bring you more, and more, and more of the same. The following JuicyFeel meditation audio will scrub your soul by filling your soul with Divine Love . . . until anything not like love will have no space left to hang out in.
Meditation for Filling with Divine Love
Some spirituality practices would stop right there. If the purest, best, most incredible flavor of love is always readily available to every one of us, why would we care about any other flavor?
Because it’s fun. Because it’s juicy. Because we chose to be here in this human form and every one of us has — right up there at the top of the checklist on our soul’s plan — “Love one another.” So as yummy as Divine Love is, we want to fill up with World Love, too. World Love includes the kinds of love you feel for your red-hot soul mate, your best friend, your cockatoo, fresh raspberries, a half-price shoe sale, and the reflection of moonlight on a glassy lake. It feels different from Divine Love. Divine Love feels soft, safe, and protective. World Love feels exotic, unpredictable, thrilling, earthy, wondrous, dazzling, splendid, dangerous, miraculous, reckless, but good, good, good. World Love’s got an edge to it. That’s what makes it so exciting.
So take a moment now to make a quick list of things you appreciate. Do it haphazardly, off the top of your head. Who are the people you care about? What brings a smile to your face? What’s your favorite food? Favorite hang-out spot? What makes you laugh?
Appreciation is love. You love these things — probably in vastly different ways and to varying extents. Since you’re reading this in your human form, the love you express is World Love. Here’s another little process you can do in your head whenever you feel like you need a mini soul-scrub going forward:
Allow yourself to fill up with Divine Love, as described in the above audio. Really saturate your consciousness with the abundance of this phenomenal love, until it feels like it needs to burst right out of you through your heart center. Then call to mind the things you just wrote on that list. With your imagination, observe the different kinds of love flowing from you to all of these things. You filled up with Divine Love, but the love you send out is World Love. World Love has as its basis, Divine Love. World Love is just Divine Love tinged with humanness.
Let your love for all these things take on different characteristics in your imagination — different colors, textures, degrees of chunkiness. Let’s say you love your family, your home, your community, nature, animals, your romantic partner. Imagine that the pure white Divine Love takes on a different color when it becomes your love for each of these things. Maybe your crazy-sexy, passionate love for your partner is red; maybe your love of nature is green, or your love of your favorite hobby is blue, and your love for a child is pink. Don’t let yourself get caught up in specific labeling; just let that idea guide your imagining so that you feel a rich, vibrant rainbow of swirly, tie-dyed, textured World Love flowing from your heart. Doesn’t it feel glorious to love so much? See if you can crank up the flow to a passionate gush.
Once you can vividly imagine that feeling, see if you can imagine World Love not only pouring from your heart, but pouring into it as well. Observe a steady flow of World Love pouring into your wide-open heart from all the beings and things you’re now allowing to love you. Allow nature to love you. Allow the billions of people you’ve never met to love you. Think of the question that Einstein claimed was the most important question of all: “Is it a friendly universe?” This JuicyFeel will leave no doubt in your consciousness about the answer, as you blissfully receive all that yummy World Love rushing into your open heart.
If you missed the first two parts of this 3-part series, they’re in the two prior posts. And if you’re still in the process of purging your physical surroundings (I still have a bit of that going on, too!) my beautiful and awesomely talented friend Karen Drucker has offered the following song as a gift from her to inspire you in that process. (She’s doing a spring-cleaning now, too.) All of Karen’s music is soul-scrubbing in itself, filling you with her pure, gorgeous energy. You’ll love this.
Free download: One Small Step, from the CD Hold Onto Love
And if you missed the call I did a few days ago with my brilliant friend and mentor Eldon Taylor, about the nature of beliefs and how to effectively work with them, you can click here to listen. He’s a masterful soul-scrubber, too.
I hope this spring-cleaning program has brought you your own flavor of happy miracles. (I’m off now, to enjoy mine!) As always, I’d love to hear from you.
Categories: Juicy Joy, Mothers' Day, soul work, spring-cleaning
