healing wounds

Love Waiting to Be Found

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

*an excerpt from my book, Choosing Love.

A man I know to be one of the kindest, most generous, faithful, and humble human beings, posted a horribly negative comment against our incoming government officials who are of the Muslim faith.  I joined my daughter in righteous anger over his comments.  How could someone who claims to be a devout Christian, and otherwise a good, kind, and generous man believe such horrible things of our Muslim brothers and sisters?  I was angry, but beyond the anger, I felt horribly sad.  How could this man, for whom I otherwise have the utmost respect, believe that his hatred and fear of Muslims is any way shape or form consistent with Jesus’ teachings?  I wanted to step in and ask him if he had read the story of The Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) – a story Jesus used to teach us that often the kindest and most “Godly” acts are performed by those who are not of our “tribe” or “belief system.”  I also wanted to quote the story of the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7: 24-30) who was instrumental in converting Jesus of his own beliefs – who through her persistence and insistence convinced Jesus that he was here for the whole world – not just the tribes of Israel.  I refrained from commenting, but I still found myself troubled. So I brought this quandary to prayer.

This is when my compassion stepped in.  My friend, in his fear and hatred of Muslims is simply believing what he has been taught by the version of Christianity to which he subscribes – a version cloaked in the same fear of “the other” that he already carried in his mind.  To me, this is very sad.  And yet, this man, like every single human being walking this planet, is a vessel of Love just waiting to be found.  Quite simply, he hasn’t yet found the fullness of his Love – the Love he already is and was made to be, but which is currently hidden beneath a curtain of fear.  He freely and generously loves those who believe as he does and in his working profession, generously loves those in need of his service.  But, because he doesn’t yet know the fullness of the Love that he is and he hasn’t yet discovered the fullness of Divine love, he is not yet able to love every human being in the way that God does.  Here he is bearing out Jesus’ most profound and simplest teaching:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these.”  Mark 12: 30-31

This scripture has most often been interpreted as a commandment, but it could just as easily be taken as an observation of what is true.  We are only capable of loving our neighbor to the extent that we love ourselves.  Put another way, the degree to which we can love other human beings is proportionate to the degree to which we believe in God’s love for us, and the degree to which we are able to love ourselves as God loves us.  This is a plain and simple human truth.  My friend is unable to love his Muslim brothers and sisters because for some reason he does not yet comprehend the vast and unconditional nature of God’s love and in this, is also unable to unconditionally love himself.  He still has more love in him waiting to be found.

The same is true of all of us.  Each one of us is Love waiting to be found.  And every one of us is somewhere along the continuum of finding and then living from that love. Our actions on this human plane reflect the degree to which we know the love that we are. 

This brings me to the topic of evil.  In the human experience we witness a whole lot of what we are tempted to judge as evil.  Evil, we have been taught, is the antithesis of love and something to fear and work toward eradicating. We are taught that God judges us according to our evil and that we are then punished accordingly.  This is not what Jesus taught – but it is how fearful men have interpreted Jesus’ teachings and used this interpretation to gain an advantage.   The issue is ultimately one of translation. 

Evil does not mean the same thing as the word Jesus used that has been translated into “evil.”  The Aramaic word Jesus used was bisha (Neil Douglas Klotz, Prayers of the Cosmos).  Bisha is an agricultural word which simply means unripe.  When Jesus uses the word “evil” in scripture, he is simply observing the unripe nature of the person committing said-evil.  There is no judgment here, only a direct observation of the actions arising out of one who has not yet ripened in love. 

When we have not uncovered the fullness of our Love, then we act from limited and fearful states.  In God’s eyes, we are not “evil” in the way that we understand this word in our English language – we are unripe – our fruit is immature.  I like to think of it this way – when we walk up to an apple tree and see that the apples are not yet ripe, we don’t shake our fist in condemnation over the unripe apples.  We simply wait until apples are ripe. 

The same is true of God.  God is watching all of us, patiently waiting for us to come into our own ripeness and loving us through every stage of our own personal process.  We are all Love waiting to be found and God is waiting along with us – excitedly and with anticipation – the same way we anxiously and excitedly wait for our own children to reveal who they truly are. 

We are all love waiting to be found and the Divine is here loving us into knowing the fullness of this love.  It is up to us to say yes.  We say yes every time we are willing to receive healing for the fears and unhealed wounds that otherwise hide our love. In the end, this is my prayer for my friend – that he finds healing for the fears within him that are limiting his ability to know and live from the fullness of the Love that I already see glowing within him.

Choosing Love is a collection of fifty-two spiritual lessons and practices for personal and global transformation. These lessons and practices invite you to shake off the cloak of cultural conditioning and discover the freedom of the LOVE hidden within. Here there is no God to appease, no outside perceived authority whose approval needs to be earned, and nothing that can keep you from being and living as your most authentic self. LOVE is who you are. Choose that LOVE.

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What You Resist Will Persist

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

There is a quote that has been attributed to Buddhism that I have found to be uncompromisingly true:

“What you resist will persist.”

In my own journey of self-actualization and in the 25 years I have accompanied and guided others through theirs, I have witnessed the proof of this. To this statement, I would further add:

“What you resist, avoid, ignore, suppress, repress, deny, try to escape, etc. will persist.”

As much as we might try, we cannot run from our demons.  That which we do not acknowledge and work on healing will find its way out sideways in non-loving and compulsive behaviors either toward ourselves or others.  That which we do not heal as a culture/world is doomed to repeat itself. In this repetition, the oppressed becomes the oppressor; the abused becomes the abuser; and we end up marrying our unhealed wounds. We cannot escape this truth and we don’t need to look very far to see the proof of it. Most often, the proof is as close as looking in the mirror.

At the center of the process of human development is the healing of our wounds.  By no effort of our own, that which is unhealed within us will make itself known for the purpose of being acknowledged and healed.  When we ignore those wounds, or refuse to do the work of healing them, they don’t go away.  Instead, they become magnified and compounded, making our journey even more difficult.  Our compulsions become addictions. Our guilt-driven conditioning becomes a cycle of self-loathing which we feed through a wide variety of means.  The places where we have felt rejected become a co-dependent drive to find someone (usually unhealthy) to love. 

Ignoring, suppressing, repressing, denying our wounds only causes further harm.  As long as we are bypassing our pain, we are its prisoner.  We will never be free as human beings until we heal our wounds.

One of the great challenges to healing these wounds, however, are all the systems/programs/self-proclaimed teachers/conditioning that encourage distractions or denial over the gritty work of transformation.  “Get over it and move on.”  “Let it go.”  “Offer it up.” “Just keep busy:” “Think positive thoughts.” “Just be grateful.”  “It could be worse.” are all platitudes driven into us by systems that have failed to do their own healing and who are then projecting their unhealed wounds onto their followers.  Anything or anyone that tells us to ignore/deny/suppress/avoid our pain is detrimental to our emotional, mental, psychological, and spiritual wellbeing; and is thwarting our path to true freedom.

While complete freedom can never be fully attained, our Soul compels us to continually seek it out.  Confronting and transforming our wounds, and the conditioning that created them in the first place, is the only sure path to that freedom.  Anything that tells us otherwise is a lie.

Moving Beyond Resistance

Ascension is not the goal, neither is it the purpose of the human journey. Instead, ascension is recognized as the midpoint of the human experience, and a danger for those who would seek to remain there. As was well-attested by the ancients, we are not meant to escape the human condition, but are meant to immerse ourselves fully within it. In this, we move beyond ascension (unity consciousness) and toward full Divine embodiment – the true purpose of the human experience. 

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Wednesdays, March 6, 13, 20, 2024

6:30 – 8:30 pm central time

Learn more and enroll here.

Being Made Empty

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

Sacred living is a commitment to many things, but at the heart of it is the calling to be made empty of all that hinders our ability to know, become filled with, and live as Divine Love (capital “L” Love).  In this process we are allowing ourselves to let go of and be emptied of all those things within us that are not reflective of Love and which hinder our ability to know Love fully and live Love freely.

Jesus accomplished this and provided a model for us to follow:

Christ, though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

2 Phil 6-8

Thankfully, few of us will be asked to die on a cross, but Jesus provides an example of the ongoing and complete nature of the emptying.  Emptying ourselves of that which is not of Love so we can embody increasingly more Love is the process of a lifetime, one that is not complete until we leave this body behind. As Jesus showed us, the final emptying happens at the moment of death when none of our human self remains, and all that we are now is Love. 

Perhaps ad nauseum, I have expounded upon all the ways we are invited to be made empty.  Emptied of our fears, false perceptions, ego attachments, compulsive behaviors, unhealed wounds, past traumas, and non-loving (guilt-driven) societal conditioning.  When we begin this journey of emptying, we often begin on the surface – those behavior traits, compulsions, defense mechanisms, etc. that are obvious in our lives which hinder our ability to live freely and at peace. As we continue the emptying, however, the journey becomes more subtle and obtuse.  Things we might not have thought of as obstacles to Love – such as guilt, shame, addictions to negative emotional patterns or thoughts, etc.  We may, in fact, have thought these things as helpful in our path to Love – at least that’s what we’ve been told. 

When we are actively and doing the work of emptying with purpose and through our own self-direction, there is a sense of empowerment that comes in “fighting our demons.” As we move deeper into this work, however, the going gets tougher and we find that we are no longer driving the “demon slaying bus.”  Instead, it seems as if we are being dragged kicking and screaming.  (I know you know of what I speak.)   It is at this time that we must harness our courage, turning toward “the beast” while walking right into it. 

Let me provide an example:  Recently, I have been invited into another layer of deep emptying.  I didn’t immediately recognize it, however, and instead found myself kicking and flailing my way through a party being thrown by all my deepest compulsions.  When the party became a beating (metaphorically), and I felt my soul crumble, and after taking a few days to wallow in my broken pride, I woke up.  “Oh, I’m being invited into another layer of being made empty and I had been trying to fill up/run away from that emptying.  DUH!”  Armed with a lifetime of experience in facing down demons, I turned toward the darkness and walked into it.  As I write this post, I am sitting in that darkness, allowing the emptying to continue knowing that I will find another layer of freedom on the other side.  I won’t lie and say I don’t have an enormous amount of anxiety sitting in this darkness – I do.  What I also know is that there is always fear in the darkness and terror in the face of the unknown.  I also know that it is only in sitting in and with that terror, that it will find its release.

Being made empty is no easy task, which is likely why few are willing and able to do it.  Being made empty is also the only way we can be made free of what hinders our journey to Love.  For the sake of Love, I believe the emptying is totally worth it.

The Dangers of Spiritual Bypass

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

Spiritual bypass can best be described as: “the tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks”

(Welwood, J. (2000) [1984]. “Between heaven and earth: principles of inner work”. Toward a psychology of awakening: Buddhism, psychotherapy, and the path of personal and spiritual transformation. Boston: Shambhala Publications. pp. 11–21.).

In spiritual bypass, we avoid, ignore, deny, suppress and repress the challenges, difficulties, disappointments, and suffering that are inherent within the human condition.  Spiritual bypass also includes avoidance and denial of the shadow.  The shadow is made up of our unhealed wounds, unacknowledged fears and includes all the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected because we have deemed them unacceptable. 

Spiritual bypass takes many forms, but in essence the action is the same – hoping, believing, acting as if we can simply meditate, pray, chant, or positively affirmation our struggles away.  The universal outcome of spiritual bypass is always the same and is best articulated in the Buddhist saying, “What we resist will persist.”  Through spiritual bypass, we are not dealing with, confronting, healing or transforming anything; we are simply sweeping it under the rug. As is true of everything we avoid, deny, ignore, the rug can only hold so much.  The rug will eventually explode and everything we have shoved under it will come out to haunt us.  Even if we are successful in keeping it all under the rug, what we have resisted and ignored will find its way out sideways – usually in non-loving behaviors toward ourselves or others. Often these behaviors become compulsive (ie: addictions), are disproportionate or uncharacteristic of our true nature.   

Some very clear examples of spiritual bypass and the negative consequence of this pattern of behavior includes: the clergy sex abuse crisis, narcissistic behaviors, abuse, co-dependency, homophobia, violence against children, school shootings and other forms of terrorism.  What we resist will persist and what we suppress will find its way out whether we want it to or not.  I would further suggest that we are currently living in a world seriously caught up in its own bypass – ignoring, denying, projecting away the darkness and pretending that it is all ok when in fact it is not!  Societal bypass is exhibited in our divisive culture where many refuse to see the truth that is staring them in the face because it makes them feel uncomfortable (triggering their own unacknowledged anxiety or unhealed fears), or who instead of acknowledging their role in darkness that exists in our society, either ignore it or project the blame onto someone else.  The bottom line is that we cannot meditate, mantra, pray, “beam love,” think good thoughts, repeat positive affirmations, “La La” the darkness away. Until we learn to face our darkness (individually and collectively) we are guilty of bypass and the darkness will not only persist, it will become worse. 

Now, I will wholeheartedly admit that I am not innocent as it relates to spiritual bypass.   I too have ventured down its path.  I will admit that it felt good there – for awhile – but eventually it kicked my ass! I have since learned that the only way out is through.  If we want to be free of our inner fears, unhealed wounds, and perceived imperfections, we have to go deep into them, feel them, wallow in them, and THEN through our spiritual practices, find our way through them.  In this, we are not covering the darkness with the light; neither are we turning the darkness into the light.  Instead, we are finding the light that is already present within the darkness – if only we have the courage to go there.

The work of dealing with our shadow and confronting all that is broken within us is hard!  It requires personal accountability, self-knowledge, courageous honesty, humility, vulnerability, and discipline.  It also requires the understanding and belief that in the overall scheme of things, what we are tempted to call “darkness” is in fact our light.  Within the struggle, suffering, struggles, challenges and all the things we want to deny or reject about our human experience is there to serve the light.  It is within these perceived challenges where we find our greatest gifts. 

Confronting Shadow

Both Overcoming Obstacles and our Enneagram Intensive support you in identifying and transforming your shadow. These courses are not about by-pass, they are about confronting, passing into, and through. Click on the images below to learn more.

Falling in Love with Ourselves

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

The Soul journey is ultimately about remembering WE ARE LOVE. We were created by Love, for Love, for the purpose of Love. In order to live that Love, however, we first have to heal the places within us where we have forgotten we were Love, or told we weren’t Love, loved, or lovable; or that love had to be earned. Remembering Love is a life-long journey, and each step brings us closer and closer to the FREEDOM we were meant to enjoy in the human experience.

Loving Myself

In becoming my Wild Divine

I have finally fallen in love with

Myself.

No more apologies or explanations.

I am the Wild Divine

Having left behind

Guilt

Shame

and encultured shoulds.

Walking my own path.

Living my own truth.

Uncompromisingly dedicated to ME.

I Am the Wild Divine.

Luscious in my fullness.

Softened by time.

Freed of rigid angles

The sharp edges of resentment’s scorn made soft.

Living beyond the fray.

Thriving outside the norm.

The world’s never seen a woman like me before.

Soul Tending with Lauri

Lauri Ann Lumby has over twenty-five years of experience as a soul-tender, educator and guide. She has supported hundreds through her one-on-one guidance, books, workshops, retreats, over thirty online courses, and online community.

Learn more HERE