Category Archives: The Higher Self

Your Significance Reaches Beyond Your Imagination

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Our acts of kindness are like seeds in the wind. Surrender them to be transformed into miracles.

Our acts of kindness are like seeds in the wind. Surrender them to be transformed into miracles.

How often do you despair at your apparent insignificance? Between ISIS, Ebola, and the devastation of the world’s climate, what possible difference can we make? Such problems can feel overwhelming and our own meager lives seem so small. Even when we do rise above such feelings of inadequacy, we then might struggle to choose the most appropriate response. What actions can we possibly take at a personal level to affect what is emerging globally?

First of all, you and your actions do matter. My experience is that our significance reaches far beyond our imagination. Even the smallest acts of kindness directed towards rectifying the world’s injustices make a difference. But perhaps most surprisingly and wonderfully, even obscure acts that we may not consider meaningful can make a difference.

Let me offer you an example from my life. Sometimes I write poetry and often I wonder why. What purpose do these poems serve? I scribble them down in a notebook, sometimes share them, most of the time not. But then one day, I received a mysterious letter. The only address on the envelope was:

Catherine Ann Lombard
Giove, Italy

At the time I was living in The Netherlands. This letter, without any street address or zip code, had been forwarded to my new Dutch address from the Italian post office 1300 km (800 miles) away.

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Don’t Count Your Success!

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Actor George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin found true love and married in Venice.

How does it make you feel? Actor George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin’s wedding in Venice.

Everyday, we hear about successful people – people who are more beautiful, richer, and happier than ourselves. Our hearts might give a slight squeeze when we compare our lives to theirs. We never seem good enough … But wait! Next to these people full of unattainable wealth, beauty, and happiness are the fallen ones. The once successful people who have ended up divorcing, in trouble with substance abuse or alcohol, or worse, committing suicide. We might experience a slight sigh of relief. After all, we are much better off than them.

We often count numbers, especially when it comes to measuring success. We count the money in our bank account, and assume the larger the number the larger our success. We count the size of our car, boobs, house – the bigger, the better. For our spiritual lives, we count how many times we do yoga a week, how often we pray everyday or go to church every week, or how many minutes we meditate. The more, the better. We count how many friends we have on Facebook, followers on Twitter and Likes on our blog. The more, the better!

Where did all this counting come from? Today, blind faith in science has become the dogma of our modern Western society, along with its methodology. Empirical evidence, that is numbers, are unquestioned as truth, because numbers can be quantitatively counted, compared, and placed on a graph. This ideology has also filtered into our society as a way as measuring who we are as persons. But this kind of counting is sterile and leaves us always wanting more. Counting success in this way depletes all creative energy. We are left feeling exhausted and alienated and far from recognizing the process of living as full human beings.

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Celebrating and Redeeming Flesh

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baby with muscles

I am writing on a warm morning in early autumn. The oak branches are full and alive, corn fields lean with their ripeness, and rabbits graze in the filtered light. As the days grow shorter, I am trying to embrace autumn (and then the long winter) that will soon descend on Northern Europe. To do this, I have been collecting the yellow birch leaves that strew my path, acorns fallen from the night winds, and chestnuts that are still encased in their prickly green shells.

To fully participate in the beauty we find in nature, perhaps we need to start with appreciating our own living nature, beginning with our bodies. Autumn is autumn with all the decline and loss it might evoke, and all its shimmering colors, low filtered sunlight, and the fervent calling of wild geese overhead. This is true of who we are as well. We are who we are … wondrous and onerous, fragile and strong, light and dark.

This time of year also seems to be mirroring my own aging process. Lately, I have experienced a number of what I call OPTs (Old Person Things). I leave the kitchen, walk down the steps into the cellar, and stand bemused as I try to remember what I came down for. I take my wallet out of my purse and put it back without removing the bills that I need. I search for glasses, shoes, jackets and even credit cards that are sitting right in front of me. I watch (horrified at times) as my cognitive skills slow to a near standstill, yet at the same time I can feel myself grow more open, grounded, and at peace.

Take a moment now to wonder about your own body — to find your body wonderful! Your body contains a hundred times more cells than there are stars in the galaxy. Everyday, your heart, on average, does the daily work of lifting 1000 kilos from the ground up to the top of a five-story building. We have 656 muscles throughout the body. Our senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch, breathing, thinking, and speech bring us powerful revelations and gifts.

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