When I asked to learn more about unconditional love, my Spiritual Teacher sent a special messenger. As it turned out, he also taught me about communication and much, much more.
Foxes (featured above) are known for their cleverness, ability to outsmart predators, and resourcefulness. The fox totem thus symbolizes mental prowess, quick-thinking, and the ability to find creative solutions to problems.
Totems serve as spiritual emblems with symbolic meanings and significance for individuals, families, and clans. Depending on the source, several meanings can be attributed to each totem. They are also part of the “waking dream family” for those who recognize that a connection exists between outer events and our inner states of consciousness.
Recently, I was grieving the loss of my beloved friend, Jen, and asked God if I could see her again in my dreams. Could I get a hug from her there? Jen gave the best hugs. She was a kind friend who helped me in a very difficult time of my life. Her passing came unexpectedly, and it was a shock for me and so many others who loved her big and loving heart.
Every day, my husband, Mike, and I open a book at random during our morning contemplation. We usually alternate between Spiritual Exercises for the Shariyat book One and book Two. One of the exercises suggested focusing on Divine Love, and we asked our Inner Teacher, “How can we love you more?”
Later that cold and rainy morning, Divine Spirit sent us some unexpected visitors to show us how to expand our capacity to love.
Sharon Sheppard’s husband, Pat, takes their Siberian Husky for walks every morning and late afternoon either to a wooded area or along the rolling sand dunes and sparsely populated beaches near their home on the Oregon coast. Pat enjoys contemplating and singing HU, an ancient love song to God, as Sitka runs through the woods or along the beach. One day, their normal routine was interrupted when Pat spied a murre bird lying motionless at the tideline.
The life force from God is all around us. It surrounds us in every moment and every place. We miss some of them. But from some of these gifts we gain small nudges to go left or right or do this or that. Others will be full of wonder, a treasure trove of consciousness expansion.
The following two stories highlight a few gifts I have received. Their central lesson for me is that God’s love comes from all of life, that we are connected, Soul to Soul, and that we share a relationship with Divine Spirit in many ways.
“No matter what you do in life, if you can just love what you’re doing and see the gift of God in little things, you’ll be happy.” —Harold Klemp, What is Spiritual Freedom?
I am learning in this precious lifetime that every little mundane experience we have is really a profound moment in eternity that lights up with God’s Love for us when we allow ourselves to see with the eyes of Soul. We need to have a childlike curiosity and pay attention to all the little details in each moment, because things are not always as they appear to be when we first notice them.
I will share with you a few moments in my life when God’s love came to me in the form of small, golden, heart shaped “packages” to discover and unwrap so that the Light and Sound could fill my world at a greater level. Sometimes my Inner Teacher had to give me a strong nudge to be alert.
There are probably more people (digital natives) living on the planet now who can’t imagine life without mobile devices than there are people who remember life before they ever existed. There’s no question that these devices have changed the way we approach life and communicate with others, often simplifying and improving the process.
Yet we’ve all experienced opposite reactions as well, and the frustrations that can accompany the complications and setbacks they can inflict. Rather than being born with a silver spoon in the mouth—an old expression that many digital natives will not know, and which only pertained to a minority of people—it seems that nearly all babies these days are born with mobile devices in their hands. Yet there are advantages to taking a break from devices.
I asked Jodi, a new friend, to take Apollo to the cat sitter’s office the morning I left for an Eckankar seminar in Minnesota recently. She was nervous about the task but sincerely wanted to help. My flight left earlier than they open. And he prefers spending more time here than there anytime.
So, Jodi agreed to load Apollo into his carrier mid-morning & take him to “Tiny’s.” Easy peasy except for one thing: She’s brand new to cats.
I wrote a poem years ago, trying to capture the way Soul seemingly appears out of nowhere, entering into this world. Then, before you know it, it’s gone again. I forgot the rest of the poem, but one stanza stuck with me through the years. Here is the symbolism often associated to moths followed by the verse:
