Where Has God Gone?

As the news reports murders, rapes, escaped prisoners, drunken accidents, wars, divorce, and suicides, one cannot help but wonder, ‘Where has God gone?’  What loving God would allow this madness?  Innocent people being killed….so much destruction and pain…has God forgotten about us here?

Sitting outside this morning, I hear the birds sing their morning greetings.  The tiniest of flying insects stops by my arms and feet, landing briefly to say hello during my meditation before flying along on their way.  The trees pour forth the very air I breathe to sustain my life.  I feel at one with the Universe and all that is perfect and good.  Here God is certainly everywhere!

Where then is the disconnect?  How can we go into nature and so quickly find God all around us, remember God deep within us, and then feel such a restless separation when we return to daily life?  What can we do to stay connected to that perfect Divine Energy that permeates all of life?

Consider the following without guilt, judgement, or resentment, merely as a possible explanation for our spiritual disconnection.  We have constructed modern society devoid of any real contact with nature.  We live in concrete jungles, eat manufactured foods, and breathe artificially filtered, temperature regulated air.  We raze the land to built modern housing and then plant St. Augustine grass and trees (often non-native to our region) to please our artificially programmed, media driven taste, with little forethought to drainage concerns or the quality of the soil and nutrients.  As if all of this wasn’t enough of a disconnect from our true origin, we then isolate ourselves into our office or our house rather than living in the more communal groups like those of our ancestors around the world.    Even if we become “active” in our communities, we rarely live as a true community…even without our own families.  Our routine involves school or work, computers, possibly some exercise in an artificial gym environment, and then driving home and pulling straight into our garage before closing the door behind us and entering our house to watch TV or whatever.   We may read a spiritual book or attend a weekly service, but the rest of the time we shake our heads at the pained world and wonder where God went.

The God we frustratingly seek is as easy to find as returning to nature.  Find a native park, river, lake, or forest.  Go to the ocean and get lost in the smells and sounds.   Retreat to a still place in which your senses can soak in the Divine from all forms of nature and the beautiful Divinity within you can awaken to return love back to nature.  Create that magnificent flow and feel alive again!  THERE’s God…right within you all along!  Now, how will you regenerate that feeling and keep God alive within you all the time?

As always, I welcome your thoughts.  Please feel free to comment below.

Namaste,

Sheryl “Pachamama” Sitts

Founder & Chief Inspirational Officer

Journey of Possibilities

How We Disagree (Words Can Hurt!)

What do disagreements sound like in your family?  Do they turn into horrible screaming matches where you are reminded of every wrong you’ve ever done?  Do you walk away scared, ashamed, or embarrassed?  Do you feel loved?

As I’ve shared, I come from a family in which alcoholism dated back to…the dinosaurs?  Anyway, because they didn’t often drink (my folks were a shopaholic and a workaholic), I didn’t understand until my 20s and 30s that we had the same broken communication patterns, and those are especially evident during arguments.  Insults, digging up old disagreements and rehashing them, yelling louder and louder to ‘win’, the idea that someone wins and someone loses, suggesting that not seeing things my way (opinion) means you are stupid (fact), one person allowing insecurities to fuel jealousy that they take out on another person who didn’t do anything to bring them about in the first place…does any of this sound like your family, too?  No one agreed to disagree or tried to learn something new from another disagreeing with them, they simply felt threatened and yelled louder until the other gave up or broke down, which meant the loudest person had finally ‘won’.  How painful!!!  Besides, when everyone in a loving family is hurt, scared, and defeated, how can anyone be a ‘winner’?  Aren’t these the people who are supposed to have our backs no matter what, be in our corner, be on our team?

When there is physical abuse, there are physical signs and we can seek legal action and get protection.  However, we may go years, or even a lifetime, without healing the effects of hurtful, destructive words said to us by loved ones in the heat of an argument.  There are no restraining orders for broken hearts and bruised egos, or destroyed self-esteem, yet they surely shape our lives every day moving forward until we heal that hurt.  We take those broken communication patterns and that win/lose, smart/dumb, right/wrong attitude with us into every relationship, picking the same types of partners, and wonder in the end why that one doesn’t work out either.

Today I simply want to share a very strong reminder that you deserve to love and be loved in a way that builds you and the other person up, so that each of you becomes MORE, not less, of yourselves.  That love begins with loving and healing ourselves so that we can approach others as a whole person and end the cycle of punishing others for our own insecurities and incompleteness.  You deserve to love and grow and heal!

For me, this has not been a weekend retreat or a year alone to heal 30 or 40. It is instead a lifelong process that starts with some deep work and then continues as I grow and change, and more of myself is revealed to me.  However, the Journey to self is our greatest Journey of Possibilities, with God as our navigator loving us through every step of the way.  A good book that helped me begin to open and may do the same for you is Your Sacred Self by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

Our parents loved us and raised us the best way they knew.  They were operating within the boundaries of their own family of origin, knowledge, and experiences.  Now it’s up to us to begin here and make our life the best experience possible.  I will admit to having walked through a lot of pain to get where I am.  I will also promise you it’s worth every step along the way to get to a place where I can experience this level of immense joy and love!  I don’t need anyone to complete me but God; I am complete and I feel complete.  Others enhance facets of my life, and this is how relationships should be.  Our disagreements allow me to learn from them an expanded way to view the world and all in it, and we love one another regardless of whether we agree or not.  No more personal insults, painful jabs, or destroyed self esteems.  We build one another up and understand that is how it should be.  I pray that in sharing this with you today you will talk to someone, find a meeting, open a book like Your Sacred Self, and finally begin the most precious Journey you will ever take!  Above all, I know that you matter and you deserve it.

Namaste,

Sheryl Sitts, Founder & Chief Inspirational Officer

Journey of Possibilities

Healing Spaces

Life sure can knock us down…low! At one point several years ago, I actually walked out of a well-paying professional job at which I was doing well and moved myself to an island. Stressed out and depressed, grieving the loss of my parents, new marriage struggling, I was hurting. This was just the sort of irrationally desperate move in which we surprise even ourselves! All I really knew for sure was that I couldn’t keep doing what I’d been doing anymore. It was only in this state that I finally gave myself the time and space I needed to heal. It was only in this place that I nurtured myself with endless walks on the beach. It was only through this move that I discovered I really was self-sufficient beyond my successful career. I lived on the barter system and met others on the island who’d arrived in similar condition. There was a large movement of healing in this community I soon discovered and connected into. That energy was so powerful! I participated in sweat lodges. I danced with scarves on the beach with a silver haired native American angel. I went back to school. I had an amazing time renewing myself! All of this was made possible because I had finally surrendered and sought healing.

Later in my life, I was again facing loss when I took a retail job at an outdoor recreational store. Not clear why I was shifting to retail, I soon realized that I had been drawn to another healing space to connect with nature and others in pain.  Several coworkers from across the country had been drawn there from a myriad of experiences and were searching for their own healing and Purpose. Not only did we create wonderful bonds and memories, but together we went into nature to beautify, conserve, educate, and enjoy. Once again, sharing nature with kindred healing spirits strengthened and healed me.

Healing spaces are so vital to our happiness and growth! When we find ourselves grieving painful loss, we are more vulnerable and open than at any other times in our life. When we surrender, we find ourselves Divinely guided to people and places that facilitate our healing. When we don’t surrender, we find ourselves quickly getting lost in alcohol, work, shopping, drugs, food, and any other distractions we can find to avoid the pain. Ultimately, walking through the pain is the only path to healing, so how much better to face it now than to add addiction recovery and making amends to our healing process later!

One word of warning about healing spaces: know when to leave them. Such comforting places do not inspire us to move on when our healing time is passed. When the time is right, we must leave or we will not achieve our potential made possible by that healing.   Maintain the beautiful friendships formed there. Visit the healing space for renewal. However, as Master Yoda would say, leave we must. Our final gift is to pay forward the love and healing we’ve experienced to those we meet who suffer. It is also to nudge along those who are ready to fly but afraid to leave the healing space themselves. In seeing us fly, we inspire them. A cycle is completed and we have ourselves become a healing space for others.

Let’s Make a Deal

Do you recall the game show Let’s Make a Deal?  Contestants could either keep prizes they won or gamble them for bigger prizes. It  was fun to watch and consider whether I would keep the prize or risk it for something better.    Of course it was much easier to say I’d take that risk as I watched from the comfort of my own home with nothing to lose.

How we make decisions in our daily lives isn’t really so different, is it?  Every day we opt to live in the Truth of who we are and see where that leads us, or to accept a job/mate/lifestyle that we know to be less than our heart’s desire.  The difference is that we aren’t on a game show, and God wouldn’t tease us with a bigger dream, daring us to take less or risk maybe not receiving the grand prize!

Florence Scovel Shinn wrote some 90 years ago (tho The Game of Life and How to Play It remains timelessly accurate today) that God typically sends an “olive branch” as in the great flood as a sign of larger blessings ahead.  This is NOT the prize!  However, if we accept that olive branch and then abandon pursuit of the larger dream, we have left the game as assuredly as if we were a contestant on that show returning to our seat.  How much better to give thanks for these olive branches and continue in faith along our journey of Possibilities to our own best Life.

Sheryl Sitts

www.JourneyOfPossibilities.com

www.Facebook.com/JourneyOfPossibilities

The Spiritual Continuum

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Fear/Stress/Busyness/Resistance                                Love/Peace/Stillness/Acceptance

Have you ever become so frustrated with a situation or relationship in your life that you threw up your hands and said something like, “OK God, I can’t do this anymore!”  Did you give it to God when you couldn’t take it anymore?  How did that feel?  Then what happened?  As it started to improve, did you find yourself slowly taking charge yourself again, as if to say, “Thanks God.  I’ve got it now”?  Maybe you just grabbed it back completely in one panicked moment and didn’t leave anything at all for God to manage?  Honestly, I can’t even remember how many times I have done this in my lifetime.

As I explore my own life as a Journey of Possibilities, I recognize our spiritual Journey as a Continuum.   When I am scared, stressed out, trying to stay busy, or resisting the flow of life, it’s a safe bet that I’m running the show.  I’ve even lost myself in addiction before so I didn’t have to see whatever I was avoiding.  At the other end of the spectrum, I know that feeling of being filled with love, serenity, and acceptance of everything just as it is, trusting God’s perfect Design and Order.  That’s the way my life feels when I put God in charge.

Whenever my life becomes unmanageable, as they say in the 12-step program, I surrender and let go…not of one thing, but of everything.  The moment I do, I instantly begin moving back across the Continuum.  Thankfully, God doesn’t have a waiting period!

If there is such peace in letting go, then why do we resist turning everything over to God? Boy, don’t we always want to be in charge!  We blindly trudge forth in busyness (often by losing ourselves in business), believing that even a little progress is better than the stillness of waiting on God.  However, any gains made this way always prove futile later against the grand Design.  When it is God’s Time for something to occur, all is manifested at amazing speed and often with much less effort on our part.

One way to check our status on the Spiritual Continuum is through daily prayer and meditation.  Give God a bit of your time, and consistently check your human urge to take control.  The sooner we surrender to God, the sooner we return to the flow of Divine Harmony.  Trusting that all is exactly as it should be brings amazing serenity no matter what is going on in this Earth School.

Sheryl Sitts

www.JourneyOfPossibilities.com

www.Facebook.com/JourneyOfPossibilities

Seeing Things Differently

Recently, I’ve begun praying that God would help me to “see things differently and find the best, most healing path” in areas of my life where I become frustrated, hurt, angry, impatient, or confused. It is amazing how quickly a receptive heart praying this earnestly will begin to see other aspects of a situation that open new possibilities, understanding, and healing. Let me give you an example relating to career.

Have you ever chosen a job you just knew you wanted, and prepared yourself for the day it became available so you could apply? Maybe you’ve had a job you loved but something happened there, and you promised yourself you’d return to that work one day.  Both of these opportunities presented themselves for me this week, and the most amazing thing happened.  I no longer see my future in either role!  In fact, I am completely certain that God has something else in store for me, bigger than I ever dared to dream for myself.   I prayed about each opportunity, and instead saw myself much happier elsewhere than I’ve ever been…creating Journey of Possibilities!   God helped me to see things differently and know instinctively the right course of action….and trust this vision will be realized in perfect Divine time and order.   He also showed me that our possibilities are not among those visible to us in this reality, but the realm of ALL possibilities known and visible to Him and made available to us by giving Him control of our life.

Is there someone with whom you are frustrated? Is a particular area of your life feeling blocked? Is there some lesson that keeps presenting itself in the same annoying way over and over in your life?  Try praying with a truly open heart for God to help you see things differently with regard that that person or circumstance and find the best, most healing path for your future.   This prayer opens the door to abundant peace and allows miracles to happen in your  life!

Sheryl Sitts
www.JourneyOfPossibilities.com
www.Facebook.com/JourneyOfPossibilities

Never Settle

Good ol’ Mom (RIP) used to say these words to me about marriage.  I’d discuss a boyfriend with whom things were getting serious, and she’d teach me to distinguish between traits that are less important and those that define the essence and character of a person.  When discussing the latter, she engrained into me to “never settle”.  So powerful was this message that I recall looking deep inside on that sleepless night before my wedding to be sure I had no doubts and was not settling on the values that meant the most to me.

A friend of mine and I were recently discussing another perspective for living life:  “expect nothing”.  At first horrified by the sound of that, I now understand that he means we should not expect anything in order to receive all that is, just as it is.  That does not contrast with “never settle”, and in fact it helps us clarify in every relationship whether the other person possesses that which we value most, and how much we actually make each others lives better.

There is no judgement in saying that a person is or is not right for us, or a relationship does or does not work.  It is much like cooking and trying different spices together to determine which spice bring out the potential of a dish.  We must keep in mind that God dreams a bigger dream for us than we dream for ourselves and God will fulfill dreams.  By settling for a partner or spouse who is not our best match, we no longer leave an opening for our best match to enter when we do encounter him/her.  That is a high price for settling.

You may be thinking that it takes more than one spice to bring out the potential in a dish.  So true!  This is why “never settle” applies to much more than one relationship in our life.  Expecting one partner to be our everything is not only unrealistic, but it strains a relationship with pressure that is unhealthy and may ultimately break it.  Having quality friends, work, hobbies, etc. completes our lives much as those important secondary spices enrich a recipe. That is why in all facets of our life we should “never settle”.   Life is a bountiful buffet not to be consumed in mass, but to receive in gratitude, then carefully selecting that which enriches and fulfills us at our deepest level.

Sheryl Sitts

Journey of Possibilities

www.JourneyOfPossibilities.com

www.Facebook.com/JourneyOfPossibilities

The Power of Living Vulnerably

Losing my mother to cancer was one of the most difficult experiences of my life.  Having just returned from my honeymoon, I went from a great emotional high to the most painful low overnight.  After the funeral, I wondered how I would return to host my call-in radio show when my boss gently advised that I simply be real and share whatever I was feeling openly at the level I was comfortable doing so.   I was so raw that it was surprisingly easy for me to drop my human concern for appearances  and be open about my feelings, specifically my intense pain and regret.  What happened next was the most healing experience of love pouring in from those I’d encouraged in prior months.  The vast and often impersonal city of Houston wrapped its arms around me as cards, letters, and calls helped me work through the overwhelming emotions I had and move on with my life.

All too often, we worry about keeping up an image or impressing others with our strength, credentials, or professionalism.  We learn to “suck it up” amidst adversity or pain, putting walls between ourselves and others.  We connect on a more superficial level while staying safely obscured.  Ironically, then we wonder why we no cannot find the deep joy or intimacy we crave, for that is the price we pay to risk nothing and remain “safe”.  Keeping others at arm’s length is an act of ego, not of spirit.

We never know what is possible when we connect with another person vulnerably and authentically with an open heart.  As I open myself more and more to what is possible in every interaction with others, miracles happen!  My life is deeper, more significant, and I see how this unlocks the potential to make dreams come true – ours and other people’s.

Sheryl Sitts

Journey of Possibilities

www.journeyofpossibilities.com

www.Facebook.com/JourneyOfPossibilities