IT'S THE ONLY THING THAT REALLY MATTERS

There is no "life" you can have that will bring you happiness, or make you feel better. There is no career, no romantic love, no family relationship, no sexual relationship, no religion that will make you happy. Not even God can make you happy. The only thing that matters right now, and for some time to come, is the healing of our emotional body, and the rejoining of our spirit and soul. Wholeness. That is the only thing that matters. It is the only thing that will eventually bring true happiness. If you find that seeking love motivates you in your healing process, that's fine. We all need something to keep us going, something to work toward, to hope for. If pursuing some creative endeavor keeps you moving forward, that's great. Dangle whatever carrots you need to keep yourself going. But when love fails, what will be your reason for going on then? When career and family fail to fulfill, how will you motivate yourself then? What will you tell yourself is the "reason" to keep healing the horrendous pain you have to heal? Will you move on to seek out a new love, a new job, new life, thinking the next one will be the one to make you happy? You need to know that the only way to feel better, truly and wholly, is to heal all the pain you have. The only way to find and feel love, is to find and heal all the parts of your heart that have been lost and broken. How can you truly love with only a tiny piece of your heart intact? There is a lot to heal, and it will take a long time. That's not to say you can't find love along the way. And it's ok to strive for love. You may find love that blossoms along the path to nourish you and comfort you. And if that love helps you further your healing, you are one of the lucky ones. But ... if you believe that love is the "magic answer", if that's the ONLY reason you have been going forward, then you'll stop there. You will hide your head under the covers of this small comfort. And after a time, your unhealed parts will come knocking on your door again. The rest of your path waits, the rest of your pain needs to be healed. Unfortunately, if you ignore the knocking at the door, your pain will not go away. It will return to bang louder on the door, and then will proceed to find other, bigger (and possibly more violent) ways to get your attention.

IT'S NOT MAGIC, and THERE IS NO QUICK FIX.

Remember, we have been suffering under the "pressions" - oppression, suppression, repression, compression and depression - for millions of years. Think about that for a minute. Millions of years. How many tears do you think it will take to heal all that pain? How many tears can you cry in a day? Go ahead and do the math on this one. Now, when you feel frustrated because you don't see magic after a few years of "healing", when you start to doubt that the process is working and want to leave your pain behind you, remember how MUCH there is to heal. But also remember this. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. The Mother is healing much more swiftly than most of the world realizes. Her healing will help the healing of the rest of creation. And each tear that is cried by every one of us helps to fill the river that flows toward the healing of us all.

IT'S GOING TO MESS UP YOUR "LIFE"

Your so-called life is built on shifting sands. You may think you are living a real life, with real goals, and real relationships. But the measure of that realness is how much of yourself you truly have with you. You can only have a real life as much as you are YOURSELF, whole and healed. Complaints will be made along the way, I guarantee you this. You will wish you had never started down this path. You will long for the days when you lived in ignorance and the bliss of it. Some of you may give up and go back to your illusionary lives. But be assured, the time is coming when the illusions will not hold. The veils will drop away, and your conscious mind will be forced to look at all that has been hidden in your subconscious mind for all these years. You have the opportunity to choose now. Would you rather be one of those who is suddenly faced with what seems like overwhelming dark demons, or one of those who has slowly and consciously begun the process of bringing your demons into the light and loving them and healing them? As those "demons" come into your consciousness and you begin to heal them, they will disrupt your status quo. It can't be otherwise. But if you do it slowly, inch by inch, in baby steps, the disruption will be less. It IS possible to maintain an almost "normal" life while healing your backlog of pain. It IS possible to hold a job, raise children, and function in the world. Delving deeply into your old pain does not mean your ability to function has to go entirely out the window. But if you do find yourself unable to function for periods of time, be gentle with yourself. Let yourself cry through it all as much as you can, and ask loving light to fill the places inside you where essence is missing. You WILL come out the other side with much more of yourself, and will be more and more able to be parental to your own healing with each step forward you make.

THE ALLURE OF THE FALSE HIGH

I'm so smart, I'm so wise, look at how much I KNOW! What a rush, what a rush! It's very easy to become sidetracked by the lure of false magic and the false high of mental/spiritual flight. When you first contact your divine spirit by going deeply within, you will feel a rush of light and love, you will suddenly feel wiser than wise, and for moments it will seem as if any kind of miracle or magic is imminent. There's nothing wrong with this feeling. If you feel yourself feeling puffed up like a balloon, lifted up into a rapturous state by a sudden influx of light or spirit, enjoy the feeling. Enjoy it. Accept it within yourself as much as you can - but do not let it become the end-all / be-all of your life. Until you have all of you healed and whole, until ALL of you is experiencing being bathed in light, this is a temporary and mostly false high. It is - as yet - ungrounded. We need to bring all of us to healing, all of body and soul and heart in deep connection with the light, in order to ground and hold this light in true vibration. When this happens, this true grounding, it won't be temporary, and it won't be false. But the first times this happens, it is so very tempting to collapse into it. Why? Because it pulls you away from the pain the rest of you is feeling. Oh, what a huge desire we have, to collapse into this false high, to believe that we are fully healed and this is our reward. Here is the acid test... if you go within, quietly, on sock-feet, letting your point of consciousness travel to the door where your soul speaks to you, what is she saying? What is she feeling, your soul? Is she there with you, in the rapid expansion and glory of the high? Or have you just found another way to stop listening to her?

NOBODY CAN HELP YOU DO IT, OR DO IT FOR YOU

Nobody can save you. Nobody can "lift your burden", or take your pain away. There is nobody who can heal your essence for you. That pain is yours. That lost soul essence belongs to you and nobody else. It is such a huge temptation to follow a guru or somebody claiming to have more wisdom or shortcut to the ear of God. We long in our deepest hearts to be cradled and loved and rescued. But the truth is, while God and the Mother can give us love, encouragement, arms to hold onto, and comfort while we cry... they cannot TAKE our pain away. The path of tears is not "Right Use of Will". It's not "Re-Evaluation Counseling" or "Primal Therapy", or "Scientology". Each of these paths has a piece of the truth, but they are not the truth itself. The path to healing does not follow any one creed, book, person, structure or group. It is the finding of your own emotional self, your lost parts. It is the process of YOU becoming WHOLE. And that does not depend on any book or person or creed or religion. All it takes is you listening to your feelings, and letting them express, letting your parts cry their grief and rage and terror. This is not an easy commitment to make. It's much easier to shy away, to find activities or people to keep the pain at bay, to focus on an illusionary "life" and pretend that it has meaning and is fulfilling. And it's definitely much easier to be a sheep, to follow someone else and let them lead you. It's much easier to meditate or pray or "talk" yourself out of your feelings. But the truth is that nobody knows your path and your pain but you. And those feelings you push away don't die. They live on. And it takes great courage and commitment to forge ahead and feel all that pain. THE COMMITMENT YOU MAKE IS TO YOURSELF. If you follow the Path of Tears, know this - there will be many times when you want to stop, when it feels like it's too much, too hard, too painful. But know this also, with every tiny baby step you take - you are a hero.