The Bridge Between Worlds and The End of Estrangement

I find great refuge in viewing the morning sky between three and four a.m. It has become a habit to walk outside, look up, and know that life is not random at all. And somehow, to trust that even what I cannot understand is happening for me.

I thought losing my daughters to estrangement years ago would be one of the greatest hardships of my life.

I was wrong.

We found our way back to one another, and have been reunited for years now. But what I discovered in the years between estrangement and now, was something I didn’t know I was looking for.

Until we are willing to meet the emptiness that lives deep within our existence, and stand in the vast spaciousness of nothing at all, we may never come to know ourselves, or anyone else, in the way the soul longs for.

And then life asked me to trust that again. More recently. At a deeper level than I expected, deeper than I believed I could go.

It is not something I would have chosen. It is what Divinity asked of me. And then the world I thought I knew, relied upon, found safety and security in, gives way, and you just free fall…

And it is terrifying, because the darkness of the vast sky opens to something the mind cannot grasp, and yet somehow you know it is what the heart has been searching for all along.

However, I am not on the other side of it. I am in the opening of it… that indescribable place where what you just walked through begins to reveal what it was actually for. Where something you could not have imagined starts to become visible.

Where awe and disbelief live in the same breath.

I don't know yet where this is going, and I am trying really hard not to control it or figure it all out. What I recognize is the feeling of being Divinely guided into something far beyond what I can currently begin to imagine for myself.

This is what I want to invite you into today.

Friend, pour a cup of tea. Sit down with me. Close the tabs. Take a deep breath, and be here now…

The only way to recognize those estranged from us, beneath the deep pain of the hurtful past, is to recognize the sacred within them. To see them as you would want them to see you… beyond the story: completely whole, completely lovable, and already knowing the truth that lies beyond it all.

We come from a sacred Source. We are of It, made in Its image. And at the highest levels of consciousness, we are One with It.

This is the purpose of atonement. At-One-Ment.

The way back, then, is not through changing another person or finally understanding everything that happened. It is through the recognition that no one, at any point in time, can truly stand outside this sacred embrace.

This is part of what I understand as Universal Law: that what is Divine cannot be diminished by our perception of it. The more we learn to see beyond the limitations we have placed upon another, and beyond the limitations we have placed upon ourselves, the more deeply we recognize and remember what is already true.

And perhaps this is why real Love does not diminish when it is shared. It expands. It attracts. The truths we come to know within ourselves become more powerful when they are lived, embodied, and given away.

You might be tempted to call this “radical forgiveness”, but it is much more difficult and magnificent than that.

And it will never be something we give because the other person has earned it. It is something that frees us from the perception that the separation is ultimately who either of us is.

Let me say that another way…

We are not being asked to forgive what happened. We are being asked to stop confusing what happened with who someone is. And we will only begin to know the truth of them, and ourselves, in this way, when we finally step through the harrowing threshold of self-doubt most of us will do anything to avoid.

And the one who most needs you to see them in this light does not need to be aware of the sacred Source within them.

They do not need to see it in you.

They may have disassociated from the call of their own soul, just as you have.

When a brother acts insanely, he is offering you an opportunity to bless him. His need is yours. There is no way for you to have it except to give it.

~ A Course in Miracles

Right now, you may be holding two diametrically opposed ways of seeing them. One sees the hurt, the rejection, the words, the history, the person you believe they have become. The other sees something beneath all of it, something whole and untouched by the story.

And both are simply thoughts within your mind.

If the voice of the Divine feels faint within you, begin to extend it. Not by declaring it, but by living it. Let it become something you offer through the way you see, the way you respond, the way you love, and the way you accept another. Because what we extend, we become more able to recognize. Words mean very little when they are not aligned with action, with the way we actually live.

You begin to hear it by extending it. What you perceive in others you are strengthening in yourself.

The Bible says, “Many are called, but few are chosen.”

A Course in Miracles offers another way of seeing this: all are called, but few choose to listen.

It is not that the Divine voice is ever actually weak. It is undeniably present, even within the struggles and suffering of everyday life. It only seems weak when we have not yet learned to listen for it, or to extend it before we expect it to be extended to us.

Friend, stay with me…

When fear begins to rule our lives, we are living out of alignment with the truth of who we are… and who they are. With what is real and what is true.

The pathway back to one another becomes obscured.

What is true cannot be false. What is real cannot ultimately be denied. What is aligned with Divine Love is already whole. It does not need to become whole. It is complete. It does not need to be defended into existence or defined by boundaries.

It is done. It is finished. Live from this place.

False perceptions will always oppose what is true because they are built upon a different level of consciousness. One level of the mind cannot comprehend what is known at another.

And perhaps this is the threshold we have been standing before all along. There are really only two expressions:

Fear or Love.

This is the threshold at which we must meet our self-doubt first.

Not at the level of the fearful interpretation, but at the level beneath it. This is what holds us back from life, from Love, from experiencing what is already profoundly real.

Divine Will becomes the mediator. Not a force that chooses one person over another, but the ultimate power of the universe, bridging the interpretations of a fearful past with the knowledge of truth and the power of Love.

Divinity Itself, transcending all perceived limitations.

Perhaps this is where the great divide of our time begins to end. Not by convincing one another to think alike, believe alike, or see the world through the same eyes, but by learning to see beyond the limitations we have placed upon one another, and upon ourselves.

To realize that we can only ever be estranged from ourselves.

To Be the One to do the hard work of crossing the threshold that every generation spends its life trying to avoid. To recognize the person beneath the story.

To remember the sacred beyond the wound.

What happens in family estrangement is not separate from what happens in humanity. Every time we meet another person only through the story we have created about them, the divide grows. Every time we are willing to look beyond the story to the truth of the divinity within all of us, something else becomes entirely possible.

Beyond right doing and wrong doing is a field. I will meet you there.

~Rumi

And with this, the cycle no longer has the same place to continue.

Come with me for a moment. I want to tell you something about what happens when you do this…

Not as a promise or a guarantee. But as someone who has walked through the devastating fire of estrangement and come out the other side into something so unexpectedly beautiful and I still can't quite believe it.

When you stop organizing your life around the story of what happened, around what they did to you, and begin to see the sacred in the person beneath the story, something shifts in the field between you.

And it ripples outward…

And in your own life, in the life that has nothing to do with whether they call or come back, something else opens entirely. A quality of living that most of us have been too defended to access. A freedom that does not depend on what anyone else does or does not do. A Love that no longer waits to be received from the outside.

This is not a consolation prize for the relationship you lost.

This is the Love your heart has been searching for all along.

And the most extraordinary thing, the thing I am living right now in ways I still can’t fully believe or explain, is that it becomes available the moment you stop waiting for the outside world to give it to you and start extending it from the inside out.

Even when it feels like you have nothing left to give. Especially then.

This is not a spiritual concept. This is a real living life experience. And it is available to you right now.

Perhaps it only takes one person to see beyond the story.

Perhaps that One person is you.

Namaste,

Share

When estrangement from ourselves ends, something in the field between us begins to transform.

~Inspired by The Path of Emergence.

If you feel the invitation, you can learn more about Standing at the Threshold here.

Not ready for that step yet? Stay close. The invitation back home to your Self will wait.