The Easter story is one of the planet’s beloved stories about transcending limits. Since I was a child I have been enamored with the concept of death and rebirth. As a young Catholic girl, death and rebirth was embodied in the stories about Christ’s resurrection.
As I grew older and explored my Native roots, I went a step deeper by giving myself opportunities to quest. During my quests, I was able to die to old perceptions about myself, opening a clear path to greater awareness of my Divine nature and the Divine nature of all life.
This concept of death and rebirth has also been presented to us by the Grandmothers of the Sacred Path of the Feminine. The Grandmothers teach us that when we are present to our current feelings and conditions with compassion, the limited beliefs that created those painful conditions simply die a natural death. They dissolve. And all that remains is love.
The way the Grandmothers explain this process to us is simple and elegant: “We shed the limited body to become the limitless self.”
So what is the limited body? The limited body holds our addictions, compulsions, stress, strained emotions, feelings of worthlessness and unworthiness, and our most profound fears.
For those of us that have spent some portion of our lives in self-development, we have shed layers of our limits, and sometimes we despair because we discover more limits. It is as though we believe a few years of dedicated work is all that is required to be a truly free individual.
The Grandmothers teach us that the journey of freedom is limitless. Each time we feel anger, sorrow, or jealousy; or whenever we feel like we want to fight, flee, grab on to something, or become paralyzed, we have an opportunity to open into the sacred space that allows us to experience the true, limitless nature of love.
Each moment we feel as though someone is judging us, does not see or understand us, or hear what we care about most, we have an opportunity to dissolve the limits that have created the pain.
We are so inclined to look out into the world, expecting it to change so that we will feel more comfortable, and yet, isn’t the external world a reflection of our collective internal reality? And where do we have the greatest influence? Internally—of course.
The world around us reflects to us our limited and limitless beliefs. The resurrection of the self requires attention to the self, and the loving release of our limited thoughts and habits.
How do you release the limits?
The Grandmothers teach us that limits dissolve naturally in the presence of loving compassion. They literally dissolve when we stop trying to fix ourselves and the world around us. They dissolve when we become still inside and open our hearts to self-compassion.
Once the limit dissolves, all that remains is love, and with that love comes the wisdom required to express that love in ways it will be received in the world.
Some years ago, I was given a simple, yet profound Native meditation, in a Sacred Feminine way, for releasing limits. The Holding—StepOne of the Creation Meditation. I freely share it with you today. The first step is the most important for opening your heart to the limits you have lived with most of your life, and experiencing the sacred freedom that emerge when you have held yourself in love.
