2002-10-27. Sunday with Alana
Costa Rica #120
Topic: Sunday with Alana
Group: Costa Rica TeaM
Teacher: Alana, Legion
TR: S. Butterfield
Note
Sandy showed up feeling extremely guilty because she believed that her objection was the reason Oliver had chosen to not attend a group meeting.
Opening
T/R: Dear Father, dear Mother, beloved teachers, we gather here today, the four of us, to be with you in your wisdom. I seek your guidance in all things, helping me to be more loving, strengthening my ability to speak the truth with love. I surrender myself to your will, good will toward all. Thank you.
Alana: Yes, this is Alana.
Sandy: Welcome, dear heart.
Alana: I welcome you, wanderer.
Sandy: Thank you, it has been a long time.
Alana: Yes, beloved. A long time from the experience of using another in order to communicate with me, yes? But we shall not say a long time from the communion of love between us. Yes?
Sandy: That’s true.
Lesson
Alana: The communion of love is as steady as the still point within the heart room. As you practice the stillness, you will discover each time that love is there. It is the same with me and with the communion of love that I share with each one of you. You are able to sustain that connection with your own will.
Yet it is true that to experience me as you do now, in a group setting, hearing me through another, is a unique experience. Sharing me and your dreams with me, your wants from me, and sharing these with others present, is a unique experience. Another kind of learning takes place, much like the child leaving home to go to school.
Still, always it is the same: to learn, to turn toward love, to surrender to that love, and to trust in the power of that love to have its way with you and the facts and circumstances of your life. To do these things so that you will know the joy that resides within the communion of love, the holy communion. But I acknowledge it is different to turn toward love, to go home to the center of love, to enter the heart room and step into the pool of love and forgiveness in a group; to do this alone is different than to share this experience.
Three of you have had an extended encounter with this group experience, but each of the four of you has your personal understanding of the group experience, your personal experience. You are learning to allow change to occur which involves surrender of some wants and desires, as well as a shift in your experience of the group and your experience of self-hood within the group and in relationship to the group.
You may, today, begin to understand that when you welcome change with love, what you are doing is allowing the holy communion of love to demonstrate its power to be greater than any simple, single, formulation or formation of human beings, alliances, agreements, schedules, routines, rituals.
You begin to see how the holy communion creates a light within your circle. This reflects the light you have chosen to allow to grow within you, and you have chosen to share with another, and another, and another. You may see this light growing in its power of illumination, radiance and velocity. You may see it rising up through your bodies, through the tops of your heads. You may see it rising up from the circle of the heart room, up through the center, up through the tiny hole at the top of the heart room. You may see this light rising into a clear, authentic, flexible, source of light that reaches toward the light and love of God, as it reaches toward others, like yourselves, in need.
(T/R sees streams of light arcing out and touching down at many spots on the earth, like a grid, lines of light connecting, arching over the earth and touching down to one spot and another, like a great geodesic dome.)
As you see this, you will know that the changes (which those of you who have participated in what you called your Jungle Group have undergone, diversified now, some here, some there) are included in the holy communion of love whenever two or more are gathered. And so this light may reach to all (she mentions only a few, but means all), Lady Kim, Sir John, your beloved Oliver, your new and unusual friend, whose path is different from, but nevertheless participates in the holy communion of love.
We do not expect that you, as individual human beings, will always find yourselves capable of the level of love and tolerance that you feel in our presence given toward yourselves. You are human on the human plane. Join us in loving you nevertheless. The challenge in learning to love, in reaching toward unconditional love and peaceful tolerance, is to allow the communion of love to guide you, and inform you, and to take its many forms in any one person’s life.
If you let someone go, let them walk away to find their own path, it is not that you should examine “How could I have kept them closer?” but rather that you should, with all the attention and focus of the heart room, allow the leaving to be blessed with love.
So, having spoken so eloquently, if I may say so, about leaving, let me offer another welcome to my beloved Sandy. I gladly listen to anything you wish to reveal to me in the heart room.
Dialogue
Sandy: Oh what a privilege it is to be here with you, Alana.
Alana: Thank you.
Sandy: ‘Welcome Change with Love” is a wonderful, wonderful lesson, Alana, but I get confused. For me, to have another person in the group whose energy was difficult…I really tried to welcome that change. I didn’t try really, really hard, I admit, but I did try for several sessions. Listening to you today, I think maybe we are going through some other change altogether, and I need to welcome that change, with Oliver and Richard someplace else. I’m confused. Do I welcome people who are difficult for me to accept? I hate to use that word, accept. I’m having a problem with this. I’m trying to trust what is inside myself, but sometimes it feels as if what is inside myself is not right.
Alana: Which is to say, wrong?
Sandy: Well, yes.
Alana: How about left?
Sandy: You mean as in left and right? Well, just not quite in sync.
Alana: The lack of harmony is within yourself.
Sandy: I know.
Alana: So, beloved, is it not true that you welcomed this stranger into your midst?
Sandy: Yes, I tried to do that.
Alana: Trying can become tiresome, yes?
Sandy: Yes.
Alana: So is it fair to say that you welcomed this person into your midst, and then you did not?
Sandy: Yes. Yes, I think initially we all welcomed him. And I don’t feel welcoming toward him now.
Alana: And so, what you struggle with is lack of welcome. Yes?
Sandy: Yes.
Alana: And you remain confused about how to welcome lack of welcome with love. Yes?
Sandy: How to welcome lack of welcome with love. Yes. That is what I have been struggling with, thank you very much.
Alana: So, beloved, may I welcome you with love, and also welcome with love your lack of welcome?
Sandy: Thank you, Alana. I know you accept me, even when I can not.
Alana: Yes. When another reflects to you, in some manner or way, what you find unacceptable, it is indeed a very great challenge to accept the unacceptable. It is difficult to accept that within yourself. To accept that which you feel and think in ways contrary to what you have established for yourself as a goal. It is even more difficult to accept the unacceptable, if this disharmony is introduced at a moment in time when you had thought yourself so very nearly close to perfect! Yes?
Sandy: (Laughter.) The sin of smugness. Yes, Alana. I was thinking of that earlier. Well, it certainly is a reminder that I am not perfect. So I just have to accept that I am not perfect. Yes?
Alana: Nor I, my beloved.
Sandy: Oh, you are perfect, Alana.
Alana: Oh yes! Alana is perfect, but beloved Sandy is not perfect. Yes?
Sandy: That’s right.
Alana: But Alana allows her imperfection in the heart room. Oh my beloved, allow yourself to be loved, imperfect.
Sandy: Your love is perfect. Mine is necessarily imperfect. And that is perhaps the hardest thing to accept.
Alana: My love no longer need struggle with the fears and doubts of human life upon your planet, among those wounded, deprived, and confused. Yet my love grows, beloved Sandy. My love grows as your love grows.
My love is perfect to you because no longer do I have the barriers of fear and doubt to prevent the expression of my love toward all that come. You, my beloved, must learn to trust your love and allow your love to embrace your fears and doubts with compassion and the patience of mercy, allowing discernment, allowing choice, recognizing the individual choices that comprise an individual life. Do not ask yourself to be other than who you are. Come to know yourself, know your love, know that you do love, and expand and perfect those ways in which you love. The unique individual you are loves in your way, not all perfectly, not all tolerant, but ever expanding and polishing and strengthening the channel of love that is yours to give and to share.
You have come together to learn to love. You have not come together to create a group. You have come together to learn to love. You will learn to love as you come together in this heart room. This heart room is wherever two or more are gathered. This heart room is the communion of love, but always the heart room here is connected to the heart room there. There may be variations upon a theme, different notes and components, different individuals, still the heart room, the love that is the heart room, remains the same.
When you can greet your brethren unashamed, accepting yourself with love, then they will see the love of which you speak, that imperfect love, touches them with the joy that is the center of love. In that joy is communicated: “I may give love imperfectly. I may express love imperfectly. But the love is untainted by my limitations.”
I would give you a rose within your heart, beloved Sandy, to allow the fragrance that resides within to rise up and fill your mind with the blessings of joy. Thank you.
Sandy: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I will remember your words.
Alana: Yes, beloved, you are creating your love life direction. You lack only the steadiness of confidence that is my confidence in you.
David: Good backing, Sandy.
Sandy: Yes. Excellent. I can just reach out my hand whenever I feel that I am not quite where I want to be.
David: A handrail in the dark.
Sandy: Dear Alana, thank you.
Alana: Yes, beloved. Thank you.
Sandy: It almost sounds…I’ve had this impression in other conversations, too…that love is a palpable, physical, presence that we can just touch, tap in to, connect with…I have that feeling again today. That its always there. (Alana: Yes.) Whether we are good at it or not. (Alana: Yes.)
Alana: Is there anyone else who would speak with me today?
Sonja: Yes. I want to thank you for everything. For the progress I’ve made with my partner, Chris. I think I’m on the right track, but I would like to know if there is anything specific that I should be focusing on.
Alana: Joy. Happiness. Humor.
Erin: This is Erin. Alana has allowed me to step in to speak to you. We would have you understand that the beloved atmosphere of what I have conveyed to you as “green love” is a lightness of being, much like the air about you that allows for the multiplicity of experience without fear. The air co-operates with the multiplicity of experience to allow life, and love, to occur.
When you think of this green, think of a green with light shining through it. Think of green leaves lightly dancing. Think of the light lilting of a happy melody, as the sound of rustling leaves in the wind. Imagine the sound of a light shower falling upon green leaves creating a bubbling brook flowing between the green mossy banks of earth, and hear the sound of laughter.
It is the laughter within that we would have you attend. You have turned, and in your turning you have chosen a direction of strengthening love. But we would have you embrace yourself as well. Embrace yourself with a lightness of humor like unto what I have described to you as sunlight sparkling upon green leaves touched with the crystalline joy of the nourishment of vital water, air and sunshine. See yourself and others through the smile of God’s love. God’s love providing you with all that you need to stay steady upon the path of creating a life of value, which you value with the same love you give to the forest, the green leaves and the animals that reside innocently within. Trust your innocence. It is love.
Alana: This is Alana. So, was that useful to you?
Sonja: Yes, it was useful to me. Thank you.
Legion: This is Legion.
Sandy: Hello, Legion.
Legion: I thought I might provide a balance to the single male.
David: Thank you, Legion, ol’ buddy.
Legion: You have grown in your understanding, and your capacity, my friend, to bring comfort to men. I am glad to experience your comfort in my presence, now.
David: Thank you, Legion, for acknowledging me.
Sandy: I don’t think David is only limited to bringing comfort to men, Legion. Today he gave me comfort, and I was very grateful for it.
Legion: As each of you practices the discipline of love, you will discover that your joy increases and comfort abounds with both male and female.
Yes, I welcome to hear the open expression of gratitude for the comfort that is passed between you in practicing the discipline of love, which is the discipline of joy.
So, with Alana by my side, I invite you now, once again, to surrender to the heart room. Allow our love to pass through you to one another. Allow our love to fill you. Allow yourselves rest and comfort in this stillness, in this heart room, in this still point of love, filling you, pouring over, spreading, expanding, sharing it with others, welcoming them into your heart room as you expand your heart room to them.
Closing
In this moment, I embrace your world. (Long stillness.) Thank you.
Sandy: The world needs your embrace, Legion. Thank you.
Legion: Have faith. Have trust in love. Let love be your authority.
We offer you our gratitude for your gathering today. In farewell, I send love through you and from you to every open heart. Thank you.
Note
A group discussion followed. The tape recorder was turned on mid-way through the discussion.
“…..so there are many different kinds of music, jazz, classical, rock and roll. Not everyone plays the same music. It is an act of love on your part to set them free to play their own music in their own key.
That’s helpful, because we are not all singing the same tune.
They are singing a wonderful tune, it’s just a different frequency or something.
This song kept going on over and over in my mind: “What good is your song if it is not in my key? Only love makes you strong. Only love sets you free.”
You can have an orchestra, but it isn’t easy, you really have to work, and practice, to get an orchestra to play well together` and create good music.
