A Clear Glass of Water


Jane AnetriniHow a person is in the manifest world is a reflection of how they are in their internal world. When your internal world is filled with love and possibility, it flows out into the world; you cannot bring more love into the world if there isn’t a wellspring of it within you.

If the human heart and mind are filled with self judgment it will taint the love that flows out from a person. I believe that is why the first commandment is so vital—love the Lord thy God with all. That reality resides within you. It is the most real thing about you. The Lord thy God is a way of naming your divine nature. As that is loved with all, the second commandment—to love others as yourself—provides the means for there to be more love in the world.

There is a hunger in people to be seen and loved, hoping it will result in feeling whole. People pursue a spiritual path because they have touched something and want more of it and initially, a person tends to believe it comes from outside of them. They may think, “When I met So-and-so, I felt alive. I understood myself so much more. I need to be with that person to learn who I really am.”

The inspiration and guidance of another person is important on the spiritual journey. It can be a wonderful thing in your life to be surrounded with the atmosphere of another who stirred something awake in you.

As spiritual guides it is our job to assist people to receive a blessing from what seems to be outside of them, and then discover for themselves, “It is me!” We assist people to find that they are touching a source within them that can fill them up, and that they can pour out a blessing to their world.

The path of spiritual transformation begins by recognizing the invisible and leads to seeing it is within. But before it can pour out fully, a person has to acknowledge the things that interfere with its flow. They have to address the hurt places inside, and the immature emotional states that tend to drift through the human heart and lodge there. They have to face the wounded places inside, and choose to express from divine source, not the wounds. Then the invisible spirit can pour out cleanly and gloriously. The person is taking responsibility to be the source themselves, because you cannot truly love if you are depending on another person to make you feel whole. You cannot truly love without choosing to express from the divine source within, not the wounds.

I looked up the word spirituality and here is what Wikipedia says:

Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or immaterial reality; an inner path, enabling
a person to discover the essence of their being… It can encompass belief in
immaterial realities or experiences of the… transcendent nature of the world.

There are many ways this can happen for a person. For me as a young girl, I visited the Mother House. This was a place where nuns in the Catholic Church were trained. It was the holiest building I’d ever been in. As I walked in, it took my breath away. I felt the wonder of all of heaven in that building. I couldn’t explain it, and the feeling memory of it is still present in my body. When I touch that feeling memory, it moves me to tears. At the time I may have thought it was the beauty of the place, the continual chanting, or the smell of the incense. What I know for sure is that in the midst of the religious training I had, I touched The Lord my God there. It initiated for me a different relationship with that within me. I touched a reality that I was really hungry for; something my life is now all about.

Years after my experience in the Mother House, I met someone who knew what I touched and was living from that awareness. His name was Bill Bahan. It was the experience of the Mother House coming through a person’s expression, not just a building. I was invited to see that reality that was in me too. So a change happened from outside to inside and I wanted to express that spirit and find others who knew it about themselves too.

Sometimes leadership comes down to being able to offer a person a cool, clear glass of water. These experiences I’ve described were like that for me. Someone offered me a clear glass of water and the thirst of my soul was quenched. When what comes out of your mouth and out of your heart is clear, untainted by judgments and opinions or wounds, you are a leader in your world. That clean and clear water leads other people to the well within themselves.

When I met Bill, I wondered how he knew everything that was going on in my heart and mind. How did he know me so well? Everything that I had been trying to find or understand could be spoken about in such a clear inviting way. That was a miracle to me. I realized that the deep feelings I had, and the awareness deep in my soul could be articulated in a clear and true way. I understood that if he could, I could. I could repeat his words, but then I had to own the fact that I had to say my words. I had to invite people, remind people myself and allow them to find their voice, their capacity to love, inside and out. When we do that together there is a tone from us collectively. It is the tone of love.

We have to start somewhere. It is not clear and clean and easy as we begin. By agreeing to do this together we hold a safe place for support and forgiveness. We care about being clean and clear and we assist each other. The support and forgiveness assists in offering a clear, clean glass of water. That is what real friendship and real loving is about. We don’t just put up with each other’s dysfunctions. We have the opportunity to be our authentic selves, and find that we belong together with others in a perfect and wonderful way.