Hi Open,

You said in your last post to me, "No one is absolutely pure. Not even a saint - if there are such things."

Your statement blew my awareness open to all the mirrors I've created in my life about my exaltation of sainthood. As a child and adult, I surrounded myself with schools and churches named after saints. While growing up, I had many books in my home and school about saints. The nuns rewarded our good behaviour in school by giving us holy cards with pictures of saints. I've had extensive religious programming about the nobility of choosing to live life as a saint -- and not as a sinner --in this lifetime and in previous lifetimes. Sinners were bad. Saints were good (so that meant I was bad). It's interesting that you say no one is absolutely pure since the religious ideal often reinforced during my childhood was to be totally "pure in thought, word, and deed." I've continued to focus on saints throughout my adulthood. Throughout my life people have told me in so many words that I am a stoic saint apparently suffering happily for the good of my soul and for the ennoblement of others. I'm feeling that my idolization of sainthood holds an important key to dissolving my distortions around my attachment to my physical disability. At some level I've felt like a "bad" sinner unworthy of redemption because I am not absolutely pure -- nor ever shall be. So perhaps I attached to saintly martyrdom through physical suffering and disability unconsciously believing that this was the way "to save my immortal soul" (another oft repeated religious phrase) in the absence of sainthood. Sin is separation from Source. One can be in truth and right action and in the divine flow while being imperfect, thank goodness.

I had a lot of family conditioning around denial of my disability (the more I was super woman the better) and denial of my feelings about my experiences with this. So these days I'm letting loose with feeling these emotions and accepting that it's okay to be a sinner and not a saint. Perfection is such a drag! I get it that good and bad and light and dark are just judgments for us to rise above and soar like eagles who really don't give a damn about such distinctions.

You said, "Open yourself up, let yourself express."

Writing is a comfortable vehicle for me to express, so I'll do more of that. And increasingly I hear myself speaking my truth -- sometimes to my surprise (who was that?).

And finally, you said, "The pain is the place where the light enters."

My pain continues so I'm accepting it more and more as a portal for light instead of resisting it. I'm not totally there yet. I like Leonard Cohen's phrase from one of his songs, "“There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.” Saints have cracks, too: that's what I see now.

With appreciation for your encouragement,

Catherine :)