A CONSCIOUS LIVING PRACTICE FOR TODAY – JANUARY 8

Nothing is so burdensome as a secret.
— French proverb

SECRETS

What is your greatest secret, the thing you have thought, felt, or done that you hold closest to the vest? Think on it for a moment and consider why you have relegated it to the hiding place of your heart. If shame keeps your secret where it is, recognize that your heart will be like a petri dish, and your shame the darkness and dampness that allow disease to flourish, to grow from something small and contained into something that can take on a virulent life of its own. The only way to cleanse yourself is to open your heart up to the air. A married couple told me a simple yet remarkable story: They were playing a card game together one evening when he did something that irritated her. She didn’t say anything about it, and a few minutes later, she noticed a red band of irritation under her wedding ring. It seemed to have come from nowhere. She had recently heard a lecture on the mind/body connection, and it occurred to her that the unspoken communication with her husband was expressing itself through the rash on her finger. She took a deep breath and told her husband what she was irritated about. Within a few minutes, the rash was completely gone. Secrets do not flourish in the light, and they do not take you over if you do not allow yourself to be at their mercy. Take ownership of your secret; take it on with the knowledge that you are bigger than any secret you might hold dear. It cannot own you or control you without your acquiescence.

A CONSCIOUS LIVING PRACTICE FOR TODAY – JANUARY 8

Find a light, quiet place and time so that you will not be disturbed. With a pen and paper, write down your secret in as few words as possible and focus on what you have written. Breathe deeply, feeling the clean, fresh air as it flows through you. Put down the paper on which you have written your secret; recognize this moment as the one in which you have separated yourself from the darkness of the secret that has been inside of you. It is now outside of you, and what is inside still needs loving acceptance and healing, but you have begun the process today.

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