“What does my soul need to learn?”

“How can I answer that?” I answered his question with a question.

“. . . except that it doesn’t want to come back here again.”

My heart breaks. My heart breaks open, making room for more love, but it hurts because I’ve opened to feeling his pain. Compassion rolls out of me. I know exactly what he means; I’ve felt that intensely, my friends have expressed exactly that feeling, many times. I can hear what he’s saying behind his words–

This place is so hard! It’s so heavy, Earth, the third dimension, being in a body; it drags and pulls on you. There’s a panicky feeling around your heart, weight settles into the layers of you, pulling your soul down until you feel like you’re downing in air. The overwhelm of being here, in this place, the state of the world scratches in your mind. War. False Peace. Murder. Violence. Silence. Tears. Pain.  A rending of your sensibilities.

Only in sleep is there some real sense of release. In sleep you can leave your body, soar in your mind out beyond this world. The universe awaits you in sleep, there is peace and rest, Love holds you in sleep. But be wary of this sleep which beckons you out of this world. There is a siren call which pulls you into escape– we are a culture built on escapism. TV. Movies. Shopping. Vacation. Careers.  My drug of choice is the day dream. Anime. Cheesy romance novels.

How many times have I told this beloved friend that I was so scarily depressed last November? How many times in the past year have I said those words myself?

I don’t want to be here!  It’s so hard being in the body. I just want to be anywhere but here.

Now, I tell myself that I’m happy being here. But just yesterday, swimming, as I walked out of the water, and the weight of my body settled back in, a sadness settled in with it. I felt so heavy. I remembered a time when the heaviness became too much to bare:

I hang up the phone. Yet another call from my sister, upset. The weight of the world came crashing down; my shoulders struggle to hold the sky up. I can’t contain my frustration, fear, and anger at the world I find myself in. Hot tears came in buckets. Scenes and thoughts flowing, images of this world. This world. Why am I here? My sister was strangled. STRANGLED. My stepmother thinks she ruined me. Am I ruined? My best friend thought the best way to choose between boys was to kill her self. How am I going to pay rent? Capitalism. The war in Iraq, never ending. The pain of the world, squeezing my heart, pushing on my shoulders. Hitler went to Heaven. So, alone. I feel so very alone. The sobs shaking my shoulders couldn’t shake the weight.

An Angel prompts me to lay in child’s pose. I move as guided, spread my knees wide enough to press my forehead into the carpet, arms outstretched. Grateful none of my roommates are home, I unleash all my emotions into this rug, snot and tears streaming down my face. I wail and scream, unloading my burdens, releasing, releasing, releasing. Eventually, my cries fade away, and I’m left, quiet, drained, empty. Lighter.

I can almost feel a hand on my back as I walk myself to the bathroom, to blow my nose. Compassion hovers at my elbow. A thought slips into my mind. Go sit on the couch, in front of the fire. I wrap myself in a blanket, but it someone else’s hands. I’m floating. Empty, open. I barely have the energy to smile, but I know there are angels in the room. Someone is holding me.

It’s time to negotiate. My contract for this life is up for reevaluation.

‘Why am I here?’

To heal the world.

‘Oh, right. I don’t like this reality.’

So dream in a new one. What do you want?

‘I can do that’, I think with a smile and the contract is signed again.

I think Atlas had it wrong.

Why struggle under the weight of the world?
Why work so had just to bear it,
staying in one place,
never moving forward?

Drop your burdens.
Just leave them there
on Earth.

Suddenly,
you feel the lightness of being.

You realize how much of your Self you had to forget
to make room for
the pain of living.

Or what you thought was living.

In your lightness,
you float off–
the joy of childhood returning
as you laugh for the first time in you can’t remember how long.

As you soar towards heaven,
you become lighter and lighter
higher and higher.

You see other Atlases who dropped their burdens
joining you in flight–
or perhaps you joined them.

You’re soaring and laughing and playing
together in your ascension.

Looking down,
just for a moment,
you’re shocked to see that though you have been flying into infinity,
you never actually left the Earth.

She came with you.

Though you no longer have feet or a body,
you drop roots of light into her core,
anchoring your vision of joy and lightness.

Set your sights on heaven,
and
this time
consciously draw her with you towards your vision
the collective vision

lightening yourself, Earth, and all other beings
who in turn
lighten themselves, Earth, and you.

I believe this poem which rolled out of me after this transformational experience explains the shifts we as a collective are feeling. It certainly marked a shift in me– in my experience of depression, in my healing practice, and in my life. I now encourage people to “drop” their problems. We don’t have to process everything, unless we choose to. Today, we are so close to high vibrations that we can simply release the weights we carry. Earth, and the human collective, are currently undergoing transformations towards higher planes of being.

It’s not always going to be like this. I promise. Those of you sensitive beings, who feel deeply the pain of the world, there is hope! Those of you who resist the confines of this body, of this physicality, these are changing! Soon, you will shift in yourself, drop enough of your weights, that even your body becomes lighter. Soon, you will begin enjoying being here. You will take pleasure in the skin God has given you, the food you can delight in, the caress of music on your ear. Soon, you will feel the swell of love in your heart, and you will know the changes I promise you to be true, experientially.

Open to this transition! Release your burdens. And it will get better. It worked for me, it’s working for me. Every day there is more to shed, more weight (fear, anxiety, pain, doubt, karma) to release. Everyday requires a deeper surrender to love. A deeper opening to love. The more released, the more room you have to experience love. But it does get easier. You will get lighter. You will feel more joy.

It is my wish to fly into new forms of being with you! I hope to see you all soaring with me.
Beloved, welcome to the incredible lightness of being!