To know, and live, that you are both supremely sacred and absolutely human is the magnificent gift of being alive.
This seeming paradox, this knowing in the heart that you are sacred and so very loved…and knowing that you are completely fallable, vulnerable and human, is beautifully painful and vitally freeing.
Within our divinity there is infinite space for our infallibility, limitation and humanity. That which is holding us, holds us  with such tenderness and love, and in this vast embrace there is finally a place to feel, then let go of, shame, humiliation, fear and fighting.
As I write this to you, I am sitting in a profound peace. I just moved through the deepest feelings of shame. These are old, old feelings finding their way to freedom through very wet and profuse tears.
The love I had always longed for, I’ve found in this vast embrace. There is room here for my humanness. Â The paradox is resolved. I am both human and divine. One holds the other with a spaciousness that is infinitely vast and utterly present.
Why write about something so personal? Because I am not just me. I am you. And, you are me. We wake up to these realizations when we share them with each other, when we see there is nothing really special about them at all, that things have always been this way.
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And you?
Please share with us your stories of this vast embrace, even when you feel nobody would want to know. We do.
i love this, julie. so much. thanks for sharing. my vast embrace right now seems to be that letting go is an opening. that opening is a surrender. that surrender is a peace. that peace is a moment that will change. that change can make you close. that closing can invite you to opening.
i love you.
rach
I just found your blog and wow…just what I needed…I’m learning the fine balance between sacredness and being human…it’s so beautiful!
I needed this so much. So much gratitude!
This is so beautiful, and so absolutely resonates with me to the core. I deeply feel this truth as well, and it is such a gift to come across your blog today thanks to Teresa Deak’s post/poem that wove our posts together so beautifully, and not only that but landed me here to find you – this kindred spirit, so grateful! love to you for this beautiful truth!
It is rather like a zen koan – this experience cannot be grasped intellectually and trying only sends it packing. It is an opening, it is simply being and allowing. I once attended darshan with a woman claiming to be “an enlightened being.” I was curious to see what an enlightened person would look like! I had no expectations about what might or might not happen. In a room full of people meditating, I sat within myself and suddenly it was as if a tractor-beam of light was holding me and I felt embraced by the sensation of being so totally loved, so completely held and protected by that love, that all worries or fears just evaporated. Of course, they returned later on! But years later I can vividly recall this experience and now as a mother I understand that love to be the very same as the love I feel for my child. And now I understand to open myself up to that love requires me to love myself in the same way. That is my doorway back to that initial embrace.
I so needed this reminder today. Thank you Julie for shining your love so brightly for all of us to see our light within. xo
Lis – so eloquently written. yes. there is no way to mentally grasp this with understanding. it is all experience…