Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Only Love!

I wanted to share one of my favorite stories that I believe could change the world! It's in my first book, The Last Adventure of Life; and I'm planning on including it in my 3rd book, too! Check it out for yourself:


ONLY LOVE

My father was a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher in the small town where I grew up. As I started to see his religious ranting as garbage, I saw how he had dominated my life with all of his rules and regulations from God Almighty. He hated anyone who disagreed with him and damned them to hell.

When I was a teenager we started arguing about religion (and everything else), and for the rest of the time that I lived in my parents’ house my father and I were almost constantly screaming and cursing each other. When I was a senior in high school I became a raving atheist. We were really at each other all the time. Finally, he threw me out of the house and disowned me, damning me to eternal hell. We despised each other passionately.

I went away to college, overjoyed to be gone and fully intending never to go back. Three years later, I did go back, for his funeral. I didn’t want to go even then, but I went to help my mother settle things. In truth, I was glad he was gone.

A few nights after the funeral, while sorting through some of his stuff, I thought I heard someone laugh. I stopped, listened intently, and heard it again, only this time it was right there in the room. I turned around and saw my father sitting there, in his favorite chair, laughing his head off. I realized then that I had never before, in my entire life, ever heard the man laugh. Not once.

What is so funny?” I demanded.

I will never forget it. “We were both wrong!” he said and howled with laughter. A bolt, just like lightning, shot out of him into me. It was a bolt of pure love. When that happened I had perfect understanding that he was saying that love is the only thing that matters. Nothing else. Absolutely nothing else.

For weeks afterward I felt his searing love shooting through me. At the same time, I was filled with sickening grief and regret that we had wasted our precious time together when he was alive. It took me a few years to come to peace with that.                     – Harley Moor
    So what do you think? Life changing possibilities?!?

Friday, April 17, 2015

Old Time Religion: Another Reason Americans Are Scared and Awkward around Death?

I was on a date with a gentleman I barely knew this past week and awakened to a new understanding: We were talking about my work around end-of-life and the final transition and the gentleman was letting me know about his hesitancy around speaking about death. He didn't point blank tell me, but I came to the conclusion that he had some fear about where he would go after he dies. And this got me thinking about how the rather puritanical "Old Time Religion" that was often about "fire and brimstone" and hell and damnation - was spawned here in the U.S. and is perhaps part of the reason we Americans are so awkward around death?

Ever since starting hospice work about twenty years ago, I've often wondered why we Americans seem to have such a fear of death. The more I've learned about death – and walked side by side with it - I've come to the conclusion that there is absolutely nothing to fear about it: We are simply “going home” to where we came from when we were born. And rather than a scary experience, death can be a sacred, beautiful experience, a gateway into that which feels like the unknown, but actually when we get there, we will recognize it as the “known,” actually our True and Real Home – where only Unconditional Love exists to bless and heal us.

One of the very plausible reasons I've heard about why we're so fearful of death was through a man who has studied conscious aging for many years. He is Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (God bless his soul, as he made his final transition last July.); and he points out that the reason we are so awkward around death, and therefore grief, too, is because we've taken it to the hospital in the last 100 years. As soon as I heard this, it rang very true for me.

We've also become a very materialistic culture which honors the “image” and outer material things, more than the inner, spiritual matters. We almost worship youth and therefore tend to - perhaps without intending to - discount age, aging, and the wisdom which comes with life experience, growth, and development.


We are also a culture that tends to be left-brain oriented. We rely on “hard evidence” as opposed to the softer evidence that we know in our hearts to be true that often comes from and is related to our intuition. I have heard that in these changing times, all of us are increasing our ability to intuit things. The love vibration on the planet is increasing; and this is partly why there is so much polarization and strife on the planet today.

In fact, sometimes I say that the entire planet is undergoing a kind of Hospice experience! We are dying to the old so that the New may be welcomed and honored. Even though where we're going is a very exciting and loving place, sometimes it's very challenging to leave the familiar. Although we all know that something new is "dying" to be born on planet earth - no pun intended! - it's difficult to know how to give birth to something we have very little experience with. 

For starters, I believe that this is a time for all of us to move from our judgmental, critical minds, and into our hearts. If we can live and embrace our hearts more fully, we can live in love and allow people to be who and where they are. This is true unconditional love. We do not have to convert or change anything. Just let it be - allow all to be, the way it is. This is the Way of the Goddess, the energy that's coming onto the planet full force today too.

Today, as we on the one hand honor the Old Time Religion that has brought us where we are, I invite us to move into the Heart and as we Open up the Heart and move into it, allow that love to permeate ourselves and our loved ones... then move out into the world and permeate the Entire Planet! What a world we could live in if MANY of us could hold and maintain this Love Vibration Frequency. 

May Peace Prevail on Earth! May our missions be accomplished; we honor the guardian divinities and spirits! Shalom, Blessed Be, and May there be Love, Truth, Beauty, Trust, Harmony, and Peace for all living things, everywhere.   (the Melchizadek's Prayer) 

Yours on the Journey, Maria Dancing Heart~~~

Warning: This writing will be part of my upcoming new book, Deathing as a Peak Experience