In caverns we hear our endless refrain, that which we put out comes back to us. Is it no wonder we seek to hear it… shouting as we come, singing as we are. The universe is proffering the truth at every moment! Everything comes back, an endless echo of action and reaction, of beliefs held within and lived in the outer world. We only see what we believe to be real and true. No matter the quality of these beliefs they hold us as tightly as we hold them. Which makes it very difficult to release them, they are stored at the near bottom of our cavernous lives.

Deep within they are the walls of our cavern, cold, hard, and slick with unfelt things and unlived dreams. Making them difficult to grasp, because as we have held them, they have become apart of us. Sometimes slimy and abhorrent to the touch, recoiling as we do when we touch on a truth we would rather not feel we turn away, outside of the interior. The endless refrain meets us at the mouth of the cave and as we spill our abhorrence out on the world outside. As we walk in the outer world we come upon a bountiful and refreshing arroyo, all full from summer rains, but in all this splendor the rocks of that stream are covered in moss, yuck! How dreadful and disgusting, they look unforgivably nasty!

So we raise a campaign, everything is perfect and divine in the valley… except those nasty little slime covered stones! Of course, we will spin it as a safety hazard. They are slippery and someone could hurt themselves. I am just thinking of the safety and well being of everyone, says that insidious voice inside. Cantankerous and bossy, unsatisfied with the what that is. So a movement begins that the moss is unsafe and must be removed and cleared. To purify and save the stones from which they cling like parasites, we must uproot them and clean them. They never belonged nor looked right, get them out of our sight!

And so begins the plight, sound familiar? Sadly terrifying and my heart just bleeds for the moss and the loss. And of course the story continues, but after the moss removal begins, it becomes the snails, and then the fish, and get this, the mud. In this refrain the song remains the same but it amplifies as the message is ignored and pushed deep into the cave, down further and further. We become slimier and slimier, an inner oil spill of toxic self-rejection which was too awful to admit so it spilled its oily mess upon the world covering and taking anything down that reminded it of this inner cavern. This never ends well, at least not at first.

However, at any moment we can return to the cave and stop yelling at the world as wrong, gross, and yuck. We go down into the cave, past the insidious voice and walk through the slimy walls to the source of ourselves, the part that was cut deep, so deep it never healed. It has oozed for years, growing and spoiling itself. Could you do that? Could you go there? Past all your defenses and mis-understandings, until the ringing of that endless echo ceased. Now standing face to face with the voice that is crying within, crying to be healed, to be recognized, and picked up and held again by you. No one can do it for anyone else, we have to make the inner trek, to original wounds.

It is not for the faint of heart, but it is exactly what our hearts call to us to do. When they break, or ache, or undergo attack they are pleading with us to come home, come back into the cave and go deep. Once we go there…. everything changes. Freedom awaits those who venture deep to accept, feel the pain, and allow the healing by embracing and forgiving the self this belief held too long, that had seeded itself in all aspects of our humanity. Save one place, and our innocence remains, in the deepest most serene pools of the cavern. Shalom our Peace is now the endless refrain echoing out into the world, out from our depths.

When we go out into the valley back to the arroyo still full from another summer’s rains, pouring over moss covered stones all lush, and vibrantly alive. Fish swim the stream and snails cling to leaves and it is beautiful, as it is. What was it a year a ago that we were so upset about… this place is heaven. The echo is new.