Loving Your Shining Star

Is there anyone in your life who is your shining star? That phrase never meant much to me until I heard my new daughter-in-law's mother toast her and my son at their wedding rehearsal dinner: "You are my shining star."

Last year an animal communication client asked me to check in with her beloved cat, who may be near death. My client asked her cat if she had anything to say to her. Her cat sang these words:

“You are the shining star at night which leaves its orbit to nestle in my heart.

You are the light from that star and its parents back to the first glimmer of light in the cosmos.

You are the ancient knowing that my being yearns toward for its wisdom.

You are the warmth of a cozy evening after a long, active day.

You are the love that diffuses all experience into gratitude and blessing.

You are the love I hope someday to be able to express every moment of my life.

Being here with you has been the crowning glory of my life.

You, more than anyone or anything else, in all my accumulated memory and awareness, are the embodiment of kindness.

My life has been blessing itself because I have spent it with you.”

When I experience this kind of flow, my heart aches for its beauty, and aches because we poor humans are usually too nervous, too wary, too afraid, to open ourselves to the totality of such love.

And yet is is this love that cracks open the world of wonder, abundance, and moves us along, whether we know it or not, toward living the life we came here to live. It may take us against our will as we bend our will to what we think our path should be, as what others tell us it should be.

If anyone you trust has ever told you your heart is closed, and if you think this may be a possibility, I urge you to consider that it may be true, and I urge you to find some way to open it. And I'll tell you, for me, at least, it was a challenge. It was hard.

First, it was hard because I thought my heart was open. Then it was hard because I didn't know where the handle was. What was I supposed to grab?

Someone I trust as a healing facilitator had, indeed, told me that my heart was closed and did me a further favor by telling me what effect that was having on the people dearest to me. And thinking of how what he said might have been true was shocking and heartbreaking. So I went into those feelings. I sobbed, fell to the floor, ashamed and appalled at my having allowed myself to have been so unaware. I cried a lot.

I noticed every time something moved me and stopped to let it in as deeply as possible. I went back through my memories to times I had not said what was in my heart and let my remorse and sadness rise to the top. And cried some more.

Eventually I found a sense of expanded calm within myself and found that I was more aware of my response to my life, to the ordinary tasks and opportunities that I had been saying yes to automatically, rather than taking the time to assess how I really felt about them. I was surprised to notice then how much of what I had been doing because I thought -- honest-to-God was sure -- that I wanted to do them felt wrong. I retreated somewhat from some significant patterns. I lived more slowly.

Animals never act out of false impressions of themselves. They know who they are and they know they are What Is. If you have an animal who is behaving in ways you find difficult to understand, tuning into them may be helpful not only to their life but to yours. When we can live authentically we no longer suffer from the friction between who we really are vs. who we think we are.

I believe it is possible for us to say even to ourselves, "My life has been blessing itself because I have spent it with you."