Exodus 8:15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said.I understood I was the common denominator. The problem. And. I knew how I wanted to feel when I emerged. Free.
After I left my husband I repeated the same self abusing pattern with my younger Brother in a business relationship. The same wanting to make someone happy without understanding I needed to own my inner space. The same “I’m not good enough” drama. The same feeling of being enslaved with no option and no possibility of leaving. Because now it was worse. It was a beloved family member.
I did not learn my lesson so up it came again. Giving me another opportunity to heal.
As Socrates said “may the inward and outward man be as one.”
It was going inward so I could emerge outwardly.
It was looking into my heart so I could see the world.
It helped that I had no idea what lay in front of me. It helped that I was in so much anguish about not getting it. AGAIN. It helped that I had tried absolutely everything to figure it out. It helped that I had spent my life facing and working outward. I was ready for the inward look. I was ready to solve my problem.
It got biblical.
Enter Moses. Moses was always part of a bigger plan. He had to have faith. He had to follow without knowing for sure. He had to listen and lead and be unsure and still know it was okay. He had to face the derision of his peers. He had to shed his shoes. He had to do all kinds of things that made no earthly sense.
I laughed long and hard when remembering our family’s ritual viewings of Cecile B. Demille’s The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner that was such a part of our upbringing.
It was consistent entertainment. Solid. Every year. Clock work. Easter. After Lent.
Being raised Catholics, we knew all the sayings, all the pieces of the script. None of it made sense but the sheer thrill of Charlton Heston and Yul Brenner facing off thrilling.
I never connected the bible with the movie, but once you make the connection, decode its deeper meanings, the symbology and information offered up by the bible will never be the same.
I didn’t get there were broader themes at work in my life until I was unable to crack through my despair. Until I was ready to look within at my patterns free from judgment. Until I was able to see with loving thoughts.
As a kid growing up with my two brothers we used The Ten Commandments as a point of reference. My older Brother wove its wisdom into our playground activities. He would announce when my younger Brother, irritated by something, picked up the football in the middle of a game and ran away, in essence halting the play, taking his ball and going home.
“Pharaoh has hardened his heart” with a wry smile and everyone would chuckle.
We didn’t have a ball to play with anymore. But we did have a laugh. It was godlike in its simplicity and accuracy. It served its purpose and today, when my little Brother does a “freeze out” with someone in his life. We go back to the voice and say “Pharaoh has hardened his heart.” And we all get what took place. We all get that my sensitive little Brother needed to shut down. When “Pharaoh hardened his heart” there was no going back.
Anyone have a stubborn streak that won’t quit? Put that into a 24 pack and that’s what my younger brother served up. Wild and wooly and impossible to work with stubborn. Due to the deeply set wounds and similar ways of carrying said wounds dealing with my younger brother was always traumatic, because neither one of us had a handle on how to interact with the wound other than to hide it, push it down and subjugate the experience in whatever tool set was available.
The sheer and beautiful laugh that flooded through my being when I finally understood who my little Brother represented in my life, and the lives of those around him, and the loving and amazing opportunity he offers up to everyone he comes in contact with is almost beyond belief. When I got it my heart sang.
The way these connections illuminate is the way that the world decodes giving you the gifts of an open heart. It’s the way that awaking from the dream offers you the ability to see.
My brother who we often referred to as Pharaoh was unrelenting in his role, he was sensitive and deadly and he wielded a power over me that I battled my whole life to understand. Pharaoh was my fear. Amplified. My sensitive doppelganger lashing out so he wouldn’t be hurt first. Taking his ball and running away when things got emotional. Pharaoh was my fear of being myself. Pharaoh was there to be faced. Pharaoh was my lifetime assignment, my dear beloved brother, placed in my life from very early on for me to get the energetic pattern, for me to overcome it. It was my evolutionary opportunity to karmicly move forward. Until I faced my Pharaoh, I would forever be a victim to his fear increasing and inducing energy. I would always fall victim and be enslaved. To have my own brother inserted in my life to be my savior or my crucifier was the kind of poetic license saved for the best dramas. To have it be so biblical in my families interactions. To be my beneficent brother or to be my beat down master. He was there to amplify the fears that I needed to face. I know this because when I moved three thousand miles away. He showed up on my doorstep irritating me back to my childhood pattern.
When you arrive at any Red Sea moment in your life you think you have three options… If you go forward you will drown. If you go backward you will be enslaved by your fear, by the Pharaoh, by the ego in silk clothes. You can do nothing. You can stay stuck in your fear and stay on the fence. Frozen.
After falling victim to Pharaoh’s constant use of fear and withdrawal. I started to feel my stuckness. I started to feel like I was stuck between Pharaoh’s hardened heart and my fear of drowning in the red sea. I was dying on the shore. As Neitzche said when the terrors of life outweigh the terrors of death a man will put an end to his life. The pain of staying stuck and afraid was great enough for me to change. I was ready to die to the self that felt enslaved and that was an okay way to go because I had learned how to cope.
I wised up.
I realized there is a fourth option.
I could do a Moses. Make a shift in my consciousness, open up my faith in the universe and part the waters, remembering the full truth of who I was and walk into the moment of my being. Dissolving the factors of fear and enslavement and its ever present minions. Moving deeper into my conscious world holding the open space and living my truth.
Walking through open doors has always been elusive for me. The door would be open and I’d say. “Hmmm. Not now.” “Not ready.” “Maybe you should go first.” “Is it to warm, I don’t have a suit.”
The door opens for a reason. For you to walk through.
There are millions of doors that open and close endlessly. Fear keeps you stuck. Love carries you through.
Faith is seeing the truth.
When the moment comes. Move into your faith.
Choose the option of parting the red sea. Go through the door of consciousness, have that sea parting moment and move the gateway into your next depth of self.
It has been said that faith is an aspect of consciousness. Everyone has faith it is merely a matter of whether you have faith in your fear or faith in the open ness of love to carry the moment.
Remembering you can part the red sea. Remembering you can change your vision, change your perspective.
This faith in who you are leads you out of the slavery of your fearful thinking into your salvation from your self.
It doesn’t mean that you won’t go back to thinking there are only two options fear and enslavement or drowning and death. But you will remember the moment that when you were tempted to believe that there are only two options but it will be certain the more you remember the easier it will be to select the third option the option of your conscious loving self. That is ready to expand into the possibilities of your being that is ready to expand eternally into the wholeness of the human race amplifying the message of loving thought.
If the Pharaoh of fear comes up. You know your options. You can run. You can face it. Or you can shift your consciousness to loving thought. Dissolving the barriers to the truth and opening your heart.
When love is the way we see. The sharp nature of truth. The fearless moral inventory of a life. The truth we are afraid to face. Leads you where you need to be. Kicking open doors previously unseen.
When I was able to see what my brother was offering me. When I could forgive him and look at him lovingly. When I could realize Pharaoh doesn’t want to harden his heart. I could listen to what his message was in the eyes of love recognizing the fear or whatever appeared to be the obstacle. Obfuscating the metaphorical drowning. Remembering whatever drama that is running has nothing to do with me. They were merely phantoms of the past, echoes of a story that long ago had grown tired.
What I learned in working to face the demons of my past, to correct my family of origin issue was this… I was the problem and the common denominator in every situation. When someone can blow up, take their ball and go home, showcasing their wound; they have done you a favor. When your Pharaoh reveals himself. Get the message. They have demonstrated where they need the most healing. They repeatedly and vigorously show you their wound over and over again. “Here’s my wound.” “Here’s my wound.” They have given you the opportunity to be loving and counteract the energy that needs to be released and to bring on the healing.
Because I was afraid of the blow ups, wanted peace at any cost, my deal was hiding my wound. Everything is fine, don’t look over here. I’ll deal with it. Never showing anyone what was wrong. The classic oh I’ve broken my leg only to go into the Doctor and show him my elbow. In not facing my Pharaoh I never gave myself the opportunity for healing.
The underground nature of the wound is insidious, it is vicious and it has very little opportunity to be healed. It’s alone, hidden, pussing and angry and disgusted that no one has seen it or shown it love because it never shows its dragon head to strike at its ever oozing brain.
It’s the beast of fear looking for a beauty of love to kiss it and make it better.
Without love at this insidious core of crazy, the beast of fear keeps feeding the fire of untruth. And in that fire and blazing and energy nothing gets extinguished. Logs are only and always sought out to feed the agony. Getting to the depths takes tremendous courage and tremendous fortitude, it takes knowing when to stand down, knowing when to hold in silence. When to advance in love, it takes everything that an adventurer needs to overcome the demon and it takes a willingness to show up. It is no wonder the fires of our internal war never die down, why patience is not celebrated and why peace seems like it will never descend below the egoic layer. When you have to rely on the faith of knowing that insular Tahiti and peace of being and source always exists and in whatever exterior story and drama is never touched by misfortune and mismanagement.
Fear keeps your being from breaking open on the wind, Love allows you to be free blowing in the wind of a truly lived life. Free.
I owe my younger brother a debt of gratitude for being an ever elusive source of learning. For being a consistent presence of a controlling drama. Of allowing me to see my own hidden wounds and allowing me the opportunity to grow into and through my fears and at last to face my own hidden dragon and allowing it to be defeated by love.
The hugeness of this experience and the power of the self lain chains that had held me down for so long being removed floated me into the stratosphere of life truly into a heaven on earth with all my brothers including the one that had tormented me since the day I added his story to mine and took on the care taking of his experience and then let that control drama rule the roost like an abused wife unable to remember that anything was possible for me outside of the imagined chains of my relationship.
Change comes from opening, understanding and allowing the space to love. Period. Love doesn’t mean we’re into agreeing and mushing into obedience, it means listening. Deeply and with our hearts to hear the truth.
I don’t think it is an accident that the word hear is in heart. An open heart is beautiful indeed. The heart listens and the heart hears and the heart is our connection to our brothers.
Love has its own resonance. It can quickly move to overwhelm and it can absolutely be a practice a strength and a burgeoning weapon in the pursuit of peace. My inner journey has been fear filled, and doubt filled and almost certainly courageous. I have heard the voices and ignored them, I have stood in the space of my thought addiction and been able to remember the truth. I have accepted help. Even when being tormented I reached out for support. I learned to own and stand in the space within. That inner self. Standing solidly and beautifully surrounded by source. Living in Love as often as possible. I surrendered all of it to a higher power that most certainly has way more Shiite together than I do.
A friend kept saying “Do you want to rely on the universe that knows how to put a sperm and an egg together to make a person, that created seeds that can grow into trees and fruits and plants? Orrrrr. Do you want to rely on your puddly ass to ‘figure out’ an answer?” Like getting cracked in the head with a ruler… “Um. I’ll take the universe. Alex. Yes. That is my final answer.”
I thank the tormentor that morphed into a thousand faces and the one face of my little Brother, I thank the ways that I went off track, I thank how many tears needed to be released for the energy to rebalance and I thank the universe for offering up gifts beyond anything I could ever have imagined.
We aren’t meant to produce, conceive, do anything we are meant to be open, loving receptors to what is waiting to be born in each and every moment. Let’s not forget the power and presence of all that is awaiting our dropping of our daggers. Held at our most tender arteries and life flows. To keep us held hostage. The good news those daggers can fall away. Now and forever. And be replaced with beauty and grace and love.
The quiet meanderings of in and out of peace with care and work found a strength to sustain itself. I am in love with my being in the defenselessness of action, free from my ego that I can happily say did not have the last laugh.
Every time I was upset or hurt my false ‘center’ closed my heart where myself was imprisoned by my beliefs. Releasing myself triggered and feared and dark and dank and shackled. For so long that was my image. A prisoner. “Tower… we have a problem.”
In my process of discovery and return to the basics there were definitely red sea parting moments. There were times where I was like “no mofo way did that just happen.” Not just miraculous spontaneous synchronistic events but there were accompanying physical reactions. Reactions so strong. Feelings so deep. I felt like a tuning fork for what I should and shouldn’t be doing. For who I should be around and who I needed to run away from as quickly as possible. Like stepping off the path created an electrifying shocker to keep me on track.
It got to the point where one Sunday morning after playing tennis with a friend. I felt the urge for pancakes and like a hound dog tracking an escaped convict, drove around the Beverly Hills neighborhood I play tennis in. Feeling my way, sensing my prey. Smelling pancakes on the wind. When I got close, I parked my car and walked around the corner to find the Beverly Hills Police department throwing a “get to know the cops” brunch. With pancakes and juice and coffee. Delicious.
Not only was it a satisfying the universe will provide type moment. I got to meet some really smart German Sheppard police dogs. Ralph and Fred. Super smart. That’s what I call intuiting the flow, feeling the vibes and having pancakes on demand.
I am amazed and humbled how the always broadcasting message is heard and the varied ways it is responded to, interpreted and delivered. We have love and truth illuminating and reminding us who we truly are and what we in our hearts know we need to do.
In this beautiful and amazing universe with all the ways available to connect on the level of the human heart at its core being we are going to transform this world in all its needs and wants. Offering the evolution that we crave and the connection we seek and the transformation we have to embrace.
In the end facing that fictitious Pharaoh was an important journey. Probably the most important journey I’ve ever taken. It was memorable and it was inevitable. And once started, the path had to be followed. The steps had to be taken.
Getting into the spaces and places that continually evolved and keeping them open was my practice. Knowing that the Pharaoh who hardened his heart could be looked on as an oppressor, a fear driven tyrant or he could be looked on as a savior that leads the way to faith. Your faith. In yourself.
-end-
The idea is the effect of Pharaoh's self-determining obstinacy. He preferred his gain to the will and command of God, and God made his obstinacy the means of showing forth his own power and providence in a supereminent degree.
Excerpted from the upcoming digital edition of Melanie Lutz's The Bare Melcessities.
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