Mary Magdalene Crying Statue, Sepulcre Arc-en-Barrois

By Mercedes Kirkel
January 22, 2014

My last blog post, “TRUST AND LET GO,” was a big leap of faith for me. As I shared in my newsletter:

I feel very vulnerable when I put out messages that are personal to me—partly because they always come when I’m struggling in some way or other, so in publishing the message I’m revealing my struggles to whoever reads it. The other reason I feel vulnerable is because I doubt that others will relate to my challenges. Even though I have heard repeatedly that that’s not the case, my doubt still haunts me.

Immediately after I sent out the newsletter with that blog post, I started to receive responses from many people, telling me that they’d been experiencing very similar things and that the message from my guides and higher self was speaking to them, too. My heart felt so filled with love and joy upon receiving all th0se emails—the feeling reminded me of Santa Claus at Christmas handing out presents to kids. Rather than the disconnection and emptiness I’d been experiencing, now I felt expansively joyful. It wasn’t the fact that others were struggling that was making me happy. It was because I felt reassured that what was happening was much, much bigger than me, like God-big or Spirit-big. By hearing from so many people, I not only felt connected to others in the midst of my difficulties, I felt reconnected to Spirit. Ultimately, that was the core of what I was suffering—feeling disconnected from Spirit.

Out of this death-rebirth that I went through, I was given a vision of a new way of connecting with Spirit. This new way is all about being transparent and vulnerable with others, especially when we’re going through hard times. It requires that we really reveal what’s going on with us, like a clear pane of glass. It was scary for me to do that. I was afraid people wouldn’t respect me or would lose trust in me as someone who has valuable things to share. I thought my pain wasn’t valuable, and in fact would make people distrust me.

But something else happened altogether. People opened their hearts to me. They told me their struggles. And through their sharing, I felt deeply connected to them. I’ve known this part for a long time—that being honest and open about your difficulties opens people’s hearts in relationship like almost nothing else. It’s part of what I teach and coach others to do. What I didn’t realize was that doing this with others would reconnect me to Spirit in such a powerful way. From my vantage point now, that seems ridiculously obvious. But it wasn’t obvious to me before.

I’m imagining a new kind of church or spiritual gathering, where people get together and share their challenges honestly and transparently. Actually, it’s already being done, but under different names. It’s called a 12-step meeting or a Nonviolent Communication practice group, or a women’s or men’s group, etc. But what if we actually called it a God group? What if we acknowledged up front that sharing our challenges with others is one of the fastest and most direct ways to connect us with Spirit? I like that. I like it a lot. Maybe this is the next step in our spiritual evolution, a new way that we’re ready for, of bringing each other to Spirit. Instead of trying to teach each other, preach to each other, or change each other, we simply show each other our human divinity. I suspect the part we’re most hungry for is our vulnerable humanity. And we generally connect with that most strongly through our challenges.

A long time ago, I learned a form of universal prayer that was very simple, yet very powerful. It had two parts. The first part was for releasing whatever was blocking or obstructing you. The second part was for bringing in what you were wanting or intending. What was emphasized was that for the prayer to be effective, we had to engage the first part all the way through to completion. Until we let go of our blocks and obstructions, no amount of intention is going to make a difference. I think that’s because the blocks and obstacles are usually going on in our subconscious, which for most of us is stronger than our conscious mind. So it’s essential for us to do our “housecleaning” there first before we try to install something new.

I’m relating these two parts to the larger process of how we connect to God or Spirit. Perhaps we’re over-focused on the second part, in our intention and efforts to connect with Spirit. And perhaps our sharing our challenges with others is a powerful form of doing the first part, of releasing our blocks to connecting with Spirit. What I like about it is how powerful it is as a process of trust and letting go. We’re not trying to do anything about our struggles, to fix them or change them. We’re simply revealing them to others. In doing so, we’re opening ourselves to God. And it’s happening in a context of being held, energetically and psychically, by others who are hearing and witnessing us. I see this as great form of love and trust, for everyone involved.

Of course this is totally aligned to what Mary Magdalene is explaining in depth in Mary Magdalene Beckons: Join the River of Love. One of her main themes is that our pain is intended to take us into communion with God. In the book, she gives detailed instructions about how we can do this ourselves. Sharing our pain and challenges with others feels like an extension of this, a way we can do this with others.

I love this! What a gift this has been to me, and what a surprise that it’s led me to this place. Thank you to all of you who responded to my sharing my difficulties and in turn shared your own. Thank you for walking this path with me, for helping me reconnect with Spirit in such a profound way, and for showing me a whole new vision of how to do this in the future. I have been feeling so strongly that our future is going to have new forms and processes that are based on co-creativity and mutual support, rather than the old models that are based on authority and hierarchy. I feel I’ve been shown one such process.

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