Love  is a dangerous thing.

We can give and give and give and never receive it. We can take and take and take and never give it.

Love has a never-ending supply. It’s not like oxygen. It doesn’t get used up and expelled.

Then why is it so difficult for us to embrace our True Self with love?

It would seem we get busy doing one of two things that prevents us from fully falling in love with our True Self:

1. Hiding our “mistakes” and “pretending” our True Self isn’t who we really are (pretending we don’t exist)

2. Comparing ourselves to something outside our True Self, and deciding we’re either “not enough” or “too much” if we stand in our uniqueness for too long.

And yes, I speak from experience on this.

The Story of The Sun and The Moon

Long has it been told in the scientific community that the moon reflects the Sun’s light. It has a borrowed glow. It is nothing more than a mirror.

We’ve been told that the Sun is our source of life, and that it is the Sun that glows brightly and warms our fields, our faces, etc.

Then why is it that some flowers only open up in the light of the moon? Is the moon so unworthy that it is relegated to the “leftover” blooms of the night? Or is it that the sun shines too brightly at times, making it too difficult for those delicate blooms to open in the heated glow of the Sun?

We are told that the dark side of the moon is the moon’s shadow – the side of the moon that doesn’t face the Sun. It’s cold there, and for years we’ve symbolically talked about our own “dark sides” as if it’s something to be hated and despised.

But what causes this shadow? Is it not the Sun that shines so brightly that causes the shadow to appear? The Sun, which has no shadow of its own, can only cast shadows when its light falls on someone or something else.

My brain really wrestles with these questions. I know. I’m weird.

But think of this: were it not for the sun, the shadow would not exist. The Moon would also have nothing to reflect, so the moon, as we presently know it, would also not exist. It would just be a rock in space. No light, no shadow. Just a rock.

And by extension the same could be said of the earth… and us.

So before it gets too far down the rabbit hole, let me transfer this story to you.

Because YOU are the Sun. And the Moon.

When you stand in your True Self, when you fully love your True Self, you shine. You GLOW! You radiate a warmth that stretches out way beyond yourself and reaches into the hearts of others that know you. You cast no shadow to those that see you. You are luminous. You ARE the Sun.

And when you stand in the presence of another glowing body, another Sun, YOU are the moon. You reflect their light, their luminosity bounces off your face. Those behind you see shadows. Those facing you see light. Those in front of you, standing between you and the light, well, you see their shadow.

“Life is a matter of becoming fully and consciously who we already are, but it is a self that we largely do not know.” – Richard Rohr

You are at once both Sun and Moon. How do you shine?

Both are light. One is the source. It shines brightly, gloriously. Because the light comes from within, there is no darkness, save where it casts a shadow. The coolest part is that unlike the real moon, we can not only reflect the light of others, but their light can magnify the light within us if we choose to let it. Otherwise, we’re casting shadows.

And that is your Moon. It reflects the light that shines from beyond yourself. It casts a shadow that can only be cleared when we turn to another light source. Yet, the darkness is always there. It doesn’t disappear, it only shifts. It is part and parcel to who we are.

You must embrace both. You are at once the Sun for others, shining brightly from within, casting your glow everywhere. You are also the moon, reflecting the light you see, casting your own shadows, and ever turning around the others in your world, as if to keep the shadow from being seen – but really more so that you can see the light in others.

Often, we try to downplay one or the other. We hide from our shadows – or more accurately, we try to hide them from the view of others. We don’t realize that as we do, we cast an even bigger shadow over ourselves and those closest to us (the ones we can most impact). We deny our light, pointing out our shadow as if that is all we are, because that one bit of darkness supposedly taints and negates all our light.

Neither is true. Truth is found in embracing both.

“Warts and all” is a phrase I’ve heard so often that I think it loses meaning for me. Yet in that phrase, we come to exactly the terms our True Self lays down for us:

“Are you willing to accept me fully, with all my gifts and foibles? Can I be enough just as I truly am, in this moment? I will never be perfect because by definition, I am human. Yet, can you accept me as perfectly and divinely human?”

Because if you can’t, who will?

This could get messy.

So @Sarahrobinson tweets about her son’s super powers. Then my pals @LIPDesign and @DanaReeves get into the conversation, which ultimately leads me to the “distracted” tweet I shared a couple of days ago. The crux of the convo was that Sarah’s kid was using his special abilities, and she, as an adult, didn’t feel as though she had the same skills in her present evolution. I believe the hashtag she used was #themomomentsIfeeillequippedtobehismom.

I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been there as adults. But it’s our own darn fault.

And it’s time things changed.

We walk around so consumed by “worldly” stuff – to borrow a biblical term. Bills, friends’ drama, family drama, our drama…

Drama drama drama! Save it for somebody else’s Momma!

I’m not saying we shouldn’t deal with that “stuff” that pops up in our lives. We definitely should. And we should ask for help when we can’t deal with it ourselves.

What I AM saying is that we use that drama as an excuse. A crutch. We let ourselves get “distracted” from our original dreams.

When we wore Wonder Woman Underoos, and knew we were invincible. When we tied Dad’s bathrobe around our neck and tried to jump off the garage roof. When we dared to believe in the stuff that really mattered: our dreams and the things we wanted to be about in the world.

When we were kids – like Joan of Arc – we were loyal to our dreams, our ambitions and the beliefs we held dear. Even in impoverished communities, little girls still dream of being princesses and living a life of “happily ever after”. Little boys still dream of “making big bucks” or “being a fireman” and “saving the world”.

To be frank, our world could use a little saving right now. Mostly from the so-called “grown ups”

So many of those would-be firefighters, teachers, doctors and princesses traded in their dreams for a 9-5 at the liquor store, not because they couldn’t do it. But because they didn’t see the patterns, and got distracted into a new pattern of “baby daddy momma drama” and wound up flipping burgers, or at the local stop-and-rob.

The simple fact is that for most of us that aren’t living out our happily-ever-after end game, there comes a point when you have to stop blaming everyone but yourself and decide: “Is this really the end game I want for myself?”

Maybe if we showed our daughters that in order to become a princess, they’ve got to have a smaller end game of meeting a prince (it does happen). Maybe if we encouraged our kids to save the world, we’d have a few more like Saint Joan.

And, perhaps along the way, they’d decide that it’s more fun to be president, or write books, or pursue a different dream.

Instead, they’re scrubbing the whole idea of having a dream in the first place.

Scratch that. They’re scrubbing the whole idea of LIVING their dream. They still cling to their dreams like Lola, the showgirl in Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana”: Bitter. Maybe even remorseful. Loaded down with regret and perhaps anger. Sitting there with faded feathers, remembering what could have been.

Is THAT really the end game you want for yourself? Are you still clinging to “hope” as a strategy for getting your happily ever after? Living with a lottery ticket mentality.

My husband says you can’t win if you don’t play the game.

My Mom said the answer’s always no if you don’t ask.

Joan said live what you believe.

I say ask, with hope, backed by a belief in what you’re end game is. That’s where we’ll pick up our super hero mantle again.

And with it, our dreams.

Since you’re still in the middle of my end game, you may be scratching your head yet, trying to piece all this together.

This is where Joan of Arc comes in. According to Wikipedia:

“Joan asserted that she had visions from God which instructed her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years’ War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII’s coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.”

When people quote Joan, often it is “I am not afraid… I was born to do this.” But there are two other quotes that I offer today:

“One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.” (emphasis mine)

“Act, and God will act”

Regardless of your religious persuasion (or lack thereof), you have to credit Joan with an incredibly powerful belief. She knew her end game. She even predicted her own injury on the battlefield.

She knew what she had come here for and to her dying breath, she did it without compromise.

Are you living your belief? In your life, your work, your coming and going, your “rising and resting” as some scriptures would say.

Do you even know what you believe?

Here’s a girl that’s been praying hard for years and finally her end game becomes clear. She figures out the steps in the cycle and makes her move. She achieves her end game.

It’s the same pattern you see in powerful leaders throughout history. The details  may be more personal, but the patterns are undeniable. I’ve remarked on more than one occasion about the similarities between the rise of Hitler and one of our more recent presidents. Both were charismatic speakers. Both wrote books about their life that outlined how they’d “change the world”. Both rose to power with a grassroots level of enthusiasm.

Patterns. Cycles.

More recently, you might have heard it called “modeling.” The idea that if you want to be a millionaire, find someone else that has done it, learn from them and model them.

The problem with modeling is that you are NOT them. Your set of beliefs, your core values are probably not the same. Modeling their successes may also mean modeling their failures. Or WORSE.

But finding the patterns… now that’s something that can benefit you. If you want to be a millionaire, don’t just look for one person that’s done it. Look at many people who have done it. What are the commonalities? Where are the patterns, similarities?

Take notes. Lots of them. Then find those commonalities in YOUR life and work.

Then ACT. Take action. Move the ball down the field and see what happens next. See the end game and move relentlessly towards it. If it’s your life’s end game, as it was for Joan, you’ve got to be willing to die for it.

What are you willing to die for?

Are you living that belief?