Full Circle

That which Supports and Completes the Greater Whole

Healing is about completing and extending a circle of beingness.  It is about restoring greater balance that brings real resolution, peace, and acceptance – elements that form the end stage of grief. 

It has been said that all core healing is about completing the stages of grief.  There are no missing pieces in a full circle.  Everything present supports and completes the greater whole. 

Listen to What’s Missing

That is why we’re so bothered when we feel a sense that something is missing in our lives.  That sensation is a thing to listen to, and to honor. 

A shortcut to identifying what is truly missing from our lives is to dare to bring forth your heart’s desires.  Late this spring I was excited to go away with a friend to Niagara-on-the Lake, a pretty little Victorian town near Niagara Falls in Canada, which hosts a world-renowned Shaw plays festival every year, lasting from April through November. 

The Real Meaning of the Bucket List

My friend and I went for some wonderful spa treatments and much accompanying ambiance at a perfect setting to “get away from it all”.  We were most successful in meeting this much-needed goal, which, as happens in full circle reality, brought us right into our spiritual centers to explore, through watching a popular movie in our most comfortable hotel room, called The Bucket List, with two of our favorite actors, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

They both play older men who end up being most unlikely roommates in a hospital, from very different walks of life,  who are informed that they are dying.  This news becomes a catalyst to catapult them into becoming soul brothers, who well facilitate each others’ transformations into whole, expanded, courageous human beings who are free and empowered to live in just in the moment, their fully adventuring lives. 

The Only Choice We Have

They make a “bucket list”, which is a list of what their heart’s desires are that have been missing from their lives that they commit to completing before they “kick the bucket”.  Thanks to the character Jack Nicholson plays, they have virtually unlimited financial means to complete their lists, critically supporting each other’s ability to carry this out.

Is this not multidimensional healing and spiritual development?  We really only have one choice in life – to live it courageously or to turn away from it.

Becoming Greater Than We Have Been

The times particularly demand living courageously.  I think we are so far gone today, as the world reveals the depth of devastating impact we’ve had on it, that we can no longer get away with turning away. 

As I think about it, turning away unravels circles, and our primary spiritual healing and development directive says we are meant to  “come full circle”, becoming greater than we have been through finding that which otherwise we know is missing.  Have you made a “bucket” list?

Dare to Create Your Full Circle of Heart’s Desires

My bent is to call that a “Full Circle” list, and, on that note, invite you to settle back, take a couple of deep, cleansing breaths, and imagine how easily your light, opening breaths can carry your freed consciousness right into your heart.  Ask your heart center to tell you what it sees is missing from your life, and then take a few moments and record your ensuing “list”.

Then draw a very large circle on a blank sheet of paper, and put every item on your list wherever it seems to want to fit anywhere inside the circle.  When you’ve finished, settle back once more and gaze at your drawing.  How are you feeling?

Our True Spiritual Contract

Record your sensations, and any insights which occur.  I would additionally refer you to a book written by Stephen Levine over a decade ago called A Year to Live, which is a how-to guide and spiritual commentary inviting the reader to commit to spend a year carrying out a  spiritual contract to live as if that was the last year of their life.

Each moment we are given is a shining moment, a literally “once-in a-lifetime” gift that will never come again, to be honored and savored.  We own our moments, and are meant to express courageously, and with maximum possible consciousness, our corresponding desires, understanding them as each exquisitely full circles of completion.