By DK Brainard
As you may know, we release a new download every month as a thank you gift for our monthly sponsors. These MP3s usually contain a guided meditation, energy healing, or spiritual tool. This month's download went in a different direction and something kind of wild happened right after I finished mastering the audio that I want to share with you.
The Impetus
Years ago a friend sent me the passage entitled "Joy and Sorrow" from The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. The first time I read it, I felt...taken aback. A little disturbed even. There was something unsettling in Gibran's poetry, something I wasn't quite ready to take in.
I read it again a short while later and I felt these waves of feeling roll through me. Whereas on the first read I was bothered by Gibran's insistence that joy and sorrow are inseparable and we can't know one without the other, this time I felt a deep sense of relief and peace.
When I got the inspiration to put this passage to music for the March download of the month, my first response was...uh, really? It seemed too intense. Maybe people would feel threatened by it as I had felt threatened upon first encountering it. Maybe they wouldn't understand the beauty in it?
But Spirit was clear on this being the way to go, so I took the music I had been working on with a different outcome in mind and stripped it way back and I read Gibran's poetry and - as I mentioned on our March podcast - I cried when I played it for Tatiana. It felt right - for our tribe, at this time.
I feel like most of our people, like us, have experienced so much sorrow in this lifetime. Sure, we've probably gone through long periods of distracting, numbing out, running away from it. But there was something inside us that wouldn't let us run too far, that kept calling us back to feel our feelings, to respond authentically to the suffering we felt within us and within our world.
I know that once I finally surrendered to this soul work and allowed myself to genuinely grieve, something inside me awoke to joy in a way I can best describe as being childlike, innocent and free, sometimes even in the midst of the most challenging circumstances.
The Delightful Synchronicity
Over the last week while I was working on "Joy and Sorrow" Tatiana was watching videos of Bill Donohue on YouTube. Bill was this guy who studied the teachings of Jesus in the Bible and interpreted them in a way that Jesus probably would have been quite fond of.
He saw that Jesus was using symbolic language to communicate universal truths that are also present in the teachings of the Buddha and other perennial wisdom traditions and got really fired up sharing his discoveries (we think this was back in the 1980s).
In this particular video we watched the other night, Donohue kept quoting John 16:23 - "And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you."
I had just finished mastering this month's download and was getting ready for bed when Tatiana said, "There's something you've got to see." She handed me the Bible, open to chapter 16 of the Gospel of John. The heading for the passage containing John 16:23 read:
YOUR SORROW WILL TURN TO JOY
Donohue hadn't talked about verses 20-22 in his sermon, but there they were:
20 "Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.
21 A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.
22 And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you."
You don't have to be a monthly sponsor to support our work. We do what we do to be of service to the Creator and we are grateful for our sponsors, for those who give a one-time donation, and for those of you who help us by sharing our work. You can get a high-quality MP3 of Joy and Sorrow in the Cosmic Fire shop for a small donation here.
I hope this simple recording awakens you to the joy that will balance your soul, regardless of how hell-bent the collective reality may seem at times.