December Plan Day 14: When did your “Grandself” show up?

It’s the last day of Week 2 of our December Plan to call in a magical year. Today we finish sifting through the events of 2009 to uncover all the gifts buried there. It’s been an interesting week, hasn’t it? Some days, I have to agree, it hasn’t been so much fun. The “gifts” of our lives don’t always come in foil-wrapped packages with golden bows. I wish they did, but the truth is sometimes the most important gifts come in the guise of defeat, rejection, loss, pain, suffering. At the time, we sure don’t consider the experience a “gift.” But that doesn’t mean it isn’t. In fact, it may be more than a single gift; it may be a window your soul peeks through, or even a highway that leads to your soul’s fullest, richest expression.

Listen to Alexander Sozhenitsyn on his long imprisonment in a Siberian gulag. He’s describing one of those really big gifts: “It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirring of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not though parties, states, nor between classes, nor between political parties, either, but right through all human hearts. So, bless you prison for having been in my life.”

Bless you prison? Bless you prison? That’s not a man speaking. That’s a soul. That’s a soul pushing a dark door open, feeling the Light, and taking the first steps down a path that will inspire millions. His words give us a flash of Solzhenitsyn’s wise soul-self waking up. In those unbelievable words, we can see his small spirit blinking in the light as it senses its potential to express big Spirit here on earth.

I like to call that appearance of the soul-self your “Grandself.” Just as the honorific “Grandmother” is meant to capture a higher, wiser expression of the wonderful motherly qualities of love and grace, and “Grandfather” resonates with a higher expression of the fatherly qualities of wisdom and protection, your “Grandself” resonates with the higher expression of your soul. It is your God-self showing up.

So, looking at 2009, when did your Grandself show up? When did your spirit burst forth with wisdom and grace you didn’t know was inside you? When did the ideas in your head stun you? The words in your mouth bless you? The ideas on the page take your breath away? When was your heart so radiant that you thought you might float? When were people magnetically attracted to you? When were you at peace, not just still, but resting in real deep peace.

Next year, of course, as we call in all the magic, love, and joy we can, we will be creating a veritable playground for our Grandselves to show up. But this year, even in hard times, your Grandself showed up too. When did your Grandself tap you on the shoulder and say, “Hello darling, I’m here.”