Spiritual Identification & The Aroma of Our Lives
Aroma
a painting description
As always you are free to interpret this piece however you choose or are led to understand it.
These are simply my own thoughts which I feel inspired to share.
My own interpretations change as I revisit with pieces as time goes on, but these are my initial thoughts at the time of creation.
Our sense of smell is a beautiful gift! Simply smelling the beautiful fragrance of a flower connects me to My Center through gratitude and awe of the diversity of creation.
Scent is something extra that adds a greater enjoyment to everything around us! The smell of a familiar loved one brings more depth to the emotion of love and connection and those emotions become easier to recognize the next time around! Walking into a room with sweet smells instantly causes us to notice the space around us and draws our awareness into the present moment. And of course there is food and the endless memories that flood our mind when our favorite dish is in the oven! There are so many gifts in this way, they seem to be unnecessary and yet how much more shallow would life be without them? Enjoying these gifts we are inspired to worship and give thanks for our amazing human body.
Our nose is a wonderful instrument of breath, bringing life into our bodies through oxygen. Breathing deeply instantly starts to regulate our nervous system and can be a powerful tool when it comes to combating worry, anxiety, and confusion. Inhale through your nose now and get ready to dive deep into the spiritual sense of smell!
Climb the stairs and walk the pathways because this is the journey of your life. Your own unique life cycle of fragrance! When all is said and done, what will be the aroma of your lifetime? Within our hearts we have a unique perfume that is meant to float out as worship to The All-in-All, a sweet smell of gratitude and praise that only we can offer!
This fragrance of our lives is the result of the offering we place on The Altar. Just as incense would send smoke up to the clouds, so our lives would send out a specific result depending on what we are offering with our hearts.
We can force ourselves with will power to offer our lives as a living sacrifice, but only when it arises naturally will it be an authentic offering. For true offering is a task not for the faint of heart! When we allow ourselves to be spiritually inspired to offer up gratitude, praise, or whatever current action we are taking, that is when the True Aroma of our lives comes out. It is a Divine Aroma being expressed through us!
How can we allow this true authentic self to emerge? For anyone can play the part and force their life to look a certain way, but appearance is not deep enough! There must be a Bridge, and this Bridge is made up of fire, The Refiner’s Fire! This Bridge is the Altar where we place our deepest desires and biggest regrets, offering up the entirety of who we are without holding back. That which is meant to be let go of is burnt away in the flames of purification and those desires that are Divinely inspired burn even brighter! This is where our True Aroma arises, out of the ashes of purified intentions and purified direction. For we are already our true selves and our only task is to stop identifying with those things that are inhibiting us.
It all boils down to identification, The Bridge is our Identity, and this is not something to be taken lightly. To have a complete transformation of identity and start to live as Christ, we gain an Inner power to redefine who we are!
To offer our lives as the incense on the altar and become The Bridge of healing and transformation to ourselves and watch it ripple out into the world! It is a surrender to The Highest Good. For the essence of a pure fragrance is offering and trust, knowing our lives are a tool in The Greater Hand of Love.
Anything that we identify with becomes a part of us. Our identity is that which we are made up of, whether it is from outside of us or from within. Our task is to identify more with the things on the inside, those pure inspirations from Intuition and Inner Spirit than we do from the things on the outside. Being careful to listen to the inner child and not be influenced by our culture through screens or that which is made popular by the collective mind of humans.
When we seek inside we come up against many blockades made up of false identities. There is no way to push through these barriers, they are not our burden to carry, in fact the harder we push and fight against them the stronger they become. We must first take a step back.
When we come up against these false identities that I like to call “fear’s last stand” we must take a moment to reflect and re-center on the journey. This may be the most challenging time to do it but it is also the most beneficial time, because if we can break the cycle it becomes easier to do next time. It becomes easier to take a step back in these challenging times if we have also been practicing slow reflection throughout our regular everyday life experience.
Breathing also becomes an especially powerful tool to use here. Slow and deep breathing regulates our nervous system and can keep us in contact with the frontal lobe of our brain, this is called the cerebral cortex which governs our ability to respond in a conscious way. Certain levels of stress or panic attacks could cause us to lose contact with this part of our brain, therefore making it very challenging to overcome a false identity. Being able to calm down through breath gives us a greater advantage at being able to process “fear’s last stand” and stop it in its tracks. Again, if we have been practicing breath awareness on the regular, it will come to mind first thing in these weaker moments. Being able to remember to breathe is key, so practice, after all it can be done anytime and anyplace.
If we take the moment slowly, we realize we are not just facing “fear’s land stand” but that we are also on a journey within, to find the core center of our truest self. Here we realize that the fear has been revealed to us and now we have more awareness to be able to transmute it. When we find we are continuing to identify with fear or limiting ideas of ourselves, these are the very things we offer up to the Refiners Fire. When the fire burns on the altar it burns away all fears and identifications that are not truly who we are and what is left is our unique individual fragrance.
When we step back and realize that rest, trust and the releasing of control is our action of offering, this is when the fire burns at its brightest and scorches out even the worst of falsehoods. For we have real falsehoods that come up, many people around me have expressed that they are not enjoying life, some even to the point of despair. Yet even beliefs as detrimental as “I have no purpose on this earth or reason to continue existing” can be released and moved past. Sometimes the thoughts hold us in such bondage with power that seems irrefutable, yet we ourselves are the one giving them the power. The power is theirs because we believe it is. When we take our power back from where we have scattered our energy we become The Burning Flame of Redemption.
However it takes a lifetime to arrive at such a place, indeed it is the journey of a lifetime! A journey filled with excitement as well as pain. Fire isn’t always pretty, sometimes it is destructive, yet at the same time it is so fluid and airy; gorgeous and bright! The good news is each season of life becomes easier and we start to see the cycles of ourselves recurring through time and understand their meaning more. Time is our tool in this way, something to use to our advantage. Having a version of ourselves from the past we can compare ourselves to is ideal, therefore as we age we can look back through time and piece the puzzle together at an even deeper level.
All this begins with offering, releasing the old parts of ourselves, for we cannot hold on to them or take them with us. Our fragrance cannot be mixed with overpowering odors. Sure, there is space for imperfection, there is value in our humanity, but we must forgive ourselves and others. We must realize the benefit of our life as it has played out already and not hold our past against ourselves or others as something to hold us back or inflict more consequences. Eventually we must surrender for true offering to occur.
This surrender and offering of our lives looks like re-identification. Renewal comes from disidentifying with fear and re-identifying with faith. Saying “I AM Faith, I Am Clarity”. Saying “I Am” to things that you are Divinely inspired to be, to be yourself!
When you are the you you were created to be, that is when you are a fragrance to the world and more importantly a pleasing aroma to The All-in-All! Why wouldn’t we want to lay ourselves down in order to bring more glory to the Infinite Orchestrator of it all?
The offering in question is our life, our entire life! Letting it arise naturally as we are molded into a vessel of higher use. We listen within, we obey the calling, responding to the whispers, and stepping out on the Rock! Purification is the bridge and the link to the fulfillment of our desires, dreams, our soul's purpose, and why we're here. We see it clearer and clearer! Then we are naturally able to release control, we begin to naturally shape into our new identity of pure, pure, authentic love!
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” ~Romans 12:1-2