GREAT MORNING BELOVED!!

“The Wizard of Oz”
‘Never let those ruby slippers off your feet”

Welcome back to Oz…..does your life sometimes look like Oz? Either very colorful which is good or very confusing which may not be very good….
Either way, I hope you are looking at how these characters, and some ARE characters(!) are a part of you as you have traveled the Yellow Brick Road of your Spiritual Journey.

Today we enter the colorful world of Oz. If you recall, Kansas was pictured as a drab and dreary world with no one to love or care for Dorothy. She only had the wise Toto (kind of like the wise Yoda!) to give her help as she traveled her own Yellow Brick Road.

“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” These are Dorothy’s first words after she steps out into Munchkinland. Many of us have had that feeling, haven’t we? Perhaps we’ve experienced the tornados or twisters of our lives and as we move through a new landscape, we realize that our life will never be the same.

Indeed, Dorothy and Toto are not in Kansas anymore. At this point in the story Dorothy may think all her problems are solved. After all, she’s escaped Elmira Gulch, Toto is safe in her arms and she’s in this beautiful place. What could possibly go wrong?

She has yet to realize that she will face the same and bigger trials in this new life as she faced in the old life.

It’s like the story of a traveler coming to a village and finds a man standing by the gate. The traveler asks the man what kind of people live here. The man asks what kind of people lived where you came from?

The traveler replied, “they were mean and unhelpful, gossips.”

Well, the man said, you find the same kind of people here.

Later, another traveler came by the village and asked the man the same question. The man replied with his same question, “what kind of people lived where you came from?”

The traveler replied, ‘Oh they were great, really friendly, always wanting to help each other.”

The man said, “you find the same kind of people here.”

Some of us can identify with this. We want a different sort of life, a life filled with love, ease and grace and yet we go through life, making unconscious choices – like Dorothy, unnecessarily walking past Miss Gulch’s house, running away from her problems and getting catapulted over the rainbow to face those same problems in another form.

The good news is that we can make other, conscious, enlightened choices as we move along the Yellow Brick Road. The yellow brick road is following our true nature – our divine essence. And where do we begin?
At the beginning. Right where we are – right now – this breath, this moment.
(BREATHE DEEP)

Dorothy says, “I Can’t Go the Way I Came” by house! – And we cannot begin again with the same consciousness we used to get here. When we begin again, we are called to go a new way, to take a different path.

We can wake up to our innate divinity and use our Spirit given power to co-create our lives with heart, with wisdom and with courage.

Today’s trip reminds us that we carry within us an inner spark. That spark gives us a “potentially radiant character and the capability of knowing, loving, and spiritually communing with the creative intelligence of the universe.”

We are endowed with infinite potential for goodness and greatness. We all have free will to discover this inner spark and our cosmic purpose.

Our Tuesday Group is studying “Living Between Two Worlds” by Joel Goldsmith. He calls it our God given destiny.

In our story, our author, Joey Green has the Ruby Slippers representing that inner spark within all of us. One of my mentors called it Gods urge. These slippers are made from the rarest of gems, reminding us of the value of that inner spark.

And he sees Glinda as Dorothy’s Mother. When she tells Dorothy, “Never let those ruby slippers off your feet,” she’s telling Dorothy to never give up her passion, her individuality, her uniqueness, her spirit….her inner spark.

Think about that. Have you ever given up your inner spark? Your passion? Your individuality? And why did you do that? I venture to guess that many of us have to some degree. There’s one of your Questions for meditation and contemplation. “What have I given up and why?

The Wicked Witch of the West isn’t very happy to see her sister dead, under Dorothy’s house. And she’s even more upset as she watches her sister’s body wither away as the slippers, her inner spark, are removed magically and placed on Dorothy’s feet.

“Their magic must be very powerful, or she wouldn’t want them so badly,” Glinda tells Dorothy of the Wicket Witch of the West’s protests in losing her sister’s slippers. Glinda leaves Dorothy to figure out the power of the ruby slippers on her own.

The Wicked Witch of the West extinguished her inner spark long before this, which explains why she is much worse off than her late sister. Even her sister wasn’t as cruel to the Munchkins as the Witch from the West is to the Winged-Monkeys and the castle guards, the Winkies.

She wants to ruby slippers to increase her power, ‘my power will be the greatest in Oz!” Her hunger for power is a sign of insecurity. Remind you of anyone in your life? I think we all know someone who fits this description.

We all know that security does not come with power; it comes from “self-love, knowing your true essence, your cosmic purpose. When we choose a life of righteousness, we come closer to the creative force of the universe.”

Choosing wickedness distances us from the creative force of the universe, extinguishing the inner spark.

Embittered people who have extinguished their own inner spark justify their miserable existence by trying to extinguish the inner spark in others. The Wicked Witch of the West tries to do this by placing Toto in a basket much like the one Miss Gulch did in Kansas. Didn’t last long that time either!

There are ‘Wicked Witches of the West’ in our lives. They try to get us down the same hole that they are in. Bosses, politicians, teachers, even parents and friends and family. They try to rob our integrity, our passions, our spirit, our reputation, even our cosmic purpose. But they cannot unless we let them.
We just need to heed Glinda’s words, “Never let those ruby slippers off your feet.” Never give in to others negativity.

After Dorothy accidently liquidates the Wicked Witch, we forget about the ruby slippers until Glinda tells Dorothy she always had the power to return to Kansas.

The Scarecrow asks Glinda why she didn’t tell her sooner?
Glinda replies, “Because she wouldn’t have believed me, she had to learn it for herself.”

Dorothy has to discover her cosmic purpose on her own. Sound familiar? There are many things we must discover on our own, hopefully they ‘sink in’ the first time around!

Dorothy agreed, “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.”

Simply, the answers are within, not handed to you by a wizard, in any form.

Discovering our cosmic purpose brings us home to our true nature. And we discover that true purpose by becoming One with our Spiritual Essence.

After Glinda tells Dorothy to follow the yellow brick road in the beginning of our story, Dorothy says, “What happens if…….? I imagine completing Dorothy’s sentence… What happens if I get lost? What happens if the Wizard won’t see me? What happens if the witch confronts me?”

For us it might be – What happens if I lose my job or if I get sick or if my relationship ends?
Just follow the yellow brick road. Follow our Divine Nature
Even as we follow our divine nature, there is no guarantee that we will not sometimes get confused or afraid. We will come up to forks where a choice must be made as to which direction we need to go.
When Dorothy meets the scarecrow at the fork in the road, Dorothy called upon wisdom in the guise of the scarecrow and then the choice was easy to make. In fact, she never referred to it again, she made a choice and took the steps.
It doesn’t really matter anyway, as we follow our Divine Nature, all roads lead to Illumination if we let them.

From the book, “The Zen of Oz”: “Choosing is absurd. It doesn’t really matter which fork in the road Dorothy takes. As long as she follows the Yellow Brick Road, our inner divine guidance, all the roads lead to self-actualization. If Dorothy, Toto, and the Scarecrow go one way, they will meet the Tin Man and the Lion. If they take the other route, they will undoubtedly affect the lives of others as they go with the flow, enjoy the here and now and guide themselves consciously toward the Emerald City.”

And truth is, we never travel alone. Remember that!
Just like Dorothy, our passion for our spiritual journey is contagious. Look around, you’ve attracted all of these like-minded people. And I bet you have attracted and inspired other people in your life just by shining your light.
And you DO shine!