Helena Hjalmarsson - Already Whole: Discovering the Sacred Within

Copyright 2022 by Helena Hjalmarsson

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Cover photograph by Helena Hjalmarsson

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-6916-8

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-6930-4

Printed in the United States of America

Also by the Author:

Finding Lina: A Mothers Journey from Autism to Hope

Beyond Autism: My Life with Lina

To Lina, who never ceases to amaze me with her kindness and deeply intelligent, mysterious, and truly original style. Her indomitable commitment to alignment and to helping those who suffer in isolated places, helps me remember my own sacred nature.

To Elsa, channeler of all that is good on this planet and beyond. She defies gravity with her awe-inspiring joy, groundbreaking poetry, enlightened dance moves, and chaotic, no-nonsense, live cooking shows.

To Scott Huber, whose steady, patient, and loving support for our whole family all these years made a deep impression on all of us.

Contents

Mother Earth and My North Stars

Living from the Inside and Some Thoughts about Meditation

Loving What IsAn Openhearted Approach

Letting GoFlowing

Inner KnowingFaith

Intention and Magic

SilenceA Gateway to Our True Self

Inspired and Awake

INTRODUCTION

Soft, quiet footsteps

Slow, Spacious breath

Releasing, Relinquishing

Extending, Expanding

Everything Alive

No withholding

No asserting or arguing

No convincing or cajoling

No wrong, no right

Just Simple, Irresistible Life

Like a whale in the Ocean

Erupting out of Vastness

Its giant body suddenly defying Gravity

A glittering cascade of water and mammal

The Whole and the Free in the world

This is the land of Sacred Colors

Where Eagles stroll and Elephants fly

Where Flowers rain from Heaven

And Coyotes swim in the Ocean

Water and Sky Inseparable

Life experience can vary so wildly from one individual to another. Few would argue against the idea that every human beings ultimate desire is to be happy and free andlike the whale, powerfully breaching out of the deep waters up toward the skywe strive not to be condemned by the laws of gravity. And yet, most people consider forces outside themselves to determine the quality of their lives. It is my hope that this book will help you realize the freedom and exuberant joy of being alive. That you may have opportunities to clarify who you are and find ways to live in the grace of that awareness for more hours of your days and nights. The purpose of this book is not to repair, redeem, fix, invent, or find anything. It is about tuning in to something that is already there . It is the recognition that no alterations are necessary for a full, happy, satisfying life, characterized less by limitation, adapting, and overcoming, and more by expansiveness, wholeness, and love.

Rumi beautifully illustrates this revolutionary, yet simple awareness of oneness, love, and awe in his poem Quietness. He describes the quiet awareness of who we really are, opening our eyes to the miracle of life. The moment we stop trying to chase it down, when we let go of our hectic attempts to get where we want to be, life shows itself to us. Your old life was a frantic running from silence he wrote, The speechless full moon comes out now.

How do we find the speechless full moon in a world that keeps telling us it doesnt exist or, at best, if it does exist, its not important or cant be found without paying a price that more or less matches the reward? And if we find it, how do we share what we found? Well, Gorgias, one of the Sophist philosophers in Athens some four hundred years before Christ, would say its an aspiration waiting to fail. He would go so far as to say nothing exists and even if it did, it couldnt be known, and even if it could be known it couldnt be shared. If he is right, this book, and every other book, and every other thought, insight, statement, philosophy, religion, and any other approach to find truth and well-being would be quite futile.

Lina, my oldest daughter, now eighteen, has autism. Her expressive language has failed her since she was three and a half years old. Via the letter boards that we use these days to communicate, I asked her what she thought of Gorgiass claims. My sophisticated, philosophically inclined teenager, with a hint of a smile almost undetectable on her beautiful face, wrote that she thought it was reasonable. But then she told me that she indeed does believe that there are universal truths that can be known, one of them being that beauty comes from love.

Personally, Im with Lina. Love can be known and all the beauty in all the world comes from it. But as far as most other matters, thoughts, statements, beliefs, experiencesall the stuff that we count as real and feel we should agree on, I think Gorgias and Lina are onto something. The ultimate truth isnt something we can grasp with our minds. We have gotten a lot of things backward. What we consider realthe corporeal worldjust how real, and valuable, is it? And what about all the stuff we discount as hocus-pocus, new age and lofty, half-crazy, a little out there? What does dismissing all that do for us? Is it possible that we have made our lives so noisy and overwhelming, packed with sensory information, and driven by evidence and facts that we missed the most fundamental part? The part that we can only find by quieting down and learning how to be truly receptive, beyond our thoughts? Most of us have real difficulty even recognizing what is at stake in not finding this kind of receptivity. Many people live their entire lives oblivious to silence and true peace. That too, ultimately, is okay, I think, because they will find it when they die. But if we want to discover it here, while we are alive on this planet, so often distracted by our physical lives, aspirations, fears, desireswe have to slow down a little. We have to start walking on a different path than the one we are used to, supported not by data and analytical thought, but by stillness and intuition. We need to be open to our intuition and ready to let go of the things that keep us separated from that openness. To take steps in that direction requires that we let opinions, preconceived ideas, experiences, personal habits, and inclinations fade into the background and allow ourselves to quiet down. We need to be willing to leave behind notions of thoughts and behaviors, ideas and beliefs, that we have learned to consider real and important and even responsible.