Are You Thriving or Merely Surviving?

(Reprinted from an undated journal entry, c. 2005)

Humans are like houseplants that have been snipped off the main plant in heaven and transplanted in the not-so-perfect soil of planet Earth.  The trauma of being severed from the mother plant is bad enough, but when you take into account the sometimes inhospitable soil that becomes our new, temporary home, it's a miracle any of us survives, much less thrives.

The first part of your life is spent learning how to survive on this planet with less than perfect growing conditions. The second part of your life, you spend learning ways to thrive.  When you turn the corner between those two parts of your lives depends on you.  It may happen at midlife.  It may happen either sooner or later depending on the path you've chosen to take.  Some people never turn the corner because they never realize they have the power to change their own lives.  They never learn that they can stop being a victim of their environment and start co-creating it.

Some of us change our environment by moving somewhere else, by changing our location, much like we move a plant into the sun when it is ailing from a lack of it.  Or we move another plant out of the sun if it requires more shade.  Like plants, each of us requires a specialized balance of environmental conditions in order to thrive and flourish.

Another way you can change your environment is to alter the PH balance of your surrounding soil.  Some plants do better in a more acidic soil, while others prefer one that is more alkaline.  Some plants need lots and lots of water, while others need a drier soil and good drainage.  Each plant type is different.  Some plants need room to sprawl while others use a small space to make themselves into a fuller, more bushy and compact plant.

The way we humans turn the corner from part one in our lives to part two is to figure out what we need in order to thrive.  Most of us have already figured out how to manifest what we need to survive--food, water, clothing, shelter.  If we are to thrive we need to build on our survival foundation a structure that allows and encourages us to thrive.  We can survive a long time in a minimal environment, or we can choose to thrive in a lush, personalized environment.  The key to this, as it is to many aspects of life, is awareness.  We have to learn what we need in order to thrive and manifest those things in our lives.

Winds of Change are Blowing Me Away

I just went down to the beach below the house where I've lived for nearly three years.  This place has been a haven for me, but now I feel strongly that it is time to leave my place of refuge.  I don't want to leave, but I know that in order to stay on my path towards fulfilling my life purpose, I have to be in a different place now.  That means I have to let go of this place that is very much part of me.  I have to let go not only of my rented house on the water, but I also have to let go of the Pacific Northwest, a place I consider my true home on this earth.  That is a radical break for me since I've been here for nearly seventeen years.  It is the first place I've lived where I really felt as though I belonged.  While it will be easy enough to stay in contact with most of the people I know here, thanks to the internet, it won't be so easy to stay in the mental space where I've experienced a true sense of belonging.  Moving here all those years ago, a big piece of the puzzle of my life fell into place.  It seems contrary to all reason to walk away from the very place I spent the first two thirds of my life trying to find.  Yet that is exactly what I feel compelled to do, and I've lived long enough to know that things are always better when I listen to my intuition, especially when the pull is this strong.  

So I am spending the next couple of months saying goodbye to as many of the places I can get to between now and the time I pull out of the driveway for the last time.  Sure I may come back some day but it will change while I'm gone, and I will change while I'm gone.  That's the way life is, a constant state of flux.  I went down to the beach today during low tide, hoping to connect to this place in a way that would allow me to carry this peace away with me when I leave it. Just as all of life is made up of change, I changed in the space of two hours while I was down there.  I changed profoundly.  I can honestly say that I went down there one person and came back another. If that much can change in two hours, imagine how much I will change in two years or two decades.

One of the ways I changed while I was down on the beach today was that I came to understand the concept of grace in another way.  Grace has been one of the recurring themes of my life, one of my leitmotifs, if you will.   How could it be otherwise when I was named at birth Beth Ann, which means "house of grace?"  I have been, and always will be in this incarnation, a vessel of grace.  While I no longer hold to the Christian religion, I have been and still am influenced by its teaching.  I jettisoned the judgments and limiting dogma I was taught, but still embrace the kernel of truth that is in Christianity and every other spiritual path I've examined.  Aldous Huxley popularized this concept of a "perennial philosophy" in his book The Perennial Philosophy, but he was hardly the first to recognize the recurring truths contained at the heart of all spiritual paths.  Divine grace is one of those truths found in many faiths.  

Whatever your understanding of the concept of spiritual grace, I came to see a different aspect of it today while I was down at the beach being buffeted by the winds of change that were blowing internally in my struggle to leave this place, as well as the winds of a storm that were blowing externally down near the water's edge.  As I walked along the beach, I was battered lightly by the winds blowing all around me, but I noticed too that there were several places along my beach walk where I could move in closer to shore and the cliff wall where I could find shelter from the wind.  Places where all became quiet, and I could experience a respite from the sound and feeling of the wind beating against me.  I didn't create those quiet places.  I did nothing in life to make myself worthy of finding those places, and yet there they were all the same, just waiting for me and any others who might pass that way.  Waiting to give shelter in the midst of blowing wind and rain.   These shelters provided moments of grace, moments of quiet in the midst of the maelstrom of life.  

Upon having this new understanding of these shelters, these moments of grace, I sent a prayer out to the universe that I would be able to find places like these as I traversed the next year, walking with the winds of change at my back, pushing me towards places and people yet unknown.  While I have an inkling of where I'm going, and I understand why I have to let go of my attachment to this place on the earthly plane that feels so much like home to me, I don't know or understand everything yet.  I will understand more as I continue my journey through the next year.  Right now I have to keep close to the front of my mind the message of Lao Tzu to anyone who feels intimidated by the road that leads away from home.  "The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step."  Another interpreter of this verse suggests that it could be phrased this way: "Even the longest journey must begin where you stand." [note by Michael Moncur, September 01, 2004]*

So I embrace this literal journey of several thousand miles from Puget Sound to Central Florida, as well as the figurative journey towards fulfilling my life purpose, knowing that it begins right here right now where I am standing in my little house on Puget Sound.  I will never get to where I want to be if I cement myself to this moment in time, to this place in the world, to this little house by the shore.  I've told the universe what I want in my life and for my life, and now I must trust the winds of change to blow me where I need to be in order to fulfill what I came here to do and become who I came here to be.  

*http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24004.html

Eternity

(From a journal entry c. June 2005)

Time is a line drawn in both directions, encompassing past, present, and future.  Eternity is a vast ocean, consisting of an infinite number of individual droplets indistinguishable from the whole when it is viewed as such.  We can study each droplet, examining it under a microscope, which magnifies it beyond its original intent.  When it is returned to the ocean, who can tell where it went?  Who can retrieve it?  Identify it? Why then do we place greater importance on some moments in time over others? The eyes of the Divine behold all moments in time as one.  All droplets of water as an ocean.  The only one who cares about this moment more than another is the one who see it as separate from all others.

For this observer, this moment is a lightly golden sunset upon dusky blue mountains, a band of rippling gold upon the water.  For another it may be time to say goodbye, to let go of the bonds that tether us to physical dwellings. Dwellings that separate us from the vast ocean that is our true abode, our eternal existence.  We must let go of the grasping mind and the restricting body and lose ourselves in the ocean of life that is God/dess, Tao, Being.  That journey begins in this moment in time.

The Wick and the Soul

(Taken from a journal entry dated 19 December 1999)

Think of yourself as a candle.  There are an infinite number of potential shapes and sizes of candles.  Some are elegant and lovely.  Others are purely utilitarian and perhaps bland in appearance.  But no matter the exterior appearance, the most important part of a candle is the wick.  The wick is what makes a candle a candle.  What would a candle be without its wick?  Merely a lump of wax.  It doesn't matter how comely is the lump of wax.  If it doesn't have a wick, it is not a candle.

In the same way, without a soul you are not a living person. You are merely a body, a lump of flesh.  You may have a beautiful form--an elegant, exquisite body or a square, stocky, utilitarian body, but none of this matters.  What matters is the wick.  Without it, you are dead flesh, a corpse.  With it, you are a person, a living, breathing human being.

Every living being has a soul, just as every candle has a wick.  No soul = no human being.  No wick = no candle.  But not everyone has discovered their soul.  It's ironic, but anthropomorphize a candle for just a moment, if you will.   Here is this lonely candle hanging around in a drawer, waiting to be used.  It doesn't know why it's lying there in this drawer.  It's kind of dark in the drawer, kind of lonely in here without any other candles or any sense of purpose for its existence.

Just as it is on its way to a pity party about its plight in life, the drawer slides open, a hand reaches in and takes out the candle.  The candle is set into a candle holder.  A match is struck.   The wick is lit, and voila!  There is light, and behold, it is very good.  The candle finally gets it--the purpose of its being.  It understands in a flash the meaning of its existence and how it fits in the bigger scheme of things.  This can be compared to  the first moments of enlightenment, when we come to an understanding that each of us has a purpose, and that purpose involves bringing light into a darkened space.

Brushing Cats

(Reprinted from my blog http"//slicesofmylife.net)

Sometimes you reach a place in your life where you long for simplicity, and I am there (again/still).  Only simplicity can be a lot of work, depending on how long and how thoroughly you've been living the antithesis of it.  I have moved more than a dozen times in the last decade, so I've already done a lot of the work of paring down in my life.  Every move required further scrutinizing over what is a necessity and what is just clutter.  I have to say that after de-cluttering for a full decade, it is still mostly just clutter.   Unfortunately, some of it is necessary clutter, and what is defined as necessary will vary from person to person.  This is not a treatise on de-cluttering.  It is an introspective look at what constitutes simplicity for me.  Simplicity is what I think of as an uncluttered life. While I think that it is nearly impossible to have an uncluttered life, if you have a cluttered physical space, I do think it is possible to have a completely organized, de-cluttered physical space and yet still have a cluttered life.  One may be excessively neat and tidy on the outside and a complete disaster inside.  While simplifying your life can always start in your physical space, eventually you will need to work your way inward, and if you haven't spent much time living an examined life, that can be far scarier than working your way outward.

I mostly simplify and de-clutter my life from the inside out rather than from the outside inward.  I'm already inside my head and heart most of the time.  I have been extremely introspective all my life.  Even as a teenager.  Once I discovered the world of writing in diaries, at the ripe old age of nine, I was hooked on introspection.  Yes, like anyone who writes in a diary, I wrote at times about the people and events in my life, but I soon shifted to the more slippery world of thoughts and feelings about the people and events in my life.  Beyond that there are the feelings and thoughts about the feelings and thoughts and hopefully you don't keep on going to the point of infinite regress, which I think after a while would resemble insanity, even though it might really be genius.   By the time I entered early adolescence, I was already in touch with my feelings and thoughts.  I was voicing my concerns and Angst over the state of the world in general and over the state of my life in particular.  I've never looked back once.  Never stop digging inside myself to try to figure out what made me who I am, which ultimately made me a student of human nature at large.  It is why I find other human beings, and now all other beings, so interesting.  Granted there are some beings, human and otherwise, with whom you could reach the bottom of the well rather quickly.  Others require a lifetime to plumb their depths.  Those are the ones I find completely enchanting.  They are the ones who surprise me with their insights and ingenuity.

What does all of this have to do with brushing cats?  Everything and nothing.  There are periods in my life when I brush one cat in particular a lot.  That cat is Dustin.  He is one of my feline soul mates, and he is also a barometer for the state of clutter in my life.  Not so much physical clutter, though I've found that my cats will let me know if that is getting too out of control for them.  If there's a pile of books on the coffee table (a.k.a., my desk since I no longer have one), they will be sure to knock it over when it gets too high.  That's a good reminder to shelve the ones I'm no longer using for research, self-growth, or leisure reading.  If I get too many papers stacked up, they'll push them onto the floor.  My cats are good for me in that way.  I cease to see the stack of books or papers if I'm deeply enough inside my own head.  They bring me back out of my head with their need to be fed, petted, and pampered.  That's where the brushing comes into play.

When my life is too cluttered with appointments, work schedules, and other demands on my time and energy, I don't spend much time pampering Dustin.  Dustin is a very clean cat, so he doesn't actually need for me to brush him.  He always looks like his suit has just been cleaned and pressed unless he's just come in from an untidy outdoor world that harbors sticky, damp things that attach to his beautiful gray coat.  But give him a few minutes and what doesn't drop onto the floor for me to clean up, will soon be meticulously licked away by this most fastidious fellow.  No, my time with Dustin is bonding time.  It is nurturing time, both for him and for me.  Having time to brush him with his soft bristle brush means that I'm making him a priority in my life, but it also means I'm making me a priority in my life.  I'm slowing my life down to a place where I have time not only to think about brushing him, but I make the time and space to do it.  Now that his much younger sister, Anjolie, has decided that she likes brushing every bit as much as Dustin, there are twice as many opportunities for moments like this.  Twice as many reminders to slow down and take time smell the flowers, or in my case, brush cats.

Removing Roadblocks to the Life You Want: Part Three

In part one of this blog series, we talked about living a complaint-free life.  Complaining not only drains your energy, but it is also pours negative energy onto the situation about which you are complaining.  It is much like adding fuel to a fire.  That will only make it burn brighter and hotter.  It won't put the fire out.  If you find that it is hard to stop complaining, then perhaps you need to find something to do instead of complaining.  Your complaining focuses a spotlight of energy on whatever thing, situation, or person you don't like.  Since it is a negative situation to which you are adding your energy, causing it to grow and expand under the nourishing light of your attention, you might want to find a way to focus your attention on something that reverses the negative thing you don't like.  Ceasing to complain about a situation may not make it go away, even if it does stop the process of feeding it, which should eventually cause it to diminish and die.  To speed the progress towards improving your situation, why not try focusing attention on the opposite of whatever is the complaint?

If there is a person in your life who is the source of your complaint, you can try a couple different ways to shift the energy in the situation.  Let's say that you work with ten people throughout the day, and nine of them are easy and pleasant enough to work with, and it is only one person who bothers you.  Why not focus on all the other people?  Instead of complaining about the one person you find annoying, try focusing on the other the enjoyable fellow employees.  Instead of complaining about the one person, start praising and appreciating the others.  It would be even better if you praised them to their faces and in front of others.  Let them know that you enjoy working with them.  You could even thank them for being so easy to be around and a great team player.  Focus your attention (i.e., your creative energetic power) on all the good things about your coworkers.  Try it for a while and see if your feelings change towards your workplace.  Liking nine out of ten coworkers is a really good thing.  It is in fact a blessing, something that makes you happy.  If you focus on the blessing of the good fellow workers, the one who isn't so hot will fade in importance in your overall job satisfaction.

Another way to turn the situation into a positive one is to bless the person who is the annoyance.  This is a little harder perhaps than praising the amiable coworkers, but it comes with its own set of rewards.  You are turning your complaint, which is not much different from a curse, into a blessing.  If you think about what you are doing when you curse something, no matter what words you might use, you can see that you are essentially spewing negative energy at someone or something.  A complaint is also negative energy being projected onto someone or something.  At an energetic level, there is little difference.  When you complain about something you might not be aware that you are putting out negative energy until you try blessing the situation or person instead.  Just try it and see if you can't tell a difference in how you feel inside and how the air around you feels.  Whenever you find yourself complaining, you will be amazed at how different you and the situation feels once you begin to pour positive energy into the situation in the form of a blessing.  It feels even better than simply not complaining.  Not complaining creates a void that almost begs to filled, so why not fill it with a blessing instead?

Auspicious Sign for the New Year

(Reprinted from http://slicesofmylife.net)

I was treated to a slow-motion flyby of a bald eagle this first day of the new year.  I was standing in my living room, talking on the phone, when I saw the bird fly slowly past my front yard.  I suspect that it had just taken off from a nearby tree where it had been perched for the purpose of hunting in the waters below, otherwise it would have been flying a lot faster.  Even though it was no longer early morning,and thus time to hunt for breakfast, it had the look and feel of morning hours.  The fog was still spread lightly across the landscape, and the heavy cloud cover had not yet thinned enough to allow for full sunlight.

Seeing the bald eagle on the first day of a new year felt like an auspicious sign.  These powerful beings are awesome to behold in person.  They are intense and focused in everything they do.  Their far-seeing eyes seem to penetrate to the core of the soul, not merely to the bottom of the river. The eagle has long been a reminder to me of deep, earthy spirituality.  I used to wear a sterling silver eagle feather around my neck on the cord that holds my crystal in a yin/yang setting.  Before I had to stop wearing earrings, I also had silver eagle feathers dangling from my ears, which along with my high cheek bones, gave me a decidedly Native American appearance.  Several times when I encountered members of one of the native nations of the Pacific Northwest, once they spied those earrings and my pendant, they would ask me to what nation I belonged.  Apparently my family on my maternal grandmother's side is somehow linked to the Blackfoot nation, but I know little about this history unfortunately.   My choice of jewelry was more symbolic of my earth-centered spirituality, which I also embrace in Taoism and other nature-based spiritual teachings.

The first time I stumbled upon the burial site of Chief Sealth (Seattle was named after this famous leader of the Duwamish and Suquamish nations), I got out of my car and walked reverently to the site to pay my respects.  While I was standing there communing with the energy of this powerful chief, a bald eagle gave its high-pierced shriek as it flew overhead.  In that moment, I knew I had been blessed to touch energies with the Chief himself.  I felt his energy then, and on a few other occasions I have felt his presence and heard his voice speaking to me.  I first refer to this experience in this blog in "Kindred Spirit," which can be located using the Google blog search tool at the bottom of the page.

In the photo above, Chief Sealth's burial site is the black and red frame structure in the upper right hand corner.  He was buried in the graveyard at a Catholic church because of his late in life conversion, which many suggest was largely a symbolic gesture to the white people with whom he was trying to keep peace rather than any sort of denunciation of his own people's spiritual practices and views.  He does have a grave stone that is much like the others in the cemetery.  However, his people also honored him with a more traditional Native American burial site and funereal objects left at the site.  It is a humbling experience to visit this great being's resting place.  If you are at all psychically sensitive, you will feel strong energy there.

I particularly sensed Chief Sealth when I lived in a house in Poulsbo, Washington, whose surrounding property butted up against the Port Madison reservation.  On more than one occasion while living there, I heard and felt the former inhabitants of the land pass right through my house on one of their "spirit rides," as I called them.  Their cries raised the hairs on my arms every time they came through, but there was nothing in the least bit frightening about them.  I simply accepted this awe-inspiring experience as part of being allowed to live so close to such a spiritually-imbued place.  Chief Sealth's burial site is within the boundaries of the Port Madison reservation in Suquamish, Washington, which is right next to Poulsbo.  Anyone who drives from Poulsbo to Bainbridge Island will pass through part of the reservation and only a quick jaunt off the beaten path will lead you to the Chief's gravesite in Suquamish at St. Peter's Catholic Church.

The cedars that framed the timber frame home, which I was so blessed to be able to rent for a year, were cut from the trees on the property.  When the time came when I was forced to leave that house, because it had been sold to new owners, I was heart-broken and could barely stand the thought of leaving that place.  In the last few weeks while I was there, I began to discern a vibration coming from the cedar beams.  As I listened carefully, I realized that the vibration I was sensing was the sound of a chant.  I listened day after day to these sounds and even jotted down the words and can still sing them to you.

Native Americans have long revered the bald eagle that once filled the skies over this country.  I am delighted that the species has made such a strong recovery.  Many of my earlier blogs here mention my connection to the bald eagles who were my neighbors on Hood Canal and are also my neighbors here.  I love them, and I am delighted to have been treated to a flyby sighting today on this first day on 2010. I deem it as a confirmation of my New Year's intentions, which I recorded in a journal last night under the energy of the blue moon.  One of those intentions is to get back to writing more about nature and spirituality.

Due to a bout of severe vertigo in 2009, which impacted my vision and forced me to look inward more because I could not see things very well at a distance, I felt as though I had lost contact with the rich experience of nature that surrounds me in this place.  Only recently have I been able once again not only to look out at my gorgeous views, but also to witness the flight of the bald eagles, the blue herons, and all the other birds that pass by my window each day.  Another smaller vertigo episode startled me this past week, but I am recovering quickly, and I am determined, like the far-seeing eagle, to remain in good health so I can fulfill my intention of writing more and more about nature and spirituality.  The bald eagle sighting was a perfect way to confirm this decision and to assure me that I can indeed complete what I have set as my intention in 2010.  I feel much like the eagle I saw today, that I am just lifting off into flight from a prolonged stationary position.  Although we may both fly rather slowly at first, the momentum will build as the wind catches our wings and we soar once again to the heights.

The following link contains some incredible photos of bald eagles.  Feel free to enjoy.  http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Pictures/eagle_pg1.html

Some background information on Chief Sealth.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Seattle