03/29/09, We live between what is right for us and what we want.

The Dream

“Have you cut the tip of your finger?” she asked. “What?” I replied. “What’s that got to do with it? How many fingers do I have to cut?” She paused, thinking. “At least four,” she said, somewhat hesitantly, as though there could be more. “Four!” I said. “Why four?” I ask all the right questions. I should get credit for that. But, it seems that she thinks I’m putting off the inevitable, that I should just cut four fingertips and get it over with. Easy enough for her, seeing, as she does, from her point of view. Take a peek from mine, I say. If I’m going to cut four of MY fingertips, I want to know the ins and outs. I want to know why and how that’s going to help and what’s the point. Surely, by now, she has to understand what she’s up against in me, and would gently explain how it is. Seems to me, I hold the trump cards. All of them. I don’t want to swim in icy water anyway. Why cut four fingertips to do it? What does one thing possibly have to do with the other? All I can imagine is that the pain of the finger slicing would take my mind off the pain of the cold water. Which is completely stupid, and much less wisdom than I would expect from the Wisdom of the Ages. I think she is making fun of me, laughing. I’m shrinking back from the cold water, and she is making fun of me, laughing. I HATE cold water. And she knows it. And she’s laughing.

We have to go where we don’t want to be and do what we don’t want to do. If we can make our peace with that, we have it made. Which is to say that what we want has nothing to do with it. What needs to be done is the question. Where do we need to be is the other question. Forget wanting. Wanting got us in the mess we’re in. We see what wanting will do for us. We create a good many of our problems by choosing to have what we want at the expense of what is right for us.

What is right for us has nothing to do with what we want for us. If you are ever going to hear me, hear me here. Learning to listen within in order to know what we know, in order to know what is right for us, past all want-ing it to be otherwise, and to have what it takes to do it, to live in the service of what is right for us, no matter what, day in and day out for the rest of our lives, ah, there be the nature and scope of the spiritual journey.

The way to wholeness, to integrity of being, is awareness, paying attention, waking up. It’s the way of knowing how things are and how things also are (which includes the truth of how we feel about how things are, and also are—the truth of how we wish things were). It is the way of putting truth on the table, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, the truth in all its conflicting, mutually exclusive, cacophonic glory. And letting truth trans-form truth, and wake us up, so that we live in light of all the truth that is true. That is the way of integration. It is not exactly what you would call pain-free. But it is exactly what you would call life lived to the core.

One of the truths that goes on the table is fundamental, foundational: We are at odds with ourselves. We relax (ignore) the tension within ourselves at high cost to ourselves. We have to live consciously within the tension of the opposites within, and choose what we will do each time a choice is to be made. No dismissing. No discounting. No denying. No Ignoring. No running, hiding, escaping, pretending. We bear the pain of our own contrariness as we carry out the business of life on the boundary between Yin and Yang.

Of course it is hard. We’re here to ride the bull. If it were easy they would call it riding the hen. We are here to do what is hard: Face ourselves and our lives and bring to life in ourselves and our lives that which is deepest, best, and truest about us—that which is truly right for us and the time and place of our living.

There are no black foot prints on the spiritual path. We find our way alone, but in the company of those who are finding their way, alone. There is no substitute for personal experience, yet, experience has to be experienced, and it cannot be experienced without being expressed. We have to talk about our experience with those who can receive well what we have to say. In so doing, we see better what is to be seen, become increasingly awake, and find our own way, the way that is truly our way, the way with our name on it. We could not find the way that is our way apart from those who listen to us, enabling realization, discovery, understanding, enlightenment—enabling us to know the truth of who we are (and also are) and how it is with us (and how it also it with us). But, once we find the way that is our way, we discover that it has a cross attached.

The cross was the price Jesus paid for living the life he lived. We all pay a price for living the life we live. The trick is to realize that, and bear consciously the cross and the responsibility for living the life that called it forth—and to know that if we choose to live differently we will bear the cross of living differently. We can’t get away from the crosses with our name on them. The best we can do is bear them consciously, responsibly, smiling along the way, because we get to live the life we are living for the one low price of cross bearing. Of course, that means we better feel right about the life we are living, else the cross will be a bear to bear.

Bearing the pain of our own choices, the weight of our own lives, means paying the price of living the way we live or changing the way we live, but then we have to pay the price of that choice. We have to take what comes from doing what we do the way we do it. If we run up a bill, we pay the tab. But we only pay our tab. We refuse to bear the pain of other people’s choices, the weight of other people’s lives. It’s the Robert Frost line about “good fences making good neighbors.” We have to know where we stop and other people start. We take care of our business and they take care of theirs. And, when we help one another, we help one another help themselves. When we help one another, we help one another bear the pain of their own choices, the weight of their own lives. If we won’t bear the pain of our own choices, the weight of our own lives, we can’t be helped, we can only be carried, mothered, babied, and live as a burden upon others all our lives long.

We have to bear the pain of our own choices, the weight of our own lives. When we do not, we neglect our duty to the tribe and pass on to others the responsibility of carrying us along. Then, we become an excessive bur-den on the social structure and undermine the good of the whole. Compare this to our calling to live as a boon to the world, a blessing unto all who come our way, and you quickly see the scope of the damage we bring to life by refusing to bear the pain that is ours to bear. Not only are we not a source of good in the lives of others, but we also deplete what little good there is by requiring them to do what is ours to do in taking care of us. When we grow up and shoulder our own cross, bear the weight of our own life, everyone is relieved and released to live the lives that are theirs to live, and joy comes to life in the world.

We have to do our part. And, we have to prop one another up. No one does it alone, yet we all have to help the others help us. This is called community building. We encourage one another in the tasks of life. We are a compassionate, abiding, presence. Urging each other along. Cheering each other on. Just being with someone who has the right spirit about her, about him, makes all the difference. Joseph Campbell says, “The influence of a vital person vitalizes.” Our individual task is to cultivate the right spirit within, to be vital, alive, and to live as a compassionate presence in the lives of others.

To be connected at the level of truth is the essential connection. To see truth truthfully together is to create a “weness” that forms a lasting bond between us, among us. This is the basis of the community we seek, and must have, to make it. It is not enough to say the truth, to say what is true, we also have to be heard, we have to say the truth to those who can hear us with understanding, who can stand with us as witnesses of the truth we know to be true because we experienced it. The truth must be told, but not only told. It must be told until it is heard, until it is received with understanding, until it is recognized as the truth that it is, by someone, anyone.

The most abusing thing about child abuse is not the abuse itself but the silence that surrounds it. The secrecy. The "explanations." The dismissals. The denials. "Oh, you know your Daddy, Uncle, Brother really loves you, really wouldn't do anything to hurt you," etc. The displacements. "It's your fault." The most abusing thing about child abuse is the refusal to hear the truth of the child, the refusal to stand with the child, and bear the truth with the child, knowing what the child knows, knowing that the child knows we know, refusing to look away, but bear-ing the truth with the child, bearing the child’s truth, the truth of the child, the child, all the way to the heart of truth, and saying, “Yes. That’s the truth. That’s how it is. And it is very wrong for that to have happened, for that to be the way it is. And I am very sorry, and I am with you to bear witness to the truth, and to help you bear the pain of the truth, because two sets of shoulders are much better than one.”

To bear the truth alone, when the world is saying, "That isn't true. That couldn't be true. You know it isn't true," is to risk losing our bearings, to split off from that part of us that knows, and to deny ourselves what we know to be true as a way of surviving in a world that does not believe us. To hold on to the truth and to know what we know and to know that we know what we know in the face of the constant refusal to hear/believe/know is the hardest thing. We need help bearing the truth of our lives. We need those who can witness the truth of our lives with us, to corroborate the truth, affirm it, and thus ground us in the reality of that which cannot be real but is, and provide us with a reference point for navigating through the madness of the world, reminding us that the world is mad, but we are not.

The more truthful we are, the crazier we sound in a world that is not geared to the expression of truth. And so, the need to create communities of truthfulness where we can say who we are (and also are) and how it is with us (and how it also is), to those who can hear us and serve as reference points for the long journey home.

03/22/09, We have to soothe ourselves somehow.

On the One Hand

We seek justification, redemption, affirmation, validation, because we think there isn’t much to us. We are afraid we don’t count, that we don’t add up to anything, and have no real business being here. We think we are just taking up space, breathing someone else’s air. We live frantic to convince ourselves that our lives are worth the effort.

And on the Other

Who has it down? Who is doing it right? The Dali Lama? I hear he wants to retire. He’s had enough of being the Dali Lama. Wants to tag out. Stop doing it. Quit. Quit being the Dali Lama. Walk away from the job. Since when did it become a job? Let a seven year old kid take his place. So he can just hang out for a while before he dies. How’s that for being grown up? Nobody has it down! Nobody is doing it right! Yet, we are all over our backs for not having it down, for not doing it right. Give me the name of someone who does! No! Wait! Give me the name of the person who thought this up. We need to talk.

We want to be justified and we want to quit. And, the longer we are at it, the more we want to quit. We all know about wanting to quit, wanting to hang out, free of responsibility, and obligation, and duty—to live freely, joyfully, at peace with ourselves and our lives without life getting in the way. Life is hard. We hate it. Want to check out. Quit. But quitting has its hard side. Everything does. Hard is how it is.

Of course, we have this happy fantasy of being able to do whatever we want, whenever we want, for as long as we want, with no repercussions or side effects, and everyone loving us always and forever. It’s called having Mother take care of us. We run up the tab, Mother pays the bill—not our biological mother, who was never the mother we needed her to be, but the Idealized Mother of Fantasy Land who will take care of us the way we want to be taken care of forever and ever, Amen! When it gets hard, we long for Mother.

Life without Mother is the hardest thing. The hardest thing is growing up, bearing the truth of life, making our peace with how things are (and also are), being our own mother, being responsible for doing what is to be done, every day for the rest of our lives, and doing it with gentleness, kindness, compassion and grace. Who do you know who lives like that? See? I told you it was the hardest thing. But we don’t cut ourselves slack or treat our-selves gently for wanting to quit, for wanting to avoid life without Mother.

We were raised on John Wayne and James Bond. They had no weaknesses and did everything single-handedly. Yet, John Wayne smoked himself to death, and James Bond has no friends. Even the actors who play James Bond can stand him only so long. He hates himself. And has to run, or drive, or fly, or swim from one action packed moment to the next. Make him sit still for an hour. Give him our life for a week. He couldn't handle it. His life is one big collection of distractions. But we think he is the master of all things. We think we should be John Wayne and James Bond. We were raised to believe we should stand there and take it. No one can stand there and take it, not even John Wayne or James Bond, but we can’t allow ourselves to get out of the way. We can’t take it and we can’t take not taking it. Who thought this up?

Col. Nathan P. Jessup (the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men) put us all in our place with his "You can't handle the truth" declaration. No one can. Not all the time. We have to put some distance between ourselves and the truth to have a chance. But then, and this is the part I really don't like, what we do for distance becomes part of the truth we're trying to get away from, and we have to get away from it. Distraction becomes addiction. And we have to distract ourselves from our distraction. We have to deny our denial. Escape our escape. Reality keeps shifting on us, becoming something else, tracking us down, breaking in. Who thought this up?
Ignorance is bliss. Denial is ignorance. We will do anything to feel better about our lives. Or to feel nothing. Consciousness is pain. To know is to suffer the fear and anguish brought on by the pain of existence. How much can you see before covering your eyes, looking away? How conscious can you be before you run to Mama? Uncon-sciousness has its place, else it wouldn’t be so popular.

We can only handle so much truth. So much mindfulness. At some point we have to give ourselves over to mindlessness and watch a football game, or play with the puppy, or swing a grandchild, or have some ice cream. We have to set life aside and live from time to time. Really. I’m serious here. We have to get out of our heads and into our lives. If your thinking disconnects you from living, keeps you from living, stop thinking. If you can’t think and enjoy pizza and a beer, stop thinking. Better to be mindlessly alive than mindfully dead. A lot better.

The religions of the east boast of their consciousness quotient, but how alive are they is the question? What is their life quotient? They dismiss the truth they cannot bear to acknowledge as illusion. Dismissal is another form of denial. They live in the midst of horrendous suffering and see it only as Maya brought on by desire, without see-ing their desire to ignore suffering and their responsibility for relieving it. Nobody can be conscious without a break, but to be unconscious of our unconsciousness is bad religion.

Bad religion exists to enable us to feel better about our lives. Good religion exists to enable us to see, hear and understand—to know how things are and how things also are—to feel what must be felt, and do what must be done, and to call time out and step away when that must be done. The pain of the truth of life will be borne, experienced, expressed, either consciously or unconsciously, either by ourselves or by our spouse, or our children, or society, or the world. The pain of the truth of life will be suffered by someone. What we do not bear consciously ourselves will be borne by others, perhaps over long generations. Pain that is not felt, experienced, and appropriately expressed, will be passed along, and the world will suffer from our refusal to suffer our portion of what must be suffered. We always increase the corporate pain level in the lives of those around us when we refuse to bear our personal pain consciously.

But, we cannot bear it all the time, and we cannot bear it alone. We have to have relief at regular intervals. No one can stare down reality. We step in and step out to restore our souls and have what it takes to step back in and do what must be done. Stepping out is one of the things that must be done, but there is a fundamental difference between stepping away from reality to nourish, nurture, and restore our souls, and running to the safety of Mama’s lap.

There is more to us than we can imagine. We are always giving up on ourselves. We don’t know who we are or what we are capable of, but we think there is nothing to us. We think, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that, or that, or that. I couldn’t possibly survive on those terms, under those conditions. I must have my bon-bons and my telly.” The Hero, the Heroine, within doesn’t get a chance to show us what we are made of because we are always collapsing in the dust, writhing, whining, moaning, calling for Mother, saying, “Help me! Save me! Won’t somebody help me! Mama! I want my Mama!”

We all have a resilient core that is more than capable of making its way in any world. Look at where we have been—both individually and as a species. Look at what we have dealt with. Hairy Mastodons. Genghis Kahn. Life cannot give us anything that is worse than the things life has already given us. We have what it takes. It only takes trusting that we do. We are the only thing we cannot handle, and stand blocking our way by not having what it takes to trust that we have what it takes, crying for Mama.

What is the pain, the fear, the anxiety? Abandonment? Overwhelm-ment? Isolation? Exclusion? Aloneness? What is it that we think we cannot bear? Too-much-ness? Is the all-ness of life, the truth of life, too much for us? What exactly do we think growing up entails? Growing up means looking our life in the eye and saying, “Show me what you got.” Until we can do that, we are children seeking Mother’s lap. And, the hope is that we will find those who can accept us, lovingly, as we are, even as they repeat the saving mantra, “I’m not your Mother!” and exhibit its truth in their way with us over time, while we grow up and become who we are capable of being.
We cannot bear the weight of our lives without a corroborating witness, or witnesses, standing with us, knowing what we know. We cannot know what we know alone. We have to share the burden of the knowledge of the weight of our lives. Souls sustain souls. That is the work of community. It is the work of sustaining one another in the knowledge of who we are (and also are) and how things are (and also are).

It takes two or more standing together to know what we know. We cannot bear the weight of consciousness alone. We cannot see (or hear, or understand) by ourselves. And, we cannot allow one another to run, hide, deny, pretend, excuse, justify, soften, or otherwise ease the atrocity of truth. The truth goes on the table. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. And we live in light of the truth of the table. As we live, we uncover more of the truth, and put that also on the table. We are constantly adding to the truth of the table, and our lives change as truth transforms truth, and perspective shifts, and understanding deepens, and worlds expand.

The ideal community is one in which we draw one another out. Bring one another forth. Birth each other. Enlarge each other, deepen each other, expand each other’s perspective, extend each other’s conscious awareness, wake each other up, enable each other’s coming to be in the world, and help each other bear the pain of the truth of life and become increasingly whole and alive. The work of consciousness is communal to the core.

03/15/09, A Poetry Reading

Introduction
I had a poetry phase once, in which I wrote poems every day for a year. And then I quit because it seemed to me that I was a poem, and that everything I said or did was poetry, and I could no longer tell where the poem ended and I began. The more I listened to me, the more I found myself saying, “You’re talking poetically again! Cut it out!” But, I could only shrug and say back, “You cut it out—if you can!” Over time we gave into it and allowed ourselves to splash around uncensored in poetic shallows, occasionally getting in over our heads, sometimes swimming in the waves, or floating with the current, laughing.

Mama
She wouldn’t actually have to be Mama. Mama wasn’t Mama. Not the Mama I have in mind. Not the Mama who would take care of me the way I want to be taken care of. So, any reasonable facsimile would do. She could wear a wig, a badly fitting wig, and heavy make up, and have on a red dress cut down to here, and combat boots. Combat boots would be good. You wouldn’t want a Mama who wouldn’t go to war for you. And bangle bracelets, and a turquoise broach. And, she could lie. Who cares. “I’m your Mama.” I’d buy it. For a while. I get desperate sometimes. Don’t you?

Explanation
Lemme ’splane this to you. We are fragmented, splintered, disjointed and ache to be whole, centered, stabilized, safe and secure. We seek a grounding connection with the core of being. Something to help us make sense of things and find the way forward through all that is in our way. The deck appears, more often than not, to be stacked against us. Or, if you would prefer a different metaphor, the deck is always pitching and rolling. No one can stand upright, and we’re always in danger of being lost at sea. There are times when it is difficult to imagine that anything, or anyone (including ourselves), is on our side, has our best interest at heart, and stands ready to help us toward that which is good. During these times, we have to be glad it isn’t worse yet, and do what is ours to do amid circumstances that come and go according to forces that don’t even know our name.

On Our Own
We are on our own in this place, and make it as well as we do on the strength of our associations and friendships and the luck of the draw. Genghis Kahn, or the US Cavalry, is always just over the hill, and Hitler is waiting in the wings, and we deal with them like we deal with the rest of it, by getting out of the way and making the best of it to the extent that we are able. We think we have a leg up until the phone rings with the lab report, then the structure that held our world together collapses and we are left with making the best of it, to the extent that we are able.

Lab Report
We are never more than one lab report away from the complete loss of life as we have known it, the demolition of our world and all it’s shiny structures. Then what? The task is always the same: Do the best we can with what we have to work with, and do it with as much grace and compassion and good humor as we can muster. We do that by what we tell ourselves, by what we say, about the present experience of our lives. The task is always the same: we are to interpret experience in ways that do not deny experience but, at the same time, enable life. If we get that down, we have it made, as much as we can have it made. That’s as grounded as it gets.

Grounded
The bad news about being grounded is that the core itself is not grounded! The core is a heaving swirl of possibility, a rolling boil of potential. No wonder the deck is pitching and rolling! We are riding breaking waves of chaos, looking for solid ground! This doesn’t mean we are at the mercy of a mad, mad world. It means we have the responsibility of providing the stability and structure we seek for our lives. We are the organizing principle of existence. We shape our lives according to our reading of what needs to happen and what can happen within the context and circumstances of our living. We work out the details. We make the compromises. We produce the foundation, create the form, provide the meaning we long to have. We make life livable via the perspective we adopt riding the waves churned up by the vital, dynamic core of being.

Hermeneutics
We cannot look for steady—we provide steady! We are the source of steady! We are the basis of the constancy, the consistency we seek! We bring sanity to life in the world. We are the stabilizing influences in our lives. If we internalize the outer pandemonium, we become the bull—the wave—we are riding and go over into madness, disintegrating beyond reconstitution. The work of integration is the work of interpretation, translation—the work of hermeneutics (Hermes was the messenger of the gods. His work is our work. We bring the messages “of the gods,” of our life experience, to ourselves in a way that makes sense of the experience and enables life in the face of it. We interpret, translate, experience so as to make life possible in the midst of experience. The trick is to do that truthfully).

The Power of Meaning
We have the power of meaning, the power of making meaning, the power of perception, the power of looking meaningfully at our lives, the power of ascribing meaning to our lives, the power of finding meaning in our lives. We have to learn how to use our power to see, and hear, and understand in meaningful ways, in ways that enable us to live well in the time left for living.

The Power of Interpretation
Who says what the dream means? We do. Get it? Therein lies everything. We say what our experience of the dream means. We say what our experience of our life means. We say what life means. We hold the power of interpretation, of translation. We make sense of it all. And we know when we are right, and when we are wrong, when we are on the beam and when we are off.

Trusting the Internal Guide
What is this “beam-knowing”? This sense of rightness? What do we know and how do we know it? Enter the mystery. We are guided by our sense of the rightness of our movement, of our resonating with the direction we are taking, but where that comes from, we do not know. Trust it. Unknowing. That’s the task. And, if it leads you to a dead end, or into the abyss, trust it to lead you out of the abyss, beyond the dead end.

Spin Doctors
Our work is the work of finding meaning in experience, of making experience meaningful by way of interpretation. We spin experience to produce the steadiness we seek. We are the source of stability, the stabilizing influence, bringing life to life in our lives. And, of course, we can tell ourselves what we want to hear. Which is to avoid the work of interpretation and settle for denial and pretense. We have to interpret experience, not deny experience. That’s the challenge of integration, of integrating experience truthfully into our lives.

We Are What We Seek
We take this and make that. We are Alchemists, making gold out of lead, transforming common experience into the elixir of life. We are what we seek. We are the Philosopher’s Stone, the Universal Solvent, producing the aqua vitae, the water of life, from ordinary, hum-drum, events and from the crushing, devastating disruptions of life as we know it. We do that through the magic of interpretation and resonating with the rightness of the spin we give to experience.

The Rule of Life
The rule of life is follow the resonance. Go with what resonates with you. With what moves you. Follow the movement. Go with the flow. Not with the flow of life around you, but with the internal flow making contact with something, someone, in your environment. With the flow of energy connecting you with some aspect of the external world of normal, apparent, reality. And be open to the possibilities, aware of the choices that are yours to make.

Questions Worth Our While
We are after a sense of rightness about our lives. What has to be changed for us to feel right about the way we are living, about what we are thinking, feeling, believing, doing, wanting, having, being… ? Where is the incongruity most pronounced? Where do we feel most inauthentic, disingenuous? Where are we ignoring the voice of opposition within—the voice of what is opposed to our living the way we are living, to doing what we are doing, to the way we are being in the world? What price are we paying to deny how it is with us, to pretend that things are “just fine” with us, to embrace the false sense of rightness that characterizes our lives? Faking some things keeps us from making anything of ourselves, of our lives, of our one shot at being alive. What are we not seeing, not noticing, in order to feel good about our lives? What are we not willing to give up in order to feel right about our lives?

To Know Is to Be Afraid
People who wonder what they are to do with their lives know. We all know, on some level, and are afraid. We are afraid of what it might mean to us to know what we know, and we cannot conceive of paying the price of living the way we would have to live to feel right about our lives. So, we don’t let ourselves know what we know, and wail loudly saying, “Oh, if I only knew what to do with my life!”

Courage
It isn’t knowledge that we lack. It is courage. We lack the courage to live the way we have to live in order to feel right about our lives. We all know how we should be living, what we should be doing with our lives. We just can’t imagine doing that and paying the bills—the bills we want to pay—the bills for the things we don’t need to live the life we should be living, but want, and think we need. We try to hang onto the life we want to live, and that’s the problem. We would have to pay different bills to live the way we have to live in order to feel right about our lives, and that’s the problem.

The Table.
Facing the problem is the first step toward living the way we have to live in order to feel right about our lives. The journey consists of putting truth on the table. We have to put the truth on the table. All the truth. The truth in all of its contradictory, mutually exclusive, convoluted, contrary, discrepant, discordant, dissonant, cacophonic, glory. Including, be sure you don’t forget this part, the truth of ourselves. The truth of who we are, and also are.

True Human-Being-Hood
When we get it all on the table—every last bit of it—we have to step back from the table, walk around it, observe it, nod, and say, “Yes. That is so. And that is also so. And that is so as well. All of it is so. That, too. That, too.” And, let it be because it is. And, then we have to decide what we are going to do—what’s next, what’s the next step to take—based on our knowledge of the truth on the table. If you can do that, you have what it takes to be a True Human Being, but you won’t take much pleasure in that achievement, because you know the price of True Human Being-hood.

Living in Light of Truth
The work of the rest of our lives is learning to put the truth of ourselves, the truth of our lives, the truth of life, on the table and live in light of it. This is how it is. What are we going to do with it, about it? How shall we live in the knowledge of the truth that is on the table? To what extent are the lives we are living designed to help us avoid/deny the truth of our lives? To what extent are they designed to acknowledge and serve that truth? The challenge is to wake up and to bear the burden of being awake. To see and not look away. To breathe, knowing the truth. And to live (knowing the truth) in ways that bring life to life there, amid the truth of life as it is.

03/08/09, Optimizing Our Lives

We are here to optimize our lives. Primarily, this means learning to trust ourselves, our own sense of what is right and what needs to be. It also means learning to nourish our souls and express the truth of our deeper Self (that which is deepest, truest, and best about us). It means learning to see, and hear, and understand—to know what is truly important and do it.

There are two tables. On one table we are asked to put our ideas about the way things are, the way we think things are. On the other table, we are asked to put the way things are. Then, we are asked to live in light of the truth of both tables. That is all there is to it.

Our perception of truth keeps us from perceiving the truth. We come into the room (any room, every room) with ideas about how things are, about the structure of reality, about what is in control of our lives and how we can manipulate the controlling forces by giving them what they want. If we figure out the hoops to jump through in the proper sequence in the right frame of mind (we have to be true believers, you know), then the gods, or God, or the stars, or the Universe, will smile upon us and life will be, finally, grand.

We think it’s all about our arranging grand lives. Life is pretty stinky. And, if it is not stinky yet for us, it is stinky for a lot of people and we want to guard against the stink settling in on us. We want to avoid the bad and amass the good, and so the search for the right hoops to jump through, and the right steps to take in the right se-quence, and the right recipe to follow to the life of our dreams, and if not quite our dreams, at least close enough.

So, we come into this room, into every room, with ideas. Motives. Agendas. Interests. We come into the room with something in mind. You know what you want to hear. You know what I’m supposed to say. And that limits what can go on here. There should be a sign for us to check our baggage at the door. Wouldn’t that be nice? Com-ing in here with no baggage. Completely open. Free to ask any question. Free to examine all of our ideas, motives, agendas, and interests. Free to put everything we think about reality on the table, and take everything off the table, and bring back to the table only those things that are truly helpful in growing up, waking up, seeing, hearing, and understanding, as those who are increasingly awake, aware, and alive. Wouldn’t that be something?

Where do we get the idea that our personal comfort is the idea, or that we know what to want? What is there really beyond living knowingly with compassion? Beyond doing unto others as we would have them do unto us? Beyond bearing the cross of realization, awareness? Beyond living in the searing tension between how things are and how things ought to be and working endlessly there to make things more like they ought to be than they are for all people, for everyone, even the least of our brothers and sisters around the world? And, what do we need for that work beyond clarity and courage? Yet, we look for what? Not for clarity and courage, but for assistance from the gods, or God, or the stars, or the Universe in avoiding the bad and amassing the good for ourselves and those we love alone, and if there is any extra good left over that we don’t need, perhaps it will trickle down to the poor masses who have failed to please the powers. We have a long way to go. And it begins with putting what we think about how things are on the table.

We have to step back from our seeing in order to see. But, isn’t that the trick, though? Seeing how we see things is the first thing to see. When we see, we see that the way we see things is just the way we see things, and it has no necessary connection with the way things are. What are the statements we call truth? The things we believe to be valid? We have to put them on the table, and step back from the table, and consider the table and the things on the table. And the things on the other table.

We have to square ourselves with who we are and who we also are, and how it is with us. What are all the things that are true about us and our lives? These are the facts of life. Put them on the other table. The work of wholeness is the work of recognizing the truth of who we are and who we also are, and how it is with us (the truth of all the things that are true about us), and living in the light of that truth as we make our choices in the time left for living.

It is difficult to face the truth of ourselves and it is difficult to bring forth the truth of ourselves within the truth of our lives. It doesn’t get easy. If you are looking for easy, don’t wake up! Dying is easy. Living is hard. The disparity, discrepancy, between how things are and how things ought to be will take your breath away, and not give it back. We cannot breathe knowing the truth. The first task is breathing, knowing the truth.

What nurtures, nourishes our soul? Expresses, exhibits our Self? We have to do more of those things. We have to live to nourish our soul and express our Self. And the two are likely to be one. We have to be true to our-selves within the context and circumstances, terms and conditions, of our lives. That’s where we run into trouble. We have competing, contradictory, mutually exclusive truths at work here. We are torn within with conflicting mo-tives and agendas, and we are faced with the impossibility of living in the world, on the world’s terms, in light of the best we find within.

We also have to bear the contradiction between what we experience as true and what we have been told is true. We have to bear the weight of our experience without the comforting buffer of what we have been told is true. Reality is a hard pill to swallow. The Way is about consciously bearing the tension between who we are, and who we also are, and what is required by, and allowed in, the context and circumstances of our lives. We have to walk slowly along that way, knowingly, with compassion, every step along the way. It is amazing how difficult this is. Dying is easy. Living is hard.

There is a price to be paid for waking up. It’s the price of a new pair of shoes. Jim Hollis is always quoting Carl Jung’s statement, “We walk in shoes that are too small.” By that he means that we live lives that are too small. He means that as people we are too small. We are small people who need to become large. Who need to grow up. We grow up by waking up. We wake up by seeing, hearing, and understanding how things are with us. We wake up by living consciously, by being conscious, being aware, of the life we are living, and of the lives we are not living. We wake up by being attentive to, paying attention to, and aligning ourselves with what Jim Hollis calls “the soul’s summons.” But to live like this is the most subversive life imaginable. This is a problem.

The problem is that the life our soul would have us live is not the life the culture, and our parents, and our peers, and anyone who matters in our life, including us, would have us live. From the beginning it has been this way. In the old story about the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve ignored the life their soul had in mind in favor of that which “was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise (but not really)” (Gen. 3:6). And, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus exemplifies the struggle of those who follow their soul’s leanings when he prays, “Not my will, but thine, be done!” (Mark 14:36).

This is the price we pay in waking up, in living between the life soul would have us live and the life we wish we could live—the life the culture wishes for us to live—and choosing to go with soul more often than not. Our task is to nourish soul, to express the Self’s true desires, within the terms and conditions of our lives.

Waking up means waking up to the need to be responsible for our own lives. It means being uncomfortable, and disturbed, and squaring up to the way things are (and the way things also are), and finding our way, over, un-der, around and through the terms and conditions, context and circumstances of our living to the deep truth of our-selves, in order to relish and express the wonder of who we are, and be alive in the time left for living.

“The facts” resist us, oppose us, enlarge us, deepen us, expand us, and grow us up as they challenge us to be who we are within “the terms and conditions, context and circumstances of our lives.” We are bigger, better, people for having lived our lives with an eye on “the facts” and an eye out for our own hearts (which is one of the facts) serving the interests of our souls (still more facts) within the limitations and restrictions of space and time.

We have to adjust ourselves to the realities of our lives. That’s the work of maturity, of consciousness, and grace. The world is not how we would have it. Life is not lived on our terms. We have to square ourselves with “the facts,” all of them, internal and external, and live in and around them, finding ways to express the contrary truths of our core values within “the terms and conditions, context and circumstances of our lives.” To be awake and alive we have to consciously bear the pain of living, and live as fully as we are able within “the terms and conditions, context and circumstances of our lives.” That’s all there is to it. No diversion, no distraction, no denial. Life in the raw. Life on life’s terms. Without capitulation or surrender. We live with the facts of life in ways that are true to our own hearts, souls, selves. And our lives are works of art.

The work that is art is squaring ourselves with the facts governing our lives and living to bring the good to life, anyway, nevertheless, even so. It is to blow on the coals of love, joy, peace, etc. and ignite a roaring blaze of ex-ceptional worth and unaccountable value in the time left for living. Our task is to know exactly what the deal is and live as though we don’t know, or knowing, don’t care. Our task is to be an enigma, to not make sense, to be an anomaly, to stand as a stark contradiction to all that we cannot deny. To explode in a mighty burst of goodness, and generosity, and mercy, and grace. To let no opportunity to express compassion and exhibit kindness pass unseen or unseized. To live as life should be lived. Without worrying about the outcome, or thinking things are invalid if they don’t last. Fireworks don’t last. No one ever boos and hisses at fireworks. Live like fireworks. Make them oou and ahh at your passing. And, don’t forget to wink on your way out, as though you know something.

03/01/09, Process, not Programs!

I’m here to change the way you think (and you, of course, are here to change the way I think). Now you were all happy when I was talking about being here to change the way the church of our experience thinks. Change the way they think, sure, let’s do it. We can all clamor aboard that wagon. But, I’ve “quit preaching and gone to meddling” when I talk about changing the way you think. But, that’s the deal. You don’t think right. I have to change it.

Here’s what I mean. Even though you’ve had it with the church of our experience, that’s the only model of church you can envision. You don’t even want to use the word church when you think about what we are doing here. Never mind that the word church, ecclesia, simply means gathering (or “gathering of those summoned”). Like a gathering of sojourners. There is nothing churchy about the word church except by way of what goes on in your heads. I have to change what goes on in there. I have to change your thinking.

I have to change your thinking about what we are doing here. You have the old model of church in your heads, and you think what we do here has to be based on that. Particularly, you’re thinking of programming, and programs, and what we do to perpetuate ourselves and our thinking through the long generations of those that will follow us. We have to know what we stand for, you know. And be able to teach it to others. And design programs, curriculum and study guides, in order to convey what we want them to know and how we want them to think. I have to change your thinking about that. We want them to think what they think. I want you to think what you think. And, I have to change your thinking about what you think to get you to think what you think.

That’s beautiful, isn’t it. Contradiction. Paradox. These are the things life is made of. Learn to love them. Embrace them. Relish them. Delight in them. I have to change what you think about your thinking in order to get you to think what you think. Where are you going to go to beat that?

There is no program to tell you how to think. The only thing to tell you is think what you think consciously, with awareness. You think about your thinking when you say what you are thinking in the company of those who receive what you have to say without debate or argument (which only solidifies us in our thinking by forcing us to defend, excuse, justify and explain what we think) but with acceptance that seeks clarification, deepening, by pushing you to think about your thinking and asks you questions (like a good clearness committee) to get you going. There is no program. There is only intently interested, and hence interesting, conversation. There is no program, there are only people listening carefully to one another. And bringing to light the contradictions, the paradoxes, in what they hear us saying.

Process Not Programs. Could be a bumper sticker. We are engaged in creating a process, an atmosphere, an environment in which and through which we might grow up. No kidding. That’s all there is. Growing up. Becoming mature. Waking up. Being aware. Being conscious.

Karen Najarian is a breast cancer survivor who has a solid grip on the kind of attitude we are developing here. She says, “Get a pick and a shovel (and maybe a camera) and dig deeper into your life. THAT's real medicine. John Muir said it best: ‘Between every two pine trees lies a door to a new life.’” You can’t be clearer about what we are about than that. Digging deeper into your life. How deep can you go? We’ll never get to the bottom of it. There is enough life there for each of us to keep us busy for the rest of it, even if we work hard at digging deeper every day. We are here to help each other dig deeper into our lives.

We all drink the same water, but we dig our own wells. You can think of life as the water we drink, or God, or The Mystery… It can be all of these things, and other things, all things. But we can’t drink someone else’s water. We have to dig our own wells. Thelma Foster says, “Each generation has to come to its own understanding of God.” And K Misenheimer says, “God doesn’t have any grandchildren.” They are both saying that we have to dig our own wells, by digging deeper into our own lives.

There is no program to tell us about God, or life, or The Mystery. No shortcuts. No doctrine. No list of things to believe. No creed or catechism to memorize. No sacred book to study forever. “Get a pick and a shovel (and maybe a camera) and dig deeper into your life.”

Where do we start digging? Anywhere, really. One good place is by looking in a mirror. We can’t wake up without facing ourselves. When we wake up, we wake up to ourselves, to who we are and how it is with us. To who we also are and how it also is with us. Where’re you going to start? How about with your feelings, your moods, your reactions to the events and circumstances of your life?

In the presence of any strong feeling, emotional response/reaction, to our environment, we have to ask, af-ter James Hollis, “Where have I been here before in my life?” “This reminds me of what?” “This triggers what in me?” “What experiences does this stir in me?” “What am I defending myself against here?” Everything wakes us up to something else. The web of connections is vast within. Our responses to the events and circumstances of our lives are memories stirring. Our reactions are wounds that still need healing. Remembering is healing. Knowing is healing. Consciousness is Gilead’s balm for the soul. But our fear is great before the door closed to pain.

When you are stunned by life into not being able to breathe, see if I have this right. Life just planted a big juicy wet one smack on your kisser. Is that it? And winked? And told you there was more where that came from? When you can't breathe, it's life on your chest, laughing. It's great, isn't it? Where would you go to beat it? Who coulda thought this up?

There is nothing like a healthy dose of reality to wake us up. Disturbance clarifies. It’s the only thing that does. Discomfort is the prelude to, and the price of, growth. Think the seed is happy to become a plant? It’s death. Death to the seed is life to the plant. And, look what happens to the caterpillar. Who is in charge here? Who’s idea is this, anyway? Of course, we are the ones who oppose us. We oppose ourselves. As Walt Kelly observed, “We have met the enemy and it is us!”
We cannot run from our fear, from our anxiety, and wake up. We have to wrestle with the angel of death if we hope to be alive. The blessing is life, you know. If we are going to dig deeper into our lives, we are going to have to face the thing, the things, of which we are most afraid. Walk right up to it and plant a big juicy wet one on its kisser and wink. And say, “There’s more where that came from, Sweetie.”

What I’m saying here is that the conscious recognition of feelings—emotional responses to the experience of life—and the concomitant reflection, exploration, acceptance, experience and appropriate expression of them is the path to True Human Being-hood. It’s called bearing the full impact of life in the world. We can’t do it alone. We have to share the load, grieve, cry, laugh and rejoice together. Human Being-hood is a participation sport. We cannot be True Human Beings by ourselves.

This is where the church as the right kind of community comes in. A gathering of those summoned by the task of life. A gathering of sojourners. A gathering of those who have taken up the work of soul, the work of digging deeper into our own lives, the work of becoming awake, aware, and alive, the work of growing up, waking up, being conscious, and present for the good of one another in the moment of our living. We help one another wake up, grow up, see, hear, and understand.

Look at everything in your experience as a Rube Goldberg device that your soul has put together to wake you up. Everything that has happened, and is happening, and will happen is as it is to wake you up. To shake you awake. To stir you to life. So that you might be consciously alive in the time left for living. It’s all about you. Your life is the Truman Show, and the real point is Truman leaving the show, leaving his life, and stepping courageously into his life. You are Truman. So am I. Here’s to us.

We cannot live without trusting ourselves to ourselves, to our lives, to one another. Yet, all is not worthy of our trust. Part of the task of life is learning who is trustworthy and who is not. And, the learning is not intellectual, logical, rational. The learning is spiritual, of the soul. We learn to wake up, to be aware, to be conscious, and to lis-ten to what resonates with us and to trust ourselves to that knowing. And even when it proves to be not trustwor-thy, we don’t see that as evidence of the untrustworthiness of the way of resonation, but trust it to get us out of the situation it got us into. We trust ourselves to the way of resonation, to the way of awareness, to the way of consciousness, all the way to the finish line.

And, we have to come to terms with the facts that limit our lives. Life will not be like we want it to be. Certainly not for long. What are we going to do about that? Dance with it! Do what we can with it! Wake up to it! Square up to it! Live with it! Live in and around it! That’s part of the work of being alive.

Our lives may never be what we wish they were. If we can come to terms with that, make our peace with that, we have it made. To the extent that we can have it made. We cannot do much about the things that matter, but we must do what we can. We must do what can be done. We must live in the service of the best we can imagine within the terms and conditions, context and circumstances of our lives. We cannot acquiesce to death before we die. Everything depends upon our being alive in the service of the best we can imagine in the time left for living.

The point is to be as awake as we can be. The point isn’t to build pyramids or change the world. The point is to be as awake as we can be. That’ll change the world.

Prayers of Confession, Guilt without Shame

James Hollis has written (In Swamplands of the Soul, New Life in Dismal Places), “To say that I have erred, that I am guilty of bad choices and their hurtful consequences, is not only the beginning of wisdom, but the only path that can ultimately lead to release.” Toward that end, I offer these prayers of confession, as a way of helping make conscious what is true with us all.

01. We try figure it out, make sense of it, comprehend it, and know what’s going on. The way we see it, once we understand how things work, we can work them to our advantage. That’s how it is with everything else in our lives. The Government makes regulations to restrict our behavior and we figure ways to comply with the regulations without changing our behavior. It’s called “beating the system,” and it’s what we do best. But Life is a tough system to beat because nothing works the same way twice. Once we think we “get it,” and devise a system to work the system to our advantage, something comes along to upset our neat formula and remind us that we can’t beat “the house.” In trying to beat the house, we show that we do not understand that we are here to serve and not be served, to give and not receive, to take up our cross and follow the one who is Christ by responding to what is needed in the moment with what we have to offer to the moment. And so, we pray that we might be conscious of what has need of us, and how we might best live in serving a good that is more than our good. Amen! May it be so!

02. We want to grow spiritually, develop our capacity for compassion and grace, deepen our awareness of what needs to be done and do it, without giving up anything on the rest of our schedule. We want to become whole without surrendering our interests or involvements in any of the areas that are important to us. We want to be wise without changing the way we live. We want the comforting, stabilizing, reality of an abiding relationship with Holy Presence, without taking up the task of relationship, doing the work of relationship, making the effort relationship requires—in every moment for the rest of our lives. We seek guidance, but don’t want to do anything differently or be inconvenienced in any way. And we pray for the wherewithal to step beyond the childish orientation of our youth, that we might give way, stand aside, relinquish our agenda, our terms, our ideas of how our lives ought to be, and understand what it means to say, “Not my will, but thine, be done”!

03. We live to have things our way—to the exclusion of every other way. Compromise and concession are terms we avoid at all costs. Getting what we want is the whole point of our lives. It is fine for others to have their needs met, just not at the expense of our own. Sacrificing our goals, aims, purposes, interests and desires for the sake of someone else’s is an idea whose time has not yet come. We have a personal investment in Our Way, and we cannot imagine why we should hand over our hopes and dreams in deference to other hopes and dreams. Yet, in refusing to submit to that which has need of us, we serve values which declare the good of the part over the good of the whole, and fail to recognize a good greater than our good. And so, we pray for vision, wisdom, and compassion required to set self aside in the service of that which truly ought to be, that everyone might be blessed by our presence and the boon might belong to all.

04. We follow the rules to keep from taking chances. We do what we are supposed to do to evade the risk of personal responsibility. We believe what we are told to believe want to be told what we should believe and how we should think to avoid the embarrassment of being wrong about what to think and believe. We have to save face even if it means losing ourselves! We have to look like everyone else even if it means ignoring the rhythms of our own heart and discounting the voice of our own soul. We cannot trust the authority of our own sense of direction, of our own sense of right and wrong, of our own sense of what fits, and what belongs, and what is good, and true, and beautiful. We have to look to see how we must look, and wait to be told what to do. And, in this, we have failed to be true to the truth within, and have not been courageous in the service of creativity and intuition. And so, we pray for vision, wisdom, and compassion required to set self aside in the service of that which truly ought to be, that everyone might be blessed by our presence and the boon might belong to all.

02/22/09, Whose Life Is It?

“What do you have to look forward to without marriage in your future?” I asked a would-be bride in a dream who had just cancelled her wedding. I didn’t hear her answer. The dream shifted. The bride went off to change clothes. An old man mouthed something to me but the background noise of people leaving the hotel (now that there was not going to be a wedding) drowned him out. And I’m left with the idea that the question is more important than the answer.

We find our own answers. What do we have to look forward to without marriage in our future? For “mar-riage” we have to substitute “what we have been working for, living for, intending with our lives up to this point.” What is a future without that in it? We are brides who have cancelled the wedding when we turn away from the life of our dreams waiting on us at the altar and we step into our own lives, the lives that have their fingers crossed, hoping that we won’t marry and settle for an existence of routine conventionality that is death dressed up in life-like costumes. We have life to look forward to. And, who knows what form, what shape, it will take? Bring it on! Hallelujah! Amen!

That’s the message of the dream. The task is to incorporate it into our lives. To live the dream that is actu-ally a dream, and not our dream for our lives. Always the choice is between the life that is ours to live and the life we want to live, between what is being asked of us and what we want to be given, between the ends we are called to serve and the goals we aspire to achieve. The problem is that we are at odds with our soul about how our life is to be lived. Whose life is it? Who is in charge here? We waste a lot of time understanding and coming to terms with who is in charge. In all of this, the soul’s strategy for waking us up is simple: “Okay. Do it your way.”

In doing it our way, we keep trying to arrange life as we want it to be, while the life that is waiting to be lived waits for us to wake up to the emptiness of all our wanting and get with the business of being alive in the time left for living. The clock’s ticking and we’re burning daylight building sheds to store our stuff.

We keep ourselves from being who we are with our ideas about who we want to be. We have to develop our awareness to the point of consciously standing between who we are and who we also are and choosing who we are going to be, here, now, in this moment of our living. And, do it again in the next moment, and all the other mo-ments. There is no quick fix for the division within. Taking the next step consciously will eventually lead us to the finish line, if we live long enough.

Consciousness is the fastest horse to the finish line. The finish line is freedom, maturity, grace, beauty, truth, peace, compassion, Buddha-hood, Christ-hood, Self-hood, True Human Being-Hood, You. The finish line is you coming home to you, to “the face that was yours before you were born.” We come alive by being awake and aware. Conscious. Consciousness is the final solution.

Consciousness is our only tool in the work of the reclamation of our lives. Everything speaks to those with ears to hear. The path is always opening before those with eyes to see. This is not difficult. It is only a matter of knowing what we know, and knowing what is to be known. Wake up! That’s all there is to it. It’s all right there, be-fore us, jumping up and down, waving it’s little hands, whistling, cart wheeling, waiting to be seen. We only have to look to see that it is so. Does the fish know how to swim? There you are. What are you worried about?

The good news is that we cannot give ourselves—or be given—anything that we cannot use in the reclama-tion of ourselves. Every experience goes into the production of us, into the process of bringing our soul to life in the world. It’s all a part of the path. We don’t have to be right. We learn as much from our failures as from our suc-cesses. What is better—to gain or to lose? Nothing is wasted in the work of aligning ourselves with the soul’s idea of the life we are here to live. Of course, if we refuse to wake up and get to work, the whole thing is wasted, but, even then, our example isn’t wasted on those who live to not be like us. Without us, where would they be? So, even in wasting our lives, we aren’t wasted. I don’t think a day goes by when I fail to remember my grandfather, drinking himself to death, hating everybody. Thanks, Grandpa. I’m not like you again today. May it always be so!

When we are genuinely, authentically, being who we are, that’s enough. The world will be blessed. The boon belongs to all, and the boon blesses all when the treasure is content to be the treasure without aspiring to more than being the treasure. What treasure wanted something for being the treasure? When we find the pearl of great price, we sell everything in order to possess it, but what does the pearl get out of the deal? WE are the pearl, don’t you see? There is nothing more for us to want, or desire, or strive for, or have. We are stupid pearls who don’t understand our own value, and keep wishing for something valuable to transform our lives and make all things good. We are the transformation we seek. We make all things good. Just by being truly who we are. Just by being true to who we are. All a pearl has to be is a pearl.

We only have to do what is ours to do until we die. If we don’t do what is ours to do because we are afraid we might die if we do, we just die sooner by not doing what is ours to do. If we aren’t going to do what is ours to do, we may as well be dead. Being dead to what is ours to do is being deader than dead. And that death is worse by far than dying in the service of what is ours to do. So what if we live to be 150 years old and never do what is ours to do? All we can hope for is doing what is ours to do until we die. It doesn’t matter how long we live. It matters how well we do what is ours to do.

“Nobody gets in to see the Wizard! Not Nobody! Not Nohow!” We read the phrase and think that the Wiz-ard has sealed himself, has sealed herself, off from the masses, safe from the world on the other side of the curtain. But the statement raises the question, “Who has locked the Wizard away?” Is the Wizard in self-imposed exile, or is something else going on? The story of the Wizard of Oz isn’t about the Wizard of Oz, but the Wizard of All. Dorothy, and the Lion, the Tin Man and the Straw Man, all discovered their own personal Wizard Within along the Yellow Brick Road. They woke up, as from a dream, to find themselves, and began to trust their own innate ability to dis-cern the right path and choose it, and find their way home—home being not where they came from, but where they were going.

Conundrums and contradictions are everywhere. On the one hand, We think life consists of enjoyable pass times. Passing the time in comfortable surroundings, in delightful ways. Golf and cocktail parties. Concerts and art galleries. A six-pack and a football game. We think life is about walking around looking at life—going to movies, watching someone else live, watching actors act the part of someone else living.

And, on the other hand, we want to relieve ourselves of the anxiety and discomfort of not knowing what to do by doing something, anything, now. Any action, in our view, is better than no action at all. We do not wait. We do not watch. We do not reflect. We do not listen. We act. All the heroes are Action Heroes. Not one of them ever sits in a rocking chair drinking a cup of coffee looking out the window. Action is a way of distracting ourselves from the deeper task of waiting to see what needs to be done, what needs us to do it.

The work is always watching and waiting. We wait for an opening. We cannot hurry growth, or see beyond the current limits of our seeing, or understand more than we are capable of comprehending. We always think we are more ready than we are for the next thing. The next thing comes in its own time, in its own way. Our place is to wait and watch, and follow the white rabbit when it appears. The trouble with this plan is no one knows where we are going, not even the white rabbit! You can’t beat this for a ride! We make it up as we go! Are you coming or not?

We make it up as we go because there are NO BLACK FOOTPRINTS! That’s the rule for life, living, being alive. There is no plan, no map, no doctrine, no dogma, no recipe, no agenda, no profile, no prototype, no model, no replication, no way to do it. And yet, it is done, everywhere, all the time, by everybody who listens and hears, looks and sees, and brings forth who she, who he, is within the terms and conditions, context and circumstances of her, of his, life.

And we find the way together. But not too much together. This is the tricky part. We are on our own and we can’t do it alone. God can’t do it alone! Should be a bumper sticker. Nobody can do it alone. We all need one another to encourage, sustain, resource our lives, to help us make it through the night. And the day following. And the next night… God needs us, we need God, or the gods, however you imagine divinity, the Mystery, That Which Knows, the Dynamic Core/Center of Life and Being... Ah, and what is it to be done? Life! Life is to be done. Within the terms and conditions, context and circumstances, of this world of physical, concrete, normal, apparent, reality. And we, like God, are on our own in the doing of life, and we can’t do Life alone. No one can. Another beautiful little conundrum, don’t you think? Here comes another one.

What is the good we call good? The trouble with the good, of course, is that it is also bad. There is a down-side to the upside. Which can fool us. The good is tricky that way. We have to be onto it, and do it, for better and for worse. We could also not worry about it, and do the bad, which is also good, on some level, and force good to come out of hiding by slinging bad around. But, that’s too easy, and no fun. How many bad guys enjoy themselves? They are always on the run, hiding, denying, pretending. No bad guy was ever alive. You could look it up. To be alive, you have to pay the price of waking up and doing good, even if it is also bad. You have to trust me in this.

02/15/09, The Price of Being Alive

If we aren’t depressed, we either are not paying attention or, we are in denial. We have to be depressed to have a chance. Insomniantic (I made that word up) depression is caused by our inability to remain asleep in our lives, which is different from biological depression and situational depression brought on by loss and life events. If we are suffering from insomniantic depression, we are either not quite awake but know, on some level, that we need to be, or we are waking up and don’t want to. We have to face our depression and let it be, because it is. We can’t talk ourselves out of being depressed. We can only wake up and bear the pain. That’s the price of being alive. And, that’s depressing.

One way of squaring up to the depression that comes with waking up, is to tell ourselves, “Of course, you don’t want to wake up. Why would you? Who would? It’s so much more blissful and serene to be there, safely secure in Mother’s arms (Not our biological mother, who never was the mother we wanted her to be, but the Ideal Mother of the world of happy fantasy, who takes care of us the way we want to be taken care of, or would, if we could only find her), dreaming of roses, rainbows and white picket fences. Who would leave Mother’s lap to grow up and make her, make his, own way in the world? Hush, little baby, go back to sleep. If you can.”

Another way—and my personal favorite—of dealing with the depression that comes with waking up is by bellowing loudly from time to time (a crowded elevator is a great place), “Mamma! I want my Mamma!” (Not our biological mother, who never was the mother we wanted her to be, but the Ideal Mother of the world of happy fan-tasy, who takes care of us the way we want to be taken care of, or would if we could only find her). I don’t hate anything quite like I hate the idea of having to take care of myself, and deal with my own problems, and do what needs to be done in every moment of every day for the rest of my life. “Mamma! I want my Mamma!”

There are no new problems and no new solutions. All the problems and solutions are forever old. We don’t have enough of the right kind of help, and something is always preventing us from having our way. In a perfect world, everyone would mother me. Of course, you see the problem. All of my potential mothers want to be mothered themselves. And, this is not a new problem. Old as the ages. The solutions are, too: We can have a tantrum and hope to be mothered the way we want to be mothered, or we can sulk and pout the world into mothering us properly, or we can cry and wail until the right mother comes along, or we can sink into motherless depression in pro-test and rebellion and hope that our suffering will be duly noted and tended to. The final solution, of course, is that we can grow up, but who in his or her “right mind” would opt for that one? That’s the one we put off until we have no choice.

All of our real problems are completely irrational and absolutely real. Hopelessness, despair, anguish, depression—anyone can give us perfectly valid reasons not to be any of these things. “You don’t have it nearly as bad as some people. Stop complaining until you are as bad off as they are!” We can agree with the logic and admit that we wouldn’t trade with them, but our problem with life doesn’t disappear just because it’s been invalidated. “Reason can’t uproot what reason didn’t plant,” goes the old saying. We cannot think our way out of the deep ruts and the dark woods. The quickest exit is to bellow loudly: “Mamma! I want my Mamma!” (Not our biological mother, who never was the mother we wanted her to be, but the Ideal Mother of the world of happy fantasy, who takes care of us the way we want to be taken care of, or would if we could only find her). And keep it up until she comes along, or we decide to do our own mothering.

We want what we want so much that we believe we can have it. We tell ourselves, “If you wish for it, it will come” (The Law of Attraction, you know). We believe in Mother. Not our biological mother, who never was the mother we wanted her to be, but the Ideal Mother of the world of happy fantasy, who takes care of us the way we want to be taken care of, or would if we could only find her. We go to our graves, in one form or another, believing in, and waiting on, and looking for, Mother. All we ever wanted was to be mothered the way we wanted to be mothered. The spiritual journey consists of finding our way through this world without the Mother we wish we had. How’s that for the worst news in the world?

There is nothing like knowing we will not be mothered the way we want to be mothered to wake us up to the truth of how it is with us. No one is going to mother us the way we want to be mothered. No one CAN mother us the way we want to be mothered. Every real would-be mother falls far short of our imagined ideal, who reads our mind and brings us coffee the way we like our coffee, no, orange juice, no, oatmeal, no, a red Ferrari with a black Lab in the passenger seat, no, a Golden Retriever, no, a Honey or a Hunk… Ain’t no Mom like the Dear Old Magical Mom we wish we had. But, we resist the intrusion of that truth into our lives, and wait for Mom to come. Mom isn’t coming. The work of growing up is ours to do on our own.

Our only tool in that work is consciousness, making conscious that which is unconscious, knowing the truth about us and the world in which we live, and the worlds beyond the world in which we live. Awareness, awareness, awareness. Eyes that see, ears that hear, hearts that understand. Seeing into the heart of things and knowing how things are, and how things also are, and what needs to be done about it, and what can be done about it, and what is ours to do, and doing it. This is the path of spiritual development, whose other name is, you guessed it, Growing Up.

All the talk about growth, spiritual growth, personal growth, psychological growth, is just about growing up. There is no growth apart from growing up. We need to grow up. Tie our own shoes. Solve our own problems. Make our own choices. Find our own path. Live our own lives. And stop looking for people to take care of us. And stop living as though someone is in charge of us, overseeing us, approving or disapproving everything we do.

Consciousness recognizes the tension of opposing positions, points of view, places itself squarely within the dialectic and chooses what to do knowing the contrary impact that its choice has. Things are not good OR bad, better OR worse. They are good AND bad, better AND worse. We make our choices and live with our outcomes. For better AND worse. Which makes it very difficult to know what to do.

It is no light thing to take up the work of soul, of listening to soul, of aligning ourselves with soul. This is no lark. It is no Sunday morning exercise in which we get our inspiration for the week, so that we might feel good about the lives we are living, the goals we are serving, and step into them and do what we must to make them work like we want them to. Soul doesn’t care about what we care about. That’s the first hurdle we have to climb—the first shock to the system.

All this time we thought soul was on our side, our spiritual Mother, ready to help us be happy if we just thought the right things about God and led a moral life. The soul doesn’t care about our happiness. The soul cares about our aligning our lives with its interests and living to incarnate its values/intentions in the world, and do what it wants done. WE are the soul’s Mother!!! How’s that for the really worst news in the world? We mother ourselves, all right, but not in the way we want to be mothered—in the way our soul wants to be mothered!

We cannot draw up a profile for a soulful life. There are no black foot prints to follow. No rules to memo-rize. We live it in the moment of our living, always alert to what needs to happen now (asking soul, “What can we do for you now, honey?”), and not knowing what the next step with be or where it will take us. We hate the insecurity of not knowing what is going to happen, of not having a map, of not knowing where we are going. We like to be comfortable with predictability, and certainty, and stability—and soul is like the wind that blows where it will.

The future unfurls one step, one choice, at a time. And, if we go to sleep, and allow the last step to deter-mine the next step, and fall into a pattern, a routine, of always doing what is expected of us (or what is not expected of us), or what best serves the goals we set when we were in college, or, were set for us by our parents, or the culture, before we were born, we lock the future into some presumptive vision produced in some forgotten past to avoid the agony of deciding what to do now and smooth our path to the grave, and that path is itself a grave, which we walk with lifeless eyes, until someone mercifully buries us, and we can continue to rest in peace forever.

It’s hard enough for me to decipher the next step, to pick it out from among all the possible steps that I might take next. I may be right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, because then the task becomes that of deciding what the next step is, which, itself, may be right or wrong, and calls forth the situation of deciding what the next step is then. Intent on the situation “as it arises,” and what is being called forth there, what is needed there, and taking the next step in the unfolding of what is important and what must be done to serve it, I lose complete sight of the compilation of the steps, where they are leading, what their purpose might be. I don’t know. I don’t have time to bother with it. I have to decide what step to take here, now.

The saving grace is we don’t have to be right. We only have to let being wrong wake us up. That’s beautiful. To say we are wrong when we are wrong is as right as we need to be. Our lives will correct us all the way to the heart of truth—if we can be corrected. We don’t have to figure it out. All we have to do is listen. And take the next step. That’s the plan for the rest of our lives. Don’t have to know what you are doing. Listen and take the next step. Trust the core and take the next step. Nothing to it. And, everything rides on it. The only reason we don’t do it is that we are afraid. Who are we going to trust? Ourselves? Trusting ourselves is what got us to this point in our lives. If we continue to trust ourselves, we can only expect more of the same. But, ultimately we have no choice. We only have to wait until it is bad enough in order to have what it takes, which is nothing to lose, to trust ourselves to listen to that which is asking us to die to all that we thought was good in order to embrace the good and live.

The Frog King, or What's Wrong With Us All

It happened quite by accident deep in the night when the moon was dark and dense clouds covered the sky, and no one could see anything if they were awake that late, and looking, which the Wicked Witch Peggy of the Dismal Forest was. Of course, you couldn’t actually say she was “looking” for anything. But, she was searching with rapt concentration. The Wicked Witch Peggy was trying to find tender sprouts of Night Creeper Vine, which grows only during the darkest night of the last week of spring, and are highly desirable for a number of witchy brews and spells. Since the slightest bit of light is enough to spoil the Night Creeper Vine sprouts, you can’t look for them with lanterns or even candles—you have to sniff them out.

So, The Wicked Witch Peggy was on her hands and knees, sniffing along the floor of the forest, searching diligently for the object of her desires, when several things happened at once. She nosed into a puff ball and inhaled a solid quart of puff power; she opened her mouth to gasp and wheeze; and a frog named Gibley Dade, frantically trying to hop away from all the commotion, landed squarely in The Wicked Witch Peggy’s mouth.

The Wicked Witch Peggy gagged, and sputtered, spewed, and coughed. “BLEAATCH!!” she bellowed, sending Gibley Dade flying into the darkness. She wiped her mouth, trying to remove the thought of a frog on her tongue from her memory. It didn’t work.

She whimpered and shivered and gagged at the very idea, and ignited a small shrub with the snap of her fingers. In the light of the burning bush, she saw Gibley Dade trying to rub the feel of witch’s tongue from his memory.

“Ha!” said The Wicked Witch Peggy. “There you are! I’ll curse you forever for this, you filthy frog! May your fondest dream come true!”

Having his fondest dream come true didn’t sound like much of a curse to Gibley Dade, particularly when it was such a wonderful one. The only dream Gibley ever had was of becoming a king. He’d heard all the fairy tales, and knew it was common practice for kings and frogs to change places, and he had always thought how grand it would be for it to happen to him.

And now it had! Instantly, Gibley Dade was transformed into the handsomest king on record, any record, before or since. And Peggy disappeared with a snap and a pop and a slight wisp of smoke. Gibley was alone with himself and the glowing embers of the bush. He admired what he could about his new appearance. “This isn’t bad,” he thought.

Suddenly, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men arrived with torches, and lanterns, and bark-ing dogs. “Here he is!” they shouted. “Hooray! We’ve found King Gibley! Where have you been, Your Highness? We’ve been searching all over!”

Gibley could only shrug as they hoisted him onto his white charger and carried him away to his kingdom. They arrived at the palace to the cheers of women and the cartwheels of small children, and Gibley was ushered straight away into the banquet hall, which was overflowing with all the delicacies of the realm. “You must be famished, Your Majesty,” said Gibley’s servants, “Sit and eat!”

Gibley was a bit hungry, but the platters of meat and vegetables, the baskets of fruit and the plates of dessert didn’t interest him at all. For some reason, his eyes stayed on a fly that flew about the table.

In the days and weeks that followed, Gibley grew increasingly depressed. The demands of kinghood were more than he could bear. There were always decisions to make, and public appearances to tolerate, and people seeking audiences and favors.

The only relief he found was in the time he spent swimming in the lily pond on his country estate. He didn’t know why he preferred that to the indoor pool at the palace, but he felt more at peace with himself there, at home somehow.

But it wasn’t enough. Gibley spent his days in sorrow and despair because kingship wasn’t really what he wanted. He didn’t know what he wanted, but the kingly life wasn’t it. He pined for what he didn’t have. The sadness showed in his eyes.

Gibley’s subjects tried everything they could think of to cheer him up. They held grand parties and circuses and ice capades. They sent him to the great resorts. He went skiing, and scuba diving, and mountain climbing. He rode horses, and went fishing, and watched television. But none of it helped. Gibley didn’t feel any better.

Nothing he did eased the notion that things were not as they should be. Nothing he bought filled the hollowness within. Nothing he could think of doing, or having, or seeing, or hearing eased the emptiness in his soul, or diminished the ache for Something More that he carried with him every day.

“What do you want, Your Highness?” asked his loyal court. “Just tell us, and we will gladly bring it.”

“I don’t know what I want,” said Gibley. “I don’t know what to want. I just know this isn’t it.”

The people looked at one another with perplexed concern, and brought him everything they had. They brought him bicycles and dinner jackets; baseballs and sports cars; hula hoops and elaborate stereo systems. They worked late in their factories, hard on their technology, around the clock in their research labs. Every invention, creation and project was hailed as the salvation of the king.

But nothing worked. No matter what they gave the king, his countenance did not lift, his spirits only lowered. Then, one day there came a light knock on the palace door. The guard admitted a little girl who said, “My name is Mary Nuel, and I want to see the king.”

“I’m sorry, child,” said the guard, “but the king cannot be bothered.”

“But it’s rather important,” said the little girl. “I want to help the king.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do,” replied the guard. “The entire kingdom has been trying to help the king, to no avail. What makes you so bold as to think that you can succeed where so many others have failed?”

“What do you have to lose?” the girl asked.

“Good point,” said the guard, and he showed her to the throne room of the king.

The little girl walked up to the king’s throne. His eyes were closed, his brow was wrinkled, and his body was slumped in defeat. Gibley had tried with all his might to reason his way out of his difficulty, and now he was lost.

“Excuse me, Sir,” said the little girl, tugging on his sleeve. “I want to give you something that I think will help.”

“Nothing will help,” sighed the king. “I know. I’ve tried it all. Several times.”

“This is different,” said the little girl. “It always helps me when I feel bad. I think it’s just what you need.”

“What is it, then?” asked Gibley.

“Here,” she said, holding out her hand. “It’s my pet frog, Emma. My mamma says she is like one of the family. So I call her Emma Nuel.”

The king looked at the frog, and something stirred within. He felt the realness of times long forgotten. His eyes lit up. A smile came to his face. He didn’t know what it was, or how to begin putting it into words, but, as strange as it seems, he felt a connection with the frog—it was as though he could see himself in the frog. And he knew if he was going to be the kind of king the people deserved he had to become the frog that he was.

So, the king spent the rest of his life pondering the essence of frogness, and he worked diligently to become less kingly and more froggy.

“Frogs live close to the land,” he decided, so he moved out of the palace and into the woods. He tilled the land himself and taught the people the value of hard work, and led them to respect their relation-ship with the natural world.

“Frogs have no pretensions,” he realized. So, he gave up his royal robes and set aside his many titles. He stopped acting as though being king made him better than anyone else and lived to identify himself with his subjects and listen carefully to their concerns.

“Frogs don’t try to get ahead,” he reflected. So, he let go of his desire to solve all imaginable problems in order to relax in the pleasing splendor of the Ultimate Answer. He simply dealt with each difficulty in the moment that it arose, and let tomorrow’s problems be tomorrow’s problems.

In this way, Gibley Dade lived out his life, reflecting upon and expressing the best of his inner frogness through all of his dealings with the people of the realm. The kingdom prospered under his rule; the people grew strong during his reign; and the swamps resounded with the proud croaking of all the frogs.

02/08/09, We cannot be whole without facing ourselves.

What’s the point? Why are we here? What are we trying to do, to get? What’s it going to do for us when we do it, have it? Good questions, don’t you think? It would help if we knew the answers. Here’s mine. Wholeness. Wholeness is the whole point. By wholeness I mean alignment of being, integrity of being, oneness of being. I mean knowing who is running the show and assisting the operation. Knowing who is in charge here and placing ourselves in that service. I mean understanding what is at stake in Jesus’ prayer, “Not my will, but thine, be done,” and intending that with our complete being. That kind of wholeness of being is the point. What’s it going to do for us when we have it? Life. It’s going to do life for us. It’s going to bring us alive in a way that glass beads and silver mirrors—or the current cultural equivalent—cannot touch. But, you are going to have to believe it to see it, to know what I’m talking about. And, you are going to have to be willing to pay the price.

The price, of course, is the surrender of your idea of how your life is to be lived. We have to leave the safety of our comfortable way with life, our structures and routines—home, if you will—and find the way in the wilderness where there are no maps and nothing is as we expect it will be. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Call it the first irony. Leaving home doesn’t necessarily mean going anywhere.

Lao Tzu says, “The master travels all day without leaving home.” And, “Even though the next country is so close that people can hear its roosters crowing and its dogs barking, they are content to die of old age without ever having gone to see it.” Jesus says, “There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions.” Leaving doesn’t mean going away so much as it means seeing differently, living differently. With the same burdens we had before the shift happened. That’s the bad news about the good news. It isn’t the only bad news.

The really bad news is that we have to face ourselves—we have to see ourselves—and decide what we are going to do with ourselves, about ourselves, every day for the rest of our lives. We have to know how it is with us. It’s like this: We have to have a home in order to be able to leave home. Home is where we are given life—nurtured, nestled, brought to life. Home grounds us, centers us, focuses us, names us with an identity that serves us well and enables us to step forth with all that we need to find our way in the world—to find the way that is truly our own, and not just a worn path with the black foot-prints laid out through the long years of the far distant future. Ah, but, how many of us start out with a home like that?

But, a home like that is necessary for us to grow up around a protected core, a strong sense of who we are. We must protect the core. The core is the Soul, the Self—the inner dynamic center around which we constellate. It is the foundation upon which we build our life. The core is that which is deepest, best and truest about us. Our central identity. The essence of us. We grow out of a protected core (And home is really the self we have to leave in order to, finally, find).

If we do not have a home that supports life and protects the core, then our primary search is for a home, a place, a community, that will help us develop spiritually/psychologically to the point of being able to leave home. The problem is that without a protected core, we enter the search for the right kind of home wounded and in need of such healing that our energy is devoted to, drained by, restoring the core, and the work of aligning ourselves with the core and redeeming the world is indefinitely delayed.

To take up that work, we have to learn to heal and protect the core. We do that by consciously processing the harmful experiences. We say what happened, what its impact was, and how wrong it was, how wronged we were by it. We witness the wrong and name it specifically and clearly. We do not deny it, or gloss over it, or say anything other than the truth about it. And, we look for corroborating witnesses, those who can hear us and understand. We have to know we are not alone and we have to know the wrong that was committed against us, and we have to know it was wrong, and grant it no excuse, no defense.

We heal and protect the core by consciously bearing the pain of harmful life experiences—by saying what happened and how wrong it was that it happened, and how no one should have to deal with what we are having to deal with, and bringing the knowledge of that experience and its impact into our life, and letting ourselves not get over it and act as though nothing happened, but walk with a limp, because we have received a blow. The core cannot stand unprotected against the meanness of life. It needs us to defend its interests and take up its cause. This is the Hero’s Task, bearing consciously the blows of life, and it is one that we need a community to help us undertake. It is not ours to do alone.

Once the core is vital and dynamic, the fun begins. James Hollis says all the soul wants is an interesting life. We think the soul wants a straight arrow kind of life, a straight-laced and narrow kind of life. Our idea of the right life for the soul, and the soul’s idea of the right life for itself, are two different ideas. We think right is about moral rectitude, or peace and justice and fair play all around, equal pay, equal rights, hunky-dorey, everybody’s happy now, let’s just be nice and the world will be a better place. Boring.

The soul hates boring. The soul loves interesting. The soul loves not knowing what is going to happen next. The soul thinks the Right Life is one where we: Upset the apple carts, rock all the boats, yank the rug out from under everything, stomp the egg shells, don’t do anything the same way twice, create chaos wherever we go, create something anyway, make a mess, relish messes, love the mess, get our hands dirty, don’t know what we are doing or where we are going, live without a map, or a plan, or a schedule, live for the situations in which the rules do not apply… That’s the kind of life our soul has in mind for us. And you thought the soul was on your side. Anybody that thinks that doesn’t know the first thing about soul.

We want stability, security, predictability, sameness, constancy, certainty, dependability, death disguised as life. The soul wants life in the raw. No disguises. No costumes. No pretense. The soul wants to be alive. You see the disconnect, I’m sure. Whose side are we on is the question. To what extent are we living to be comfortable? Seeking to be comfortable? Surrounding ourselves with that which makes us comfortable? We cannot be alive and comfortable. What’s it going to be?

We cannot be alive and comfortable because life is inconvenient and inconsiderate and insistent and incessant and unrelenting. We just want to settle down and be happy. Life is goading us and urging us on. We just want to “get there.” Life won’t let us stop. We never get done living—we never get living done. We look for a groove. Life gives us upheaval. We look for smooth sailing and easy street. Life gives us chaos and says, “Here. See what you can do with this.” It’s a conflict of interests all the way. Who is in charge here? Who is running the show? We can force a life on Soul that Soul doesn’t want, and Soul picks out a nice wall to slam us into. Those who know, know who’s in charge. Those who don’t know are learning.

Soul isn’t here to serve us, we are here to serve soul. “Not my will, but thine, be done!” Until we understand the right order of things and put ourselves in the service of soul, there is hell to pay. Of course, there is hell to pay if we serve soul, so either way, there is hell to pay, but serving soul is a different kind of hell, it’s the kind where we can grin and laugh while we are going through it, or after we go through it. The path to heaven winds through the right choice of hell. The wrong choice of hell just winds around in hell. Choose the right kind of death and you come alive. Choose the wrong kind of death and you’re just dead.

It comes down to a question of faith. Who are you going to trust? Put your trust in the core, in soul, and step into your life. Every day. That’s all there is to it. We have to know, remember, be conscious, aware, that our primary work is bringing forth soul, living aligned with the core, manifesting the core—that the call is for wholeness, integrity, authenticity, genuineness, and truth—that we are called to live lives that are integrated, that are integral, with what is deepest, best, and truest about us, with the soul, the core. That is our work, knowing the core, living from the core. Living the life the core would have us live, the life that translates, incarnates, embodies, exhibits, makes concrete the core within the context and circumstances of our lives, the time and place of our living.

But this gets tricky. Because we decide what the core would have us do. Surely, even if your name isn’t Shirley, you see the problem. How do we know that what is important to us is important to soul? We pay attention, and practice, practice, practice. The first place we listen is to our bodies. Psyche is Somatic. Soul is physical—is expressed, known, felt physically. So, we talk about “gut feelings,” and taking a “gut check.” The thing we have in common with our soul is our body. Soul communes with us through our physical sensations, our feelings/senses, our emotions, our reactions to our life experience, our dreams, our slips of the tongue, our unconscious drifts toward music (humming a tune) and memories and preoccupations, our symptoms, our fears... We tune into ourselves and find Soul talking to us, calling to us, trying to get our attention.

And, we can’t worry about being wrong. It all becomes clear over time for those who keep looking for clarity. We have to live toward the best we can imagine at all times and let the outcomes guide our future direction. Therein lies wholeness and life.