Archived here are the blogs I write about inner life and outer life, inner nature and outer nature. Perhaps my writings on life, as I see it and experience it, may offer you some small insight or different perspective as you take your own journey.
With gratitude for all that life teaches me, I share my experiences.
On my father’s eightieth birthday, as we sat around the crowded dinner table, I posed a question.
“Dad,” I said, “you’ve lived a long life, reached this ripe old age of eighty. Do you have any words of wisdom to impart to all of us on this momentous occasion?”
My father looked at me and then glanced around the table at the rest of the family, everyone wondering just what he might say to such a question. His gaze turned to the table laden with food and he simply said: “Pass the butter.”
Laughter erupted, but that was all he said. He didn’t follow it up with a single word and we were left to wonder. Is that really what it’s all about? Pass the butter? Was he telling us that his opinion didn’t matter or that he just didn’t have anything to say about life? Was he suggesting that nothing really matters in the end, that the only things that matter are what comes next? Was he implying that my question was too much to respond to, too impertinent to spring on him like that?
My father was not an outwardly expressive man, kept his thoughts private for the most part, though I always suspected he had a thoughtful, rich inner life, as I expect everyone does. At one time in my youth I had admonished him to quit wasting his imagination on fears and put it to creative outpourings, for I saw, at an early age, how fear consumed him. I knew that in his youth he had been a poet with aspirations of becoming a writer, but those dreams got interrupted, usurped by duties of marriage and family.
As I experienced my father turning from my question that evening at the dinner table, I felt not only a pang of rejection, but, by far, a deeper sense of dismay, for I could not fathom that someone could have lived so long and not been able to speak from the deepness of his heart to his own family. At the time, I was deep into my recapitulation, investigating myself in a most thorough manner, constantly asking myself challenging questions and demanding that I find the answers within. I was learning to trust my heart, turning to my inner self for the answers I sought, and thus I could not imagine that he had not, at some time, done the same. For, as I said, I expected everyone to have a rich inner life. But now I know that not everyone chooses to explore the inner world of the deeper self in quite the same way and beyond that, that many roads lead to a path of heart.
I will turn sixty this year, and I hope that if my children ask me to impart some words of wisdom that I will be as succinct as my father, that perhaps I will be able to wrap it all up in a nutshell and say, this is what life is really all about: Pass the butter. For I think my father’s answer says it all.
He was really saying, without self-importance, without attachment, without needing to uphold anything: This is how I do life, how are you choosing to live your life? And indeed, that is a most private endeavor. Can I be as detached as my father and fully own my own journey, and without judgment let others live the life they choose?
From my father, I have learned that life is not about making a point or being right, or having the answers. Life is really just about choosing how you want to live and then doing it to the fullest. I know that my father lived his life according to his own values, that he made choices in alignment with what he felt was right. He was extremely honest, hard working, dedicated to serving others less fortunate, though he himself was not well off by any means. I know that in his own way he lived every day from a deeply caring place and that he gave without asking for anything in return, only that justice be served, that right be done, knowing that everyone matters. A man of few words, he expressed his inner life in his everyday actions, traveling a path of heart, giving wherever he met resonance in the world.
So, what’s it all about? I fully agree with my father. Life is just about choosing how to live and then living that life to the fullest, in whatever way is right for you.
The wrens are back and so we know that the weather will now be milder. They’ve moved into one of the bluebird boxes, crammed it full of sticks and straw, and wake us each morning with their noisy, boisterous chatter, so loud for such tiny birds. The other bluebird box has been occupied by a pair of bluebirds for several weeks now. They came in March and we watched them flit about checking where to nest for quite a while before they decided on the box furthest from our deck. It’s an annual event around here, waiting to see who will occupy which nesting box.
The predators will come...
The robins have also returned in force. Though we can’t be sure, it appears that the same robins are building nests in the same areas again. I am fascinated by their ability to forget what transpired in the years before. The robin family that got devastated by a snake creeping up the small ornamental maple and snatching all but one of the fledglings has moved back into the same tree. Go figure!
Another set of robins made a nest under the deck last year and have done so again, in spite of the fact that they were quite upset at our backyard activities and spent the greater part of the summer contending with us humans. This year they have moved even closer to the backdoor and every time it’s opened the mother flies off the nest in a screaming panic. We had watched the nest building along the main beam there for a few weeks as several decoy nests appeared before the final one was completed.
We’ve noticed how birds never fly directly to their nests but have a way of deflecting attention by taking circuitous routes, but once they set up their flight path they never vary. Go figure that one as well! It’s not that hard to find their nests at all.
On the other hand, I am so grateful for nature trusting us by repeatedly coming to our yard. We have made it comfortable and inviting, nothing is discouraged or turned away, everything is acceptable, that’s just the way it is—Oh, except for the poison ivy! But overall, it’s been gratifying to have front row seats to the unfolding of life, to watch the comings and goings, receiving valuable lessons on a daily basis.
Habits is one of the lessons that comes to mind as I watch these annual nest buildings. Even nature has habits and behaviors as potentially harmful as we humans do, so I don’t feel so bad. Picking the same spot to nest year after year, in spite of what has come before, suggests that all of life has the same tendency to forget, to stay with the known, to just do what generations have done in spite of the known risks. We humans do the same.
As I watch the birds reacting to imminent danger, I find myself appreciating their immediate response, often a shriek or cry and then nervous fear, just like us. Flying about in a panic before finally deciding to attack is quite often the case, seeking to deflect attention from the nest by creating a fuss, but once the predator has its eyes on the nest no amount of fuss will draw it away. The tender young are more inviting than the distraction of a fight with the parents. A predator will do what it can in order to get what it wants, just like us.
Are the birds really that ignorant, forgetful, self-deceptive? Are we? Yup, I think so. Along the lines of making changes in our own lives, we too must contend with the forces of nature, both inside and outside of us. As we seek to shift ourselves out of our usual patterns of behavior and attempt to do something really different and evolutionary, we find that our foes are often as formidable as the predator coming to steal from the robin’s nest. Such a foe is not easily distracted.
Nature, at least nature in my back yard, shows me each year that it has a plan and it sticks to the plan, no matter what. It has enough energy that it can afford to lose countless chicks and whatever else to the predators that will naturally come seeking sustenance and it will continue to produce life in the same manner—no matter what. It goes on doing what it has been doing for eons. We humans, however, have something else in us that makes us stop and look at ourselves, our habits, our tendencies. We have something that makes us question our behaviors, something that says, “hey, stop that, do it differently,” and this is what gets us in trouble, but what also evolves us.
Nature in balance...
Nature evolves slowly, very slowly. Man evolves quickly, very quickly by comparison. As I write this, I look out the window and see the pesky squirrel digging up yet more of the peas I have planted. I am guilty of habitually doing what I see the birds doing and the squirrel predator has obviously been watching me as closely as I watch the birds. Last year I was quite successful in getting my peas planted undetected and we had a good crop. This year I have been planting and planting only to discover, each morning, that something has been digging up the nice plump pea seeds and leaving deep holes in the soil. I have suspected a squirrel and yet I have just gone on planting, thinking that the squirrel will forget about my peas after a while. But today I see that there is no way that squirrel will forget, for it is nature doing what nature does best, returning and doing the same thing over and over and over again. I guess that bodes well for nature, but it does not bode well for my pea crop this year!
Rather than fighting nature, I’m letting the squirrels have the peas. I’ll settle for other crops that are coming in nicely, planted a little earlier because of the warm spring. It looks like I will have enough food from my garden this year. I can share some things with nature because I just don’t need more than I can consume. I don’t need abundance; I just need enough.
In the meantime, I ponder my own evolution. Am I really doing anything different? Am I just another creature of nature and habit? Do the birds and squirrels have an inner world as rich as my own? Are we humans really all that unique? In the end we are all of us—birds, squirrels, humans—just different forms of energy, inhabiting this world for a time, but I am intent on maintaining my awareness beyond this world, and so I remain alert to what is around me, aware of the passage of time and the seasons, habits and processes, learning what I can.
The Shamans and the Buddhists suggest that we use our time to hone our awareness, using both our waking time and our dreaming time to prepare for our evolution from this life, so that we can learn to stay awake when we die and not miss a thing. We are all beings who are going to die, but in the meantime we are also all beings who are offered the opportunity to truly live and grow our awareness. How we elect to do that is extremely personal and it can take us a long time, the natural time it takes for us to reach a level of awareness that life is more than just what meets the eye.
There will always come a time when we have to make a decision. Do I return to the same place and do the same thing all over again, knowing full well the consequences of my actions, or do I do it differently? As humans we can change any time we want, simply by doing so; by choice and will and patient practice we can change. Change takes action and acquiescence, acceptance and daring, letting go of something while embracing something new. There is always a give and take. Sometimes we might think we are losing something precious but we discover, eventually, that we have gained something even more precious, but it’s only in taking action that we will discover this.
During this time of year, the pagan feast of Beltane—of nature’s passing from one time of year into another, of birth and rebirth—is celebrated, but in reality we have the opportunity to rebirth ourselves into new life at all times. It’s pretty daring to be that way, to confront both the self and the world, asking for new life.
Like the foxes...just passing through...
Although Jeanne and Infinity, in Monday’s channeled message, suggested that the world is far-gone now, I did not feel that meant nature, but only that it meant the world man has created. Nature, as I see every year, will continue doing its thing, just as we will. But, as conscious humans, we have the opportunity to do our thing differently, because in the end it’s our world that is now impacted rather than nature’s world. Perhaps it’s time to admit that we just didn’t get it quite right, to take stock of what we really value and really change now how we live.
Can we live in symbiotic balance with nature, knowing that there will be enough for us? I know that I will survive on what is in my yard, that flowing with nature means that I must stop fighting it and stop taking from it. It means being as simply and straightforwardly natural as the critters in my yard, by giving and taking with full human awareness that I am only passing through.
Just deciding how to live and give, most humbly thankful and grateful for all that I have,
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived with her mother and father and many siblings in a house in the woods. Each morning before dawn the father would get up and go to work at his job in the city and he would not return again until after dark each night. Every day the mother stayed at home with the children. The children were quiet and obedient because that was what their mother expected of them. Anyone passing by the house in the woods would never have known that the house was filled with children, for they never made a sound, they knew better. That’s just the way it was.
One day, when the girl was nine, her mother locked herself in her room and would not come out. The girl could hear her father at the bedroom door pleading with the mother to come out, to not be angry, but the mother only screamed that she would never come out! The little girl went to the door of her parent’s bedroom and, pushing her father aside, told her mother to come out at once.
“We need you to be our mother,” she said, but the mother refused. And so the little girl became the mother that day. She took care of the other children, cooked for them and her father, cleaned the house and went to bed an exhausted little mother. The next day, to the little girl’s great relief, the mother came out of her room and carried on as if nothing had ever happened. That’s just the way it was.
Not long after that a new baby was expected in the family. The little girl was very excited about this new baby. “When will it be born?” she wondered. “Who knows,” said the father. There were many emergency trips to the hospital, but the mother always returned home to wait a little longer for the new baby to come. One night, the father told the little girl that he was taking the mother to the hospital again and that she was in charge of taking care of all the other children until they got back.
The next morning the little girl woke to hear her father coming in the door, looking tired and bedraggled. “Is there a baby?” the girl asked, all excited. “What was it? A boy or girl?” The father, in a dead tone of voice, as if it were not the most important and exciting thing in the world, simply replied, “Oh, a boy.” And he went into his bedroom and fell fast asleep on his bed while the little girl kept everyone else happy and quiet. That’s just the way it was.
Later in the day, when the father awoke, the little girl asked him questions about the new baby. “Where will it sleep and where are its clothes?” she asked, for she saw that no preparations for this new baby had been made. She made the father climb the rickety ladder to the spider-filled attic and get the old, dusty, baby bassinet down. She told him it had to be cleaned and when he stood there helplessly, his hands hanging at his side, doing nothing, she took over. In spite of her fears of spiders she cleaned and scrubbed that bassinet until it shown. After that, she found sheets and baby blankets and made it up so the new baby would have a place to sleep. Next, she asked the father to help her find the old baby clothes, but he did not know where to look. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll take care of it.” And so she did. The girl did all of this because she knew if she didn’t no one would, and that’s just the way it was.
On the day the new baby came home from the hospital, one of her brothers claimed him as his own, for the baby was coming home on his birthday. The little girl let this pass, knowing that the baby was really hers, for she was the only one preparing for its entry into the family and she felt a special bond and great tenderness for this new baby. She vowed that she would be a good big sister to it and so she was.
Pouty big baby...
As time went on and the girl became more observant of the family dynamics, she began to notice that the mother had many tantrums, that she spent a lot of time fuming in her room with the door locked, that she rarely left the house. The girl noticed that she was not like other mothers. It was extremely rare for the mother to attend a school function or accompany her children to extra curricular activities or even encourage them to express themselves. She liked things to be predictable, her children to be quiet and everything perfect. She did not like others to ask things of her, but if she wanted something she demanded it be so, and so it was.
The mother did not drive and so as soon as the girl got her driver’s license she became the mother’s chauffeur, taking her on trips to visit people and places at the mother’s whim, sometimes great distances away. She took care of the younger children on these trips, keeping them quiet and preoccupied while the mother attended museum exhibits, tea parties and bridge club meetings, while the father was away in the city. The girl accepted these assignments, because that’s just the way it was.
The girl grew up and left home. With great relief she left the house in the woods and all her duties as little mother and went off on her own adventures. Eventually, she got married and became a mother herself. Whenever she took her children to visit their grandmother she took note of how distant and uninterested the grandmother, her mother, seemed to be to the people around her. Her interactions with her grandchildren were brief and then she’d shut herself off in her own world, literally turning her back on those around her to pick up a book or disappear into another room. “That’s just the way she is,” the girl thought, “it’s how she’s always been.”
After the girl’s father died, the elderly mother grew increasingly dependent upon her daughter. The girl began to remember her life as the child of this woman as she took on the role of chauffeur once again. Without complaint, she quietly attended to her mother as she had once done as a child and teenager. One day, as she was chauffeuring the mother around as usual, the girl, to make polite conversation, asked a simple question. The mother, for some unknown reason responded with an angry retort which escalated within seconds into a full blown tantrum. Screaming at the girl in a bitter and condescending tone, insinuating that she was a stupid idiot, the mother unleashed a fury of pent up anger. The girl, much taken aback, looked at the mother as clarity struck. “Oh, My God!” the girl thought to herself. “You are the World’s Biggest Baby! You are a f***ing big baby!”
The World's Biggest Baby
A voice in her head told her to let this truth stand, and thus she refused to take responsibility for her mother’s outburst. She did not allow herself to take the insinuation personally, nor did she make excuses for her mother as was her usual tactic. For rather than let herself feel the full impact of the mother she had gotten in life, she often toned down the reality of who she really was, sensitively striving to see her as just another human being struggling to make sense of her journey. But this time the girl let the full impact hit her: her mother was indeed the World’s Biggest Baby, she always had been, and she was not a very nice person, either! And that’s just how it was!
In a rush of insight, her whole relationship with her mother suddenly made sense, her whole upbringing and her childhood in the house in the woods made perfect sense. She had indeed been the little mother while her own mother lived out her entire life as a big baby, tantruming, demanding and refusing to grow up.
More fully liberated from this big baby mother than ever before, she continued to chant, first silently to herself and then out loud as she drove away from her mother. “You are a big baby! You are the World’s Biggest Baby!” Shouting it out for the whole world to hear, she drove down the street happy and free at last, knowing that it was just the way it was!
The moral of the story is, don’t get caught in thinking that you have any responsibility for how your own mother acts in the world, for she is living out her own necessary life and—until and if she chooses to change—she will live it to the fullest. She may, in fact, just be another World’s Biggest Baby! And that may just be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!
I am a human being. How am I going to use my gift of consciousness today? Am I awake? Am I aware? Am I advancing myself and my world in some way, small or large? These are the things I ask myself this morning as I awaken before dawn. I’m tired, I don’t really want to get up yet, but I do. I go about my morning routine and before long the sun has risen and I am full of energy. Something has shifted.
Nature being nature...but not at my front door!
I go to the front door and peer into the overhead recessed light, looking for my tiny petty tyrant, the yellow jacket that has been pestering me lately, for days invading our entryway. I am determined that he will not nest there. And so I have become his petty tyrant as well. He is not where I last saw him. I wonder if perhaps I’ve finally out-pestered him.
I see him and his comrades stealing tiny wood fibers from the latticework on the back deck. They scrape tiny filaments off the top frame of the structure and fly to their chosen nesting spots. My yellow jacket flies around to the front yard and right up to the front door. By the time I notice him, he has constructed a tiny nest; a cluster of four or five honeycombs dangles from inside the doorway. When he leaves I knock his nest down.
“Sorry, but you can’t be here,” I tell him. He comes back. Persistent, he begins to build his nest again in the very same spot.
“Don’t you get it? I don’t want you here!” He flies away and, again, I knock the nest down.
I don’t want to harm the insect, yet I don’t appreciate his abode of choice and so this process between us goes on for a few days. Yesterday, after I had knocked the nest down for the billionth time it seemed, he went away and didn’t come back. Or at least that was what I perceived because he didn’t come buzzing angrily at me every time I stepped out the front door, letting me know how disappointed he was at my presence in his life. But then I noticed that I had been tricked! The persistent little devil had only moved a few feet, into the recessed light fixture right above my head.
“Okay, you little trickster,” I said, “I’ll get you yet!” And so I waited until evening, when I knew he would be sluggish. Just as it was getting dark, I asked Chuck to reach up and knock down the tiny nest—this time with the yellow jacket nestled inside it—a little too high for me to reach. Now I’m not a fan of messing with the wasps and bees of this world, so I stepped back inside and let the fearless man in my life take this turn at delivering the message to my nemesis that I just didn’t want him around.
“It’s okay, he’s on the ground,” Chuck called to me a few seconds later. We left him there to struggle and I turned the porch light on, hoping that the heat of the bulb would deter him from settling back into the housing of the light fixture. And so this morning, at first glance, I was pleased to see that he was not there. Does this mean our process as each other’s petty tyrant is over?
I ponder the role of the petty tyrant, always ready to point out something to us. This little guy makes me face the fact that I do not like tiny stinging insects, but, even more than that, he lets me know how some tiny, pesky little thing can blow up into a major battle and soon take over. A good amount of time and energy went into the recent battle between the yellow jacket and me. I tracked him as much as he tracked me. Was it really necessary? Well, yes, I think it was. There was something I had to recapitulate.
The wasp making a nest by my front door reminded me of the two wasp nests that flanked the back door of my childhood home when I was about seven years old. My parents, rarely attentive to such things, had let the wasps take over and two large nests were in full operation on the day that I rushed up to the door a little too fast for the likes of the wasps. As soon as my hand touched the handle to pull open the screen door I was dive-bombed and stung by two wasps simultaneously, on either side of my forehead. Within seconds I had two very painful egg-sized lumps forming high on my temples. Not only did I look ridiculous with my Frankenstein forehead, but I was in agony! In addition, I was furious with my parents. How could they let such a thing happen to me! How could they not have noticed those nests!
I had been dodging the wasps for weeks. Once aware of their presence, I began using the front door, but for some reason on that day I had forgotten! I was in such a hurry that all caution went to the wind and I sailed right up to the door in total forgetfulness.
One evening, a few days later, my father donned his bee-removing gear—a large hat covered in netting that tied under the chin and big leather gloves—and climbed onto a ladder and pried both nests from their perches on either side of the back door. I stood far back in the yard and watched him do this. Now he was my hero, just as Chuck was last night, but at the same time I never forgot the experience. My seven-year-old self has been wary of the painful stingers of those tiny flying tyrants ever since.
Now, in full consciousness, I confront my flying petty tyrants again, this time in an inner process, for I know that I must use what nature brings me for personal growth. I will not allow occupation of my entryway by petty tyrants, I conclude. I will not be controlled by outside forces. I want free access to my outer world and my inner world. I guard and protect my ability to flow freely.
The other nest builders who make me laugh...
Beyond the front door I accept that I have little control over what happens in my yard. Even as I write this, I look out the window and see that the robins have flipped the hose I’ve tucked into the mulch around a newly planted peach tree and are now bathing in its spray. I laugh at those petty tyrants.
I’m not really annoyed by the robins as much as I am by the wasps, and I have to ask myself why. They are all just being nature, doing what they naturally do, but, as I said, I want free access to that which is mine, and so I will not tolerate the pesky yellow jacket so up close and personal.
I pause in my writing and go outside and right the hose, making sure there is a nice puddle of water for the robins to work with. I know they just want it for nest making, for I’ve seen them working as diligently as I’ve seen the yellow jackets scraping the latticework on the deck. For the past few days, I’ve watched the robins dragging nesting material through the mud before flying off with it dripping from their beaks.
The robins and the wasps are nature being nature and I am part of nature too, but a certain degree of consciousness was awakened on the day I was stung by the wasps at the age of seven. I remember thinking that I had gotten through my whole life, until that day, and never been stung by a bee. I knew that it was a momentous occasion, that it was a rite of passage. Now I had been stung and I was no longer the same person. I had experienced something that could never be undone and I could no longer brag that a bee had never stung me. As I experienced the pain of the stings, I was jolted into full body consciousness, leading to awareness of inner transformation.
It was a big moment for my seven-year-old self. I have continued to use the lessons I learned that day. I have never let a wasp build a nest by my entryway. Keeping watch over my doorways became one way I maintained control in a world where we often have very little control. And to this day I still do it, because I know that my child self was right that day, that you don’t let things get so out of hand that they injure you and cause you pain. But I also allowed the stingers in my forehead to awaken me to an awareness of my inner world. I knew that a transformation, an awakening, happened that day as I experienced that jolt of pain.
It took me a long time to really fathom those lessons, and a whole lot of years of pain and suffering had to ensue before I figured out how to use the consciousness raising that occurred that day. I carried the lessons deeply inside though, and have since put them to good use many times, always aware now to not let things get so bad that I am overwhelmed and, in addition, to look for the transformative lesson that is always being presented.
Consciousness, as Chuck wrote about in his last blog, is our unique gift from nature. As I contemplate that yellow jacket, I am aware that we often undertake life with the same repetitive persistence. We continue to do the same things over and over again in spite of the consequences. Our habits control us, until we wake up to the fact that they have been stinging us on the head for a very long time, alerting us to wake up and stay awake. It’s time to act differently, they tell us. It’s time to change. We are no different from the wasps and the robins if we don’t use our most unique gift of consciousness to change.
Nature instructs. Are we awake?
Still watching that entryway, and wishing everyone a transformational week,
“After recapitulating there is only NOW,” as Taisha Abelar was quoted as saying in a lecture.* I see this as being present in the moment, with no need to go back. No old and powerful fears or horrors exist in the shadows of the psyche. With the deeper unknowns of the self revealed and resolved there is no unfinished business. No questions remain. They have all been answered.
We are all composed of light and shadow selves...
Being present NOW, means that should fears arise, they are recognized simply as signals to experience something deeper about the self. We notice that they no longer hold as much power as they once did because we have taken their energy from them, reclaimed it for ourselves, and are using it differently now. Rather than getting caught up in fear as a paralyzing entity we now face it as a curiosity, deal with it quickly and succinctly, seeing it clearly for what it is.
After recapitulation, fears become gentle reminders that we must keep ourselves in good balance, spirit self and human self in balance. We must be vigilant and attentive to our onward journey, which means we must always do inner work while we continue to navigate through life. As we constantly attend to our fears, we anchor deeper in who we really are NOW. In realigning with the fully known self, we are ready to continue on into the next moment without attachment.
That’s the other thing that becomes clearer after recapitulation, what it means to be without attachment. Attachments signal that we are out of balance, needy, desiring of things of this world, but in reality our spirit knows otherwise. When we are in balance the voice of our spirit is clearer, our neediness and desires lose their powers, and we are free to be present in the moment, experiencing NOW.
After recapitulation the world is still inviting. We are still presented with the constant invitation to live and experience life to the fullest. But being present NOW means that we have honed our awareness to be more fully open to life and where it takes us than ever before. Awareness keeps us alert, making sure that we navigate life in a new way, conducive to our new self. We are available in a different, mature way. With our spirit carefully guiding us, our path of heart revealed and embraced, we are eager for new experiences in life. Yet even as we flow, we are equally ready to stop and investigate ourselves, closely and deeply, for we know that this is what we must do to make the right choices, to take right action, to remain in alignment, and to keep growing and changing.
There is always the opportunity to do deep inner work. It is what we are all challenged with, whether we plan for it or not, and our spirits will not let us rest until we take up that challenge. How often have we heard of someone being restless though they appear to have everything that they could possibly need for a happy life? How often do we know we should be happy, yet we just cannot settle where we are? Why are we always so miserable, so angry, so scared, feeling so hopeless and worthless? Why do we still feel so restless when we are so accomplished, so successful, living such perfect lives?
These visitors to our yard seem to be asking each other, "Are you ready to take the journey?"
Once we ask our spirit to take over, we realize there is no other route to true, honest fulfillment than the path our spirit will lead us along. We might even discover that we are already on the path of our spirit, that we have been on it all along, but for some reason we have been reluctant, caught in habitual behaviors, unaware, or just too angry and bitter to see it clearly. Most likely we have been ignorant of our spirit’s true intent, for in reality its intent will not be revealed until we have aligned with it.
In challenging ourselves to take the inner journey, we set a precedence. It takes work, but once the most pressing aspects of the recapitulation journey are faced our fears diminish, our balanced self releases to live more fully in the moment, experiencing the energy of NOW, and the world changes; it greets us differently each day. Different ourselves, we wake up one morning and discover that the world has changed with us. Isn’t that what we all want and need, a changed self and a changed world?
After recapitulation the changed world keeps changing, every day, because there is only NOW, and each moment is new. That changed world begins within.
Taking the inner journey, humbly offering encouragement to take it too, for it leads to truth and love,
Jan
*Note: From a lecture in Pasadena, October 10, 1992, as reported in The Nagualist.
