1 Fish, 2 Fish, Little Fish, Big Fish

I began writing this blog in October of 2013.  Even on days that I didn't know what it was going to be when I sat down, the words have always come.  At the first of this year, I committed to writing at least 15 minutes each day, and I have reported for duty as promised. The words have been flowing easily every evening...until for the first time last night, the words were not there.

What was the block to my words?  The only other time that I have had complete writer's block was for two weeks prior to writing the first draft of Leading from the Heart.  I had blocked off two months, and then, like now, the words had always been there.  Except they weren't there that day...or the next...or the next.  I prayed. I meditated.  I saw my therapist three times in a week.  I can't say what the block was or what ended it, but suddenly one day, I got up from my meditation, went to the computer, and the words moved through me so fast that I could hardly keep up. They kept coming until the draft was complete.

I said that I would show up every day and write for 15 minutes; I didn't say I would post every day. I wrote...and wrote...and it was all garbage. I spared you. I went to bed disappointed in myself and sad that I may have let down my readers.

Magic worked in my sleep.

Regular readers will recall that I had been in something of a dream desert for the last few years, but since entering my transition and getting a full night's sleep almost every night, the dreams have been back, richly and generously.  Almost every night I have remembered at least one dream; most mornings it has been several.  One morning I couldn't remember until I sat to meditate, and then I started recalling details, which eventually flowed together.  I believe adequate sleep is part of the answer, but I am also confident that the respect that I've been showing the dreams is also a big piece.

Each morning immediately on waking I write whatever I recall, and, as I do, I usually remember more. The volume has been as many as six dreams in a night.  This morning I only recollected two but in great detail.  I wrote three 8-1/2 x 11-inch pages about the two dreams.  Then I go through and note the symbolism of different aspects of the dream.  Finally, I journal what the message was to me and what I plan to do about it.  The Universe should have no doubt that I am listening.

Over several days, I've received messages that change is occurring now or soon.  That shouldn't be a surprise, I am in a conscious period of transition. One of this morning's dreams made clear that I will be going in a totally different direction.  Also not a huge leap since I've felt so burned out from my consulting work within the government.

The other persistent theme, which came in spades this morning after last night's block, was the need for more meditation, usually symbolized in dreams by fish.  In this dream, I was claiming a message and reached over to buy a very small fish--very small.  Get this, I'm trying to get messages, but only putting in a small time for meditation to receive them.

Then I was invited to dinner with someone I met at the message center.  He fed me fish that were many times larger that the very small fish I had purchased.  Finally, he and a wise old woman invited me for dinner again, and this time she fed me fish that were several times larger than the ones he had fed me.

I would have to be really dense not to get the message here.  I need to meditate more.

I am taking a class that demands a lot of time, and I've been trying to get most of the work done in the first 2-1/2 days of the week so that I would have uninterrupted time for the rest of the week. To accomplish that, last night I worked until after midnight.  I think that maybe part of the message here is to start my day by asking what I should do, and that might mean stretching the work over several more days.

If that doesn't work, I'll try something else.  I am certain that after having had writer's block for only the second time in my life last night that I will listen more often and more intently.

What To Do with That Busy Brain

I continue to be soulful in my consideration of my uncontrollable desire to get on the Greyhound bus and ride across the northern US in the middle of January.

I've share my spiritual journey with a friend for decades, and we've been through the ups and downs of the mystery together. Today I was having the "how do you know?" conversation that I wrote about in yesterday's post.  "I want to follow my guidance, but how do I know that it is real?" I repeated.

In yesterday's post I mentioned that sometimes guidance comes out of my own mouth in conversation with someone else.  As I shared my dilemma, my friend respectfully held space until the words came out of my mouth, "You know, my busy little brain makes things up to keep me from doing things I am afraid of."  It occurred to me as I talked that I have embarked on this monumental cleaning out project of getting rid of things that I don't want to be part of my next nine years.

As I look at boxes, piles, and bookshelves brimming over, I am certain that I could really benefit from cleaning out.  There are some things that clearly are part of my future and other things that definitely are not.  But, what about the sea of things in the middle?  If I don't know what my future is--what I want, how can I know what to do with this vast expanse in the middle?

Now, talk about doing something that scares me: that is it.  Why am I scared?  I don't think that I would be throwing out anything that couldn't be replaced.  Then, what is it?  I am certain that the answer lies in committing to my future.  What will it be?  Some people at my age are winding down and would say, "Why bother?"  But I have exceptionally good longevity genes.  I will most likely live another lifetime for most people.  It does matter.  I want this bonus life to matter.

If you'll excuse the word, this is "huge."

As I pondered my trip, it occurred to me that this whole Greyhound trip thing may be the invention of my tricky little mind to help me avoid making a commitment about my bonus life.  Oh, my, I thought. That rang truer than I could have imagined.

This evening I've psychically been weighing, sometimes even holding out my two hands, palms upward, as if the mass of thoughts could be measured.  Divine guidance? Trick of my mind? Divine guidance? Trick of my mind? Oh, dear.

My big cleaning out project for today has been getting the Amazon/kindle version of The Game Called Life, a considerable stack of paper, off my desk. As I started the finishing up project, I discovered that I had gotten it 95% done in November of 2014.  It took me less than 20 minutes to correct the handful of typos.  I've been waiting 26 months because I was too busy to make 20 minutes-worth of corrections!

The down side of the 26-month delay is that I had marked my proof copy very deliberately for something other than typos, and it had been so long, I couldn't remember what the markings meant.  I am sure that it never occurred to me when I edited it that I wouldn't pick it up again until 2017.  The more of the markings that I found, the more concerned I became about putting the book "out there" without giving attention to whatever these markings were.

I read through whole pages with the markings.  I could find nothing wrong.  What was it that I was missing?  Finally, I relented.  I would sit and read the book, again, for maybe the 20th time.  Maybe then it would be clear to me.  This book is life-changing, at least for me.  About 30 pages in, I figured the mystery markings out: they were talking points for lectures and interviews, which inevitably follow a book release.

Mystery solved.  I could have stopped, but each time I've read the book, I've learned things that I had long-since forgotten.  So, I kept reading.

About two-thirds of the way through the book, I stumbled onto a process for getting clarity.  I tried it. In an instant, even before I could articulate the full question, the answer was there.  This time, I was told, it didn't matter what I did as much as why I did it.  Consequently, I will muster up my courage, stay home and sort, and in that vast middle, I hope to find my future.

How Do I Know?

A young man sits talking with his pastor before his marriage.  "How do you know?" he inquires. Like many people about to marry, they want to make sure this is the right one because the decision will inevitably change their lives in some, probably many, ways.  The pastor gives him some signs, but mostly says, "You just know."

Not unlike the young man about to marry, over the years many of my friends and clients have asked me about the guidance I receive.  "How do you know?" some ask.  "How do you get it?" others want to know.

Yesterday in a meandering conversation with a former Intentional Living Intensive client, now friend, we wandered into the topic.  This time it was me attempting to establish parameters for myself.  My most important guidance, or what I assume to be my most important, has usually been boldly clear to me, and many times it has been the response to a simple question. Often a booming voice spoke to me in a bold but loving way.

When I knew that it was time for me to leave Eugene, Oregon, 22 years ago, I stated simply, "I want a more friendly environment in which to live.  I asked, "Where would you have me go?" Instantly, I received the names of three cities "you should explore." Over the next 18 hours, I received six "signs" about the Research Triangle Area of North Carolina.  The last was a banner headline of my Oregon newspaper, which read: "Raleigh/Durham named best place to live."

Almost a decade after settling into my home in Durham, N.C., I found myself writing the words, "You are to move to Washington, D.C." while I was journaling.  I tried to ignore them. I liked living in N.C.  I had never considered living in Washington, what to me seemed like a "big city."  I had usually lived in smaller cities and just didn't have a clue how to move into a city that I didn't know, without a job, and knowing almost no one. The prospect was overwhelming.

Other times I've gotten repeated guidance that I wasn't excited about receiving, and it has persisted. Over a couple of years, I had frequently gotten guidance to take a month-long pilgrimage to a place where English wasn't the dominant language, make no plans, take very little cash and no credit cards. I would be guided I was told. I wasn't ready. Finally, on a flight between two islands in Greece at the end of a physically exhausting conference, the bold voice was there again, this time tinged with more than a little impatience.

The message was the same except for a couple details to take the wiggle room out for me.  "You are to return to Greece within three months for a pilgrimage.  You are to make no plans, take very little cash and no credit cards." The open-endedness of previous guidance was erased by very specific place and time frames.  I did receive two very small details over the intervening three months, but mostly I went with little more than initially directed.  It was a wonderful, growthful, and insightful exploration.  I will never be the same.

Insights haven't always been of the life-changing kinds, like moving across the country or going to an expensive tourist country with no credit cards and very little cash. On one of my open-ended vacations a few years later, as the day was growing toward an end, I said to my travel partner, "I wonder where we should stop." Within 1/4 of a mile, a large billboard stated simply in foot-high letters, "This is your place."  It was.

Although it has been a long time since I had one, I used to occasionally, I have what I call a "cosmic marquee."  Like a theatre marquee, a message for me is highlighted by flashing lights around it.  The "cosmic marquee" seems to be reserved for really big messages.

Whether big or small, much of my guidance has been very specific.  However, other times, it has been subtler.  When I find myself  having the same conversation with several clients in the same day or two, I believe that to probably be a sign that I should give the topic some inner reflection.  When I have done so, it has usually ended up being dead-on for me.

Other times, words just come out of my mouth as if I didn't know the source but was keenly aware it was my mouth that was moving.  In the years just after my first two books came out, I did a lot of keynoting, and because I was being paid very well, I always dutifully wrote my speeches in advance. But once I started speaking, other words came out.  At some point, I started a file called, "Speeches I never gave."  I've also found myself asking coaching clients questions that meant nothing to me, but were spot-on for the recipient.

Yesterday's conversation went in a different way, though.  We talked about the even subtler forms of guidance.  A hunch.  An explained desire to do something I've never done. My intuition? Maybe my insatiable quest for adventure?

Recently, I've had the urge to get on a Greyhound bus and travel across the northern part of the US...in January.  Really?!  Our wind-chill factor in Washington today is 2 degrees Fahrenheit, and I don't even want to go near a window much less travel across the breadth of the country in places that often get much colder than this. This isn't a lingering desire I've suppressed that is emerging from the depths of my psyche. Although I've often jumped on a bus for travel in Europe, I've never even considered going anywhere on a bus in this country.

Is that guidance, I wondered to my client/friend?  I do know that timing is critically important when following guidance.  Not unlike the Butterfly Effect, which describes the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in New Mexico causing a hurricane in China, there are a lot of moving parts in God's world. God knows the plan, but the rest of us don't get the site map.

Let's say I am supposed to bump into someone at a truck stop near Fargo, North Dakota, on January 25. I have to take the bus because if I was driving, it is a place I wouldn't stop. The encounter may be brief, maybe totally unmemorable. In the course of a casual conversation, say with a waitress while ordering lunch, I say something that makes her understand an aspect of her life differently.  We don't talk about going back to college or moving to Arizona, but there is something that is said that makes her connect to doing those things. As a result of those bold moves, she makes a discovery in her research that alters the course of humankind.

If I didn't leave until weather is more pleasant in spring, I don't make that connection, which means that a conversation we may have had never happens.  Following guidance isn't like using God as your personal travel agent.  It is very precisely about allowing God to change the world through you.

Think about Moses saying to God that he doesn't want to go that way because there's no way to get around the sea.  How could he have known?  He just followed his guidance.

So, back to the question, "How do you know?"  As I sit in my apartment contemplating whether I want to walk half a block in this weather to get to a car to go to a dance tonight, I ponder, "Do I really want to get on a bus and travel across the northern US?"  It is a question heavy on my heart.  My intention is to make the world a better place, and if this is guidance, I would do almost anything to do my part.  Yet, what if this isn't guidance, and traveling on a bus in January is really a fool's errand I'd rather avoid?  How do I know?

I will meditate on this more...and ask simple questions.  In the end, I will trust that with my intentions clear, I will know in my heart what I am to do.