Hang on!?

I've been in such a nice place over the last few days that I've been tempted to fall into a chair with arms and legs spread open, relax, and maybe even laugh out loud.  This feels so good.  I'm having fun with class. I'm delighted with my exploration and experimenting with new healthy recipes.  I've been getting exercise.  I'm clicking one or two items off my "things-to-do" list every day. I'm not even stressing about money.

Technology challenges have dominated that list, mainly because dealing with them is usually so stress-inducing that I put them off until I can't do so any longer. Yesterday I spent two hours on a technical support call with the nicest man.  I felt like I was in good hands. During long gaps while software was uploading, we talked about a lot of things.  We laughed.  At the end, I thanked him for taking such good care of me; he said I'd made his day.

Alas the problem wasn't solved. Today, at his suggestion, I headed to the Apple Genius Bar to continue working on it. While I was there, another technician worked on a problem I was having with my new iPhone. I felt really supported by the two technicians dealing with the separate problems.  I even laughed with one of them. Not once did I feel stressed.

That was the pinch-myself moment to make sure that efforts to induce more dreams hadn't resulted in daydreams.  No, I was awake.  This was all real.

I felt so good that I mused about maybe I'd learned whatever spiritual lessons I needed to learn in this life, and I could just enjoy the rest of my life just like I've been doing the last few days.

I remembered times in the past when I'd been in similar periods of my life.  There were different spiritual lessons: not easy but I felt like I was going with the flow of the lessons, instead of struggling. The last 17 years have been a struggle, or more accurately, I've felt like I was in a river of struggles, attempting to keep my head above water.

I recall a time decades ago when I'd been drifting down the wild and scenic Rogue River in Oregon with a friend. We were at a very wide and calm spot, where we were both splayed across the raft, drinking in the sun, hats down over our faces.  Suddenly, my friend let out with an expletive, followed by "Hang on!!" Our relaxed reverie was abruptly interrupted as we went crashing over a waterfall, dropping us several feet into a pool of whitewater where we struggled and fought to move out of the whirlpool.

Each time I've been in one of these "good spots," I have would be thrust into a pool of spiritual lessons for months or even years. Each time the lessons presented to me were more challenging than the previous cycle and developed different parts of me. I have dramatically evolved spiritually during this sequence of periods of challenge.  In each, like struggling to get out of the whirlpool at the bottom of the waterfall, one day I would realize I'd finally made it out.

I'd love to think that the last--the longest by far--would be the last, but for those of us with the intention to evolve our souls, I think there must always be lessons.  In The Game Called Life I say that in our lives we have three things to accomplish:

• Be of service
• Develop our gifts and talents
• Learn the spiritual lessons our soul chose.

Quite frankly, if it is OK with the Universe, I'd really like to scratch the last off my list or at the very least allow the spiritual lesson be to learn to enjoy these wondrous moments. That's a lesson I could really get into. I would also consider spending the rest of my life working on the first two, but even as I say that I know that even doing that will bring lessons.  

For today, I am enjoying being in a good place, and I'd really like to do that for a bit longer--maybe even years.  And, if another waterfall/whirlpool awaits, I'll worry about that when it gets here.

Pieces of the Whole

I always look forward to my holiday greeting from colleague Suzan Thompson.  I always enjoy seeing what new directions her work as a therapist has taken in the last year.  However, because she is a fabulous and generous artist, her greetings often contain a small piece of art.  I had a favorite on my refrigerator door for several years.

Yesterday was the big day, and I admit to ripping the envelope open in the elevator the minute I saw the return address.  (I suppose it might have been more appropriate to wait until I could fully appreciate the opening experience, but delayed gratification has never been one of my strong suits.) 

This year's gift was different than the individual pieces in the past.  This year she created an incredible collage, called "Pieces For You."  Then, she cut it up and sent pieces to her friends, along with a link to her blog where we could see the whole artwork*.  I've inserted it below.

 

 

I loved the piece, but I have to confess to studying to see which piece of the whole I had received.  (My piece came from the bottom right, and it included the heron and a key.) We emailed back and forth, and I said I loved being able to find where my piece was in the whole, and I added, "...if we only knew exactly where our piece was in the Whole."  The truth of that statement stuck with me. 

 

If we could only know exactly where our piece was in the Whole, what difference would it make?  When I think of Suzan's lovely collage as a metaphor for our roles in the world, I can imagine that when one of us decides not to follow our intuition or chooses to take a job that was more money than the one for which we had passion, that there might be blank rectangles where our piece should have been.  If many of us don't do our part pretty soon the beauty of the whole canvas is obscured. 

 

This Aha! moment hit me particularly hard on a weekend in which I have gotten back to serious writing for the first time in a while.  I'd hate to think that in the greater scheme of things that my busyness with other things has removed an essential component(s) from the Whole.  Yet, I know that is true.  The Universe isn't designed with extra or disposable parts.  Each of us is essential, and we all make a difference. 

 

In the future I plan to use Suzan's collage with my piece missing as a mental image of what happens when I choose not to show up for Life.  I can't imagine her artwork with a missing piece, just as I'm sure the Universe can't imagine Life without my piece.

 

 

*For more details about the collage and appropriate viewing music, you may visit Suzan's blog at http://magicwonderandmiracles.blogspot.com/.



Partnering with our hearts

In order to evolve spiritually, we need to listen to our hearts. They are encrypted with a unique code that tells each one of us what we should be doing at any time in order to grow, perform service, and to use our gifts and talents. If we frequently take just a second to ask, "What would you have me do?" we will unfailingly be guided to accomplish what we are here to accomplish. 

Two challenges haunt me as I attempt to live this way.  The first is just remembering to check in.  It seems that I am tuned in one second and on autopilot the next doing what I'd planned to so.  The second is doing exactly what I am told when I am told to do it.  Now that flies right in the face of most of what we have been taught.  We are supposed to set goals, plan ahead, and fill our calendars, often months in advance.  The current thinking is that we don't set out to do something unless we know how to accomplish it and how we are going to pay for it, and rarely do our hearts give us a fully developed strategy and step-by-step plan to follow.  In fact, more often than not, we are only told the first step. If we keep checking in at each step, we will be guided flawlessly without ever knowing more than one step ahead.  Being in the mystery is what it is about.

Consider this story.  A number of years ago when I was living in the rainy Pacific Northwest, I decided I needed to live in a sunnier place.  I asked my heart for guidance.  (I often clarify, "Send me a sign--a real clear sign that even I can get."  Within the next 18 hours, I received six very clear messages that North Carolina was my place, beginning within five minutes when I walked in a bookstore and overheard a conversation, "I hear North Carolina is a great place to live."  The last of the six was the banner headline of my Oregon newspaper the next morning shouting, "NC best place to live."

I had my sign.  What next?  I had received no additional guidance, until I was awakened at 3 a.m. with a dream that made it clear that I was supposed to be in North Carolina on October 19.  I got up in the middle of the night and made my reservation.  Over the next nine months, a path as easy as the parting of the Red Sea opened for me.  I met someone at a conference in San Francisco, who was instrumental in meeting a realtor and business contacts. I met someone else at a conference in South Carolina who introduced me to what would be my inner circle of friends during the first years I was in NC.  Even the house that I bought became available in the middle of the day on the day I was told to shop for a house.  I've had moves across town that were harder than this cross-country move.

With all that said, when I arrived in Durham, N. C., on July 31, 1995, I had no job and all the clients of my consulting business were about as far from me as they could be and still be in the US.  However, I was certain that this was going to work out.  Within three days of my arrival, I had two major pieces of business back in Oregon that were willing to pay travel expenses, and the contracts were sufficient to support me for my first 10 months.  Furthermore, a couple months later, a client with work in China hired me, and I was able to extend my monthly trip to the West Coast on to Beijing.  Even though I hadn't known how known how I would support myself when I arrived, my first year living in NC ended up being the best revenue year since starting my business.

I could share many stories like the one above in which doors I couldn't have anticipated just miraculously opened when I listened and followed. I haven't always understood how things were going to work out or even why I was supposed to do certain things, but never once when I was following my heart, have I been misled.

That's not to say things have always worked out perfectly, but those times happened when I either didn't ask or didn't follow or didn't follow in a timely way.  More about that tomorrow.