spirituality – Page 14 – One Woman's Quest

A Final Mystery

Is death a gentle reprieve,
a final release of suffering
a promised resting place?

Or is it contemplation
coloured by memories
demanding retribution?

Will death bring reunion
unleash forgiveness
shine with revelation?

Will one final earthly breath
call forth all the fragments of the soul
and restore wholeness?

I have witnessed death –
both embraced and unwanted –
snatch the spirit from its nest

felt the whoosh of escape
and a swirl of celebration,
known the peace that follows

witnessed the body, open-eyed
and open-mouthed
become a vacuum –

discarded membranes;
an impotent shell.

The spirit does not dwell there;
it lives on borrowed time.

Where it goes when all is done
remains life’s poignant mystery.

The River

There’s a river runs between us,
you and I.
Our thoughts, like tears, are liquid
carried effortlessly by the current.

But you and I,
we stand on the banks, oblivious;
ignoring the connection,
proudly touting our individualism.

Still the river flows,
and all you’ve suffered,
and all I’ve suffered,
or dreamed, or imagined, or hoped,
flows with it.

Step into the water with me,
feel our connection,
do not be afraid.
for it is sacred.

Wade deeper and know
you are not alone
for I am here
in this river
that runs between us.

( Image: ldsmag.com)

Well before I was of an age to articulate it, I understood that there was something sacred about nature. An indescribable presence spoke to me and I, unscathed by the creeds of modern religion, learned to listen with reverence.

My appreciation for a Higher Being was stirred in the gardens of my birthplace. The vibrant colours of the many species of flowers and the busy, other world, of the insects that inhabited these gardens spoke to me of a whole world that was invisible to the ordinary eye. Life within life. I was captivated.

By the age of five, I began to wander beyond the garden gate, across the tilled fields of the farm that our home bordered, and into the woods beyond. There my true schooling began.

The woods were untamed – a tangle of old and new growth, thickly blocking any paths – and if I was careful enough to pick my way through, I came to a natural opening where a creek ran through. The water, like my soul, was clear and revealed every little secret.

For hours, I would squat and behold its wonders: tadpoles in the springtime, crayfish burrowing in the sand, and even the twigs that would be carried by the current, get stuck in the rocks and resist the flow of water until they were released again.

I discerned a certain pattern to the life I was witnessing: a sense of harmony and purpose.

Lucky enough to live in a country with four seasons, I absorbed the lessons of change, and learned to read the signs. The shifting wind, for instance, spoke of brooding weather, or the coming of spring after the winter’s slumber. I learned that life has cycles, and that after every winter comes the rains and new hope of brighter days.

Another of my favourite spots was deep within the woods, where the light beams trickled through the leaves like a cascade of fairy sparkles. Burrowing into the soft soil of the earth, I would sit quietly, patiently, until nature revealed herself to me. The woods, I discovered, much like the garden of my own backyard, housed a thriving population: insects, birds, animals, and reptiles – all whose existence seemed to rely on one another.

I wanted more than to be a part of it all – accepted, belonging: a child of Nature.

And then I lost my innocence.

I attended church, and learned that God lived in a church, and that I was not worthy of His love, and therefore; I needed to repent. I needed to repent because I was blemished by sin, and that felt dirty, and the earth that I so loved became undesirable, and bugs were icky, and nature was something wild to be feared.

I began to doubt my own understandings.

I learned to doubt me.

I lost confidence.

I no longer listened to the signs.

I learned to want for things, material things, anything, that would fill the void. Disconnected from the reverent, life felt out of control, something to be feared, not revered.

But nature has a way of reminding, even the most diehard non-believers, that there is more to life than we can see, and that a force, inexplicable, and sacred exists, and it came knocking on my windowpane tonight, with a message in the form of unseasonal gale winds and hail, and woke me from slumber.

And my soul answered, like the child I had once been, with a joyous recognition that despite all our theories, and doctrines, and delusions of educated knowledge, there still exists a life within a life: the Great Mystery that defies us and keeps us ever humble.

As a Tree

Confined for hours at a time to my bed, I cheer myself by contemplating the trees outside my windows. There is something in their stoic beauty that both calms and inspires me.

Be as the tree a former meditation instructor taught me.

If I were a tree
my roots would run deep into the earth
and spread in all directions
grounding me.

Present.

My trunk would be wide and solid
weathering all storms
supporting other life
a tower.

Strong.

My branches would reach up to the sky
and dance with the breezes
and bend with the changing seasons
and bow to Nature.

Flexible.

If I were a tree
I would be calm, yet strong;
have heightened awareness, yet be rooted in reality.

I would yield to change,
yet stand proud in my own existence,
growing with grace.

If I were a tree
I would live in harmony
with Nature.

Present, Strong. Flexible.

Fully alive.

(Image from: www.nbcdfw.com)

Self-Delusion

I am driven,
a woman obsessed.
feet digging in,
body pressed forward,
the sweat on my brow
blackened by the relentless dust
whipping around me
in the prairie heat.
I drive on,
fatherless,
husbandless,
solely responsible
for my cargo
the horses heeding my commands,
everything, everyone
I treasure
on board.
I am a pioneer
delivering us
to the promised land.

I am wounded,
bleeding,
my prone body
curled on a mat of straw
back towards the others
teeth clenched
in silent pain
determined
not to show my need.
I will not be a burden.
so I feign sleep
and brace myself
against the jolts
and try not to gasp.
Lie still,
Be brave,
the journey is necessary
and soon we will arrive
and all will be well
and I will stop,
bleeding.

We children
are both afraid and
joyous
The ride is bumpy
and never-ending
and we try to be good
and not complain
but our spirits long
to play
to get out of this wagon
and find cool water to
splash in
or play hopscotch
in the sand.
But we are obedient
and so instead
find laughter
in the moments
in our own company.
Believing,
trusting,
that all is for a reason,
and the end is near.

I am a young man,
and I have goals,
and dreams
beyond the confines of these wagon walls.
I have a vision
of a life fulfilling,
of purpose,
and gold,
and I am ready
and able
to fight
I am willing
to strive,
fearless
into the unknown
yet I am trapped
held captive
by my elders.
overlooked.

I am the faithful,
God-inspired
all-believing,
hopeful,
prayerful,
trusting in higher power
caught in a web
of pleading, asking, forgiving,
accepting, and wondering.
What can I give of myself?
What does God need?
Am I not good enough?
Have we sinned?
Are we being punished?
Are our needs only trite,
and we selfish?
Must we bear this cross
to be received
in Heaven?
Is there a reason
I pray for strength
so that I may be more worthy,
more deserving,
when the judgment day comes.

I am a mother,
worried,
caring,
hoping for the best
catering to all,
barely a child myself,
bearing each experience
with borrowed strength,
selflessly focused
outward
drawing, drawing,
from a well
seldom replenished.
Tired,
oh so, tired.

I am an old woman,
frail yet wise,
enduring the rough ride,
surrendering to the knocks
knowing that as in all things
this too shall pass.
I am silent,
guarding my wisdom
for the imploring only,
acknowledging the value
in each journey
in each interpretation,
knowing that in the end
we are all deluded
and that the destination
is in the here and now
not tomorrow
not at the end of some dusty trail.
In each moment we have arrived
and so have I.
Patient and accepting.
Life is as it is.
Amen.

The Drive Behind the Quest

I was nine, when I first asked God to let me die: I’d had enough of life. By the time I was fifteen, I was pleading: “Really, God. I am happy with all the experiences I’ve had. You can bring me home now.”

Once I realized that my mortality (suicide aside) was not negotiable, and convinced that God had forsaken me, I was determined to control my own destiny. Intolerance and judgment became my life maps. I went into overdrive to “get there”, wherever “there” was. I worked long hours, partied hard, and grasped at opportunities. I forgot to pack an emergency kit, so when life broke down, I was not prepared.

One thing I did know: my life wasn’t working for me.

That is when my quest began. I hungered for a deeper sense of purpose and an inner peace. I wanted to feel bliss and live from gratitude.

I first encountered the Tao through Tai Chi. “Tao means ‘how'” the instructor told me. “It seeks to explain the Universe.”

“Yes!” I thought. “This is what I need.”

I embraced spirituality with a great hunger, consuming philosophies and teachings with unbridled enthusiasm. My mind thrilled to the challenge of cryptic codes believing that I could find meaning and order in everything, and everyone, I encountered. My compulsive need to fix thrived under the poorly masked guise of “love and light”. I really hadn’t changed; I’d just chosen a different vehicle to drive.

Until it all blew up and those I felt closest to walked away.

I still quest, but now it is for simplicity and contentment. I am tired of complication and drama. I have seen too much. I am focusing now on letting go; and supporting others in their choices, allowing for the beauty of life’s natural order (and disorder) to unfold before me.

Truth is, whatever control we think we think we have is an illusion for the most part. Self-control, maybe, but never where others are concerned. For me, my mishmash spirituality helps me hang up that hat: my chauffeur’s cap. I am not driving anyone anywhere these days. Instead, I hope that others invite me along because I am me, and that me spreads love, acceptance and support.

As I learned long ago, some choices in life our not our own, but how we live is.
I still have a lot to learn. Guess I’ll be around for a while.

(Feature image: thejesuschick.com)(Other: www.inquisitr.com)

Bathroom Inspirations

“Meditation will open whole new worlds for you,” the psychic proclaimed.

“I know nothing about it. How do I start?” I was really just being polite. Dragged to this session unwittingly – I thought we were going to be playing euchre – I didn’t want to burst my friends’ bubbles by telling them how skeptical I was.

“It’s really very simple. Find a place and time where you know you won’t be interrupted, clear your mind, and focus on the center of your being.”

Really simple. I decided to try it, since the woman had said a few things that hit home. Maybe she was right about this too.

Step one turned out to be a problem. I was twenty-eight years old, and pregnant with baby number three. Finding a consistent time and place to practice meditation was a challenge. If and when the girls did nap at the same time, I would use those moments to do laundry, prepare a meal, or try to catch a few winks myself.

“Make time,” she had insisted when I told her about my busy schedule. “It is up to you.”

I felt so inadequate as a spiritual being, and at the same time driven to prove I could do it. I grabbed every minute of solitude that I could find. I would learn to practice the art at the drop of a hat. I would become super meditator.

The psychic was right. I had profound revelations, and discovered a new source of wisdom from within. It was amazing.

“Doing it in the same place, and at the same time, communicates your intent to the subconscious, unleashing the inner wisdom,” she had explained.

It was true. With practice, every time I went to my meditation place I would experience that connection, and sometimes even without seeking it, insights would flow.

Then one day, an amazing thing happened. I was out for lunch with a business associate and we were trying to figure out a mutual problem. Neither one of us could find a solution, until I excused myself and went to the Ladies’ room.

Clarity overcame me before I could even flush the toilet, and as I excitedly revealed the answer to my colleague, I marveled at how easily the idea came to me……in the bathroom…..the same place where I practiced meditation at home.

It seems that my subconscious mind is not particular about which bathroom I use. Now I experience inspiration when nature calls.

Synchronicity

Daylight had just begun to creep into the night sky when an insistent tapping woke me. Fighting against the fog of sleep, my mind struggled to identify the source of the sound. It was coming from a window, across the room. A small bird was tapping frantically on the windowsill. Silly bird, I thought. You don’t want in here.

Awake now, I decided to start my day. In two weeks I would be going away on a much anticipated retreat. I had things to do. As it was a Sunday, I would have several hours to myself before the kids awoke and the day got underway. Thanks, little bird, I thought.

The next day, I was already waking up by the time my little friend arrived, tapping once again on the same window. He flew into a nearby bush as I made my way to my car a little later, and when I started the engine, he flew onto my side mirror and cocked his head at me. I laughed out loud. “You can’t stay there,” I scolded. “I have to drive to work.” Stubbornly, he rode down the driveway with me and then flew away as I turned onto the street.

We were to become best buddies for the next two weeks, he greeting me every morning, then riding with me on the car. When I’d return in the late afternoon, he’d be back to greet me again. Mom’s friend, the kids called him. “Why is he doing that?” they’d ask. “I have no idea.” I’d respond, but I had a feeling I’d find out soon enough.

* * * * *

Time came to set out for the retreat. Three of us were traveling together and stopping for the night on the way. We chose a cute little town with a promising looking little restaurant where we could get a gourmet meal. I chose the Duck. Never having had duck before, I didn’t know what to expect. The grease from the bird kept me up all night with stomach pains, and prompted a number of jokes about sitting ducks, and Duck! and so on, all night.

We arrived at the retreat center just before dinner the next day. The cabins were rustic, but the setting was idyllic. Our cabin was set back in the woods, not far from a stream with a waterfall. The beauty and serenity of the setting instantly filled me with calm.

The bell for dinner sounded, and my friends and I made our way to the dining hall. A line had formed along the entrance way, which doubled as a book store. “Oh good,” my friend Sandy exclaimed. “I want to shop for books.”

I was not as interested. I’d spent all my money getting here, so I would practice some restraint. I turned my back on the books to avoid temptation, but just as I did, someone tried to pass, and I knocked a shelf. I caught a book mid tumble. It was open, and as I glanced at the page, I was startled to see the picture of my little bird looking back up at me. I gasped.

“Remember the bird I told you about?” I exclaimed to my friends. “This is it.”

“What does it say?”

The caption read: “If this bird has shown up in your life, it is bringing you the message of…….”

Shaken, I put the book back. The message I just read was no coincidence. I couldn’t concentrate all through dinner. I had to know the rest.

The book, Animal Speak, by Ted Andrews, said that the bird that had been following me was a cowbird, and that cowbirds speak to the issue of abandonment in childhood. Andrews said if this bird had shown up in your life, it was time to deal with those issues. I was dumbfounded, and trembling, but at the same time, there was no better place for healing.

* * *

I awoke the next morning before sunrise, and slipped out of the cabin quietly. There was just enough light to see the outline of a path. A movement in the brush alarmed me, until I saw that it was a bird that flew just ahead of me. I followed. The bird flew ahead a bit further. I continued on the same route. The bird settled on a branch of a tree, and I approached it as if being beckoned. The tree stood on the bank of a stream. Without daylight, everything was imbued with an eerie light, almost other worldly. I decided this was as a good a place as any to meditate on my findings from the day before.

Taking a few deep cleansing breaths, I opened my awareness to the beauty of my surroundings. Immediately, I became aware of another presence; a presence I had not felt for many years: the divine feminine. My heart filled with deep longing, and sorrow, as tears rushed down my cheeks. My issue of abandonment.

Why did you abandon me? my heart cried.

I did not abandon you, the voice was gentle, loving. It was you who abandoned me.

It was true. I had become so entrenched in the pursuit of material happiness, I had neglected my spiritual roots.

I never left you. I felt myself surrounded in a warm embrace, and sobbed. I cried for all the years lived in a vacuum, striving to please others, and be good enough, yet lonely, incomplete. I cried for the arrogance that made me think I didn’t need this connection, and for the ingratitude that I had shown.

Mother, I had called her as a child. She was a loving, patient presence that was always there for me: her voice the subtle changes of the wind, her essence a sudden release of fragrance. She spoke to me through signs and omens, but mostly through birds.

Birds. Birds had brought me back to her.

Hope, renewal, rejuvenation, and love filled me. My feet barely touched the ground as I skipped back to the cabin, daylight just starting to greet the day.

“Tell your bird friend we don’t need the wake up call,” one roommate grumbled at me as I opened the door. “She’s been tapping at the window since 6.”

Sure enough, she was there again as we made our way to breakfast, following along and finding a perch just outside our window. Then, as if she had waited, she followed us across the grounds to the gathering place, where we would be studying for the day with Delores Krieger.

Synchronicity is the Universe’s way of telling you, you are on the right track, Delores offered.

At lunch, I looked up the species of bird: catbird.

” The presence of a catbird as a totem indicates you will be encountering a wider range of people than you are normally in contact with …..With the catbird as a totem, look for new people coming into your life that will teach you lessons in your ability to communicate.”

It made sense. The focus of the retreat was how to teach therapeutic touch, and it appeared that I was renewing old forms of communication as extracurricular.

I was feeling the synchronicity.

(Image: abundanthope.net)

Questioning

Every Sunday, dressed in our church clothes (matching dresses that mom had sewn herself) we girls were ushered off to service. Dad rushed us so that he could get a decent parking spot – one that would permit a hasty exit when it was all over. He didn’t want to waste his day hanging around that place any longer than he had to.

At eight years of age, I marvelled at how different everyone was on this day. The crabby old lady from next door, who spent all week terrorizing the children of the neighbourhood, arrived in formal attire, with her little pillbox hat and matching gloves, and sweetness plastered across her face. Another neighbour, who everyone knew drank too much and beat his children, was greeted as if he himself was free of sin. On Sundays, I observed, we all became new people.

I chose to sit in the main church for the sermon as I never quite got the concept of Sunday School. Seemed to me we never learned anything, and most days we just coloured pictures related to some story that made no sense. That’s not to say I understood the sermon either. The minister kept referring to God as He, which would set my mind to wondering. My experience of God existed right back to my earliest memories, and that being was more feminine than masculine. I could not relate to the He the minister kept talking about. Could I have been so wrong? Is it possible that the minister had it wrong?

“What is the point of church, anyway?” I asked my parents one day. “Seems to me it is hypocritical.”

“Sunday is the day that we worship our Lord,” my mother said. “We dress up and show respect in His name.”

“Well, what about the rest of the week? Is it okay to be nasty the rest of the week? Doesn’t God watch us then? Shouldn’t we be living in respect of God all week long?” I didn’t mention the gender thing.

“She makes a good point,” my father added.

“That’s the way it’s always been done,” my mother shrugged.

We stopped going to church, but my quest for spiritual understanding didn’t stop there. I invited myself to my friend’s churches, and discovered stricter creeds, and attitudes of superiority and exclusiveness.

Organized religion, from my perspective, tells one what to believe, rather than encouraging one’s own relationship with the divine. As a child, I had a deep and very real connection with something that was beyond the ordinary – a loving, yet omnipotent power.

Now, I seek a return to the sense of wonder of life, to the simplicity of knowing that there is a presence or meaning that transcends the mundane, and the security of believing in that force. I crave goodness, and a harmonious state of being. I want to know inner peace.

Immortality

Time passes,
shadows shift, waning
light made precious
by beckoning end.

Once believed in forever,
guaranteed tomorrows –
fallacy now shattered
by mortality’s knock.

New souls, born
of promise, eyes hungering
for what shall be, ignite
a fire of hope in me.

Will I be remembered
when life has begot more life
and I am faded ancestry –
will my essence linger?

Flesh rots, memory
fades, but the spirit
has its own calling –
will mine rise again

in trait, or disposition,
or with fresh complexion
and renewed intention –
an immortal circle?

(Image: livingwisdom.kabbalah.com)

Category: spirituality