Dear ones, I have been away for so long! I have been writing elsewhere, and thought my old-fashioned methods of letting you know about that would suffice. Clearly, I didn’t consult with the technology fairies, or they would have advised that I post about it here. Finally, thanks to some of you reaching out and letting me know you were wondering, I am here, with this link to where I am writing now. I look forward to meeting you there! And wish you peace, and joy, and a life you thrive in.
If I am to honor my Self, I must be willing to feel, willing to become familiar with the dark places, with the shape of my fear.
Honoring my Self means offering myself compassion, gentleness and generosity, although my habit is harshness and cold.
It means celebrating the myriad gifts that are constantly coming my way.
Honoring my Self means strengthening my energy so that I can choose discomfort when ease, even when I know it harms me, tempts me.
It means committing to my practice of stillness so that the noise of confusion can become quiet, and the Wisdom that resides within me can emerge in my awareness.
Honoring My Self means using the tools I have acquired, instead of simply contemplating them.
Especially, it means remembering that I am greater than my thoughts, greater, also, than this instant, and yet, simultaneously, very much in it.
Photo Credit: Lars Sundström
How is it that dry, yellow sand can possibly nourish tall, swaying mounds of grasses that release their seeds to the wind?
How can the sounds of crickets transport me thousands of miles and twenty years into the past?
How can a large-eyed, yellow warbler, fluttering fearless me before me awaken this wonder in my heart?
This little patch of green, dwarfed by the expanse of water and sky, compressed by blacktop, cement, and the smell of exhaust: how is it that it can immediately return me to my Self?
Photo source: Wikipedia
Sometimes I understand that loss and pain are good for me, when they force me to stretch my neck beyond the boulder that hides me and I can see a whole new landscape unfurled beyond, inviting. Sometimes, today, I don’t know how to look at suffering and love what is there. I don’t know how to feel gratitude for the breaking, for the loss.
When I allow myself to intuit the depths of my fear, my impotence, then I understand how easy it is to defer to anger. I feel how much strength it takes for me to open myself, truly, to empathy. The question is: Am I willing to summon it?
I need to go inside to that core place, from which I find my way, where my Truth rests. But, sometimes, today, I find no real comfort there. And yet, I am aware of the Wisdom in openness, in empathy, and vulnerability. I am familiar with the gifts that they can bring.
And… I can perceive my strength, hidden in there, somewhere. If I stay long enough, I know that I can choose them all, some time, when I find that hidden strength. Or the will to summon it.
©David Ritter at RGBStock.com
For expediency’s sake, I call our social structure the Patriarchy. And I feel myself wounded by it, I rail against it, I resist it. It results in oppression and constriction. Today I am aware again of how this is true for men, as much as for women. If anything, the oppression and constriction of men is more subtle, camouflaged, because we are not taught to see it, because it is the lens we do not know we see through.
What irony, what joy, that I can find the strength to see this and to recognize the woundedness in me, to heal myself, and, through me, a piece of the world, only in the safety of a circle of women.
Human Eye, ©Dave Edmonds at RGBStock.com
What is it about leaves rustling that speaks so powerfully to my Soul?
That even amidst the deafening roar of everyday busyness, manages to hush the noise, to cause stillness?
So that I can surface from underneath the layers of “shoulds” and of tasks, from the corners into which weariness, irritation, inattention have driven me?
I walk outside with an intention to do Something, to accomplish Something, to check Something off my list of to-dos.
There is nothing to do.
The leaves, they rescue me, stopping me in my tracks for one infinitesimal, one infinite, crucial moment.
©Michal Zacharzewski at RGBStock.com
I have been cleaning out my closets, clearing out the clutter that accumulates there almost without my awareness of it. I am making space for greater energetic flow in my life. And in the process, I have found (and discarded) boxes full of diaries and journals from as far back as elementary school. As I paged through the oldest ones, I rediscovered a very strong, very brave version of myself, trying to know my Self, and hide it at the same time. It did not feel safe to allow my fullness to show in the world, and I consciously took on masks to navigate my life. I wrote about this, about the masks.
And this reminded me of all the masks I have donned through the decades, of all the ways that I have hidden myself, and how, even today, sometimes, I may feel that allowing myself to fully be can feel frightening. I remembered all the ways that I have twisted and turned myself in knots to fill others’ expectations, which I had frequently internalized and accepted as my own. I remembered all the ways I betrayed myself.
And I wrote my younger self a letter. I know I have done that before. But I felt compelled to write this letter. And as I wrote the following, it dawned on me that it holds true for me, even now, for the days that I have left to live.
You don’t have to seek anything out or try to win anyone over. Just stay true to yourself, love and respect yourself, care for your body and your soul and you will find everything you have doubted you could experience, awaiting you in your path.
As I go about my day, every day, I run into people whom I greet very briefly. “How are you?” “How are you doing?” Most of the time, these questions are answered with only a few quick words. Our exchanges are so often hurried, their content is less important than the very fact of them, of the connecting glance, of the acknowledgement we offer one another.
What would my day be like if, instead of the usual questions, I heard, “Who are you being?”
Who am I choosing to be? Am I showing up fully? Am I hiding parts of myself? Am I shielded? Am I being true to my essence?
Yesterday, on a podcast, I heard British Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks say, “By being what only I can be, I give humanity what only I can give. It is my uniqueness that allows me to contribute something unique to the universal heritage of humankind.” This sums up so well what I believe about each and every one of us. Just hearing it illuminates me.
And now I am approaching the day when I can offer one more form of my uniqueness, when I can give one more gift that only I can give. And that thought fills me with more joy than I can fit into one three-letter word, or any word at all.
I have made reference here, before, to the home of my soul. It is a place like no other that I have ever visited, in the breadth of my travels. It is a place that sounds pedestrian when I describe it, compared to what it offers. It is not like the glaciers in the Rockies, which took my breath away with their stark beauty. It is not clear and turquoise, jade green, and eight other shades of blue, like the Caribbean. It is not rich with history and the presence of many anonymous lives, the way Macchu Picchu is. I won’t find there the dragonlike sea iguanas and Frigate birds with bloated red breasts that I would on Galapagos.
And yet, like all of those places, La Finca can open my heart in my chest. It can fill me with a silence so deep and so broad that I can clearly hear my own soul. It can offer me treasures as minuscule as an inch-long golden orchid hidden under a leaf, which fills me with wonder and awe.
And that is half of the gift I can offer: a visit to La Finca with anyone who cares to experience for themselves the magic that I can’t do justice to with such meager tools as words.
Another view at La Finca
There can be a oneness between us, an open, expanding, radiating energy that connects our hearts and minds. It is a resonance, our two voices singing in harmony, in tune, at-tuned; their next phrase foreshadowed, and yet, simultaneously unexpected, surprising. We, our thoughts and feelings, our being, flow unhampered into one powerful current, running a new course. We recognize that we are the same wavelength.
Reflections From My True Self 