Fickle to My Calling

That calling, that pulling, forceful energy that awakens a  yearning inside me, I feel it again. I recognize it. I know that I am meant to move towards it, as it moves towards me.

But when I think I can almost define it, almost close my fingers over it or pull it to me in an embrace, I lose it, the way a soap bubble pops and leaves only moisture behind. And then it’s gone, and even that moisture is insufficient proof that it ever existed.

I remember those stories of olden days that I read as a child, of two young people who recognized something in one another when they met and were then separated by life circumstances. They parted, then, with a soft promise, followed by a long separation, perhaps of many years, without any more connection between them than the fading memory of their encounter and their promise. In those stories, they held faith across vast expanses of time until they were finally joined by life once again.

My first thought is that those stories do not describe me. I know how fickle I can be! I need reminders, reconnections, a gentle wind over red embers. I need that calling held before me continuously, palpably, in order not to fall back again into oblivion.

Or, maybe not?

Is it possible that the fading memory of my encounter with that energy, of the promises I fervently made in its presence are powerful enough to hold me up until life joins us once again?

Photo Credit: John Boyer

To Stop Putting It Off

Once, in another time, I was working in an internship that was very important to me. I was living what felt like a desolate life, and trying to recognize what choices had gotten me there and what changes I could make. The internship was one of the places where I could get perspective, it was like a tree that gave me shade as I explored a sun-bleached landscape.

 

I am remembering that internship because one of the things I had to do was go through a long list of contacts and make cold calls to them, to tell them about our program and see if they would work with us.  Picking up the phone felt utterly terrifying.  I found all kinds of urgent things to do for a few days, before I could simply no longer put that task off.

 

I am intending, now, to recall what I did, what I thought, when the day came that I finally had to make those calls.

 

I know that, once I started, it got easier and easier. To the degree that making cold calls, even today, is something I can do effortlessly, without any moment of pause. There’s nothing to it. I don’t think about it, I simply pick up the phone and dial.

 

Sometimes, when there’s something I just have to do, that feels paralyzing, but that I have been shown in so many ways, ever more urgently and forcefully by my Soul that it must be done…well, I simply have to stop thinking about it, breathe deep and just take the plunge!

 

Photo Credit: ©Tnimalan at RGBStock.com

 

And if I allow myself to recall that internship, and so many other times after it, I can remember, too, that once I do that terrifying thing, it is not half as scary as it was when I was contemplating doing it.

The Soul Calling

As we go about our lives fulfilling the roles that we have chosen to take on, that we may have inherited from the people around us, we are sometime interrupted.  Sometimes the interruption comes through something big, often painful or frightening, something that shakes up our life. And sometimes, the interruption is only a niggling sense, a feeling, an unfathomable itch that gives us no peace.

It is our Soul, calling us back to our essence. It calls us to recognize that which would emerge into the world through us. It calls us to own the fullness of who we are in spite of the apparent contradictions found in that very fullness. It calls us to remember we are more than we seem, more than our bodies and our minds.

Sometimes that calling is present to us for a long time, we keep going as if we didn’t know it is there. But we intuit the potency of it, we are aware that it will not abate, will not release us to continue as we were. Yet, the force of  habit, the familiarity of living and doing as we always have, the approval of our family and peers for continuing as we were, and, especially, the overwhelming power that the fear of change grips us with, all conspire to keep us from heeding that call.

We have not been taught to honor our Soul, not been taught to listen for it. Our world is not built to support this kind of growth, this kind of stretching that feels like taking so great a risk.  Our lives are built around keeping on keeping on.

We all need to be reminded of the great Wisdom of Life, which we are part of, and, more so, of the Wisdom we already hold. We all need a mirror that catches our Light and reflects it back to us, so that our physical eyes can behold it.  We all need someone who has faith in us when we doubt ourselves; who asks what we would gain, when we ask what we would lose; who recognizes our fortitude when we feel weakness; who speaks back to us our own words of Knowing, which we have already forgotten.

We all need support and companionship on our journey to respond to our Soul.

I am that, I am a spiritual companion. I hold up the mirror for you to see yourself in your power and your potential, walking your own path, guided by your Soul’s compass, through the spaciousness of your own making. This is what my Soul calls me to.

A mirror that reflects our Light
Photo Credit: Andrea Friedmann©

Power

I am reading about power, the ability to make something happen. Yang power is what Westerners would think of when they hear the word “power.” It is what my ego would have me use. To make something happen, to cause a change that I predetermine, my ego wants a plan, preferably in black and white, with measurable markers along the way, and results it can hold up to the light to compare.

In Mother-Daughter Wisdom, Dr. Christiane Northrup calls yin power “the power of expectancy and faith… that change[s] our minds and our beliefs so we are better able to attract what we want. [It] knows how and when to wait and hold back… that sometimes the best action is to do nothing.”

This is the power my True Self would have me use. It is rich, loamy darkness, pulling my focus away from fear and to my soul’s desires. It requires that I sit in silent awareness, that I remain awake to my callings, and that I shift my vibration, tune myself up to the energy of that which is wanting to come into being through me.

©Fishmonk (Dan Shirley) at RGBStock.com

Something Greater

It is my intention always to follow what is alive for me, where the energy calls. But sometimes what that is, how to do it, is not so clear to me. In recent months, I have been doing some volunteer work that includes crafting a written environmental statement that my mind recognizes is vitally important, but that has felt immobile, stuck, in no way beckoning!

I am fortunate that I do not work alone, and that my companion on the journey, Amy, is a woman of wisdom who calls me to step into my own center when I forget. Recognizing the static energy in our task, together, and before our scheduled meeting, we decided to set aside all that we had done before and open ourselves up to inspiration.

That intention, consciously set, moved within my dreams, in the archives of my memories, in my imagination. An image came to me of a medicine wheel, sprung from my learnings in shamanism; an image that seemed completely outside of the worldview this Statement is supposed to fit into.  But it felt alive: a huge circle made of stones laid side by side; a circle, cut in quarters, and each separating line leading to a vibrant bunch of wild herbs growing. That image reminds me of the energy of la Finca, of mountains and soil and green trees unfolding, the place where I feel most aligned. That image connected me to the energies of all that which our Statement claims to celebrate and protect, but that I had drifted away from in the minutiae of wheres and wherefores.

During our meeting, when I shared the image with Amy, I did so only because it felt so alive, such a powerful presence in my mind’s eye, not because I could see its relevance to our task. Nonetheless, my wise companion invited me to allow what wanted to be expressed through us to arise. She set a process in motion that I could not describe, and before I could make sense of what we were doing, our staid, stiff Statement had turned into something new: a fluid tool that can hold highest consciousness, that can create space for any permutation of celebrating and protecting life, of learning from Nature, of connecting to Mystery.

In spite of the smallness of my imagination, I am blessed, for, in my willingness to follow, to open, I have been utilized again as a piece of the jigsaw that draws into the world something greater than my narrow mind could produce on its own!

Something Greater                                                       ©Marcelo Terraza (mterraza) @RGBStock.com

My Calling

My calling. It’s been beckoning, across the years and the decades. And I, I have listened for it, sometimes attentively, sometimes distractedly. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes resisting, I have followed its echo through darkened forests of heavy undergrowth, have felt it push me through tight spots that open into sunlit vistas, its energy giving me momentum to jump across canyons.

I have been faithful to it, across the canyons of time and geography. I have been true, as true as my courage and determination have allowed (which are, admittedly, not unflagging).

After all these years of listening, answering, following, I would think I would have grasped it already, I would predict I would have reached it with a victorious celebration! At the least, I would expect it to have faded slowly to nothing.

But time has only made it stronger. And, lately, it is a command, issued in the imperative.

I can only respond. I want only to respond.

Although I name it “a calling,” although that is a noun, my Calling is a verb, in continuous movement, never attainable, achievable, finished.

And I give thanks for that, for the magnificent white waters it will compel me to navigate, and the shiny mountaintop lakes it will coax me to climb to. I give thanks for all that I will see and learn, that I would never even aspire to, but for my Calling.

Mountaintop Lake in El Cocuy, Colombia, Photo by Santiago Giraldo

Following Suffices

When I feel my Soul calling, I know I am ALIVE!  And this awakens me to joy and radiance.

Often, the call requires me to stretch beyond my comfort zone, to gather courage and strength, to remember my commitment to my Self in order to find the determination to respond.

Often, what I am called to do has direct and visible consequences, not just for me, but for those around me. I have been called to do community work, to hold rituals, to offer Reiki… none of those occur alone, in my room, behind closed doors.

Often, those consequences distract me, they become the reason for what I am doing.

And when they don’t look the way I expected, my confidence fails and I want to retrace my steps.

But that is a mistake.

I can’t find a “logic” to what my deepest Self asks me to do. I don’t really know why something calls to me with a power I cannot deny. I especially don’t know it when I experience the call.

I forget that it is the fact of responding to my Soul’s urgings that is the reason I answer the call: honoring my Self.

Doing so makes me expansive and generous. And I know, for the briefest instant, the white-hot, numbing cold, impossible-to-reconcile, utterly familiar Oneness.

That is reason enough.

Photo Credit: Sanja Gjenero at RGBstock.com

There is a Fire

There is a fire.

That burns away the layers of dishonesty and dissimulation.

A fire that burns somewhere in my belly, under my ribs, and somewhere deeper, in a place unknown, unseen, that only can exist in the mists of Knowing, beyond the physical plane, yet still within me.

It burns with a great roaring.

It is not the flame that once scorched me, it is not the fire that brings death,

but the fire of Life, naked Truth, Passion.

And it seeks to pour itself into expression,

through me.

I will not douse it,

I will not seek to contain it,

I will not even dampen it.

In the end, I welcome it.

I choose to allow it.

 

I stoke this fire.

 

 

Mosaic

I come out of a coaching session, aware again, as I am after virtually every session, of the privilege that I have, to be a companion to another soul on its unique journey.

I am colored in awe for the courage I witness, and the wisdom that so naturally arises in each of us.

I am inspired by your willingness to step forth when clarity is lacking about the direction taken.

And then, I am inspired again by the synchronistic presence of every resource, every understanding, every connection needed to take another step forward into the unknown.

Awash with wonder, we look back together and see in this mosaic of tiny steps, the artful patterns that create this colorful, moving and powerful scene.

And I am reminded: your scene, with different tiles, steps in different directions, is part of the same collection as mine.

What is Alive

What is alive.

Awakens a dormant spark within.

When a cool cloth slides through my fingers, inviting me to mark it with my threads.

When the title of a book calls me, inexorably, to explore within its pages.

When the sunlight spills into my room and reminds me of trees and birds and gentle breezes, waiting to be witnessed.

What is alive.

Awakens me to my Self.

Reminds me that I am not only what I hold in my mind. I am also the inexplicable mystery.

What is alive.

Threatens to upend my world.

If I am bold, if I follow the light shed by that spark…

where will I go, what I will see…

will I make my way back? Will I want to?

What is alive.

Calls to me.

That call is the echo Of my longing.

I can only answer, If I am to remain true to my Self.