Where Are You Going?
When I was ten years old I took my first airplane ride. It was in a single engine plane with my uncle who had recently been certified to fly. Seeing the roads, lakes, farms, forests and houses from this new perspective showed me a world I didn’t know existed. It expanded my place in the sun and opened me to new possibilities I’d never imagined. The perspective of the ants moving along the same well worn paths opened to the eagle in the sky flying high with a different eye. This new perspective inspired awe and wonder. This small town boy had been given a new destination, a new way of seeing.
I didn’t realize it at the time but something shifted in me that day. New possibilities showed up when I wasn’t even thinking of them. I left my formal piano lessons for the fluidity of an electric guitar. A few years later I took up scuba diving to see what it was like to breathe underwater and explore the deep. At the age of sixteen I fell in love and discovered the mystery of the divine feminine. Eventually I went to college, graduated and moved from the Great Lakes of Michigan to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
Over the following decades I rarely sensed my destination as a place on a map or even as a fixed profession position. My destination became an internal landscape, a way of seeing and being with whatever called me into itself for what I needed to receive, give and belong to at the time. Now, well into the ‘second journey’ of life, I’m still on the ground and in the sky seeing with the eyes of a child where there’s wonder, joy and beauty. The mysterious path of creativity still calls my soul to awaken and unfold.
It’s been said by many that true creativity often starts where language ends. Does your experience lead you to agree with this saying? How have you touched its truth? Think back over your life to the times when you were fully alive. Picture the darkness that led to the light of this aliveness, the silent energy of creation that was drawing you. Feel the feelings, the silent prompts, the intuitive knowings that led you places you longed for and may have even feared. Breathe into it. Feel the currents. Follow your heart’s flow.
Were you able to see differently? If not, re-imagine your vantage point. See from the position of freedom, healing, nurturance, possibilities, empowerment, enoughness, beauty and lovingkindness. See from the depths of your soul, from your heart of hearts. Take your time. Breathe slowly and deeply. This current of infinite Life is always here. It doesn’t come and go from us, we come and go from it. Calmly enter this stream of conscious awareness. Feel the gentleness, nurturance, aliveness. Slowly breathe into the opening within. See the light glowing in the darkness. Feel the warmth. Rest here….
What’s being invited for us all is a basic reorientation from the incessant focus on the external destinations to the internal ones. It’s the way of contemplative creativity and artistry. It’s the way of abundant Life that’s interconnected and entangled with the Source of Life. It’s entering the flowing river-rooting tree that speaks volumes to you and me when we agree to see differently. It requires the courage to let go of the illusion of external certainties to let come the reality of internal refreshment and serenity. . . .
- Make the commitment to observe how you allow the external circumstances of your life to influence you. Notice the emotion swings and observe the wisdom of this saying from our friend Hokyo: ‘Serenity is not freedom from the storms, it’s peace within the storms.’ Are you increasingly finding peace within the storms or just the opposite?
- After reflecting on this essay, how much more clarity do have on where you’re going? Is it further within to the depths or further out into the chaos and confusion?
- What’s the next step for you in shifting the way you see things? Journal this over the next months. Notice the subtle changes in where you put your attention and how you’re able to see through the forms into the substance of people, places, situations and things. Open to new possibilities. Ponder your destination from the inside out . . .
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