Thursday, March 25, 2010

Daily Discovery

As a young teen, lying on the shag carpeting of my room with my feet up on my dresser, I sometimes thought about the many different roles adults play and how impossible it seemed to be all those people at once. I was just becoming acquainted with myself, looking at how I played out my limited repertoire: student, daughter, sister, friend, camper, dancer, etc. How can a person be all these things and go from one to the other so seamlessly, I wondered?

I wanted to fit in, be accepted. External appearances were important. The more I tried to keep up with everyone else, the more fractured I felt. Who was I really? It was at this time I started to have my own unique thoughts about the world. I was discovering I did have an internal life as well as an external one.

It is the deeply rooted sense of who we are inside that gives us our center and makes us feel connected to everyone and everything. We cannot go inside, be connected to this Source, and at the same time be concerned with comparing ourselves to everyone else. So it is no wonder that my teenage self was confused about who she was.

This feeling has lasted to varying degrees for most of my life. Like Dani Shapiro, in her memoir, Devotion, I came to a point in mid-life where I needed some answers. We each have our own questions, and they are often of an existential nature. Mine were primarily about my purpose, my contract in this lifetime. It is clear that I am on a path, a journey of discovery. I know that each and every day something new may be revealed. But what am I meant to be doing, what is my life’s work?

I’d like to think of myself as a patient person but I am not. I want to KNOW. I’ve always been like that. Sometimes, when the suspense of a story became too scary, too big, I flipped to the back of the book just to KNOW that the hero did not die. So, too, I want to know what is in store for me, where I’m heading.

What I do know is that it will unfold at the perfect pace for me. I need to be open, be patient and be aware of what IS happening, right in front of me and to me, each and every day (“moment” would be more than I could hope for). Then gracefully, effortlessly, it will be revealed.

The Space Between Breaths

I have just finished reading Devotion, a memoir by Dani Shapiro. It is a story of her spiritual journey, and it could just as easily have been mine or yours. So often I felt myself nodding at her self-discoveries, Truths with a capital “T.”

We all grapple with finding that quiet space within ourselves, trying to find it over and over again. That, and not getting lost in the distraction of everyday living. It is my greatest challenge.

Why do I go weeks without posting on this blog? I don’t make the time to sit and write—it’s not my “job” or “profession.” So, I go from one airplane ride to the next train ride, having a period of an hour or two, suspended between two destinations, like that space between breaths. It is in that space I can give voice to what I have been experiencing.

We each find space in our own way, when we come to realize we crave that quiet, that opening. Whether sitting in meditation or communing with nature, it is the first step, the awakening, in the process of becoming more conscious.