Live, Love, Laugh wire, resin and bead focal on cord $57 by Tammy Vitale
I had another blog planned for today. And I realize I’m getting backed up so may be posting a bit more frequently until I catch up (finding so many lovely sites that need to be shared as my FB friends grow).
Last week I was reading Patty Digh’s blog (delivered to my inbox – the one way I can be sure to read blogs I love and I do love hers!) and it was poetry Wednesday day. She had a knock-your-socks-off poem by David Whyte – whose prose writing I adore. Didn’t know he wrote poetry.
Well. I’m am going to go way understatement here and say that every page would be totally underlined if I were to underline all the important thoughts.
It opens with a Drew Dellinger poem from “Hieroglyphic Stairway” (I didn’t know him either):
It’s 3:23 in the morning
and I’m awake
because my great great grandchildren
won’t let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?
surely you did something
when the seasons started failing?
as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?
did you fill the streets with protest
when democracy was stolen?
what did you do
once
you knew?…
Sometimes you have to walk immediately away from something profound so it has time to settle. I keep doing that with this book. (Bear with me, here – this has absolute bearing on my last post, “Why isn’t it working? I’ve done it all right!“) Anyways, Chapter Two starts with this poem:
Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask it permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers.
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
(I’m a total believer in the healing power of nature – I do not know how anyone can go to the Ocean and sit with her and not be healed. But I digress).
Here’s a section of Chapter Two, The Power of Here, that every one who feels lost (and don’t we all at some point?) should have at the ready as a map (yes, Seth, there are maps) to the next step:
Wisdom traditions worldwide say there’s no greater blessing than to live the life of your soul, the source of your deepest personal fulfillment and of your greatest service to others. It’s what you were born for. [Hell Yes!] It’s the locus of authentic personal power – not power over people and things, but rather the power of partnership with others, the power to cocreate life and to cooperate with an evolving universe.
Before you find your ultimate place, you are, in a sense, lost. You have a particular destiny but don’t know what it is. It’s like being lost in a forest, as in poet David Wagoner’s image at the opening of this chapter.
You can begin or deepen your relationship to soul in the same way the poet advises you to commune with the forest. None of the nonhumans in the forest – or the world, more generally – are lost. Each one is precisely in its true place, and each one knows every place in the forest as a unique place. They are doing something you do not yet know ho to do. You could apprentice yourself to them. The forest, the world, knows where you are and who you are. You must let it find you.
If you don’t yet have conscious knowledge of your soul, you haven’t yet learned the power of place – or the power of Here. To acquire this power, you must first get to know more thoroughly the place in life you already inhabit. This place consists of your relationships and roles in both society and nature. This is the place in which you are lost, in which you find yourself to be, and from you you can, eventually, find you self. You must treat this place you’re in as a “powerful stranger,” and educate yourself more fully about what it is to inhabit any place. To inhabit a particular place is to have the potential to do and observe the specific things that one can do and observe in that place. This knowledge about inhabiting a place will help you shift other places in life (which is done by changing your relationships and roles ) and to get to know what it’s like ot inhabit those places. You’ll discover that some places feel more like your true place, closer to your ultimate place. By developing your sensitivity about place in this way, you can gradually move to your ultimate place.
In the moment you finally arrive in this psycho-ecological [place], you feel fully available and present to the world, unlost. This particular place is profoundly familiar to you, more so than any geographical location or any mere dwelling has ever been or could be. …This is the identity no one could ever take from you. Inhabiting this place does not depend on having anyone else’s permission or approval or presence. It doesn’t require having a particular job – or any at all. You can be neither hired for it nor fired from it. Acting from this place aligns you with your surest personal powers (your soul powers), your powers of nurturing, transformation, creation; your powers of presence and wonder.
The first time you consciously inhabit your ultimate place and act from your soul is the first time you can say, “Here” and really know what it means. You’ve arrived, at last, at your own center. As long as you stay Here, everywhere you go, geographically or socially, feels like home. Every place becomes Here.
This is the power of place, the power of Here.
Before soul initiation, wherever you go, there you are. After soul initiation, wherever you go Here you are. (Emphasis throughout, mine)
I hope you stayed through to the end of that. This is page 38 of a 450 page book. I keep having to put it down and walk away. Which is to say I find this all pretty intense. And am so thankful that I paid attention to it’s arrival (when I used to go to bookstores, books would literally fall off shelves into my hands. That was pretty clear. On-line you just have to be in tune with your gut to get the same thing).
So, what do you think?
Wylde Women’s Wisdom
There are a lot of coaches and gurus out there who are selling “authenticity” (they use that word a lot – they’re telling you what they want you to believe and what you probably want to believe too, not necessarily what they are offering) in one breath and “I can double/triple/quadruple your money” in the next. Words are cheap. Be careful who you allow into your space. Coaching with the right coach can be amazing. Choose wisely!
(also, see Danielle Laporte’s post wherein she opines: “Try this. The next time you walk into a bookstore, or stumble upon a seemingly helpful blog, or lean in to hear a theory from someone supposedly wiser or more trained than you, just ask yourself: DO I REALLY NEED THIS?”)
Finally: be gentle with yourself. If this were easy, we’d already be there. Which means “there” is not important. “Here” right where we are is where all the good stuff is happening.
1 Comment
Love this post…..as I am seeking authenticity :).
P.S. Love the necklace too!