Different Ways #14, Chapter 13, It's a Beautiful Day, Part One
Just sitting on a nail.
Thank you for listening.
Different Ways, Chapter 13, pp 87-91
Spiritual awakening or spiritual emergence is quite the buzz phrase these days in spiritual and enlightenment circles. I hesitate to use these terms but they are what they are. It happens. I first realized that I had experienced something phenomenal in terms of evolution back in 1977 when I recognized it was becoming more and more common in people's lives. I read Eckhart Tolle's book, The Power of Now where he related his story of what happened to him. I thought to myself, "Uh huh...that's it. That is how it happens." As Kafkaesque as it sounds, the miraculous does happen. I couldn't step into any kind of ownership yet of my experience even after reading about Tolle. I was too embedded in my narrative of staying safe about it to make my move. I had decided a spiritual life was not for me no matter what I had exerienced. Everything had to play out in its own time; in my own time. As Amanda Palmer would point out in her parable from her dear friend C. Anthony Martignetti, when she queried him regarding her reluctance to move on something she knew she should move away from, but somehow could not. She quoted this exchange in her book, The Art of Asking and he said:
“A farmer is sitting on his porch in a chair, hanging out. A friend walks up to the porch to say hello, and hears an awful yelping, squealing sound coming from inside the house. "What's that terrifyin' sound?" asks the friend. "It's my dog," said the farmer. "He's sittin' on a nail." "Why doesn't he just sit up and get off it?" asks the friend. The farmer deliberates on this and replies: "Doesn't hurt enough yet.”
Human beings don't move from their comfort zones until it becomes unbearable and terrifying. I'm no exception in that. Things have to play all the way out. The body must dance along with all the decisions we make and hope for the best when we are younger. If we are fortunate, we grow old and can begin to allow our lives to be as they could be not as we think they should be. So it was with my spiritual emergence. As I see it now, this experience had to be strung out over the course of decades so I could relate it from the perspective of the 68 year old me. This culture, this evolution, this time and space learns through us. We will deliver what is good to each other. It is not so much about surviving as it is about learning how to navigate being human and being of the universe simultaneously. I had to log in some lifetime to be able to grasp the importance of that concept. People of all ages and stripes need to be free to share their experiences so we all can learn how to thrive in a reality that encompasses so much more than we understand currently. Art is the quickest and the slickest delivery system of information in this regard.
Music: I understand Amanda didn't really like this song as it seemed simple to her but she rolled with it because so many people related to it. It is a little schmaltzy, to be sure, but I find it tender and on point in regard to the trap of being young and feeling so much life erupting from within, the confusion, and the connections just out of reach of one's expectations. It is a bit of a sucker punch to have to be young and in love with life in many ways; a tease. In essence it is the process one must attend to in fully living out one's story. If we live through it; if we answer to our decisions with compassion, we alchemize and become a kind of gold...a different kind of tender and something more than a legend in our own mind.
Thank you for joining me here. The memoir Different Ways: Revealing the Feminine can be purchased through my website using a link to Village Books at AlltheDifferentWays.com. There will soon be an eBook version available with an independent retailer.
The BlogCast that outlines my intentions for this series of readings from my book, Different Ways, Revealing the Feminine can be found here in the post, Between the Lines.