It appears that it was all a misunderstanding.
What was only a trial run was taken seriously.
The rivers will return to their beginnings.
The wind will cease in its turning about.
Trees instead of budding will tend to their roots.
Old men will chase a ball, a glance in the mirror—
They are children again.
The dead will wake up, not comprehending.
Till everything that happened has unhappened.
What a relief! Breathe freely, you who suffered much.

~Czeslaw Milosz~
New and Collected Poems 1931-2001

Stumbled on this in my archives.  I wrote this several months ago and I think it’s sage wisdom any time of the year …

What if we believed all things were unfolding for our good — not just some of our experiences but ALL of them?  Well, what if we did?  That would eliminate all anxiety, fear and worry.  It would essentially rid us of all suffering.  But it would require something of us, we’d have to suspend all conclusions that are set against our desires.  We’d cease inserting a period into any experience, as my friend Wenda would say.  We’d remember that life is in perpetual expansion and because of this the nature of all things is continually unfolding.  We know this to be true, now couple that with believing that everything that happens – happens for our highest good.  Imagine for just a moment what that would feel like.  Do you feel the peace, the ease and the profound relief wash over you as you rest in that knowing?

in a world where we can choose to adopt any belief we want to, why not choose the ones that work for us and with us.  Everything about this vast Universe moves with grace and benevolence.  The whole of nature moves towards balance and well being.  This is proof that all that does unfold is for the well being of everything.  Knowing this, there are no longer any reasons to suffer over anything.  Next time, should you find yourself beginning down the trail of suffering, take pause to remind yourself, everything unfolds for your greater good.  You may not see the bigger picture in this red hot moment but you can trust the truth of this knowing — everything unfolds for my good — and rest there.   No longer will you walk through darkness.  The belief that everything unfolds for your good will illuminate all your paths and prove itself true for you again and again, if you just let it.

Should we suffer needlessly again, it is because we’ve reached a conclusion that counts against everything unfolding for the good.  We’ve inserted a period into that experience —- forgetting momentarily how life is in constant flow.  We can re-join that flow right now.  Close your eyes and take a deep breath and sink into knowing that all things are unfolding for your good.  Stay there long enough to feel how it feels in your body and before you open your eyes remember you can take this feeling with you wherever you go.  Know that you need not suffer a moment longer as long as you choose to know with every fiber of your being that everything, absolutely everything is unfolding for your good.  Let that be the gift you give yourself this season.   It truly will demonstrate itself to be the gift that keeps on giving.

We’ve all had them – challenges and circumstances that leave their unforgettable impact and change us forever.  Abraham aptly terms it: the contrast.

I would like to believe that we have chosen the contrast on some level before we ever fully emerged into these bodies.  I don’t believe we chose the specifics of it so much as the generalities.  I do believe we chose it before we were capable of feeling fear and before we formed individual ideas of what’s good and what’s bad or even what’s right and what’s wrong.

The beautiful thing about making peace with having chose it all on some level is that I don’t have to understand why – just know that whatever it is, I chose it. This is a far more empowering feeling than the victim stance of this happened to me and I have no control over it and it sucks.  And I feel it’s even more empowering than searching for positive aspects in certain situations where I just can’t come by it honestly.

I actually dreamed one night about someone very close to me who is a heroin addict.  I dreamed we were in non-physical and talking about how we were going to come down to earth in these bodies and have this relationship with each other.  We spoke eagerly about this adventure we were going to have and there was this sense that this undertaking meant lots of challenges with thrilling twists and turns.  But there was no fear, no judgement at all about it, the only feeling was one of enthusiastic anticipation.

The dream scene then changed and we were in physical bodies here on earth.  We were in a small boat on a river and we were still happily awaiting the contrast we were about to experience.  Then the water became choppy, darkness descended and one of us was thrown overboard into the water.  At that moment, the drama began to unfold and we were both lost in the dream.  We forgot the initial agreement we made in non-physical.  We become immersed and lost both literally and metaphorically in the water, in the dream I was dreaming, in the drama.

The dream ends but leaves behind its message: this was all a choice and from your non-local vantage point, you were not afraid, nor did you say this is a good pile of things to experience and this is a bad pile of things to experience.  You wanted it all.  You didn’t just come to paint with the color yellow, you didn’t just come to ride the smooth train from point A to point B.  You did want it all.  And remembering this, I step out of immersion and I make peace with where I am and what I have lived and will live.  Making peace, I pass from moving against the current of life to moving with the current of life.

Optimism is reflected in many areas of life.

Many birds in their fantastic migrations demonstrate an amazing optimism, traveling thousands of miles to distant shores, almost literally flying by faith, as it were, ignoring all dangers, unbesieged by doubts.

There is no hesitancy, but the sure flight. Birds do not question whether or not the weather will be favorable, the winds fair or foul. They simply fly towards their destination. Even if some birds do fall or die, this in no way impedes or undermines the faith of the others.

Monarch butterflies, in their remarkable migrations, often fly toward land that they have never seen themselves — and yet they reach their destination.

In all such cases there is an inbred biological faith, that courage and vitality, that biological optimism. It acts the same in people, triggering the necessary bodily responses. Only when the optimism is severely tampered with do the physical mechanisms falter. Even then, however, all creatures are sustained
by that innate gift, that inner sense of security that not only propels creatures toward life, but safely conducts them past physical life and past death’s doorway.

The way toward health is simplicity itself.

It is the natural, easiest way to behave, yet this natural mental behavior is often quite difficult for the intellect to understand, since the intellect is apt to enjoy playing with complications and solving problems. Therefore, to the intellect it often seems ludicrous to imagine that the answer to a question lies within the question itself.

All of nature demonstrates this almost miraculous seeming simplicity. Plants and animals and all of life’s aspects take it quite for granted that the sun will shine and the rains will fall in the way best conducive to all creatures.  Animals certainly do not worry about tomorrow’s weather conditions. It may be true that animals do not need to know tomorrow’s weather, since they do not plant seeds or collect the harvest. It is perfectly fine to make plans for the future, yet each individual should live day by day, without worrying about the outcome of those plans.

The physical body can only react in the present moment. Worrying about future events, or dwelling upon past unfavorable situations, only confuses the body’s mechanisms, and undermines their precise activity in the present moment.

I am not saying that anyone should pretend that unfavorable circumstances do not sometimes exist, or that they may not be encountered in the past, present, or future. It is also true, however, that advantageous events occur with a far greater frequency than do negative ones — otherwise the world that you know simply would not exist. It would have disappeared in the throes of destruction
or calamity.

In a basic way, it is against nature’s purposes to contemplate a dire future, for all of nature operates on the premise that the future is assured. Nature is everywhere filled with promise — not only the promise of mere survival, but the promise of beauty and fulfillment. Once again, the keen sense of promise is
innate within each portion of the body. It triggers the genes and chromosomes into their proper activity, and it promotes feelings of optimism, exuberance, and strength.

… Live each day as fully and joyfully as possible. Imagine the best possible results of any plans or projects. Above all, do not concentrate upon past unfavorable events, or imagined future ones.

~Seth – Jane Roberts – The Way Toward Health~

I just finished reading Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella.  Perhaps you thought I read metaphysical/consciousness stuff all the time.  I do read a lot of that but once in a while, I temper all that seriousness with lighthearted and fun reading.  So, I adored the book, hated that it was over, when I reached that final page, and cried at the ending.  I’m not going to review the book per se but I loved its story of a guardian angel.  The main character in the book has a deceased great-aunt for a ghost that lives with her and she evolves into her guardian angel.  All sorts of circumstances and people come together because the guardian angel arranged it behind the scenes.

Doesn’t that just sound like The Universe?  Isn’t that our guardian angel?  Haven’t you had things happen to you that just had you scratching your head, how did that happen?  Have you ever thought of something or pondered wouldn’t it be nice if such and such happened and it did?  Haven’t people, circumstances and events sometimes come together in ways you couldn’t have possibly imagined?  Moments where you said it all unfolded even beyond your wildest dreams?  Haven’t wonderful things happened to you, where you thought: oh my gosh, I can’t believe this happened to me?!  Or you get a little nudge, an impulse to do something, you don’t know why, but you do it anyway and surprising things happen to you as a result.  Or how about all those times when everything turned out alright after all and seemingly just in the “nick of time”.

Maybe that’s because we all have a guardian angel.  And the Universe/God/Source/Field, whatever floats your boat, is it.  A guardian angel orchestrating a multitude of things on our behalf.  A guardian angel who has had our back at every step of the way.  A guardian angel that’s stepped in and carried us through the worst of times.  A guardian angel that moves with grace and benevolence and infinite wisdom and is by our side at all times.

And this guardian angel still remains when I get to the end of this book of Life because deep down, where it matters, I know that I’m not alone, that I truly am loved beyond measure and always have been and always will be.  That’s there’s an inescapable and mysterious Something out there always moving on my behalf, guiding me and encouraging me to take my hands off the wheel.  They’ve got me covered, they always have.

Truth is
when the heart grows cold enough
everything disappears. Even the self

is invisible (though the mind
would prefer a word like “detained”).

If you can’t feel anything
the whole world is “detained” —
our lives happening and unhappening
at what seems a safe distance.

But that
is all a seeming, an apparition.
There is only one
distance, which is love, one real
choice, and if we consent to it,

the one we were
is lost forever. “Abandonment,”
we call it. As in: wild, or perfect.
We abandon ourselves
to love.

~Kate Knapp Johnson~
Wind Somewhere and Shade

photograph: Ansel Adams, “The Black Sun, Owens Valley, California,” 1939

Forget The Museum of Natural History,
The Metropolitan or The Smithsonian.
The collection I want to wander in
I call the Valhalla of Lost Things.

The Venus de Milo’s arms are here,
she’s grown quite attached to them.
I circle Leonardo’s sixteen-foot-tall
equestrian statue, never cast, browse

all five-hundred-thousand volumes
of The Alexandrian Library, handle
artifacts of Atlantis. Here are all
the ballades and rondeaux of Villon,

the finished score of The Unfinished
Symphony, I read all of Edwin Drood
and Answered Prayers. I’ll screen ten
missing reels of Von Stroheim’s Greed,

hear the famous gap in Nixon’s tapes.
There are lost things here so lost,
no one knows they were lost—manuscripts
by the unknown Kafka, far greater

than Kafka’s; his best friend obeyed,
shredded every sheet. The cure for cancer
is here: The inventor didn’t recognize,
the potion went unpatented . . .

In my museum no guard shushes me
for talking, there are no closing times,
it’s always free. Here I can see
what no one living has seen, I satisy

that within me which is not whole.
Here I am curator not of what is,
but of what should have been,
and what should be.

~Robert Phillips~
what have you lost?
Poems selected by Naomi Shihab Nye

Recently someone I consider to be a wise teacher in my life, Philip Golabuk, stated that we are too much with the world and not enough with the self.  I pondered what was the meaning of this statement.  What does it really mean?

I’ve come to see it means I am too much with trying to make things happen in the world.  Too much with believing there are an endless string of things to be worked through.  Too much with giving attention to what I don’t want.
Too much being reactive to the world.   Too much with shouldering burdens I am not meant to carry. And too much with believing I am in control.

Too much with getting and not enough with letting.

Too much with reacting and not enough with Being.

Too much with the head and not enough with the heart

Stated another way, as Meister Eckhart said: The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge.

Who is this inner man and which self are we not enough with?

Perhaps it is the inner self that doesn’t die.  The inner self that lives in the deepest truth.  The inner self which, when unobstructed, freely finds its way to goodness and grace.  The inner self that rests in calm, still waters.

The self that reaches a turning point and lays down its arms, literally and figuratively.  Knowing now there are no more causes to be fought or won.  Our arms drop to our sides and then, perhaps only then, does the Field/Universe/God take up our cause.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.

I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.

Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.