We got the announcement this week at work – the one where the manager nervously calls everyone into his office and gulps before launching into a rehearsed spiel about the layoffs being made in other groups as we speak (QA virtually wiped out) and about how now the consultants are turning their attention to our group for “reorg” and consolidation — and there WILL be “job impacts” among us in the next 30 days.

No numbers at this time.  Might as well be a number and names drawn from a hat because that’s how firmly based in reality these decisions are.  That’s how much the people making them know.

We co-workers looked at each other in silence.  Although we have been through round after round of company layoffs over the last few years, this was the first time our small group heard the announcement directed at us in particular.  Up until now, the impact on us has been friends lost and crazier working conditions because key people in sister groups were let go and their work was outsourced to offshore vendors who have no clue about our products and customers.

Now it is our turn on the block.

We have been working together for years now.  The core group of us has been together in one capacity or another for over ten years.  We have been through a lot of changes in the company and seen many CEOs and top executives come and go.  This one now – the one who brought in the current crew of consultants to radically “reorg” us yet again – he has been with the company for a few months.  He has very little understanding of the actual business.  He specializes in coming into a company, ‘shaking things up’ and leaving.  He specializes in not dealing with consequences.

He is a former jock and has the blithe unblinking confidence of a dolt.  He sends us a lot of email communiqués using acronyms we never heard of to describe our organization.  He has the facilities guys busy putting up posters and distributing desk drops with slogans and goals that are hard to decipher because of all the unfamiliar acronyms.  He expects us to attend forced social events involving football jerseys and fake beer.  This while the work piles up on our desks because they’ve already laid off too many people for there to be time to spare.

The current CEO was brought in after the previous CEO was let go.  The old one was let go by the next bigger CEO in our company’s convoluted global structure, which is like a contraption Dr. Seuss might have dreamed up in a nightmare.  There is at least one other CEO above the bigger CEO’s head, not counting any of the sideways CEOs and assorted bigwigs with “dotted line” authority over us.

The old local CEO was smarter than this one, but he was meaner.  He liked to summon us randomly by personal invitation to attend lunch with him in small groups.  You were not allowed to decline and woe to those who showed late.  At these lunches, after staring us down for a while to stir up anxiety, he would pontificate about his grand plan for the company, quiz us on matters we did not have access to and then tell us testily that if we wanted to keep our jobs we had better jump to attention and take ownership.

Not literally, of course.  Just work AS IF we had ownership.  AS IF we were making millions like him.

He lasted a little over a year.  He had his own crazy acronyms, posters and desk drops.  All went into the dumpster when the new guy came.

So we – long-time co-workers and in most cases friends – looked at each other in silence while our manager nervously delivered this speech.  There was a curl of a smirk on more than one of our faces.

Not because we don’t need our paychecks and medical coverage.  We do.  Not because we feel invulnerable to the axe.  We don’t.  Just because of the sheer absurdity of our company, the global economy and the leaders of all of the above.

The day had started out with a thought-provoking weekly horoscope from Risa D’Angeles at Night Light News.  She is a fellow Pisces and her esoteric horoscopes are uncanny.  The last line of the current one is quoted at the start of this post.  I was mulling it over at my desk while I worked that morning.

It has taken years to come to this place?

I didn’t feel I was any place yet.  I was feeling more or less like I always feel – like I am trying to get to that place.

So, yes, my personality was resisting.

All my life I’ve longed to do meaningful creative work that serves humanity, in alignment with what I feel within.  This desire has translated into me on a perpetual quest to earn my Right Livelihood.  For a number of reasons too complicated to go into here, what I have done instead is back myself into the corner of a crappy job in a crappy company, so that most of my time is engaged in empty work that is beneath my abilities.

Meanwhile, the contradictions in the world are coming to a head, and we seem to be arriving at a crossroads.  The hour seems to call for heroic works to realize the Brotherhood of Man – not soulless busy work to enrich The Man.

This contradiction has been bothering me for a long time.  But as the morning wore on, I was thinking that I’ve had it backwards by focusing on my outer work as a precondition to my inner peace.

Maybe the most heroic thing any of us can do is to take up the reins of our lives wherever we are now and set out to master ourselves from the inside out – without feeling ground down by external conditions, without feeling like we’re on an amusement park ride that is not amusing.  Maybe the most heroic thing we can do is to go within, face the darkness and redeem it.  If enough of us do it, we redeem the world.

I can’t say I’m not afraid of losing my job within the next few weeks, but I can see it’s time to face this monster head on.

*      *       *

P.S. I have haven’t been posting because I am studying and, to a lesser degree, working on a novel, but for what it’s worth, I do want to clean up this blog and make it a place for emerging thoughts.  Just not exactly sure of the shape of it yet…I hope to get rolling soon.

If anyone reading this is also facing a layoff or is already out of a job, I wish you the strength and vision you need to face this crisis and turn it into an opportunity to become more true to who you are.

Namaste

7/3/10 UPDATE: After tiptoeing through the month of June, we were told there’s been a delay and now we won’t hear until “mid July” by one account, “after the holiday” by another. We all wish they would just get it over with. If they lay me off, I will use it as an opportunity…part of me hopes they do.

The teenaged daughter of a good friend was texting her way through a hike in the woods and literally walked off a cliff.  Thankfully, she tumbled less than twenty feet down to the next ledge.  It would have been around seventy feet more if she had gone all the way over.  As it was, she survived without major injury.

All this noise around us – our lives are built on distraction – just at a time when the contradictions in the world are coming to a head.  Perhaps a time when attention is more important than ever before. 

The wheels have come off the global economy.  Our news is all hype.  Our culture is in a freefall of decay, catering to lowest common denominators and worst impulses.  A storm looms ahead, and we seem to be barreling straight into it, too busy with all our multitasking, twittering and frittering to look up from our various handheld devices – metaphorical and literal – and step mindfully.

Honestly, I can’t take the noise for granted because it is overwhelming to me.  I can easily lose myself in it and float rudderlessly out to sea.

So in the midst of the din, I find myself returning, after years of exile, to memories from early childhood.  They are my most vivid memories – before the trauma, before the socialization, before the build up of desensitizing sludge. 

I perceived small things with such clarity back then.  The crackling of ice-cloaked walnut trees swaying in a biting wind.  Crocuses poking through the snow in the rock garden outside the kitchen door around my birthday.  The fragrant bed of long soft needles under the bows in the enchanted pine grove beyond the fields.  The velvet brown ooze of the river bottom, with minnows darting from my feet.  The orange glow of the late afternoon sun flooding the kitchen before dinner.

I find myself returning to these memories for their innocence.  Their delicate focus and understated beauty.  Their quiet perfection.  No noise to spoil them.  No worries or impending deadlines to take them away.

They are perfect imprints. 

I am trying to reconnect with the mindset that created them.  That mindset opens a quiet, clear space within.

Attention is one of our most important faculties.  We forfeit our creative power when our attention is diluted or handed over to external sources in exchange for shallow entertainment.  We need to stop being restless adolescents forever in search of diversion.  We need to take up this powerful faculty and direct it with conscious intent. 

Namaste

 “What are you looking for?”

 It was not so much an offer of help.  More like a curt request: Tell me what you want.

I didn’t know what to say.  Honestly, I was there to browse.  I was a seeker just starting to seek – and I was embarrassed about it, especially with my Marxist boyfriend standing there.  But I had been experimenting with the Tarot for around two years by then.  I had a Rider-Waite deck, a pop interpretation book, a feminist explication book and a desire to learn more.  So I told her I was looking for a book on the Tarot.  She disappeared without a word.  Relieved that she was gone, I went back to browsing while trying to explain myself (quietly) to my inner materialist critic, whom I was projecting outward on my Marxist boyfriend.  I was ambivalence in action.

Suddenly she appeared again looking severe as before.  She didn’t say anything – she just held out a little book.  I took it from her and she hurried off.  I was at a loss.  I wanted to explore and pick out something on my own.  I didn’t want her help to begin with.  And looking over the little book, I could see right away that it was something I would not have selected.  It was strange.  It seemed she had brought it out of the back room where it had been absorbing incense smoke for years, judging from its heavy scent.  I thought about ditching it on the shelves I was browsing – I had my eye on another book – something bigger and glossy, but then I saw the glossy book from her perspective and knew it was cheesy.  I suspected that Wednesday Adams was issuing me a challenge to move beyond fluff in my seeking.

So I bought the strange little Tarot book.  I took it home with me and tried to find my way in.  The heavy scent intrigued me.  But no, it just wasn’t what I wanted.  There wasn’t any direct instruction.  It consisted mainly of short poems and illustrations of cards that were slightly different from the ones I was used to.   There was Biblical-sounding verse and “O Israel” exhortations.  It seemed way too much like prayer and religion for me, half-Marxist that I was. 

I stopped experimenting with the cards and put the strange little book aside.  But I did not get rid of it.  It survived numerous painful book purges when I moved from apartment to apartment and eventually to my own house. 

The book was The Book of Tokens, by Paul Foster Case.  In more recent years, it came in handy when I was reading essays that referred Major Arcana images as they appear in the BOTA deck.  It wasn’t until last year that I read Paul Foster Case’s more directly instructional The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages and finally understood the point of the strange little book I’ve had sitting on my shelf for the last fifteen years.

Of course, the Tarot cannot be explicated in mere prose.  The cards are to be meditated upon for their symbolism speaks fluently to the subconscious mind.  And through the subconscious they can help bring us into conscious communication with superconsciousness. 

So after all those years of sitting mostly unused on my shelf, the strange little book is now picked up and pored over every day.  I was taking it for granted that it was always there waiting for me until I was ready.  Lately, though, I’ve been musing on the odd way it ‘fell into my hands.’  Why did Wednesday Adams thrust this particular book on me?  If she was bent on directing me to something by Paul Foster Case, why not hand me the more accessible A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages? 

Whatever her reason, I appreciate the result.  So thank you, dear Wednesday.  The metaphysical shop in Belleville is long gone, but its incense-laden scent lingers in the pages of my strange little Tarot book.

 Now, a 3.0 earthquake is nothing in the scheme of things, and indeed there were no damages.  But this is Morris County NJ and a significant earthquake here is sort of like a snowfall in Florida.  It does happen but it’s not common and people tend to make a big deal about it.  I personally have never experienced it before.

I’ve been keeping an eye on earthquake activity in the world, especially since my trip to Bar Harbor this past September when I was surprised to learn that there had been an earthquake there in 2006.  We have taken several vacations in Bar Harbor during the Autumnal Equinox.  On such a trip in 2004, at the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, I had what I believe was a spontaneous heart chakra opening.  Our trip this Equinox was our first time back since then.  This time we found the East Face Champlain trail closed and a notice saying it was damaged in an earthquake in 2006.

Significant earthquakes in Maine are about like earthquakes in New Jersey.  They do happen but they’re not common.

As I wrote in Right Place Revisited, the land at Acadia National Park felt different to me this September, even before I knew about the earthquake.  The energy was still there, but something seemed off and metaphors for upheaval abounded.  I did a little googling upon my return and learned that it wasn’t just one earthquake but a series of earthquakes that shook the park in 2006.  The first occurred on the Autumnal Equinox.  If we had taken a vacation that year, chances are we would have been there for it.

All of the quakes were minor.  The first was 3.4 and over the next 11 days there were some aftershocks, a 2.5 and a 3.9 (summarized by USGS here).  There was a pause and then one more on December 20th.  Apparently, the damages occurred in the 3.9 quake.  (A NPS slideshow showing some damages to the trails and Park Loop Road can be found here.)

Anyway, Acadia was as beautiful as ever this September, and we had a great time.  Still I came back with a nagging feeling.  It was like the 2004 experience had been the grand banquet at the Grail Castle, and this fall was waking up the morning after and finding the guests gone and the Castle empty.  I felt like Parzival — had I failed to ask the question?

Vague ideas about this have been itching at the back of my mind.  Last night’s earthquake, centered practically on my front lawn, prodded me into writing about it.  To what end, I don’t know, but somehow these events seem meaningful to me.  And as Acadia’s earthquakes opened on the Autumnal Equinox, last night’s earthquake here at home coincided with Imbolc.  This, too, seems meaningful and appropriate.  Something is ‘in the belly.’  

Being sick was good in a way because it forced me to be still. I had to jettison my big list of things to do — I was taking my last 2008 vacation days so I was off and had overambitious ideas about how I’d use the time. As it turned out, I was couch-ridden and mostly I just read.

When I’m sick like that, the world becomes smaller and quieter. In a way, it’s easier to think.

As events and energies have ratcheted upward, I’ve become more self-conscious about writing here. I am conscious of how little I know, how I lack the language to express the wispy half-understandings that occupy my mind, how I may sound naïve to some, crazy to others and how some of my dreams and visions could conceivably contribute to the eschatological panic out there.

I am a Seeker, and while I am climbing toward the light, I spend a lot of time stumbling in the darkness. I share interior thoughts of my journey here, without the wisdom of hindsight, because I was instructed to “tell the tale and live it” in a dream. Somehow, I sense, that it is these awkward early steps on the Path that need sharing. And I shouldn’t go back and edit or delete as my understanding grows. I must let it stand in its own integrity.

In fact, maybe I should be more open than I’ve been.

My experience over the past several years has been a gradual honing in and sharpening of focus. I had something of a breakthrough over the summer, described in Unlocking the Gate. But then I lost some clarity and wandered a bit. Now I am back on the inner threshold of the gate, surveying the lands before me. Where there was a confounding maze, I am seeing a coherent set of paths.

I feel the need to commit to a formal path, in concert with others. I’ve moved in this direction before, and each time, foundational aspects of my life have seized up behind me, demanding my urgent attention, or so I thought. On past occasions, I have withdrawn to focus on them, and then it has taken a long while to wander back. That may be happening again now – I feel some tremors – but this time I will not relent. I will move forward on the Path, come what may.

So the earnest desire goes forth in search of the Master, as it has not far to seek. If the student is worthy he will presently be rewarded either by the inner knowledge that he has achieved this mental contact, or he will find that “chance” has placed him in touch with a source of occult information and training, and his conscious work has commenced. The gate is open, it is for him to tread the Path.

– Dion Fortune, The Training & Work of an Initiate

More to come.

Namaste.

I then descended steeply into the underworld between two mountains where I passed through a tunnel formed by twin slabs of giant stone.  There an orb of light greeted me, though I didn’t know it until afterward when I saw the picture I had taken. 

Having passed through the tunnel, I climbed steeply back up the mountain – a different mountain in 3D but it doesn’t really matter.  At its summit, once again on the bare pink and green granite, bathed in the golden light with brilliant blue for miles around, I affirmed my intention and listened. 

Nothing specific.  Nothing immediate.  Just a subtle release of fear and a resulting clarity inside.  One step after another.  Mindful.  Unhurried.  The path stretches long ahead. 

The trails were mostly empty.  I had the thought that another 911 could have happened hours ago and all hell could be breaking loose in the world.  But on the mountain that world was far away.  Our world was the perfect serenity of granite, pitch pines, wild blueberry bushes and cricket song awash in the golden angles of the September sun, with ocean and sky spread endlessly on all sides.

Et in A(r)cadia ego

Back at sea level, I traveled through the woods to the sacred boulder.  Fallen trees lay everywhere. I passed through the grassy channel where I saw the bear crossing our path four years ago.  A few steps later there was fresh bear scat.  Very fresh. 

Bear is my guide.  He sits on my right shoulder.  Nevertheless, I could not overcome the fear of meeting him in the flesh.  I took out my keys and jangled them.

We pressed forward and his scat was everywhere.  So distracted by fear this time, I missed the boulder on the first pass and we had to double back.  When we found the boulder, I was dismayed to find more bear scat its base.  My husband climbed on top of the boulder to meditate, but I could not relax enough to trust myself to attempt the climb.  Still jangling the keys, I meditated on a ledge at the bottom.  I found a chrysalis there which I refrained from touching out of respect.

Despite my fear, I managed to enter that rich dark matrix where Wolfie, the spirit of the boulder, resides.  Just for a few moments, though.  For four years now, I have been eager to return to sit with him again.  Thinking that I’ve grown since the last time, I loaded the moment up with hope and expectation.  Unfortunately my fear of the bear muffled all of that.  I was still jangling my keys after all.  But I did sense him – Wolfie, that is.  I also asked him to help me heal my relationship with work so that I can earn my Right Livelihood and work in alignment with my higher self and the evolution of the planet.   This request might seem silly, especially now, but what can I say?  We each bear a cross — my woundedness in relation to work has been mine.

That night I had a mundane dream that was interesting for being a new spin on an old recurring theme.  Usually I find myself in class on the last day and there is a final exam being handed out or a seminar paper due and I’ve done nothing – I haven’t even been attending class because I didn’t know I was enrolled.  My usual response is a frantic scramble to pull out a good grade at the last minute.  This time I decided not to bother taking the final.  I knew the class wasn’t meaningful to me and I shouldn’t waste any time on it.  I also knew that people would say that I “failed out” but that didn’t matter because I had to stay true to what I felt was important. 

The next night I dreamt that I was at a conference in a building that was a cross between a school and a workplace (the two are often conflated in my dreams).  Outside on the road there were fanatical nationalists waving the American flag and throwing firecrackers at passing cars.  Someone threw a lit firecracker at me as I walked by.  I threw it back and they called me a terrorist.  I tried to argue – next thing I knew I was inside the conference and embroiled in some drama I don’t remember.

In the hall on my way to the next conference event, I saw a dark-haired guy with an infinity symbol on his t-shirt.  I told him I liked it.  Then I saw “2012” spray painted in silver on a whiteboard nearby.  I commented on it to those around me, but no one knew what it was. 

Later I saw the dark-haired guy in a silver leotard outfit with the infinity symbol on the chest.  He was with a crew of people dressed just like him.  They were all gathering underneath a strange room.  The room was actually on the floor above us but it had no floor so we could look up into it.  All four walls were spray painted silver in countless rows of alternating infinity symbols and 2012s.

Suddenly the silver leotard group was gone. 

“Aren’t you going, too?” someone asked me.  I responded that I would like to but I didn’t have a silver leotard outfit like theirs.  A voice told me that didn’t matter.  It was my choice and here was the moment I’ve been waiting for.

And so I went to the silver room, which was some kind of gateway.  The dream dissolved as I was transported.

Both of these dreams were about freeing myself from the bonds of external expectations (good grades) and prerequisites (silver leotard) and choosing my next step based solely on my own internal compass. 

The next night I arose from a deep sleep in the wee hours and looked out the east-facing balcony of our motel room.  The night sky was bright and overwhelming.  It confused me at first, then I realized that it was the Big Dipper emblazoned over the ocean looking giant and surreal.  I went to the room’s lone window, which looked southward, and saw Orion framed perfectly over the mountains and lit up the same way.  Don’t know what it means if anything other than the fact that I am so accustomed to light pollution that I am stunned when I see the constellations unobstructed by haze.  Somehow, though, it felt meaningful.

*   *   *

Bear made his presence known — so did Falcon.  Falcon was everywhere in the flesh.  Once I saw him catching prey in midair.  Sad for the prey, but it did communicate that now is time for seizing the moment.

Earth Activation

Every time I visit Acadia, the trails present me with a coherent theme in imagery.  Last time it was splits.  Split trees, split rocks — all kinds of splits were underscored with a synchronistic glow.  The lesson I took away was that there was a split within me and I needed to align my will with my heart.

This time the imagery was about upheaval.  Uprooted trees were a frequent sight – much more so than in the past – some were bearing the bright blue paint of a trail marker.  The path itself was eroded in spots, certainly not everywhere but again more so than in the past.  The East Face Champlain Trail was completely closed due to damage and subsequent rock falls stemming from an earthquake that occurred in October of 2006.

Please don’t misunderstand.  Acadia National Park is a treasure.  It has not fallen into disrepair.  It is amazing in its natural beauty, and its many trails are lovingly kept by brigades of people who are passionate about the place.  I would gladly live there if I could.  What I mean to say is simply that the trails presented metaphors for upheaval to my eye this September.

As I’ve written before, I feel I was activated by this place and have or had some kind of connection to it.  In past years, I’ve seen familiar faces on the trails – others who kept returning and had a glow about them when they were here.  This time I saw no faces familiar from previous years.  It seemed like the activation party was over, the guests were gone and now the host was alone and possibly in need of assistance.  For all my meditations on the mountaintops and at the base of the sacred boulder, maybe I really should have done only one thing and that is ask the question: Dear friend, what ails you?

Toward sunset on the last day, we drove up Cadillac Mountain to say goodbye to the island, just as we did four years ago.  We haven’t hiked up Cadillac in a long time – mainly because it can be a let down to spend hours climbing up a mountain and then be greeted at the top by tour buses and a gift shop.  (Cadillac is the only drive-up mountain on Mount Desert Island.)  Nevertheless, this was where I experienced what I believe was a heart chakra opening last time.  It seemed that Cadillac Mountain was a powerfully active volcano, but instead of lava, it was spewing energy of a high vibration.  For those keyed to it, being in range of its energetic broadcast was a blast to the chakras.  That was my theory, anyway.

This time I got out of the car with some concern that the mountain would be quiet – that it was stressed and wouldn’t have the same power.  But ultimately, at the top of Cadillac, the energy was there.  It was somewhat subdued from last time, but it was still pulsing bigger than all of us.  Bigger than the upheaval at hand.  Bigger than the mountain, the sky and the surrounding ocean.  Maybe bigger than the Earth itself.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
– W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming

But the center had no integrity.  Built on illusion and delusion, the tower must fall.  All of this has happened before.  What do we do now?  Do we choose the path of FEAR?  Do we try to cling to the failing order?  Do we hoard and stash and hunker down?  Do we feed on fearful rumors and panic at possibilities?  Do we retreat into old patterns in the face of the shift of the ages?

Or do we release the old structures and embrace the shift with open hearts and minds?  Do we start building the communities of the future today?   There is a huge difference between building bunkers and building sustainable communities for a changing world.

Consider the following insight from Neil Kramer’s latest post on the Shift:

The only real preparation is spiritual preparation. Psychological and emotional balance, together with a real, deep connectedness with oneself and the natural world has never been so important. Be who you really are. Dissolve inauthentic behaviours and attitudes. Allow the universe into you. The chrysalis that we thought was the whole world, is beginning to crack open…. 

Greater dimensions of being await. Observe non-attachment. Do not cling to anything, and there shall be no suffering. Easier said than done, some may say, but take the first step. Know in your heart that all is one. Feel the impermanence of all things. Know the indestructibility of your soul. We have chosen to be here now, in this time of revelation, unveiling and transformation. Stand at the centre. You are the change.      

And let it be so.

Namaste.

Since I had a dream months ago that pointed to September 15^th as a day of death, I approached this day with some caution.  I have been grappling with my darkness lately.  Interesting that despite the progress I’ve made in recent months, I feel darker than I did a year ago, darker still than I did the year before that.  I am not sure what I mean by this.  But I do know that I am experiencing my Saturn half return, and the full moon today is conjunct to my natal sun. 

I previously posted about feeling that I had finally unlocked the gate.  I think this is what Charles Eisenstein described as “a glimpse” in his essay on the seven stages of the spiritual journey (“Invisible Paths”).  He writes:

“This state does not last very long: sometimes just minutes, sometimes days, rarely for weeks. It disappears faster the more you try to hold on to it, and once it is gone it will not come back by trying to replicate the circumstances through which it came before. You might slip back into doubt and despair, you might live a while longer in the old world, but there is a huge difference now. After having had this glimpse, you now know that a more beautiful world and a more beautiful life is possible.”

Now I stand on the inside of threshold, and for the time being at least, I am overwhelmed by the lands before me.  There is a maze of traditions and schools – which route to take? 

Meanwhile, the outer world seems to be crumbling.  Everyday the state of affairs in the U.S. reaches a new level of absurdity.  Last week, someone I know dreamt that chaos had broken out and UFOs were hovering overhead and picking people off.  Everyone was panicking, but he said “I know the answer!”  Then he took out his credit cards and money, cut them up and threw them away. 

Fear and clinging to the old order are the last things we need.

But yesterday I looked at the “work” category of this blog and realized that, on the subject of my job, I sound like a broken record player on a downward spiral.  I apologize.  Clearly I need to resolve this contradiction.

The good news is that I am going on a return pilgrimage to Mount Desert Island, Maine.  The last time I was there – four years ago – I had an experience that I believe was a heart chakra opening (recounted here).  I return now in a different space.  Then it was just a beginning.  It was an ungrounded opening.  I believe I have grown and achieved some grounding in the years since. 

Now I need to be quiet with myself and the mountain to see how to carry this forward and bring the swirl inside me into being.  I am eager to listen to whatever the mountain has to say.

I will write more coherently from the trails.

Namaste.

So it’s Labor Day weekend here in the U.S.  Labor Day, of course, is the holiday that was invented to divert the American working class from celebrating May Day with the rest of the world.  Instead of joining in international class solidarity and remembering those who gave their lives in the struggle for basic things like the eight-hour day, we Americans go shopping, lie on the beach and eat mad cow burgers at barbecues.  It’s a big party weekend signifying the end of the summer – and one fleeting workday off from the misery of our jobs.

Right now the biggest obstacle I’m facing on my spiritual journey is my job.  I dread it.  I feel chained and trapped by it – it is feeding on me and dragging me down. 

I won’t belabor why my job sucks.  I will say only that it is as if I am a flute desiring nothing but to play my tune.  But my job uses me as if I am a can opener.  Dump trucks piled high with cans are unloaded in my cube each day and I am expected to have them all opened in a couple hours.  Then I am expected to write reports about how many cans I opened, how many cans I farmed out to the Philippines to open, what categories of cans were opened, how many cans are left to open in each category, what is the rate of all the opening, what is the rate of the reporting on the opening, how many cans do I expect to come in for opening in the future.  In between, I am responding to complaints about the contents of the cans. 

To top off the absurdity, no one wants the cans – open or closed.  The customers are demanding about them because they are paying my company a premium for its services.  But they don’t really want the cans.  They serve no useful purpose in the world. 

Just as using a flute as a can opener day in day out would be damaging to the flute, my job is damaging to me.

When I was a manager, I took work home literally and figuratively.  It took up residence in my head and pushed me out of my life.  Now that I have a scaled down job, I no longer take work home.  I think I am leaving it behind at the end of the workday, but I wake up in the night after a couple hours of sleep to find that my mind is caught in a loop of worry over what I have to do at work.  This is now happening six out of seven days a week.  My only night off is Friday.

So here I am back to square one.  I left my managerial job to reclaim my life.  I got a scaled down job thinking I could keep it in bounds.  For a while it worked, but now it, too, is growing like a weed throughout my mind, choking out my own plantings. 

Some people tell me I should not think twice about work – I should just come in, do what I can without stressing and, if it’s not enough, let management worry about it.  These shoulds join the other shoulds in my head.  The ones from childhood that tell me I should be a good worker and always meet or exceed expectations (even if wildly unreasonable).  All this shoulding gangs up on me, telling me there is something wrong with the way I am and how I feel.

A part of me feels like a failure for not being able to keep my day job in its place, but another part of me will not relent: I am NOT a can opener!  I refuse to spend most of my time and energy opening cans that no one wants or needs.  I don’t want to separate myself from my work.  I want to play my song.  I want my work to be a true expression of me and what I came here to do.  I want to work in alignment with my higher self and the evolution of the planet.

And maybe this is not a matter of dreamy escapist me being unable to settle down and get along in the world.  Maybe this is the truer part of me pushing onward and outward into manifestation.  And maybe if enough of us manage to manifest our truer parts, we will be the change we want to see in the world in sufficient numbers to change the world.  

I’ve been thinking about Kingsley Dennis’s comment on my last post.  He quoted the Persian poet Saadi:  “If you wish to find the Truth, dive into the ocean. But if you prefer security, stay upon the shore.”  Maybe I am trying to dive into the ocean while keeping a toe on the shore with a corporate ‘day job.’  An obvious contradiction – hence my discomfort in the pose.  Something has got to give.  I have to let go.  Somehow.

Life on this plane is like a dream.Spiritual awareness is like lucidity. The handful of sand phenomenon applies.

To make matters worse, we are buffeted on all sides by a cacophony that would drown out our inner voices and by strong waves that would pull us back down into the dream.

It is challenging to hold onto that sand. 

In three of the podcasts I recommended last time, Christopher Moors talks about the need to first withdraw and observe your patterns without acting on them. Start where you are, he says, quiet the mind and observe without reaction. When the drama surges, let it pass by. 

I have been consciously trying to master my emotional reactions for years now with only limited success. I am a person with a whole lot of water going on. I have a big barrelful and I easily slosh over the top.I think a big problem was that I’ve been consciously trying. You cannot consciously master unconscious processes. You need to deal with the unconscious directly – in its own language. 

Listening to Moors talk about “letting it pass by,” an image came to me wherein I was sitting calmly on a bank at the edge of a wood watching a river rush by me. Somehow the image spoke to me on all levels, so I’ve adopted it as sort of a mental talisman.

This is a day-by-day, step-by-step journey. Some days are better than others. Nevertheless, with this image in my mind, I have been much less swept away by my reactions. Progress, not perfection. 

A test came in a family event some weeks ago – an annual event that I always dread because of the negativity that permeates it. My family is a bit oddball, but there is a very conventional couple in my extended family. They are financially well off, politically conservative and — in my view — narrow minded in their aspiration to middle brow American culture. I have nothing in common with them except this extended family connection that forces us to socialize at least once a year. 

The husband is basically good natured, but the wife is arrogant and judgmental. She sits aloof in a closed posture of arch superiority and provides negative commentary throughout the day. She doesn’t approve of me and makes it known with several put downs at each gathering. Since she is my mother’s age and this pattern goes back to when I was a child, her put downs have a powerful effect on my barrelful of water. 

In recent years – mainly since I quit my managerial job – her put downs have focused on my writing – specifically on my lack of what she would call “success” as a writer. She makes it clear she thinks I should stop my silly scribbling and resign myself to the “real world” (i.e. climbing the corporate ladder, owning a big house, raising kids, voting Republican . . .). 

This time my mother, my aunt and I were talking about email behavior when it struck me that “Reply to All” would be a funny name for a satirical novel about the contemporary corporate workplace. Unfortunately, I blurted the thought out, forgetting that my critic was sitting nearby. “And I have an idea for the picture on the cover . . .” I said playfully. It was all supposed to be a joke. My idea for the cover art was going to be the punch line. Maybe it would not have been funny in that setting, but that did not matter because I didn’t get a chance to finish. I had stepped out of line and my critic was already snapping back.

“But you don’t have the content for the book, now do you? There’s where your writer’s block comes in.” She was looking away with a smirk on her face – arms akimbo, one leg crossed over the other. Awkward silence fell around us. 

Does this comment seem mean to you? To my ears in the moment, it was sneering and dripping with contempt. In the past, I would have taken it like a kick to the stomach. I would have felt completely humiliated and worthless. 

This time I saw that wave coming, but I sat on the riverbank and watched it pass by. 

Okay – truth be told, I did muse to myself about how she is going to look eating crow at my book-signing party. BUT this wee bit of a MILD reaction is a HUGE improvement for me, sloshing barrelful of water that I am.

Um, did I have something in my hand a little while ago?    

Image by my husband, used courtesy of a marriage license 

Chances are you’ve heard it, too — that strange inner calling. That half-tuned in radio station playing in the next room. For me it was always there, but I didn’t know how to move in that direction. There was no direction to it in my mind. It was just a nebulous droning that over the years intensified into a distinct but still poorly understood imperative. I felt I had a purpose to fulfill in this life . . . I confess I fancied it a special purpose. But I guess it’s often experienced that way.

Years passed. I had recently graduated college. I was standing at the first major crossroads of my adult life — completely confounded and carrying this maddening impulse within me. By day I was lost and afraid. By night I was dreaming about being on an elaborate multi-stage quest that I could never fathom upon waking.

One such night I dreamt I was in a small band of travelers following a white unicorn or horse on a path through fields and forests. We were on a grand quest that would solve the riddle of everything.

I was so engaged and excited. This is what I had been waiting for my entire life. In a semi-lucid moment, I thought that the quest would make an inspiring novel and that I must remember it to write it upon awakening. All of the other dream characters continued on unaware, but an elderly couple in the party responded to me as if I had spoken the thought aloud. They were smiling and nodding emphatically.

“Tell the tale and live it,” they told me.

The quest itself did not survive the dawn, but I came away from the dream with what I felt was a directive. One that validated my lifelong love of stories and story telling with the stamp of a higher purpose.

Tell the tale and live it.

Not live the tale then tell it. Like an expert. Like a memoirist looking back on a thing done.

No, tell the tale and live it.

I felt “the tale” was the grand quest of all quests. The inner grail quest that I felt relentlessly drawn to but didn’t understand. Telling it meant writing a grand novel. At least one.

Years passed muddled in frustration. This was far too grand a tale for me to tell. I had no clue. I tried to live it, but for the most part I was circling around, endlessly searching for a way in but always stuck outside the gate.

Then weird little things started happening in my life. The more I paid attention to them, the more frequently they happened. The little things got bigger and formed chains that became undeniable. I spent some time on the web looking to see if anyone else was experiencing what I was experiencing. I found a lot of things, to be sure, but not quite what I was looking for.

A new wrinkle came in the fall of 2006 when I started getting synchronistic nudges to start a blog. The nudges came from outside me. Blogging was not something I wanted to take up. I thought it would be another jones-driven distraction keeping me from “telling the tale and living it” and was therefore avoiding the whole blogosphere. But the synchronistic message was strong. It took me a long time to get rolling, but I heeded the call.

The urge was to come out as a seeker and share my experience with fellow travelers. NOT to put myself forward as some kind of expert and dish out bullet points of wisdom. Instead, to share from one seeker to another – here is my personal experience from where I am on the path . . . can you relate?

This was a scary prospect for me. It was a side of my life – of me – that I did not often share, even with my husband and closest friends. My socialization told me it was the kind of stuff that you just don’t talk about or people will think you are wacko. Nevertheless, what I often looked for from others I would try to put out there myself.

Here I am several months and a better blogging platform later. Little did I know when I started that putting my journey out there on this blog would unlock the gate for me. Previously I was looking for something out there to let me in, when actually I needed to put something out there to turn the key.

Now I am finding things that I’ve long been looking for. Books I knew about but never felt inclined to read now call me and turn out to be revelations. Pieces of the puzzle are clicking into place in big clusters. Understanding that long eluded me now flows easily. And I am starting to connect with other travelers around me.

Tell the tale and live it.

So now I am processing. I am pausing to find balance in my new surroundings. I am learning to make that calm space within so I stop getting swept up in reactions to daily drama. I may continue to be relatively quiet for a few more weeks while I process, tend to my garden and finish setting up this blog. But I would like to say that the podcasts over at Occult of Personality have been very helpful to me. There are too many good ones to list, but I particularly recommend the following four if you relate to the rattling-the-gate syndrome: Podcast 32: On the Spiritual Path with Christopher Moors, Podcast 41: Journey to the East, Podcast 47: Exploration of the Inner Realms and Podcast 46: Fraternity of the Hidden Light’s Steward, Dr. Paul Clark.

Namaste