The Thing That Could Be Anything

When my oldest daughter was about 4 she came home from school one day, proudly bearing her art project. It was a white plastic ring, like a costume jewelry bracelet, with a strip of aqua-white iridescent cellophane tied onto it. In response to my asking what it was, Lucy said, "It can be anything you want it to be." And so it remained. The thing that can be anything you want it to be has never actually become anything else for Lucy, was never used in any imaginative play, and I've wondered if it was her own expression of the limitlessness of being, the expansive possibilities present within life here.

I know that for myself I have needed reminders of abundance, especially when faced with messages of boundaries and containment. As a child, my bike was one of my keys to freedom, because I could go places, go fast, go far, go away...The library was another place I was free to explore horizon upon horizon without restriction. I could get as many books as I wanted! And on hikes with my family, I felt myself expanding, relaxing into a greater ease of being, if only for a short time.

My healing journey has to a great degree been a recovery of the space and possibility of being, of MY being, right here, right now. I have learned that I can actually call myself creative, instead of half-denying it by saying, "Oh, I just like to create." The art supplies that I have slowly gathered over the years have been moved to a convenient place, a visible reminder to myself that I have the potential to create. The art supplies have, in turn, slowly gathered dust, but they do remind me of what I could do, and I sense that they and I are waiting for the moment when potential becomes manifest.

Many accumulated limitations have been slowly melting away. I can actually acknowledge that I am a deeply feeling person, rather than try to push it away and consider it a flaw impeding me from the more desirable traits of rational and logical. I can remove conclusions about what I may or may not try, achieve, do, become. I've done a lot of cross-country skiing this winter, and I was surprised to discover that the reason I was having so much trouble with hills was that I was saying to myself, "I can't," and then I couldn't feel my feet or legs and the information they were giving me. On one hill in particular, I noticed the exact moment when "I can't" slid across my brain, and a split second later I was on the ground. I immediately got up, climbed back up the hill and told myself, "If I fall, I will fall, but in the meantime I will pay attention and respond to exactly what is going on in each moment." I made it down the hill with a tremendous feeling of empowerment. I thought, there's no reason I couldn't get out there and explore any of my "I'll never do's," like snowboarding or downhill skiing. ..I could even parachute from a plane! Well, that last one's a little up in the air, so to speak, but you never know...I just might! Why limit myself with unnecessary conclusions?

I recently asked Mother Mary at a channeling if we couldn't just shortcut through all this "unfolding in due time" and jump right into massive manifestation because I’m bursting with impatience. She didn't give me the shortcut. But in the past several days, I've been feeling as if I blinked and opened my eyes into a new reality. Suddenly the spark and sparkle of my soul have bubbled to the surface of my life. The container is fading, drudgery and effort are passing, and the truth that I had almost forgotten about myself has become clear.

I am here to play endlessly in life’s vast playground, and of all the things I could choose to do, I would choose to simply play. I would laugh and sing and dance, bounce, and twirl, sparkle and spin. I would throw open my arms and gather all that is into my heart. I would look into the eyes of a child and share a moment of wonderment. I would creep into the quiet places and listen to the music there. I would run with exuberance and collapse in the grass and find castles and kingdoms in the clouds. I would explore and experiment, learn and love, move move move with lightness and life. I would flit here and float there, sprinkling bits of joy, gathering sparks of love, weaving all that I encounter into glorious tapestries, and all the while I would smile with delight as the Earth Mother’s laughter bubbles through me.

As I let go of all the old limitations, I have the feeling that I could do anything, that I am the thing that can be anything. I am pure possibility.

Intuit (and Out of It)

I've done a lot of slogging lately. In fact, I spent much of 2010 in a fitful slog through horrendous, knee-deep, boot-sucking sludge...with enough bright spots, much needed support, and a relentless inner sense of Something to enable me to continue the journey. Finally, when the calendar page turned and a whole brand-new year lay before me, I thought, Hurray for 2011, Year of Manifestation! Then I plunged back into the muck where I tend to do a lot of thrashing and disremembering of who I am before I come to my senses, before I can sense my own wisdom again. Surely there are more pleasant routes to releasing my being from the bondage of the past...Or maybe not for me. After all, this path is working for me--if you were to question any cell in my body, each would tell you that it is so. They have more room to dance than they once did.

Dancing, however, felt like a vague impossibility for much of February. In an email exchange with Michele, the energy work practitioner with whom I've done a lot of healing, she suggested that we work together again, if it felt like it was time. The moment I read her email, I felt an immediate movement within, tugging the rest of me forward. If I could convey the message in words, it would be something like, "Yes, it is so."

Within a week I was able to get in to see her, and during my appointment I felt like I was emerging from 10,000 leagues under the sea, as legions of accumulated imprisoning beliefs slid off and I relaxed into my own space. Much of what was released had to do with my highly diligent, though misguided efforts over lifetimes to figure out how to do it "right," how to fit in in the world of people, and be safe, not get hurt--but in spite of it all, I could never quite achieve the unshakable sense of connection, belonging, safety that I so desired. It felt like part of me kept trying to join me here, but after each tentative testing of the waters, it would retract, with a feeling of "I don't see myself here, I don't see my place here."

Michele and I began making a place for that part of me here by clearing my channels of connection with the natural world, where I feel most myself, most at home. Since I began this work of soul healing a couple of years ago, I have felt many times like a kid in a candy shop—this is all too good to be true, that love and life and souls could be so boundless! And yet it IS true. Over and over again I am amazed as I uncover beliefs I didn’t know I had that are limiting me from what truly is. I had rediscovered the Earth Mother (a candy shop experience) through my healing process, but now a whole new realm was opening before me. I could have a REAL, living loving relationship with all of the Earth Mother’s nature beings, in any dimension. I could BE and be embraced here in the Earth Mother’s arms—my whole being could play and dance and sing in a more expansive and joyful way than I had known.

Yet I HAD known, on some limited level. Because somehow I found my way from college into a job as a naturalist, playing with kids outside. And somehow when we bought our house 12 years ago, we ended up in a house 2 blocks from a creek, less than a mile from the river, and a couple of blocks from a dingy gas station that would later be transformed into a pond, complete with a beautiful springtime toad chorus that I can hear loud and clear from my house. In a few short months I will be blessed with their song again, and perhaps I will hear more within that song. I have suffered significant hearing loss over the ages where my soul’s voice, my intuition, is concerned, but I’ve still managed to catch some of its whisperings—even when I didn't quite know what it was. I am preparing myself to hear more.

I received a delightful gift at my appointment. At some point Michele mentioned fairies, about which I have never given much thought, beyond fairy accessories for my daughters, but that word spoke to a place within me. In the days that followed I have had such bouncy, sparkly feelings of love. “Fairies…fairies…fairies” has been calling out within me, like a calling to loved ones I had thought were gone forever. I have a sense of an unfolding here that I can’t quite verbalize, but I'm listening, and I feel sure it will take me somewhere too good to be true, or as I prefer to think of it now, so good it must be true.

It...is...time....

My naturopath asks me, "What is your Life's Purpose?" and of course I get all teary. "I don't know!" I tell her. Well, more accurately I DO know, it's just that I have misplaced this critical piece of information. Or possibly even hidden it away somewhere, because you know it could be DANGEROUS for the wrong person to get their hands on it--the wrong person being me. Oh, how tangled it gets, fighting with oneself.

I've been getting these mantras, or affirmations. I have a pretty deeply ingrained habit of negative self-talk and I'm also very, very stubborn, and as a result I can get really stuck on unhelpful stuff. And wow, am I convincing! Either that or I'm gullible, because I fall for those old beliefs before the rest of me realizes that an old belief has even crossed my mind!

So, the first mantra that I've been using fairly consistently was given to me about 1 1/2 years ago by a practitioner who I see for energy/soul work, and it is, "Love is everywhere I am." That has gotten me through a lot, and until about a month ago was about all I had sometimes in response to the inner barrage I subject myself to. "Love is everywhere I am" reminds me that I need not close myself off, I need not believe in my absolute separation from everything.

About a month ago in a moment of need, a new mantra came to me: "I choose to be here." Here in this moment, here in this life, on this planet, here moving through this transformation process. I choose everything, except that I sort of forget I have that power of choice, and my habitual reaction when things get dicey is to run like hell. I want to go home more than anything else in the world, a home I've lost and believe I must go back to in order to feel safe, loved, etc. But then I abdicate all my power, because I can't go back, though I might wish it for lifetimes. Acknowledging my ability to choose has been very empowering for me, once I get it through my thick skull that I do indeed have power, that I can in fact be present in this moment no matter how hellishly impossible it may feel.

Somehow bringing that choice mantra in got things rolling, because several more supportive statements have come to consciousness for me, in response to old stuff getting triggered. Here's what I've got so far:

I open and allow.
I experience abundance and prosperity in each moment.
I open fully to my Divine being.
I trust my inner voice.

This has been exciting for me, because you know, I've got things to do or be or express or experience in this lifetime, in this new paradigm of co-creation, and I've got myself barricaded. I'm terrified--of myself, of my own power, my own divinity. Of my Life Purpose. And I feel it within me that it is time...IT IS TIME...to BE. HERE. To be fully conscious. That's what I came for. I'm very clear about that part--usually.

And I'm still terrified. Life Purpose sounds so big, so daunting, so formal. Like something I could screw up. And of course it couldn't be like that. It must be fundamental to my being, innate to my design, like my skeleton, or my DNA. They seem to have developed just fine. I haven't lived in terror that my skeleton wasn't developing in perfect alignment with the Universe.

I don't really know what it means, though, Life Purpose. Maybe it's a feeling more than something to be expressed in words, maybe it reveals itself over a lifetime and is most clear when looking back, and almost certainly it evolves throughout life. I just know that something within me is not yet clear, something is still under lock and key. I'm moving, I'm in process, and these affirmations, these mantras, are helping anchor me here, in life, light, love. And I think I'm a teeny bit more skilled at recognizing the lies when they punch me in the gut. Like today, when I thought maybe I'd get back to this blog and see what happens, and what happened was I couldn't access my blog at all, and waves of terror/despair/desperation washed through me. I couldn't think, I couldn't find help when I did a Help search. I felt a cyberspace wall of unresponsiveness. I felt like a small child lost in a world of people who don't see me, don't know me, don't understand me, and if no one can understand me, how can I be? I felt like I had lost a precious piece of my being, trapped in blogland forever. I felt utterly powerless.

And then I had return to the surface to take my daughter to the doctor. Underneath, I think I looked a lot like a frantic flopping fish, but a fish who doesn't realize it's already in the water. I grasped at my mantras with desperation and clumsiness, and to tell you the truth I'm not quite sure what did the trick, but I came home calmer and feeling the relief of solidity in myself again, and when I sat back down at the computer again, voila! The problem had resolved itself!

It is time. To just do this, let go, let go, let go of my collection of limitations, this old shell I cart around. And then what? I haven't a clue. What I do know is that beyond all the clutter and chaos, beyond the flailing of my mind and the wild oscillation of my emotions some part of me still knows what is Real. What I do know is I'm not gonna miss this boat.