Week 25 of 52 Changing Nothing, Accepting Everything, in the Quest for a Spiritual Life

REFLECTIONS

“We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide examples for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves.”

― James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life

 Christmas Eve! A celebration of new life!

Even during the darkest days of the year, I now know that new life is still being created, constantly…perpetually. And I am not just thinking of the precious tiny babies that are born this day, every day, but the never-ending creation of new life within the “self “…that mysterious place that connects each of us to each other and to the Unified Field, the source of all that exists. It is this paradox, that new life is created even in the darkest of times, that has given me hope for myself and our world. If indeed we are leaving the era of ego based creations, to an era where humans create consciously, from their hearts and souls, we will experience the dawning of a new age.

Conscious Creators of a New World

It seems the first half of life is meant to be spent discovering our real reason for being on this planet…and the second half to express this ‘soul self’, in whatever creative manner we feel moved to use. As I went about life in my 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, embracing the ‘workaday’ world, making a living, a home and a family, a quiet but potent force nudged me to discover that which would truly fulfill my destiny on this planet. At my 50th birthday, I invited those people who had made an impact in my life, and thanked them for their love and support. What I was not conscious of was that I was saying goodbye to them and the material life I had cherished to that point. Unknowingly, I was about to set out on a quest to find a spiritual life. It was mandatory for my survival. I needed balance between the material and the spiritual, so that I could live from my soul, expressing myself consciously, from my heart, not just my mind.

My quest for a spiritual life had all the elements of any quest…a desire for a missing object or experience, that was of such inestimable valuable to me, the hunter, that any number of obstacles, including near death and blindness, would be willingly faced in its pursuit. Every culture, past and present, has fairy tales, myths and folklore depicting such journeys…Sir Galahad on his quest for The Holy Grail…the Heroine’s search for a husband in the fairy tale, ‘East of the Sun and West of the Moon’…’The Wizard of Oz’s’ Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Lion, searching for Kansas, brains, heart and courage, respectively…and Holden searching for a sense of purpose in ‘The Catcher in the Rye’.

Quest for Holy Grail

Quest for Kansas, brains, heart and courage!

Quest for a Husband

Quest for a Sense of Purpose

Quest for the Holy Grail

In finding that elusive and mysterious entity, we call the ‘spiritual life’, I can now live in balance between that and materialism, which encompasses the mundane but necessary aspects to keeping alive, sheltered and fed. Symbolically, perhaps, the image of the cross depicts this…the balance between spirituality and materialism. In finding this, after years of searching, after countless wrong turns, tragedies, mishaps and misadventures, I can live a life from my heart…my soul, expressing that which fulfills me.

Aspirations for Week 25 of 52

Changing Nothing, Accepting Everything, in the Quest for a Spiritual Life

I have come to accept, it makes no more sense to cling to a wonderful moment, a lovely day, a cherished friend or a material object than to wish away pain, or depression, stupidity or the drudgery of life. I cannot live in paradise if I want to grow into a conscious and fulfilled human. I have come to also accept that just as a garden goes through a cycle of deterioration, decline with eventual death, before there can a period of incubation, and creation of new life…so too must I.

I must allow old ideas and habits to die, when they no longer serve me well, just as I throw out clothes that no longer reflect the new me. When I was uptight and rigid, I wore very tailored and coordinated styles of clothing befitting a woman twice my age…now I am beginning to love clothes that flow!

So for Week 25 of 52, I will be Open Hearted to life’s moments as they are presented to me, willingly receiving whatever crosses my path.

Open Hearted to the Devine