In this time of transition I’m doing a dance that is precarious, thrilling and scary so, to help me on my way, I’ve been following the advise of Baba Ram Dass:
“My own strategy is to keep cultivating the witness, that part of me that notices how I’m doing it—cultivate the quiet place in me that watches the process of needing approval, of the smile on the face, of the false humility, of all the horrible creepy little psychological things that are just my humanity. And watching them occur again and again and again.”
I’ve packed up my life aboard the Bel Ami and landed in a lovely spot with a great view en route to returning to my north side home. As with all endings, it’s an emotional and multilayered journey. Some days I’m more present than others, my energy high, flowing downstream. Other days I obsess and resist, am not present and worry.
That’s when a walk on the beach got me noticing patterns everywhere: the way the waves lick the shore and trace the shape of their presence for a few seconds; the Zen precision of the ground keeper’s rake marks in the sand; the designs the wind makes on water and the tracks of those who came before. I thought about how, as vibrational beings, we all swim in a sea of energy that is constantly moving and constantly generating new patterns. My footsteps shift the landscape beneath me and I can see that I am a part of the bigger pattern and the creator of patterns.
All of which led me to kaleidoscopes and remembering how delightful it is to tilt one up to the light and watch the glass pieces shift from one gorgeous pattern to the next.
What if our lives are like a big kaleidoscope and we are the observers gazing at the many pieces that make up our worlds like multi colored pieces of glass. When we turn the cylinder, make a move, stumble or when someone or something else does, the whole picture transforms.
With the toy we are always delighted. In life we spend a lot of time trying to glue a particular pattern in place permanently. We arrive at a one we enjoy, become attached to it and hang on for dear life.
Change and endings of all kinds stimulate synapses and tapes about change and endings from our whole lives. We drag baggage from childhood trauma and early and recent life experience to the table.
If we have done some personal growth work and begun to heal old wounds, to forgive ourselves and others and are committed to ongoing personal and spiritual growth, times of transition and upheaval are great times for mining precious veins of ore and seizing opportunities to dump the baggage, lighten our loads and be freer and more joyfully ourselves.
When my friend Susan and I walked 150 miles on the Camino de Santiago, along trails through the French countryside, we stayed at hostels, one as different as the next: austere convent bunks, houses with rooms full of knick knacks and photos and stone farmhouses with modern interiors. At each and every one of them Susan and I would survey our new surroundings, look at one another and say, in unison “ We Love it here”.
As I loved each new pattern born of the falling-into-place of glass pieces in the kaleidoscopes of my childhood, and each place I laid my head as a pilgrim walking, I am aiming to love each new configuration that comes into focus in the kaleidoscope of my amazingly rich and colorful life and to look around and say, “I Love it Here.”
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