Tonight I am grateful for living and walking in harmony, in flow, in step with my life. Some days I feel like I’m stumbling along, out of step, not synchronized with the proper rhythm, off balance. I don’t freak out about those days; we all have them. It’s a simple matter of remaining as calm and patient as I can while I recalibrate and get my bearings, tuning back in to the proper rhythm and adjusting myself accordingly til I’m back in the stream. My apologies if this sounds like cosmic gibberish, off the wall “woo-woo” stuff. I assure you that the 7 years I lived in California didn’t completely wash away my Midwestern sensibilities. If anything it deepened my understanding of who I am and clarified in part what the heck I am doing here on the planet right now.
The clearer I get about who I am, how I am meant to be and walk through this world, the more in sync I get, the more the world is opening up to me. As I get more closely aligned with the mystical life purpose that for so long I was doggedly pursuing, I am watching the synchronicities beginning to slowly increase. I lived in a space of uncertainty for a long time during which I continually asked the universe, “What do you want from me? Why am I here? What’s next for me?” And for a long time I ignored the answer I was hearing because it didn’t make sense and I didn’t know how to respond to it. “What do you want?” (I hate when people, particularly God, answer a question with a question…) I would get so exasperated. “What do you mean what do I want? I want you to tell me what I need to do, what lessons I need to learn from all this bad stuff that is happening to me so things can start to get better. And by the way, I also need a job.” Gradually, through the years of struggle and of asking (begging) for direction, I slowly became aware of a small but budding understanding, a rumbling of awareness stirring deep inside me. And I knew the answer was coming.
The “answer” didn’t turn out to be a how-t0 manual that was going to tell me step by step how I was going to begin to walk out my life purpose. (Remember, as my teacher said to me some years ago, “Never let the how get in the way of a good what.”) The answer came in the form of letting me know who I am. As clear as a bell, a very short phrase that now guides my prayers and my thought process as I move forward. The specifics of the message are not what’s important; it’s more important that you know what your answer is for you.
I was talking to a good friend this morning who called me in a state of agitation. She’s been under tremendous pressure at work; all around her things appear to be unraveling. “I need to know how you had the courage to just walk away from that which was poisoning you,” she texted me, which prompted me to encourage her to call me. She is working in a very toxic environment that is slowly draining the life from her. She has tried to remain above the fray, doing her work diligently and with integrity, but undermined at nearly every turn by uncivil and unethical managers.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” she declared to me, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” “What do you want?” I asked her in response. “I want to get the hell away from here.” “It’s not enough to want to get away from something, you have to know what you want to go toward. Running away from it still doesn’t give you a destination. You have to know what you want so that you have something that draws you in, not repels you away.” By now she was calmly listening and taking this in. “So, what do you want?” I repeated. “I don’t know what I want to do. I do know it involves music. I come alive when I’m playing my instrument.” “What if it’s not what you want to do, but more about how you want to be?” “I want to be in harmony. I live in harmony.” “That’s it.” I told her simply, “That is your mantra, your focus, your purpose. You don’t need to know the how right now. What you’ve gotten to is the what. ‘I live in harmony’ is a distillation of who you are at your core, it’s who you want to be. As you begin to open up to that, you’ll start to see opportunities that align with that.”As I spoke to her, I felt an absolute sense of calm certainty that what I was telling her was true and that if she listened and could grasp what I was telling her that she was going to see some significant shifts in her life and her work. How could I be so certain? Because part of my calling and my purpose is to help other people clarify theirs. When I am in that flow, the world opens up.
I am grateful for walking out my purpose in everything I do as best I can. My friend doesn’t yet know what “living in harmony” is going to look like in practical terms on a daily basis; but even in the work she does in a highly technical field, her love of her music and her walking in harmony will transform that work and touch everything she does. It’s a beautiful concept and a beautiful thing to behold. I look forward to watching it unfold in her life and continue to unfold in mind, grateful as always for the unfolding. Which puts me in mind of one of my favorite lines in The Desiderata, “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” And so it is.
