Sometimes it amazes me how quickly a day passes. And then another day quickly passes until it’s been another week. Time has flown by and is showing no signs of slowing down. I am grateful for the time I’ve had over these months to get a hold of myself, to develop some new ways of being in the world, and to begin the process of quieting my mind and opening up my heart and spirit. I don’t think I could have found my way into these new directions if I hadn’t experienced the painful endings that started me down this path in the first place. God needed to get my attention, I suppose, and boy was my attention gotten!
I still have a long way to go. In some ways I feel like I’m in kindergarten, learning and doing so many new things all at once and not sure how it all goes together. I hear that in first grade it starts to get a little better organized and that by fourth grade they actually split things up into separate subjects. That would be good; it’s all kind of overwhelming at the moment. In the meantime I am juggling–the job search, volunteering at the food pantry, the blog, walking at the Park, guitar playing, the meditation group and mindfulness practice, the nutritional cleanse–all the pieces of the self-help curriculum I’ve developed for myself. Today I got to thinking briefly about how the curriculum will shift when I start a new job. Gods willing, it’s bound to happen sooner or later. A big part of me feels like there’s no going back–that the me I was six months ago is significantly different than who I am today. I will bring all of this new awareness and this new learning to whatever work situation I find myself in and they–the new employers–and I will be all the better for it.
Maybe the curriculum I’ve laid out for myself is a bit like being in an interdisciplinary major college–you sort of put something together for yourself that makes sense. At the conclusion of it you have a degree that you then have to figure out how to put to use in the real world. I am learning a lot on this somewhat unorthodox path I’ve been traveling. Through intuition, timing, and sometimes plain old “luck” (another word for the synchronicity that happens when one is in the right place at the right time) new thoughts, ideas and opportunities have come my way. On a strictly practical level these have not involved increasing revenue generation, resulted in a job or other standard measures of “success.” By in the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional realms all that I’ve been experiencing and learning are paying and will continue to pay huge dividends that sooner or later will show themselves in the practical, natural realm. Until then you just have to trust me when I say that a lot is happening just below the visible light spectrum.
I’m grateful for it all. One of the things that has been enhanced over the past few months is my appreciation of beauty, particularly of the natural world. I’ve always loved nature, but my sense of absolute adoration of what I see around me has heightened. As many times as I’ve walked around the park, I’ve not ceased to find something that captures my attention. Today is was the unusually tranquil waters of the San Francisco Bay. In the months of walking, I have not seen it this quiet. Today’s walk was much hotter than usual because none of the usual breezes I’m accustomed to were blowing. The stillness of the water changed not only the visual landscape but the auditory as well–the sound of the waves pushing themselves onto the rocks was mostly absent. A wonderful, unexpected shift from the norm. It’s been another good day, and I am grateful.
Unusually Tranquil Bay Waters
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