How will you spend your dash ( - ) .......

I have a running route through the city of Victoria that allows me to run alongside the oldest cemetery in the city. Given this is Victoria, I suspect it is one of the oldest cemeteries in Canada. Anyways, as I plod along .... and yes, I now plod rather than run sometimes ..... I will stop and imagine a life lived back in time from say 1897 - 1988. This individual lived for 91 years before their bodies became food for worms. My apologies for sounding so insensitive, but it is true: we will leave behind these physical bodies, all of us, and we will decay in order to follow the laws of nature from death, decay, gestation, fertilization and rebirth.Can you imagine being witness to two world wars, traversing the Great Depression, witnessing the creative invention called the automobile and even electricity, etc? Myself, born in 1962, I have lived a rather charmed and pampered life! One thing I have been witness and sometimes succumb to is rapidity.Yes, too fast, too much, too competitive and full of striving .... for what? So I can fill up my dash with lots of "to do's" that no one really cares about anyways (and on some level, either do I!).

I am a slow learner however that is my work at this time .... to unlearn conditioned patterns and the only way to do this is to be with them, all of the icky, picky, tricky conditions that no longer serve. My job is to witness them only .... not to change a darn thing, just watch. Ah, so easy! Then why the struggle?

I have a new view of education ..... those of you who know me, I am a bit of an education junkie ..... Alvin Toffler wrote: "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." Well, this might just about sum up how I am going to be spending the rest of my dash!Wow .... lots to do!!!

signing off for now ...... Stephanie Needham (1962 - _____)

www.moffattneedham.com

Callings

"You thought that union was a way you could decide to go. But the soul follows things rejected and almost forgotten. Your true guide drives from an undammed stream." - Rumi.

Last night I had a dream where I found myself in a place I have been before but the waters along the shore were congested and boggy. The shoreline was not at all what I remembered: all had changed,and not necessarily for the better. Any one looking for symbolism might comment on how the water is really me and the fact that it is congested and boggy probably means that the dreamer (me!) is too. In my efforts to live my soul's calling or callings while at the same time remaining a householder who lives in this world and has bills to pay and responsibilities to commit to, I am sometimes forced to halt along the way in my accelerated growth and allow the underpinnings of my dream scape speak to me. I have always considered prayer my way of conversing with God and meditation my way of listening. Dream scape however is a real banger because wisdom comes to me in the night, in the dark.  So here I find myself in the midst of living and this time living more authentically. To walk a life non-linearly means at times, to get re-routed, fail, stumble and crawl ..... basically finding yourself traversing through Dante's hell of the dark woods. Mystics of past and present confirm that despite the fierce challenges we may confront, dark and light, all is for the divine purpose of making us whole. There are no short cuts when we say "yes" to becoming who we really are. Making such a claim ought to come with a warning label: This will change your whole life. Once again, careful what you ask for .... although I no longer want to be careful. I have wiggled my way through careful and am now on my way to dareful. So be brave, go deep (like I always suggest to my SI clients) .....undam your stream, follow to the places within that are rejected and forgotten.

Cheers!

Leave nothing behind ......

Today's wanderings wrap around a quote from Kazantzakis who writes, "Leave nothing for death to take, nothing but a few bones." I cannot pronounce the author's name, however his/her words are profound.For those of you who commit to a yoga practice or meditation practice as myself , know the goal is the same as the path: it is the road we travel towards self-realization. This is no simple or easy task for the householder: there are distractions and demands all around us! This is it though, isn't it? I once had a Vedic reading years ago before I studied to become a yoga instructor and the reader suggested to me that I had spent many lives in solitude, like a sage, becoming wise but never giving it away.This explained the loner within and began to bridge the wise me with the intensity and intuitiveness I find relatively simple to hold. In that same reading he encouraged me to come out of my cave this time around .... spend more time in the light! Ah .... the light, yes. But I quite like the dark, I rebel. Here, no one disturbs my self righteous attempts to understand  all there is out there. Hmm ...... not this time round. The study of yoga, Vipassana meditation and Structural Integration have all yanked me out of the dark, into the birth canal and into the light. This time, I choose a life fully lived, messy, disruptive, chaotic and incredibly spiral! Hooray for me ..... I intend to leave nothing but a few bones!