Do you perhaps live as I do, somewhere between this person plugging along in her life, doing her best to survive the blows of life and celebrate its special moments, and the energy that sometimes descends like grace to fill us when we’re open to it? And aren’t we always in the middle—of things, of demands on us, of crucial decisions to make? Living between the world that demands our immediate action and response and another world that awaits our attention.
Few rewards are as satisfying as finishing a job to which I’ve given my best professional effort. Yet after a lifetime of attempting to be single-minded, engaged, united in purpose, in spite of being pulled in many directions—the question remains. How to stay open to an ongoing call from another source as I go about my daily achieving maneuvers? That call is so easily forgotten.
Perhaps because I’m older, and at moments wiser, success seems less important nowadays than to acknowledge frankly that I’m divided, and that the unification of this multifaceted human being may never take place. I’ve accepted that this present moment, my opportunity to be here now, won’t provide an escape hatch to Nirvana. Only in my dreams can I get away from the primary human situation of living at the crossroads between yesterday and tomorrow, between earth and heaven. In the middle.
Nevertheless, a lifetime may go by as we attempt to discover ourselves between these two worlds, seeking a path through our confusion. But what if we are the path? And, if so, where are we taking ourselves? In spite of those special moments of grace, I imagine that you, like me, alternate between longing for contact with spirit and identifying with the joys and sorrows of life on earth. Maybe you, too, have flirted with following a cloistered path, wondering if you could get to Cloud Nine and give up the struggle.
How to find a way of working that puts us in touch with an essential rhythm, the kind of rhythm that’s heard in the sounds of accomplished craftspeople in any field as they sweep the floor, saw wood, paint a house, cook dinner. Their work, inner and outer, flows freely into a movement for which daily, hourly, even momentary commitment is indispensable. The strokes, the moves, the instant decisions in the heat of the moment, all call the master-worker into balance.
Returning to the challenges in my small corner of the world, how can I integrate thought and action, whether I’m sewing on a missing button, experimenting with a new kind of soup or trying to listen to my children’s problems without telling them what to do? The very attempt to find our place in the middle asks a question. And perhaps what we call integration is simply a return to what’s really been going on while I was lost in imagination or reaction. We need to fully occupy our own place: between heaven and earth, between body, soul, and spirit. In the middle. At the heart of life.
As always, Patty, you have an uncommon ability hit the nail squarely on the head with your compassionate and wise Hammer. Every year during the frenetic Holiday season, I reach without knowing it a breaking point where I just feel like jumping out of my skin and giving innocent strangers the finger, even though I have known the miracle of mindfulness and compassionate awareness, and prayer. God, why have you made me like this? I guess part of me has been using spiritual practice to run away or get rid of the pain and messiness of being fully human. Sometimes the only thing I can do is to STOP, drop the storyline, and rest and soften into what the body is feeling
And watch it all come and go. But why do I have to be reminded again and again to do this? Perhaps I cannot do this alone? Sidney L Gulledge III MD(Sid)
Hi there Sidney, I love your sentence: Sometimes the only thing I can do is to STOP, drop the storyline, and rest and soften into what the body is feeling. I do that a lot. What’s more, it is powerful to begin to suspect that our storyline isn’t useful. Sorry it’s annoying to do but it’s a major path!
so lovely wise and true…. a pleasure to have ‘met you’ , thank you Patty
And thanks for joining in! Patty