Do Something

I’m personally a believer that the important thing in life is to just be doing something; anything, really. I like shaking it up; my exercise routine, health and nutrition, form of meditation. You name it. A dear friend of mine once said in response to my most recent report of something I was trying was “you’re always into some crazy thing!” My answer back was “all that matters is that I’m doing something.”

The same philosophy applies for personal growth and spirituality. There are many paths to self awareness and living a more balanced life. Do I believe there is a holy grail of how to do that? No, I don’t. Life happens. Our life lessons are just that—life lessons. We will be faced with them throughout our lives. Self awareness is like an onion peeled back one layer at a time, and you often find the same issues in the first layer are going to reveal themselves to you in a different form in the next layer, all the way to the core.

Over the course of our lives, we may be exposed to multiple spiritual modalities and disciplines. Should we find one and hold that particular viewpoint for the rest of our lives? Well, that depends on if your personal viewpoint stays the same for the rest of our lives. Expanding experience has a way of expanding the way we look at the world, which includes the way we interpret our spirituality.

For some, this ever changing world view may present a problem; we as humans do have a tendency to want the “right” and “true” answers. But I find it exciting, and I imagine many of you do as well. It may look to others like we are frogs jumping from one lily pad to another, desperately in search of the “right” path. But we know better, don’t we? We change, our lives change. Our understanding of universal truths reaches new depths, and we gain new awareness of our place in the universe. What matters is that we are doing something.

Blessings,

Sheryl

Transcendence

     “a state of being or existence above and beyond the limits of material experience”

Just as we are all dichotomies, so we all have characteristics that can be viewed as both our blessing and our curse. One of those characteristics for me is my ability to feel deeply. My ex-husband would watch on with both frustration and awe as I covered the spectrum of human emotion in a matter of minutes, and then with ease, could carry on with the rest of my day. He once said the sky I saw was much bluer than the one he saw, but that the pain I felt was deeper too.

            Living life that way is a rich experience, and one that can enable a person to not fear what lay within him or herself. But sometimes when a person is handed too much over a span of time, he or she shuts down emotionally; a coping mechanism.

At the time I didn’t realize it, but it happened to me. I handled the experiences being handed to me with an “evenness” previously unknown to me. And so it was for several years, and it occurred to me that maybe I had learned transcendence; the ability to rise above and beyond the limits of material experience.

Then one night as I sat gazing at the stars, I realized my sense of awe was diminished. As I thought about many of the events I had faced over the previous few years, I also recalled that I had never shed any tears. The words to the Eagle’s Desperado played in my head-- “You’re losing all your highs and lows, aint’ it funny how the feeling goes away--” and I got it; I was numb. While the absence of the lows was nice, life without the highs is a flat life indeed. With that recognition, the tough exterior that shielded me for several years began to soften, and I got hurt. I sat on a friend’s couch sobbing, recalling how awful it was to feel something so deeply. Later that night, a favorite phrase from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, came into my mind:

        “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

            Gibran’s poetic wisdom both gave me pause to reconsider the concept of transcendence and reminded me of the richness that exists in this physical experience we have chosen. Human emotion is a critical part of that experience. With that awareness, maybe healthy transcendence is not so much about responding to what life throws our way by immediately rising above it. Perhaps it is ultimately about how we respond when we find ourselves in that deep well of human emotion.

Blessings,

Sheryl

Patterns

           If you have read Timeless Waters, you are already aware that it is a story of what felt like a space-time convergence leading to the discovery of three different lifetimes. These lifetimes spanned several hundred years and were all related to a specific location in New Mexico. What an experience it was! And while finding clues and documentation supporting my dreams and intuitions is what made the ride so unbelievable, it was the recognition of reincarnational patterns that has impacted my life the most. The stories, while relevant in their own right, are simply the backdrop; they are the vehicle through which the patterns are demonstrated. The patterns are what we carry with us through space and time, beckoning us to seek understanding.

            What I am still learning, however, is that just because I know about the patterns, and have detailed knowledge about other incarnations related to those patterns, it doesn’t mean I get to be finished with the pattern. The older I get, the more I see that life patterns are like an onion. You make your way through one layer of the human experience and shed your skin, only to find with the passage of time that—oh, there is it again in the next layer! And so it goes over the decades.

            One of my patterns is loss. It has come up over and over again in a variety of forms. Success in dealing with this pattern is not going to be demonstrated by the eradication of loss in my life and a cheer from above that I finally figured it out. Rather, it is about how I respond.

            I once heard someone say that life lessons are just that; for life. They are the crux of the work we as individuals are here to do, and no one is exempt. The challenge then, is to recognize what is happening when faced with your own particular pattern and each time you are, reach deeper understanding of the wisdom that can be gained from the experience—even when it renders you a pile of rubble.

            I write this as a reminder to myself as much as anyone else, as I am yet again faced with the challenge of one of my patterns. I know the past lifetime that the pattern relates to, and I even know the players. Yet I still struggle, as do we all. Does this mean we are failures or somehow less evolved? I don’t think so. It means we are here, having a human experience, engaged in the work we came into this life to do. 

Blessings,

Sheryl