Honoring "the nudge"

Hello Kindred Spirits!

First, thanks to all who have responded and signed up for the email list after the technological travesty that resulted in its demise. Perhaps it will rebuild and be better than ever, yes?

It has been an interesting few weeks for me. My “real” job has been quite turbulent, yet at the same time I have been feeling oddly creative. I want nothing more than to hole up with my laptop and let it pour out of me -- Which brings me to what I want to share with you today: honoring “the nudge.”

Last week, a small book idea that came to me last summer as I sat on the beach was front and center in my mind. It is a little book about burnout for executive directors of nonprofits, which I am in my day job. I sat down, and over the course of a week, the  bones of that little book was written, just like that. Imagine me snapping my fingers for full effect! It literally just poured out of me.

Around the same time last week, I started feeling the strong sense that I am supposed to rewrite Timeless Waters in the first person, which it actually was in its first draft. I am asking myself, why on earth would I need to do that? When will I find the time?  But I have felt the nudge, heard the call, felt the pull. Needless to say, I imagine sometime soon I will sit down and try a rewrite….

            The nudge can be an inspirational idea that makes you want to act. It can be a nagging feeling in your gut. It can be a series of roadblocks that keep redirecting you until you finally get it, or it can be a faint whisper on the wind that you might not even realize you heard.

We feel the nudge to do things; call an old friend, take a different route to work, create, start a project, go back to school. Yet, when receiving that gentle push, we often don’t listen. We tell ourselves it is a silly idea or all the reasons we shouldn’t even bother. But what if that nudge you feel, that “crazy” idea, is Spirit’s way of gently guiding you in a direction that will make you happy, enrich your life, or help someone else? 

Spirit communicates, in a multitude of ways. Our one and only job is to listen.

Many 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

Spirit Work

There are those in this world who have chosen to take the “spiritual path,” by which I mean their focus and how they make their livelihoods is based in what we might call “spiritual work”. A part of me yearns to be one of them, and has for the better part of two decades. As a result, I became a massage therapist that intuitively incorporated energy work, I learned Reiki, I taught meditation groups, I have written a book. For heaven’s sake, I’m writing this.
 
But you know what? I am a social worker by education and profession. I love it, and quite frankly am good at what I do. Most important, it pays the bills! I am a woman torn between two lovers; torn between the reality of supporting my family and a life I view as the equivalent of communing with the divine while living on a mountain top away from stress, …..Deep sigh.
 
Snap out of it, Sheryl! The reality is that our very lives are Spirit Work.
 
There have been years that my connection with Spirit was blatantly evident by the amazing experiences I was having; Timeless Waters as a prime example. Then I have had years of what seemed like very little connection to Spirit; on the treadmill of life, day in- day out responsibilities. These are times when Marilyn (aka Malory in TW) would ask if “anything was coming through” psychically or if I had been working on Timeless Waters. My answer would be “No, I guess I’m just living it.”
 
Every part of our lives is Spirit made manifest; from mowing the lawn to answering the email from your boss to paying the water bill to tucking your kids into bed at night. And on the many days that I am rushing out of the house at 7:45 in the morning to get to work without the opportunity to meditate, I find myself in the car saying “Spirit, I didn’t get any time to connect, but I am you made manifest—help me hear you today.”
 
It’s when we realize that the very fabric of our lives is Spirit Work that life gets richer. It’s where we find empathy for others. It’s where we find wisdom and understanding, and it’s where we begin to get a glimpse of what it means to live a physical life on the earth plane.
 
Rich work indeed.