Suggestions from my Soul

"Darest thou now oh soul,
Walk out with me to the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?"
- Walt Whitman

I want to let my soul speak today. I don't have a topic for exploration, so I will see what comes to mind.

There is an opportunity in my life now to explore my soul, to see the being behind the actions and motivations. This opportunity arises because I have found my way into my heart. I am aware of my interests, and becoming familiar with my likes and dislikes. I have been watching my thoughts for many years and find their patterns and themes familiar. This means that I have the possibility of noticing when interests and ideas other than my conscious ones arise.

How else can soul communicate with my conscious self? The interesting title of a book, the theme of a movie that haunts my waking mind until I consider all its ramifications, the thread of conversation that grabs my attention, and the dream or story that finds its way into my awareness and stirs up a storm all are all examples of ways that my soul can speak to me. I have become pretty astute at noticing the way an idea will stand out and call attention to itself. I have not given these communications a place or name in the Transition.

I could think of them as messages from God dropped at my feet day and night, offering possibilities and creative options. As long as I remember that these notes continue to come, day and night, without fail, I am free to respond or not, to each of them. There is no pressure, they are like notes passed to me from my advisors who remain in the background as I am faced with decisions and choices. The suggestions offer possibilities for me to consider as I find my way and discover more of myself.

I like the image of notes from my board of advisors. It gives me a better feeling of freedom to choose my way through life, without resorting to dependence or obedience in response to the suggestions. A suggestion implies that I am making the choices and these possibilities are meant to help me get clear about what I want to do. The alternative idea of Inspiration and Divine Guidance seems to connote directives that I would be foolish or self-destructive to ignore. In fact, from my childhood programming in Catholicism, Inspiration and Guidance are directives that must be adhered to or followed under the threat of eternal punishment.

I have a way to include the suggestions from my soul in my awareness. I wonder what will come today?

Whispers from my Father's Spirit

This morning, as I was pedaling my stationary bike at 5:35 am in the dark, I thought of my deceased father and how I don't have a sense of him after all these years. At that moment, a sharp knock sounded on the door. No one else was awake in my house at that time and there were no footsteps or any other indication of there being anyone physically at the door to my room. I was startled by the sudden rap and wondered about him.

He was the kind of person who would love to communicate from the spirit world just like that if he could. I entertained the notion because of the timing of the sound. If it had been a creaking in the walls, as often happens when the house is warming or cooling, I would not have registered the sound as significant. However, I've never heard a rap on my door without anyone physically doing the rapping.

My brother, who lives in Indiana, has had numerous experiences in his house that he attributes to my father's spirit. He's a meticulous engineering type who loves to fix things and tinker with car engines. He has told me about screws or bolts that he specifically lays on a table disappearing while he's working on the engine. He looks everywhere, under the table, anywhere it could have rolled. Nothing. However, a few days later, it may reappear on the very spot that he originally placed it. This has happened to him many times and he fondly blames my father's trickster spirit for playing with him, while letting him know that he's around.

I visited my brother last summer and stayed at his house for three days. I enjoyed my visit and spent a lot of time with my brother. I carry a polished stone with an Native American stylized Orca whale carved on one side. I carry this stone in my left pants pocket because I like having it with me. It's like my good luck charm.

The second day at my brother's house, when I got dressed in the morning, I couldn't find my Orca stone. I assumed that it must have fallen off the side table where I had placed it the night before, along with my wristwatch, car keys, loose change and wallet. So, I crawled around on the floor of the room, looking for it. I mean, where could it have gone? The door was closed while I slept and no one had entered the room during the night . I couldn't find it anywhere, so I finished dressing and went on with my day.

The next morning, since I was leaving that day, I told my sister-in-law about the stone over breakfast, just so she could save it for me if she came across it somewhere in the house. By this time, I had given up any hope of finding it, since I hadn't seen it for over a day. However, when I went to my room, later, to pack my things to leave, I put my hand in my pocket and there it was!

I had checked the pockets of all my pants the previous day, when I was trying to find my Orca stone. I got chills when my hand touched the stone in my pocket and immediately thought about my brother's stories about our father's tricks with missing things in his house. I was delighted when I realized what had happened and silently saluted my father's spirit.

Evolution of a Scientist

When I was ten years old, my teacher in Catholic elementary school was Sister Mectilde, an older nun who had taught for many years. One day she told her fifth grade class about Charles Darwin and his crazy idea that humans had developed from lower life forms. I was very surprised at her statement because I had read most of the books in the library that had anything to do with dinosaurs, prehistoric man and early life. All of those books explained and promoted evolution, so I had assumed that Catholic teachings were in agreement with it.

I raised my hand and said to Sister Mectilde, "Sister, I thought that everyone agreed that man had evolved from the apes." I was expecting a simple validation of the idea and perhaps an explanation of why she was mocking Charles Darwin.

Instead, she made an exasperated exclamation, like, "What? Did you hear that, children? Rabinti believes that man has evolved from the apes! Isn't that funny, children?" My classmates dutifully laughed at me.

To make matters worse, she then turned her focus on me, saying, "If you believe that, you're a heretic, and God will punish you in Hell for all eternity."

I had never spoken about any of these ideas to anyone. Since the information about evolution was in books that were in the school's library, I just assumed that anything I read in them was fact and incontrovertible. Suddenly, I was confronted with a dichotomy and a crisis in my faith and life. I didn't want to burn in Hell for all eternity and yet I couldn't imagine how evolution could be incorrect.

I shrunk down in my desk chair and tried my best to be invisible for the rest of the day. Deep inside, I promised that someday I would prove her wrong. I suspect that promise ultimately led to my interest in mathematics and science, where facts were incontrovertible and theories were either proven or disproved.

I never spoke of this experience to anyone when I was a kid. I felt so ashamed and embarrassed, as well as terrified about the prospect of being punished by God for all eternity. Had I been able to think lucidly about her accusation and condemnation, I would have dismissed it as incorrect. I had too much fear around the issue to consider it clearly, though, so I forgot about it, at least consciously, and tried to move on.

I had been toying with the idea of being an archeologist for the three years prior to that. It seemed like such a wonderful life, digging in the ground, living outdoors much of the time, and piecing together the puzzles that made up human evolutionary history. During the trauma of this episode, I completely forgot about my interest in archeology and evolution, and gradually became focused on the secure world of physical science and mathematics, where I couldn't be blindsided by matters of faith and morals.

Experiencing the Valleys

I have been busy with business responsibilities for the past two days, so I haven't had time to play, study or record any music. I look at this differently than I did when I was younger. I actually enjoyed the break from my learning curve. My business duties involved taking orders, packing boxes with orders, communicating with clients and fixing order and delivery problems from earlier deliveries. I was completely engaged with the tasks at hand and felt good about doing practical things that both help others and earn income for my family.

In the past, I would have struggled with having to take a detour from my chosen direction, but I have changed. I like taking the detours, now. I have found that rich experiences often occur off the highway, so these chance developments enrich my life. When I was much younger, I fought them as distractions and interference. But then, I also thought I knew where I was going and the destination was more important than either the process of getting there or the current place where I was. Now that I'm older, I don't have a destination, a place where I absolutely must go and where I wish I had arrived yesterday.

It's like the situation of standing on a mountain and looking across a valley at the mountains on the other side. When I was young, I just had to cross the valley to explore those mountains on the other side to see what was there. I would pick a trail through the valley so that I could reach the mountains as efficiently as possible. Once I had chosen my destination, the valley became unimportant, a place to pass through as quickly as possible. Anything happening in the valley then became distraction and interference between me and my goal.

It would be difficult to know how much I might have missed during my youth, when I was in such a hurry. I always had places to explore and rich experiences at my destinations, and enjoyed exerting myself to reach those important places. I just wonder what changes and experiences might have enriched me and altered my direction in life had I lingered in the valleys I passed on my way.

Why Blog or Make Music?

This morning I wonder why I write this blog every morning.

I enjoy writing and I find expressing my thoughts and ideas interesting. I have learned new aspects of myself as I wrote about them in previous blogs. So, having fun and learning about myself seem to be the main advantages of writing the blog. Hmmm. That seems like a great reason to continue. I like doing something because I enjoy it and I learn about myself by doing it.

I can apply the same two advantages to creating music and arranging my songs. I enjoy what I've done so far and I am learning about myself as I proceed. I notice that my inner child is beginning to complain about the learning curve for music theory, recording software, and creating arrangements. He can understand learning CSS and JavaScript because they have immediate marketability for web design. I guess he was hoping I'd make a career out of my interest in web design, so anything I do to learn more and improve my design skills is important to him. He's not so sure about learning all this music notation and theory.

His skepticism regarding music makes perfect sense to me. My parents actively talked me out of going into music when I was young. They didn't believe I could make a living as a musician so they kept at me, insisting that I needed to choose a career that had stability and security built into it. They kept repeating that I couldn't make a living doing music until I believed it, too. So, of course my inner child is convinced that I'm wasting my time with the music because I can't make a living doing music and, from his point of view, there is no other reason to do music.

Now, back to how much I enjoy playing with the music and experimenting with my song arrangements. My pleasure may not register with my inner child, but I have noticed how easy it is for me to explore and experiment when I am doing it for fun. There is no pressure and there are no deadlines. There is no expectation and no anticipation. I have always enjoyed learning and learning new aspects of music seem compelling and interesting. I easily maintain my household and business responsibilities and would be happy to add more web sites to my resume if the right opportunity comes along. It feels like I gain a lot by exploring my music and I can't think of anything I sacrifice or lose in the process.

It's astounding to imagine that I can continue expanding my musical skills in service of finding what pleases me in my music.

Dreaming Life

I am considering my situation embodied as I am here in the material world. I am reflecting on being the life-dreamer as well as a separate embodied being at the same time. I experience this two-fold nature as two different aspects of my being.

When I was growing up, I was taught only that I was a separate being. In fact, I was taught that I was a flawed separate being that needed intervention from God to save me from eternal punishment. This was the proof that God loved me. He would be willing to forgo the pleasure of tormenting me for eternity in exchange for my believing that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead to save me.

God was given all the good stuff to do. He was all-powerful and all-knowing and He created all that exists out of nothing. He created humanity perfectly, but some ancestors didn't follow His instructions very well, so He damned all human beings to Hell forever unless they believed that Jesus could save them and were practicing Catholics. Imagine an all-powerful creator that takes revenge on His own creations for their flaws which He gave them.

In any case, now I identify with that divine, creative and all-knowing power. Only, I'm not the only one who is identified with it. Everyone is. The challenge is that this aspect of who we are, this mystery of creation in which we participate, is not conscious. Our soul is identified with the all-powerful and creative divine being and does the actual subjective creation of our world and our experience. We each experience the world differently, then, as our soul designs and chooses. This is beyond my understanding but I can appreciate the mystery and the confusion in people as we try to understand how this is possible and how exactly this is accomplished.

I experience myself both ways: an individual separate from others and the divine being incarnated in this body. And somehow, miraculously, I feel like one being and am happy waking up to all that I am.

Shifting Awareness

I awakened at 3:00 am and could not go back to sleep, so I went to my office and meditated. After about a half hour, I started dozing so I lowered the recliner and relaxed. I went to sleep almost immediately and had an interesting dream.

In the dream, I was similarly sitting in a recliner in my office, meditating. I was feeling somewhat agitated in the dream and I was looking at a book on the floor beside my desk. I don't know what the book was, but the cover had a Mayan line drawing of a man's profile. As I sat looking at the desk and the book, my visual field rippled, as if the focus was shifting, and a visual distortion rippled across my field of vision from the top to the bottom. I felt altered by the experience, and realized as I was looking at the Mayan line drawing that the drawing was expressive of a game. The art is part of a game and I am free to use the art and anything else I want in whatever way I choose in the game that I'm playing. I felt relieved and connected again. My dog, Magic, who was apparently laying on the floor next to the desk got up and began trotting out of the room, but I noticed that it didn't look like Magic but some other dog, a terrier about the same size and coloring but with shorter hair.

I liked the dream because it seemed to help me shift my consciousness away from the mental activity that had kept me awake. I had been obsessing, going over something in my mind while laying in bed that wasn't very significant or important to me. However, it obviously mattered a lot to my inner child and he was worried and fearful about it, apparently. The image of the shift in consciousness as a visual distortion of my field of vision is quite brilliant, and it seemed to represent the way I let go of my inner child's worries and returned to myself.

When I was younger, I would experience just such a visual distortion and shift when I would go backpacking in the wilderness. I would notice it sometime in the first 24 hours of being in nature. I thought of it as a perceptual shift from my normal, goal-oriented life to an open-ended, intuitive and natural way of living. So, the image is totally apt for shifting awareness from my child's perception of the world to my adult perception, where I see the activities of life as games that souls play while they sojourn in the material world. I want to maintain my perspective about these games people play, because my activities are also games and can be enjoyed as such. My inner child considers these activities as important and serious, requiring all my attention and focus or great harm will come to me. It doesn't make sense in my adult world, but it does make sense in the world in which he grew up, where he was powerless and had to depend on the good will of others for his safety and well being.

I can use this shifting perception image when I find myself caught in my inner child's small and fearful world. I can shift into the game view of life, and have some fun with it.