Posts Tagged ‘journey’

You know that I am ALL about the journey….everything I write in my life is about the journeys I undertake, whether from un-awareness to awareness, a place on a map to another, or the immense journey one undergoes to reclaim themselves for healing.

I was particularly moved when I read my friend and colleague, Anne Marie Bennett’s book, “Bright Side of the Road-A Spiritual Journey through Breast Cancer”.  While I don’t have personal experience with breast cancer (and hope I never do), I was eager to read her account of going open-eyed into the abyss of taking responsibility for one’s own healing and learning the lessons along the way.  I was not disappointed. 

I know Anne Marie through our mutual love of the written word and through our love of art and the amazing pathway to our deepest selves it provides access to.  She is an artist and Soul Collage facilitator, and an utter delight to know.  But underneath her smiling, kind exterior, there is a warrior woman who fully claims herself as precious.  This decision to love herself completely is what she faced when she was diagnosed in 2001 with breast cancer. 

It is not an exaggeration to say that when we face a truth about ourselves it is a kind of initiation.  The journey one undergoes when facing a truth is what makes us victors in our initiation.  We all have opportunities in our lives when we are asked to step out of our comfort zones and confront something challenging.  It is our lives asking us to be more.  If we rise to the challenge, and do what is asked of us as we let go of our old selves and become more, the passage to our larger selves is nothing short of transformation.

 I’m so grateful that Anne Marie wrote this book, and that she was willing to share the truth of her journey with the world.  I asked her to share with me about her experience:

LB:  How would you describe the journey you have undertaken through your experience?  For example, do you see a continuum of progress in your inner awarenesses and growth, or lots of backsliding, or a combination…it is hard to articulate an intense inner journey, but it helps others who are undertaking that journey themselves.

AMB:  Thanks for an excellent question, Licia!  For me, the journey is like a spiral, or even a labyrinth… moving always towards the center, but sometimes feeling turned around or even like I’m headed in the wrong direction.  But always, always, I am moving towards the center.  There are times when I feel like I am going backwards, but that is merely preparation for moving forward!

LB:  How are you different than you were when you started? 

AMB:  Before my breast cancer journey, I was numb in many ways.  The whole experience taught me to feel my feelings, to express them in some way, as well as the power of affirmations to change the negative thoughts in my mind.  I feel like I am clearer now about who I am, and definitely more grateful.  Gratitude has become the cornerstone of my life now. That is a huge difference.

LB:  What have you learned?

AMB:  The best thing that my breast cancer taught me is that I’m not alone.  Seems like an obvious fact, but let me explain.  When I received my diagnosis, I had a loving husband who was there for me every step of the way. I had my brothers and their wives, my nieces and nephews.  I had friends and coworkers who meant the world to me.   But all my life, my tendency has been towards isolation.  Somewhere in childhood, I learned (most likely from my mother, a stubborn Yankee!) that I was strong if I could do things myself.  On my own.  Not needing help from anyone else.

So my breast cancer was a huge wake-up call for me in that regard!  Suddenly, I COULDN’T do everything myself.  I learned that just because I needed help making dinner and taking a shower and remembering who I was, that I was still a strong woman anyway.  I learned to be open to what others were longing to give me: love, friendship, support, encouragement.

But most importantly, I learned that I wasn’t spiritually alone.  I had been isolating myself from Spirit for several years when my breast cancer came along.  This is the very best lesson I learned: that the Divine (which I choose to call Spirit) is with me always, as are many spiritual helpers. 

LB:  Are you grateful for the diagnosis and what it has brought you?

AMB:  Before my diagnosis, I had heard some cancer survivors on TV talk shows saying that they were grateful they’d had cancer.  Seriously? I thought they were misguided and crazy.  But now it looks like I am one of those people!  I am indeed grateful for my cancer diagnosis.   I never thought I would say this, but my cancer gave me more than it took away.   I was given love and support from family and friends that surprised me and was soothing to my soul.   I was given a closer connection with Spirit.  My practices of gratitude, journaling and meditation gave me a whole new perspective on life and living.   Ultimately, I was given a re-routing of my life, a re-direction, which I didn’t even know I needed until it was given to me.

For more information about Anne Marie’s book, Bright Side of the Road, please visit this page: www.annemariebennett.com 

To purchase the book, please visit this page: www.annemariebennett.com/how-to-purchase 

Bright Side of the Road is also available on Amazon.com http://tiny.cc/lf3HF 

The Stolen Mother Moon

from a story that Clarissa Pinkola Estes tells on “warming the stone child”, worshipfully transcribed by Licia Berry

This is about a light, a certain kind of light that is represented by the moon, a psychic light, a cool light, it has some distance to it, not the hyper-tropic mother that is all over her children every time their nose is running they might have pneumonia, this is a mother that is a little more aloof, a little more circumspect, she does not so much love by showering love as she loves by guiding, by bringing consciousness out of the darkness.

There was this village, a wonderful village, and everything happened just the way it was supposed to happen, and all the children were terrific and all the mothers and fathers loved each other, except, as there always must be in the psyche and in fairy tales, there was this one thing that was very, very adverse…..this beautiful, harmonious village was surrounded by a moat of black, murky bogs.  It was dark there always, and it stank because everything was rotting.  It was for that reason, the darkness of those quagmires and quicksand, that the people depended on the light of the moon to guide them at night.  Some nights, she did not come, and on those nights the bogs were filled with treachery, because there were evil things that lived there.  Things that live in the darkest corners of humans’ minds would come out at night and lead the poor, struggling travelers with no light into the quagmires and drown them. 

Well, it turned out that several people died in the course of a very short amount of time.  When the Moon Mother learned of this, she was filled with sorrow, for she cared for humans.  In fact she was so concerned she decided she would come to earth and see for herself.  So when the dark of the month came, she stepped onto a slow shooting star and landed at the edge of the marshes.  She wore a black cape pulled around her so that no light could escape, and for as far as she could see, the bogs were like black mirrors, with a few sparse willows sticking up here and there, and the smell of muck everywhere.

Around the bottom of her cape there was a bright rim of light; she saw that and she pulled her cape even tighter.  It was so cold she was trembling, and she feared the evil ones, just as we all do, but she loved the human soul more, and so she began her investigation, guided by the little golden light that leaked through her cape over her beautiful white feet.

She felt her way through the grass with the dank ponds on the left and the quagmires on the right. And just as she had thought she got the lay of the land, all of the sudden, she felt a vine across her ankles, and too late to hold herself, she began to fall forward.  She reached for a twining tree, the kind under the control of the evil ones, and sure as she grabbed its branches, it sent out tendrils around her wrists and her ankles, holding her as though with manacles.  And the more she struggled, the tighter it held her.  And there she was in the blackest dark, shivering and straining. 

She heard a voice calling from far off, “help me, please help”.  She listened and the cry came nearer and nearer, and she heard footfalls stumbling; at last by the dim light of the stars, she saw a haggard, despairing face with fearful eyes and she knew it was a poor soul who had lost its way, and was floundering on to his death. 

And the traveler now caught sight of the glimmer of light from the captive moon, and made his way toward the light, thinking it meant help, but there was a quagmire right in front of the moon.  She was filled with sorrow because she was luring him with her little tiny light, luring him to his death.  Frantic to warn him, she struggled until her hood fell back, and her dazzling hair lit the black waters; a flood of yellow, precious light of the Moon Mother glinted and the whole was as bright as day. How relieved the traveler was to see the evil ones rush back into their underwater holes. 

But the moon struggled against the branches which held her tighter, and she was so glad he was safe, but the traveler ran to the edge of the marsh so quickly, with such haste and relief that he forgot to wonder about the wondrous thing that had just occurred.  And the Mother Moon sank, exhausted into the mud, and as she did, her head fell onto her breast and her hood fell back over her hair and all became darkness again.

And the vile things that love the dark came too, then.  They came with a kind of whisper chatter… “we’ll get her now, we’ll get her now, now we’ll kill her, yes, we’ll kill her.”  They gathered around the Moon Mother, snarling and kicking and grasping, and they drove her into the ground, they who hated humans.  At last, no more light shown across those dark waters.  The One who gave light and even more, the One who shown down on mothers nursing their babies, the One who made sleeping women kiss their lovers’ backs, the One who put words into the dreams of poets, that One was pushed deep into the mud.  The evil ones didn’t care about mothers or babies; they didn’t care about lovers or poets.  The Moon Mother let one last ray of light zig zag over the waters before she disappeared completely.  The evil ones rolled a great boulder over her grave and danced a crazy dance on top of it.

On nights there was no light to guide, and so many people became lost, and so many children became orphaned, and so many people suffered, that the villagers decided they must go and find what had become of the moon.  Armed with torches and clubs, they trekked through the night into the bog, sinking down into the wet and slimy grass all the way up to their knees, and cold and wet they continued on.  The evil things were about and surrounded them, scratching and clawing at them, but the flames from their torches kept them safe.  

And they came to a great boulder, and they said they did not think this boulder was in this place before.  There was a little lip of light all the way around it that shown whiter than white.  With great excitement they lifted and they hauled and they tugged until the boulder rolled away.  And then staring down into what seemed like the most beautiful face they had ever seen, they saw eyes filled with the love of humanity.

  The light rose up, lighting their faces first from beneath and then straight on and then finally from the top as the Moon Mother escaped from her prison and climbed the dark staircase back to the sky, where now, on most nights, she travels across the sky with her hood turned down and with her radiant light everywhere. 

And on those few, now predictable nights, when she veils herself in grey and does not shine, travelers have learned to stay by the hearth and wait until she shows the way again.  

When my beloved family of four began our traveling and inner search for our “family heart” in 2003, I thought it was something new for us.  We had certainly never done anything like what we did before…leaving behind all of society and its demands and obligations, a completely selfish and enclosed journey into our own processes, and permission to allow that to unfold on its own time, despite pressures from the outside world to interrupt or end it.  It was a remarkable period of years, to be sure. 

Lately as the old world seems to be falling apart and our own family has been going through intense inner change, I have been reflecting on the cycles that nature brings as well as the more subtle energetic cycles that seem to be universal indications of a larger order. 

I see now how these last few years while my family tried to make Del Norte, Colorado our home were a time of “landing” after being mobile for a few years, of integration into the outer world after being so internal during our RV trip.  It was a perfect place to land, a perfect place to slowly make our way outward from that inner chamber of our family and individual hearts.  It has been quiet, a blissful sanctuary of nature, and a testing ground for trusting our inner guidance, something we worked keenly toward during our family journey. 

Now that we are leaving our beloved San Luis Valley, with its high windswept plains and 14,000 ft. rocky peaks, we are aware that this kind of quiet is not something that we will find in many places.  We are sad to leave behind our sweet 40 acre homestead that we have put so much work into.  We are aware that this place has provided a womb of sorts for our further evolution and expansion into the rest of our lives.

We leave for our new life (and it does feel that way, brand spanking new, almost can see the shiny packaging and big red bow around it!) around the full moon of August, a great time to come to fullness and completion with a phase in one’s life and to honor all that has been.  The timing just happened to work out that way, and I shouldn’t be surprised.  The more I have intended to align with the natural cycles of earth and the universe, the more in tandem my actions have been and the more supported I am by that larger energy wave.

I was reflecting on these years of change, thinking that our family was coming to the end of a 6 year cycle since we left Asheville for the Big Trip when I was corrected by my angelic friends.  They told me that we were actually coming to the end of an 11 year cycle.  Really?  I thought about this, counting backwards from 2009 to 1998, and realized that this was true. 

It was in 1998 that Peter and I had construct shattering experiences in our lives that cracked us open to our larger Selves, what some would call spiritual awareness.  It was that year that we bought our “dream house”, Pete was subsequently released from his position with a mortgage company, and I met my first true spiritual teacher.  It was a year in which we jumped on the fast moving treadmill of spiritual growth.

Ah, now the 11 year cycle comment makes sense.  If I were to reflect on the last 11 years of my life and of my family’s life, we have clearly been on the fast track to our Authentic Selves.  As if a great horn sounded, we were called by our souls to line up, and the universe came together in quick order to support us in so many remarkable experiences and learnings.  It boggles the mind. 

I have heard others talk about 7 year cycles in their lives….perhaps that is true.  But I was reminded by my angelic friends not to make too much of the number eleven, or any number for that matter…what is more pertinent is the essence of this sea change.  What has been accomplished over these 11 years is nothing short of a brand new life.       

 “He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.”   Friedrich Nietzsche  

Like most babies, I learned how to walk the first time by the age of 11 months.  I crawled successfully at 8 months (seems a little late, but I’ve always been on my own timing), pulled up to standing at 8 ½ months, then the world was my oyster before one year old.

I say that I learned to walk the first time by 11 months because I am learning to walk a second time at the age of 44 years.  Yep, you read right; after 44 years on this earth, this girl is learning how to walk again.

Due to a violent and (pretty gross) compound fracture and severe dislocation of my right ankle in February, I experienced surgery, metal plates and screws, and 8 weeks of weightlessness; for me, a new meaning to the word “stillness”, and the sudden and complete absence of forward motion in my life.

Well, not entirely; the movement that I have been experiencing since my injury has been on the inside, and lots of it.  What I’m noticing is that the movement on the outer world can sometimes be a distraction from the movement in the inner world.  I discovered that I sometimes used physical movement to help me run from feelings that I didn’t want to feel.  Feeling powerless or afraid?  Go for a run or a bike ride.  Feeling angry?  Go clean something.  Feeling anything uncomfortable?  Go MOVE, do anything, but don’t sit still or else it might catch up with me.

I’m exaggerating a bit here; for the last 10 years, I have been working consciously on myself to wake up, and much of that has been about getting more still and paying attention to my feelings.  In my house, I am the one who is most vocal about her feelings, and the one who is most actively reflecting on what I am feeling.  But I live with three guys (one husband and two sons) and a cat.  Well, okay….maybe the cat wins the most vocal about how she feels award…

But all the work I’ve done had taken me only so far; then my ankle met with a series of metal stairs on a rainy day in California, and my knowing of being still so I could feel my feelings got a whole lot deeper.  That’s how it works in process, doesn’t it?  We go so far with something, then find stasis and equilibrium, then a new expansion experience is introduced and we get to grow again (oh goody!)

I am happy to say that I chose to go for it with this experience; I know that when things happen, there is the opportunity to relate to it as a victim or as a choice maker.  I wanted to harvest all of the AHAs and lessons and insights that I could from this experience.  I sure never want it to happen again!  And I haven’t been disappointed; the amazing healing and awarenesses have been profound and bountiful during my weeks of convalescence.  I can look back on it with just a little perspective now, and it feels like a precious gift to be allowed to be so vulnerable. 

I was given the okay to bear weight on April 27, “letting pain be my guide”.  I took off my “Darth Boot” (my affectionate name for my big, black, kick-ass removable cast) and started learning to walk with the aid of my crutches.  Within a couple of days, I noticed that I started to forget where I left them; that’s a good sign!  By the end of that week, I was hobbling around without any help from my rickety metal friends.

But the hobbling is a little troublesome; I look like Frankenstein, arms flailing out in my attempt to keep balance.  All that’s missing is the metal bolts in my neck and the mantra, “FIRE BAD!”  The scars are not pretty, my ankle gets swollen quickly when I am up on it, and it does hurt a bit when I come down on it.  But it’s a good pain, or so I think.  It is the pain of learning to use something in a new way.

Amongst my reflections and ruminations during this time of forced stillness, I have wondered if I was walking in a way that was not good for me.  Maybe not the physical way I walked, but from a symbolic standpoint, where was I leading myself?  How was I getting there?  Was I being forceful or was I being discerning?  Was I afraid of moving forward, or was I walking in balance and ease? 

And now that I have the opportunity to walk again, I also have the opportunity to learn to walk in a different way, perhaps a way that serves me and the world community better.  How do I want to walk in this world?  Confidently, in balance, knowing that I am supported…at ease in my own power, looking forward to my future, knowing I am part of this world and that I have something to offer…with grace, strength, discernment, wisdom, and love. 

I can’t help but reflect on what it must have been like to learn to walk the first time; I can’t remember, although I wish I could.  What would it feel like to feel the inner impulse to move, to get up on one’s feet and take a first step forward?  What kind of innate trust is there in all children as they fly through their developmental stages?  What kind of crazy motor drives the impulse to get off your knees and start walking?!  How amazing is it that we go from being born helpless to moving around at light speed in under a year’s time?  I seriously doubt that we could handle that kind of rapid growth as adults…if I picture me trying to assimilate so many changes in one year as a new baby does, I think I would explode!

I say this because I am a grown woman, in her mid forties, and I have learned to be afraid.  Life has taught me about people and things and events that hurt, and that I must be protective and watchful and wary, lest something bad happen to me.  Even when I am all of those things, sometimes bad things still happen.  That innate trust we are born with can slowly erode over time, to the point that it seems quite unbelievable we ever possessed this gift.

However, I am hopeful.  When I put my injured foot to the floor, I am in essence saying, “I trust that this leg will hold me up”.  When I choose to engage my body with the earth by walking, I am saying I WANT to trust again.  I WANT to be part of the earth walk again, I WANT to move and run and dance and play.   

As I learn to put my foot down and do the careful dance of rolling my heel and pushing off with my toes, I wonder what kind of a little girl I was when I took that first step.  Was it a joyful and exciting adventure?  Was it a feeling of complete trust and knowing that I was supported?  Can I harness that level of trust again as I learn to walk this time?  I pray that I can.   

We have had an eventful time since we left Tucson! 

The drive over to the Pacific was merciless as we did not make reservations (BIG NO-NO when you are driving something 35 feet long and weighing 20,000 pounds), so poor Pete was stuck behind Jude’s wheel for 400 miles until we found a place to stop for the night.  That wound up being Live Oak Springs, a lovely hideaway that has been owned by the same family for 25 years east of San Diego off I-8.  We collapsed, ordered in for pizza, and zoned out in front of the TV for the night.

But the following morning as we shook the trauma of the long previous day off, we had an utterly easy drive and got totally high on the Pacific air.  We cruised through San Diego with minimal stress, and headed north on I-5, the road that we think will be the back bone of our west coast trip.  We will deviate here and there, but will come back to I-5 like homing pigeons as we journey.

We ended on Monday, October 27 at San Clemente, a lovely little beach town.  We stayed at the San Clemente State Beach, which is a gorgeous park right on the cliffs with trails down to the beach.  It was a completely perfect orientation for our being on the Pacific coast….I found myself to be in a little shock, still getting used to the changes in elevation since we departed Colorado at over 8000 feet, but what was more intense for me was the change in density, the energy of so many people in a concentrated area.  While the drone of I-5 is constant and loud, the San Clemente area is a great place to get accustomed to the Southern California (So Cal) vibe because of the prolific buffer zone of Nature.

We came here as a destination because Peter made contact with an old high school friend from Flint School, a sailing school that cruised Europe in over the 1978-79 school year.  We won’t get into what a bizarre and unhealthy experience it was here, but suffice it to say that Peter has had some healing to do about it; part of his process was to reach out to others recently to hear what their experiences were.  A true gift for him has been to hear his own experience echoed and confirmed.  As our guidance supported us coming here, one of the absolute gems that he found in his search for friends from his past is Janet Harder, who now resides in the San Clemente area.  She welcomed us with open arms into her home despite not having seen Pete for 30 years, was the most excellent tour guide with suggestions about places to go, made us wonderful food, and even hooked us up with the gorgeous state park we stayed in.  She is a delight, and I am happy to say, a new friend for me as well!

Janet, Peter and Licia in San Clemente CA

While there, we visited the San Juan Capistrano Mission as part of home schooling to learn about California history.  The oldest building in California, this lovely mission did a great job of linking its long and many-chaptered history together and presenting it to visitors.  I recommend the audio tour that comes with your entrance ticket (thanks for the tip, Janet!).  Of interest to us was how the local Indians, the Acjachemen, assisted the Spanish in building the mission, being close friends and allies for many generations.  To this day, the mission has a special ceremony when a descendant of those Indians passes away. 

Bells and Fountain at San Juan Capistrano Mission 10-29-08

Pete and I even got a date night….we haven’t had one in ages, so it was extra special.  The boys are old enough now that leaving them by themselves for a couple of hours is not a problem…in fact, they are both babysitting age.  We went for a romantic, fog filled night to the Fisherman’s Restaurant on the pier.  We had a delicious dinner, but the view of the foggy evening over the water was unparalleled.

We made a reluctant departure from San Clemente on Halloween, and headed north to Los Angeles (L.A. on Halloween, you say?  That IS scary!)   Obviously, I had to overcome some fear when we were guided to come through here.  But it brought another level of understanding and comfort level about southern California.  Here I have had to confront my judgments about southern California and the people who live here….as usual, what I have found is that judgments are such generalizations, and that they should be challenged and violently broken…..they just aren’t true, and don’t hold up when you come with an open mind and open heart. 

Our adventures in Los Angeles tomorrow……

We also took time to see the Texas State Aquarium on Corpus Christi Beach.  It is a smaller facility than we are used to for an aquarium, but it made up for size in quality.  I had particularly sweet interactions with the sea turtles, which crowded around to pose for my camera (I must have been standing where they are fed or something!)

The boys enjoyed the Big Tank…Peter is a huge fishing enthusiast and lamented being unable to catch some of the prize redfish on display:

Da Berry Boys posing in front of the Big Tank

We were guided to leave Corpus on Wednesday, October 16^th…so we pretty much had the RV ready by then.  As we left, we gassed up at the local Valero, and were shocked to see that gas prices had dropped to $2.32 a gallon!  We took a picture because we know we won’t likely see that price again!

The 16^th we headed up to San Antonio….again, we were guided to go there.  We thought we were going so that we could have the car serviced (40,000 miles in 16 months!)  But it turned out there was something more special in store!

At close to time to make supper, I received a call from a man who said he had seen our website and that his family was planning a cross-country trip to see National Parks.  He had received our web address from a woman who had met us 4 years ago, when we were on our first big trip and were stationed at Padre Island National Seashore as volunteers.  She remembered us and passed our contact info on to him as a resource for his own family’s trip.  Usually a procrastinator by his own admission, he called on this night to ask some questions.  He said he had seen we were in Texas to get the RV, and wondered if we were still in the state.  I told him we had just left Corpus Christ, but we were staying in San Antonio until the following morning, when we would be heading west.  He paused for just a moment before he said, “I live in San Antonio!” 

This is exactly the kind of thing that used to happen to us all the time on our previous journey…the magic of synchronicities became so common place that we expected them.  It was so fun to feel the “magic window” open up again for this kind of happening!  He suggested our families meet for dinner at a famous burger joint in town…we did, and we spent hours talking and answering their questions.  They are very special people and I want to pass their website on to you to see what they are up to.  Their current plan is to disembark in December.  We can’t wait to meet up with them on the road somewhere out there!

We left San Antonio on Friday, October 17^th and headed west on highway 90; we slept at Alpine, Texas at the Lost Alaskan RV park, where Susan in the office was an absolute hoot (the park was great, too, except that the pool was closed down for the year).  As we drove away from Alpine the following morning, I had the sense that we wouldn’t be seeing Texas (or, Tejas in Spanish) again for a long time.  The sweet rolling hills and live oak trees are so very beautiful there.

Thank you, Tejas, for the memories!

So next…..a night in Deming, New Mexico on our way to Tucson AZ.  We will be in Tucson for the week of October 19-25.  More soon!

We have officially left Texas, ya’ll!

When we arrived down in the Corpus Christi area to fetch the RV on October 5th, it was a balmy 90 degrees and the soft, moist air billowed our sails after a LONG drive down from Colorado.  After waking up to 30 degree mornings back home, the warmth was a welcome change.  Felt like vacation all over again!  We found out later it snowed the day after we left.  Hee hee, good timing, Universe!

We promptly scurried around, getting the RV back into live-in condition and doing the inevitable shopping to re-outfit us.  We fell into an easy pattern within 3 days….we know this routine so well after traveling together for those 2 years!  We parked (I just cannot, in good conscience, use the word “camped”) at a GREAT place in Portland, Texas, right on the bay across from downtown Corpus Christi, called Sea Breeze.  The water was lovely, the fishing was good, the skyline lights at night were jewel-like.  It was a perfect spot to regroup after leaving Colorado and to prepare for our sojourn. I was asked by my dear friend Elizabeth Barbour what it was like being back in the RV again, and I was happily surprised to hear myself say that it was a breeze.

For those of you who have not gone RVing for any length of time, there is an entire lifestyle and culture that goes along with it.  I was reminded as we did our laundry at the recreation building and was chatting with other RVers how much I enjoy the core devotion to freedom that Rvers seem to embody.  It is an unspoken, but highly respected value that we hold dear.  I imagine this is true for anyone who seems to have travel in their blood!

We went to Padre Island a couple of times to play in the gulf….the water was clear and gorgeous…however the beach was covered in trash washed ashore from Hurricane Ike, which hit north of Corpus Christi at Galveston.  I found a computer, a toy chest, electric outlets, shoes, and plastic, plastic, plastic.  It made me renew my commitment to buy as little plastic as possible….there was no end of the horrid stuff littering the beaches for miles.  It was an odd feeling to see these pieces of people’s homes tossed so indiscriminately and deposited on this wild stretch of beach.

For educational supplementation, I took the boys to see the replica of Columbus’ ship, Nina, which sits on the Corpus Christi Bay waterfront in downtown.

 More in Part 2……..

It seems that if something is moving, alive, and on a journey of any kind, then it will meet with obstacles, unfriendly winds, dangerous weather, or sudden and unforeseen changes that cause a slight (or major) shift from the originally intended direction. 

I am of the belief and knowing that everything is alive, even the things we call inanimate….I see that a rock or a book or a star dissolve over time, and so are on their own journey of change.  Even at an atomic level, one of our most basics parts, where there is agreement to come together to act as a table, to organize as a body of water, to serve as a piece of fruit, there is motion and expansion and evolution of self, or a journey towards fulfillment of purpose. 

But a journey constitutes movement, and movement constitutes change…..and meeting up with the rest of All Creation….and therefore the “wild card” of Course Correction.

I capitalize Course Correction here because sometimes these surprising reminders of our connection to everything in the web of creation come in degrees. 

Sometimes they arrive in mini packages….like a notice in the mail that we are slightly overdue on a bill, or a test score returned to us that reveals our knowledge of the material as less than the A-plus we thought we’d achieved.  Ah, we say, no big deal, I’ll take care of this now….I’ll make a slight adjustment to my behaviors and choices and will get the desired outcome.

Moving up the scale are the middle of the road Course Corrections….the difficult relationship in the office that causes you to seek a promotion to a different department, the house roof that won’t stop leaking until you break down and re-roof, the car that goes flat after a slow leak…..this type of course correction gets your attention in slightly more demanding ways, requiring a little more effort and conscious awareness to change your behavior and choices to get the desired outcome.

And then there are the larger Course Corrections, the GrandDaddy of the Course Corrections, the ones that make us stop in our tracks, the ones that cause our brains to pause thinking and our hearts almost to stop beating….those proverbial “divine 2 by 4’s” to the head.  I tend to think these occur because we weren’t paying attention to the little course corrections before the big Course Correction had to occur to finally get our attention.  Some examples of the Big Course Correction may be the auto accident, the unexpected divorce, diagnosis of ill health, the loss of our retirement stock portfolio or loss of any kind…the kind that will bring you to your knees.

Course correction of any degree is a necessary partner of any journey….when you start out on a journey of any kind, you state your intention in the beginning about where you want to wind up; or if the journey is just to go with the flow and be in the moment, without any arrival point, that is an intention, too.  But inevitably, we can get pulled off course, by lack of attention on our part, like the captain of a ship falling asleep at the wheel and being blown off-course….or because we have driven ourselves in a direction which is not congruent with our stated intention or purpose of the journey.  In that case, the universe will obligingly remind us of our original intention and ask gently (at first), “Are you sure this is where you want to go?  You seem to have made a wrong turn back there.”  Of course, then it is up to us to choose to listen or not.

I am of the mind that the universe is actually supporting us when it throws up the course correction….that it is invisibly cooperating with us in our efforts to get somewhere.

I believe the global economy is going through one serious Course Correction; we were certainly given the messages prior to the Big One we are getting right now that things were not working in integrity in the financial sector.  I guess not enough of us were paying attention, and so the 2 by 4 was prepared.  Many of us are really scared right now….and I understand that.  But I also believe that this was a necessary part of balancing out what couldn’t continue.  I do see it as being a good thing in the end.

Many times in my own life have I experienced the occasionally upsetting, certainly confounding and always, in the end, rewarding inevitability of course correction.  I have found that if I pay attention early to the little, mini course corrections, and shift accordingly, I don’t have the major pain and upset that comes with dealing with the Big Course Corrections.  Call it selfish, I call it self preservation….I don’t favor pain much, so I choose to be alert to the messages the universe drifts my way early and often.  When I haven’t caught the messages early, I have been given the opportunity to learn a hard lesson.

Our family also knows to be alert to course corrections as we journey, both inwardly and outwardly.  Within the spirit and psyche of each of the four of us, we are taking many journeys….and the physical journey we are undertaking is an apt metaphor for those other journeys. 

We found the last time that we did this that we did not wind up going where we thought we would….our intention was to be present, to be soulful, to love one another…..and so our journey was shaped and charted by those holy intentions.  In our minds we thought we would go all over the country, here and there to places we wanted to visit, but the greater intention overrode those egoic desires.  The universe supported our original grand intention and corrected us when we veered off course.  We eventually got into a rhythm of being so present and alert that we had very few course corrections by the end. 

But over the couple of years that we settled in Colorado, we got a little unconscious again….it took a few course corrections to get us to this point, where we are on the road once more.  Now that we are here, in the familiar RV that has a different backyard every place we go, and in such close proximity to one another, the old awarenesses are flooding back.  We are listening deeply again for the pulse that guided us so exquisitely before…and I feel us getting closer and closer to it.      

In what ways have you observed course corrections work magic in your own life?  Are you experiencing one right now?