I guess I may use metaphors a little too much, but they help me understand things and I figure they may help others understand things, if the metaphor is apt. So today, I was looking back on the month since I arrived back east, and realize that in a way, it has been like a defibrillator, shocking me back to life. Now, this doesn't mean that I was literally dying in Duluth -- indeed, I underwent quite a rebirth over the last two years or so, but into a routine and situation that no longer quite worked or was stimulating enough to sustain me. It was the perfect place to rise to a new level of awareness, but perhaps not the perfect place to move forward from there. And I'm not entirely sure that "here" is either, but racing around a sprawling populated area that I'm only somewhat familiar with nowadays, attending events that are unfamiliar, meeting people who are unfamiliar, and traveling in fast-moving highway arteries has been a jolt..like an electrical charge, potentially aligning me with a new kind of life, if (ahem!) it doesn't do me in.
Of course it has to be said that part of the shock has been to see (and hear) the horrifying expressions of national and international hatred and conflict getting louder and more lethal. As much as I have expected (in general terms) the kinds of nightmares that are already characterizing this decade, the reality comes close to being unbearable for many of us. The only path through it is love. Not the word "love", but the genuine ability to love others, or -- at the very least -- say or do as little harm as possible to people, plants, animals, the earth, or any form of life. (Coincidentally, I seem to be becoming more of a vegetarian. My system seems to be going "off" meat, anyway.)
Most mornings, I start the day writing down an intention, and then blindly pulling a card from one of the three oracle decks I have with me. This morning, I couldn't even come up with an intention. I literally wrote, "I have no idea!" I think it may be the first time in this whole leg of my journey when I was honest enough to say that. I am clueless. And perhaps not surprisingly, I picked a card that explores being at the heart of the Divine. At this moment, all I can seem to "do" is "be" here. And try to personify the Goddess's beautiful energy as much as I can.
