Dancing With Mystery, In Love, for Love

Soul Friend,

It's happened this way before. I offer harbor to some hairbrained dream, letting it torture me, living in a state of flirt, believing it's fruition completely impossible, and then something shifts, and this idea that was safely anchored and bobbing about, somehow grows wheels, cuts away the anchor, emerges from the sea, finds a track and comes barreling straight toward me. It's horn is blaring and the conductor is leaning out the engine window calling, "All aboard!"

The ground shudders beneath me. And I find myself standing on a platform, paralyzed. Will I embark on what feels equally a threat and an opportunity? I'm terrified by this chance to receive just what I've been dreaming of. The Beloved has pulled into the station, invites me out of business as usual and offers up Enchantment and Mystery. How can it be that everything in me both wants to climb on board and wants to hightail it back to my safe and predictable home?

Up strolls my Inner Critic. How could you even consider climbing aboard this hairbrained adventure? You'd be abandoning people who depend on you! I don't think this is a good use of your resources. Sounds selfish to me. Why would you go without evening knowing why you're doing it?  On and on it goes. Of course, he doesn't leave out this one: What will the neighbors (read: family members, friends, colleagues, clients) think? And then, digging really deep, What if you decide to never come back? What if you do, but you're not the same and that ruins everything?

All that relentless questioning holds me captive, in indecision, until I remember that Inner Critic (also known as Resistance) always shows up at moments like these. He belongs and is just doing his job. He's trying to keep me safe, asking me to stretch and see if I can touch down to the depth of my desire. He could use some manners, but he is not my enemy.

I find my own depth and respond, Welcome, welcome. We've got a few minutes. Can I buy you a latte? Tell me what this is all about.

I listen and consider his questions. And then I respond. I trace out for him how I've been following this thread, often through the dark. The thread of nighttime dreams, collage images, phrases from my reading burning in my mind. He's appearing to listen, but he's not really letting up.

Just when his voice reaches its loudest, and I'm feeling discouraged and deflated, the Animate Everything shows up. A Merlin hawk slams into my eating area window. The hawk and I are both stunned, he on my patio, me standing inside, looking out. How this happens, I don't know. Someone must've called the Cosmic 911. When I most needed it, someone called for help.

Merlins, like the mythic character, are magical birds. Also known as a pigeon hawks for the way they mimic the flight of pigeons in order to sneak up on unsuspecting prey, they invite us to consider the wisdom of shapeshifting, of creating a little magic in order to get what we want. 

In falconry, merlins were the preferred bird of noble ladies. They were easy to train and were often returned to the wild after a season of hunting. They invite us to take advantage of new and temporary windows of opportunity and learning. They say, "Don't be afraid to shapeshift your life and yourself."

Merlin's arrival confirmed what my Inner Critic tempted me to doubt: I can trust my deep, beyond rational sense of things. I can trust what doesn't yet make sense to others. I can trust the wisdom of this collage image that came through me on New Year's Day.

 

I can trust "my own weird ways." Or maybe it's the Beloved's "weird ways" with me, or, just his love language.

The last time the Beloved invited me on such a grand adventure was when I precipitously traveled for 3 weeks in India. How could I have anticipated that in the 6 weeks following that trip I would close up the non-profit I'd founded, get keys for a soulcare office, get my business license and build a website. All in, I kid you not, 6 weeks! Crazy pants. It still makes my head spin!

On Wednesday I am leaving my predictable, and in so many ways, rather lovely life, to spend an entire month in the city of Marrakech, Morocco. For years, I've wondered about a January "sabbatical," a time to become fugitive to my own existence and ingrained roles. A time to try on, play around with an alternate way of being. A time to try on a new place, new rhythms, new people, new perspectives. I don't know exactly why I'm going. I trust the Beloved to guide.

As I was readying all those years ago to head to India, I received the invitation to create a 7-word mantra to guide me on my trip. What came was, Stepping into Mystery: opening mind, heart, will. Anytime I got afraid or felt daunted by the journey, I'd recite that mantra. It helped me take then next step, and the one after that.

This time around, I wondered about pulling that mantra back out. The Beloved reminded me that everything evolves, and what I was given this time is: Dancing with Mystery, in Love, for Love.

Dancing evokes joy and relationality. And this mantra speaks my deepest desire, to live and write and serve, to simply be, in Love, for Love.

Of course, it's not just my personal business-as-usual that being toppled. On a global scale business-as-usual continues to be turned on its head. We are all affected by the chaos of these times. The invitations of this season may show up by crashing into our view, or through explosive outbursts. They may also come via image or dreams or the incisive question that expands like ice in a crack of our being. They may be calls to fugitivity or fidelity. There's no predicting Love's ways.

I want to meet whatever comes so that I will look back on these times and how I met them as transformative, rather than deformative. I want to bring my opening mind, heart, and will. I want to do that with the joy and relationality of dance, with the intention of generosity.

Soul friend, what's the invitation in this for you? Are you being invited to reverence your "own weird ways?" Your own beyond-rational knowings? Is there a fugitive exploration, a departure from business-as-usual calling you? Is there an invitation to dance with what both beckons and frighten you? What might generosity ask of you these days?

I am with you and for you. No matter our location, we are in this together, dancing with Mystery . . .

in Love, for Love