Meditation for June 23, "Journey to the Heart" by Melody Beattie

"Discover the Power of Stillness

I will forever remember Yellowstone Glacier Lake at midnight. A large full moon—the biggest I have ever seen—was resting atop the lake. The lake was frozen over, a still mirror between the mountains. Even the pines stood motionless. At that moment, I saw stillness—quiet, motionless stillness—and I began to understand its power.

Be still and know that I am God. How often I heard that verse from the Bible. How well I knew it, but how little I understood stillness. Stillness is different from solitude, different from aloneness, different from turning off the stereo or speaking softly.

Stillness is a place. You can find it in the desert or in the mountains. You can find it when you're alone or when you're in the midst of people. You can find stillness wherever you are, whatever you're going through. Stillness is a place within you. Slow down. Breathe deeply. Get quiet. Become familiar with stillness. Take time to learn its power.

From that place of stillness, the right action will emerge and you will find your next step. From that place of stillness, you can move into the persent moment. There you will find your power, and there God will find you."

"We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them." - Anaïs Nin

More Anaïs Nin Quotations

• We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

• Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.

• Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.

• Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

• We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another.

• There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.

• We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

• I am in a beautiful prison from which I can only escape by writing.

• My diary is a mirror telling the story of a dreamer who, a long long time ago went through life the way one reads a book.

• What I cannot love, I overlook.

• We don't have a language for the senses. Feelings are images, sensations are like musical sounds.

Walk On
- U2

And love is not the easy thing
The only baggage that you can bring
Not the easy thing
The only baggage you can bring
Is all that you can't leave behind

And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for a second you turn back
Oh no - be strong

Walk on - walk on
What you got, they can't steal it
No, they can't even feel it
Walk on - walk on
Stay safe tonight

You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been
A place that has to be believed to be seen
You could have flown away
A singing bird in an open cage
Who will only fly - only fly for freedom

Walk on - walk on
What you got, they can't deny it
Can't sell it or buy it
Walk on - walk on
You stay safe tonight

And I know it aches
How your heart it breaks
You can only take so much
Walk on - walk on

Home - hard to know what it is if you never had one
Home - I can't say where it is, but I know I'm going
Home - that's where the hurt is

And I know it aches
And your heart it breaks
You can only take so much
Walk on

Leave it behind
You've got to leave it behind

All that you fashion - all that you make
All that you build - all that you break
All that you measure - all that you feel
All this you can leave behind

All that you reason - it's only time
Love in a fever - no, not mine
All that you sense - all that you scheme
All you dress up - all that you seem
All you create

This is a poem I have revisted over the years. The nature of its personal meaning has changed over time. At first it resonated as a challenge posed to me by another person, perhaps a friend ...a lover. Today, I hear the words spoken from deep within me, as if spoken by my reflection in a deep pool of water. The voice (my voice) challenges and encourages me to become more genuine and free... not for the sake of someone else... but because this is how God intended me to be.

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes!”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

© Mountaindreaming, from the book "The Invitation"

The Clearing
by Morgan Farley


I am clearing a space
here, where the trees stand back.

I am making a circle so open
the moon will fall in love
and stroke these grasses with her silver.

I am setting these stones in the four directions,
stones that have called my name
from mountaintops and riverbeds,
canyons and mesas.

Here I will stand with my hands empty,
Mind empty under the moon.

And if something takes my life,
if a sudden wind sweeps through me,
changing everything,
I will not resist.

I am ready for whatever comes.

Me and My Shadow
(rediscovering the little girl I left behind)

I can remember playing with my shadow when I was a little girl. She was an imaginary playmate who followed me wherever I went in perfect unison with my every move. Sometimes she would run ahead of me, growing larger, then smaller...and sometimes totally disappearing in a game of hide and seek, only to pop up behind me. She was always close by. I remember how she would dance on the walls in my dimly lit bedroom as I shaped my hands into all kinds of animals...a bunny, a barking dog, a galloping horse. I loved my shadow. She was my most loyal friend. She was my identical twin, a perfect reflection of all that I was ... playful, carefree, uninhibited and real.

As we continue to grow up, the essence of that child becomes the voice of our inner child, the best friend we talk to when relating to the world's demands on us. Sometimes, we look back and wonder where she went. On what day did I begin to change in a never-ending series of choices to become another person...the "Good Girl", the "Devoted Wife", the "Great Mom", the "Sweet Lady"...my parents' "Pride and Joy"?

We grow up being told that we need to be protected, to feel secure, and kept safe. We yearn to belong to someone, to be fearlessly rescued, to be desired, adored ...and, yes, loved.

Over time, many of us will portion more and more of who we really are into the safe confines of our Shadow. We do it in order to attain those gifts promised to only the "Best Little Girls". Think about it. How often do you talk with your Shadow about what you really want to do...those things that are not acceptable to tell anyone else?

Do you sneak spoonfuls of chocolate ice cream straight from the container when no one is looking and carefully wipe your mouth clean so no one will see the evidence? Do you fart LOUDLY (or do you "pass wind" as Mom would say) and laugh at how bad it smells when you think no one will hear (or smell) it? Are these times you share with your Shadow, like I do with mine?

On a deeper level, how often, when you are doing the things everyone expects of you (you know...the things that you claim to take joy in doing), do you find yourself confessing to your Shadow "This really isn't what I want to be doing, but please don't tell them or they'll be disappointed in me."?

I've been talking more and more with my Shadow lately. She calls to me to come out to play, to be the wild child I once was... dirty-faced and skinned knees, hair flying in the breeze, arms outstretched, reaching for the sky, singing at the top of my lungs as I skip down the street.

Lately, it seems more important to be "real", than to pretend the Shadow isn't me.

Choices, Decisions and Prayers
(of answered and unanswered varieties)

I often find myself reflecting how a life unfolds. We spend alot of time contemplating the 'meaning of it all'. The meaning for us mortals lies in the way things play out according to our plans, wishes, desires and prayers. The end result...the 'how it plays out' part, will be attributed to a variety of causal effects...depending on our view of what makes the world spin. Some will call it God's will and His response to our prayers (a "yes or no"), others will view it as karma, destiny, kismet, accident, or even totally meaningless, or random happenstance.

We "pray about it", "put it in God's hands", "wait on God's signal", "petition God for his will", or we "take our hands off the wheel" and let God take us where He wants us to go by either directing our steps...or doing the stepping for us. Some of us will live virtuous lives, believing there is a reward for "doing it right". We look for signs that tell us we are moving in the right direction. We leave our mind open to all possibilities, lest we miss an opportunity we might have never considered. Or we close our field of focus and pick one thing (or person) to play the role of what we KNOW we need to make us happy. We try and try to have control of some sort, so that the story plays out the way we WANT it to...happily ever after...as we chase the elusive fairytale that our childlike heart still believes exists for us.

Now I am not trying to paint a dim picture here, because I do believe that whatever gets us there is how we allow ourselves to put one foot in front of the other through the hard times that lead us to the next happy season in our life ...those "kodak moments" when we say to ourself...."this is SO right..this is IT! Surely THIS is my purpose, my destiny, my prayer answered!" And then we embark on the path set before us knowing (THIS time...after so many failed other times) THIS one's going to be different, because THIS is what I have been searching for all my life!

Tell me...how many times has this played out in your life? Have all your happy beginnings...had happy endings?

Happiness comes in small portions sometimes and in subtle ways we might just miss, if we don't pay attention.

One of my favorite movies is "Under the Tuscan Sun". It's a story of a woman who has a prewritten plan for how her life will play out. She is a newly divorced American who happens to have a free trip to Tuscany fall into her lap when good friends can't make the trip and give her the ticket, knowing she needed something positive to do for herself. So she embarks on the trip and utlimately buys a broken down villa in Tuscany and decides to start an entirely new life in a strange country.

She finds herself wishing (praying) for a number of things...things that will surely make her happy if only her prayers are answered. She prays for a wedding in her garden, she prays for the sound of children's laughter in her home, she prays for a family to love and enjoy. But somehow it all seems to be eluding her. She has this picture in her mind. (Don't we all?) of exactly how it all should play out for her "happily ever after". The story's ending might be sad if you buy into things having to play out exactly as you want them to. Your happy ending would be her meeting the perfect man who will love her for all eternity, she has a beautiful wedding in her garden and she is the princess bride, that she would have a house full of laughing children, and all HER prayers would have been answered exactly the way she wanted.

But she doesn't find the perfect man, in fact she has no man in her life at all...at least until she stops trying to find him and make him who he needs to be to complete her self-composed dream for her life. Rather...everything she prayed for DOES come to pass, but it's her pregnant friend who arrives on her doorstep and decides to stay after the baby is born...that ultimately brings the sound of children in her home. And it's the young couple that she befriends who decide to get married in the beautiful setting of her garden, that enables that happy event to unfold. And it's the wonderful friends she has made who give her the sense of family she has never known.

We often get what we ask or pray for... We often don't get what we think we need. We often miss the subtle things that can take us in a different direction onto paths we could have taken. Are these missed opportunities? Or were these things never meant to be, or not yet ready to be experienced because we are not ready for them? Happiness is in the small stuff, the Kodak moments...a life filled with memories (some good, some not so good), a life filled with hopes and dreams.

Pay attention to it all... or you might miss the ladybug sitting on your shoulder.

And Then Comes the Dawn...

After awhile you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul.
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning,
And company doesn't mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises.
And you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes open.
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans,
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After awhile you learn that even sunshine burns
if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul.
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure...

That you really are strong.
That you really do have worth.
And you learn and learn...
With every goodbye...
you learn.

© Veronica A. Shoffstall

Autobiography in Five Chapters
By Portia Nelson

Chapter I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I'm in the same place, but it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in...it's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter V
I walk down another street.