In the past few months, I have become increasingly aware of the power of spiritual practice to keep the rudder on my ‘ship of dreams’ guiding me steady on, so that I don’t run it ashore. Just when I think I can be complacent and  refrain from keeping a watchful eye on the direction it is going, an iceberg pops up in my line of sight. Remembering that the tip isn’t what sank the Titanic, but rather what was under the surface that the captain didn’t see, I take a look at what lies beneath my own water line. Is it fear, anger, frustration, doubt, self sabotage, exhaustion, judgment, or over-doing it in some area? Am I taking offense at something said by another, or not said that I would like to hear?  Is it feeling put-upon, rather than taking a step back and kindly and lovingly declining a request?  All of this is ‘normal people stuff’ that in the past would have seemed inconceivable that I would have the right and willingness to change.

I also face the remnants of co-dependent caregiving in one pivotal relationship in my life.  Daily, I take my own inventory and recognize where I may be overcompensating for choices I made in the past, that unless I can turn back the clock, ain’t nuthin’ I can do about that now. When in the midst of sleepless angst over it, I heard the loud and clear Voice that has comforted me throughout other such tossing and turning mental meanderings that asked “How much do you trust Me to handle this?” “Alright,” I sighed. “I forgot that I don’t need to carry this myself. You’ve got my back,” and clearly that of the other person. With any addictive cycle, as the person in question, has with repetitive negative thoughts, I ‘didn’t cause it, can’t control it and can’t cure it.’ My own addiction dovetails and needs to be separated out from the mix. Once I allowed it to sink in, I was able to drift off to dreamland.

What assures me that all is in Divine Order is a series of reunions with people from my past, each carrying a gift that I needed most at the time. A friend from my twenties reached out in the past year to symbolically ‘re-write a script’ that neither of us liked all that much, but brought with it, major lessons. The stories I was telling myself about our interactions back then was that I had no choice in how it went down and I carried resentments that simmered under the surface. There are always two parties in every dance, sometimes stepping on each others’ toes, sometimes gliding gracefully. As we speak these days, both of us take responsibility and laugh with delight at how far we have come. How freeing.

The second was last weekend when I serendipitously and ever so briefly physically crossed paths with a friend with whom there are some tangles of loose ends, but whose ‘thought form’ hovers about from time to time, since the connection is so cosmically coordinated. With that recent encounter, the gift was reinforcement of how powerful our thoughts are, as well as the question of timing, or inevitability. What I had asked  in a previous Bliss Blog entry was about whether the stars were aligned on that day that had all of the tumblers clicking into place so we would show up at that same moment in time.

The third is a fun and exploratory re-establishment friendship with someone from high school. We have watched each other’s lives unfolding via the marvels of modern technology and the phenom of Facebook and finally, after three decades, met up yesterday when he was passing through the area. Marveling at the winding path, beginning with different family of origin dynamics, we are finding ourselves at the same place psycho-spiritually. Shaking my head in amusement that that the ways I felt about my place in the adolescent drama of high school, were some of the ways he felt. Hard to imagine at first. One of our conversations was about the dynamics that occur when one is soaring through the air as ‘the daring young man on the flying trapeze,’ as he has been over the years in his career. I have used that as a metaphor for letting go and trusting. I asked him how it really feels in those few seconds between releasing one swing while reaching out for the other. I don’t recall the exact word, but it seems like it was along the lines of ‘thrilling’ or ‘exhilarating’. He commented that what happens in between those two trapeze swings is ‘a leap of faith’. I asked about precautions and he assured me that a harness and safety net are both present.

Returning to my original thought of letting go in complete trust that the God of my Understanding has my back and those of every being on the planet. For me, All That Is, or as my friend Tom refers to as ATI (pronounced Ah-tee) doesn’t make things happen or allow things to happen, but in co-coordination with us in our free will choices, is the safety net, harness, anchor, comfort and strength that helps us both in the open ocean or narrow channels we traverse.

These days, I’m lovin’ every minute of living and allowing the adventure to continue.