Everything Is A Metaphor ...

••• EVERYTHING IS A METAPHOR •••

Have you ever noticed how when you clean out your closet, or straighten up your desk, or even wash your car, that you feel lighter, clearer, open to new ideas and ready to take action? Just like your desk is now occuring as an invitation to work on something new, and your car is a pleasurable invitation to drive, life experience occurs as freer and there is an invitation to become curious about what next inspires you. 

"If you want to know what you're thinking, look at your life."

I completed painting the interior of our home this past holiday season. It took months to decide on which colors to put on which walls. I am an artist, so I figured it would be easy and fun! What I realized shortly into the project was that this was a whole different world of expression than creating paintings, and there was an inventory of house paints and colors about which I was basically ignorant. This was work! About six months after starting, the last wall was complete, and our two floors of Navaho White are now transformed into a enveloping realm of warmth and beauty.

What I wasn't prepared for was the deep and satisfying experience of being home that this new many-hued house suddenly elicited. Having grown up in a family where abandonment was the culture, I had always felt that I didn't have a home, and over the decades have experienced myself as always looking for home, feeling like I never belonged. I came to realize that I didn't have to keep looking for a place, because I was a place, and I learned to "bring home" with me. But this new expression of warmth radiating out of the bold palette reminiscent of pumpkin and aubergine and green pear, is like stepping into one of my paintings, and suddenly the "inside bringing" of home is reflected in the outside structure of the house. Finally, the completion of a long search born of much self-reflection, emanating through this lovely house. Everyone who visits loves stepping into this environment and feels its enveloping cheer.

"If you want to know what you're thinking, look at your life."

I took a wonderful class last year through the University of Berkeley's "Ollie" curriculum. It was a course on dreams and consciousness. We shared dreams as part of the coursework, and as we all sat in a circle, we took one voluntary decribed dream and we all interpreted it. The caveat was, however, that we had to interpret the dream as if it was our own - we could not analyze the dream as if we had the answer for someone else. Well, of course, each of us saw so much value in our own interpretation of another's dream, because the symbolic nature of the other's dream got interpreted through our own filters, born of each of our own unique past experiences. It didn't matter which of us had actually dreamed the dream! Very powerful.

As I reflected on this classwork over the weeks, something occurred to me. What if I were to describe an event that happened during my waking hours, an event that caused me some kind of dilemma, concern, or perplexity, and reviewed it myself as if it were a dream I had had, or even a dream that another had had? And what if my interpretation of this waking event as if it were a dream, resulted in a fruitful illumination of the issue? 

Well, there followed many good harvests.

If you want to know the source of your life, consider what you are thinking!

Are we sure this life is the waking walk and the dream life is the sleeping walk? Is it worth considering that everything is a metaphor? With this perspective through which to peer, life experience takes on even richer hues, even clearer vision. The deeply wise essence of who I am is always trying to tell me something, but I have been limiting myself to listening only to the language my tongue can speak.

~•~•~ Ten Thousand Blessings to You  ~•~•~

Loneliness and Longing: "Who Weeps for God?"

"The singing and dancing over, the Master took his seat and all sat around him.

'Sir, how can one develop Divine Love?

Through restlessness - the restlessness a child feels for his mother. The child feels bewildered

when he is separated from his mother, and weeps longingly for her. 

If a man can weep like that for God

he can even see him.'"

~ from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

Every now and then I would have to say that I suffer from a deep sense of loneliness. It used to haunt me but now it gives me pause to get quiet and reflective. I have a wonderful life with many friends and family, and I have very good work that is well suited for me which I have generated over many years of training and practice. So there is no real reason for me to experience such loneliness. 

For many years I thought that the loneliness had to do with others and old experiences and resulting patterns of abandonment. I am not saying that such experiences and patterns don't have their impact. They do. But what I have been able to discern over time is that by paying attention to these old patterns I have actually cultivated them into an ongoing reality, re-creating them into having their own ongoing life, and re-creating relationships which prove the validity of being the victim of the perceived and actual losses. 

In being willing to be curious about the loneliness, I developed a tolerance to actually be present with it, and I have come to see something. I can see that the loneliness is actually a longing for the freedom of authenticity, the grace of aligning with my own essence, a resonating call for self-acceptance and self-expression, such that I am bringing communion rather than looking for it. 

There are some places where this is fulfilled, and I can speak from experience that the longing of mother for child and child for mother is certainly one place. Sometimes we are blessed to find it with another partner, and whole worlds of love unfold within and without. 

But we can have that experience of whole worlds of love unfolding within and without, even if we are walking through life without a significant other. The fulfillment of such longing is actually a birthright, a realm which is equally everywhere present, permeating and penetrating and saturating all of the ethers. As we are willing to take a deeper dive into the source of the unrest, seeing the unrest as an aspect of longing, listening to it as a request that is preceding the fulfillment, we can resonate with the quietness and profundity and the peace of contentment. The longing is the promise of fulfillment.

"Let me tell you something. What will you gain by floating on the surface? 

Dive a little under the water. The gems lie deep under the water; so what is the good 

of throwing your arms and legs about on the surface? 

A real gem is heavy. It doesn't float; it sinks to the bottom. 

To get the real gem you must dive deep." 

~ Sri Ramakrishna

~•~•~ !Ten Thousand Blessings to You! ~•~•~