Thursday, October 18, 2007

Learning To Live My Life


Learning to Live my Life

As I re-read the words of a friend’s message, contemplating the relation to me and my own experience of learning to live my life, again the questions hovers just beyond the reaches of awareness, just outside the grasp of understanding. Almost as if to repeat the mantra of tragic occurrence, 'why' looms in front of the next impending thought, above the ceiling of reason that seems so very low at times such as these, behind the reservoir of familiar and comfortable thinking from which the mind draws its normal sense of solace. Not knowing anything about the mystery of God's will or the sometimes misery that accompanies the playing out of the human drama, I can only share my profound sense of hope.

In sifting through the fragments of my own memory, the recollections of strange turns-of-event and the unexpected twists in the roadway, I regret that I have little wisdom to offer myself, and to others for that matter, that would suffice to mitigate the pain and difficulty that is so much a part of human life, its endings and its many false hopes. And although choice affects a considerable part of one's perceptions of these things, life is still difficult at those points of departure or radical change that are so inescapable. The only illumination that I have found on the horizon seems to come in the form of acknowledging that the entire sequence of living is a path; one that must be endured and shouldered, but one with its own offerings as well.


I have conceded that there is no time limit placed on getting “it”, no schedule on the arrival to any zone of eureka, however temporal it may be. I think that the process lasts the entire duration of our stay here and thus, perhaps, there is no time frame for understanding, in spite of the tricks played on us by our perceptions. Maybe it is that we are asked to endure a full lifetime of learning, repeatedly engaging the lessons, the mysteries, the rhythms and the patterns of the human drama, until the time comes when we are called elsewhere. Realizing that life is a gift in spite of the occasional misery, I simply pray for sustenance, for endurance, enlightenment, and for the opportunity to grow within, with patience and some measure of understanding.


I don't know if I will ever get there, if there indeed is a 'there' in human life, but I continue to welcome faith, for myself and for all others for whom the word has meaning.

Life of the present has taken me on a journey of ups and downs so far and so high I’ve yet to catch my breath before another wave hits. Truly, if anything, I’ve learned I am certainly not in charge and the best I can do from day to day is to seek for His continued direction and the strength to carry out His will for me. I am sure that there is a very meaningful and profound correspondence to it all -- perhaps something that is known in depth, at the present time anyway, only to God above.


I have been searching for words to effectively describe the changes that I have experienced these past few months, the shifts in awareness, emphasis, perception and detailed focus that is coming from somewhere beyond or somewhere deep inside. It feels as though there is a woeful deficit in not only my understanding of this energy, but in my ability to describe it in the spoken or written word. I admit that this missive will probably be only the first of many attempts to unfold the understanding and, in turn, describe it in words that make any sense at all -- simply because I am learning as I write, as I think, and as I take each daily turn that emerges moment by moment.


There are subtle changes that I am aware of, changes inside my soul, I suppose, and changes that confirm the understanding that I rely upon almost superficially at times to explain the fact that life is constant change around me, around all of us. Striving to learn from my past, and equally from my present, I can offer to you only these simple words that reveal the very strong responsibility and accountability that I feel to my own life, to the path the is unfolding, however nebulously. I am not sure how to approach its description, the painting of the picture, for in these recent days I have been at a pronounced deficit of self-assurance -- a phenomenon that always seems to accompany an impending understanding, an impending new phase of life. These things come from somewhere way down in a realm of intuition, a realm that is sometimes without words, without description.


I feel an incredibly strong responsibility to discovering the right way to live my life, (if in fact there is a “right” way,) devoting all the energy that
I possibly can to being accountable, responsible, sensitive to the connection that I feel is ever developing, constantly unfolding, between the life of spirit, i.e. God's pure intention, and the my own assimilation of it in my life, and how my actions ultimately reflect the understanding. It is difficult because sometimes I honestly don't know where to put my feet; sometimes the understanding that I had yesterday has already exhausted its relevance and its usefulness, whatever it may have been. I can admit that things have been difficult, financially, emotionally, intellectually and on the level of basic human confidence. Some of these things I have share with friends and others have remained unspoken, but they all are related to some larger picture, some direction of new responsibility and, forgive the term, mission.


I have a profound and firm belief in this sense of mission in my life, however ill defined it may be at the moment. All the events that have transpired in recent times only further confirm my own desires to understand and delineate my place and my responsibility with respect to larger picture. Trouble is, I cannot succinctly define for myself what the larger picture is. My intuition tells me that life on this planet, our gifts and our abilities and our talents, are profoundly essential to those whom we know personally and others more distant -- a thought that I have had for some time, but only we as individuals know the details and the relevance of how they are applied, or how they will continue to affect those that surround us.


I apologize for the fact that my efforts to discover, to understand and to find my place may come across as strange, or distant or somewhat diffracted, but I can only offer that at the moment I am trying, desperately at times, to figure out what all of this means. There is more to be said, much more to be described, defined and shared, and when I have the words I will surely give them, though I hold no expectations of time or space as they relate to my ’getting it’ and I may fall grossly short with the reality of what is and what may be to come. I try to simply accept things as they are, and acknowledge the fact that the cloud I have walked beneath for protracted periods at a time, still lingers above the path.I will write more words, if and when they come. Until that end.

© CiCi Stewart

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