You can spend years of your life searching for your purpose. It can be both daunting and confusing. What if it doesn’t have to be? What if the purpose you’re looking for already exists right under your nose? The simple truth is that there is no part of you or your experiences that is not perfectly integrated into your life’s purpose. And the Earth’s purpose. You don’t have to search for it—you are it! Each and every one of us is an evolving soul on an evolving planet….
Returning Home
What does “home” mean to you? A place? A group of people? A memory? Or is it a feeling deep inside that touches your heart and soul? All of these perhaps. Our own life experiences define what home means to each of us. I grew up in Illinois, later lived in California, and then settled in Massachusetts for more than 30 years. Massachusetts is where I met my life partner, Anne, and where we were married. I’ve always loved both coasts, but I didn’t realize how much the Northeast had become home for me until I moved away and then returned for a visit.
A year ago, in June, Anne and I moved to Florida, leaving behind many years of memories and starting anew in a different part of the country. This June, one year later, I traveled north for a five-day retreat at Omega in Rhinebeck, New York. I was totally unprepared for the emotions that welled up in me as I flew into JFK and then took a series of trains to Rhinebeck in rural New York.
The Amtrak train route follows the Hudson River. On one side is the wide expanse of the river, and on the other, rolling hills and open fields. It was the latter than grabbed my heart: the GREEN! Avalanches of vibrant early summer green everywhere I looked—green trees, bushes, grasses. Mother Earth bursting with renewed life. Green filled my eyes and my heart. Tears streamed down my face. It was all so profoundly beautiful and so familiar. It was “home” to me at a very deep level. Florida has its own stunning tropical beauty, but here was a beauty that had been part of my life since childhood: the change of seasons and the return of green after a long winter. And for me it was the return of summer green after being away from it for a year.
I was in absolute awe at how stunning and vibrant the colors were, both on the train route and then at Omega itself. The sun highlighted all the varying shades of green, and the play of color and light was breathtaking. I wrote to Anne: “How did we live here and not fall on our knees in gratitude every day at the miracle of these incredible greens each spring and summer?!” It’s not that we didn’t appreciate the beauty of the landscape then, but something about returning after months of absence made it all explode with radiance within my perception.
And the birds! I love birds, and the spring migration in Massachusetts was a highlight of the year for me. This past May I missed it tremendously. My bird friends were passing through on their northern route without me! The warblers and thrushes, the orioles and tanagers. Of all the birds, though, I think I missed the robins most. Their cheerful lilting songs fill the spring and summer air in the Northeast and Midwest. Although there are amazing and unique birds in Florida, particularly water birds, I missed the robins that I saw every day at my backyard birdbath in Massachusetts. So, when I arrived at Omega and heard robins singing everywhere, I was brought to tears once more.
These are the irreplaceable details that make up a feeling of home—at least for me. My heart opened wide in joy and gratitude. I felt like “myself” again in some indescribable way: cells of memory that live in the heart and never disappear. You can have many homes in a lifetime, but one or two may hold particular emotional meaning. For me, the green Earth is always home because it touches the deepest part of my being.
I had no idea I would react so strongly when I returned to the Northeast. It was a gift of unbroken connection with all of life. As I stood looking out at the hilly green Omega landscape, I was reminded of each morning when I walked out the door to my Massachusetts garden and smiled with love and appreciation for the living green beauty before me.
What Is Here
In every moment, there is a surplus of wonder in your life. The air you breathe, the sky above you, your friends and family, all of them precious beyond words. Yet, not every person, event, experience, or detail in life is always within your perceptual field. You can have one particular experience today and an entirely different one tomorrow, each of them seemingly separate. If you expand your awareness, however, both experiences are connected.
We live on a planet of polarities, and we are learning to navigate it, to find balance and harmony within that world. The middle path is one that is inclusive of everything within each moment. You don’t get lost in opposites, which can lend itself to only experiencing loss. Instead, you see everything around you as part of a greater network of meaning and connection in the universe. There is no absence, only presence.
I find when I live my life this way, within that presence, then I am always full of appreciation for what is instead of feeling regretful about what is not. It is definitely a practice though—gratitude, appreciation, inclusiveness, whatever you want to name it. The field of polarity that surrounds us can pull us into the opposite of appreciation—into sadness over the past or fear about the future. When I remember to re-center myself and look at the world from present-moment awareness, I see a surplus of wonder, not a deficit.
So I practice, each day I practice. On my morning walks, I remind myself: “____ is here” or “I am grateful for ____.” With each new addition to those sentences, my heart opens more. It is amazing how a few minutes of doing that can shift my consciousness into a much more expansive and inclusive state. Presence fills, and absence drains, us.
If we want to find balance and equilibrium in our lives, then I can think of no better way than to love what is here, not long for what is missing. It’s all a mental construct really, a trick of human perception that tells us that everything is separate from us (including God), and that we can’t know the world as a whole in each moment within our consciousness. If the entire universe (uni- means “one”) is of a piece, constantly evolving energy and light, then in truth we are never separate from anything, throughout eternity. So “here” cancels out “not here,” and there is only Presence, which is another name for God or Source.
You hold the universe within you. You hold all seeming opposites within you. You hold God within you. You are Presence itself. When you remember that, then you are always “here,” and so is everything else. And all you can feel is thankfulness and love for the miracle of life you are living.
Surrender the Outcome—Back by Popular Demand
Over the last month or so, I’ve noticed that many different people from many different countries have visited my website to read my 2016 article “Surrender the Outcome.” Day after day, that title keeps popping up in the statistics, from Argentina to Morocco to India. I know it’s a key issue for people in their lives no matter where they live, but I also thought there must be more to it. From the perspective of divine guidance, how much clearer could a message be than the repetition of the words “surrender the outcome” every time I go to my website? The truth is that even though I carry that wisdom within me (and have written about it repeatedly), I often need a reminder when things get challenging in my life. The message to surrender comes when I need it most.
Why can’t I/we always remember to surrender to the life force within, to the hand of God that orchestrates the cosmos? To let go with each breath? Well, forgetting is the human condition. We live our lives in order to remember all that we forgot when we were born. Funny, that. Kind of a nuisance really. Yet the journey that remembering takes us on is one unlike any other—and one I wouldn’t pass up for full recall after birth. I didn’t always feel that way, but after many years on the spiritual path, I’m realizing that we couldn’t reach the greater levels of wisdom, insight, and connection without that veil that curtains off pre-birth awareness.
God, you see, is living my life through me, as me, as all of us. In that unique scenario is God’s opportunity to experience the physical manifest world in all its extremes and polarities, its perspective of separation. Each individual physical form on Earth is a piece of God, slowly recalling its Godness. Each human life is a different experience, a different opportunity to remember the love from which we all came. If we knew the end of the story before we began, how could we experience the adventure, the highs and lows, the gradual awakening to who we really are? God in human form forgets….and then remembers through connecting with the soul. That is the miracle, the flow of the universe in which the many “separate” pieces recognize they are part of the same whole.
My life in the past year has been an odd mix of absolute clarity and absolute confusion. Enlightenment and dark night of the soul experienced almost simultaneously. What’s that about? I’ve asked myself, with increasing impatience. I made a huge leap of faith and landed somewhere that feels like another dimension (Florida), where I see both the heavenly and the disheartening. The fact is I still don’t fully know why I’m here, and everything keeps falling away all around me. I sometimes feel lost, disconnected—except when I am in Nature. There I find divine connection, every time. The shining face of God in every plant, flower, tree, butterfly, and bird. And within my own heart.
Perhaps that’s why I’m here: to experience that, to write about that. To find my way Home through all the puzzling dichotomies. Oh yes, and to “surrender the outcome.” One more time, deeper than ever before. To wake up each morning, and say “I don’t know.” To allow the Great Mystery to open up infinite possibilities all around me. Maybe that’s the sum total of life, right there. When we let go of everything and just say Yes to whatever shows up, we are no longer separate from anything, including God.
Undoing the Doing
Popular advice would tell you that when you feel stuck, lost, or unmotivated, then do something, anything, to get out of it, to move yourself forward. I have found that the exact opposite is true: If you don’t feel moved to act, then don’t. Allow for the pregnant pause in which something new can be born. Take a deep breath and relax into the present moment. The rest will take care of itself.
Doing is the backbone of American culture. Most of us live lives filled with activities, surrounded by voices that urge us to do even more. Working 24/7 is a badge of honor. “I’m so busy” is the daily mantra repeated by countless individuals. We often find ourselves caught up in a whirlwind of work and social activity that leaves us drained and exhausted. Motivational coaches enthusiastically tell us we can achieve fulfillment by becoming the entrepreneurs of our own lives. Success and empowerment await us if we just make that extra effort. Such promises distract us from our own inner truth.
Behind it all is a desperate attempt to shore up a status quo that is rapidly disintegrating. Every social, political, and economic framework around us is breaking apart. The old stories and rationales no longer convince us. Within us something new is awakening, a vision of a different way of being. The Old Earth ran on fragmented “us” vs. “them” energy, me outracing you. Separation, hierarchy. The New Earth, more and more visible on the horizon, is centered in connection and collaboration. The circle, not the tower. And that circle is formed not from frenetic activity but from quiet intention and shared focus.
This new way of life exists now as a possibility in our lives, but first we have to undo the doing. We have to step back and away into the empty space that opens into being without doing. There, creativity and new visions can be born. Nothing is forced, everything flows. All possibilities are welcomed, and eventually calm, centered action arises out of this empty space of allowing.
I am currently in such a transitional “empty space” in my life. I have left the past behind but as yet have no idea what comes next. My own lifelong spiritual journey has brought me to this pivotal point of wholeheartedly embracing the present moment, where there is no time. No noise, no hurrying. I immerse myself in the natural world around me and the timeless light-filled energy of birds and butterflies, trees and flowers.
Here is peace, respite from the busy world. Here is the centerpoint of stillness, within which the entire universe was born and continues to silently vibrate potential and possibility for each of us. Herein, the creative flow of all life emerges from being itself. Doing then unfolds as part of that beingness.
I am choosing this space. I trust it and hold it sacred in my heart. This is who I am at the soul level, and in aligning with my soul, I am aligning with the dynamic divine energy that sources everything. I am connecting with thousands of other souls on this planet who are experiencing the same energy. Out of this connection, an entirely new consciousness is arising. We are finally recognizing that we are human beings not human doings. The New Earth will re-form itself around this awareness.
The voices of the old paradigm will urge us to rush into the future, no time to waste. Instead, I say to myself: Wait a minute, take a deep breath, and keep taking them until all urgency drops away, and all you can feel is the peace at your core. It is from that place that my life and yours can recenter and redefine itself. I was not born to fill my life with nonstop doing; I was born to be my unique soul self, and all else will flow from that. In being is all of life. No separation, no “other.” This is the New Earth we are giving birth to and being born into simultaneously. A world in which you and I are no longer at odds, but instead work together and celebrate each other.
So allow the pause, the silence, the undoing. It will introduce you to being. It will save your life. It will save all of our lives. In fully being present in our lives, we will not face each day with worry and overwhelm but instead with joy and celebration that we are savoring every moment of what we came to this planet to experience. In the process, we will create a New Earth based in freedom of expression and commonality of purpose, one that recognizes the sacred marriage of being (divine soul) and doing (human form).
Spiritflower 
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