Tag: life

My Life in Waves

In the past few years, I’ve found that life has become a series of waves that rise and fall continuously, carrying varied emotions with them. Even in the course of one day, I can feel sadness, happiness, peace, unrest, and calm again. And part of me, my soul, is just silently observing it all. My soul’s view encompasses everything, expanding both inward and outward. My human physical self wonders about the meaning of all the wave action; my soul just accepts it. 

On New Year’s Day, I had a phone conversation with a longtime friend. We caught up with one another’s lives and then moved into a deeper, more sacred space as we spoke of a dear friend’s recent death and other friends courageously living with health issues. We talked about our own physical and emotional challenges as we age and also face a world increasingly at war with itself. She too has experienced her life as vacillating waves of sadness and joy, pain and love. Never one thing permanently but always shifting, moving, even within the space of a few hours. The longer we talked, the more our hearts opened, and a shared awareness passed seamlessly between us. We each found that some experiences had slowed us down and yet that very slowing had allowed us to live fully in the moment and to see the world anew.

My breast cancer journey in 2021-22 deepened my connection to Spirit while lessening my desire for outer busyness. At times, I became a quiet witness to life as it passed before me and through me. Many of my most profound moments of joy in living were/are in Nature, especially with birds, flowers, trees, and the ever-changing sky. As I described this to my friend and listened to her description of walking in the woods and living each moment completely, I could feel that same truth touch us both. 

 And it began to expand further as I realized that the more I live in the moment, the more that moment opens up to include everything! If I look at all parts of life the way I look at Nature (intensively, expansively, with love), then that is perhaps the greatest wisdom of all. Whether I am active or contemplative, I am always centered in my soul’s inner stillness. I could feel it happening within me as she and I spoke.

I am actually one with the waves that are my life, that are all of our lives. We rise and fall, expand and contract, with the cosmic tides that affect everything in the universe. Our lives reflect the spirit within us and in the world. Some call this connection to God or Universal Consciousness. The words we use don’t really matter. It is the motion, the flow, of something greater that carries us. We are being moved to fulfill our destiny as evolving souls on an evolving planet. The stardust that brought us here is lighting the way, even when things seem unclear or unsteady. And it is the waves that are bringing us Home—to a sparkling golden ocean that encompasses All That Is.

Framing Your Life

“It’s all in how you frame it,” a good friend once said to me when I was lamenting something that had recently occurred in my life. This gem of wisdom has remained with me ever since. It shifts everything when you remember to call it actively into your conscious awareness. The gist is that whatever you picture seeing before you is what you will experience. Same with hearing. My friend refers to landscapers with their loud leaf-blowing equipment as “Tibetan Buddhist monks chanting.” Completely changes the experience from annoyance to laughter, and I invoke that image when I hear them blowing/chanting outside where I live.

Actually I learned some of this from my parents. My dad tended to see first the problems that needed to be addressed and solved (weeds, a leak, rabbits eating his garden). My mother looked out the window and saw the flowers, birds, and sunrise. The optimist’s view. Not that she didn’t see problems or that my dad missed seeing the birds; together they were a complementary blending—which I inherited. And both my parents had the sense of humor that my friend showed with his monks-chanting analogy. We often laughed at such silly things in our household when I was growing up. I’ve carried those shared smiles with me from childhood on.

Now, even though I thrive most on sunshine, I’ve found that seeing rain as renewal for Mother Earth’s greenery helps me appreciate the balance it provides. When I’m running errands, if I miss a bus, I remind myself there must be a reason, so then I immediately know that the person I have a conversation with on the next bus is someone I was meant to meet. This imaginative reframing can touch every moment of life, even a breast cancer diagnosis, which I received three years ago. When I framed it in peace instead of fear, I experienced my treatment as a spiritual gateway—and a surpisingly expansive gift. Anne too is finding her own wise reframing (gratitude for life) with a similar diagnosis.

Our lives pass by so quickly. How we see the events of our days can mean the difference between regret and acceptance, sadness and joy. As each year’s end approaches, this overview can become particularly clear. To celebrate the blessing of every moment we are given in our lifetimes is to know not only wisdom but deep inner peace. And ultimately to realize the sweet intermingling of all our life experiences, creating a tapestry of light.

Nature gives us stunning visual examples of this truth all the time. When a bright yellow leaf floats to the ground in autumn, it is not separate from the leaves still on the tree or those resting below it. It is a part of the continuity of all life that flows through the year in perfect synchronicity. This oneness of being includes the air and the tree branches, the summer sun and the winter snow, the light and the dark. Life on Earth is a circular, multidimensional work of art that gives us the opportunity to experience every possible aspect of its complexity, always magical if we see it that way. Over and over, with each passing picture, I find it’s all in how I frame it.

Life As Is

How we see life changes over time. When we are children or young adults, it stretches before us in vast waves of possibility and potential. In middle age, we become one with the waves and often forget about our own progress on the trajectory of life. Then as we begin to grow older, we may find ourselves looking more closely into the greater meaning of life and our own lives in particular. A subtle shift in language occurs: “my life” becomes “the rest of my life.” How strange that seems, both to hear and to say. That “rest” could be 30+ years or one year, no way of knowing. Of course, that is true at any time of our lives, but the longer we live, the deeper we feel that truth.

 As I look at my life, I feel both joy and sadness. Joy at the blessings that fill it, both people and experiences, and sadness at its ephemeral essence. Impermanence is the basic nature of life on Earth. Yet, full acceptance of that very impermanence is one of the greatest pieces of wisdom we can attain in our lifetime. At a certain point, we come to realize that all we are given here is rich beyond words. Language cannot fully express the wonder of living with eyes and heart wide-open on this sweet planet. The longer I live, the more profoundly I am touched by the beauty of Nature and the love of friends and family, realizing it is all fleeting and everlasting simultaneously.

Over time, I have come to surrender to life exactly as it presents itself. That is the essence of the spiritual journey I have been on for many years. Initially I was looking for a way to accept eternity, the stretch of infinity beyond my lifetime. What I found, and continue to find, is that that acceptance lies hidden in all the details of my daily life. Each tree, flower, or human soul I encounter is eternal, the entire universe held in its very beingness. When I stand in awe of that living Presence, I “hold infinity in the palm of my hand,” as William Blake wrote. Infinity, once a source of fear and suffering for me, instead becomes a source of liberation.

Humans invented time and space to try to explain the world and our lives. When we step away from that limited view, explanation is no longer necessary. We stand in eternal Presence, and within that is the meaning of life. What I have searched for most of my life is not what I thought it was. It is not an answer to a question, but rather living beyond questions and answers. This is what Ram Dass referred to as “loving awareness.” It is not something that can be explained but only experienced. And the longer you live, the deeper the experience.

Ultimately, we discover there is no end, nor any beginning. Definitions and parameters fall away, and all that is before and within me is life as is, both a miracle and a blessing. Human joy and sadness interweave within that vision. Every single experience is part of life, designed at the soul level for our expansion into awareness of the light that fills us—and everything.

Reflections on a Board Game

Anne and I have played Scrabble regularly for years. We like the mind exercise involved in forming words to fit on the board in often difficult places. Recently we bought a new board game called Wingspan, which I had read about online. It was a bit complicated to learn, but now we love it. Players create small bird sanctuaries on their individual boards, using bird cards, bonus cards, food and egg representations, and colorful markers and dice. In the course of four rounds of play, each player fills their habitats, and points accumulated from various plays and cards determine the winner. Overall, we are fairly evenly matched, with Anne usually winning more frequently at Scrabble and me winning more often at Wingspan. Occasionally we tie!

So, board games are fun, right? Relaxing as well as stimulating to the mind. But could they also be seen as a reflection of life, something we could learn from? This way of looking at them occurred to me recently when I was repeatedly losing every Scrabble game. It seemed that I was always drawing letters that did not make words—all vowels or all consonants. Meanwhile, Anne was sailing along forming five- to seven-letter words, often with triple scores. After the sixth or seventh game like this, I began to feel frustrated and angry, as if it was more than just bad luck. When I then lost a Wingspan game in similar fashion, it seemed like the last straw: God was literally “stacking the cards against me”!

As soon as that thought passed through my mind, something clicked, and I realized that each game was a reflection of life, and together they were demonstrating to me a spiritual teaching that I thought I already knew by heart: Accept what is. If you resist whatever is occurring, you will be angry and upset. In a board game and in life. And so it is. Spirit has such imaginative and humorous ways of showing us life’s truths and exactly how they work. As long as I continued to be annoyed at the way a game was unfolding, I would be unhappy—and furious that I couldn’t control the outcome. So it is with life. Accept whatever comes up, and you will feel peaceful. Resist, and you will grumble and complain throughout your days on Earth.

When I came to see that Spirit and my soul were playfully reminding me of this deep truth and that it applied everywhere all the time, I smiled—and then laughed out loud. Life flows if you allow it to be exactly as it is. Board games do too. The secret is seeing them that way. Who knew that Scrabble was hiding spiritual wisdom in all those letters?!

P.S. The evening after I had this insight, I won the Scrabble game (not that it matters… ha!)