How do you feel when you have known since before you knew the word that you were destined to be a writer, a word magician, someone who takes those funny-looking squiggles a schoolchild lines page after page with, and transforms them into something special? Something that can make peeps joy in the remembrance of shared adventures? Something that can make strangers weep at the unfairness of life, or belly-laugh at its unexpected twists? Something that hits some people so hard that they accuse you of writing nothing but lies?

How do you feel when, forced to choose between that which you love and those to whom you owe your life, you lock up your heart and promptly lose your way?

How do you feel when for decades you search for the path that will lead you back to your freedom, and you search everywhere and you open every door, except for the one that you have learned and still believe the devil lurks behind? And how do you feel when finally you inch that last door open and find, not the dark demons of the past but light, and smiling faces, and arms welcoming you into your new family?

How do you feel when after all the years of wandering in the wilderness, listening to everyone’s truth but your own, how do you feel when you allow yourself to feel again, when you dare to translate those feelings into words on the page, when you see that others are moved by what you have written? And in a way you don't even care who reads you or whether readers are moved, because you are finally and at last once again doing what you were always meant to do. And because you, yourself, are moved.

[silence]

I could go on, there were other words I wanted to say, about zaadz-gaia, about Diving Deeper, yes, about freedom. But my heart is full, and its truths can, in any case, be found in writings scattered here in my blog, in my profile, and wherever else on gaia I've joined in conversations.


[Written 2 years and a day after joining zaadz (now gaia) and Diving Deeper.]

For some reason, seeing this question brings to mind a comedy routine from Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (late 60's TV show). The routine centres around a "dirty old man" in a trenchcoat and the middle-aged spinster he is always trying to seduce. One of the versions goes like this:
Tyrone (Arte Johnson): Do you believe in the hereafter?
Gladys (Ruth Buzzi): Of course I do!
Tyrone: Then you know what I'm here after.

Ok, I've got that out of my system now, on to more serious matters:
Do I know what I'm here after for?

I am here to lighten up. I am here to lighten up me, and the space around me, and the space around the space around me, and so on and so on, extending into the whole entire universe. I am here to be light.

What does it look like, this being light?

It looks like a smile, it looks like a tear, it looks like an encouraging word, maybe even a word of caution or advice (if asked for);
it looks like turning the other cheek, and paradoxically, like standing up for myself and what I believe in;
it looks like deep listening, and heartfelt sharing; it looks like being willing to tell my story, speak my truth;
it looks like saying "I love you" for the first time to someone I've known all my life but who had never heard those words from me before;
it looks like extending the feeling behind those same words to someone I may not even know, but who looks beaten by life, who may be dying to hear that she is not forgotten, not a failure, not worthless, not unloveable, not any of those spirit-crushing weights that I carried for so long in my own journey;
it looks like being there for someone who thinks she is destined forever to live in darkness for something, or maybe for a lifetime of somethings she did, or thinks she did, "wrong";
it looks like...

well, it looks a lot like LOVE, don't you think?

 
I sat on a hard, backless stool, pulled inward by a million sun-lights dancing atop the waves of the strait. Why did everything seem so difficult? I mused. Where had I left off dancing, denied myself, drained my life-blood? When had I opted for ordinariness, the false middle way?

I turned away to study the threads of my fellow passengers on the ferry transporting us to the mainland: calm, frenetic, impatient, animated... A woman glided past, perhaps five feet from where I still sat. She wore her peach sari gracefully; there was dignity in her bearing and (I thought) the sense of a hard-won acceptance of something that could not be changed. Her face looked both serene and pensive, inward-turned.

When she raised her eyes they met mine, as if ordained. A sourceless smile sprang to my lips, and I felt a flow of love---from where, I couldn't say. They felt infinitely sweet to me---that smile, that love---their presence in me took me by surprise. She studied my face, unsure how to respond to this spontaneous overture from a stranger. Suddenly, her whole being lit up in an answering smile, carefree, joyous, more brilliant to me than the sun-dance I had been watching.

She went on her way, a lighter energy (it seemed to me) guiding her step. I returned to my wave-gazing, my spirit less weighed down. We didn't encounter each other again, but I knew---and I felt certain she did too---that that moment of eyes meeting and smiles exchanged had bridged all conceivable distances between us, between her kind and mine. We had become sisters, two solitudes merging into one.

Eight days later, her sunlit face still gladdens my heart.
 

An authentic question is one that doesn't come with any preconceived notion as to what its answer might be; it's open-ended (in a manner of speaking), an open question. It arises from the questioner's heart of hearts, and the asker genuinely wants to know the answer but is willing to sit with the question for as long as it takes, to have it remain open indefinitely rather than hasten to any conclusion regarding it.

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I love that it both shelters and exposes me, teaching me to own my strengths (and weaknesses) and stand up to my deepest fears;
I love how it dries my tears, moves me to tears, weeps with me and for me but never for itself;
I love how it catches my breath; and how it breathes me in and then out again, and how I feel changed, shifted after;
I love the example it sets, the way it breathes everything in, as if there is no bad, no good, nothing that could harm its essential beingness; and how it stands naked in and to the world, as if there truly is nothing that needs to be hidden;
I love how it waits for me to catch on, catch up, ...
.

A long time ago I had a vision in which I and a Jesus/Buddha-like "friend" walked along a well-marked forest path. There were side paths too, down which I would occasionally be drawn to pick pretty flowers, check out some bird or shadow or whatever else called to me. The friend never accompanied me on these side journeys, but when I tired of my explorations, was always there waiting for me, just exactly at the fork in paths I had left from.