The Experiment: Day 124 ~ A Journey Alone…

“Anything you fully do is an alone journey.”
Natalie Goldberg

And so here I am. I have set out on a journey of 365 days and I am roughly 1/3 of the way in. I have come far enough to be able to see significant changes in my life but I am not far enough to see the far distant shore. There is no way I can foresee what the outcome of this journey will be. The only thing I can do, the only thing I am able to do, is to show up each day and do this blog post. And sometimes I feel very alone, and sometimes it takes me all day and I really struggle with what I need to write, just how to say a certain thing, how to say it at all? But I show up and I do the post and then it is as if I fall back in my chair, take a deep breath, and am grateful that for one more day it is done. This is my job now and it’s important for me to do it. And I don’t know why, and it doesn’t matter, but I am doing it, alone, and I have a deep faith in the process. (I keep hearing something I heard so many years ago I don’t know where it came from, “Trust the process, it’s larger than you.”) And I am doing it fully, and I shall continue on.

In years past I would have been very afraid. I set out this year with the intention to find a way to make money, to create a business. I sorely need the income. But more than that I need to regain my health wholly, and completely. I need to feel an inner radiance and wellness I haven’t felt perhaps since I entered this life journey nearly 64 years ago. I need to know and trust and experience the absolute joy of living in this body on this planet right here and now. That is something I have never known, ever. I wonder how much any of us really do? And I have to do this blog post everyday. I have never been more certain of anything in my life. This matters and it is leading somewhere. I do the ketogenic diet and other physical and mental health practices, and I show up here and do this blog post. These things are my job this year. And they are huge, and somewhere deep inside I know that it is time, that it makes perfect sense, and that devoting this year to these two things is going to bring the absolute right thing that I am supposed to do into my life. I keep trying to make it be a certain thing — hurry up and do this and you can begin to make money — but you can’t do something just to make money and expect that you will be fulfilling your soul’s purpose. And that’s exactly what I intend to do.

I am supposed to stay here, to stay open, to do what I am called to do each day, and then to let go of any ideas of right or wrong or outcome. How much of our lives do we waste trying to force a thing to be instead of letting it become? I am beginning to trust every moment as if in that moment if I stay wide awake and receptive I will receive the next piece — I am as if a monk going out with her begging bowl each morning and being happy with whatever is put in her bowl, being grateful, and knowing that what she has received is exactly perfect for that day — and it might be a quote that I come upon, a person I encounter in person or online, a phone call, or a message from deep within. I am here, I am present, and I am open to receiving the guidance that I need to go on.

There are so many signs just now. I had to laugh out loud when I drew my card from The Angel Tarot, by Doreen Virtue and Radleigh Valentine, today. I draw a card each morning to meditate on and they are always so amazing it can be rather startling. Well, today, after shuffling a great many times, as I do, and cutting and shuffling and cutting and shuffling, I drew the exact same card I have drawn 3 out of the last 4 days! There are 78 cards in this deck and they were shuffled so long and so well there’s no way this could have happened, and yet it did. Coincidence? I think not, and you’ll never convince me otherwise. These are the kind of things that are happening now every day and the thing, the important thing, is that my job is simply to hold the space, allow what is to come to come, and what will be to be, and gently take it in and let it be part of what I need to see and know on this journey without judgement. It simply is, and I embrace it.

It is like the Rumi poem that I have loved for so long…

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”

And yes, the hardest thing about this journey is that so much is happening it is like that last line, “the world is too full to talk about.” What is happening now, to me, is so deep, it is as though it is changing me, shaping me, in unseen ways, and the changes as they come and flow through are almost “too full to talk about.” But I have set myself this task, 365 days of showing up and talking about what is happening, and so I do my very best. Some posts receive a lot of comments and some receive none and that used to worry me thinking that if no one commented the post wasn’t any good but really that’s not my job or my concern. I love it when people respond, I love to answer those who do, but my job is simply to write the post and put it out there, to share what I am doing on a particular day. And sometimes, from day to day, the subject of the posts seem disconnected from one another, and sometimes I don’t understand why I’ve written a certain thing but you cannot understand what I am doing here, I cannot understand, without seeing this whole experiment as just that, a whole. No one day can pinpoint what this is all about, these posts will have to be taken collectively, read from the first day to the last, to see what it all means. It is a fascinating, mysterious journey and I have stopped trying to understand it and I have stopped being overly invested in what the outcome will be. It will be what it will be, exactly what it’s supposed to be, and it will set me on the next leg of my journey. That is all I know, and it’s enough.

So here I am again today, as I was yesterday, as I will be tomorrow, and I will carry on. The only way you can do something like this is to do it alone. I am exactly where I need to be. I am ready, my soul stands ajar

“The soul should always stand ajar,
ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.”
Emily Dickinson

The Experiment ~A 365 Day Search For Truth, Beauty &
Happiness: Day 1 ~ Introduction To The Project
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Yoda

Comments

  1. you are absolutely right, maitri. day by day you open the door and let the light in, then you shine it on us. maybe theres only moonlight, or one bird singing her song. maybe
    it’s cold and drizzly, so you look at the fireplace screen snap and crackle and in that moment the words come, and you write them in your blog. and somedays you want to dance for joy — your gums don’t bleed at the dentist, amazing! other days, you are quiet and watchful and unsure… and just waiting…for clarity. all of this is not just enough, it is more than enough. it may be a teaspoon of warm soup, or it may be a bucket of
    daisies, or the bowl might be empty, but you see your face in the bottom of it, and the face is beautiful.

    so carry on, you are doing the work that is calling out to be done, and you faithfully render your soul’s imprint on the page, for us.

    xox
    ka

    • Oh Katya thank you so much, this means so much to me honey. I don’t know when I’ve felt this deeply or strongly about a project, and then again, and I know you know this, the older we get, the more we appreciate and savor things. Isn’t that true? And on this day of all days, your 74th birthday!!! I feel it is something to be celebrated. Happy Birthday Darling Ka, I think it’s going to be a big year for both of us. And I love you darling one…

      M. xoxox

  2. Sometimes, Maitri, you’ve posted something that is so profound or complex that to respond would be a lot of work for me. I don’t recall specifically which ones or what but that’s what happens to me. Your writing is fresh and interesting and I look forward to it every day. Hugs.

    • Oh thank you so much Marge, and that is such a lovely thing to hear. You know, sometimes we, as bloggers, forget that just because people don’t comment doesn’t mean we haven’t written something of value. It helps to realize that people may read and be helped or touched and just not know what to say or may not be in a state of mind where they can or want to comment. All I know, from deep in my soul, is that I am supposed to do this, so no matter how many comments come or don’t come — and I appreciate them all so much — I will be right here doing this every day. It is, for me, a spiritual commitment as much as anything else.

      Thank you so much for being here Marge, it means the world to me… 🙂

  3. You write every day, I read every day, with a tender feeling in my soul and love in my heart and admiration for what and how you write. Sometimes I just have to comment, it’s pouring out. Sometimes I just look at the clock and see – gosh, I have to go to work. And the moment is over. So: no, you are not alone.
    Hugs from the stormy shores
    Yours Silke

    • Thank you so much darling Silke, just knowing that you are here means so much to me. One of the sometimes difficult but always very important things for a blogger to practice is non-attachment as the Buddhists would say, not attaching to the outcome. We write what we have it in our heart to write that day, we feel we must and we hope to reach and touch others, but as I wrote above to Marge we may touch others, or help them, or not, but it is not our job to worry about the responses but only to give the gift that is ours to give. And when someone responds it means the world, and when people don’t we must have a quiet knowing in our heart that we have done what we were means to do. But we had that moment, when the reader reads what the writer wrote, as you say, and there may be a brief moment of alchemy, and then time rolls on. I love that you have a tender feeling. That means so much to me. I think of you often, and of Ben, and hope you two are well… 🙂

      With love, always…

      Maitri

      • Thank you, Dear! We are fine. I had the day off, so we went to the beach and played, then cuddled up. Now time to go to sleep. Very much looking forward to your new blogpost every day!
        Yours Silke

        • Thank you so much Silke honey, I’m just home awhile ago from therapy and grocery shopping and other errands, about to feed the pugs their dinner. This was my big day out for the week and it feels good to have it all done. I’ll be working on the new blog post shortly! I hope you are sleeping well with your boy… 🙂

  4. Thank you Maitri. It is also challenging for me to ‘go with the flow’ and to ‘trust the process’, so this year is kind of an experiment for me with that as well. By nature and personality I am a very analytical and task driven person, so I do like to have a map or plan and to anticipate certain outcomes. But, as you suggested, perhaps in our senior years it is really time to believe that as long as we show up and trust the process life will show us the next steps.

    For the last five years or so I have struggled with decisions about making income again too and have not found a sustainable situation. But, somehow I’m fine and our basic needs are met. So I am trusting that I’ve been meant to be available for other purposes in life during this time. I will be shown what to do if I show up and trust.

    • P.S. The same thing happens to me with oracle cards too, getting the same ones repeatedly. I often say out loud to myself “really – come on!” But, I know messages keep coming to us until we get what they mean for us and maybe choose something in life differently.

    • Ah Joan, trusting and going with the flow are not only the best way to be but make things so much easier on us if we can but God knows it’s easier said than done. These things, like so many others, are really “daily practices.” We must keep consciously coming back to them again and again, like in meditation when your mind wanders and you have to keep coming back to your breath, so, too, must we remind ourselves to come back to the present moment, to “go with the flow,” and to trust the process. May we both find our way on this journey…

      And ah yes, isn’t it funny about the cards? I’d love to know which decks you use and like. I am currently using The Angel Tarot, by Doreen Virtue, but I have a lot of them, oddly they made it through the fire and came back to me and it was rather startling to see how many I have. I had bought them through the years. I have never really done traditional tarot, just draw a card each morning, once in a blue moon I used to do 3, past/present/future, but I no longer have any interest in that. The past is gone, there were a lot of hard things back there but I have finally released them and gone on, the future is not yet here and will be determined, really, by today well lived, so I continually work toward staying in the present moment, again, a practice, and draw one card. It is just enough for me.

      I hope you are feeling well honey. I think of you so often and I’m sending you a great big hug…

      Maitri

      • For the last year or so I am mostly using Colette Baron Reid’s cards. I have The Map oracle cards, The Good Tarot and her latest one Post Cards from Spirit. I don’t really do full tarot readings either. I just choose one to support my intentions and my highest good. I also really like her Wisdom of the Oracle cards which she has used a lot in her weekly readings on YouTube and Facebook but I don’t own those ones yet. They have been out for two or three years I think.

        • Ah Joan I hear her work is supposed to be very powerful. Isn’t it wonderful when you find people you really resonate with? I am about to draw my morning card now. It will be interesting to see what shows up! 😀

  5. Stubblejumpers Cafe says

    You are an excellent writer. Just sayin’.

    Good article at powazek.com on coping wjth depression.

    -Kate

  6. Kate, thanks so much for your kind words and for the link, it looks very interesting. I’m so glad you enjoyed the blog post, it’s nice to see you here. I hope you have a blessed day… 🙂

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