The Authentic Life. Begin Again.

The authentic self is the soul made visible.  ~Sarah ban Breathnach

Upside down the view is touching and real as anything going on when my feet are on the ground, in fact, life felt most open, most real, most expansive and in touch with what my insides crave from that exact perspective.  I was naked as the day is perennial, floating inside the earth in hotspring mineral water that came from deep inside the belly of the land.  My head was leaned way back, resting on a rock, staring up at moss then roots then the trees arched over me then beyond.  And me close as I could be to deep, deep under the Cascade Mountains, Northern Oregon, USA.

This was May, last year, after I quit my career and went on a month long sabbatical in the Pacific Northwest.

My friend and wise woman Gretchen had her buddy pick me up in Portland and drive me the three hours to her and the cozy room in her cottage on the coast. Gretchen lent me an old beater pickup and for three weeks I went where the wind wanted to take me.  I spent a lot of time with her, my wise woman friend, and with Paul my brother in rebel-peace-making who I met working in a roadhouse steak joint on the Oregon Coast in 05, and also with Beth, my friend with the Lungta-Spirit and Anusara-calling.

I called my mom crying after the first week, saying how much I had ached to be there with people who I intrinsically considered my tribe, how very much alive and like myself I finally felt again.  Beth and I floated in those hotsprings and slept in the cold, pointed night in Paul's tent in the lush evergreen woods.  We hiked the coast range and communed deep with the well of wise woman wisdom which is found easily and naturally within when we take the time to still, and listen.  And what I told them, Beth and Paul, again and again when they asked what was next for me was that I was giving my spirit all the time it needed to answer that question.

No time-frame, is what I said.

I had weddings and family obligations back at home, and a job waiting, and a room at the beach.

This morning, in that very same room, I thought a lot about the past year and about the importance, the commitment, of always returning back to our selves.  This is the wild woman wisdom, the intrinsic trust in one's own connection within.  I was 21 when my aunt gave me the daily meditation book Simple Abundance, and it is that book that I credit for Confirmation.  Confirming the yearning.  The natural and legitimate siren ring from inside myself that felt like propulsion and being stuck at once that was pressing me towards hand-creating a life that was meaningful, and real, to me.  And that life has always begun first with settling in to find "me".   I handed that book over to a young wise-woman to be this week, knowing well that it landed in the right hands.  And in the mean time, I returned to my quiet space today, answerless still, but with a clear knowing sense from cultivating that connection: My next move harmonious to my spirit is soon to present it self, so long as I continue a day at a time to show up to me.  To show up and begin again after for example 8 days of living out of my car through the tangled holidays stretched along the Baltimore-Annapolis corridor, to be willing to sit back down and begin again.

The process, even when not looking, is unfolding all along.  I sat down a long time this morning, and yesterday afternoon. I walked long on the beach today and re-found and breathed in deep that feeling of the trees from upside down and the hotsprings and warm earth's belly.  I am willing, and shall continue, to begin again, begin again, begin again.  Every time I leave me it is all I ever, ever have to do.