Practical and personal insights on living a spiritual life in a physical world.

Sooner or later, we all must ask ourselves the hard questions. One of the hardest is “What do I really want out of my time here on earth?” When I asked myself this, the answer didn’t come easy or soon. Although the answer was very obvious when it finally came, I was asking for a long time before I got it.

1) I want to express my Self. Not the personality - that’s easy enough - but to express my true self, that self we usually guard from the world. Not the self the world taught me how to be, but who I learned to be in spite of it.
2) I want to tell the truth. and I would like to write and publish what I am learning and discovering that is true.
3) I want to help other people tell their truth.

I discovered a desire to write when I was six years old, even before I went to first grade. I was a mid-year baby; my parents decided I wasn’t ready to start school at five and a half, so they waited till six and a half. Meanwhile my Dad started teaching me to read.

I loved it. I read everything I could get my sticky little hands on: magazines, Granny’s old poetry books, Winnie the Pooh, Grimm’s and Anderson’s Fairy Tales, and my mother’s most beloved childhood book about a horse, called Black Beauty, which I guess you might say was the original darkhorse. In the story, a horse of noble but unknown origin heroically goes through all kinds of struggle and adversity, rising from a starved and beaten carriage horse to become a champion racehorse. It was a children's book probably written in the 1890's, but in 1937 a real horse with the unlikely and unlovely name of Sea Biscuit actually made that story come true. The Darkhorse, the one nobody thought could win, won.

After Black Beauty I read all the horse books in the library. When I had read all the children’s books, I read whatever else I found. I read books from the back my father's bookshelf, like the short-stories of Guy de Maupassant, and a crumbling old leatherbound copy of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” I read 1,001 Arabian Nights, an astonishing collection of stories that are magnificently crafted, though I didn’t know it then. All I knew was that there was magic, wonder, and mystery in books, and incredible journeys could be taken, right there, wherever you were.

None of this did I understand very well, but all of it stirred and thrilled me with the mystery of the words - so many words I didn’t know. I wanted to know them all. Every book was full of mystery and wonder because I knew there was much more in them than I could understand, and I tremendously wanted to know. That was my earliest perception of human life - that there was so much more of it than I could yet know or understand. I still feel that; I still have that tremendous desire to know “all of it,” all of the words. And even more, I want to learn, to discover, and to write and publish the things I understand and the things I am trying to understand, so others can find them too.

And yet the minute I say that, I feel the rush of fears and apprehension that always accompany any deep desire. Ghosts of childhood experiences rise up again, the anticipation of disappointment, of polite rejection or disapproval for daring to create something, daring to try to do something that might matter. Yes, that’s a big part of the internal resistance that comes up each time my heart lifts up, to dare or to dream.

This, I know, is one of the tasks of life and spirit, for all of us alike to break this binding fear. In truth, it’s no more than the shadow of a ghost from the past that still hangs around making threats that cannot be carried out, except if I do it myself, to myself.

At some level, we all want to share the gifts we’ve been given, and bear fruit to the world. And so I have come back to the first statement of the first discovery of my childhood - I want to express my Self in this world. I want to give my Self, and have it be welcomed, not laughed at, not rejected but received. I don’t want fame. I just want to tell the truth and have the courage to do it without being embarrassed or ashamed of who and what I truly am, and what I have to give.

I also think about What I DON’T want - I don’t want stress. I don’t want to work in an environment where I’m pushed and pulled or assaulted and insulted, carrying a crushing load working at a job I don’t love. Yet I have done that - for many years, and it gave me cancer. I didn't knowingly choose that - But when it happened, I realized that the life I was living chose it for me, and I alone had chosen the life I was living.

I don’t choose any of that anymore. I know now that what I choose, consciously or unconsciously, is what the universe unfailingly sends. If I see myself as a victim, I will certainly be victimized, again and again. So now I try to be aware of what I am thinking and feeling, because I know that these things profoundly shape my life.

Breaking away from an old image or an old self-concept that no longer fits, is not a quick or easy thing to do, for any of us, but it is absolutely doable. The first step: you recognize that something's got to change, and that you have the power to change it. I know with certainty that anything is possible, even the most improbable, impossible things. I know this to be true because in my life I have done some of them.

So now I LOOK for joy, and I go for it at every slightest opportunity. Today a great many people are choosing insanity, anger, and violence. I don’t choose that. And you don’t have to choose that. I still have times when anger comes up, or resentment come up; but I can choose not to feed them. I've learned that when I don't feed them, they fade and die.

Most of us don’t realize how powerful we really are. Whatever we hold in our mind always manifests in our lives, and we are always giving power to whatever we focus on. When we focus on our fears, resentments, or injustices, we bring more of what we don’t want into our lives - more fearful things, more unfairness, more injustice. We can choose what we really want the same way, by turning our focus and thoughts away from what is angry, hurtful, joyless and fearful, and intentionally holding to thoughts of what we would rather have instead.

I want peace and grace, and time and space dedicated to a mindful life and work. I want to live and work in joy. I know now that joy is the master key, for me. This realization came to me as a clear message when I was in the darkest hours of my cancer, drowning in all those terrible fears and regrets. I knew that the only way to get well and stay well in every cell of my body was to choose faith instead of fear. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. I knew that somehow I had to choose, achieve, and then maintain as a lifetime habit, the priceless gift of a peaceful joyful heart.

When I got the news that the cancer was gone, my relief and my gratitude to God and life were so overwhelming that I cried for days. Every time I looked up at the trees, glittering gold-edged in the sunlight against the deep blue October sky, my heart was flooded with an unspeakable gratitude and my face was flooded with the tears of an intense joy that was unlike any feeling I had ever felt before. I saw things I had never seen before. Even the air was alive, and the simple morning sunlight was not just shining, it was streaming over everything it touched like a river of light. This was not just happiness, this was the real meaning of Joy.

So now every day I remind myself to consciously choose joy instead of Being Right, or winning the race, instead of Being The Best at everything there is. Now instead of dying for what I believe in, I choose to live it. I have set for myself the goal of joyful work. I choose the path of intuition, of inspiration, the path of my soul’s yearning. I know now that I can have that, if I choose it, ask for it, and believe in it. God has promised this, and God always keeps His promises. I am striving now to be One Who Keeps Promises too.