This Moment To Be Free

This weekend I met a new cousin – one of the eldest of my husband’s many cousins. He is learning shamanistic wisdom and pointed out to me that the work I find now to do part time to earn some money does not need to be the work that I love, but will be a bridge while I am getting ready to make my living doing what I love to do, and while I am learning what I am learning now…

He also commented that I need, as soon as possible, to begin imagining what I want to do to earn my living and imagine it all as detailed as possible so it can manifest/and I can manifest it. My new cousin shared the idea/concept that he had read recently that we humans were created to be the imagination of the universe…I have often been told that I have a vivid imagination and that I think to much…and here is an opportunity to use these qualities for the good…

The occasion of meeting this wise cousin was the birthday of other new cousin and a journey to a sweat lodge he sponsored for his birthday celebration…and this lesson/thought/experience was reinforced when I was seated in lodge in the direction north-east — between the north, which is rest-time and the east, which is the time of new beginnings…

Being seated in this position (by the leader who had never met me before and with whom I never spoke) made me realize that I am not done yet with rest time and how vitally important a full rest and fully honoring my need to rest and the time to rest are…and that I will naturally move into the time of beginning something new, because that is the next place in the circle/cycle — and that I am already moving – I am in the process and between times…. neither fully in the north or in the east, but in the northeast.

And, that my work right now, is to begin to imagine the next thing(s)…

I got “A’s” in grad-school in courses I hardly believed I would be able to complete when I began them. I have achieved much in my life by desire and sheer force of will, and with deep feeling. I know I have not yet applied that level of determination to building a work-life I love…and I have not yet imagined it in the level of detail needed…although I do feel that time lying fallow is much under-rated, and is a form of hard work and deep determination in its own way…much food for thought…

Peace…

I am a deeply sensitive being and I am just now learning to feel blessed by that. Sensitivity is a blessing. No more or less so than any other blessing, or curse.

I need to honor my sensitivity and give myself time and space enough to feel. Being sensitive means I need to balance work and rest time and build my life around this balance and focus on taking care of my sensitive body and soul rather than focus only on making money.

I can honor the divine gift of being sensitive and find ways that feel good to me to benefit the greater good, ways that don’t exhaust me. I can stop trying to figure out how to use this gift and begin to just enjoy being sensitive. The good I will do for others will emerge naturally out of my happiness and enjoyment of my gifts.

This sensitivity, this gift, is an aspect of the universe that I am being allowed to hold. It is valuable, lovable and something to be cherished. As am I. (Amen, svaha, let it be so…)

It has become clear to me over the past few weeks that what I am doing is not taking six months off to do yoga – but rather making a shift into a new way of living that includes and focuses around yoga and cooking whole foods and putting my body and soul first.

I have been feeling fear because I had been afraid to look at what this means – that I need to find a livelihood, a way of making a living that supports my desire and need to take the rest of my foreseeable future “off” and do yoga. I know that I do not want to return to a full time office job and that I wish I did not have to earn a living at all and could do yoga, shop, cook, read, write, make art all the time, and afford all the lovely bodywork I enjoy. But that is not my destiny right now – now I need to find ways to earn a living that supports my life. And that seems to mean doing a variety of things that I like and am good at on a part time basis and also cutting back very much on any expenses that are not vital (in the way that yoga and food are vital).

So, I am starting to look around…for calm, kind, earthy work that supports my soul and my sensitivity and lets me put body and yoga and rest and well-being first before money and status. And maybe I will be surprised as to what that will do for my “career” in the long run…maybe I will be unexpectedly happy with a different kind of approach to work…

I just took my sewing machine in to the shop to be cleaned. When I bring it home, I will start making a baby quilt for my friends whose first child is due in April. And then perhaps a “big boy” quilt for my nephew.

We receive our babies – from God, from the Universe, from our bodies, from birth-parents who feel their children would be better off adopted into other families. For many centuries we have been preparing to receive our children by creating quilts, made especially for them. For a newborn or very young adopted child, this would take the form of a baby quilt. For older children, a larger quilt would be better, but a baby-size quilt could even serve as a wall-hanging created to honor that child’s origin and heritage.

I love the image of receiving. I picture arms wide open, the corners of a handmade quilt grasped in each hand – ready to wrap a newly bathed baby, or to enfold a child, who runs in to those arms, to be hugged and wrapped in a beautiful, warm, happy quilt.

I envision rainbow-colored quilts, made with the nicest cottons on the shelves of the local quilting store. Quilts made of African cloth, Guatemalan fabrics, Mexican or Ukrainian embroideries, or their new parents’ old sheets, recycled into a work of love and art. Rainbow quilts, for a rainbow of babies, and rainbow of children, a rainbow of families.