Just inside Yosemite National Park is a beautifully wild and scenic river. It is one of the few remaining rivers not dammed in California. For many years I had sought out the energy of running water. Recently I was beginning to suspect there might be a spiritual energy connected to how I felt. I was tapping into something for which I had no name. It enlivened my body, and I often felt an in-rushing of joy flow through me. I made pilgrimages to this river only minutes from my home. Transformation in the river's character is easy to see from season to season. In the spring it is a torrent of wild power, and as the days progress into summer the power turns to gentle tranquility. In the winter it lies quietly in dark, opaque pools. However, my own transformation was more difficult. My spiritual river ran underground.
In the presence of the power of the water, I did my school work, and journal writing, and tried to make sense of the movement in my life.
In the presence of the power of the water, I did my school work, and journal writing, and tried to make sense of the movement in my life.
I cherished these long days of writing and reading before I went to work in the late afternoon. Even though I did not care for the waitressing, it left me with glorious daytime hours to be in nature. I tried to bring some understanding to my recent experiences of joy, and my struggle with thoughts of going on to a Master's degree in Social Work. I wrote in my journal:
"My world expands and grows. My walks bring me into contact with nature's forces. What do I call this force? God, Goddess, Great Spirit, the IS? When I look to the sky and whisper, "Grandfather," I am filled with such exquisite feelings of connectedness. It is a joy that I have looked for in relationships and never found. This is spirituality; a love beyond anything that my mind would have created. I just had a most remarkable thought. I could continue to waitress and sit on this river and write forever; I think there is a book inside of me that needs to be written. Driving here this morning through the cool shade and deep sun-filtered greens, I had another sense of me in my life. It is what I have been calling a spiritual contact. It is simply me experiencing me in my moment and all is well. Or another way of saying it: it is me suddenly seeing in a moment of clarity, how I have opened to this splendor of feeling, realizing I am free. Why don't I want to follow my fellow students into the Master's program for Social Work? Too confining. If this is so, then what? How do all these wonderful pieces slide together to create a life's work that is uniquely me? I had an idea that I could let my writing help create my future work, combining my love of nature, and my desire to help people heal their fears."
I continued to scribble, looking up occasionally to watch a cloud form and dissolve and form again. "If I look into the essence of what I want from a Master's degree, I see it is not the process I find appealing, only the piece of paper which I perceive will make me legitimate in the eyes of society. If I look for the light, the energy, the excitement in the process, it is not there. It feels flat. I feel no life in two more research classes, two more Micro or Macro Practice classes. So I ask myself, where does desire burn? In the untraditional. Helping people heal their fears, not helping 'fix' them within the context of what society thinks is normal or healthy. I want to share with people about this spirit inherent in all things."
As I picked up my books and papers to go home and get ready for work, I knew I was becoming disillusioned. My reality was changing and I wondered where I fit into the scheme of this new life I was trying to create. The Social Work program obviously focused on the areas of need in our country, and they were great wrenching needs. It focused on the downside of my world. I had chosen Social Work because I had a calling to help. Now I had to face that I did not have the disposition it took to work the frontline ills of the world. I was far too sensitive, and I seemed to carry other people's pain inside my own body. Of course I was always told to toughen up, to stop being so sensitive. But I did not perceive being sensitive and loving as a birth defect. If it turned out to be one then I could not change it anyway.
It would be years later when I was finally able to see this very important step towards a deeper understanding of my nature. I was responding to what was authentic in me, not clinging to the traditional, or worn out future which many had tried over and over again, but never attained happiness. There is a call from the Universal Life Force. It is being heard everywhere, if we take time to listen. There are teachers and wise-ones that are far along this path of a new paradigm, and they are here to guides us. The answers to our questions are always present; often we are too busy planning a future to listen into the moment of now. This was the beginning of choosing a different path, into as yet an unknown goal, one for which I would be truly suited. Creating a future comes from steps in the moment, sometimes not even knowing we are on a path, and the goal has yet to be revealed. But certainly in the face of the pain and suffering of our planet and most that live on her, the time is now to look inward and ask why we are here and how we can best serve.
Martina Dobesh author of "Call From the Heart" chose to strike out on her own to discover what her calling was. As a spiritual seeker, she lives as if a story is writing her, and her first book came from this journey. She moved on to becoming a journalist in Baja California where she has lived for 12 years. Here she became the editor of her own online publication, "The Baja Sun, Stories from the Baja" which records life experiences of many people living and working in Mexico.
Article Source: Martina Dobesh
"My world expands and grows. My walks bring me into contact with nature's forces. What do I call this force? God, Goddess, Great Spirit, the IS? When I look to the sky and whisper, "Grandfather," I am filled with such exquisite feelings of connectedness. It is a joy that I have looked for in relationships and never found. This is spirituality; a love beyond anything that my mind would have created. I just had a most remarkable thought. I could continue to waitress and sit on this river and write forever; I think there is a book inside of me that needs to be written. Driving here this morning through the cool shade and deep sun-filtered greens, I had another sense of me in my life. It is what I have been calling a spiritual contact. It is simply me experiencing me in my moment and all is well. Or another way of saying it: it is me suddenly seeing in a moment of clarity, how I have opened to this splendor of feeling, realizing I am free. Why don't I want to follow my fellow students into the Master's program for Social Work? Too confining. If this is so, then what? How do all these wonderful pieces slide together to create a life's work that is uniquely me? I had an idea that I could let my writing help create my future work, combining my love of nature, and my desire to help people heal their fears."
I continued to scribble, looking up occasionally to watch a cloud form and dissolve and form again. "If I look into the essence of what I want from a Master's degree, I see it is not the process I find appealing, only the piece of paper which I perceive will make me legitimate in the eyes of society. If I look for the light, the energy, the excitement in the process, it is not there. It feels flat. I feel no life in two more research classes, two more Micro or Macro Practice classes. So I ask myself, where does desire burn? In the untraditional. Helping people heal their fears, not helping 'fix' them within the context of what society thinks is normal or healthy. I want to share with people about this spirit inherent in all things."
As I picked up my books and papers to go home and get ready for work, I knew I was becoming disillusioned. My reality was changing and I wondered where I fit into the scheme of this new life I was trying to create. The Social Work program obviously focused on the areas of need in our country, and they were great wrenching needs. It focused on the downside of my world. I had chosen Social Work because I had a calling to help. Now I had to face that I did not have the disposition it took to work the frontline ills of the world. I was far too sensitive, and I seemed to carry other people's pain inside my own body. Of course I was always told to toughen up, to stop being so sensitive. But I did not perceive being sensitive and loving as a birth defect. If it turned out to be one then I could not change it anyway.
It would be years later when I was finally able to see this very important step towards a deeper understanding of my nature. I was responding to what was authentic in me, not clinging to the traditional, or worn out future which many had tried over and over again, but never attained happiness. There is a call from the Universal Life Force. It is being heard everywhere, if we take time to listen. There are teachers and wise-ones that are far along this path of a new paradigm, and they are here to guides us. The answers to our questions are always present; often we are too busy planning a future to listen into the moment of now. This was the beginning of choosing a different path, into as yet an unknown goal, one for which I would be truly suited. Creating a future comes from steps in the moment, sometimes not even knowing we are on a path, and the goal has yet to be revealed. But certainly in the face of the pain and suffering of our planet and most that live on her, the time is now to look inward and ask why we are here and how we can best serve.
Martina Dobesh author of "Call From the Heart" chose to strike out on her own to discover what her calling was. As a spiritual seeker, she lives as if a story is writing her, and her first book came from this journey. She moved on to becoming a journalist in Baja California where she has lived for 12 years. Here she became the editor of her own online publication, "The Baja Sun, Stories from the Baja" which records life experiences of many people living and working in Mexico.
Article Source: Martina Dobesh
No comments:
Post a Comment