I've been sick for several weeks now. It has eaten me up and spit me back out without so much as a wham-bam-thank-you-mam!

These weeks have been miserable. I've experienced some pretty rough and raw emotions, and none of them the good ones! I've felt my energy levels drop below zero. This barrel had nothing left to scrape. Everyday just breathing was laborious and exhaust inducing.

My voice was taken from me and replaced with the raspy, phlegmy gurglings of one who has smoked unfiltereds for 50 years.

I've coughed til my back muscled spasmed in protest. Yet I had to keep coughing to get some of the bad stuff out of me.

I've begged to be restored. Only to get sicker. I've cried from the oppression of the fear and loneliness that takes hold in dark nights of waking while everyone else sleeps around you. You watch your frustrations grow, murky in dreams that give no rest - and you know you still have to go to work the next morning.

Today is better. It seems to be breaking up.

I have a lot of thoughts to chew on. There must be something here from which I'm meant to grow.

Honouring the Inner YOU

On a personal level, I've always been somewhat disconsolate. I go through phases where reaching out and being social comes more easily and I doubt most would perceive me as anti-social (as I am as good a pretender as the next). It is however in this 'pretending' that I hide a good portion of the 'me' people think they know. In my mind I'm always outside the circle of mainstream. This is not a burden to me, inside would be much more difficult I assure you!

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Does that make me manipulative and fake and inauthentic? Yes, sometimes. No, sometimes. But more in a self-preservation type of way. It is more likely that I will study my surroundings, take the temperature of the encompassing personalities and start formulating who is trustable and who is most likely to share my own interests and ideals. It is with these feelers that I actively assess the dangerous people and intuitively slide away from them without so much as a ripple above the water.

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For as long as I can remember, I have had this gift. I say gift, because as an observer of daily social interactions amongst 8 year olds, it is not something I see in plenitude. Although it is there, and sometimes I want to tell those kids to hone that talent as it will serve them well throughout their life. Trying to explain the concept of observing and evaluating without disturbing the currents of life in the fray, seems beyond challenging for the mere reason that it takes a high degree of self-esteem/worth to be able to step back from the madding crowd.

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One thing I have noticed is that like does attract like.

If it makes you happy...

I've been back to having a shoulder problem. Major relapse this week coupled with a C3 (neck vertebra) badly out of place - requiring 3 daily adjustments in a row. Add to this, on Friday I managed to stress myself out quite thoroughly when marking some tests for my students. I was beyond frustrated about their inability (generalization) to write a decent response in sentence form to a question in which they missed the meaning of entirely. Grr.

After having spent several hours analyzing the situation and talking myself back down off the ledge... forcing them to do a test in the last 20 minutes of class on the threshold of a long weekend, just may have been a mitigating factor!!! (Yah think?) So I'm going to stop hinging my fear-of-failure and success-at-their-cost on a few poorly constructed prose. Life moves on and I'm sure the kids (who are for the most part fantastic little writers) didn't let it get them down once it was over and handed in!

This morning I gave my 'dear ol' auntie Clara' a call on the phone. We really haven't conversed in detail since the onset of my shoulder affliction. I think Clara is an amazing woman. She is well read and knows a lot about energy and healing and the link between mind and body - her house is accented in a variety of rocks and crystals, she has no problem walking to the beat of her own drum. I love her for that. It is with her that I first became interested in exploring a sub-surface world.

A lot of my frustration has been with recurrence and relapsing back to a pre-therapy condition. I have spent quite literally over a thousand dollars in treatment, only to make little or no gains. So she asked me a few pointed questions. My problem is on the left side (and at times affects my entire left side) which is the feminine side of the body. Pain in the body indicates something deep and personal that I need to deal with. Pain is also associated with fear, anger and resentment. Something I am holding on to but don't need to. Perhaps breaking down under the weight of what I no longer need to bear. She said I need to talk to my shoulder and ask it in conversation to reveal to me what is subconsciously impairing and misshaping my form (the pain causes me to hold myself at awkward angles). She also told me that all the tools I need for healing I already possess - outside intervention is only acting as a diversion. With every failed treatment my discouragement grows.

I really think that she is right. Immediately something came to mind (which I am not at liberty to discuss publicly) and we were able to talk about the intense feelings I've had on the situation. This 'thing' has been on-going since December and although it has formally finished, there are still a couple of loose ends. Ends outside of my control. I don't want to leave you with the impression that it was horrible but suffice it to say, it was not something I wanted to do and have had negative feelings about from the gate. From beginning to end I considered it an energy and creativity blocker.

Remarkably, even as we were talking I could feel the pain subsiding in my shoulder.

Intuitively I have known that this problem was not injury based. Regardless, one of my experts tried (unsuccessfully) to convince me that it was, so that I could fit his understanding of how the body works.

Whether or not I have hit the nail directly, I know for certain that sitting her, fingers flying across this keyboard, my pain is substantially less than it was this morning when I woke up. I've taken no pain medication today.

Honestly, I can't help but be in perpetual wonder of the unseen. It is as though we live among icebergs. We see these little 'things' that pop up above the surface from time to time, not giving due respect to the mass below the superficial.

Some days I am in serious need of a chill pill.

Journey

There is no shortage in life of learning opportunities. There is however, often an unwillingness on our part to embrace and learn from what is put right in front of us. In fact, some of us manage to stumble over the same lesson for years, kicking it around, growling at it and even telling it to piss off from time to time - yet it never goes completely away.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Teilhard de Chardin

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A few years ago I lit onto this idea that our spirit is here to embrace a spiritual life through the lens of humanity. To have a human experience. To remember that we are spiritual beings first and foremost. Spiritually (not religiously) our human form has lessons to learn, these lessons are plentiful and free! This has marked a significant paradigm shift in my thinking.

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If you can make this leap it will change your life. It will give you courage and freedom. For as far back as my memories can take me, I was always a child full of courage, thinking and embracing and in search of ways to be free. I purposefully sought out the things that made me strong and fueled my senses about the world in general.

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I grew up Christian and for that I am most thankful. Primarily because my parents have an unwavering faith in things 'unseen'. To embrace a spiritual life, one must first believe in a world beyond what we can see and touch. I was brought up to believe in prayer and that praying to God can change our world, as he is lovingly interested in bettering our lives.

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So in many regards, the principles by which I was raised are in essence the same as what I believe today. I've dropped a few things, like heaven and hell and being redeemed and now ascribe to a more gnostic theism, choosing to acknowledge that we are all god-like, we came from a source and will return to a source, that source remains with us throughout our human journey.

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It is throughout this journey that we have opportunity to connect to this source. To find strength and courage to solve our problems and live better lives. Lives of peaceful determination, always testing our mettle, expanding our experiences and finding joyful contentment. Life should be about these things and yet so often it becomes about our fear of failing. When we fear failure we lose our determination, we shrink back before we can see what we're made of, we live with scarcity and loss, holding so tight that what is within our grasp trickles away.

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A spiritual life is open for business, so to speak. It welcomes and encourages. It has a prosperity mindset that interprets the world as already having everything that we need. It espouses a world we cannot see that enables us to direct and attract the kind of life we wish to live.

Living a spiritual life is paradoxical - it is power in that you are the creator and as creator you make it what you want it to be. For some the concept of creating our life may seem foreign or even blasphemous, yet we (according to the bible) were created in his (creator) image, why should we not share in what we consider to be God's defining quality? All around us, it is the creative force of what is possible that stand as our inspirations for life.

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A spiritual life is also about letting go, which on the surface may seem in direct opposition to power. Letting go means that you stop competing with your neighbors and yourself and start living on a plane of creative thought. Letting go may involve a few rounds with your ego and reputation. When you first begin changing the way you think, you will quickly find that 'leggo the eggo' is not for the meek of heart!

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So think about your life for a bit? Are you happy? What have you been kicking around for years that you need to learn from or confront your fear of? Have you crafted a life you embrace and enjoy? Is it balanced or do you live only for the weekend? Do you experience courage and freedom and have avenues to direct these qualities?

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I know for many of my readers these are not new ideas. In reality they are very old ideas, not modern at all! For further reading I suggest Wayne Dyer, The Power of Intention.