Here is the passage that we will use to invite you to transit to a fuller and more relaxed way of being in the world.  I will go so far as to say that this is essential knowledge especially for those people who are navigation the life transiton called midlife and the 2nd half of life.  This is the life transition stage that I refer to as the stage of life called the will to meaning.  So let me share with you what will be the first of a series of passages of inspiration that will allow you to, not only cope, but enjoy life’s transitions.

Your true function is not to do anything, rather, only to be willing to listen to the small Voice within.  This is a voice you are not likely to be accustomed to hearing, for it is a voice that speaks, not in mere words, a hearing that does not require the body’s ears.  It is the Voice for joy.  It is the Voice for Love.  It is the Voice you share with the One who created you.  It is What you will someday become, not by change, but through remembrance and awakening.   Joel Wright  – Author of The Mirror on Still Water.

What is to Become of me?

In a one word answer to the question “What is to become of me?”  the answer is “Love?”  You don’t have to make yourself the perfect person.  You don’t have to change all those aspects of yourself that you think are not acceptable.  This is not to say that you are to engage in activities that harm yourself or others.  The words of the mystic poet Mary Oliver writing in her poem the Wild Geese are helpful here.

 

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

From Wild Geese by Mary Oliver (Bloodaxe World Poets)

 

There are certain key issues that arise out of this passage that are important for making the later of life’s transitions.  These key aspects include,

• Doing versus Allowing.
• Willingness as Abundance.
• Stillness that Speaks.
• Listening without ears.

Doing versus Allowing

The embracing of the above life transition energies are not what we are usually taught in mainstream education.  The above dynamics are certainly not what I was taught when I was being brought up in my homeland of Northern Ireland during the 1960’s and 1970’s.  I was assured that it did not matter how far I walked on my knees, or how many miles I walked through the desert, I could not change the fundamental fact that I was born wrong.  This sense of wrongness is still being taught as fundamental to the teachings of the church throughout many parts of the world.

This teaching of our essence being in some way wrong creates a need for what is called the Protestant work ethic.  We work, not to express the joy of creation, but essentially to try to create enough things in order to fill a kind of existential emptiness.  This keeps us doing and doing more.  The result is that we as a species are literally in the do-do.   While doing is necessary for transiting the first half of life it works against you in the second half of life.  Essentially, what we call the midlife crisis, is the transition to finding what will fill that existential sense of not belonging in the world.

Let me say this.  I am not against work.  I work seven days a week and probably ten or more hours each day.  I am not stressed because what I do, is more or less, being done through me.  This is the difference between doing and being willing to allow the voice of Creation to express through you.  I am not stressed because I feel wholehearted.  There are of course challenges but that simply allows me to trust more deeply in the creative process.

This is doing versus allowing.  The allowing makes you more creative which is not merely to be equated with making you more productive.  We are at a point of our evolution as a species where we are producing more than the earth can provide on a sustainable basis.  Much of this doing it to feed the collective mantra of market forces of never quite enough.  This is not action arising from the experience of allowing that force within you to create through you and in doing so fulfil you through such allowing.

Willingness as Abundance

Thy will be done.

Willingness is a feminine practice.  It is a life transition practice of trust.  It is a practice of faith.  People tend to think that faith is something you give allegiance to as a doctrine laid down by some religious or political text.  Faith, for this writer and storyteller, is the willingness to trust in the unknown and the unseen as being able to express through you.  This is alignment with true prosperity because you are willing to be in alignment with what is infinite but which express through you.

Our approach to life transition is what is called a dominator approach.  We impose our will upon life and we see how we do this with our relationship to the natural world.  We are told that we have dominion over the earth and we have quite literally taken this, not to heart, but to a point of insanity.   Willingness is a life transition that allows us to come into harmony with Creation.  We begin, not to dominate the way we see how the world should be made to suit our own image but how we can align ourselves with the image of creation that we uniquely are.  This is truly imaginative and gives us true power.  This is not ego power but the power that arises when we really are willing to say and mean some of the words from the Lord’s prayer, “Thy will be done.”  One doesn’t have to be a Christian to take this spiritual gem to be a guide for real life transition.

Stillness that Speaks

Stillness is the language that creation uses to communicate with you.  You won’t hear this communication in words.  You won’t hear this communication with ears.  All you have to do is allow the soft animal of your body to do what it loves.  If what you do is what you love to do, and not because you are told that you should do it, then this is the small still Voice speaking through you.

The modern mystic Eckhart Tolle writing in Stillness Speaks states that when you lose touch with your inner stillness that you lose touch with yourself.  Thus you are left to transit life passages without being in alignment with your true north.  For those of us engaged in the modern go getting way of living life stillness is veiwed as a waste of time.  The paradox is, for those, willing to allow stillness to be central to their life and how they manage key life transition is that time expands and can expand into the vastness of the dimension of the timeless.  Then you have all the time in the world available to you to allow the timelessness of creation to express its power and grace through you.

We have become afraid of stillness.  It is had to find a place, other than in nature, where you can invite the connection to stillness.  That is why I love to go into churches.  I go into churchs when there is no one else there and I abide in the silence.  This silence speaks to me because I go with the intention of being willing to listen to the guidance from that silence.  This sounds crazy to the logical mind.  It is crazy to the logical mind.  However, I say to those who wish to make the transition to the wild and precious life, “Get still.”  Become willing to be the voice of Love as it is intended to pour through you.

Listening without Ears

How do you listen to a voice that speaks through stillness and that you do not hear with your ear?  The listening is done by paying attention to your energy.  If you feel that your level of energy is raised (without the addition of some drug or entertainment) then this is a pointer to the fact that you are  in line with allowing

the soft animal of you body to do what it loves.

Notice that I have stated the energy is raised in a natural way.  There is no outside stimulation.  You become like a child who dances because the Lord of the Dance has been allowed to dance through you in the way that unique way in which you are created to dance.  We have been conditioned to listen to every other voice other than the Voice that will lead us to the fullness of who we are.  We go to experts but there is no one more expert that you in knowing what brings you alive.  What I invite here is a life transition beyond all that your ego thinks it has to do to get what you think you need to be happy and fulfilled.

In one sense I am inviting you simply to turn around and go inward.  I am inviting you to remember who you are and why you are and to have revealed through you what it is you are here to become.  What is it you are to become is a unique voice of Love expressing in form.  This is a major life transition the I invite to know and live.  This is a still voice but it has a stillness that gives you a peace beyond understanding.  To listen and follow the promptings of the still small voice is the quest into the whole life.  It is to journey into a willingness to listen to the voice of the one who has loved you during all your life transitions.  This is the one, in the words of the poet Derek Walcott who, “Knows you by heart.”  This is the voice that you gave up listening to for the promise of doing your life in an endless cycle of never quite enough.

Letting your body do what it Loves

Here are some ways in which you can learn to practice the invitation from this passage and live the wild and precious life.

• Practice meditation.
• Learn Hatha Yoga.
• Discover Tia Chi,
• Walk by a river.
• Dance
• Drum.
• Garden with Spirit.

Each of the above will allow you to let the soft animal of your body do what it loves.  Make sure that you practice any of these practices, not with wilfulness, but with the feminine attitude of willingness.  Gift yourself the following:-

• Be willing to be miraculous.
• Be willing to be wondrous.
• Be willing to be sensational.
• Be willing to be gifted.
• Be willing to receive.

Notice the essence (meaning that which is essential) in the above list. None of the above are what you do.  They are all about being and becoming.  The above list is what will become of you should you accept the invitation to be still and know the wonder of who you are and enter your life transition in a more feminine way.  This willingness impacts the way you live in the world and the way that the world is reflected back to you.  It makes those life transitions that we all face  transitions of opportunity rather than just experiences of resistance.  There will be resistance but with the focus on the above dynamics  of allowing, willingness, stillness and listening such resistance will be minimised.  You will be more in flow and live more of a whole life rather than an unlived life.

It is my intention to write further invitations that arise from inspirational passages that help with life’s transitions.  You can bookmark this page to return to it.  Simply press ControlD.  You might find it easier to subscribe via the RSS Feed for Personal Development and Beyond Blog which ensures that anytime I post to this blog that you will receive that article and be able to move into the connection to the wild and precious life you are here to live, to love and to give.  Here are some selections that I recommend should you like to journey more deeply into the important lessons that are available through life transitions.  This learning, is for this Irish writer and storyteller, true education.  Education means “to arise from within.”