I took this picture this afternoon, sitting on the bench, looking out at the labyrinth, wondering, yet again, what it is that I think I’m doing with all of this. Sometimes I’m so lit up, excited to share the gifts of the labyrinth, which somehow seem separate from me. But are they? My intuition has gotten so much stronger as a result of walking this pattern and building this pattern. It was always strong, but I didn’t listen much to it, or act on the information that I got from it. Now, I listen. That happened with the labyrinth from the start.It started when, on the path the very first time, I knew that I needed to build one of my own, so I went after that idea with a vengeance. I’ve heard, multiple times, that what’s impressive about that story is that I built it in the first place, that others would have heard the call, but not acted on it. I did, I acted on it. In the moment, I was so swept away by whatever it was, that it felt almost as if I had no choice. But now, it feels like I’ve got choice and I’ve not been choosing. I’ve been choosing fear and smallness and anything except actually stepping out and claiming. Partly because I’m not sure what it is that I am claiming. Am I claiming my intuition? If so, how? How does that show up in the world in terms of being of service to others? Not sure yet.
Am I claiming wisdom? I feel like I’ve got some level of understanding of what it means to detach from stories (clearly not this story! I’m still hanging out in this one, but other stories. ) I’ve dropped the jealousy story. In fact, people have to remind me that that was a big piece of who I was and how I moved through the world. I tend to completely forget that that was a very big issue for a very long time. One day I just said with tears streaming down my face, “Oh that’s right, I forgot. That’s just a story and I can choose differently.” And for whatever reason, I’ve not forgotten again, at least in that realm. But I do forget in others. I forget in this one, and this realm feels like a very important one to not forget. I know that I help others. I know that I sometimes have an uncanny ability to say exactly the right thing to open up a person so that they can see some part of themselves that they’ve been either hiding from others or hiding from themselves. I am able to open windows or keyholes or some sort of peek hole that allows them to view themselves and see their light.
But what am I to write? I feel like I’m supposed to be writing something, but the bigger form is elusive. Is it a book? Is it a series of blogs? Am I meant to be teaching something in all of this? We’ve all got things to teach each other.
And I know that it’s easy to be able to see another’s gifts. In fact, that is one of my gifts. I can look at you and see your beauty and what you’re meant to do in this world. How you’re meant to impact others. This is easy for me to see. I sometimes struggle with how to tell you what it is that I see, but I see it. I see your light shining, peeking out through the edges of the covers that you put on, peeking through the walls you’ve built. But it’s there.
And I also know that what I see is only a piece of the puzzle. And it can change. I’ve been looking at this picture and seeing more and more things in the shadows. Different faces, different outlines. Life feels like that. What part of the picture am I putting my attention on? The bit that looks like some big, dark monster? Or the bit that looks like a giant tree waving. The giant waving tree is what I saw first, and then others looked and started naming off scary things from other places and I didn’t want the tree shadow to be an Ent from Lord of the Rings, or the Horned God from Discworld. I wanted it to be a smiling, waving tree shadow. And then I thought, hmmm, what am I focusing on? It can be all those things for all those different people, and we can play at looking at this, talking about the different things that we see.
And then I take a deep breath in and relax. I will sit down at the computer every day for the next 90 days and write. And sometimes you’ll see it here in this blog form, and sometimes you won’t. But I commit to putting my bum in my seat and writing. Writing past the fear, writing past the self-doubt. Writing. Because, it turns out that I’m a writer. I’ve got stories to tell and I’m guessing that there are people out there who want to hear them.
