Inner Compass...

Lately I’ve been feeling like I’ve lost my inner compass – in a boat without a paddle type thing – no wind to tack into and therefore, no movement. And it’s a little unsettling, even for a “meandering mystic.” :)

Having spent a lot of time in “the Cave” the last several days, in the space of silent Stillness, it feels as if I am being emptied out. It’s as if the burdens I’ve been carrying - the mentations and beliefs of the way life “should” be, of how life is “supposed” to look, of how I am supposed to feel, think and experience life - are being “laid down” – well almost. This includes the “laying down” of all my ideas about my so-called “spiritual path”, realizing I don’t want to be defined by any particular “path” – just wanting to follow my Heart. But the Heart is not speaking, so I am facing an apparent darkness - an emptiness.

I hear that is a good thing on the “spiritual path.” That eventually you have to lay it all down, all those ideas and concepts that you have identified with as your “self” and just step into undefined territory – the pathless path – the Emptiness Itself. However, in this space of not knowing, sitting in the deep Stillness within, just listening - where a lot of my “direction” usually comes from - there still hasn’t been that inner sense of *knowing* how to go - even how to Be - if that makes any sense. There’s just the space of no-thingness where everything reverberates like a deep echo. Helloo~o~o~o~o ~~~~…

I wait for something to emerge from the depths of Stillness - but nothing comes. There is only this sense of being “poured out” – emptied… And only being able to do the simple tasks of living… I’ve been here before…

So of course the mind gets worried, because the mind likes definitive direction, likes having structure, likes having answers, likes having stimulation – likes *doing* not being. So the mind starts questioning – what am I *supposed* to be *doing*? Maybe it’s a January thing. In the mind’s attempt to get an “answer” I even asked my husband – what do you do when you’ve lost your inner compass? He looked at me quizzically. I asked, haven’t you ever lost your sense of inner direction before? (I know he has, he seems to have forgotten.) But in his usual story-telling way he answered: Well, it’s like being one of those float planes in Alaska on very still water. And you’re just sitting there, floating on the water, waiting for the wind to come up. And then when the wind comes up the plane automatically turns in the direction of the wind and you know the direction you’re supposed to take off into. Until then you wait…

Okay… Huh! - mind said – really? Doesn’t this plane have an engine and a throttle that I can* control* the plane with? Is it really that simple – just waiting? But “i” want to *do* something about this – about this directionlessness that I feel. “i” needs to feel like life is going somewhere, like “i” is doing something – creating, expressing, doing *important* things… So I do a little of this and a little of that, but no, those aren’t it. I keep getting called back to “the Cave” - to Emptiness - the place of Stillness. Yet, even there, there seems to be a very deep sense of unsettledness and not knowing - and a seeming inability to reach Still Point - true North - True Self… Or maybe I just don’t recognize it…

I am apparently in a place of waiting – hibernating actually – needing to be very still and quiet. And maybe that is exactly my “direction” at the moment – no direction - simply waiting - for inner movement, the inner voice; waiting for clarity, waiting for the wind to come up; trusting that I am exactly where I need to be...

I wait – I breathe – I wait – for the whispers of the Heart, the inner compass to reveal the Way…

~*~

There’s an interesting blog post called Following the Moon:
Each Heart is a World
that is about the cycles of the moon and
“Forging the True Work of the Heart…”


Photo – Yes that is exactly how the shoes were!