My friend David Mackenzie inspired me to offer you this invitation:
Please print this newsletter. It is meant to be held in your hand.
In the Native American shamanic tradition, there’s a way that a teacher chooses the students who come to learn the art of plant medicine. “Here’s your first test,” says the teacher. “Go and find as many sacred plants as you can in the next hour and bring them back to me.”
If the student walks away to look for them, the teacher knows he or she is not ready to begin the apprenticeship. The ones who are chosen do not move. They stand where they are, and look for the plants that live right under their feet.
There is a lot of talk about gratitude these days, a lot of talk about learning to appreciate what is right under our feet. People all over the place are awakening to the power of gratitude, not just as a warm fuzzy feeling, but as a liberating and transforming force in their lives. Who could deny that gratitude is good thing? It’s easy to talk about it, easy to think about it-quite a bit harder to walk the gratitude walk in a genuine and sustained way.
A few years ago I came to a place where I realized how conditional my gratitude was. I could feel gratitude for things that pleased and delighted me- not for the times when I was stuck in between a rock and a hard place. I could only appreciate those times in retrospect, after I had gleaned the hard- won wisdom out of the pain and struggle.
I found myself becoming more and more curious about how it would be to be grateful for it all, for every single moment of my life-nothing left out. It was one of those questions that wouldn’t go away. It just kept drilling down into my heart, into the moments when I was deep into resisting what was going on. It drilled into the annoying little moments: “How would it feel to be grateful for this parking ticket?” and the big ones, “How can I be grateful for losing a chunk of my investments?”
At times the question felt like some genie I had unlocked from a bottle. “Thank you very much,” I wanted to say, “it’s been great. Now go away and leave me alone.” But the genie does not go back into the bottle so easily.
What I’ve discovered is that our capacity for unconditional gratitude is intimately connected with how we feel about life itself-our deepest convictions about how life actually operates. Often these ‘core beliefs’ about life run like a silent current underneath all the surface events of our lives. They are carrying us along, but we don’t see or feel them until we dive a little deeper.
What is life? Did you ever ask yourself this question with all your heart? Is it friendly, is it a bitch, or is it neutral and disinterested? Do your ideas and feelings about it change as your experiences change? This is not about adopting a comforting belief. I don’t think we can afford to take shelter in such places at this stage in the game. For me, ‘What is life?” is a question that calls for a total response-one that lives in our guts, our hearts and our bones. The whole way we live is actually the answer to this question. We need to have the confidence to ask these questions that lie at the heart
of our lives, without shying away from them, or looking to some authority for the answer.
I read something in Time magazine last month that relates to this. A senior Administration official was speaking about the war in Iraq, and how to deal with the disaster it had become. “It’s a Mick Jagger moment,” he said. “You can’t always get what you want. The question is, can we get what we need?”
That’s the question that really intrigues me. How do we live when we really open ourselves to the possibility that life is always bringing us what we need? Not just when it’s fun and juicy, but when it really sucks. What happens when we start to awaken to life as the expression of a profound and universal intelligence?
Take a moment now, and look back on your life, on everything that has ever happened to you. Let all of the happenings, all of the people, all of the triumphs and failures bubble up into your consciousness. Allow yourself to just imagine letting go of all the pain and regret that might still be lingering in you from past events. What if your whole life was a stream, a river, that had to flow exactly as it did to bring you to this moment? What if every single moment was essential, an integral part of the unfolding evolution of who you are? How would it feel to bow to your failures, disappointments and heartbreaks? Not just a stiff little bow, but a full bodied, open- hearted bow to it all? How would it feel to trust the essential nature of life that much, and to trust your own capacity to align yourself with the flow of that intelligence?
‘and if ever i touched a life
i hope that life knows
that I know
that touching was
and still is
and always will be
the true
revolution. (Nikki Giovanni)
I offer my love and thanks to Peter Fenner, Adya Shanti, and Molly Gordon, for all I have learned from them about gratitude.
with love,
Shayla
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please send it to a friend. If you have questions or issues that you would like me to explore, let me know. If you wish to subscribe, (it comes out every few weeks) just email me. I totally respect your privacy and will not share your personal information with anyone. You can unsubscribe at any time by pressing ‘Reply’ and putting ‘Remove’ in the subject box. To read back issues of my newsletters, go to my website at http://www.barefootjourneys.net
Barefoot Journeys winter offerings:
Please go to my website for more details on these courses and workshops
Non-local
By phone and email:
Personal coaching sessions
Human Design and Numerology readings
Weekend workshop in St. Augustine Florida
March 2007
‘The Gift of Presence’
Local
8 week ‘Gift of Presence course’ at my home studio
Dates will be up on my website this week.
Two 8 week courses at Selkirk College, Nelson:
1) ‘The Alchemy of Writing’
Wed. nights, 7-9pm
Jan. 31st-March 21st
2) ‘The Heart of Communication’
Mon. nights, 7-9pm
Jan. 29th-March 19th
8 week course at Oxygen Art Centre, Nelson
‘The Alchemy of Writing’
Thurs. nights 7-9:30pm
Feb. 15th - April 5th
Half day writing workshops
(following the Soma Yoga morning class)
Saturdays 2-6pm
Jan. 20, Feb. 10, March 3.
Soma Yoga classes at Shanti Yoga:
Wed. and Sat. mornings, 10-11:30am
