Being

23 April 2014 A great  card to have this week when I've been having an Easter break, and able to really appreciate 'being' as well as doing. My challenge is to keep that awareness strong in the busy times. To be conscious of how I am being as well as what I am doing. Many of the qualities that are important to me in 'being' - such as love, compassion, grace - all too easily become yet another list of things I 'have to do.'. How can I choose how to be, when sometimes I feel I do not know who to be? It has taken me a long time to come home to myself enough to begin, again, to know. A few years ago a person senior to me where I worked (and who had interviewed me and influenced my appointment) said something that really rang an alarm bell for me. Something along the lines of 'Where has Mary gone?' After a redundancy (my second) and a lot of effort in job applications and interviews, I was in what felt like my 'dream job'. I'm not sure what happened then exactly, but maybe I was trying too hard to be exactly what I thought the company, and my colleagues, wanted me to be. In any case, various events shook my confidence badly. I felt as if all the aspects of my work I was good at had been demolished and shown to be false.  The comment 'Where has Mary gone?' was part of a process of rebuilding and recovering, remembering what I am good at and who I am. I hadn't realised how lost I had become, how disconnected from my own inner wisdom, from my true being. Each of us has this, our true self, our being that just is. Just is the essence of each of us. Just is the unique and amazing bright spark that only this one individual can bring to the world, and that can shine simply by being themselves. These events took place after I had already spent many years rediscovering and becoming more aware, and that 'crash' felt as if I had slipped all the way back to the bottom of the mountain again. I have often used the metaphor of the spiral path to comfort myself when I feel I am revisiting the same old issues, yet again. The thought that maybe I am at a higher level on the upward spiral, passing over the same things again but able to see them from a different perspective has been useful for me. One of my coaches, (I am usually working with someone for my own support and development) challenged me on this, with questions such as 'What if there is no mountain? What if there is no path? Nowhere you have to go, no one you have to be - what if you are already perfect, you need do nothing, just be?' By changing my thoughts about something, can I change my reality too? Recently I bought myself a very special pendant, a silver spiral with a tiny peridot stone in the centre. Looking at this now, even though it is a man-made three-dimensional solid piece of metal, I can visualise it as representing a continuous reality, a universe where there is no space, no time, all is one and we are all part of the whole. Each a part of the multi-coloured, magnificent world, not having to do anything, simply be, simply shine out as our true selves. Here is picture taken on the rich dark leaves of the plant growing in a pot outside my summerhouse study. I am finding it difficult to write about 'Being', and I am not sure if my words are making any sense at all. And, maybe that is not surprising, I am trying hard to 'do' something (writing at the moment, but it could be speaking, painting, drawing) to represent something that just is. 'Being' is just being, it needs no qualification or description. However to return to the beginning of my thoughts here - in that case, can I choose to be something positive: happy, rather than sad; assertive rather than aggressive? Or if sometimes I need to be sad (or angry or grumpy), can I be those things in a way that helps rather than destroys - for myself and others? Again I am tying myself in knots with words. The colour of this card, the rich luscious purple, feels whole. As if it is sufficient in itself. And rejoicing in being that which it is. Maybe that is something I can aim for - rejoicing in being, whatever that being encompasses at this particular moment? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am smiling at myself now. Having written that piece as 'flow writing' (without editing or self-censoring), I went back and started doing just that - thinking 'Oh, this isn't very good, not sure if it makes sense.' The purpose of sharing these thoughts has always been, for me, to be open about the process that I go through when I draw a card, and the thoughts and feelings that arise prompted by the word and the colour. So I am smiling at my impulse just now to start looking for good quotations, and to go back and edit - as that would have gone against that aim. How interesting that I have forgotten that now, after nearly fifty cards - though I know this has happened on other occasions. My wish is that by sharing my random thoughts, by simply being me, there may be some nuggets within that pique your interest in some way (even if to laugh at, or hopefully with, me!) As always, please feel free to comment below with your thoughts and comments.  If you would like to own a set of cards to explore their power for yourself please visit the dedicated page. Thank you dear friends for visiting with me again this week and sharing my musings. Until next time, with love, Mary *if you have any difficulty accessing the 'blogspot' service, you can also read and comment here on the Daring to Blossom website, or find 'Dare to Blossom Life Coaching' on Facebook.