Hopping across the state line to pick up a visiting friend at the airport, I stop at a coffee shop to write. I’m early and a soft packet of time dangles in front of me, begging me to fill it with words. Maybe some breaths and silences too.
Someone has left the local newspaper where I sit. It says, “Shift! OK, listen up. Green is not the color of nerds.” The sound system croons, “Give me all your loving, all your hugs and kisses too. Don’t let up until the night is through.” Those aren’t bad themes for this jaunt. My eyes come to rest on my watch: it’s 2:22. Clouds hover in tentative layers, ducking behind haze and bending out again, stitched together by slices of sky in the palest periwinkle. I don’t know if this is normal; I have not been here before.
I have a job. After weeks and weeks of exploring, applying, asking around, dizzied by the moving target of ever-shifting needs, preferences, possibilities, and ideals, an unexpected offer turned up. Strangely (or not), the hourly rate and number of hours per week are exactly what I had fantasized about as a best fit. I will be stretching into a new way of helping others while using my natural talents. In my free time I am learning farm skills, mechanical skills, writing, enjoying the company of good people and the view of quiet mountains. Coming to know this self still better.
It’s funny how things feel so even lately. Even the bouts of magnetic intensity, the neuronal realignment sensations in the frontal lobes, the apparent successes and the fading of the sporadic, conditioned worries about survival. Somehow, and despite that old conditioning, emphasis has moved off earning money as the goal, while still acknowledging its (temporary) present utility. While I wasn’t looking, work has become about sharing, helping and learning rather than adding more of those dollar signs to the bank account. The monetary system may not be pushing up daisies yet, but it’s so over. My soul knows it.
Everything I truly need has appeared. So, here is evenness; here is love for It All. The whole process. Now the disinterest in the monetary fruits of work despite the apparent need for them makes sense. Cycles of energy and opportunity turn like the shells of planets, building effort in a long slow swing out toward the far station, then hurtling around the orbit’s bend on the downhill run. Through all of this recent time, even with those old deep fears rearing up now and then, a current of trust has run through these weeks. Only the rational mind objected at times, but now it understands what it could not see but which the intuition knew well.
Thank you for having everything I need. Thank you for feeling, knowing, for finally getting it: Helping and sharing and experimenting and understanding are what it’s all about. Those are the best games around, and there are no losers. Only pieces of the All who jointly prosper and assist, uplift, and smile with contentment at the midpoint of a hazy afternoon. A wandering spirit lurches out of the shop, yelling, “I love you! I love you!” to no one, or to all of us. A subtle harmony has crept into this confusing world while I wasn’t looking: Infinite grace.
Namaste
