"I feel like a dandelion whose seeds have been liberated by the breath of God."
I had just spoken these words to a group I was leaving. With the force of revelation, they completely surprised me in their deep personal significance. Here's what I came to understand.
I feel like I have completed, after twenty years of spiritual practice, teaching, writing and publishing, what I came here to do. During those years I blossomed like an ordinary weed but with so many insights about the mystical life, and then, through nine books and countless blogs, articles, conferences and workshops, and moved by the divine breath of inspiration, released these insights like seeds floating out into world. Having dispersed my very self, completing the flowering stage of my creative life, "I" am the spent dandelion: "I" no longer exist in my old form and no longer wish to. I sense that what's left for this now mostly-empty "me" is to hang around through these saging years to care for my sprouting seeds, whatever that means, and to be the love I had once chased. I am more space than being now, but space that is alive and conscious, filled with the divine breath. I feel its great presence flowing in and out. Like every other chapter of my life, I don't know how this will go but I trust the wisdom inside each developmental stage, especially those in late life. As my spiritual director said to me recently, "You are not the one directing this. You are the flute through which the divine breath moves. Spirit will tell you what to do and say." So I am moving on like the Tarot Fool or the Hermit, not sure which, but I love the mystery of the call.
I had just spoken these words to a group I was leaving. With the force of revelation, they completely surprised me in their deep personal significance. Here's what I came to understand.
I feel like I have completed, after twenty years of spiritual practice, teaching, writing and publishing, what I came here to do. During those years I blossomed like an ordinary weed but with so many insights about the mystical life, and then, through nine books and countless blogs, articles, conferences and workshops, and moved by the divine breath of inspiration, released these insights like seeds floating out into world. Having dispersed my very self, completing the flowering stage of my creative life, "I" am the spent dandelion: "I" no longer exist in my old form and no longer wish to. I sense that what's left for this now mostly-empty "me" is to hang around through these saging years to care for my sprouting seeds, whatever that means, and to be the love I had once chased. I am more space than being now, but space that is alive and conscious, filled with the divine breath. I feel its great presence flowing in and out. Like every other chapter of my life, I don't know how this will go but I trust the wisdom inside each developmental stage, especially those in late life. As my spiritual director said to me recently, "You are not the one directing this. You are the flute through which the divine breath moves. Spirit will tell you what to do and say." So I am moving on like the Tarot Fool or the Hermit, not sure which, but I love the mystery of the call.