Looking for answers? Here they are...

"Be patient towards all that is unsolved in my heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer." From Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Inspiration for this writing comes from a place invoked by pain, merged after the departure of planes landing across an ocean and resulting in the evolution of a lasting friendship, from peace, from love, from truth.

Where are the answers you are looking for? Do they evade you, mesmerize you, sting you, make you laugh, seem elusive, are unwilling to surface, or just plain unwanted...? This, my people, we must decide for ourselves. We must realize that the answers we most seek and deserve may be within us from the start. Answers become surface level only when we decide to leave them behind and not mark them as a goal but as a journey.

The circle of life is living answered. Restless living leads to demise and a mind full of distraught. All the while devoid of mindfulness and overflowing with heedlessness. Oblivious to the outer world surrounding us with beauty and leading us closer to the truth. Or the harsher truf of what might not be pleasing to live. But we must push onward knowing the facts and accepting the dance. The to and fro of what can paint a symphony of notes with the human manifestation of rhythm and connection. Connection to one another and growth that leads to realization. That...that leads to answers.

It is no longer a request, but it is an invitation to live, to like...wait no, "Don't just like." Accept the invitation to love. To love uncertainty as you love black and white, to be attracted to gray as much as vivid color brings you joy, to miss confusion because it pushes you to look for clues, to love the question mark - the curves, the elongation, the signal of an end and punctuation, the period that indeed does close it out...the very sign that the answer is indeed in the question. Will you seek it out, will you welcome it, will you embrace it as it embraces your questions?

Say yes.

She Speaks

Trembling in a corner, the room is enveloped in darkness with the spotlight on red. Quivering forward, she steps into the light and clears her throat. She wonders if what she will say will be heard through the black of the space. She thinks she hears crickets giving their salute to the night, but instead she is hearing the rapidity of her trembling. She recites what is innate and gives her all to the audience she cannot see. The spotlight is hers but can those who hear her see her? She begins again. The first recitation was a mere rehearsal of inner thought. She speaks. Not sure what is flowing out of her she begins to feel the weight fall off as if she is released from the tension of the strings that bind her. She turns, focuses her attention to all sides of the room, hoping her frail voice will echo off the walls and back into her where those thoughts and feelings are safe. She second guesses herself when she hears no response, but realizes that she is still showing the room her skill through her performed prose. When she has finished there is silence again. No snaps, no applause, no approval, no rejection, no thrown off stage, just her, the spotlight, and the corner from which she orates. All the while trembling, but now, feeling a stillness inside. When the heart speaks, it expresses to manifest feeling into reality for itself and no one else.

Excavating --> Exposure

Dig. Dig Deep. Dig Deeper.

Picking up the shovel, which for some may be the most daunting task, is the first step. Clearing your schedule and making nothing know and disappearing into stillness is what you need next. Using the tools that God has given increase the speed at which you discover, but does not change the fragility that lies beneath.

Is this adventure unexplored? Have you started to uncover yourself and just when you see 'you' peeking out of the next layer of dirt, called away to accomplish another task in life? Did you begin to see what is hidden and complex, only to find that you were not ready to see the rest? Ask.

Discover that within yourself has shaped and defined who you are reflecting at yourself each morning. Find that comfort in seeing yourself clearly in and out of reality, with or without stability, having and not having comfort, feeling or not feeling love, learning or not learning truth.

You are perfect just the way you are. There is no need to change or alter your state. That is not your mandate. The you that you are supposed to be is ready. You have to be ready to be informed, ready to be great, ready to feel pain and love and happiness all at the same time. Ready indeed does mean willing, and willing to want to be you is your destiny.

If you are not ready for your destiny, realize that you are looking at a fertile pasture of untouched soil. Rich with longing for seeds of interest that bear fruit of awareness and healing.

So I charge you to dig, dig deep, dig deeper. Keep going and as the sweat rolls down your brow, keep thinking "I'm willing to meet my destiny because I'm ready to keep digging."