How to Leap from "To Do" to "Ta Da!"

It's the perennial first question in Western culture: "What do you do?" In an earlier era, I had a straightforward answer: "Marketing communications." (This was when "content" was plural, and referred to what you'd find in a book.) When my former life dissolved, so did easy categorizations. Later, when pressed for a sound bite, what ushered from my mouth depended on the moment — and the audience. I might say, "I facilitate conscious evolution," or, "I'm a life coach." The first was a truer reply in the fullness it conferred; yet often, the recipient's eyes would glaze over in confusion. If I answered, "I'm a midwife for the soul," the person might exclaim, "Oh, you're a midwife!"

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Oh, Baby!

Out for a walk on Easter, I met a young woman holding a very cute baby. The mother seemed tired, and the baby wasn't that cheerful, either, although I surmised she (the baby) had perhaps recently awakened from a nap. The mom told me she also had an 8- and 5-year-old, though this child was more difficult for her, because she was raising her alone. The little girl was only four months old, so I thought, either her partner didn't plan on a kid, or, as seems to happen often in these extraordinary times, the couple came together just long enough to combine their DNA, because this little Light was needed on Earth.

As her mother and I were conversing, and after I mentioned the baby's subdued demeanor, she looked at me in the way babies do: staring, never breaking eye contact.

And then she began to laugh.

Huge, rollicking, endless laughter emanated from this tiny bundle. I stood transfixed, feeling my mouth curving irresistibly into a smile and then into my own laughter ~ it is contagious, after all!

Her mother said, "She likes your soul," and I appraised the mom as clearly a conscious being, equipped to raise a Light such as the one she held, and I said as much.

I felt blessed, renewed, in some way redeemed, by this infant's unquenchable laughter. I was in the rapt presence of a baby Buddha, and received her sustenance as manna. What an amazing gift on a day of rising: Yeaster, a rite of passage. It is a benediction I share with you through our cyber connection. May you receive the pure holy joy of laughter in your life when you least (or yeast) expect it, and may it renew you in every cell.

As I walked away, I offered the baby's mother, "May you have an easy raising." I didn't even realize the full significance until this morning.

Woo-Woo in a Wow-Now World:Living As a Practical Mystic

"Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rises and sets, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is."

~ Joseph Wood Krutch, US naturalist and writer

What does being "conscious" actually mean? My online dictionary defines it as, "awake, aware, supraliminal…". Now there's a word to roll trippingly on the tongue. Supraliminal. It's the exact opposite of the subliminal media messages we're bombarded with daily.

Supraliminal means above the threshold of normal sensation. So, instead of being anesthetized by the jackhammer rhythm of life in the third millennium, a supraliminal person moves to a different cadence. You live an aesthetic life — in tune with the beauty all around you — rather than an anesthetic one, numbed out on sensory overload and emotional angst. This is being conscious, and we get to choose whether to walk this path, every day.

It doesn't mean we have to live "woo-woo" in a wow-now world, however. There's a way to "walk the mystical path with practical feet," as one of my own great teachers, Angeles Arrien, often says. Her lucid book, The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer and Visionary draws upon her vast experience as a cross-cultural anthropologist and educator to show us how indigenous wisdom can help us live richer, more joy-filled lives, both personally and professionally. The approaching winter season corresponds to the way of the Warrior, or leader, whose challenge is the right use of power. Angeles reminds us that Native peoples use the words "power" and "medicine" synonymously. If we fully express who we are, we are "in our medicine."

Earth herself offers us a bountiful opportunity to grow, by planting ourselves in presence. Louise Hay, in many ways the founding mother of the personal growth/self help movement, says being in nature, nurturing the soil, and growing her own food is a kind of meditation for her. She lived in New York City for forty years, so she knows what it's like in the asphalt jungle, and feels especially blessed to be able to garden on her acre of land in California now.

Louise says, "My garden sustains me a lot. It is nature at its most abundant and beautiful. And what I do primarily in the garden is build soil. I do everything that I can to make the soil better. I have a big chipper shredder, and not a lettuce leaf or a leaf from a tree leaves my property. It's all ground up, nature makes it into wonderful rich soil, and I put that back into the soil. And it's the same thing with the people, with their own lives. You know if you enrich yourself, if you pull the weeds out, if you get the rocks out of the way in your consciousness and enrich yourself with good reading, good study, good meditating, understanding — then life takes care of the rest."

As the Northern Hemisphere turns inward now, it's a good time to compost any aspects of ourselves that no longer support who we're becoming. And perhaps, as we continue to build our inner soil, enrich our soul, and live a more conscious life, we'll also lose our fear of the next threshold.

Awareness Into Action:

What practical steps can you take this week to build your own soil, to live your medicine? Choose a specific action and put it into practice with everyone you meet, all week long.