the great unfolding

We are alive during one of the greatest dramas in human history. I call this time “The Great Unfolding”. Our shadows and structures are unfurling and showing themselves in the light. We are coming face to face with ourselves, our relationships, our systems, our humanity.

I wake up each morning and say “I am grateful for this day, for I have never know one like this before” to put myself in the mindset of the present moment where peace truly lives. Each day brings new experiences, lessons and awarenesses as we slow down and plug in.  I have had many insights during this journey since February and captured them in scraps of paper, note pads, in social media content, and various journals strewn in every room in the house. These fleeting or deep thoughts that nudged my attention enough to record them on paper are living documents manifesting and generating creative life. Too many ideas to explore fully or to share. These entries have accumulated over the last 30 or more years of my life in treasured books too valuable to discard. But have I ever gone back to read what I have written? 

 Never.

 The “word” of the year, I declared as the essence I wanted to embody in in January of 2020 was “Mastery” (I am since working with “light” and “unity”). As a Generalist who got most of my wisdom from seeking the unknown, direct experience, and instinct, the novel always caught my attention. I follow my curiosity and move ahead to what is next, to accumulate new knowledge without delving into the well of what I already know. Not looking back to what has already been discovered and recorded in my many, many journals.

 The secret to “mastery” may lie in those old journals. Returning and rereading scribblings, writings, quotes, to do lists, may uncover clues to our consistent soul print, as well as remembering thoughts unknown and to be further developed.

I, for one, am afraid of these living tombs of forgotten dreams and untraced thoughts gone to die, or otherwise hopefully lifted up by the universe by some diving frequency to guide me or make my life better without my knowledge.

To dive into this feels like trying to go back though 30 years of piles of photos and put them into albums. 

But here is how I approach it… 

Journal Reading as Spiritual Practice:

·      Light a candle and attune your senses

·      Let yourself by drawn to one old journal or notebook

·      Touch the cover and remember when you bought it and why or how you got it

·      Open to any page

·      Read something that pops out

·      Stop and try to piece together the context, class or time period this came from

·      Ask yourself who was this person who wrote this?

·      What insights can I bring to this now?

·      Is this something that I have integrated, completed or discarded?

·      Is this something I would like to continue to explore or does it no longer resonate, and why?

An example of the personal value and nature of these memories we carry from house to house is, this winter my mother in law died at the age of 79 from Dementia and Covid. I was helping to clean out storage units of pictures, awards, important documents that no longer had an owner and future steward on a mission to save them. They died along with the original owner. My father diligently keeps a binder catalogued with his ideas and written expression to spark memories and to pass down his wisdom.

So what are we keeping these for? For what future you or for who? For the practice of journaling, releasing and expressing our inner process to make sense of it in the moment? Sure. And

I challenge myself to go back on an archeological dig of my own soul to see what treasures can be unearthed when I… unfold the page.