December 2006

Every year at this time, the increasing darkness and cooler temperatures keep me more often indoors after dinner.

My rarely visited journal gets read and written in now, books are finished, and there is time to delve into piles of paper that need to be sorted. Here are often found the most valuable treasures, as notes reveal patterns of interest that have emerged over the last year.

This time last year I felt a strong calling to add a new creative direction to my life. I was uncertain if there was a specific direction that was whispering to me from the wings. That can be more tortuous, trying to decode or uncover a precise message. This did not have that sort of urgency. As I moved through the piles and re-read journals spanning a number of years, I could see that my interests, although quite varied, all shared a number of qualities. 

Foremost, was a desire to unlock the keys to merging with the divine. In fact, most of the words on the pages were themselves keys to unlock my own remembering that there is no separation from the divine. 

Certainly I have experienced moments and even minutes of rapturous union with a vast loving intelligence. Often it happens in nature, when I make contact with an animal and time stops as we experience a oneness, sharing an eternal moment. Other times it has been looking at a beautiful scene; as I pour gratitude out toward the beauty, each blade of grass, each speck of blue seems to shine a little brighter as they reach back to include me, and we pulse brightly together. The moments inspire but, alas, they do not physically remain. 

So I began this year with a stronger sense of what this ‘calling’ might be about. It didn’t feel as if I had to re-invent myself, rather that what was emerging on the horizon would be a natural and integrated expression of much of what I had brought to my life already. 

I certainly love writing and having a tea company, as they both have rapturous moments, but I find myself often either talking to plants or talking to a computer. So, a second requirement was that I wanted to do whatever it might be with others.

During the first ten days of this year, I focused my attention to this matter by talking about it verbally, writing notes to myself, and keeping it close to the surface. Then one optimistic sunny morning, I lit sage and a candle, poured a glass of water and smudged the room as I talked to the sun shining on my face, the trees outside the window, and the wind about the house. Having said good morning I talked to them about all of this, and about wanting to get some clear direction on what would be the best vehicle for me. Then I headed back to my desk and a normal workday.

Within the first hour of the day I received a call from someone wanting to buy tea and she felt compelled to tell me about how someone she knew had been cured from a serious illness by a technique called Bowen Therapy.

In the early afternoon I received another call from someone who also felt compelled to tell me a story about how Bowen had changed her life. Then at teatime the third call arrived, from someone whose Naturopathic Doctor had used Bowen to cure her of a chronic illness. When I told her she had been the third person to mention Bowen in one day, that all three of them had called about something else and had just volunteered the information, and that I had just asked for some guidance about what new direction was knocking on the door, she then gave me the number of the only Bowen instructor in Ontario.

Isn’t that beautiful! Before the day was out, the world had come to my snowy country home to answer my question, not once but three times, and left me with the next move.

A year has passed and my certification is going into a frame tomorrow, my ads are in the local papers, and folks are already giving me testimonials. Bowen is a deliciously powerful therapy made of specific rolling movements over muscle and connective tissue. It is like a homeopathic version of massage, where less is more.

What has been wonderful is how it affords me a perfect opportunity to be fully present with another human being, often someone I have never met. As I first place my hands on them, I visualize that there is no separation between us, a feeling washes over me, and I can begin to creatively merge with the divine being in front of me.

Happy New Year!