Lessons

Today was an interesting and enlightening day.  It was beautiful.  Sunny.  Hot.  My morning started with a bike ride with 117 other bikes to help raise money for the Ronald McDonald House, a place where families stay who have children with catastrophic illnesses.  So, I started my day grateful.

Pulling into the parking lot of the House filled me with peace and the knowledge that I would do something good today.

The good I did there wasn't the good I would do today.  That good came later and is, hopefully, still coming.

Today was a private gathering for a woman whom I felt an attachment with only I didn't know why until today.  I was included in the private gathering which felt right but had me scratching my head. I knew that this woman would always make a point to come sit with me and talk to me.  She sat close, touching, but it didn't feel odd to have her in my space.  It felt right.  Familiar.  Old.  Comfortable.

So, I went but not just for me.  It turns out I was there for someone else, only I didn't know it until I hugged her and then I knew why.  And that felt right too.

At some point, everybody went inside because someone was going to say a few words.  I tried to go in even though I was in my motorcycle gear, standing out like a sore thumb but I didn't care because she didn't care.  I just couldn't stay in the house.  Something wouldn't let me go in beyond the entryway and something kept pulling my back outside.

So, there I was in the front yard when it hit me.  She was there.  I felt her.  I asked if it was her and started crying because she was sad.  She very clearly told me to tell everyone there that she was sad because we were sad and she didn't want that.  She told me that she was exactly where she was supposed to be.  She told me that I was there because she was supposed to tell me that.  She also told me that I was there to help hold someone else up.

It lasted for only a moment but touched me deeply.  

I hope those who need to hear this hear it or read it and realize that it's meant for them.

If nothing else, learn this--If you feel something for someone then tell them before it's too late.  Tomorrow isn't a given.

Friends

 

Friends.  What makes one?  What are the rules, if any?  I'm having to think about this because it appears that who I counted as friends has changed or is changing and maybe that's they it should be.  Some friends remain with us for life.  They may drift close then away then close again but they're always there.  Sort of like something floating at the edge of the surf...in...out...in...out.

Do you out grow people?  Probably.  I believe that we all travel in spheres of time and for a while, certain people will travel with us and then they fall out of the sphere to travel at their own pace.  Sort of like the turtles in the western current in Nemo.  If you pop out of that current, you lose ground and either you can catch back up or you can't.

They say that when the student is ready to learn, the teacher appears.  I would suppose that once the student learns the lesson, the teacher disappears.  Makes sense.  The real trick is to figure out what the lesson is, and for some, we may never figure out what that lesson was because our vision is clouded with grief or anger and we refuse to either work through it or let it go.

So, for your own sake, you grieve the loss of that friend, because it is truly a loss, and then you move on.  You go through all of the stages and them come out better on the other end.  You learn to become self-aware, self-conscious and by that I mean "self" conscious, not self-paranoid.  We develop and understanding of who we are and why we are who we are.  We have the "ah ha" moment of realizing that everything that has happened to us has made us who we are in this moment.  We also begin to realize that who we are right now is not who we will be next week or sometimes even by the end of the day.  

The awesome thing is that through the process and through the contact with that person, you make other contacts and other people show up in your life to teach you something else.  We are always learning and as humans, our life is experiental.  It has to be or we wither and die, if not physically, certainly emotionally and spiritually.  And some of the experiences we have, we go into knowing it is going to hurt but we are compelled to do it anyway.  Because we just have to touch that hot stove, or that live wire (which I've done) because we just can't believe that it will hurt us and when it does, we're surprised.  Or are we?

I  believe that our souls travel in a pack and have since the beginning, whenever that was.  Our souls chose to incarnate because there is either a lesson they have to learn or the souls around them do.  When I realized that my soul has chosen to put me in this circumstance and surround me with the people and the experiences it has, I had two reactions:  one of anger because why in the hell would my soul make me go through some of the things I'm going through now or have gone through?  And one of relief because it means I'm doing and feeling and experiencing exactly what I'm supposed to.

My circle of souls has experienced a great deal of loss lately either through physical death or through the migration of friends.  If you close your eyes and picture a rope of light extending from your heart out to the hearts of the other souls in your circle, you should see something that resembles a spider web...or a dream catcher.  You should see ropes of light that go from soul to soul without a direct line to you.  And the more people we touch, the brighter that light becomes.  It has to.  It lights the darkness and eventually, you would see enough ropes that it looks solid with no room for darkness.  

And if you keep looking, you will see that none of the strands are disconnected because while the physical person may leave, their soul still travels in the circle and though we may never again know them as who they are in this life, we'll be with that soul again.  We will be a brother or a sister or a lover or a wife or a husband or a friend or a child or a mother or a father or whatever our soul and their soul needs us to be.

So, while my circle has lost some people important to us, my soul space still blazes with the bright light of my soul circle.  Some in my circle, including me, will grieve the loss of one in this circle.  We will be sad and angry and feel lost and bewildered and struggle to understand the how and the why but if we take a moment and look within we will all see that the light is still there and still just as bright.

And that's comforting and gives me strength.