The Soul knows the Way. She always does. So Stop and Listen.
Today is 20 years after 9/11. It’s 20 years since the United States was paralyzed, even if for just a few moments, by terrorists that took down our greatest symbol or “reaching for the stars”. Terrorists terrorized and stopped us in our tracks in ways that we had terrorized so many countries as well.
This blog isn’t about politics though. Anyone who knows the history of imperialism understands what I’m referring to. This is a blog about the soul. Because no matter how fast we get, no matter how successful, or how well we reach for the stars–as the U.S. has done and we have done as individuals–there comes a point in which we need to stop and get humble. There comes a point when the soul wins, when life wins, and all the rest, no matter how good or amazing it looks, doesn’t matter.
So, I find it ironic, that today, on September 11, I find myself being called to slow down again. For me, my soul’s call comes through my body. I feel fatigued, exhausted, and my throat seizes up. I feel sick. I have no energy but to sit and be still. To rest.
When Covid-19 braced the world, we were all asked to stop once again, as was I. For some, it became a threat to our freedom–as was 9/11–but for others, like me, it was another call of the SOUL. Stop. Stop. When we don’t listen to that call, and we choose to just push through or fight back, that soul’s call comes back again and again. Unfortunately, the call gets stronger, it hurts more, as it did for me 20-plus years ago.
Today, 20 years after 9/11, that soul’s call has gotten much louder. We are facing global floods and fires and natural disasters are becoming more devastating each day. We can try to do the same: fight back, push through. Or, this time, we can get that it’s time for all of us, for our planet, to STOP and listen. It’s time be become humble enough to listen and do what is needed to bring balance to our lives and our planet before it is to late.
Stopping doesn’t mean not acting with beauty and love in the world or not doing our part in this life. It just means taking a minute or more to sit down in a way we haven’t in a while–maybe in our favorite comfortable chair we’ve ignored in your rush–and listen to the birds, be still inside, outside, and feel what is. I will end this blog with Pablo Neruda, the Chilean Poet, who said it better than I can in his poem entitled, “A Callarse” (“Keeping Still”):
“Now we will count to twelve / and let’s keep quiet. / For once on earth / let’s not talk in any language; / let’s stop for one second, / and not move our arms so much. A moment like that would smell sweet, / no hurry, no engines, / all of us at the same time / in need of rest. Fishermen in the cold sea / would stop harming whales / and the gatherer of salt / would look at his hurt hands. Those who prepare green wars, / wars with gas, wars with fire, / victories with no survivors, / would put on clean clothes / and go for a walk with their brothers / out in the shade, doing nothing. Just don’t confuse what I want / with total inaction; / it’s life and life only; / I’m not talking about death. If we weren’t so single-minded / about keeping our lives moving / and could maybe do nothing for once / a huge silence might interrupt this sadness / of never understanding ourselves, / of threatening ourselves with death; / perhaps the earth could teach us; / everything would seem dead / and then be alive. Now I will count up to twelve / and you keep quiet / and I will go».
Thank you for reading. Blessings to all of you… 🙂
Michelle Adam
Check out my recent children’s story, Adventures with Duende in the Ocean, a journey of an elf and a young boy, Nico, into the Ocean. This is part of a series of stories that take children into different realms of the earth in a honor of our Mother Earth and caring for her. My Novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, is a story of returning home to the earth inside and all around us. It’s now also available in Spanish as Niña Duende: Un Viaje del Espíritu, through the Spanish publisher Corona Borealis and as Duende: Guardiã da Terra with the Portuguese publisher, Edições Mahatma https://edicoesmahatma.pt/pesquisa?controller=search&orderby=position&orderway=desc&search_query=duende&tm_submit_search=
Yet, ironically, in order to heal, in order to let God, or that divine energy we call God, move through us, we actually have to let go, to soften our grip, and let life in. That’s when the creative flow and restoration returns. That’s when we feel the divine within us, and it is this very energy that holds us.
How ironic is it that we, as a world, have most recently been asked to slow down, or at least more than ever before? And why? So new life can come in? So God can come in? So we can come into balance after years of being so contracted and not feeling held in our rush to dominate and survive? And what is it that is possible now?
sick and dying, for those without the resources and friends to help them through this, for the emptiness we would feel, and for all of our lives forever altered. I sensed a kind of death, an end–for now–to all the running and running of this world. And inside this space, I felt we would need to look at ourselves, and reflect on what this crazy modern-living paradigm has been all about.
strongly. There wasn’t time for most people to check in, to see how I was, to have compassion for someone in a vulnerable place. And so, back then, 20 years ago, I stepped into my own cocoon, into my own aloneness, and reached out to God for answers that would help me walk again.
And it won’t. But, I discovered then, as I feel now, that the GRIEF, that energy below the fear, which I carried, was of having been on the treadmill of life far too long, and feeling an immense loss of soul and self from all of the going, going, going. And in this process of slowing down—whether then or now—there’s this immense grief of being with ourselves, of truly being with ourselves—with the pain, the nightmares, the stories our soul and body long to tell us, to guide us through, so we can come home again.
n the television, absorbed in his own world. And I was sitting there, not only in pain from having pulled a muscle, but from having flown this far south from my New Mexico home to be with my father, whose emotional absence in the other room only made me feel more alone.
be a girl, and later, what it means to be a woman, become extremely confusing.
Superbowl half-time. On one hand, these two women owned their sexuality and weren’t afraid to show this. I remember as a young woman how I had worked hard to “own” my own sexuality as a way of owning my own power (not waiting for someone to bring it out in me or to see and love me first). It was a way of owning my own body, or not being afraid to be a woman (and not to be in the shadow of my own insecurities). So, when these two women danced, I saw it as them owning their own sexuality, sensuality and aliveness. At the same time, did the fact that these two women danced in a sexual way take away from others seeing them in their talent and their greater soul essence?
e time. Back then, in the 1960s, he was denounced as an extremist, as so many of us are when our dreams threaten the current establishment. But Martin Luther King Jr. was undeterred and his dream inspired a movement toward equal rights and human dignity for all men and women.
ocent voice in a cynical world. 
we had as children, that immense wisdom that we once had that knows there’s a much better place than the one we’ve been born into? Why must we wait for people like Martin Luther King Jr. to lead us, or our younger generation today, like the Greta Thunbergs of the world, to tell us that we, as adults, are not doing enough and need to do more? 
ecome far too accustomed to.
) die in your arms and to carry her around with you everywhere you go because she has given you life. She is what reminds you everyday to cry, to give reverence for what was and is. She is the one who gives us humanity and allows us to deepen ourselves,” I reflected 20 years ago. “I needed to hear that silence between two breaths to look at her, to feel the sadness of this child, to forgive her for all her attempts at love, all her attempts at greatness, all the running that left her (and me) empty because she only knew how to live one way. Then, I needed to give her back to that place of vitality from which she grew, to give her an honorable death, to let go of these old ways.”
eath—of its weight, its story, its trauma—so we can make room for the next!
t movies, and walks above fallen leaves with my love.
around me. It’s in watching the sunset, in sharing my life with my love and partner, in many walks and moments with friends, in the laughter, play, and celebration of our lives together.
know what power or being in our power means. We come into the world needing food, water, love…all the basics…and we rely on those who raise us to provide these necessities so we can grow strong. Some of us are more fortunate than others. I see many of my students come from families who nourish them well, yet others struggle to grow in what seems like an asphalt of a childhood.
al connection to the earth. It cuts us off from source, like plants attempting to grow from above the ground.”
ue selves? How do we stop giving our power to others and stand inside ourselves with love?
Michelle Adam 