September 11: The Soul Knows the Way

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.

SLOW DOWN AND LISTEN TO THE SOUL

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= 

44. Giving Thanks to Divine Unity

BLOG 44: November 24, 1989—It was Thanksgiving, but 18 years ago, at my parent’s house in New Jersey. My days and nights were filled with dreams, wide-open dreams and experiences that revealed the magical possibility of our humanity inside a deep purging.   

My body—in its pain and opening—had become a vessel through which ancients truths could emerge and awaken. I was in bed, unable to fall asleep on Thanksgiving night because my body was speaking to me. I could feel intensely that my reality was a memory of shapes that move, shift, and change like reality shifts into dreams and dreams into everyday reality. I had never experienced this before…that all was malleable, that everything was fluid, that the physical and emotional were all the same…that we are a kind of liquid of sorts, and that if we could see that, we could experience the potential of magic.

During those days, I had also been reading a book by Lynn Andrews, and it prompted me to dream about and reflect on a character in her booked named Agnus, who carried a “marriage basket.” In my dreams, she represented the Virgin Mary, and the marriage basket was the “Holy Grail”, the child within her that is the “Unity of All Things.” Mary gave birth to Jesus, but more symbolically, as all women do, she gave birth to the feminine and masculine within herself. In doing so she created a child that was in the image of God, and she, in essence, through giving birth, became, the unity of all things.

Those days 18 years ago offered some deep reflections that, in this simple blog, may be hard to fully express. But what I saw then, and I see now, as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving—a holiday first shared between native Americans and North European settlers who gave thanks to the native people for showing them how to grow and harvest corn and other crops to survive in new lands—is that we are so much more than the extreme masculine energy of competition and winning, and the extreme feminine energies of pity and plight, and that it is time for us to give birth to the magic child within us, the unity of all things.

In the past months, so many of us have felt the fear, pain, and horror, of change as the extreme masculine has reared its ugly face during the elections and at Standing Rock (where thousands of native people and supporters are fighting to protect the waters, as they are brutally attacked and their graves and that which they hold scared are desecrated). We have also seen people speaking up with more courage and heart than ever before to protect each other and the earth.

And now, as we all come together with loved ones during Thanksgiving, and we give thanks for that which has blessed us, it may also be a time to plant a seed for the spring—a seed that gives birth the unity of all things. Maybe this time of upheaval is a chance for us to look at the separation we have been living—the extreme masculine and feminine energies we have been carrying—and to give birth to the divine unity that we all are. Maybe we are being pushed to see who we truly are: fluid, divine beings with malleable colors and shapes that we can creatively rearrange to create a beautiful painting and landscape we can all celebrate.     

*My recently-published novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, is a story of coming home to this divine unity. Check it out on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Child-Duende-Journey-Michelle-Adam/dp/099724710X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474233011&sr=8-1&keywords=child+of+duende  or at www.michelleadam.net