Day 37: The Soul's Drama

It’s a reflective, frustrating time. It’s hard to be patient as I return back into my solitary room, waiting for another week to pass before I can hopefully get out of the wheelchair, climb down the stairs, and begin my life ‘at home’ again.

The courtyard garden entices me to wander without getting my wheels stuck in the sand. I spent a lot of time planting these gardens. Now, I am invited to sit and enjoy them. It’s not an easy invitation. There’s a lot that needs to be done. I’d rather get my hands in the dirt and work. I want to play in the garden.

REST is a complicated word to experience – especially for someone who has lived much of her life as a worker bee.

I’m reminded of the deep spiritual promise I received in those difficult first days in the hospital:

So what is a ‘soul story’?

How do we know the difference between the human story of day-to-day life happenings, and living in the liminal space between our actions and thoughts in order to glimpse the bigger cosmic picture of who we are and how we uniquely are connected in community and called to live on this painfully messy and beautiful planet?

I see it as both big picture/imaginal thinking and mindful presence to attunement in each moment. It’s about getting out of our monkey minds and practicing embodied experience as a way of life.

For me, active gardening has been a ‘way in’ to soul story, into earth story. I’ve written a lot about how nature brought me home to my true self. It’s quite shocking then to be invited through this cataclysmic near-death experience in order to be cracked even more deeply open.

It’s clear I’m being invited to live my elder soul story from an entirely fresh perspective. That’s my journey now. This uninvited outside drama of ‘car crashing into pedestrian’ is gardening me, teaching me to slow down even more and REST. Awakening into an even greater adventure of life and learning to garden and be gardened in the flow of the moment.

“The soul needs an outer drama that can help awaken the inner myth that it carries and the original agreement it made before descending to earth. Throughout the course of life, the soul will create impossible dramas and persistent dilemmas in order to crack open the shell of the little-self and reveal the living seed, the original agreement, it carries within. The soul’s great adventure becomes the focus of the arc of return, which shifts our attention from the outer world to the deep self and soul within.”

Michael Meade

When you consider your soul story – what comes to mind? Any images? Connections? Ways of being that are beyond how you usually show up in the world?

What outer drama has captivated you – is overwhelming you today? How might this be a call into cracking open your everyday shell and revealing the living seed of your being?

Back: Day 35

Next: Day 39