A Year of Magic - part 2 Saying YES!

                   I’m not sure where I’m going. I’ll lead!
                                          - Emmanuelle Heyman

The Call
I’ve definitely done some things that many people would call courageous, and I am also terrified to do some things that other people wouldn’t blink at. Even though I didn’t know two months before I left that I was about to change my whole life, I’m actually not all that impulsive, or even spontaneous. What I have learned over time, however, is that I have a “still small voice”, as they say, and it lets me know when to say yes to something that has presented itself, even though it’s missing most of the details.  As it turns out, it’s kind of a quiet, background voice rather than the loud, commanding, accompanied-by-celestial-trumpets (or a hammer-over-the head) type messenger that I thought would be required in order for me to know for sure that I should pay attention, that it really was my wise, inner guidance.

I don’t know about you but I have been seeking this voice for a long time. I want to be internally guided, by a higher authority/self/whatever-name-you-want-to-assign-it that I know I can absolutely trust, that has my best and highest interests in mind. Not by my ego-ic self, which I find is quite unreliable and causes suffering. I knew that voice was there but didn’t know how to access it. Well, be careful what you ask for.

Meeting the Voice
The first time I became acquainted with this voice was when I was at a workshop with Russill Paul (who became one of my beloved teachers). The group gathered for a pot luck on Saturday night, we introduced ourselves and shared how we got to be at the workshop. The wife of the host said that she had recently done a pilgrimage to India with Russill. She described it as gritty and deeply spiritual (I love opposites when they have an “and” in the middle) and said, “If you have $5, just put it down toward the trip. Don’t worry about how the rest will happen. Just do it. You won’t be sorry.” Or something to that effect. Her comment wasn’t any big deal. Except that throughout the evening, and all the next morning, it would not leave my head. It just kept being there, and then began to evolve, something like this:

Hmmm, I wonder what it would be like to go to India with Russill. Wow, India, I hadn’t really thought about going there seriously before. Hmmm, still thinking about it.  Hmmm, still thinking about it, that’s interesting. Maybe I’d better ask him a question or two during the break cause, you know, I don’t really do the group travel thing…. Hmmm I kinda feel like I might want to do this…wow, really?   Okay, I think I might do this. Where are the trumpets/hammer, so I can be sure? Okay I think I’m going to do this. Okay, I’m going to India. What????

My whole life changed as a result of listening to this small voice that weekend. And even better, that guidance became conscious. I learned to recognize when a thought would lodge itself in the back of my head and take up permanent residence until I realized it and did something about it. (This is a quiet voice, however, so I can only hear it if I tone down the thinking mind and make a little space for it)

Back to California. So last summer my now-tenants posted on our community forum that they were looking for a place to live. They described in detail what they were looking for and it so perfectly matched my home that I felt compelled to answer. This was actually the original Yes. Can you imagine? Hi, I see you are looking for …… Well, I’m pretty sure I have what you’re looking for, although I don’t really have any plans to vacate. Wanna see it?

Bless their hearts, they said yes, all potential obstacles seemed to just disappear, one by one, and I thought, well maybe, just maybe, there’s an opportunity here. Maybe I can go to California - something that had been a dream for a decade, although most assuredly on the back-est of the back burners at that particular moment. (the universe, as we know, has its own unique timing). So we left it that they would keep looking for a house and I would see if I could figure out the California side, i.e., where I would/could live, etc.

Enter the still, small voice. Although I began to do my due diligence - putting out feelers, connecting with people I had met out there, asking everyone I knew what they knew about CA, where they’d been, what they liked, who they knew - within a week (probably less) I knew I was going, no matter what. I then gave it another week, even though I had already recognized the "voice". A major clue for me was that I was very energized, I felt way more excitement than fear. I actually didn’t really feel fear, just awareness of what I was apparently being invited to do, and how big it was.

So I simply said OK. Honestly, that was it. I said, I trust you. OK. I'm doing this. I called and said the house is yours if you want it. My tenant wondered where I had found/decided to live. I said I didn’t know, I just knew that I was going. (of course, that caused some undue concern over whether I would end up back here wanting my house back but that simply wasn’t an option for me.) No plan, no real idea of where I wanted to be, except that it wasn’t going to be inland, and I wasn’t going to room with 4 people. Way over that. How? Well, that's always the kicker, isn't it. If there is one thing I have learned over the past decade or two, in my own life and that of my clients, is that the how doesn't determine the what. It impedes it. If we pay attention to the what, and the why, the how flows from there. And that's how it should be.....but not what most of us learned.

So this turned out to be a huge experiment/experience of manifestation which I’ll talk about in the next installment. Meanwhile this voice, this knowing, sustained me throughout not only the trials of negotiating a lease and packing up the house, but the entire two and a half months before I landed here, where I am now. I never once lost that energized feeling, that excitement. On the contrary, it grew every day, building my belief and trust, until I felt so full, and so alive I couldn’t imagine what had taken me so long!

I pay attention now.