Wednesday, April 20, 2011

On being...a Renunciate

...You may find yourself living in a beautiful house
With a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself,
"Well, how did I get here?"
(Talking Heads, "Once in a Lifetime")

That's the question I've been asking myself as of late - Well, how did I get HERE?
It has taken my review of my Taoism books to make some blessed sense of the frequency I'm inhabiting these days. For a bit over a year, I've been all but unemployed...and truth be told, not terribly inspired to look really hard for a new job. I've been wanting to cultivate/co-create my own source of steady income - merging my Work with my work - and have precious little manifested for myself!

(Now, before I go further, absolutely no worries, all right? I'm not two steps away from homlessness. Financially, I'm okay. Promise.)

I found the word that fits me these days in one of my Taoist books: renunciate. Double-checking with ye olde dictionary, I confirmed its fit: one who has renounced (given up, disowned) something. Well, yes, I've given up quite a few things that used to inhabit my life, including sugar, gluten, dairy (most of the time, except for some occasional cheese), televised news, and most shows that pass for "entertainment" these days. Outside of sports programs, I don't watch a lot of TV anymore, in truth. I would also say I've disowned the apocalyptic, fatalistic, and "poor-me-I'm-such-a-victim" mindsets - more importantly, I don't have room for these mindsets in my life. With my sensitivities to energetic ebbs and flows seemingly increased a thousand-fold, my BS Meter is set off pretty easily...and it doesn't take a whole lot TO set it off these days! "Nope, don't have the time for you in my reality. Toodles!"

When I left my muggle job at the answering service last year, I didn't intend not to work again (hardly) at all. I didn't desire to cut myself all but entirely out of the ebb and flow of the collective Agreement we call "Civilization" - yet this is the place where I've wound up, bobbing nearly solitarily in a pond I've never seen before and not entirely sure in which direction to swim to find other bobbers. Maybe I really don't want to move about at all!

This is where my faith comes in...Grand Movements are afoot. Though I can't see them, and I don't really know (if I'm completely honest with myself) exactly where I'm going, I know I'm on my way to an Awesome Destination. Most of the time, I'm actually enjoying the journey - and in truth, it's not like I've just been twiddling my thumbs and waiting for special dispensation from the Pope. I have been uber-busy, but most of the work has been internal. Now and again, though, I wonder, Well, how did I get here, and what's going to happen next?

In this, I'm no different from anyone else in not knowing THE answer...so I'll just keep ambling along until the sun rises and shows me the rest of the path that my feet are following. :-)

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