by Ronda LaRue, M.S.
Feature Article Extracted from the Spring 2008 Issue of SoulArtsReflections
I don’t know about where you live, but here in Ojai, Spring has sprung!
This might sound surprising (even ridiculous) to those of you in the northeast and other cold climates of the world, but we DO have a spring here; not much of a winter, but enough to stir the senses awake and jostle that wonderful springtime feeling of renewed hope and radical aliveness.As I type these words, I am looking out through the little stream at my entranceway and into a symphony of new bloom on this artisan sanctuary I am blessed to call home, and that has become a sanctuary for renewal and inspiration to those called to private retreat with me. I see plum and cherry and apricot blossom; the proud flock of bright bird of paradise stems poking out from a bush as many years in the soil as I’ve been walking on it; oh, and the very first signs of Easter Lilly lifting its white tips up through the still cool morning mist.
What a welcomed surprise I find each year; that first day, when spring startles me by jumping into my heart, showing me (yet again) what has sprung from the sluggish dark grave of winter. Truly, all of life, and each one of us, is called to make a sacred springtime pilgrimage to witness and to take part in the resurrection of that which seeks to rise up from a dark rich soil of death and decay.…Who can look on these fabulous fragrant signs of renewal and not wonder at one’s own call to the natural rhythms of life, and to this one that so gloriously pops out from ground and gloom in such a wild display of glory!?
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Most of you know that I work deeply with individuals one-on-one at my private artisan home, called Ojai Soul Arts, and through private e-mentoring programs by email and over the phone. My life work is dedicated to helping a person find and live according to his or her own inner guidance, spiritual wisdom and unique genius. I teach people how to tend their own path to God, to peace, to inner understanding and creative renewal. I call this process of inner self-discovery and spiritual living, The Soul Arts of Being YOU!
We, as a culture, are so hectic and caught up in our minds and our chores that we are nearly starved and all but bankrupt of soul and art and peace. There is a yearning for inner wellbeing and spiritual self-knowledge that is palpable: you can hear it in the mid-life crisis, the compulsive consumerism, the pandemic anti-depressant use, the lyrics of our popular songs.
I receive numerous emails a month from people longing to know how to find peace, happiness, purpose; how to tap into their inner guidance and spiritual wisdom. How did we get this far away from our own inner wellspring of wisdom and wellbeing?
Many of the emails I receive are from people who have become dismayed by the externalized and often hypocritical dogma of traditional religion, the endless looping of psychotherapy, the fad books full of ”expert how to” promises and new age practices. I receive emails from people who are tired and who know that something essential is missing from their lives but don’t have any idea what it is …or how to regain it; I receive many hopeful emails from people who sense that the answers they seek must come from within themselves, that they somehow hold the key, but cannot find where it has been misplaced or how to use it …that is, if they can still find the right door!
I ask you, what has happened? What do you see when you look inside and outside yourself and contemplate this question?
Why have we become so depressedly stuck “not knowing” who we are, or what to do about this or that in our lives, or how to find meaning and purpose in our world? Very simply, as I see into it, it’s because we’ve lost touch with the very nature of nature! We have lost touch with how life actually works. We’ve lost touch with what the nature of life truly requires and asks of us if we are to know our selves and live a life of meaningful communion and connection.
We’ve become so disengaged from our own natures and so hypnotized to seek answers outside of ourselves that we’ve lost our inner sonar, and along with it, our innate confidence for what it means to lead a good life of character and suffering and renewal and love. We try practices, meditation techniques, how to books, but something is still missing inside…What is missing inside? What word can you give it? (See what you notice when you look…)
We can blame society; our culture; the workforce; responsibilities of home and finance in this high-tech fast-paced culture of ours …but fact is (when you really look) we have created, and continue to create, these imprisoning conditions moment-by-moment through what we give ourselves to.***
If I were to try and pinpoint the one key kingpin that stands in the way of the peace and purpose and harmony that people seek, it is this:We have become trapped in a circular fixation by the fear-driven thinker-mind …and then we go about trying to use this very thing that has separated us from our true nature to try and restore that nature! …Can’t happen; fundamentally wrong tool and mistaken method. We’ve become so aligned and attentive to our rational thought as the only way through life’s hurtles and questions and puzzles, that we don’t even realize what inner essence has been denied and lost in the process.
We’ve lost the roundness of life and the integral wholeness expressed in nature’s ways. And as a result, we’ve become like myopic surgeons cutting away at this to try and fix a diseased that from our fragmented lives. We’ve become microscopic in the detailed survey of our lives minutia and as a result have lost the larger storyline and gracious perspective of our own mysterious artistry in the works.
In the private one-one-one apprenticeships that I often call “The Art of Being You”, I merely facilitate an experiential discovery of how to move through the circular gatekeepers of the thinking-calculating-mind, and into the enchanting and mysterious gardens of the soul. In the gardens of the soul, one quickly realizes a way of tending one’s own estate that is outrageously more natural and real and spunky and “right on” than the linear problem-solving mindset of “rational thought” (which is the tool most of us almost exclusively use when trying to fix and solve life’s problems and questions).
In each of the people I have been honored to work with, the answers sought have been revealed through a very simple process of re-engaging with their own nature and reclaiming their own inner knowing through a creatively playful commitment of self-discovery. It’s all about stepping outside of the confusing prison walls of the rational mind (with all its well-rationalized fears, anxieties, “what if’s” and paralyzing riddles) and creatively courting the frontier of one’s aliveness.
Here at the frontier of one’s aliveness and in the natural forces of life, there is immediate access to the language of soul, the provocation of inner wisdom, and the wellspring of one’s own unique genius. As I said before, this is the kingpin: When the rational mind is removed from the way, the Way is simply and splendidly present!
For those of you right now, finding yourselves trying to “get” what I’m saying through your thinking mind …look if you will, from an expansive inner “regarding”, and see what you notice when you ask: “What is thought? Where does it come from? What is its genesis?”...
Rational thought is a protective coating that we overlay onto life in order to try and find and fix ourselves to a place in time and space …It comes “after the fact” as an attempt to create position, identity, security…place. Nothing wrong with these functions of thought …except when you are trying to find your true nature and hoping to break free into a living love affair with life, then these constellated thought forms become that which blocks the very thing you seek.
We try and try to marshal and use our thoughts to help us figure out our direction and our purpose. Problem with this strategy is, thoughts are not at the frontier of what is alive so they can’t be “the finder”. (Think of President Bush: “I’m the decider” ..ha! our minds are like that!)
We’re so stuck in the rational scientific paradigm and (relatively infantile) historical context of today’s cultural perspective, that we don’t even understand that there exists another more intelligent “language of soul”… (Ehh?)
That’s because what is being said here can’t be understood through the mindset of rationalism. Aliveness offers a far richer and deeper form of intelligence than that of the rational mind and so it cannot be understood until it is directly, deeply, viscerally experienced. Experience brings you back into your life. It is the portal to your wisdom, your peace, your balance …and your genius. Anything thought about and not directly experienced, is already a few steps removed from the immediate genesis and clear intelligence of aliveness.
Aliveness happens.
Thoughts come after the aliveness to interpret what already happened …but it does so in the only way available to it: through the lens of past experience, belief systems and conditioning.
… And then we wonder what has happened to wonder…
Thought is meant to support the courageous movements of living with little moments-of-light that fix consciousness in time and space for a moment and then let go again into the vast unknown movement of creation as it evolves …a breath and a pause; another breath and a pause. We run into depression, confusion and paralysis because we have shunned true radical aliveness and artistry for a canned replica that is merely fabricated out of the ruminants of what was once living and since moved on. …We hold our breath and forget we are the breathing!
Thought has its right time and place, but, as I say in my work with clients, its time and place is not in the areas of solving The Big Life Questions: “who am I, what am I here for, what is my special genius in the world, how do I mine the gold of my life, what is my purpose, how should I be with the people in my life”. These big questions (and their many secondary offshoots: “should I move, or marry, or quit, or stay”, etc.) can only be truly answered through learning the special language of soul and the living artistry of an engaged relationship with life.
Most people look at me askew when I first tell them that their way of thinking IS the problem standing in the way of the answers they seek. But it’s true. Rationalism has become our false god. We have mistaken that which is supposed to stand in support of our creative artistry and radical aliveness, for “the thing” itself. We’ve got it “bass ackward!” The thinking-mind is not meant to be seated as master of your life, it is meant to be a servant to your true authority of being.
What is your true authority?
… Reflect on this springtime quest:
What really “authors” life? How does life “author” itself? Look around at nature and see.
Consciousness is authored and has its actual genesis from something way beyond and before the overlay of thought. In fact, your true authority springs up before thought can even rise to think itself here. It’s one step late. The “it” already was… Thought’s job is to serve your true authority by helping to temporarily give it form.
Rational-mind-thinking belongs as an organizational servant to the greater alive forms of intelligence which ride on the waves of the living: inquiry, inspiration, intuition, revelation, creativity. These are the voices of soul… and this is where your life is. Inquiry, inspiration, intuition, revelation, and creativity exist at the very frontier of living.
What I have found after a lifetime of attachment to the intellect, trying to “understand” with the mind, reading literally thousands of books…and then finally, falling into the Grace of a vibrant relationship and attention to life, is this:
To answer life’s questions, to find your own truth and way, and to be at peace with your life, is an artistry that must be tended, not a question that can be solved.
Heck: Life, I mean real living, demands being alive! Sounds obvious, but crimany, that’s the part most of us are missing! We seek and cry out and slip into dark despair because we are actually looking in the wrong way, with the wrong tool, and then missing the gift that is forever right here, springing forth, in the garden of soul that ever surrounds us.
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To be really alive, means learning how to cultivate a very active listening engagement with Life itself. We ask (and we ask and we ask…) but we don’t really understand how to actively engage in a responsive listening. We quest and work out new life directions, but miss the essential secret of life’s actual alchemy at play…
True listening is entering into a whole new level of relationship with your life, one that is not merely seeking a useful insight. True listening is learning the art of being engaged in your life as an ongoing relationship and journey toward greater wholeness expressed through your unique genius. Everything you seek at the core of your longing for inner peace, true happiness, abiding love, and dedication of purpose, resides in how well you are able to actively engage in responsive listening.
True listening requires an immense awareness of self in relation to what is here now in your life. In the Zen tradition, it is said that the master can only truly hear the seeker’s heart when he is so deeply listening within himself that all else is cleared of the path. I find this utterly true in working with my clients. It takes a great awareness of self and surrounding to not miss a slightest whispering from the other’s heart…
To live in the frontier of your life, where the voice of soul leads the way through life’s “big questions”, you must in fact become the listening.
What do I mean by “becoming the listening”? What I mean is this: To actually hear the voice of soul, to sort out your life questions and to find and live your heart’s deepest longing for harmony and peace, requires that you learn the art of being intimately engaged and responsive in the truth of where you are right now with life: all of it, “the good, the bad and the ugly”.
To find the answers to the life you seek requires more than asking and seeking and meditating and discovering… It means pouring yourself into (giving yourself over to) each step of the way along the artful processes of your life’s quest.
Some call this ceremony; some, practicing the power of now; others, sacred attention; presence; a meditative quiet mind. These are all a bit amorphous and often misconstrued I feel. It’s really very simple: Ask a question of life… and then engage the question with your very life and by means of creative (reverently playful) exploration and honoring acts that show your listening/responsive dedication. In other words, become an artist of your life and step into your quest as if you were entering into a relationship with a lover (which you are!)
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What does it mean to be an artist of your life? Here’s a good way of seeing what I am pointing toward:
How would you go about your life if, instead of struggling to find solutions to the various problems and confusions, you entered into a conscious relationship and honoring rapport with the questions themselves, just as the artist picks up and uses the materials of his art? What if “the materials of your life” – all of them, “the good, the bad and the ugly” were curiously picked up and honored in a process of creating from them a work of art that reflects your closest truth and your soul’s deepest longing at that moment?
Here’s a little “side key”: We don’t gain wisdom and peace by mastering “the law of attraction”. That application is still a control mechanism motivated by want or need. The Law of Attraction is not any big secret, but rather just a small part of the evolution toward inner responsibility.
We gain true wisdom and peace by consciously coming into the artistry of our living; by choosing the courageous call to character and weaving our storyline in a pattern that reflects our greatest offering of self within each moment.
We don’t find ultimate peace by manipulating our lives to suit a particular desired goal, but by falling into a love affair with life itself… and offering ourselves to that union with all our heart.
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Here’s a closing contemplative zinger:
It’s not life’s job to make us whole, solve our problems, make our way clear. It is our responsibility to Life to offer back the whole of ourselves to its evolutionary creative impulse.
It’s an amazing relief: When we find and face and offer our humility – when we meet the truth of who we are right here, right now, and offer it up to Life with self-proclaimed authenticity, we have just reflected our true Divinity! Our humility and our humanity, when it is consciously honored as an offering to our love affair with life, is the expression of our innate wholeness, our unique genius, and our reflection of Life’s very Divinity.
When we give ourselves to life in that way, everything is an act of worship and a playful genius, delighting in the lovemaking. When we learn to tend the garden of soul and express our life as a work of art, the old dark questions cease. And in their place springs love. …How’s that for resurrection!?
It is springtime! May you dive into the wellspring of your heart’s deep pools of longing and there see through the eyes of one who gives everything to Life, and so receives All...
Blessings of Spring!
Ronda LaRue
http://www.rondalarue.com
htttp://www.OjaiSoulArts.com