Years ago my life was in total turmoil. My business was being sued erroneously. My home life was chaotic with 4 teenage stepdaughters. My husband was suffering depression. I was in the depths of food addiction, while also reading spiritual books, sometimes 5 per week.
Peace was desperately wanted as I was in fear of an emotional breakdown, which kind of actually happened.
On a lovely day I thought I was ok as I sat alone at a fast food restaurant and looked out the window taking my time. Then suddenly, a man appeared at my table and knelt down beside me and asked if I was OK. “Yes” I answered, “Why do you ask?” He told me that I had been speaking out loud as if to someone invisible across my booth. “You were angry” he said. I thanked him and said I would not speak anymore. Sitting there in shock as I had no memory of speaking out loud to anyone, I resolved to seek help.
A kind spiritually-inclined psychologist told me to begin a meditation practice and advised me to seek more solitude. I began getting up very early in the mornings to walk for an hour on a lovely wooded path near our home. I took a paragraph-long passage from a meditation book to repeat during the walk. I memorized it.
The passage was repeated over and over as I walked for an hour. After a couple weeks of walking, I realized the affirmation had become just rote repetition. I also realized the walks were helping me – just being alone was helpful; but I was still in turmoil. I decided to repeat the affirmations much more slowly thinking this would calm down my mind.
Then one day a voice came into my head with these words: “Listen to ME”! I stopped walking and just stood there in surprise. I knew who this “ME” was – the voice of the higher self- the self that is one with all and Source. I stopped repeating the passage and became still and listened. I heard no more voices on my walks; instead, I found myself looking out at the trees, the sky, the rocks, the path.
After a while the wind was felt on my face, the heat in summer, the coolness in autumn. I felt my feet touch the little rocks on the path and felt my muscles working.
There was a connection especially with the trees. A very old scraggly tree I named Elder, and a young one, a baby tree not much higher than me, was Alice because she lived in a wonderland. I named others too and they became friends. I was gradually, for just an hour each day, becoming again the mystical child who loved nature, especially trees. Like then, I now greeted them by name each day. And each day, they would teach me how to BE.
Over time my mind became more at peace even off the walk. Healing was taking place as the days and weeks passed. I found myself more in the present moment as I watched the peacefulness of trees, the way they lived and accepted everything, the graceful stillness they maintained while being buffeted by wind, or burdened by snow. Whether green and full, or grey and barren, they remained themselves.
I walked almost every day along this path for almost 3 years. It became my favorite time of day. There were no more emotional breakdowns. Life was still hard and there would be much more turmoil and drama in my life – much more! But I was slowly learning how to go within and heed the message: “Listen to ME!”
I look back now on that young woman struggling for peace and trying to catch bits of wisdom, trying to find answers to every little why? appearing in mind every minute. Now I can sometimes see a light beyond that lights up the past and makes it all ok.
I look now upon a child, a woman, a soul.
Which one is me? Or, am I simply a spy,
a being already whole watching
experiences of soul, woman, child,
a movie screen, a wonderland of things
where dreams are cast and sometimes fly
to become a part of this everything? But why?
And who is the dreamer? What is this dream?
And for peace, where do I go?
Ah! Listen to ME.
I will show you a place
of no questions and no dreams,
a place beyond time and space
a place of only ME.
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A very lovely, sad happy hard and blissful read.
Thank you for it.
All there is to know is always within each of us. Just the choice to stay still and listen can take us there💞