Fred in the kitty pen; happy no matter where he is.
I’m leaving tomorrow morning for my big adventure, so I wanted to touch base with you all this evening. I’ll post at least a few times from the road but I’m not sure when. After I hung up the phone with my brother on Saturday, I kept thinking, “Am I really doing this? Can I really do this?” There was a part of me that felt I couldn’t just leave home for 10 days without much of a plan. Yet a deeper part said, “Go. This is right.”
All day Sunday, and even into Monday, I found myself preoccupied with details; packing and wondering what the weather would be like, if I had the right combination of warm and cool clothing, shoes, toiletries, books, cds, and journal, and I could feel my energy almost buzzing around me, a little out of control. This happens when I forget who I am.
Lately, I’ve become much more aware of myself not just as Mary Muncil. I’ve started feeling beyond my body, beyond planning my life around my bodily/emotional needs (what I’ll eat, where I’ll eat, how much sleep I need, which vitamins to take, what clothing I prefer, what social contacts I need to keep up, what I need to do to earn my livelihood). Don’t get me wrong, I am delighted to be experiencing life now, in this temporary home called a body, through this mind, but I am also so aware that too much focus here (on the material plane of existence) feels small. I love comfort, good food, good books, rest and play, friends and solitude and appreciate them fully when I keep myself centered on the larger part of me; the part that knows no time or space, no good or bad, right or wrong, no me and them,.. The part that is not apart at all.
I am increasingly interested in the qualities of Life that I want to both feel and to manifest, the Divine Qualities, and less in the “particulars”. I ask myself on a regular basis how I’m, in the moment, demonstrating and living the essence of who I really am (who we all are); God Consciousness, becoming aware of Itself through us, and shining out as happiness, peace, harmony, good-will towards all, helpfulness, gratitude, fun, expansion, acceptance, open-heartedness, love….
These are the qualities that will make this trip meaningful….these are the only “things” that I really need to take along.
“The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him, that moment I am free from bondage. Everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.” Swami Vivekananda
