Once again, my plans (somewhat vague, I admit) to write on a topic have been bumped because something else took right over. And again—I’m learning to trust this process rather than feel as if I should discipline myself to stick to some previously decided upon game plan. As I look back over the journals I keep from my daily meditation, I notice that there’s one word that appears again and again, sometimes even accompanied by an image. The word is “flow,” and the image is usually of a river or a waterfall. My sense is that I am being encouraged to go with the flow—not out of some simplistic hey, why bother to get all excited over something kind of platitude—but because an underlying law governing life is being pointed out to me.

I will put myself out on a limb here so as to further explain myself—the limb being that I will be touching on something that may be regarded at best skeptically, and at worst, with concern for my well-being. As I believe I mentioned in the last post, part of my meditation sometimes involves asking for something, maybe just clarification of something, and then being open to receiving. So a little over a month ago, I wrote in my journal, “Why do I keep seeing water rushing down a river or going over a drop, like a wide waterfall, or a dam?” I immediately saw, heard?—it’s hard to explain the process—the following words: “It represents POWER—natural power derived from flow and momentum and gravity…natural forces. It is an image of the benefit of GOING WITH THE FLOW—of doing what you DESIRE to do—what your natural inclination is to do—rather than what you think you SHOULD be doing. It is in a way the opposite of what your society teaches, which is that the largest benefit comes from resistance to your deepest desires and using discipline to force yourself to do what you think you should do. You are learning to respect your desires as the way to fulfillment and JOY.” (Sorry for the CAPS—it’s how it came through..) You might ask who exactly is talking to me? Hah—well if I knew I’d certainly tell you, but all I can say is that whoever it is is much wiser and more patient than I am. And most importantly, there is an unfailingly loving energy underlying these communications, which is why I trust them.

I think one of the reasons I’ve been getting this message is that I’ve been struggling for way too long with whether or not to pursue what I went back to school (at considerable expense) to do. I am nagged by this feeling that I should do it because after all, look at the time and money and effort that went into pursuing the degree. I will elaborate that the degree was in counseling, which, by the way, I truly enjoy. Going back to school was just what I needed when I decided to do it, even though I’m sure others questioned my timing. The program I was in was such a rich, deeply satisfying opportunity to explore a field I’d long been interested in while at the same time—because of how it was designed—explore me. The problem is that after graduating, in order to obtain the full licensure that allows you to practice independently, there were still quite a few hoops to jump through (rightly so, as it’s good for the profession and for those who would avail themselves of its services.) Yet there were very compelling, practical reasons for me to hang on to the full-time job I’d had for years, leaving little time for hoop-jumping. I began to notice—one of the hoops being the ongoing continuing education units you’re required to rack up—that whenever I sat through a day of one of those seminars I started feeling detached and as if I was in a strange land—rather than having the sense of being comfortable and at ease that makes you feel that you’re on the right path.

And then the few forays I’ve made into possible counseling opportunities where I might begin to accumulate the incredible number of hours needed for the permanent license (another hoop) have not given me the feeling that I’m in the right place either. Do you know the feeling I’m talking about? When you have the sinking feeling in your gut that tells you to get up and leave while you’re sitting in the waiting room because of what you’ve been observing of the atmosphere of the place and the people who work there? So for the longest time, I’ve had this big pile of folders and notebooks from school sitting in a corner of my bedroom where I put them after finally dragging them out of my closet, presumably to go through so as to be able to finally come to a decision. I just know that the chi trying to move around the room gets to this symbolic blockage in my life and comes to a complete halt, where it then stagnates.

Oh, wow—I realize that this would be a good place to tell my “plate story,” which I’ve been wanting to tell for a while now but didn’t want to just randomly include somewhere. The story goes like this. One morning while meditating I felt this frustration and weariness with my indecision regarding the “to counsel or not to counsel” business. So this idea came to me of pretending that there were small plates arranged before me, and on each was a possible idea I could pursue that might at least at some point lead to a way of making a living. On one plate was simply staying at my current job; on another was “art consulting,” an idea I’d started to pursue years before and even now believe I could do successfully; on a third was “counseling,” and on the last was “writing.” The one rule of the little exercise was that I had to pick just one plate—which was not to say that it was a forever irrevocable decision. The point was that a decision had to be made, which then would allow me to focus. Of course, I had built up the momentousness of the decision in my mind to the point of paralysis. And then a thought came to me. Which one of those possibilities, if not pursued, would I most regret—feel as if I had somehow betrayed myself—at the end of my life? That made the choice clear and simple, because putting it that way took it out of the realm of more practical considerations like likelihood of money to be made, possibility of failure, etc. It became a soul-level decision, as in which was most me. And so I picked the writing plate, one of the results of which is this blog (although the counseling plate still pulls on me at times—thus the pile in the corner of my room.)

Over and over I have received this message in some form or another, that our desires, our longings, need to be paid attention to, rather than dismissed. And when we allow ourselves to go WITH those longings, rather than resist them, there’s a feeling of being in the zone. There’s an ease that comes with it—you’re not paddling upstream against the current. This is not to say that we should go with every impulse, every whim, every easy way out, or that going with your longings will not upset the apple cart at times. You may have a deeply held, longstanding desire to be a great musician, but along the way have impulses of not wanting to practice, or even to quit when it’s particularly challenging, for example. Or maybe you were expected to take over the running of the family widget factory but instead you heeded your soul’s call to pursue your oboe playing. There are times when, seemingly paradoxically, discipline is needed to satisfy a deep longing. When I was younger, I had such a longing for the experience of having children and raising them very consciously—it’s hard to explain, but I could really feel how it would be to do this. I could see myself doing it and doing it well and finding great satisfaction in it. And actually, I have had that experience, and it has been what I thought it would be—absolutely joyful, even though there were times when I really needed to learn and grow along the way.

As I’m reading over this, I realize that this post, at least on the surface, may seem to contradict the last one, in which I spoke of finally captaining my little sailboat after floating for too long and choosing a direction in which to sail based on what my goals are. But this post is about the underlying process of choosing your goal and therefore the direction in which you will be sailing, and the idea that you will do well to take advantage of the winds and the currents—for the purpose of our metaphor, your heartfelt desires—and to go with rather than against them. I’m sure there are many who would respond that everyone just “going with the flow” would result in a chaotic world without order. Kind of like the classic image of a sour schoolmarm with a pinched face after years of being stuck in a miserable classroom responding, “Hmph! Yes, well, and what kind of world do you think we would have if we all just up and followed our heart’s desires?!” Perhaps a very nice world, I’m thinking…