A seekers path...

I open the door to the old church and expected to feel the relieving chill contained inside the stonebuilding. The mid-day sun, combined with the heavy humidity, as if it were to rain again, were almost unbarable. Even my palms were sweeting and my feet burned were the skin due to the sweat were in constant friction against my teva sandals. All morning I had listened to a lecture by an AidGroup, trying to explain why the best for the native people is not to be fed free food and taken care of, but told how to read and write. As long as the major part of the population is uneducated, it´s easy for the government to get their will through by bribes and coca-cola promises. All through the speach I listened carefully, but with a sick feeling in my pit, cause there I was, searching for my soul while traversing the country as a European trader and the obvious truth had a foul tast to it. Afterwards I turned down the tea-request and skidded off to find some remote place were I could gather my thoughts. The old church had a nice glow around it, even from a distance, yet simple and derelict. I was surpriced to find, as I walked trough the doors, that the front part of the roof had bin removed so that the insides almost looked like an atrium right above the altar. Letting the sun fall down beatuifully on the stonealtar and the place were the altarpieace used to hang and Magnolia had taken over. There were no chill, no ordinary feeling following when entering a church. This place were like a hidden gateway to other realms, lost in time and well kept from reality. It felt like entering the gates to Narnia or Shambala perhaps. There were no remaining benches and so I sat down in the grass, facing the magnific Magnolia and the sunlit altar. I felt sad. In my mind I noticed thoughts and memories comming back that I had left behind as I left the airport and my everyday life back home. Thoughts of value, destiny, purpose and the future path of mine. Throughout my life I had bin at constant move from one path to the other, no matter in what area. Changing field of profession, education or situation within only months sometimes. Never staying, never satisfied. Surely it made me flexible and experienced in many fields and areas, but I always longed for finding the One Mission of my life and as long as I did not, I always mourned meanwhile laughing no matter what I did. Silently I cried out to God.

"Why is it so hard for me to find the right thing to do? Why do I have to run around like this, searching, trying, failing, flieing.... No matter what I do there is always the feeling of incompleatness, always some area uncovered that I rather fill. If I do this, I long for that, and when I do that, I long for this! Why does it have to be like that?! GOD!? How can I come to term with the different aspects of me, so that they can work alongside and as a unity as I assert myself in the world?
The answer poped into my head when my own thoughts had cried out like that long enough and mind seamed to need a pause. When there was a gap where God got a chance to break in.
Is that the right question?
I was surpriced by the counterquestion.
"I don´t know."
Then ask yourself what is the right question.
"Uhm,...okay.... What question do I look for answers to at this time?"
What questions do you have?
"Well, lots! But I might not want to ask them out loud, I guess, even to myself, because it feels rather childish and stupid..."
Why, my child....?
Noticing the irony in this, I laughed out loud.
"Yea, okay, point well made.... I guess I do not want to start a new project. Im tired of starting over... Tired of the constant challange. "
So, what are your questions?
"Well, I guess my question is what the right thing is, for me to do. I would like, no, I need to know how I can find a vocation that really fits me as a person? What job is fullfilling both in creative and spiritual ways? It feels like I´m trying and trying, searching and searching.... I do not want to spend all of my life like this! I need your help!"
Is there a need to find this job or is there a job that needs it to find you...?
"Is there a job that needs me!?"
Off course there is.
"Then how can I find the way to it?"
By opening up to the fact that you are, indeed, needed. By acually letting me help you.
"But, I were never needed... by anyone... I am not used to thinking like that...."
Is that true?
"Yes...To me it is..."
Then what happens if you do not believe in it anymore?

"But this is what I have lived to believe. What others have proved to me. No one has ever needed me."
What if I need you?
You! Why whould you need me?
I need everyone, all pieces of creation I need, or else the creation would not be whole.
"So, I should ask you were you need me...instead of asking myself were I need to be."
Exactly.

I had to take a deap breath here. Return to focusing on the enviroment, halting my thoughts for a while. If God needed me, then why did I try so hard to find my own path? If God new, then why did I search for answers everywere else? I felt I had to ask how to let God run the show, but I already knew the answer to it to. The duality of faith, the hardest task for humanity, to let go and trust in God. The only forum we´ve got is the prayer and even that is a oneway conversation. The sublime force of God being all to easy to dubt when not manifested clear enough or as we emagened or want.
"If you need me.... then I want to be at your service. I have always wanted to be at your service but I have never understood how. Your ways seams to difficult, to demanding or to far from real life-living.... Somehow it feels like Im not ready to follow, to let go of control but it´s easier to go on, trying the best I can by my own and play it safe. Perhaps Im not ready to give up."
Why would it be to give up?
"I dont know. Perhaps because I dont know what you want me to do..."
You don´t have to do anything.
"I know. But that is the most difficult thing to!"
Can I help you?
"Yes. Please do!"
Close your eyes. Now emadgen a beach, mileswide and the blue pasific infront of you. Emadgen you together with a friend that you´ve known forever. Your best friend. Now emadgen what you say to him or her, as you watch the ocean.
"I wouldnt say anything. Its just a good feeling that needs no words."
Then that is what I want. Now emadgen a forrest, filled with treas and roots and branches all over, like the rainforrest you saw in Peru. Emagden your in the middle of it, and your friend is with you. Emadgen what you say to him or her.
"I wouldnt say anything. I would only watch and be fascinated by it all. Perhaps holding hands though, if I were a little overwelmed or scared."
Then that is what I want. What if you were is a big city, doing the same.
"Then I get the feeling of wanting to get away."
Then you know that is not the place for you.
"Yes, I understand. I need to emadgen myself in a situation and pay attention to what I feel, and the feeling will tell if you want me to be there or not."

I continued to emadgen myself in different areas, different situations and noticed how I felt. At work, with kids, in an airplane and so on. At one point I emadgened myself infront of a pool with dolphins in it and as I slid down and into the water I was suddenly overwelmed by emotions and started crying. At the same time sadness and an enormous healing. Hearing my sobbs and wailing and it sounded like I were a dolphin to, releaving my heart to them. The feeling that followed, the imense peace, made me get back up unto the ground, wanting to stay, being a dolphin like them. But it was as if they said, look, you are a human now, enjoy it! And all of a sudden I felt so free. Realising that there is accually nothing I have to do but to enjoy life. What I really wanted, I noticed, was to feel peace in my heart. As I did at the beach and in the forrest. With peace in my heart it would be easy to live according to Gods will.
"If that is what you want God, then how can i find peace in my heart?
By not running away from what you feel.

I stayed for a long time in the church. The sun soon moved beyond the edge of the roof and let shadow fall upon me and the atrium and scents of the evening had already filled the air as I left. The magnoliablossoms had closed thier petals for this day but I had opened up for a new way to understand God.
"Thank you." I thought as I strolled back towards the citycenter. "Thank you for helping me understand, God. Thank you for being a feeling inside of me. Thus you are always with me."
And as I noticed the peace inside, I smiled and knew that it was true. That it was God.

He slept while she left. Sneaking out of the bedroom and tiptoed down the hall. Her own reflection in the kitchenwindow almost made har jump, not wanting anyone to see her. Light feet at the spots were the floorboard disaproved, haltering before entering the darkness in the hall to prepare her eyes. She picked up her sneekers, folded her jacket, almost in slow motion turning the key around, holding her breath. Then the door slid open, without a sound she was out. He was still sleeping, without notice, without knowledge. She laughed in silence, a gost in the night, a free spirit, an untamed heroine. Out and into the endless open, every oportunity awailable to choose. No passed life to forcefully bend into. No traces left but her scent in the wardrobe.

A seekers path...

The days when it did not rain I often took long walks along the beach. Collecting seashells and beutiful images of the ocean and the sky making love by the horizion. One day I found a little cover by the upper coastline. A straw and wood constuction someone had tied together and nail to the ground with sticks. Due to the heavy rain it had sacked a little but I found a good and strong piece of wood to raise the roof and manage to staple to it a piece of plastic so that there became a tent underneath the straw. From inside the little hut I had a great wiew of the ocean and still I´d be safe from wet in case I got caught in a shower. This day I sat down to meditate upon the mening of thinking and the balance with that and the state of not-thinking . I had often listened to reflections upon Truth. What is true and how do we respond to it. Since Thought often dominate in the narrow space of our focus, peace seldom get the chance to reign, and when it does, thought emediatly wonder why it´s quiet and what we managed to do to achieve that state. And so the moment is gone. But without that conection with serenity and peace, we have no chance to understand who we are and what is true.

To begin with, I had always believed in some sertain thoughts concerning my pharents, my childhood and the thoughts about the world I´d inherit. But theese thoughts had, when spoken out loud in the prescence of my pharents, met resistance and disregards and it turned out that the thoughts that I had held as a truth belonged only to me and were somewhat a construction of memories and emotiones put together from different events. Therefore, I had for many years held true what now seamed to unfold as a fiction of my mind. These made-up truths had not only haunted me in my thoughts but effected me until now to act and react acording to the wounds and hurts conected to them. I had become part of who I thought I were, becuase of these actions and therefor kept on holding them for real and also kept on trying to heal the emotiones caused by the actual moment, that I thought I remembered. Like a dog trying to catch my own tale, except I had non to begin with...

Feeling rather stupid I came to think about other so-called truths that lived inside of me. Thoughts about my body and how I tried to stay in shape all the time, believing I had to to be atractive or happy perhaps. Thoughts about who I were to become and how I often felt more like a victim of sircumstances rather than the master of my own future. How often I had played the part of vounded child, even counsciously, in situations were I did not know how to handle a conflict. Why did I do that? Why did I react as on instinct and old patterns and not as the grown up I had become?
"Because you are, also, that child."
The voice answerd even before I had pronunced the question through in my mind.
"I know I am that child. But I am also grown up. I should have lurned to act acording to a grown up, should´nt I?"
"These are your judgements..."
My judgements. Off course. I thought I behaved wrong. Judged myself as childish.
"How can I lurn to behave, or react in a more afficient way?"
"Observe."
My mind filled in by itself. As we are children we lurn by observing others. Just because we have lived to be grown up it does´nt mean we stop observe and lurn, though we might not be aware that we do. New questions formed in my head. Am I unaware about how mutch I lurn by observing others and how mutch do I acually behave acording to what I have lurned? Am I being merely a puppet by society? The thought made me feel sad and a little uncomfortable.
"God, can I not decide for myself what I want to lurn and take to heart?"
"I gave you free will, did´nt I?"
"Yes... but...can I choose how to lurn to be?"
"Off course you can. Why do you think people search for comunities to belong to? The Budhist have the Sanga as Christians have the church. Muslims all turn their heads towards Mecka..."
"Aha, okay... Yes I see now... But I have never had only one Guru, religion or comunity, yet I have always longed for this feeling of belonging..."
The silence talked back to me. The image of the neverending sea. I had never made a choise to follow anyone. Always to proud and unresonable to bend my values. Perhaps because no matter which master, religious doctrine, fatherfigure or loved one there always seamed to be blank spots and puzzlepieces missing. There were right about no perfect teacher or teaching. Also, both Budha and Jesus said to the people; this is my way, you must follw yours. Still everyone ended up following and copying their every single step. Eager to end up at the same spot, to become like them. This conflict were somehow always ongoing inside of me to. The conflict inbetween being independant and being openhearted. I had had to many experiences of being let down when trusting in others or alowing myself to feel comfortable and somewhat safe in the company of others. At the same time I longed for nothing else and nothing more then to do just that. Together with the feeling of never being good enough, never really belonging, it created a discordance that I found made it hard for me to live in peace when among others. The mere thought made my stomach turn into a tight knot and my heart ache. A sadness so strong and owerwhelming it made me want to cry out in despair.
"God...?"
"Yes...?"
"I want to become like you."
"You are."
"But how can I know I am, when I do not follow any rules?"
"You feel. Don´t you?"
"Yes... but the feeling is hard to stick to sometimes... I easily get lost... And I feel so alone, God.
I wish there were a religion I could stick to, that I felt were as much mine as everybody elses."
"There is. It´s called the heart."
Sadness overflooded my insides and tears welled up and wet my cheaks. At the same time a fine rain began to fall. Carefull and humble drops, ever so smoothly touching the sand and the water as if they did´nt whant to disturb. My religion, I thought, off course it´s the heart. It has always bin.

A man with a child at hand walked by and along the shoreline, leaving footprints in the sand like a bracelet. The heart, I thought, is the point were God meets with man and were people meet eachother. Like the axle in a wheel, the sun in the solarsystem. Whatever we live, whatever we lurn from the surounding world, it´s in the heart truth lies. The point of peace that have no name, no description, no explanation but were all truth is to find. Beyond understanding, beyond reason is God, but within our expanding hearts. I noticed I smiled. Sitting, as I did, in lotus position underneath the shelter I thought I must look like a budha wanna-be. Perhaps he was just like me, searching for truth beyond life. Perheps he to found in his own heart, an expanding place, a sun of peace and understood that there is nothing to find but the choice of being there at the same time as being alive.
The soft rain stopped and instead an orange sun slowly sank towards the ocean as I got up and strolled back to the bungalow. Following the footprints in the oposite direction, leaving a third pair of prints in the sand, one more string of beads along the bracelet.