Living into a life that one has yet to occupy fully is akin to bringing shadow material into solid form. Integrating those latent aspects of self that reside just on the other side of conscious awareness will be where the transformative adventure begins. Are you prepared to become fully engaged in discovering who it is you are meant to be?

“There is a vast difference between the bark of a tree and the bark of a dog.”

Watts, A. The Book. P. 68

Imagine that you are sitting at the edge of a deep pool, feet in the water, pants or skirt hiked up. Feel the warmth or the coolness of the water on your bare skin. Wiggle your toes in the current. Notice your seat against the edging of the pool; feel the air against your skin. And, relax.

As you are now fully placed in this dream-state become aware that there are fish swimming below. Some are beautifully colored and move gracefully within their school. There are several large sharks slowly circling in the shadows, neither retreating nor moving forward. Manage any considerations you may have about having your feet share the same water as these creatures. Notice the sensations that are predominant in your body and relax into them.

Realize that you cannot know what will happen next. Shift your awareness by simply feeling what it is like to be here, seated betwixt and between and manage the impulses that may try to dislocate you from this position.

Open to this in-between space, and receive what is here waiting. Allow the images, memories, and feelings to find you and observe.

It is in the “betwixt and between” that our conscious mind gives way to the unconscious and our dreams give voice to our soul.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you, “the Buddha told the farmer.

“What do you mean?” railed the farmer.  “You’re supposed to be a great teacher!”

All human beings have 83 problems,” the Buddha replied.  “A few problems may go away, but soon enough others will arise.  So we’ll always have 83 problems.”

The farmer asked indignantly, “Then what’s the good of all your teaching?”

The Buddha answered, “My teaching can’t help with the 83 problems, but perhaps with the 84^th problem.”

“What’s that?” asked the farmer.

“The 84^th problem is that we don’t want to have any problems.”

Bayda, Ezra  (May/June, 2002).  Facing you monsters.  Body and Soul, p. 44, 46, & 48.

Are the situations that present themselves in our everyday life meant to be challenges or inspirations? If you were the farmer who complained to the Buddha about his crops, his wife and his children, you would soon learn that it is only by truly understanding the solution to the 84^th problem that one can rest harmoniously in life.

Although any problem can present as an obstacle, impediment, difficulty, or challenge, its ultimate gain is the manner and method in which one rises to inspire resolution. If we were to change the word “problems” to “teachings,” and if we were to take delight in their daily offerings, we could actually greet the day in hopes of seeing ourselves inspired.

Resting within a Sense of Wholeness means you have the tools and methods to:

• Recognize your worth
• Have clarity of purpose
• Be free from conditioning
• Be integrated in mind, body, heart, and spirit
• Act in service to humanity and the planet
• Deliver on promises
• Accept yourself as you are revealed within your relationships
• Access your natural way of being
• Communicate clearly and compassionately
• Cultivate an inner dialogue
• Transform difficulty into opportunity
• Manage the subtleties and the dramatics surrounding change
• Be graceful in your transitions
• Utilize the right methodology in the right situation
• Greet with curiosity that which you cannot control

Nineteen years later, just a few months ago, I am on the third floor of a different house. It is 5:30am and I listen to gentle creaks and snaps of my son’s joints as we do a yoga routine together. We have tea on the floor next to us, the soft light of a lamp on the shelve baths us in a warm glow and I remember – We are together in silence just as we were so many years ago. I hold him in my conscious embrace as he holds me in his. Something moves between us, then and now. Something holds us in recognition, a quiet, ancient sort of ancestral knowing.”

(Timothy P. Dukes, Fathering Journal, 2010)

Rilke addresses the need to create. For the artist, he suggests we must be a world onto ourselves and find everything within and in relationship with nature. “Go into yourself and … explore the depths whence your life wells forth; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it as it sounds, without enquiring too closely into every word. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take your fate upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness without ever asking for that reward which might come from without. For the creator must be a world for himself, and find everything within himself, and in Nature to which he has attached himself.” (Rilke, 2008, p. 13)

To cultivate our creativity we need to turn away from seeking ourselves in the outer world, our relationships, and our careers and realize who we are and what we are here to accomplish by bringing our awareness into our experience of ourselves directly.

However, the question remains, how do we do this? How do we find the deep impulses to guide our creativity? I think we open ourselves to the possibility that all we have to do is ask. David White suggests that this; “can be done with a minimum of fuss, simply by sitting back in our chair and closing our eyes for a moment…and… ask for an image… it can, with a little practice, appear spontaneously.” (Whyte, 1994, p. 232,233) Try it now, simply close your eyes and ask silently inside, “may I have an image that will guide me to deepen my relationship with my creative self.” Wait for a few moments to allow an image to arise.

Notice, there is a particular feel that goes with an image or an understanding of our creativity. Whyte continues, “A discipline of calling up an image is an old form of contemplation. But a further step is to rest into the way the body feels in the presence of the image, then the image can be released and the state itself reached directly.” (p. 234)

Rest now within a state of wholeness as you again close your eyes and spend time with the image and notice the feel that emerges.

Rilke, Rainer Maria. (2008). Letters to a young poet. B N Publishing.

Whyte, David.  (1994).  The heart  aroused: Poetry and the preservation of the soul in corporate America.  New York:  Doubleday.

One of the best ways to recognize your worth is to have a clear understanding of how your behaviors come across to other people; your employees, colleagues, clients or friends and family. – I am just off the phone with a friend of mine. She consults with individuals and companies to help them understand who they are, what they do, and how to take this understanding into their personal and professional lives. I consistently find that when I am speaking with her, I clearly recognize myself as she formulates and expresses how she perceives me and my work. She becomes a mirror and steadies our connection so that I can see myself in her understanding of me. I recognize the value, not so much because I see and accept myself, but because of how she expresses her experience of how she perceives me.

This relationally activated recognition of self and worth, refreshes and supports my experience to such a degree that I literally recover a deeper – felt sense of who I am and of how I am being perceived. It is as though my “worth” is market driven; it is based on how value is determined by those who are invested in having a relationship with me.

Recognition of self and worth becomes the currency with which we learn to more deeply value who we are. And it has value to the degree that we value our relationships with one another. Take a look at one of your relationships today and greet with curiosity that person you are as perceived by that person you are with.

Ref: Goldsmith, Marshall. 2007. What got you here won’t get you there. New York: Hyperion 

” Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or ‘culture,’ the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and is meaningless – even though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire of renown. Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his Minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration.” (Campbell, 1949, p. 59)

and the maker of pine mountains!

All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.

The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who judges jewels.

And the music from the strings that no one touches, and the

source of all water 

If you want the truth, I will tell youthe truth:

Friend, listen:  the God whom I (you) love is inside.”

Bly, R.  (1971).  The Kabir book:  Forty-four of the ecstatic poems of Kabir.  Beacon: Boston