Challenges Archives | Julie A. Wallace

There’s an old Chinese proverb that goes “There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.”

Of course there are multiple interpretations of that, and this one from Hinduism is on my mind today:

There are hundreds of paths up the mountain,
all leading in the same direction,
so it doesn’t matter which path you take.
The only one wasting time is the one
who runs around and around the mountain,
telling everyone that his or her path is wrong.

Put another way, there are many paths up the mountain and only one truth.

That truth is love.

Or, the best way to express that truth is through love in action. You know what that feels like, yet explaining ‘love’ is like trying to slap a definition on a blue sky. You can’t make someone see blue when all they see are clouds and rain.

But this is not supposed to be a long-winded essay today. It’s a check-in, a way to let you know that I am still here, walking up that mountain. It’s the same mountain I’ve been walking up for some 25 years now – that’s about the time I identify as the official start of my spiritual journey.

It’s probably been longer, but who’s counting?

Who’s counting a belief in reincarnation that suggests hundreds or thousands of different lives and just as many years?
Who’s counting this soul’s multiple simultaneous incarnations?
Who’s counting multiple lifetimes happening simultaneously through multiple dimensions, time, space, etc.?

There is no time, so there is no counting, and all is now.

Still Climbing

At the start of the trail, the walk is always easy. Wide, smooth, well-trodden, and downright fun. As you rise up (as good a metaphor as I can muster this morning) the path is strewn with all manner of rocks, sticks, fallen branches. It’s steep and uneven and sometimes scary. It’s one obstacle after another because everything in life is the path.

I’m discovering that I have a great need to strip away non-essentials, to once again let go and let go and let go.

I’ve spent the last few years accumulating stuff – literal things like clothes and cookbooks, but also mental stuff like Reiki, QHHT, life coaching, mindfulness, and business ideas.

And I’ve gotten so turned around on the path that I think I have 10,000,000 things do to and am tired of 9,999,999 of them. I’m tired of grasping, wishing, dreaming, tired of thinking about and tired of not doing.

I’m tired of taking on things (Reiki, QHHT, Life Coaching, Mindfulness, business, clothes, and cookbooks) and having little to show — other than a PDF certificate and a large pile of cute clothes and vintage cookbooks.

Paint The Basement

My life coach asked me what I needed to do next to move along the path. I said, “paint the basement.”

I want to focus on the here and now and on things that make a tangible difference for me.

I could get all symbolic on how painting the basement equates creating a solid foundation on which to build my future, but really, there are enough metaphors out there for me to use on another day.

Today, I’m pausing at this grand turn on the path of my life.

Sidebar

(A sidebar is a short story or graphic accompanying and presenting sidelights of a major story. It’s a deviation from the main thread or idea presented here. So you can ignore this part if you’d like.)

I’ve unfollowed a lot of people and pages and businesses on social media. Each platform seems more like a bad joke. Social media wastes time and focuses energy on wants and desires over true connections.

And yes, I know people who use social media for true connections, but the majority of it seems fake and fake and fake. But yet I don’t want to cut the social media cord completely.

Frankly, social media manipulates that deep desire to spy on people. And deep down, that’s what it’s about – jealousy about that life lifestyle or activity or possessions. And in turn, that jealousy becomes fear of missing out (FOMO.)

I’m doing my damnest to seek JOMO (joy of missing out) but there’s the whole “missing out” part of both of these acronyms that bothers me: what exactly is missing from me that needs to be found and fixed?

Keep Climbing

Of the nonsense online, one blog stands heads, fingers, knees, and toes above the others at the moment for me: Schrodinger’s Other Cat.

The posts are usually short and funky, the comments thought-provoking, and the metaphysical humor 100% on point.

It’s definitely not for everyone. But it’s a cozy little box in the corner of the interwebs for consciousness naps and meows that I thoroughly enjoy.

Lately “the cats” have asked readers to experiment with a saying from a student of A Course In Miracles (ACIM.) My experience with this saying was quite interesting, so I thought I’d pass it along.

Take this saying and try it out on anyone and everyone. Include yourself, and those you’re struggling with or have struggled with in the past:

Boss pissed you off? Say the saying!
Cut off in traffic? Say the saying!
Annoying relatives? Say the saying!
Thinking of your ex? Say the saying!
Nosy neighbor? Say the saying!
Burned your dinner? Say the saying!
Former frenemy in your thoughts? Say the saying!
Pesky pests eating your tomatoes? Say the saying!

I work at holding that person in my mind’s eye and gazing into the person’s eyes. Then I say the saying (it’s not a mantra, but, if it’s easier to remember it that way, so be it.) I wait and see how it feels.

That’s the key here — how does it feel? Most people I can do one recitation and feel some change or release. Some folks take two, three, four or more recitations. You may need to stop, collect yourself, and really get in touch with the compassionate part of yourself that loves beyond love – unconditionally.

You’ll know you’re finished saying this for the person because there will be a clear release. For me, it’s usually quite subtle like a gentle sigh or stomach muscles releasing.

Notice any thoughts that appear while you’re doing this. It could be something like “leave me alone” or “thank you.” You might say “whew!” when you’ve finished with some, and smile with others.

Feel free to change the saying around to make it work for you. For the word “Brother” I’ll often say something like “brother, sister, father, mother, source, god, goddess.” And I found that I had to repeat “all is forgiven and released” over and over for some people.

This is one way of being love in action. It is a way to walk your path up and around the mountain of your life with as much love in your heart as you can muster.

Regardless, try it out and let me know how it goes.

You are perfect

immortal spirit

brother

whole and innocent.

All is forgiven

and released.

So I’m on my third, fourth, or maybe fifth time watching the entire seven-season run of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

(I live alone…Amazon Prime and I are good friends.)

The fifteenth episode of season six is called “Tapestry.” And here’s a quick synopsis because it’s important to understand the essence of this episode for all that I have to say about my life right now.

Picard’s Regrets

Main character Captain Picard is rushed to the Enterprise’s operating table where he dies because his artificial heart has stopped. He’s given a second chance at life by an omnipotent character named Q.

In their conversation, Picard admits he regrets much of his younger life because he was arrogant and cocky. This intrigues the omnipotent Q, who allows Picard to “pull on this thread” of his life to see what happens.

So Picard ‘pulls’ on a very specific thread in his life: the events that led him to have an artificial heart. He returns to his early 20s, and we see him attempting to date multiple women on one day.

More importantly, we see the events that led up to him starting a bar fight which led to his knifing, which led to the artificial heart, which has caused his ‘death.’

Picard’s Boring Life

And while it’s funny to see an aging Picard playing out that incident with his youthful friends, the part of the ‘tapestry’ I’m most interested in is when Picard is placed back onto the Enterprise. This is the fleet’s flagship, and of which he is captain – but not in this ‘new’ reality.

Instead, someone else is captain and Picard is a Lieutenant Junior Grade Astrophysics Administrator – or some goofy title like that.

He goes to the starship’s bar, Ten Forward, and asks for an employee review.

It doesn’t go well.

I Am That Picard

Picard is so very, very wrong about that quiet life. It was not dull and tedious – it only seemed that way through his eyes.

It really bothers me (and bothers plenty of other people) that this normal life is portrayed as if it’s horrible.

What the heck is wrong with a “normal” life? I am that Picard. My day-to-day life is pretty darn dreary and repetitive.

I wake up.
I have some tea.
I go to work.
I come home.
I feed the cats.
I read a book.
I watch yet another episode of Star Trek.
I have dinner with a friend.
I clean the litter boxes.
I plant some flowers.
I buy cute clothes at thrift stores.
I meditate a little here and there.

And that’s it, folks, there’s very little excitement in my normal, everyday, ordinary life.

Or is there?

Ordinary Extraordinary

My blogging friend Beth Ann Chiles writes nearly every day at It’s Just Life: Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary. As the title suggests, the blog covers many aspects of Beth Ann’s everyday life: family, friends, devotionals, teapots, travel, and more.

In chronicling her life, Beth Ann elevates the everyday into something that approaches art.

Or maybe it is art, I don’t know.

But I do know that she’s created a cozy spot on the internet where I always feel welcome, and where there’s probably a pot of tea nearby.

I also envy her many trips around the world – and the fact that she’s at the beach again this week.

But the thing that gets me about Beth Ann’s blog is that her “ordinary” life is not Picard’s dreaded “dull and dreary.” It’s magical.

There Are No Dull and Dreary Lives

More to the point, my life isn’t dull and dreary. There are these amazing high points:

Living in London just after college.
My first apartment in Toledo and the writing and modeling friends.
Life in Athens with more writing and meditation friends.
Living and working at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies.
That amazing trip to Peru a few years ago with magical waterfall experience.

All I have to do is start making a list, and I’ve had a lot of amazing experiences.

To be sure, there have been lows, too.

Filing for both bankruptcy and divorce in the same year was horrible.
Getting fired from a job wasn’t fun either, but retrospect shows me the journey from that point to now.

We all know life isn’t about the high or the low points. Life is a sum of all of those points and finding that middle road where all is well for us.

Getting Busy

It would be easy to argue that Picard’s view of that “dull dreary” life is flawed. Through the magic of storytelling, he’s thrown into that life without the benefit of the experiences that led him to the ‘end’ of the journey. Surely there have been wonderful things happen in that Picard’s life.

Unlike that Picard, though, you and I have the ability to stop and look back and the various twists and turns that led us to here and now. Having done this recently, I am at a still point with being the “dull and dreary” Picard.

Not long ago, I wrote about how I thought that if I “that if I just put up a pretty website and got busy with business-like things, my life would change.”

Unpacking The Story

Unpacking that sentence and the story behind that “still point” for you a little more, I was obsessed and enamored with the idea of having a business.

The idea of one – not the reality. I had grandiose ideas about what running a business by myself meant and had convinced myself that being busy = business.

In my mind, I needed to be as busy as possible because surely that would make my business succeed, right?

But the more I observed this desire to have a business, the less it felt real. It didn’t have meaning and purpose and felt terribly hollow.

So I let go of that desire. It really was that easy.

In writing one morning, I asked what I really needed to do. And the answer had nothing at all to do with running a business.

Stop Forcing Success

If you want coaching, I can do that. If you want writing, I can do that. But I’m not going to run around and try to force success to happen anymore.

One other thing I’ve realized is that all of the amazing things in my life came relatively easily.

Yes, I had to work at them.

But those things came together in a way that I can only describe as magic or happenstance or fate. The less I fight with life, the more it flows. And I know that miracles of all sizes happen every day when you least expect them.

So now my life is back to a normal, ordinary, gentle hum.

Does your life hum? Do you see the magic?