“I’m tired. Can I just be tired? Without piling on all sad and scared and out of time. I’m wild. Can I just be wild? Without feeling like I’m failing and I’m losing my mind…”

Broken and Beautiful Songwriters: Alecia B. Moore / John Mcdaid / Steve MacBroken & Beautiful lyrics © Concord Music Publishing LLC, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Spirit Music Group, Universal Music Publishing Group

I’ve been quiet lately.

I can feel my wild animal within pacing; waiting for its moment to sprint from the cage I’ve unwittingly built around it in a fear-based bid to gain control over a facet of myself I’d once believed was uncontrollable.

Because truth be told, there were some instances under the power of my wild side that didn’t end in a manner that I’d consider optimal…

But I’ve realized that while I can easily sense, acknowledge, support, and respect this fierce beauty and fundamental need for freedom of the wild animal in others, I’ve been unconsciously denying my own wild animal access to the same essential freedoms I deem indispensable for others.

The question is why? Why would a person do that? Why am I doing that when I should “know better”? (as if “knowing better” is ever enough!🤣)

It’d be so much simpler if the universe provided me with a one-post-one-paragraph answer, but if I’ve learned nothing else in my 60+ years in this realm, it’s been my experience that most questions we ask of the divine aren’t answered with an actual “answer” but instead a series of additional questions meant for our inspection and investigation, intended for our self-expansion and evolvement.

And while it’s often frustrating for the “just give me a solution so I can get on to the next thing” impetuous level of my nature, the curious level of my nature interprets this process as MAGIC.

Magical “clues” the universe scatters as messages on our paths for our discovery, aimed to assist and guide- including but not limited to:

• literary passages
• music and lyrics
• film characters and films
• conversations with people you know or those not involving your participation- overheard among others you may or may not know
• quotes from every source imaginable
• tales from the experiences, exposures, and journeys of others (just one reason I adore podcasts)
• connections and exposures, both random and otherwise, providing alternate lenses of perception
• enlightenments from the “masters’ among us and those who’ve come before us (hint: don’t overlook anyone’s capacity for providing wisdom to assist in our journey, provided we don’t aimlessly discard diamonds in the rough)
• ANYTHING, and I mean ANYTHING that resonates with YOU and that may mean ONLY you, so don’t think twice if nobody else “gets” what YOU are getting from something that nobody else sees any relevance in. They don’t need to for you to.

And yes, I’ve shared this before and will most certainly share it again…

So, in my plea for guidance regarding my inner wild animal longings and their place in my current life, I wasn’t surprised, though I was delighted that the universe dropped one of my favorite masters, Martha Beck, on my lap in the form of a repeated podcast episode of We Can Do Hard Things.

*click on links for all pertaining info and/or to hear full podcast*

Some people have written Martha off, perceiving her as too woo (I personally can’t get enough woo) but in actuality, she has as much data backed research, education, and science packed into her messages as she does worldly and otherworldly enlightenments. I consider her experience/education a marriage of both the substantiated and the mystical, combining to bring the magical, which is actually my own mission statement. So yeah- she resonates with me.

Fueling me to find my own answers. In my own time. In my own way.

It’s my belief that that’s exactly what we have the capacity to offer one another: energetic fuel to keep going.

Not advice. Not micro-management. Not a one-size-fits-all directive detailing the “right” way to do something, regardless of how well-meaning our efforts most likely are whenever we unwittingly step in and take over what another is meant to be doing for themselves. I know mine were!😳 #workingonit

Just fuel for the seekers. Which is what I’m offering here today.

Fuel up and pass it on when led to.

We’ll circle back to my own wild animal as life unfolds...

THOUGHTS TO PONDER

As said by Martha Beck on WCDHT:

The Buddha used to say, wherever you find the ocean, you can know it’s the ocean because it always tastes of salt no matter what it looks like. Wherever you find enlightenment, you can know what it looks like.
It’ll take all kinds of forms that look weird to you, but you will know it’s enlightenment because enlightenment always tastes of freedom, always. So it may hurt, it may make your family hate you, it may terrify that crap out of you, but it will feel like freedom.

“I was a Chinese major as an undergraduate, and there’s this Chinese saying that when nothing is done, nothing remains undone. And it sounds so weird. But what it means is that when you stop doing things by the struggle of your individual will, and you relax into nature, the power of nature itself has intentions, and it has a design for you, and it will pick you up like a river, and it will take every skill you’ve learned, every bit of talent that you inherited, your position in life, and it will throw you at the problem, and it will get the kids up, and it will do all these things. And then there’s this weird sensation, I’m not actually having to do this. It’s happening through me. And it’s a very weird idea for Americans.”

To try a one degree turn…

This very day, you make a list of things you have to do. You see which one makes you most upset. Then you make another list of things that make you genuinely happy.

Then you replace 10 minutes of the thing you hate with the thing you love. You do that every day for a week and then you move 10 minutes again. You just keep doing that and I call it one degree turns.

It’s like flying a plane 10,000 miles and you just turn one degree. Nobody even knows. You don’t even notice.

But if you do that every week, you end up in a totally different place.”