Battling ghosts
People are onions, really.
It has taken me the better part of two years to finally understand what I wanted to be doing with my life more than anything else (and discovering some of the means to do it), and all of the years before that to grow conscious and mature enough to be able to go that road in the first place.
So I’m delighted to be where I am.
The flow I experience in writing these blogs, working on the Saplings and The Book of Seth, discovering the ways in which I can experience Spirit coming into my life and into the world — all of it is deeply fulfilling and gratifying. I can safely say the last six months have in many ways been the best of my life. I have found the flow I belong in.
Only, wouldn’t life would be boring without a good fight now and then? Sigh.
So here I am, battling ghosts.
Ghosts are, per definition, dead.
But it will not stop them from haunting us sometimes.
Let me introduce you to some of mine.
The Ghost of Ambition
I am an artist and a writer. That means I love to work with language, but it also means I crave an audience.
And I have one, to be sure, both in Dutch and in English, and it holds people I have come to love and whose reactions I look forward to. I feel like I belong to a close-knit community here on this huge platform, and it is a heartwarming and honest and true one. I am so grateful for it.
Only the ghost of ambition will blow everything out of proportion and make me restless. He knows my weak spot, too: I love to see my work in print. I experience it every time I print a Sapling to add to my portfolio. Paper has a magic quality in its physical capacity to transport transformation. I know I once wrote that I had shed all old foolish dreams of authorship in the very first post I wrote for the Story Hall, and I honestly meant it. I still do. But people are onions, really, and shedding is always a work of many layers. And apparently not all dreams of bestselling lists have evaporated from my subconscious like the mirages they really are.
The Ghost of Impatience
I try to soothe the ghost of ambition with tales of building networks, keeping up the good work and time, time, time.
Unfortunately he has a buddy following close behind: impatience. Now I have two pests to subdue.
I can handle this. I take a deep breath, center, and remember that the road is more important than the destination. I remind myself ambition is indeed nothing but a spectre come to haunt me, and you are never obliged to listen to uninvited guests.
I reconnect to the immense joy I am feeling, and I recognize how much stronger my voice has grown since last year. I know I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing.
That’s when another uninvited guest arrives.
The Ghost of Insecurity
How certain am I, really, that this is what I’m supposed to be doing? And if it is — he will grant me that much leeway at least, he’s a rather nice ghost — who is to say I am doing it well? If I were doing it that well, wouldn’t I somehow be seeing more results? Wouldn’t people recognize the value of my work more often?
Oh my poor, fragile Ego, how much you long for control still…
It would be too much to hope for that we could lay our ghosts to rest in one, or even several, sessions of respectful burial. The most tenacious ones of them will leave their graves more than a few times to come and give us a hug. In fact, they do so whenever they feel like it.
I try to welcome them, hug them back, and then gently guide them into their coffins once more.
Because deep down I know — I do KNOW — that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. And I also know that the only way I can walk this path is by being in the moment and by enjoying every step of it, uncertain though it may be, and to deliver myself to the flow of Spirit as it is guiding me on.
By imagining any scenario as a preferred future I am obstructing the very flow I am on, for any concrete vision, however vague, is in fact an obstacle I am creating in its path. With images and ambitions in my head, I am no longer in a state of total trust and surrender. I am trying to determine a course.
Bad idea.
So I give the ghosts of ambition, impatience and insecutiry one last, warm hug, and I send them back to where they came from.
Then I turn my attention to my heart, and my eyes to the sky.
Not that long ago, there was a Sapling that started with these very words:
Flying is easy, you tell me.
You just unfold your wings. The wind and your desire for the horizon will take care of the rest.
I guess it’s about time I started trusting the wind, and my wings.
