Surrounded By Spiritual Clutter

Yom Kippur is supposed to be about atonement. It is supposed to be about introspection, looking inside, asking for forgiveness and doing your best to try to become a better person than you were before but I didn’t do a very good job of it this year.

Some people enter the holiday as if they have taken a gentle stroll around a placid lake. That is usually how I try to start. I do my best to clear my head and begin from a place of calm but that didn’t happen this year.

It would be an exaggeration to say I flew into the day like a man running through hell while covered in gasoline but fair to say I was like guy who missed the drawbridge at the castle and instead of being able to march in I had to fight my way around the walls to find the secret entrance.

I’d like to say I was disappointed to enter covered in blood, adrenaline pumping and anxious to go back to battle but it would be a lie. The truth is I hit the day pissed off and frustrated about a variety of things that were outside of my control and when some of the fine folks online decided to take a poke at me I welcomed it because I had an excuse to just unload upon them.

After a time I grew tired of it and walked away to think about what had happened. I wanted to clear my head of the noise and the spiritual clutter but it didn’t work the way I wanted it to so here I am, writing so that I empty my mind.

“If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

While sitting here thinking about what to write about I decide to check my stats and come across some posts others were reading tonight and find myself intrigued by what I read because the words seem appropriate for the evening.

“Old Jack is a sentimental fellow who roams where he will and walks where he might. Sometimes those forays into the darkness and the light lead me places that bring me joy and sometimes they bring me sadness. Sometimes I shake my head and wonder if I had any sense or if I was just an expert at ignoring it. I suppose that depends on which side of the fence you stand upon. Some will call me a prophet and others a fool. But the real question lies in what I call myself.

That is part of why I blog. I write these words here in an effort to gain a better understanding of who I am and what I want. I write these words so that I can leave a legacy for others. I write these words to remind my children that I don’t blog about the times we volunteer at soup kitchens or the moments we spend trying to help those who  are less fortunate because I want kudos or thanks.  I mention it so that in the years to come those who follow me remember that we have an obligation to help.”-  Are You Trying To Live Your Dreams?

It is hard not to look at those words and wonder why I stumbled across them this evening. Hard not to smile because they are a comfort. Part of me laughs because I see a consistent question and message in my words and I want to ask the guy who wrote them if he believed it would take as long as it had to get to this place.

Don’t really need to speculate on what he would have said because he never would have written these words. Things were just coincidence and nothing more for him.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~ William Wordsworth

I am doing that now, maybe not as well as I would like to but I am beating on the doors that stand in my way and pounding on the walls that prevent me from getting to where I wish to go.

“I keep finding remnants and relics of a past that no longer exists. There are pictures, videos and memories of people who are no longer part of my life. Some of them are gone because they or I chose to go a different direction and some are enjoying the aptly named dirt nap. “-Trust Me

Part of what frustrates me are the people who don’t recognize that some things are gone and will never come back. The people who let fear wash away the bridges to the future because they can’t see through the fog of the past.

I look up and around the room feeling a bit crazed because I have checked out of this place. It was home but it isn’t any longer. It is just some place that holds my stuff and many good memories but it is a place and that is how I choose to view it. Ok, that is not entirely true because it is more than just a place but it is not mine any longer.

Yeah, I checked out and part of the crazy feeling in my head comes from feeling like I am treading water and not moving into the future.

The funny thing about it all is the contradictions I hear and see.

“There are no coincidences because what you see, hear and do are part of something greater than us. It is tied into something larger that can be described as both mystical and magical.

Don’t ask me to explain this because I can’t tell you how or why. All I can say is that I know because I have experienced it. I have seen it. I have lived it. I have been there and that is all the proof that I can provide.

It won’t be enough for some of you. It won’t be the kind of thing that you can accept because you can’t buy, touch or taste it.

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There are no coincidences. You can live your dream. You can find a way back. All you need to do is let go, submit to the reality of the possibility and accept that there will be opportunity.”- There Are No Coincidences

As I said above, don’t ask me to explain because if you don’t get it I am not sure I can put it in terms that will make sense to you. Most of the time not being able to describe or explain something to others frustrates me.

I usually see it as an indication that I don’t understand the topic well enough.  I usually share this quote by Einstein and let it go, “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

Except in this case I think a six year-old might understand better than an adult because six year-olds still believe in magic and things that aren’t based solely upon logic and science.

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Midnight approaches and I shouldn’t be on the computer.

Not because I fear a lightning bolt from the sky but because I don’t always do a good job of disconnecting and just being. The frustration and and anger are real and tied into things outside my control but the spiritual clutter is mostly me.

It is me not taking enough time to wander under a moonlit night or under a sunny blue sky. It is time to focus on just tuning out the noise and reconnecting with the inner peace.

My hand is reaching for it…