Today is as good as any to begin

I recently read that when we see qualities in another that we admire and resonate with, it means that we have the seeds of these same qualities within us.  And this morning I realized I have been searching for beauty, more specifically, flowers.  They inspire me and fill me with pleasure and a delicate joy. They are all around me here in Southern California.  On my run today, I smelled a white rose that smelled just like a rose.  And most days when I am walking around minding my own business a gentle breeze delivers the scent of the woody eucalyptus or the almost sweet jasmine.

A few years ago I traveled to Mexico hoping to find some answers about my past and find some direction for my future.  Of course, I realize this is a lot to ask of a country, but I was desperate.  I spent time in the highlands of Oaxaca, hoping to meet a shaman who could help me heal my past so I could move on with my life, in the direction of my own choosing.  In the market, filling the narrow mountain street, was a woman selling mazatec pottery. She called me over and invited me to stay with her and her family.  She was genuine, and familiar with gringos coming into town looking for ceremonies, so I took her up on her offer and went back to the hotel and collecting my things.  She provided me with my own room on the bottom floor of her mountain side home, it was cold and damp.  She fed me egg omelets, tortillas and coffee.  When the day came for the ceremony I was excited and hopeful that what I felt I had lost would be returned to me, that I would feel whole again.  Of course, healing is rarely this instantaneous, but a girl can dream.  The ceremony was a mix of Catholic and Indigenous prayers and rituals, as well as Ines' generosity and compassionate heart.  She could tell my heart and soul were in a rough state of affairs, but her faith was resolute.  During the ceremony I did not feel any major shifts, but I did feel I was in the presence of prayer and trusted Ines' work.  That night I went to sleep, only to wake up in a dream-like meditative state speaking in a language I had never heard and didn't literally understand, but somehow knew it was working magic on me.  I saw my soul traveling into the Sierra Madres searching for what had been misplaced.   On my way down the mountain the next day I would understand this vision more clearly.  When I woke in the morning I remembered a dream; I was cut open like a c-section, but instead of giving birth to a baby, I gave birth to flowers.

The memory of this dream surfaces every once and awhile, like today, when I remembered for a moment that what I am seeking outside of myself, like beautiful flowers, is already within me. Spiritual teachers repeat this quite often and I honestly always thought it was kind of vague and even trite; but now I think it is just that it is really difficult to believe.  In many ways it was easier for me to travel a foreign country alone than recognize I had all the seeds of happiness within me.  My psyche needed to be in Mexico, it was a part of my particular healing that had to do with my father and a former love, but it was also a way of fleeing some of my deepest emotions.  I was simultaneously searching for my place in this world and running from it.  Being in Mexico quieted my most painful inner voice; that said I had given up on the life I was meant to live.  This voice had been teasing and taunting me for years and I needed to be in a place where it had little or no power.  Free of this voice I began to accept that my life was heading in a new direction.  I realized Mexico was not to be my home and I was ready to return to my friends and family in the States.  It's one of the paradoxes of healing; that sometimes we have to leave our home, both literally and spiritually in order to return more deeply to our essential self.  It has been 8 years since I made that journey to Mexico and today the early spring flowers are encouraging me to look within, to remember the dream, to add beauty to the world, and to trust what is unfolding within me.  As we approach the Spring equinox, what do you sense is unfolding within you?  What seeds would serve you best to cultivate and grow; and what seeds will serve you best to stop watering?