Meeting the Inner Explorer

Day 50:  Meeting the Inner Explorer

Beatrix Potter's Hill Top Farm

Quotes from Simple Abundance: 365 Days to a Balanced and Joyful Life by Sarah Ban Breathnach


"I craved to go beyond the garden gate, follow the road that passed it by, and set out for the unknown," the French explorer and author Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1964) wrote in 1923, recalling her daring journey to the Himalayas in search of spiritual truth and high-spirited adventure.  Her thrilling exploit is heady enough, but we can up the ante of her story:  Alexandra was 55 years old when she did it....As I drove the afternoon car pool, I wondered, how does a woman today satisfy such wanderlust?....If you, too, crave scenes beyond the garden gate, do what I do to keep the spark of adventure alive:  Journey within to meet your authentic explorer.  Keep a seductive and glamorous 'someday' box to hold your secret petitions (i.e., travel brochures).  If you could go anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, babysitter/pet sitter at your disposal, where would it be?  Why?  Who would you be with?  How long would you stay?  What would you do?"

"No one needs to know that you're traveling in your armchair (for now), indulging your imagination on a cold winter's night as you consider exploration as a personal metaphor.  And why you might ask?  Because as the American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker astutely observes, we're learning day by day that 'the most foreign country is within.'  We are our own dark continent; we are our own savage frontier.  Many marvels await discovery as we continue the path to authenticity."

I have, until recently, collected travel brochures of places I might like to go to.  I recently cleaned out that file cabinet when I thought we were moving back in November.  I had brochures from the 1970s!  With everything on-line now I saw no reason to keep them.  It was interesting to note how many places I never made it to, but it was just as interesting to note that I actually did visit several places.  Now I am less interested in traveling.  The hassle of airports and increased traffic on the roads makes it less enjoyable.  What I've come to realize is that what motivates me to travel at all is if there is a people connection for me--either to visit friends or relatives or to explore a home/area of a writer/artist/notable person that interests me.  I love seeing where they lived and "experiencing" the home and landscape behind the person.  This is what spurred me to travel overseas to the Lake District where we explored several prominent people's lives from the past.  You can read about that visit starting HERE.  There are 13 posts in all about our trip.  Just click on "Newer Post" at the end of the comments section for each post to get to the next one.  We also did a couple New England trips where we visited the homes of authors/poets/artists.  Check out the archives at Morning Musings for those trips.


Day 51:  The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

The heart-shaped rock I found on the beach at Martha's Vineyard

"When we begin to make authentic choices, we discover our true place in the world for the first time....It takes tenacity and daring to travel to the darkest interior of one's self.  Who knows what you will find there?  'It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him,' advises the English fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.  Our dragons are our fears...fears of the unknown.  Fear of failing.  Fear of starting something new and not finishing.  Again.  Or the real fear, the one that sends shivers up our spines:  the fear of succeeding, of becoming our Authentic Selves and facing the changes that will inevitably bring.  We might not be happy with the way we are living now, but at least is is familiar."

"Today if you feel frightened or unsure about the future, pick up the double-edged sword of Light and Love.  Always remember, it's simply not an adventure worth telling if there aren't any dragons.  But as in the best old tales, at the end of your exploring, you will live your happily ever after and the dragons of discouragement will either be slain or tamed."

As I noted above, my travel is often connected to people I am interested in learning more about.  In reading what Sarah has to say today I realize that my outward travel is part of my inward journey to learn more about myself.  Something about the person I'm interested in knowing more about sparks something inside me that needs discovering so I go exploring to look for clues.  The best example of this are my posts about our trip to Martha's Vineyard.

As I look back at the vacations I've blogged about I'm seeing a pattern I hadn't noticed before.  Each of those trips were planned and executed by my Authentic Self.  Hmmmm....now if I can do that for my everyday, stay-at-home life!


Day 52:  A Safari of Self and Spirit

Mary Kingsley

"In the summer of 1893, an English woman named Mary Kingsley traveled to the wildest and most dangerous part of the French Congo in search of herself.  Both her parents had recently died and suddenly, at the age of 31, Miss Kingsley found herself 'not only desolate with grief, but bereft of purpose.'....In Africa, to go on safari--the Swahili word for journey--is to leave your accustomed comfort and safety to venture into what for you is wilderness.  Each time you listen to the woman within--your Authentic Self--you do the same.

'The grand African forests are like a great library, in which, so far, I can do little more than look at the pictures,' Mary Kingsley wrote in her explorer's log, 'Although I am now busily learning the alphabet of their language, so that I may someday read what these pictures mean.'  Remember Someday comes before Yesterday."

I had to ponder Sarah's last thought in today's meditation before I grasped what she was saying.  The  past (yesterday) began with planning what we want to come next (someday).  So if you want to look back on your life without regret one must figure out today what one wants the Someday to look like.  We can't just let things happen without our input or else it may never happen.  This is why people go to college, open a savings account, or date.  They are taking the steps that will help them achieve what they want in life.  Knowing what you really want saves you much time and effort in life.


Day 53:  Safari Life

Sunrise over Chesapeake Bay

"Winter is the dry season in Africa, the time of safaris.  We can learn from the dry seasons in life and from life on safari.  'You could expect many things of God at night when the camp fire burned before the tents,' the British-born, Kenyan-raised pioneering bush pilot and safari guide Beryl Markam confided about safari life.....A safari of the Self and Spirit is at times lonely.  But we are never alone.  It is a comfort to realize that this sense of isolation is necessary if we are to encounter mystery, which is very much a part of a safari.  Each day in the wilderness brings with it the struggle to survive and a heightened awareness of how wonderful it is just to see the sunset and rise again in the morning.  Each day on safari is lived to the fullest because it is all that is guaranteed.  If only we could learn this lesson as well in our everyday lives.  Today, expect many things as you sit around the campfire of your heart...Expect to have hope rekindled.  Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways.  The dry seasons of life do not last.  The spring rains will come again."

Whenever I travel to the sea I always get up before sunrise to capture its magnificent arrival over the water.  Perhaps it's because I need reminding that I'm on a planet that is traveling through space and time....that I am part of its rhythm of getting up, moving through the day, and settling once again into the rest of nightfall.  Some days the sun may hide behind clouds that pour rain to the point of overflow and other days it may cause the earth to be parched.  As Sarah points out, we can expect to have hope rekindled by looking at the natural landscape, and just as it has its seasons we, too, have seasons in our lives.  The landscape may be forever changed by the events in our lives, but if each day is lived to its fullest we will have gained more than what outwardly may have been lost.


Day 54:  The Story Beneath the Story

The Adventures of Poetry the Calico Cat

"I have  come to believe that falling obsessively in love is one of life's necessary assignments.  It cracks us open.  We put everything at risk.  In the process we discover the dimensions of our own appetites and desires.  And life to be lived fully, demands desire."  -Rosemary Sullivan, Canadian biographer, academic, and author

"A biographer is a clandestine cartographer of the heart, mapping out certain milestones to search for the secret story beneath her subject's surface life.  Because all writers know that true lives are lived between the lines.  We will be taking on different roles as we search for our Authentic Self:  biographer, explorer, adventuress, and authentic archaeologist.  For each specialist possesses skills to unearth remnants of memory buried deep within the fertile soil of our subconscious minds and in the deepest caverns of our hearts.  Archaeologists read artifacts much the way a detective reads clues.  The reason we want to awaken the authentic archaeologist is to excavate the true you.  The you that is the story beneath your story."

"Among the most powerful touchstones of our lives is how and what we love....'The story of obsessive love is a story about wanting something so badly that we will risk everything to gain it.  As we hurtle down the highway at break-neck speed to meet our lover,  as we defy all prescriptions for rational behavior, we are living a drama, and nothing else in the world matters,' Rosemary Sullivan writes in her brilliant Labyrinth of Desire:  Women, Passion, and Romantic Obsession......Sullivan asks a provocative question:  Does a woman fall in love out of a need to release a pent-up passion that she's unable to express artistically in her present situation?....As you ponder this question, think about where you were, and who you were with or not, when you last fell obsessively in love...."

"When a woman cannot access or express her own passions, desires, and artistic expression, or when she denies the authentic part of herself to care instead for the needs of others, especially lovers and spouses, eventually she arrives at a three-forked intersection where choice, circumstances, and chance are patiently waiting for a painful head-on collision."

'For better or worse, obsessive love awakens the whole range of primitive emotions of the needy self and we find ourselves caught in a world of mirrors, looking in astonishment at the multiple selves that occupy our inner world," Rosemary Sullivan explains.  "Obsessive love sends us deep inside the caverns of our own psyches, where, if we have the stamina, we will discover how rich how resonant, how numinous we are."

I've only had one obsessive love and I married him 51 years ago!  My marriage has taught me many, many things about myself that I would never otherwise have learned.   But I have had other kinds of obsessive loves--I can easily fall in love with ideas of how I'd like my life to look.  Of course, they are often fantasy-based, totally unrealistic, and require other people to cooperate with my idea which makes it even more inaccessible.  Looking back, this explains why I started writing stories in the late 1990s when my first child left home.  It was my way of recreating my own little world because the one had known for 18 years was beginning to crumble and fall away from me.   Rosemary Sullivan is right--my stories were actually a mirror of what was inside me wanting expression since I had no control over what was happening on the outside.  My characters took on different parts of me which explained my complex personality--why I was a dichotomy even to myself.  Now Sarah is helping me reconcile those different parts of myself to discover which one is the authentic one.


Day 55:  The Authentic Dig

"How we remember, and what we remember, and why we remember form the most personal map of our individuality," writer Christina Baldwin reminds us in her wonderful book Life's Companion:  Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest.  Today, become willing to remember.  Prepare yourself for a gentle but authentic dig that will help you discover the mystery in which your soul abides.  Whether you realize it or not, you have lived many lives, and each one has left an indelible mark on your soul.....I'm referring to the episodic way in which our lives evolve:  childhood, adolescence, college years or early career, marriages, motherhood, perhaps life as a single mother, widowhood, and onward....Each life experience leaves a layer of memory like a deposit of sediment:  things we've loved and moments of contentment we've cherished that, when recalled, reveal glimmers of our true selves."

"Unearthing a mosaic is one of the most exciting discoveries on an archaeological dig....On the authentic dig we shall also go in search of a mosaic:  what brought us moments of happiness and contentment in our past lives....Most of the time, however, our memories are fragmented, like small colored chips.  When this happens, we need to be patient as we brush away the sediment of the past...Let your authentic archaeologist gather artifacts that can coax memory:  old photographs, letters, mementos....Listen to your favorite music from yesterday...Trace your life back to when you were ten, sixteen...and onward.  See what memories are triggered as you reacquaint yourself with the girl and woman you once were.  Linger only on the happy times.....With patience and quiet observation, these events will provide the seeker in you with a continuous thread of revelation."

My childhood memoir, Little Girl Lost, begins, "Getting lost is all from one's point of view.  My parents said when I was two my dog, Tuffy, and I got lost in a soybean field behind our house in Greenville, Mississippi.  But we weren't lost.  I knew exactly where we were--making our way down the paths--the secret paths, like a maze--in the soybeans, which were nearly as tall as me.  Just because they couldn't find me didn't mean I was lost."  This became a metaphor for the rest of my memoir which only covers up to the time I married at age 18.  It was only after I got out into the real world as a married woman that reality set in.  The fantasy world I'd planned for myself had obstacles I didn't know how to overcome.  I began to doubt myself and lose any confidence I'd carried out of childhood.  It's only been through perseverance that I've excavated the parts of myself that I lost over the years as well as the parts I'd deluded myself about as a child.  Whenever a memory from my childhood keeps surfacing I will take it as an indication there is something I need to pay attention to.  That memory is trying to tell me something about myself that I've forgotten that is important to who I am now.  Usually it is there to help me release something that has been holding me back from becoming who I really am.  When we are children, and even when we are young adults making our way in the world for the first time on our own, we may be easily intimidated.  We conform in ways that go against our personalities or even our values.  We become lost.  Thankfully, our Authentic Self knows exactly where it's heading.  We just need to get out of the way.

Is there a place in the world you'd travel to if all your expenses were paid and any other obstacle removed?  Tell us why that place in particular.