This morning I prayed for a bridge. And the bridge I saw was long and blue, crossing a vast turbulent river.
But not so in my heart. My heart lives in the woods where hawks fly and chipmunks race and little red fox pups eye me mischievously. Ah the bridge of my youth.
There have always been bridges in my life…an imaginary way to cross from here to there, from what is to what is better…always. These bridges have usually been books. So many books.
But now I have fewer years in front of me than behind. Time has a melodramatic ring to it instead of melodious bellows. Now my bridges must have meaning and they must be real. I have no time for the what ifs.
Somehow the bridge must take all the philosophies, sermons, and theologies of my past and lead me elsewhere, because the past is so incomplete. I need more. Though I pitch my shovel into the dirt of all I have been taught, I still come up for air with more questions than ever before. So here I am, looking for another bridge.
In my prayers He said He would be the bridge…Oh Lord be the bridge before I find myself traveling on seas that take me nowhere. I don’t want to go nowhere. I want….I want….I want…
I am not happy with myself. I have never been happy with myself. I have always blamed it on circumstances outside of myself. Until now. Until I began listening to Sadhguru define taking responsibility of yourself. Well I am a westerner. I define that as life has all been my own fault. Abraham-Hicks said, my choices have led me to here; I have chosen to be here. Doing laundry in a hotel is what I have chosen to do? Really?
“If human intelligence does not tie itself down with identity, every human being will realize the nature of life.” Yes yes that’s what I want, to realize the nature of my life. But like he said, I am committed to one dimension of intelligence. I want…I want …more. “The entire human experience is happening within you…What is happening within you you must at least be able to determine. What is happening within you must be happening the way you want it. When what is happening within you is happening the way you want it, suddenly what you want to happen in the world is tremendously enhanced.” …”If you pay attention to your existence, not to your thought, not to your emotions, not to your arrangements of life that you have made around you…if you pay attention to the nature of your existence, it is the most obvious thing.”
What led me here across the bridge to this world of questions without answers, yet seeking them nevertheless? I had had a horrible day made worse when a coworker wrote notes all around the work area about the awful work I was doing and that I was too slow. The voices in my head grew louder, what I thought of her, what I should say to her, what notes I should write back to her….and then I ‘googled’ voices in my head and got hits by the dozens. Looks like I am not the only one who gets so upset.
So, I listened to Michael Singer’s The Surrender Experiment. I was most intrigued with the yoga. How it had shut off the voices. Then I read The Three Pillars of Zen. Though confused by a lot of it, it led me to Sadhguru. And here I am, dabbling in the forms, art and philosophy of yoga. What bridge is the real bridge to wherever I should be and whatever i should be doing?
This day ended in a long pause.
There have been others who have searched beyond the safety of their home religions, who have discovered other worlds and other beliefs yet stayed true to their own.
Sadhguru said that we just merely believed what we were taught.
But I have experienced The Word as Truth. I have called on the name of the Lord and He has saved me, He has answered me. Even all these books and videos come from Him because I asked Him to open my eyes.
Yet I feel like a traitor to Christianity even as once I felt my Protestant beliefs to be treason to my Catholic upbringing. Religion is a hard rock to climb under in order to climb up on. I feel like I am always raising a white flag in the dusty corners of I don’t know what to believe. But I do know that my Christian roots are deep, not to be discarded.
Yet at the same time, if there is more to learn, I am willing to cross over my long blue bridge.