following the omens
I recently finished reading Paulo Coelho’s excellent book The Alchemist. One of the things he spends some time talking about in the book is the idea that omens are the language of the world, a language spoken through the entire world, but unique to every individual, because every individual has a different dream they are trying to realize. Looking back on my life, I can see how omens have appeared at the important junctures, and how following them (or not) has affected my life. I bring this up because I am seeing them again, an indicator that something very important in my life is about to occur.
As I’ve written about in another column, I believe I’m being told to choose the direction that my life will go in for the next several years, if not the rest of my life. Despite knowing more now than ever before, and knowing that I know all I need to know, I still find myself approaching this decision with some trepidation. I am not sure where the fear is coming from – some comes from my head, some from my heart. My head is concerned that despite everything I know, I am going to make the wrong decision. I’m still figuring out what it is exactly that concerns my heart – I’m not as in touch with my emotional self as I should be, whatever the reason. I only know that it is concerned too, and somewhat hesitant.
I suspect there are two reasons for my heart’s hesitancy: one, it’s afraid I won’t listen to it, and go down the wrong path, and two, it’s afraid it will get hurt again. If you knew my life’s story, you might understand the reasons for that, but I will not go into that here. Emotions are not logical and cannot be reasoned with, but I can address the issues that cause my heart to feel that way. I cannot force myself to feel something I don’t, and I’ve reached the place where I choose to acknowledge the emotions I feel as valid, both good and bad. If I don’t acknowledge the bad ones, I can’t change things to keep them from coming back.
I know I spoke about omens, so I’m doing my best to follow the ones I’ve been seeing. The biggest one I’ve been seeing with sledgehammer like regularity is the singleness of purpose people have when they really want to achieve something – something I haven’t had in a long time. I keep looking around my house and thinking I have too much stuff, still. I feel like I’m being made aware of this because I need to make room for something to come in – or possibly someone, and it can’t come until I have made room for it. I’m becoming aware of the interconnectedness of things and people, seeing how they are networked and connected together. I’ve finally figured out that just because I learned how to do something once doesn’t mean I need to keep doing it, that I can let it go and focus on matters at hand instead of irrelevant things from the past. And that no matter what happens, I will be taken care of, however overwhelming circumstances may seem at the time.
Maybe I should be sitting down and writing out my creed, or manifesto for living. I’ve found a pretty good way of living, I’m thinking it’s time to enhance it. Writing it down would certainly force me to put my thoughts into a definite, expressible form, instead of vague thoughts. Hmmm. Something to think about.