Finding Our Way (from blog comment dialogue)
Wolf – your message to Tara about the frozen-in-fear deer is all too true, yet harder than we ever realize to break out of.
Not only your message but those incredibly beautiful and insightful ones by Kiva Rose and Loba bring tears to my eyes every time I read them ~ I print them out at the library, store them, read and re-read and gather sustenance. You really must compile a book of all your articles! I have come to find Anima so recently and was immediately spellbound, barely even 9 months or less, and regret that I didn’t have this incredibly sane and sage advice when I was at the threshold of life in my 20s — years of wasted actions and floundering. Being a baby boomer female I was a hippie at heart but lived some wild decades while being a loner by nature and never quite fit into any slot; always enjoying the intellectual exchanges of city people yet finding the simple, perhaps “trashy” country folk more comforting and approachable – not being judged nor being defined by what one does for a living.
The Animá Center provides that refuge for those of us who long to find their meaning in life ~ please write more articles for those of us who are STILL wondering what they will be when they grow up ~ is it possible to never know one’s purpose? How can one even take an action step when the direction or purpose is totally blank?
Also is there any advice for someone who’s environment and climate is the most influential factor of loving where they are?
Perhaps you have already written an essay on this topic, if so please direct me. Any advice on what your family/tribe’s spiritual path and source of energy is would be so appreciated. At least I have a supportive husband but this anguishing search is a solitary one!
Keep up this great Work, all of you!
In peace and gratitude,
Juni
Dear Juni
We all appreciated this comment, and it can’t go unacknowledged. If our touches you deeply enough to earn a tear, then all the time and love that goes into this has flowered and fruited.
Much of my work is already found in available books which we would be happy to send you (see the books page of the website for complete titles). Those that are not in completed book form now or yet, can be sent digitally for computer viewing or printing out. The best and newest work is all going into the Book of Animá, which I can only hope will become an available tool for every deeply feeling and increasingly uncompromised seeker. To be there for any 20 year old, and perhaps spare them some distractions and limiting habits, would be wonderful. But to affirm, inspire and empower someone like yourself is no less important. At any age, every moment is beginning from which we will never go back, endless possibilities and scary but wondrous choices that are always ours alone to make. What you will be when you “grow up,” is what you consciously and purposefully do right now. Do what your hear implores and your world seems to need. Like the child’s search and find game of “warmer, warmer,” continually adjust your course towards what feels most helpful and healthful. When it feels “cold,” distracting, disempowering, soulless, move away from it… and in this way find you are ever more on the path of your wholeness and wholest giving. Purpose is not a destination, it is a process that is never complete yet always fulfilling. I hope this helps.
For more about the path we teach, turn to our writings page on the website, search the past blog articles in the archives there, and request our books as appropriate. And for the deepest understanding of yourself, we recommend a commitment to completing the studies and practices in the Animá Correspondence Courses. The energy we run on is the same resource you do or will tap, from the inspirited living earth we are extensions of and the powers and memories stored and drawn from there. And besides the energy and inspiration, it is the passion that makes us insistent and driven, passion fueled by both discomforting awareness and overwhelming love.
Now is always the time. Do not let self doubt or hesitation keep you from your magical dance, your ever evolving calling, your fullest satisfaction.
Blessings from us all,
Wolf & Family
Categories: Practicing Animá Lifeways
Chris
Thank you for this lovely post, Loba; your warmth and love always shine so clearly, and I am always hungry (and more determined to search for wild food!) when I’ve finished reading.
Wolf, your saying these things (“Do what your hear implores and your world seems to need. Like the child’s search and find game of “warmer, warmer,” continually adjust your course towards what feels most helpful and healthful. When it feels “cold,” distracting, disempowering, soulless, move away from it… and in this way find you are ever more on the path of your wholeness and wholest giving. Purpose is not a destination, it is a process that is never complete yet always fulfilling. I hope this helps.”) helps me tremendously, too. Thank you for the analogy.
Jane
Dear Juni,
Your honest words and anguished yearning touched me deeply, because they resonate strongly with my own desperate journey to discover/uncover “What am I supposed to *do*?” This was a frenzied anguished searching and seeking for years–that anguished knowledge that there was something I couldn’t pull together in myself, something I didn’t see or understand that enable me to take up the mantle of my own nature and just *BE* that person in the world, in my fullness of purpose and service. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just be a writer (my ambition as a youth) or a musician (I was and am a professional harper) or a Reiki practitioner … or whatever! Any one thing i enjoyed wasn’t ME, but a ribbon in the weave.
Our purpose is around us wherever we are–the world, the stories we love, the images that dance compellingly in our mind and flit away as impossibilities in this culture, this time–are our soul calling, this way, this way! The dream of our truest nature is woven in our hearts and playing out in the things we notice, in our most wistful imaginings … *and* they (in my experience) are tantalizing. You may be able to pin it down and say, ‘of course–this is who I am, must be!’ and feel that this is IT. Or … it may be a facet of yourself, or yourself at this time. We are in process through our lives, and as Wolf pointed out, our understanding and expression with change.
So, we continue with our Inner tracking, using all our senses and the gentleness we can muster, and the perseverance to discern the shape, scent, feel of who we are at heart, as we would in tracking a shy animal. Learn what she loves, where she most likes to find herself, the textures, the tastes. And find the places in story where she hides. What you notice in a tale reveals something of who you are, where you are in your life right now.
I can tell you from my own experience that a time can come when you can say. “Yes.” I don’t have the definitive answer, but it is enough. I choose to take action from this place. (as Wolf so clealy suggests)I claim it for myself, and where the mantle lightly so that I can continue to grow and shift as the world reveals more of what I’m here to do, who or what I’m here to serve. When you listen and observe and persevere, the world, the Universe can’t help but mirror and offer back to you what you need.
Blessings to you on your journey, Juni — and all of you who are in this wilderness. Find something to love about where you are. As an elder once said (words I took deep comfort from at the time): our tears reveal that we are in vision. When you weep at words you read or hear that touch you deeply, or in other circumstances, do pay attention to those moments. They reveal what lies hidden in the heart of you–your own nature–where the beauty lies and the wounding. Remember, our deepest wounds often lead us to our greatest gifts ….
Jane
Juni
Dear Jane ~ I am JUST NOW discovering your response, was always reading the comments posted after Loba’s initial essay, not the one including my plea. My eyes mist up at your compassion and understanding of this search ~~ it really isn’t frivolous! So many in our culture just ‘poo poo’ the notion of this self examination, of this questioning ~ so they anesthesize themselves with sports, kids and grandkids, and all the hectic modern day activities that to me seem a desperate avoidance technique for just sitting with themselves! I too have always wanted to be a writer, yet feel stumped at what story to tell…. also have a Reiki empowerement from years ago but don’t have the ambitious streak it takes to go for it, you know? Lately I’ve even toyed with the idea of going to the medium for some advice and guidance, always still fearing that I can’t intuit the answers myself, since I suspect my fears and ego get in the way….. How to trust our true inner voice? I have good intuition about everyone else, though!! I laugh about that, but I think it’s easy to be objective ~ and thus very CLEAR ~ about situations where we have no attachment to the outcome. Perhaps that’s what true compassion is, to not be personally attached to any outcomes but to want only what is best for the other, regardless of whether that’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Whereas for myself I only what the good outcome, don’t want to risk summoning up the bad ~ even if that would be the best learning experience.
I feel that we don’t necessarily have to suffer to learn our lessons ~ but feeling frustrated is such a burden.
I have always blamed my environment as contributing to my malaise – always seeking “Home” in finding the perfect town. What part of the country do you live in? Perhaps the artifice of Florida environment leaves that emptiness, since there are not that many like minded souls here (or that I have been able to connect with)
Thanks so much for your generous words, Jane ~ will read them over and over again!
Namaste,
Juni