One thing I’ve been observing recently is the weather pattern of my psyche. There are dominant feelings that arise and then linger like a slowly fading echo, serving as the backdrop to a strand of days. It’s like visiting a foreign country. You’re still you, but everything feels a little different at the same time. This inner weather is always moving around, always shifting. Unpredictable. The weather of three weeks ago is long forgotten, but the weather of today is like a question percolating in the background, surfacing on the ride to work, in between tasks, or as I sit down to write. A persisting impression.
When I’m reading A Course in Miracles regularly, or A Course of Love, or translations of Rumi or Hafiz, or some other text dripping with traces of the Beyond, one of the benefits is the continuous calibration of my inner weather. Every such day contains a sunrise. I look out the window of this vehicle into the vast Emptiness surrounding me at least once, and my world is cleansed. I exhale consciously. I’ve noticed in the past that if I reduced my contact with these periods of reading, reflecting or meditating, my inner weather would drift. Sunrises could stretch into days or even weeks apart. Fog could sock me in and leave me witless, and I’d have to rebuild that warmth of contact with the Unknown. I think spirituality is ultimately about learning to keep in fruitful contact with Love on a moment-to-moment basis, as a natural way of being, even after setting these learning aids aside, but I think it can be challenging to try to fly too early.
Step by step we strengthen our connection to Truth, by giving over that next little bit of our old life and our limiting beliefs. The weather changes. We offer gratitude to the turning inner seasons. Eventually, we’ll have turned it all over, and we’ll be free. It is easy to consider this point a long way off, but I’m not inclined to consider myself an accurate judge of progress. It could be ten minutes from now. It could be my next breath. Love is like a saber-tooth cat coiled in the bushes on the side of the road, ready to spring as we walk by. We just need to quit thinking we live in a world where saber-tooth cats have been extinct for ten thousand years.
Lately I’ve been feeling myself able to sustain a view into the Distance, and yet… my inner weather has been simultaneously aswirl. I’ve been wondering, as I experience myself moving through events and as I observe my reactions to phenomena, why is it that I can tap into an experience of freedom and grace with far more ease than ever before, invite Hafiz in for tea in the evening, and yet I watch myself forsaking that experience for one less pleasant in moment after moment after moment?
I can see exactly what’s happening: I still give validity to the sensation of lacking something in particular situations. I watch myself do it. Then afterwards, I step back and start rebuilding the fire. The thing is, I think it’s possible to give up this recurring detour into the sensation of lack. I’m much more accepting of this idea than ever before. I can see how Love would have no need of presuming it’s own littleness to be polite, of strategizing to build a cushion of security, or interpreting any event whatsoever as evidence that if one is not careful or attentive, one could be left on the outside.
These are habits of thought. They run on autopilot. The right use of denial is to deny them… Jesus visits, and we stand together at the playground fence watching these children play games of pretend and act as though they’ve just been struck down by tragedy and loss, by the one disaster they most wanted to avoid, the one they knew would break them. They make it look so real, so close.
Don’t worry, he says, those types of thoughts are like signatures in a cloud chamber. You are like a sky-in-training, a being with no boundaries. As such, how could you not inevitably dissolve them? And when he says you, he means the One of us. There is no right or wrong in this, no way to train harder or accelerate this process, no way to increase my focus or nerve, no way to muster more dedication, no need for efforting and concentration. Christ has entered the room, and these strange thoughts have looked up, and just like that, they have seen each other. Oh @#$^. One moment, and everything changes.
Outside, the sun is high in the sky. It is so quiet you can hear spurs tinkling off the creaking slats of the boardwalk. Between buildings, the wind is coming in gusts. All I’m really saying, is this Presence within me can make for some interesting weather…
Embracing Forever 
nice post Michael. Very poetic, wise and fun story winding through your psyche, experiencing little self and big self. I’m delighted that you can watch the weather and be connected to the divine at the same time. I’d like to root myself more in the divine where I can watch the weather as children dancing across my yard. 🙂
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I loved the way you said: “I think spirituality is ultimately about learning to keep in fruitful contact with Love on a moment-to-moment basis”. I think for me, spirituality, is living from my soul, I mean being tuned into this loving vibration within, of every moment of every day. Living life as though our whole life was a prayer for unconditional divine Love. I think Jesus, or the Angels, or any spiritual being approaches us in the way we need to be approached, in a way we can understand. For me, being little child-like, it is always in a very nurturing, embracing, caring and loving way, like a kind of perfect “parental” Love in a way, but without being authoritative or discipline-oriented. In that way, we may all perceive spirituality as something different, because it adjusts to our soul’s journey and the needs of our soul. At least that is what I think 🙂 Lovely inspiring and thought-provoking post Michael! 🙂
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You have a beautiful way of capturing this, Line. I like the way you describe our relationship with the Divine, about being met where we are, in the way that is unique to each of us. We each have access to this loving vibration within, and I agree it is important for us to each trust our own way of accessing it. When we try to be someone else, or copy their way, we move into concepts, and away from the direct feeling available within. Thank you for sharing a sense of your own “way”! It is lovely and inspiring…
Michael
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This was a stunning explanation of how I feel, too, but I could have never described it so eloquently as you. Thank you for this. For being aware enough to put it into words.
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Thank you, Lehua. When words resonate between us, it reminds me that somehow, somewhere, we share in a common Inner Weather. We may be at different points on the globe, but we partake of the same Atmosphere…
Michael
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Hi Michael,
I love the weather analogy and imagine my life in a similar way. Both the patterns and the sure change and seasons of weather are ways to understand, anticipate and expect change, in life and in my reactions to it.
There are ways of being that are new to me as I suppose they are to all of us, many of which have come from going through rough weather. I think for me, thinking of life as weather helps me to appreciate that nothing remains the same and yet the patterns repeat and are familiar as the years go by.
“Hey Mr. weatherman won’t you come on over.
Hook me up to the powerlines of your love.” Ian Anderson
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You hit on something that really struck me, which is that thinking of some of these inner patterns like the weather might help to allow us to attach less meaning to their movement. What I mean by that is that we all live under the influence of the external weather, but we wouldn’t say we were bad people because a storm came through. It is just the weather. Likewise with these patterns that pass through us, these movements that take life within us and then fade, they are not necessarily “who we are”, but we are so prone to attach meaning to them in a way we might not, if we knew, it was only the weather… Maybe that isn’t exactly what you were saying, but I hadn’t thought about that when writing this, and it struck me as a potentially healing thought… Wishing you bright skies…
Michael
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Hi Michael,
Oh yes, that’s exactly what I am thinking. I refer to it as psychic weather, although that has connotations of the occult which are not intended by the term.
I have come to appreciate correlating natural, material existence to what we think of as “inner life.” It is grounding, lol, pun intended.
It’s clear sailing from where I am. 🙂
Debra
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Good to hear. I like the feeling of correlating natural, material existence to “inner life.” It does feel grounding, as you say, and also seems to emphasize that there is a Relationship in which we abide that is large enough to span all of these phenomena.
Michael
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Yeah.
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You, too? 🙂
Michael
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Surprise, surprise… 😉
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I really like your writing and the elasticity of the metaphor. I did however hesitate for a moment with the image of Love as a sabre tooth cat coiled in the bushes ready to spring. I hesitated, but then got convinced somehow… that’s the thing about these big cats, the quality of stealth.
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Ha! Lovely reply. I thank you for the compliment and yes, I assume them to be quite stealthy. Unless the instance in question is one of those retired circus cats that languishes in the sun all day, and waits to be fed. But that cat wouldn’t have gotten the part in this piece, anyway. I was thinking about the feeling Love as being able to tear through all falsehood, devour us, carry us beyond littleness and all of our half-hesitant maybe one day’s. But also we have to let Love in… Unlike the natural saber-tooth, it wouldn’t spring against our will…
Michael
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Wonderful, open the door and I’m devoured by Love as sabre-tooth in its natural state. Thank you! This abundance led me to look for Hafiz in the internet and I found traces, would like to buy something from Amazon, can you recommend a small volume? Thanks again…
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One of my favorites is the entitled The Gift, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, and inspired by Hafiz. I really like his inspired translation-renditions. When I think and write about Hafiz, it is often the Hafiz that emerges in Ladinsky’s work that I am feeling.
Michael
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Thank you, a quick reply, I’m on the way out now and shall have a look in the bookshop on the way. More later…
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That inner adornment and jewelry that pops into the imagination…wearing a strand of days. I love this. -x.M
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.. exactly ..
🙂
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Thanks, Bert!
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