The great pink search.
Still pondering what isn’t spoken, what isn’t shared on our blogs and with casual acquaintances.
What don’t I share here?
What words aren’t uttered and why?
I spend most days deeply contemplating spiritual questions.
Looking at things deeper and deeper and still deeper.
Our lives…
It’s not enough for me to view the surface level. I want to know what is deeper than personality, what exists beneath our everyday consciousness.
Years and years of meditation have revealed that our perception of life is not what it seems. We are not what we seem. Years and years of witnessing actions, thoughts and feelings illuminate glimpses of what we *really are* beneath our projected selves.
That’s what interests this one the most. That’s what I am. That’s what means more than anything.
Footprints in the sand
This blog–for me–has been mostly a fun release, a way of playing, in between and around and over and under the constant questioning, the attempt to realize the deeper essence of what we are.
Many people aren’t really interested in this. (And, gosh, who can blame them? It’s a deep underground well with many rushing streams and valleys and underworld mountains that lead to no answers at all. It’s the search for the Holy Grail. It can be agonizing. It can be joyful. It can be a very destructive process. It may even be a fruitless search. Yet some of us must search because there’s nothing else we can do… Something grabs us by our muzzle and we won’t be satisfied until we find what our inner self is seeking.)
The shopping cart that questions reality
In the end, of course, we know that Dorothy clicks her red heels and repeats, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”
Home is revealed to be HERE, now, and the movement toward seeking was actually a movement away from what we really are.
In the meantime, I search. Every minute. Every hour. Every day. Perhaps “search” is the wrong word. I look. I notice. I question. I inquire. Every day.
“Who makes the coffee? Who writes the blog? Who am I? Who are you? Who does this? Who does that? What is true? What is real? What is imagined?”
Is it the personality that makes the coffee, writes the blog, deposits the taxes, goes to town?
The boat in which we row to the other side of the lake
One of the reasons I don’t share this is that it’s integral. Some people say: just relax, quit searching, don’t DO anything, gosh that sounds exhausting, you’re going about this wrong, you’re not who I thought you were, you THINK too much!
Others aren’t called in this way; they imagine inquiry would be stressful. Yet what feels stressful to me, so often, is living from habituated patterns of response. Living from within a constricted reactive way of relating to the world.
Others think they’re being helpful, but in the end we all have one life to live. (Inner voice: WHO has one life to live?)
I don’t necessarily want an answer in thoughts. I want an answer in feeling. In action. In knowing. In life. The questions must lead BEYOND questions…
I love that the questions often open to a deep place of unknowing, to a deep place of peace. The questions take one back home to an emptiness that is full of joy and contentment and enough-ness.
That is what I don’t share with you, day in and day out. That’s who I am. That’s what drives this one. That’s what is the most important thing.
What is the most important thing for you? What are you alive to discover?
She ponders…
Lake Superior Spirit 
You can’t think too much! But I’m biased as I think too much too 😉 You asked about my blog – it’s at http://kumonofhamiltonwestend.wordpress.com/
Much love,
Nicole
Sometimes I envy the people who can go through life without constantly asking themselves the deeper questions. Then again, if there is nothing left to learn, nothing left to think about, then what is left?
YES! and then I think the to be real part–HOME while still observing that ‘grail’, with no words out. I can just smile and be silent. Some people close to me, I fear that I will lose them when I get that way. They have no way of knowing the inner conversations and the workings. On the outside, I can just sigh periodically. I wonder at what it looks like to those close to me. I worry that I look boring. Not so much in the same way others might worry about what people think. But in that way of what people do when they stop communicating in a way that is familiar. How, for me, to realize that I have been chattering in my head for twenty minutes and noticing energetic feedback from the other person’s ‘mind’ but choke and notice that I haven’t uttered a sound beyond a laugh or a smirk-like smile of understanding sound. I am glad that the few close to me get to know that about me, even if they can’t share. They have learned to say…have you floated off again? you must be very absorbed, try using colors to help me share it with you…or sometimes…don’t worry I know that you want to talk with me about something and I’m really ok with sitting here quietly with you.
And I’m really ok with sitting here quietly with you . . .
A very nice post…thanks for letting us share a little bit of who you are. I think I must be living in my own little happy world. Maybe I should question why I’m so happy with life. I love your photos…I believe the first is of a Roseate Spoonbill which I used to see when we lived in Key Largo.
I believe we have a lot in common here, Kathy. Thank you for sharing this with us! The word I use for that desire to “feel” answers and not just think or hear them in words is “knowingness.” Words, after all, are only symbols of something aren’t they?
The journey home is a long one…..I think it is all about becoming thoroughly human, caught up in Incarnation….
Has anyone read: AN ALTAR IN THE WORLD by Barbara Brown Taylor?
Fountainpen
wonderful post- like you I am a seeker, and lifelonger learner–I will never be totally satisfied but that does not mean I do not find peace in my seeking–I have been told often that I think too much too–I cannot imagine thinking any less
as always you express these thoughts so well
–sometime you are a reflection of me
Feel a deep connection with this comment. Much appreciated 🙂
🙂
Reading this Kathy is a bit like finally identifying that ingredient which one intuitively felt was missing all the time in Auntie Em’s cake ….
Kansas was never so far away, ‘nor’ so near…..
Your carrier pigeon senses are right on target.
Thank you so much for elucidating a little piece of ‘home’ ❤
Hi Kathy,
Ok that explains why I like you!!! I’m a thinker too – of course Monkey Mind is there a lot which kinda makes it fun – but you find me a strong Gemini who ISN’T a mind person. Sign of the twins, sign of duals, mental gymnastics, more thinking than they can handle sometimes. I know it’s why I spill out on the page every morning – all that thinking just HAS TO GO SOMEWHERE.
I’m heavy into packing now – lots of loud happy music playing – as I wrap up a life and move it. Talk about thinking – whoa.
Hugs
Suzen
I want an answer in feeling . . . a deep place of unknowing, to a deep place of peace.
I discover I am you and I don’t know the you, that you are. And I’m OK just observing that and sitting in the unknown.
I resonate deeply with you Kathy but am finding it harder, lately, to put my own inner workings into words, written or spoken. Always appreciating what you share here, and elsewhere xo
I was like you, Kathy, until a few years ago when something happened to my concentration and memory (side effects that had unfortunately lasting effects of prescription drugs I was on years ago) and I no longer delve. I rarely ask questions anymore. Sometimes it makes me feel dull, dulled. Sometimes I’m thankful for it as – unlike you, if I’m reading you correctly – I never did feel comfortable with it, but it certainly was who and what I was. It was me. What is me now, I’m not entirely sure.
You said: “I don’t necessarily want an answer in thoughts. I want an answer in feeling. In action. In knowing. In life. The questions must lead BEYOND questions…” And the thing is, this is probably another reason you don’t put it into your blog (though actually I think you put more of yourself in here than you think you do, or maybe I’m just good at reading between the lines) – that words don’t express as feelings do, as action does, etc.
I am a thinker. I am a Gemini. I am a feeler. A big FEELER. People have accused me of thinking too much, of feeling too much, they said it wasn’t healthy. I used to watch movies and read books (always true stories, usually of survival in the worst times) and I could “feel” what the characters were going through and it would exhaust me. It would drain me. But then it would dig into my soul and change me. Sometimes it feels like I am a seeker. A seeker of myself….rather, the pieces of myself that have somehow gotten scattered across the universe. So, I seek, gather and try to make sense of the pieces when I find them. There is another part of me….that simply “knows”. A part of me who has already lived and remembers. And/or who is so connected with other souls that I know and feel their experiences. It doesn’t happen all the time and there seems to be no rhyme or reason but when it happens, it is amazing and still takes my breath away! When I was growing up and would get into these “seeking/questioning/thinking/feeling” states, my Mom would starting singing “Dig a little deeper in the well”…(an old Statler Brothers song, I think). lol…I think she felt the need to lighten my mood. I do feel more balanced now, focusing on the present and being mindful of everything in and around and over and under and high and low. Sometimes, just observing, listening and feeling.
I’m loving reading the comments almost as much as I enjoyed the post. I think you dance around the thing that you are really good at and that is being present in the seeking. You manage to move forward and still be able to truly notice and experience where you are right now. That’s what the blog is and I love it for that reason. I am a seeker as well, but what I live for is the conversation. There’s nothing I like better than sharing what I’ve found along the way and hearing about what others have found on their own journeys.
Today I am very thankful for the internet and for blogs. Without those two things, geography would hinder all of us bloggers and deeper thinkers from finding each other and from knowing that there are others who have the same questions we do. Thanks so much for sharing this, and mostly, Kathy, thanks for being you. I only wish that geography didn’t separate us from being really close friends. I would sure enjoy coffee or tea with you on my porch or yours.
Yes. 🙂
“I love that the questions often open to a deep place of unknowing, to a deep place of peace. The questions take one back home to an emptiness that is full of joy and contentment and enough-ness.”
Kathy – I dance with this same partner, “unknowing.” Sometimes it’s a slow waltz, sometimes it’s an all-out jig. Regardless of the tempo, the dance with “unknowing” always clears space. And it’s in that very space that I find direction.
Of course, this is a subject near and dear to my heart. I have so many thoughts on it, I don’t even know where to begin, while at the same time, I feel you’ve said it all.
I’m deeply interested in human behavior. For me, one needs to cut through all the conditioning of human life to find the deeper “I Am.” You’re right, it’s not easy, and it’s why so many avoid it. I believe we have a power beyond measure … power that can heal the most painful of diseases. Perhaps this power can even grow back limbs, if we could only clear away the human muck of dysfunction.
At the same time, I ponder the paradox’s of this human/material/world of matter. Perhaps we are meant to experience the opposites (sorrow/joy, up/down, light/dark) of this dimension to better appreciate living in the ONE when we finally awaken. Then again, what the heck do I know? Like you, these are things I ponder.
Kathy, I love the images that you choose to help display what you’re saying. Your words are true and honest and speak with a calm maturity that I struggle to achieve for myself.
There was a time in my life when I knew the answers. Knew them with a burning certainty. I was a “born again Christian”. It was nice having all the answers. Then one day I found I did not want to be “in” if it meant others were “out”, because they did not believe as I did. But gosh I miss that certainty. I yearn for that spiritual confidence. Now, like many, I am as one at a buffet, picking and choosing from items I do not fully understand and judging the god who I once felt was judging others.
I thought to mention the word discerning and discernment to you after reading your comment. I think, from your words, that the buffet idea might be a little like ice skating on a vertical surface at times? Perhaps, what I do/did might help if I share it with you? There are things in the bible, I know there are, just where, I’m not the sort to recall them–they speak of discernment. I note that many follow in a rote and unthinking or undiscerning manner, many things. If I put me in a place to follow, but to watch me from the outside, I am then discerning and can bypass the notion that I have foundered. Doing things this way, in a walking alongside manner, helps me to just do and be, hopefully before I make a choice or a decision. I’m thinking you were just sharing and not so much having issues with this. I just keep thinking of people feeling like they must reinvent the wheel over and over again and wondering how do humans get into that inventing space over and over again.
Me, too, Sybil, I used to “know” all the answers with absolute certainty and shunned those who didn’t share membership in the same belief system. Your comment made me think of this quote:
“A person has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it, and one’s religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.”
~ D. H. Lawrence
Well I am glad I waited until there were all these fabulous comments to read, also.
I agree with Val, that you share more of what you don’t say than you might think you do, LOL!!! You share being present, as lisaspiral said, and that conveys huge amounts whether the reader is consciously aware of receiving, or not..
And we are all probably more similar to one another in what we don’t say, in the place where we aren’t saying anything, than in what we DO say! That is comforting and comfortable, to me.
I love you!
OM
I’ve found myself asking those very questions very recently. What am I alive to discover? On the surface, at the most simple level, I’m sure I am here for my family, my daughters. But is that my only, my one true purpose? I’m sure there must be other possibilities that I feel unable to discover.
oooooooo….”Everyone has it in them to express themselves that fundamental thing that they know they are inside. That rather beautiful afraid person. Which might get translated into aggression, or silence, or shyness, or all kinds of other things. But inside we know that we are huggable and lovable, and we want to love and be loved. That person is yearning for fulfillment. To be the person they know they can be and that’s a constant journey; that’s a process.”
– Stephen Fry
Another fascinating post, Kathy, thank you. Your surely know these words:
“It is the journey that counts, not the destination”. Along this life journey, I often ask myself “What am I here for ?” Some days I find answers when reaching out to people. At other times I cannot help but feeling confused and full of contradictions. Life is never a long and quiet river and listening to my inner thoughts helps me discover more about myself and accept the fact that not all answers may have to be known.
I do wonder what the purpose of our lives is…what it is all supposed to MEAN. But I figure sooner or later it will be revealed. And I’m (somewhat) content to wait.
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Engaging post and comments. You write beautifully about many things…both outer and inner images.
Eons ago I searched for the soul; if it lived within or without the body. Then I wondered Who I was? What am I doing here and why?
Ambiguity was and is very difficult for me. I know I don’t know but how do I find out if I do not seek, but where does the seeking begin and for how long; is there a map?
Can I Google this and find answers? I think not…I once tried that approach and actually laughed at the results Google spit out!
It is a puzzle to me; this life and the people who inhabit the same space as I, yet see and feel things so differently.
You are obviously a deep thinker Kathy. If I think too much I get a headache – like doing crossword puzzles in a moving car. 🙂
I, too, am in a state of constant thought. But it is exhausting to me – I suppose I should learn to meditate, so that I’m not always searching – so that I can just “be” even through the questions. I wonder if that’s possible.
I do find the thinking Kathy to be an inspiration to me. Your thoughts are not your enemy. I learn a lot from you. ❤
As always I find this life richer because people approach it so differently. I seek the details, and savor the present, but feel more like we provide our own meaning. Figuring out what things mean to us is certainly a process, but I’ve never looked for a hidden meaning to present itself. Perhaps I am wrong – it’s happened before – but for me, this is enough.
It’s true what you say, that some of us must search because there’s nothing else we can do. Me, too. Not sure, but I think I was alive to discover, to learn the hard way, actually, that the most important questions have no answer, and that it was all right to rest quietly in that deep place of unknowing. And from there, to be an observer with no agenda. Don’t know if that makes sense, but there it is.
I love this post, Kathy – it resonates with me.
Philosophers of all times and nations have tried to answer the question about the essence of existence, the soul, beginning and end, and they’ve also tried to find out what’s beneath this all. There are thousands of theories with all kinds of explanations, and nobody has answered this question completely or in the way this could be perceived as the only true answer.
What we know about the brain is that it’s electrical activity what causes impulses to be sent, received and transmitted. One could argue whether the soul keeps existing or not because there’s still the law of conservation of energy which clearly states that energy doesn’t disappear, but is not created from scratch, too. It’s in an instant circulation in all its various states. That means the energy produced by the brain activity (positive, negative, uplifting, depressing, whatever) gets involved into the stream of the entire energy flow in the universe, thus, anything you say, think or express, anything which involves the tiniest consumption or release of the brain energy does not ever disappear. It changes its state and takes on different forms and keeps existing. It’s you yourself who’s beneath of everything in this moment of time. Everyone of us is the product of ourselves and the subject to infinite outer influences.
wow, Kathy! I don’t know you but I feel like I know you intimately, like a sister. Very inspired writing…
Thank you, Laura! I appreciate that you stopped by and shared a little bit of yourself. You also prompted me to read this post (forgot I wrote it) and was inspired to read these thoughts today. 🙂
Like Stacy, I am a deep thinker. If we just think deeply enough, the answer is bound to be there! But all that is there are more questions….