Friendly Souls

The woman I’m counseling holds up a book. “Do I want to borrow it?” It’s the parable of

The Little Soul and the Sun

. I thank her, saying, “Not now.” She questions me again next week, and this time I surrender, saying “Yes.” Having read it, I now tell everyone in my practice to read it.

It’s nighttime in a community in India, ten years later, where I’ve come for spiritual training and volunteering. I’ve been sitting in my living room in a comfortable chair while my gaze roamed from a large print of Meher Baba up to the twenty-foot sloped ceiling, then down to a small, carved lamp pouring soft light over half of the desk. It is quiet.

Just let it all go. Just let it all go

—now I say my thought aloud, “Just let it all go.” The words feel like water running among rounded stones—undemanding yet strong.

I’ve been remembering my simplified version of

The Little Soul and the Sun

. The people whom I’ve seen as difficult in my life, I now meet in my mind as souls who’ve volunteered to be on Earth with me. They’ve come to help with the lessons I’m to learn. Whatever my thought has been of them—

Just let it all go

. I feel mellow and relaxed—with deeper understanding and appreciation.

My realization is, “Seeing those who make our lives difficult as 'friendly souls' may bring us kindness—learning beyond our worldly knowledge.”

Little Bloomers or Upside-Down Hearts

When you begin seeing "hearts," she told me, "you are ready for a relationship"—then she added she had made that up. Years apart, a friend told me she’d been to a conference where she’d found heart-shaped stones near a river. I mused over her discovery. Then I had a phase in India where I saw stones that were heart-like. Exploring putting hearts on my bed pillow when I was ready for a relationship, I can confirm one appeared.

I face with resignation the thousands of insects that come with the first monsoon rain each year, crawling over the walls, or immobilized near a light. I delight in the "flying horses"—beautiful clouds of fluttering wings in the security lights beyond the darkened windows. There is one insect, however, that has captured my imagination, for it looks like a pair of little bloomers, or an upside-down heart. A thoughtful-appearing insect—it rests for hours (maybe several days) undisturbed, unless my hand comes close.

In my spiritual training, some people were described as upside down—most of the population—or right-side up. The difference depended on seeing the values of the world as worldly (material) or spiritual (finding God within.) People could own both values. Love is—down deep—the stuff we are made of. The little bloomers, or upside-down hearts, remind me to keep upright—keeping my thinking through my heart.

My realization is, "The heart symbolizes love on our surface and also at our deepest level."

Quitting

Professional Photography by Willene Johnson Flag, owned by Micheline Voets

Quitting is something I’d not thought about—until it appeared—opening times that I had quit. With a sudden leap of thought, I understood emotional immaturity had been responsible.

For a science fair, in high school biology, I wrote a report on the jack-in-the pulpit (a wood’s flower), drew it on poster board, and made a clay model. Because the resemblance wasn’t good enough, I quit using it. Striking my disappointment, second place was an entry with a clay jack-in-the-pulpit.

My sister and I took horseback riding lessons in high school, mounted on big horses—learning to walk, trot, and canter on English saddles, in a ring. We graduated to an outside road—until stopping short one day, I pitched over the mane, clinging under the neck until my feet released to the ground. All night I cried quietly as antihistamine couldn’t stop the itching of poison ivy from horse hide. I quit riding. At my fiftieth high school reunion, one of my friends told me she jumped her horse every day.

One university summer, I waited on tables at the Atlantis Hotel, in Maine, with its huge dining room overlooking wide lawns. I did the work well until the week before Labor Day, when I developed a mild sore throat, a self-diagnosis confirmed by a doctor at one of my tables. I told the owner I wanted to leave, in return receiving a scowl and being told that it was the busiest weekend of the season. I quit. Married, I admiringly watched my daughter wait on tables after her university graduation, until she found the position she wanted.

My realization is, “Like the lengthwise and crosswise threads in woven fabric, the strength of success comes from both emotional growth and intellectual growth. The second, without the first, can cause misunderstood weakness in commitment and follow-through.”