Evolve the Conversation Blog

There are days I try to get through. Too many. On these days, no amount of coffee or chocolate can help. I usually have too much of both.

Screaming rush of river Empties Into mud-walled stagnant pond.

There are days I try to get out of. Not participate in. Pretend are not happening, because my emotional filters are clogged. My spiritual portals: closed. On these days, I clean until our home is a stage-set. Then, I reluctantly become a nomadic forager of salty starch products. Fool myself by choosing “baked” varieties.

This weekend I tried a one-day water fast. What I learned (besides the fact that coffee is definitely the answer to everything) was that I am starving. Not for more attention. More love. Or a mind-melting foot-rub.

I am hungry to be a connector of spirits. A networker in other worlds. I am hungry to be a giant epic success of radical receptivity. I am hungry to hear the leaves.

Two days after the fast and I introduced fruit, coffee (in case that wasn’t obvious) and turkey chili. Odd, I know, but my objective was not to follow any prescribed cleansing rituals but to make my own. I have felt out of step with my spirit.I know, it sounds abstract. Esoteric. But what I am craving is a primal, elemental. The kind of experience that cannot be accessed by therapy or acupuncture. The kind of experience to which howling or chest beating or shrieking would be a more likely way in.

I am trying to tune in. I am not sure what this even means. Certainly not how to do it. But, I have been trying to let the day get through to me, get out of me what it has to give–show me that I am bigger than two letters.

I ask the red leaf, “Where should we go?” It points down. South? No. Back? Toward the train? No. It bobs in the barest breeze. Nods. I widen my retinal aperture. All the leaves of all the trees nod, in unison. Agreement? Yes. “Faith is bigger than knowledge,” they say.  And then, the one red leaf, speaking from within my head offers this, “Drip like molasses through the roller coaster of your mind. Enter the fire of passion without singing the edges of your five-fingered maple soul.

I cannot speak with spirits (yet) but I am dancing deeper into the questions.