Jamie Ridler | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

What do you wish to jump into?

It’s interesting that Jamie’s picture is her jumping in a puddle in the rain. It’s raining in Fort Collins today, drizzly and dark and depressing. This is what the wishing landscape looks like here today:

It’s the kind of day when a soft puff of breath isn’t going to do it. Those wishes aren’t coming off, aren’t being made without a little energy and force. There will be work involved with this wishing.

How interesting, considering the clearest, strongest, loudest answer I have for this prompt, “What do you wish to jump into?” is that I wish to jump into writing my book.

And then, what comes right after reinforces the realization I’m having that I am a Jill of All Trades. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking that your dream, your passion, your calling, has to be just one thing, and I was okay with that, since being a writer was my dream and it felt so huge, big enough to fill a whole life. But, what I am beginning to understand is my dream involves more than just that, even as central as the writing is to the rest. It includes yoga, meditation, coaching, therapy, art, mindfulness, teaching, mentoring, hiking, running, music, blogging, web design, dogs, relationships, vulnerability, bravery, silliness, curiosity, eating healthy, self-care, self-love, etc.

And yet I can distill the whole thing down into a single calling: helping people remember, rediscover, be mindful of and manifest their basic goodness. I wish to jump into that. Plunge, dive, leap, vault, cannonball, belly flop, jump into that.

Jamie’s prompt is this: “What are you dreaming under this Full Pink Moon? The name represents the pink flowers that so lavishly bloom in the spring. What an invitation to let yourself luxuriate in your dreams, embracing them passionately, sharing them magnificently and enjoying each precious bloom. Let’s share our dreams and make beautiful magic together under the Full Pink Moon!”

The Full Pink Moon asks: “What dreams is it time to tend?”

As I was telling my writing group today (we made full moon dreamboards together as part of our practice), sometimes when I make one, I begin the practice with an empty mind. I might have a vague sense, whisper of an answer not yet fully formed. I keep myself open, as Jamie suggests, seeing what pictures arise, which ones call to me. I’ve even been completely finished with a dreamboard and still not quite sure what the answer is, and only fully discover it as I write my blog post trying to explain it.

When I first read this full moon’s question, “what dreams is it time to tend?”, I knew my answer immediately. However, I didn’t want to fixate on it, didn’t want to reject any other answer that might want to come through, so I stayed open throughout the process–but the answer stayed the same.

It is time, kind and gentle reader, to tend to my dream of writing a book.

Wisdom, wonders and writing.
Books.
Understanding.
Offerings.
Practice.

The story beings.

Writing begins with the breath.

Creativity.
Great stories from a crumbling world.
Writing down the bones.
Freeing the writer within.
Being true to life.

The Writing Warrior.
Discovering the courage,
to free her true voice.
Read, see, listen.
Practicing mindfulness.
Presence of mind.

A magic poem, sent from the Universe, like a prayer:

Spinning, swamped, slimed, sunk
She rises, resolute
Still crowned by petals.

P.S. I am realizing now that I should make clear that the last stanza here was a true gift from the Universe, but maybe not how you might interpret that: I was looking through my stack of magazine pages, feeling like I needed just one more thing, probably words, to finish out my dreamboard, and there it was, a whole page poem, Way of the Water-Hyacinth by Zaw Gee (translated from the Burmese by Lyn Aye), of which the above is the final stanza.

Here’s a video of Lyn Aye talking about and reading the poem.