Julie Tallard Johnson’s Blog

Someone recently inquired about what I thought a miracle was. So, in response of course I sat down and wrote my thoughts in my journal. After all, everything is grist for the mill when it comes to spiritual journaling and the writer’s life.

The response came quickly because I have experienced many miracles in my life. Just yesterday morning looking out my window I witnessed a miracle.

Miracles often go beyond our ability to explain how they happened. Of course there is much around us that cannot easily be explained. However, when we have a miracle show up it is through our understanding of it that we experience it as a miracle.

There are many levels of miracles and depending on and through one’s view, one experiences a miracle. Your view includes your perspective, your mind set, your assumptions and your spiritual knowledge.

One “level” of miracle is through synchronistic encounters, another “level” is through experiencing our oneness with all of life (this can be a healing miracle or a spiritual epiphany). Paradoxically, I experience many miracles in nature and through scientific phenomenon. Seeing a redheaded woodpecker at my feeder can be understood as a miracle due to their rarity. Being in a terrible accident without a scratch on you could be a miracle. Someone recovering from cancer could be a miracle. Someone having cancer could be a miracle. 

Miracles are relative to the person witnessing or experiencing one.

Just yesterday I was sharing a story of a personal miracle I experienced back in the late 1970’s. (And even though I consider this a more personal miracle it fulfills my requirement for an authentic miracle.) An authentic miracle is one that moves the individual and environment (social and natural) in the direction of one’s evolutionary destiny (destination). An authentic miracle is recognized as such. An authentic miracle is perfectly timed (but this timing cannot be explained rationally). 

An authentic miracle holds an opportunity for the recipient. 

So, back in the second summer after I graduated from High School I went to the admissions office of the University. I had attended my last two years of High School at one of the first alternative high schools: Malcolm Shabazz. Grades were not important, but one still had to get credits to graduate. Up until my senior year I had no plans of going on to college. But upon graduation I decided I wanted to be a writer and become a social worker. So with my “eggs all in one basket,” I took my transcripts to the admission’s office with the plan to attend the University that Fall. The woman at the admissions took my material and told me to come back the next day. Which I did. When she retrieved my transcripts she informed me that I did not have enough algebra credits for admission.

I left confused and stumped. My plan felt SO correct for me. I could feel the momentum of this idea I held for my self and my life. 

I went for a walk down to a local drug store that at the time had a counter where one could get sodas, sandwiches and ice cream. (Back then they were known for grilled cinnamon rolls — buttered and flipped on the grill!) I sat down and ordered a coca-cola. As I sipped and considered my predicament (I was also asking Spirit, How can this be, and What should I do now?), someone sat down next to me. I was pretty self-absorbed but I did look up to greet this person.

Can you guess who sat next to me that day?

My algebra teacher from Malcolm Shabazz. I told him what just happened and he told me that I did in fact take enough algebra and that he would write a letter stating so.

I was admitted into the University that Fall. (I now have eight published books and hold a Masters in Social Work).

I know we have to show up for these miracles, they don’t come to us. We have to “meet the Creative” halfway as the I Ching consults us to do. We have to participate in the evolutionary momentum of our life and the life of the planet. When we do this, miracles show up to help us.

I witnessed a miracle recently. One that is relatively common — someone addicted to drugs and alcohol hit the wall, hard. The wall was the miracle. The miracle was his feeling the impact of the wall. The miracle was in his choice of recovery.

In the movie The Cave of The Yellow Dog the Grandmother shows her granddaughter the miracle of life. She asks her to try and get a grain of sand to land on the top of a needle. When she is unsuccessful her Grandmother says, “That is how difficult it is to have a human birth.” 

Ideally, miracles are recognized as such and not wasted.

 

Journaling Around Miracles

What do you consider a miracle? Write about a recent one. What kind of miracle would help you at this point with your intentions or life?

Write about a missed opportunity (or wasted miracle) using the following words: precious, reluctant, chance, future, sunset, over. 

How can such difficulty as cancer or losing something be a miracle?

Take a different bus or route home. Notice something unusual and write about that.

 

 Freedom involves making decisions, and each decision is a destiny decision.- Joseph Campbell

 

What do a snowstorm, winter prairie, prayer flags, frozen seeds and enlightenment have in common?

 

Well, being a meaning-maker, I decide that. Oh how I love the writer’s life, I can take and make meaning of everything!  As the spiritual practitioner I am also the meaning maker but use sacred texts as a skillful means to make meaning of my encounters and experiences. After all, awakened Beings have gone before me and traversed the difficulties and distractions leaving behind many maps for me to use.

 

So my walk through the prairie and its 12 inches of snow afforded me inspiration for both my writing and spiritual life. It usually does. This of course is in part due to what I bring into the spiral with me, my view as a writer and as a spiritual practitioner. Joseph Campbell in his work often pointed to that it is not so much the experience itself (any one can walk through the prairie, attend church, or listen to a spiritual teaching) it is “what we bring to it.” We all bring our view to our encounters and this view determines what we get out of it. One’s view includes beliefs, intentions and assumptions. If you are having an unpleasant experience, check your view; check what you are bringing to it.

 

Then as a writer, notice what arises from your view and write about it. As a spiritual practitioner notice what arises from within and without during a certain event and use it as material for your spiritual practice. And then, if you want, bring the two together.

 

On my winter walk I noticed how the sun appeared like a phantom through the haze of snow and cloud. This reminded me how even though we don’t see the sun or the moon they are always there. Much like the Buddha or my root guru Padmasambhava. They are always there but often hidden behind something. Then I realized that I see the Buddha when I practice, when I come out from hiding. The Buddha is in the practice. Actually more what I mean is that the Buddha is seen through my practice. When I bring the Buddha into my experience I get more of the Buddha back. I bring him or her out from hiding. 

 

This took me further into the realization that the only teachers I rely on (and recommend others rely on) are ones that are first most practitioners. They too bring the Light of the Buddha or the Christ or the Truth out as they practice what they teach.

 

On this walk through the prairie the sun remained hidden behind a haze of cloud and snow but still sent out some light, enough for me to get through the prairie, enough to make my way on the unhiked and snow covered path.

 

As I continued I remained aware of what I was bringing to my walk as well as what caught my attention as I walked . . .

 

I saw seeds frozen on top of the snow, small tracks of mouse having braved it across the white landscape, how the path disappeared and reappeared, the faded Tibetan prayer flags moving with the wind, the call of the crows as I walked deeper into the spiral, the familiarity of it all and how the prairie gives me the feeling of belonging.

 

Instant Enlightenment

 

Frozen seeds crown the December snow

some will make it to bloom yet.

While others will be devoured whole

by the local residents.

 

Searching

 

When in the prairie

I need not search around for enlightenment,

This would be like the Echinacea

trying to conceal its seeds.

 

Here, Now,

 

 I feel a thousand lifetimes away from awakening,

Unknowingly

walking at the feet of the Buddha.

 

So that’s what destiny is: simply the fulfillment of the potentialities of the energies in your own system. The energies are committed in a certain way, and that commitment out there is coming toward you.  –Joseph Campbell

 

Journaling Practices for You –

Take five subjects you notice while either on a meditative walk outside or just throughout your day:  snow stuck on trees (what kind of tree?), the sounds of a child playing with a friend in the adjoining room (playing what?), red-tailed hawk swooping down on a mouse (does she get it? Are you happy for the bird?), the frozen foot print (of a boot, a coyote, mouse?), etc. . . . Write about them with the intention to draw some spiritual meaning from them. Notice what you “bring to” any given encounter. Write this into your piece. Spend a good deal of your time outdoors or during the day simply noticing. Notice what you are bringing to something (attitude, assumptions, ideas.) Notice what comes to you, what gets your attention on your walk or during the day. Who or what shows up? Where is the sun? What’s in your pockets? What do you want? What do you hear? How does what you bring to an encounter (walk, visit with a relative) change the experience? Write about that. Write about experiencing something for the last time (a meal, a walk in your favorite spot, a sound of your child, for examples.)

 

Write a poem beginning with, “I am called”.

I am called

Write a poem beginning with, “Earth brings me.”

Earth brings me

Write a poem ending with

I watched as it fell

 

 

Happy Writing to you. Happy Awakening. Blessings on this Winter Solstice.

 

I am called to sing

a song I’ve never heard

Visit the friend

I’ve never met.

 

I am called to dig

For the words hidden deep

Find the meaning

of this unknown place.

 

I am called to undo

the pain of the past

And to know you

for the first time

again and again.

 

For more on poetry go to my Poet’s Page at my website. Enjoy my guest poet William Stafford. And did you know that you can back order my book on Initiation that is going to be released this August? Simply go to Inner Traditions/Bear & Company! Spring/Summer 2010 frontlist catalog. You will find my book on page 32.  Thank you!

 

 

There is a great theft going on, one that steals our power, our medicine and our ability to hold our seat when necessary. Words are being stolen right out from under us.  What happens then is we find we are going right when we thought we were going left. We find ourselves believing without reservation that North is up and South is down. We find ourselves being scared of someone because they are a Christian or a Muslim. We find we shouldn’t feel entitled or hungry. And that selfish is always bad and love is always good. (Many, many nasty acts have been done in the name of love.)

War is patriotic but peace is unpatriotic. 

We need to claim these stolen words back and do so bravely and relentlessly. In our writing and in our speech we must use and speak out forbidden and stolen words, reframing them when necessary. “I am a monger of peace.”

Find the root meaning of words. Know the original intentions of a word.

Listen to what you are agreeing to when someone tells you something.  “I did it out of love.” “This is what a patriot does.”

 Listen for assumptions in someone’s speech and help reframe words and watch the world transform around you. This transformation is much like the restoring of a prairie to a more natural and honest state. We don’t let one plant horde the soil and light; we don’t let a word’s stolen meaning reek havoc on our intentions. We are not robots to other’s meaning of words. (We are the Meaning Maker.)

 Break the pattern of agreeing to a stolen meaning of a word or phrase and allow for a diversity of meaning to beautify a prairie and a conversation. Speak up. 

Shake up the conversation. 

Consider every word we carry as sacred and itself a container of a potent elixir or poison. You carry this word around with you affecting your psychophysical body as well as when spoken you impact the world around you. You release the elixir or poison from the bottle. When a word is stolen and we haven’t claimed it back then the vibration and meaning of the stolen word is the one carried in our psyches as well as the one heard and felt by others.

 “The penthouse is always on the top floor because the higher up you are the better. The better view is from on top.”

 “Dark is dangerous and bad.” 

“You bring me down.”

“This is ugly.”  What makes something ugly? And I wonder, where does this word originate? If something is considered ugly, is it considered bad?

 “Many of us know the northern countries are ‘on top’ and it is always better to be on top.”

“She’s ugly.”  “She’s beautiful.”

“I am patriotic.”

“Let’s be friends.”

“He’s a Pagan.”

Stolen words hold many assumptions and agreements and often hidden lies. When we numbly agree to stolen words our creative expression is halted. Stolen too. If top is always better than bottom where does that leave the snake, the inhabitant of the first floor apartment, or the earthworm? If hot is always red? . . . The day was blue-hot. A hot so uncontaminated it purified and released the long-ago deceased. It was time for everyone to go home. The dead knew their way and fell into the blue of sky, the blue of heat. Even the dead seek the warmth.

I hear people often say, “I think,” when what they are often trying to say is, “I know.” “I think,” communicates a wavering, an invitation for a robbery. “I think I want to try that,” sounds quite a bit different than, “I know I want to try that.”

“I think so.”

“I know so.”

  When you only think you know then others can easily step in and hold a conviction in your place. Predators enter where we waiver. Resistance arises where we hesitate.

Maybe the volume of stolen words is just too great to tackle. Just too premeditated to wrestle. Just too much to even consider. But let me remind you, words and the use of words make up both our inner and outer world. Words and the stories they weave are the world. What better past time to have but shouting out on the page or at the gathering, “I don’t agree”!  ”I don’t agree!”

“I don’t agree!”

“Hey, I don’t agree!”

Here are several stolen words, can you add to the list? –

 Up 

Down

Lesbian

Black

Dyke

Homosexual

spiritual

Christian

God

Medicine

patriotic

Muslim

natural

winning

love

forgiveness

entitled

pagan

justice

to be fair

ritual

democrats

I know 

republicans

green

divorced

stoned

beautiful

childless

family

home

sin

goddess

crazy

Buddhist

Caring

Humility/humble

Shadow

Selfish 

“If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?”  Written by Jane Wagner for Lily Tomlin.

Write about what you were taught love is. How was love used (or misused) in your family, religious institution, or community?  Is love, “never having to say you’re sorry?” Is love, “This hurts me more than it hurts you?” “She loved him so much she had to do what she did.” What does it mean to love god?  What is god’s love? What does love mean to you now? Whom do you love and how? Choose a better word to represent this affection for others. Sometimes we reclaim a word by finding another one to takes it’s place.

 “Fire has a love for itself­–

It wants to keep burning.”   Hafiz,  Sufi Master and Poet

 Write a piece repeating the sentence:  “This is what I know . . .” Remember not to stop to think instead repeat the above sentence until the muse begins to flow. Fill up one page without stopping your pen.

Reclaim the above stolen words for yourself. Write a story or a letter to someone using several of the stolen words, claiming them back in the process. 

Identify and write about several other stolen words. What makes them stolen? Win them back by writing about them.

Write about an enemy using the following words: reluctant, inside, fearless, grasping, mirror, revelation.

What makes up a family for you?

You are fourteen years old. You just slept over at your best friends house. The next morning you are sitting in her room watching a show where someone reveals they are gay and your friend says, “What do you think about being gay?” Finish this conversation. 

Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself

In dark woods, the right road lost.                  Dante’s Inferno

“Ultimately, no human being can find genuine meaning in her life merely by accepting the meaning handed down from those who have gone before. Personal meaning must be created, not accepted, and the process of creating it requires testing and experimentation. A false self will neither test nor experiment; it is a defense against experimenting.”  James F. Masterson, M.D. The Search for the Real Self

When life offers us meaningful or even mystical experiences we often tend to seek other’s help to interpret and understand it. However, since the experience is in the context of your life it is important that you are the primary meaning maker.

So often this ability to make meaning of spiritual circumstances, mystical experiences and significant encounters is taken and even stolen or seduced away from us. Academic teachers often tell our kids what to think rather than how to think for themselves. Religious institutions often push a certain doctrine and insist on how their followers should interpret their experiences. Those in the psychological field too often interpret and diagnosis according to their education and view. By letting others make meaning from our experiences we lose an opportunity to learn and integrate spiritual and psychological occurrences for ourselves. Then we may miss an opportunity to write a great poem or story because our energy is put into searching for meaning outside of our self.

 At some point if we are to create the desired movement in our life, we need to make meaning for our self.

 Within my Buddhist practice and tradition relying on a qualified teacher for guidance is emphasized. But what makes a teacher truly masterful and qualified is that they lead you to your own inner teacher. They give you the tools for you to make meaning of your experiences. They encourage self-reliance and investigating the truth for your self. The Buddha himself said, “The truth is like my finger pointing to the moon, don’t mistake my finger for the moon.” Good teachers point, while the rest is up to you.

We are the meaning-makers, as Gerald Mohatt writes in his book, The Price of A Gift: 

“In Lakota framework everyone is a meaning-maker, everyone must make sense of his or her experience. Woableza has been translated as “realization.” It has always seemed to me that this word acknowledges that each person has a capacity to make meaning; that understanding is very personal, is timed by him or her, and is not predictable; and for woableza to exist, a change in the person should take place.”

I find that people sometimes get stuck in the “meaning” and forget to actually “make” something of their experience. They forget to use the experience to generate movement in their life. That would be like finding a treasure map, understanding where it leads to but not going on the actual adventure of discovery. You make meaning by going on the adventure for your self. When we skillfully make meaning we then take from the meaning to create in the world. The result is a more conscious and active life.

 I find that my writing is a central way to make meaning out of my life experiences. It is quite likely that this is what makes writing so appealing. We can take anything from our life and journal about it; make a story, a poem or write an entire book. Both my fiction and nonfiction are ways I become my meaning maker. Spiritual Journaling allows me to consciously agree to make meaning of certain events and circumstances. I can also pull meaning from spiritual teachings I may be reading or attending while I write about them.

Here are some writing prompts and exercises to being your own meaning maker:

 Borrowing from a favorite poem, write your own poem using the same theme. Since this is just for your own use, don’t worry about plagiarism. Create your own poem and notice what shifts in perspective arises as you write.

Write about a recent difficulty. Begin with just describing it as best you can. Then read it as if it were a dream you had. How might you interpret this dream? What gets your attention in this dream? As you make meaning of this “dream,” consider what is the call to action? What is the “dream” asking you to acknowledge or do?

 Next take the difficulty/”dream” and rewrite it. Reinvent a new circumstance. Include the call to action as you rewrite the dream. 

Notice what gets your attention. Write about something that keeps getting your attention. Ask yourself what might be the reason this keeps getting your attention? Intentionally make meaning from this.

 Notice how often you complain and change your complaints to requests. You can change your complaints to requests in your journal or verbally.

Write about getting up in the morning and being surprised.

 Write about your favorite color using the following words:  natural, virtual, sublime, cracked, unveil.

 Enjoy!  

Winter Writing: Listening to the Bones. An intimate writer’s retreat at Thundering Clouds December 4th. Check out my calendar for details.  http://www.julietallardjohnson.com/