Damnit. I knew I forgot something. I forgot to state in my Intentions that part of my dream design job will include enough money to have a wool and knitting budget. The universe (me, I know) was CLEARLY confused and now I am pulling out that journal to LITERALLY put another bullet in my (seven heart shaped) pages says "This job will also provide me with a wool and knitting budget!" Just like I had to clarify with the universe, which is me, being REALLY clear about things that are important to me, down to the details, that I wanted to meet the love of my life by 2017, not whenever... :) Remember that I rolled my eyes at my Spiritual Guide when she teased me about forgetting to be specific about the year, and it didn't happen until I was clear. You think I'm stoned, but I'm not. This is the thing about doing exercises like this, it's not a crazy thing randomly coming to you, it's that you have to be really clear about what is important to you. So you also have to be aware about yourself. It's not selfish, it's treating your time on earth like it's sacred. This is what feeds me, and then it pours over with love ... Speaking of which ::
I am completely in love with this Drachenfels scarf - the original Drachenfels is a stone formation high up along the Rhine near Bad Godesberg - thank you Dad, and I am grateful that I got to hike this two times in my life ... The scarf was created by German woman Melanie Berg, with her lovely design interpretation which she describes as paying homage to the dragon of the legend of Drachenfels, imitating in her design the the scales of the dragon ... Soaring joy, I tell you, when I look up what other people are using for colors. The perfect thing to make as gifts and tailer each one to the color favorites of that person. The problem is that I want to make one of each of these as a gift AND for me ... I can see why I would want a wall of shelving at home and a collection of wool just for the art of it ... Arranged by hues ... Sigh.
And another story. Two years ago, I started this scarf pattern 7 times and ripped it out, started over. Every single attempt something other than a triangle was happening. I'm all for mistakes, but there's a limit. In the span of ONE year I started this scarf 7 times. Reading patterns is new to me and just because I made a crazy knitted farm blanket 4 times, I still found this pattern a challenge. I started it in January and put it down completely in December and thought, wow, I'm done with knitting. After the years of knitting, designing multicolored sweaters without a pattern the German way, gifting them to my loved ones as gifts, I'm done. This year I reached out for help - my knitting wiz friend C who successful finished this pattern, and my Mom, who declared that she also loved this pattern and would try to help me.
Somehow ... four weeks ago, I started this pattern and it just came. Yes I had to ask a few questions, yes, I had to look up what KFBF means, and find it the continental way of knitting, but there really was no effort. The satisfaction was deep ...
It occurred to me that the year that I was strangling this pattern alive, I was also in the midst of doing the hardest spiritual work of my life which was dismantling my ego. Oh, it sounds so complicated, but ego is when we get our way in life every fucking time and we just think we are amazing. But of course we do it with humility so that at the end of the day we still have friends. So I didn't get my way. I didn't sail into San Francisco and land the $90,000 design job even though I had recruiter leads tell me they didn't get it. That's a way to dismantle my ego. I did this thing and had a LOT of people watching me do it. My brilliant plan to my perfect life which was about to get more perfect didn't work according to my design.
And then I learned to love my Wad of a life anyway. Sure I had the good fortune of meeting my Spiritual Guide here and had already loved working with a Spiritual Director and a therapist, but I had to pick one and the one I ended up working with in a focused way was the woman who suggested so many things, but one crucial idea was that I wanted .... Me.
The reason I believe that I met her is that it's only in our vulnerability that we connect with other people ... Perfect people are annoying.
I remember our family friend Phyllis, now no longer living, telling me two years ago, that when she first met my beautiful mother in the early 1970's, that the only reason my mother wasn't completely annoying with her beauty and perfection was that my mother has a beautiful heart. My mother also is perfect: she is beautiful, the kind of beauty where you don't have to wear make up, she is charming, she is skinny, she has beautiful taste in clothing, she decorates her house beautifully, she is a chef, she is a baker, knitter, learned English late in life with a small base in school, she is a contractor, a hiker, she can make butter, she can spin wool, garden gardens, compost ... she can do anything if she puts her mind to it. Okay so maybe one of the things she doesn't do so well is figure out where that cement hump is in a parking space and often drives over them, but otherwise, may I just add that even her two sisters have had a little envy and it's been interesting watching that sister competition. The point is, perfection kills connection.
In my vulnerability and general falling apartness I made the most amazing friends. The people who stayed with me, the people I found, the people who didn't judge me, the people who saw my Wad and decided to love me ... It's the only thing that matters to me. Of course it's how I found G. For years I dated and showed up as perfect woman, and for all my love of finding Realness, I lived in a totally superficial level without knowing it. You don't know things until you start living on a heart real level and you can't do that until your ego gets the shit kicked out of it. You may think you are an open person, I did, but that openness and complete love can't happen with perfect-living. It just can't.
Do I want to live that kind of pain again? Um, not really, but I do know that it's ALWAYS an invitation.
I know today that the years of pushing myself into a design job failed because this was WAY more important. This, my life, my heart, my soul, my sense of self being happy because of the Wad that I created. When I can look at my path and love it. The difference now is that I have Intentions and I have things that are important to me. Wool, for example. But my life is not about controlling the thing anymore. Even on my shitty days I have an inherent sense of trust in EVERYTHING. It's not a huge sense like when you graduate or get married or have a baby - or get a huge job! - when the whole world comes to you and loves your success. It's a tiny sense of trust that I can every day come back to this tiny moment, my sacred spaces. In a flower, a garden grown veggie, a written word, a tiny walk, a stone with a pattern on it, the feel of wool while it's cold out, the fact that I didn't kill G's asparagus plant, work with what I have. Because someday I may have cancer and then I'll have to find different things. I don't know, maybe running around naked more at home ... There's gonna be more pain and I don't what it's going to be, but I'm going to have to do more idea-flipping.
So here I am. Knitting a scarf with ease and love, when it was once the bane of my existence. Let this be the working metaphor to rest of my life ....
xoox
