While I'm tempted to say just two words...

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

We tend to make the thing in the way
the way.

How many thresholds that seem blocked or barred or locked only seem so from their initial viewing? How many opportunities for true living are barrier-free, if we can only remove ourselves and our minds from their traditional points of entry?

It seems blatantly obvious to me the direction this particular journal entry is going to take.

For the past several years I have been trying to find a way to be able to be with the woman I love in the country of our choice. However, the coutry of our choice has locked and barred the gates, and I am currently still walking the wall to find an alternate route - whilst maintaining a presence at the gate in case some change, some brave soul should find the key and unlock the padlock.

It was recently put to me, in a none to gentle way, that the perception of many people is that I'm not even trying. That people who are already where I want to be do not see or understand the problem, because they didn't have it, and therefore just me and my efforts, my struggles by their own experience. How dare they, quite frankly. One should never judge another person until you have walked a mile in their shoes.

I can't give you that experience of being able to be me and walk in my moccasins for a mile, but I can perhaps give you a taste.

Start here And with that in the background, or maybe on a different tab, consider these snapshots from the many years of trying:

-Believing that the only way I was going to manage this was to come in on a work related visa, I started searching from the UK for a position that would be prepared to sponsor a visa. I interviewed over the phone with a wonderful Daycare - visited on one of my vacations to see what the place was like, and was eventually offerend the job some 2 weeks before I would have to give notice to quite the job I had in the UK. For a teacher in the UK there are set time periods you have to do that. You can't just give one week or one month of notice, nope. To quit a teaching job you must give a whole term of notice, which is usually about 3 months. Decision time - did I give notice even knowing the visa was not sorted out, though I had a firm offer of a job. Of course I did. I wanted to be where I wanted to be. No such luck. Daycare teachers are not 'professionals' and the position doesn't qualify for work related H1B visa. (Don't shoot me, that's not my opinion, it's just the way things are in the US). Even with the daycare working their ass off to try and find a workaround (they really wanted me), and a US senator prepared to back up the application, it just couldn't be done. So not only was I not where I wanted to be, but now I had no job at all. It wasn't a problem, I worked substituting until I found a new job.

-Undeterred, though finding that school districts and schoolboards routinely don't sponsor visas, I applied in the same way, from the UK, to private and charter schools. One Charter school wanted me, but we couldn't at the time find out if my UK qualification would translate to a US license in NC, because to find out that fact, you need a US social security number with which to make the application even for finding the information out, and you can't get one of those without a work permit, and you can't get one of those, you guessed it, without a visa. So that one fell through. A private school wanted to hire me - even sent me to see their attourney. However /that/ position fell through when it was discovered they would have to wait maybe as much as a whole year, because there's a cap on the number of professional visas issued each year, and by the time schools are hiring in the early spring, usually that cap has been reached. So /that/ fell through.

-Still undeterred, I began looking at other alternatives... interviewed and was placed onto the VIF program. in 2007. And then of course the global recession happened, school budgets were slashed, and not so many schools were able to hire teachers from home let alone from abroad. I'm still on the VIF Program, and still awaiting placement. However, I'm still not sitting on my ass at the gate waiting for someone to unlock that padlock.

I've looked into: Nanny positions, non-profit visas, companies that might hire me in the UK for US positions (namely company visas), gifted practioner visas, gifted artist visas, even the damned military option (though being as I am that one might be a bit tricky).

So if you're still one of those people that believes I'm not doing anything to get where I need to be... do yourself, and me a favour and THINK. AGAIN.

The thing in the way truly has become the way.

Are We the Architects or That Which Is Built?

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

How are you tending
to the emerging story of your life?
-Carol Hegedus and Frances Vaughan

Tending our stories means that our lies must open if we are to live in the mystery; our ways of hiding, no matter how subtle, must relax open if we are to be.

I am woman, I am priestess, I am child, I am mother and crone blended to one. My life demands connections with my heart and soul that have been damaged, wounded but not broken, and I must heal. I am lover and loved, and life demands that I must listen to the voice of that love inside of me and that voice from without also. I am teacher, and student and must move with the constant flow and change of education; changes that sometimes I do not like, but must go with in order to reach where I want to be, learn what I need to learn and move on - attain my goal. I am writer and the written word - muse demands of me that I write, but in the universal story being written I must roll with the finality of the period, rest in the cradle of the comma and wriggle through the spaces in exclamation and question marks to meet and suprass the challenges placed in my path... but one thing above all...

The story of my life demands that I cannot and must never give up... and in that fact I am one with the universe.

Listening To My Inner Yoda

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the Source of Being.
-Lao-tzu

Like so many other tasks that await us, the reward is hardly what we imagine. It seems that Lao-tsu reveals to us a secret tool of living, kept secret by our unwillingness to accept its truth. This ancient sage tells us quite openly that the act of simplicity-of living directly-is the doorway to the Source of all being.

Imagine if this is true. I implore you, when feeling lost or far away, try it-try being direct-and the Universe without a word will come alive.

The last time I can remember anything being direct, simple and uncomplicated was when I was a child. Does that mean I've grown old and cynical?

I know it's a product of the baggage that I'm carrying that I've been writing about in other entries of the journal, so I won't belabour the point here, suffice to say that when someone tells you flat out that they don't want to hear about your feelings (which I guess is being direct, in a way, but not one that's positive), and you know that you need them to know and understand those self same issues, then you automatically go about finding another way - which isn't necessarily direct and simple - to make sure they understand. Being indirect and complicated is therefore a leanned behaviour.

All I can say is that Pavlov has a lot to answer for.

I would love to be simple and direct - to have the courage once more to do that. So why can't I? Why do I fear it? And what can I do to make sure that at least try from this point out, to be more direct, to be simpler in my interactions with others.

Though of course my inner Yoda tells me, "Do or do not; there is no try."

My Own 'Tea Ceremony'

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Given sincerity, there will be enlightenment.
-The Doctrine of the Mean, 200BCE

If we stop to truly consider it, making tea is a miraculous process. First, small leaves are gathered from plants that grow from unseen roots. Then boiling water is drained through the dried leaves. Finally, allowing the mixture to steep creates an elixir that, when digested, can be healing.

The whole process is a model for how to make inner use of our daily experience. For isn't making tea the way we cipher through the events of our lives? Isn't the work of sincerity to pour our deepest attention over the dried bits of our days? Isn't patience the need to let the mixture of inner and outer brew until the lessons are fragrant and soothing on the throat? Isn't it the heat of our sincerity that steams the lessons out of living? Isn't it the heat of those lessons that makes us sip them slowly?

Yet perhaps the most revealing thing about all this is that none of these elements alone can produce tea. Likewise, only by using them together, can we make tea of our days and our sincerity and our patience. And none of it is healing without a willingness to drink from the tea of life.

I used to do this all the time... Conscious living... focussing on the process to internalise the thoughts and feelings, the meaning - even in something as simple as making a cup of tea. People used to find it strange at first, for example, when sharing a meal with me, that I would rarely talk and eat at the same time. I'm not talking about the whole 'don't eat with your mouth full' thing. I mean that, if I was eating, I would be quiet and think about what I was putting in to my mouth, into my body, and while talking I would set down my utensils, and give my full attention to the conversation.

Similarly in other things - walking in the fresh air... showering... anything I was doing, focus, internalise, understand... It was also something I demanded of my students (My wiccan ones, not the little ones that I teach).

I don't know when I stopped. I don't think I did all the time, but sadly far too often I succumb to the pressures of the fast paced life we all live in. The thoughts here, these thoughts for the day, have brought this back to my awareness, and rekindled the need to do this again.

Perhaps it's time for a cup of tea.