I have lost and it’s a beautiful thing.
Lost what? You will, of course, ask.
Lost the need to know.
All my life I have been a spiritual seeker. My spiritual autobiography highlights include:
Methodist Sunday school, Baptist church (at 12, on my own, without my family), Catholic mass with my best friend
Course in Miracles, channeling (L.A. in the 80’s what a hoot), Assiniboine sweat lodges, goddess circles, sage wafting everywhere
Every kind of yoga you can name, mantras spilling off my lips, Buddhism in many colors, meditation cushion always
Unitarian Universalism (me at the pulpit, loved those Sundays), Episcopalian wafers, deep-dive Jungian analysis.
I intensely loved and learned from these experiences (well, most of them). I adored the seeker in me. And then, one day, the seeking became empty. A distraction. The desire to find the answer began to hurt. To hinder.
I fought letting go of knowing, of seeking. Not doing so unmoored me, made me dizzy. Who would I be if I let go of wanting to know?
And (of course) the pull only grows more intense. I know a soul’s call when I feel it. (I know about refusing the call, too. Oh, don’t I.) When I lead my retreats this month, I heard this from other women, too. “I just want to be still.” “I am called to stillness.”
My call is this: Settle into stillness. Stop learning, stop seeking, stop fussing.
There is no need to know.
I’ve had experience with this. After my divorce, I so wanted to know why Chris left. It was Bob who said, “You will never know. Let it go.”
All my life I have loved the word mystery but not until now that I can feel its shape taking me under its wing.
Embrace the beauty of losing, I whisper to myself. What is lost can then be known. Maybe. Only no secret holding on, no backroom deal making.
To state the obvious: I do not know where this will lead me. That is the beauty of losing.
