CHAPTER 1
Exit the Norm: "Something's Gotta Change!"
The Call
How we love the SQ, better known as the status quo. In truth, there is no such thing. Everything is always changing — this is fact. But we regularly delude ourselves into holding on to the idea that finally, at last, everything has settled down, and everything is going to remain nicely the same as right now forever — or at least for a good, long while. Sometimes it looks that way, for a while.
But the truth is nothing ever stays the same. The nature of our world is motion. All things are in motion all the time in this third-dimensional plane called Earth. Whether or not we resist it, the river of life is flowing along. We can become rocks in the river, waiting for the great storm to send us tumbling along. We can pout and shout, stomp and resist, take to our bed with the fevers. Or we can let go into the flow of the river, either with or without what we deem as vital accoutrements such as the boat, oars, food, extra clothes, and maybe even a mask and snorkel. We can lay back, hands behind our heads, and float along in a big trust mode. Or we can prepare and prepare, gathering all we may ever need, and finally let go.
But sooner or later we will have to let go, because of the nudges. Remember, all is in motion both inside and outside. Sooner or later, even the most solid of rocks is going to hear a whisper or feel a slight push of something coming. If there's no answering response, soon the rock will feel a stronger swirl, a call in the wind, an unmistakable call for movement.
And heaven forbid if there's still no answer, no movement. You know what happens next. Some call it the hit over the head, or the cosmic shove. Whatever you call it, it's generally not too pleasant. It appears to dramatically upset your world. It usually calls for at least some measure of that word we have been taught to demean, even despise: surrender. Of course, surrendering is very close to that old, nasty phrase give up. We may even be required to allow the final insult: asking for help.
The call can come in many forms. It generally starts with a niggle, almost like an itch at the barest edge of your awareness. You could so easily miss it or dismiss it because it's so subtle. You automatically want to brush it away, like a leaf that softly brushes your skin. "Did I hear something?" Yes, if you are paying attention or have cultivated a practice of noticing even the slightest hints. But most of us haven't.
Along comes the swirling current of a call, which can sound like the buzzing of a mozzie or a fly. Definitely irritating, but definitely a wake-up call. You have to get up and get moving; you have to do something. But what is it? Swat the critter, get rid of it, and lie back down? Or listen a little harder? "Now that I am up, what is it that's trying to get my attention? What was that dream? What am I missing?"
If you are awake enough to begin asking those questions, you'll probably begin noticing some strange coincidences, some synchronicities, some signs from your inner wise woman, some messages from the universe. "The article I just read in the magazine I happened to pick up while waiting in the office. The clear image of a horse in the clouds as I was taking my walk this afternoon. The butterfly that landed on my shoulder yesterday. The conversation with my neighbour, who mentioned Hawai'i — the third time I heard that word today."
Signs and synchronicities come in many ways and forms, and we get a lot of them every day. Mostly they are pretty obvious, and mostly we choose to pay little or no attention to them at all. We could, though. We could cultivate the habit of noticing and paying attention, learning from and getting the guidance from these signs. Mostly we don't, which is too bad because the consequences then become not fun.
We have all had a sledgehammer treatment or known someone who has. It often looks like a challenging health situation, a devastating loss of some kind, or an accident that changes everything. Whatever the event or process, it's as though you have been stripped bare, taken down to the bones, and left to stew. It asks you to listen deeper than ever before; really hear the call for change. It's a call you will never forget. Bit by bit, slowly and gradually in the enforced surrendering and deeper listening, you can come to an acceptance of the call, of the changes, of the wisdom that is growing in you.
Maybe you've heard the whisper and paid attention. Maybe you've read the message of the horse in the cloud. Maybe you've had the horrendous car accident, disease, divorce, or death of a loved one, and you've been forced to surrender to the quiet listening. Whatever your way — and they're all good in the big picture — the call will come. What was will pass away, will Exit.
Before you stretches the unknown, and it's very scary. You can try to run or hide, but the movement is inexorable. There has been a little death, and you are required to face it. By facing it, you begin to see intimations of the new. With every death, every ending, there is always a new beginning. The Exit is the entrance, the revolving door in the dance of life. May we all Exit as gracefully as possible when the call comes.
Misha's Story
At age fifteen, I attended a vocations camp at Knockna Gree, ostensibly to accompany my girlfriend who seriously wanted to be a nun. I hadn't been away from home to a camp or any holiday in my teenage years, so this sounded like a great opportunity. I convinced myself that I didn't really have to consider a religious vocation in order to go to the camp. My goal was to get married and have a family of ten kids: two sets of twins, one set of triplets, and the other three any way they came. But to qualify for the camp, I had to have the recommendation of our school. That was easy; all I had to say was that I would like to go to the camp, and there were no further questions asked. There were four of us from our fifth form class (year eleven) who eventually attended.
In terms of a vocation in life, I wanted to be a doctor but was told that nursing was what was open to girls. This was the early sixties, an era when nursing, teaching, or being a secretary were the usual choices open to women. If you were a Catholic, you could give your life to God in service as a nun. Nowadays there are so many more options for service at home and abroad.
For the most part, I had been schooled through the Catholic system, and in my impressionable years and beyond, we were told and read the stories of the saints, men, and women who gave their lives in service to God. The majority ended their lives in martyrdom and stayed faithful to their beliefs and service in spite of the brutality of the martyrdom. I hid a guilty secret from age twelve, when in class we were asked, after the completion of the story of Saint Maria Goretti (she was murdered at that age for protecting her virginity), if we were prepared to die for our faith. I put my hand up along with the rest of the class, but in my heart of hearts, I was scared of pain and torture and knew that I could easily betray my faith if the pain was too great. I was a post-war child and had a steady diet of war films in which torture was a key feature. I shuddered to think of having my nails torn off, being burnt, or whatever cruelty a human could concoct. I wanted to believe the affirmative that I had just given, but my guilty secret was that I feared I would be a coward in the face of such a choice.
In actuality, I already knew I was a coward because I had been sexually molested in boarding school by one of the older girls and by the parish priest — and in form one, by a family acquaintance. I knew I hadn't fought to the death to stop their actions, so it was a no-brainer that I would choose marriage rather than religious life. And yet even as a small child, I was drawn to service. I had expressed a desire to go to Mars to be a missionary, because some of the radio stories that I'd listened to at my Nana's on a Friday night about Martians captured my imagination. In flights of fancy, I could see myself going to unchartered territory and winning souls for God.
The paradox of the vocations camp experience is that towards the end of the week, I felt the call to religious service as genuinely as was possible for a fifteen-year-old. I was shocked because it was not why I had gone; this camp was meant to be a holiday with my best friend. I kept this experience to myself and tried to push it away. How could a girl who was afraid of being a coward, to the point of denying God if she were tortured, consider having a vocation? But one doesn't have a vocation — one is called. And once the call is received, it is compelling. I know I didn't hear a voice calling me, and I equally know I wasn't pressured by the two people running the camp. But what I heard about a religious life of service struck a chord in me. I just knew. I didn't have words to describe that knowing, but I had family members, especially my Nana and my parents, who raised me to be of service to others. I had been in Catholic boarding school from the ages of five to ten, so I was familiar with convent life; it seemed to be a natural progression. And in the early sixties, there were limited opportunities for serving God.
Once back from camp, I flowed back into my daily life, the call receded into the back of my consciousness, and I never spoke of it. I was a typical Catholic teenager of the time and was involved in school and parish activities, particularly the youth club of our parish. We played sport, we had socials, and I was active in youth leadership.
The following year, my sixth form year (year twelve), we were called individually by the principal to discuss our future aspirations. I was one of the first to go to interview, so there was no time to prepare — remember the teaching, nursing, and secretary options! When asked what I was thinking of, I said calmly and clearly that I felt called to enter religious life. I was more shocked than she was to hear myself enunciate those words, and yet it was my truth. I learned then I would be trained for teaching. That was difficult because I had set my heart on nursing once I'd learned that I wasn't able to be a doctor. I had read every novel about nursing, had read June Opie's story five or six times, and had spent times in my holidays going to help at the surgery where our good family friend was the nurse. At least I wasn't going to be tortured!
I completed my school year, and in February the following year, instead of returning for form 6a (year thirteen), I Exited my home and entered religious life. There was no turning back from the call — it was impelling and compelling, and once I had named the call, I had no hesitation in answering. For my parents, as Catholics this was a supreme moment: one of their children had heard and answered the call. It was only after my first nine months in the order — my postulancy, a time of preparation to see if the order was prepared to accept me into the novitiate — that I learned from a letter my mother wrote to me how the call and my exiting their home had been for her. She wrote, "As a Catholic, I feel very proud; as a mother, all I feel is an empty space."
Jessica's Story
How could anything go wrong with the "perfect marriage"? I had had a first marriage that brought in my two beautiful children, but Mose and I were as unsuited as corn and hibiscus. I had consulted an outstanding channel, Dr. Neva Dell Hunter, who had assured me that if I completed the karma with him by biting my tongue and being as patient and kind as possible (a very tough ask for a young Aries), he would eventually leave. Then another man would show up who was older, wiser, wealthy, and on the same spiritual wavelength. I did, and he did.
Dean and I had a glorious time travelling in Europe and America, attending all kinds of New Age trainings and seminars, and offering some ourselves. We established a New Age retreat and workshop centre in Albuquerque and sponsored programs by some of the outstanding leaders of the day, including Peter and Eileen Caddy of Findhorn fame and Dr. Helen Bonny of the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music. I was training in this outstanding counselling modality as a postgraduate supplement to my master's degree in mental health counselling. We were happily doing our work and fulfilling our lifetime missions — weren't we? The outstanding astrologer we had consulted gave us the best possible date and time for our wedding, and we adhered to it exactly. We believed that we would walk into the sunset of our lives, serving the Great Plan together.
About five years after our marriage in 1974, I had a nudge of attraction to another man. This hadn't happened before, and I was surprised. But it was no big deal, right? The very next year, Dean and I were in a blinding snowstorm car crash. We both had concussions, but Dean almost died. As we lay recuperating in the hospital, we tried to discern the message. My answer was: simplify!
Our lives had become so busy and overcommitted that we were both exhausted. Dean had extended our portfolio to include one more property. Altogether the stress was over the top. We came back to our beautiful, peaceful centre overlooking the Rio Grande and the Sandia Mountains. I was lolling in the upper room, mostly in la-la land. It was beyond shocking when Dean announced a short time later that he had bought yet another big property. In retrospect, I know that something in me snapped.
We continued along quite nicely until one fine day Dean told me he was having an affair. It transpired that he was desperate to talk with someone who had also had a near-death experience (NDE), about which I had wanted to hear nothing. He was grieving the loss of the "other side's" magnificence, but I wanted him here and now, simplifying. Therefore he found an NDE lady he could talk with, and he began encouraging me towards an open marriage. He assured me his affair did not in any way threaten our marriage.
After many months of this dialogue, I sat up all night reading the book called Open Marriage. Towards dawn I resolved that I would also open myself to whatever was in divine order, including another relationship. That afternoon, Dean came home and announced his affair had ended. Sadly, I related that I had opened another door. We could now both see the handwriting on the wall.
It was no surprise when a casual friend of Dean's knocked on the door several months later. The instant and powerful attraction between me and this handsome stranger was acknowledged on all sides. Richard and I began some fabulous and exotic travelling, including New Zealand and Australia where we swam with some free dolphins at Monkey Mia, north of Perth.
But I also began a deep inquiry myself. I attended my first vision quest under the expert tutelage of Michael Brown, and I discovered the hidden anger I had toward my "perfect" mentor and husband. I saw how my good-girl upbringing had conditioned me to follow in the footsteps of others, but whom? The husband — especially the good, kind, wise, spiritual husband. It had been unthinkable to question the "perfect" husband.
I looked deeply into the teaching about cycles. As the excellent adage goes, "Some things [people] are in your life for a reason, some for a season, some for a lifetime." I looked back with heartbreak on our beautiful life together, our beautiful centre, and our beautiful dreams. Somehow, little by little I accepted that the marriage was over, that the life we had together was over. It was truly Exit time.
Then I had the dream. There was a huge fire, and our centre was burning down. I was desperate to get inside and retrieve some of the precious things, but I could only reach my hand around the door and close my fist around a bundle of jewels before I had to leave.
I called the dream "Take the gems and go." It signalled that completion was nigh: I had what I needed (the gems), and it was time to move along, though I knew not where.
In New Zealand, people had repeatedly said to me, "And when you move here ..." They paid little attention when I assured them I was happy in America and would not be moving to New Zealand (where I have now lived for twenty-seven years). Yes, there were fine clues about the doors that were to open, but I dismissed them at the time as untenable, unthinkable. I was an American, and that was that!
My, my, how we can dig in and resist. I hope you have never been so stubborn. But most likely you've at least had some of those tendencies. Most of us do. Therefore I have created an Exit mantra that sometimes helps: "Let go sooner!"
May it help you too.
