[blockquote source=”Pema Chodron”]“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”[/blockquote]

I was having such a difficult time writing these past few days, my mind immediately grasping to thoughts of, “Oh dear, what if this is the end?”

We writers are such a sensitive lot ~ always adding flourish where nothing further is truly needed.

I was terribly distressed, thinking I had lost this most precious gift – and one, that I had only just begun to discover.

Writing is my bliss, you see – and this earth, my inspiration. From the splash of berry through softened green, and hanging wisps of Wisteria trees ~ my writer’s mind is endlessly captivated by the millions of images this universe chooses to share with me.

And yet, over these past few days ~ this inspiration seems to have been ‘blocked.’

It can be quite troubling when things don’t go quite as we had anticipated. But, perhaps that’s the point – now, isn’t it? That we may be challenged to face our deepest doubts, in those moments when faith seems to have left us?

Doubt is inevitable, my dears – but the stories we attach? Those are always our choice. Oh, and aren’t we quick to attach those stories, my friends? After all, we’ve been saving them up all these years.

In my mind, I was finished for sure – and, had nearly packed away my ‘pencil case.’

But then, as I fumbled through my morning routine, I discovered the true source of my unsettledness:

I’ve been wearing my contact lenses in the wrong eye.

In my haste, I had them switched – left to right, and right to left….leaving my normally sharpened vision an absolute and utter mess.

Inspiration hadn’t left me, at all – I just couldn’t see it.

Such silliness, isn’t it? That in these fleeting instances of doubt, we begin to lose faith in ourselves? It challenges us, and forces us to question – all that we’ve ever known to be ‘right.’

But, that’s the balance – isn’t it? Great Faith and Great Doubt are at opposite ends of our “spiritual walking stick.” At Faith’s end, we grip with all our might – and at Doubt’s end, we forage through again.

It is this action that becomes our spiritual practice.

You see, our minds can become so conditioned to expectation – that we fail to see there is always something more.

In a sense, we become ‘blind’ to all that is before us.

Pema Chodron once said, “When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.”

You see, Great Faith and Great Doubt very much need one another.

For, it’s within their tenuous balance you’ll find – the light that is so perfectly you.