The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.'

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

© Oriah Mountain Dreamer

I took a ten week training with a Cherokee Medicine Man, in New Hampshire.  It was training in how to use contemporary counseling techniques with traditional ways.   It was amazing how he used each of these points as a focus as we worked through our own 'stuff' in order to learn the ways of utilizing counseling for the people we work with.  It was amazing.  I am thinking to begin doing some blogging on each of these 12 points from her writing.  

How often do we get invited into actively working on positives for our body, mind, heart and soul?  How many times do we actively work on soul?  Have we forgotten that that comes from the quadrant that is closest to going to Creator, on the Medicine wheel?  

To explain this, I will show you a drawing... imagine the medicine wheel as a great tipi with an opening, where human beings come and go to Creator.  If you look, you can see that physical (birth) and dying (death) are both closest to the going and coming into and out of the tipi.

How pure were we when we came?  How pure are we when we go back?  What can we take back with us when we return?  What are the things you are taking back
©Carol Desjarlais     6.17.19