Books Find YOU...Words Leave you...a CYCLE

All my life I've always had books come to me at just the right times to save me out of some rut. My parents divorced early on and I was a latchkey kid for many years so I ended up always looking for my own answers to life's questions.  When I began searching spirituality at age 19 I ran into a book about Taoism and it helped me center myself and generate more questions. Having always felt absolutely no deep connection to my Catholic roots, Eastern religions were like water to a thirsty plant.....I felt right at home. I later found the works of Chögyam Trungpa, author of countless books on Tibetan Buddhism, my favorite being, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism which helped tremendously in seeing ways in which my spirituality should belong to me and for the purposes of improving myself and never as an agent of separation among people, as I've experienced so many times in the past. 

By the same token, I've always found personal journal writing to be incredibly helpful in allowing my feelings to be identified clearly. I have journals dating back from when I was a girl. They are sitting in a huge plastic box and have come with me whenever I've moved all these years. I have not ever actually sat down and read them, but perhaps that was never the purpose of them. The only purpose of them was to allow me to get IT out, whatever IT was. The PROCESS itself was it's express purpose. 

I see both reading to find answers and journal writing as a cycle.....Books put new ideas in your heart and mind.....you incorporate these words from these authors in your life.....LIFE happens and you reflect in writing to let go of the old stuff. 

If there is anything I want my kids to know to do is how to find answers to their questions through inquiry, books and relationships. A funny story about my son that relates to this happened last night. During one of our long chats during his nightly hyperactive hour, Luke recounted that when he was a baby he remembers falling down the stairs after being accidentally brushed aside by our huge German Shepherd. I was amazed how much of that experience he remembered. From the fact that is was at night, who caught him, to how many people were home when it happened.  It led him to ask everyone in our family to tell him a story about when we were little like him; he was genuinely interested and would not stop until my husband, my mom, step-dad and I recounted some detailed story. I later heard him ask my husband, can we get a book on "falling"? Oh, I love him and his little curious 4-year-old mind...

I think I have nothing to worry about......