 |
About Us
Getting Your Wish Can Be Scary!
 With the exception of Congress people and their Stimulus (Pork-ulis?) "earmarks," and short-sellers in the stock market, all too few people are getting their wishes granted lately. I think that in the long run those two classes of our society are going to be sorry they got their wishes granted because getting what you want at the expense and to the detriment of other human beings is a basic "what comes around, goes around" violation. I'd like to remind these greedy people of what our little shaman cat, Zane, taught me the other day: Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.
March came roaring in like one of Zane's genetic Lion cousins, dumping fourteen inches of moist, fluffy snow onto the eastern end of Long Island. It was the deepest snow Zane has ever seen in his almost eight years - his birthday is March 23rd, the same day as Amy's - and it caused him to violate his Special Forces-like credo, "Anytime, anywhere, any weather," after rushing out of his cat door into a snow drift that was half a foot higher than his door, turning on a dime and coming in looking like a miniature white tiger.
Those of you who've read my previous blogs about Zane know that our ritual is to go walking each night (and sometimes during the day, too), usually no matter what the weather. But this winter has been a brutal one and Zane was as stir crazy as only a snowed-in seven year old can be. His now snow-blocked cat door followed weeks of temperatures in the teens that kept the previous snows preserved in dangerous slip-and-fall ice. He was climbing the walls, as I had seen a mother lion do when my policeman father arranged for me and my sister Karen to hold one of her cubs when it was my turn to be seven - sooooo cuddly and cute, and the biggest paws!
So out I went to shovel our walk or I should say our walks, because Zane has his own walk, the wooden rails that line both sides of our gravel driveway. This is where Zane takes his dry food, yet another of our spoiled cat rituals, and so once I cleared a path for us that looked more like a lake bed with canyon walls rising above it, I cleared his wooden walk and did a few bonus paths into the woods, where cats do, indeed, do their business with the bears. And in a last Herculean effort to show myself that though I'm pushing sixty (next January) I can still push snow with the best of them (thank you, treadmill!), I cleared a path to our "squirrel proof" bird feeder, a hot bed of activity due to my carefully blended seed mixture.
Zane has a very good record of leaving the birds alone, with a few exceptions when he was younger and thought I was screaming at him in delight. Even when he's brought them in the house, usually on birthdays and holidays (no lie!), he brings 'em back alive. Just ask Amy about one birthday where she found a Blue Jay sitting on the shower rod of our bathroom, not a feather out of place despite being carried by our mighty hunter in through the cat door and through the house.
But Zane was not looking up at the bird feeder as we both stood in the newly cleared path. He was looking intently off to the side and it was a strange sight to see because the snow off the path was up to his chin, so it looked like he was resting his head on the snow shelf. Now anyone who has a cat knows that, like crazy people, they always top themselves and do something weirder than you could have imagined. So imagine my surprise when Zane went totally Wild Kingdom on me, rearing up on his hind legs and plunging his front paws into the fourteen inches of snow until his head disappeared, but only for a moment.
Fast as lightning, he reared up again. Only this time he had a big dark gray mole in his paws! I watched, first in proud papa amazement and then studio audience laugh track hilarity as he flung the mole onto the path and ran away from it as fast as he could with his tail between his legs. He had gotten what he wanted all right, but it had scared him half to death!
I've learned so much from spending time in nature with Zane. I see well in the dark because of our walks, a physical manifestation of the mental and spiritual growth our adventures have engendered. That snowy day's lesson was an obvious but important one. Be prepared for whatever comes your way, especially when you're taking action to make something happen. You just may actually get what you've been working hard to get but that doesn't mean that you'll be ready for what comes with your attainment - they are two separate things. Getting what you want changes your life, mostly in ways that you cannot foresee but you might as well try and imagine as best you can how things will be when your life changes the way you want it to.
This is the secret of doing affirmations, something that I know a bit about, having written our Little Reminders series of affirmation decks and three decks of affirmation cards for Chronicle Books. Using tarot cards and asking how things will change when you get what you want is another good idea. There is a tarot card, the Five of Swords, that represents the concept of getting what you want but being changed radically by it, not necessarily for the better. These are all good things to keep in mind.
Before I do a psychic reading for a client I have a little ritual of my own. I always ask them to make sure that they are asking questions that they really want to know the answer to because they may not get the answer they're expecting. This is by no means to say that we should not ask questions or try to change our life for the better - Amy and I have dedicated our lives to making systems that help people do both of these things in the best manner we know. Zane's lesson for me that day was simply Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it and it might scare you and make you run away without thinking and you might end up losing what you worked so hard to get.
But it might be the mole's perspective that is the teaching we all need to hear during these allegedly dark days of readjustment. Just when you think you've been snatched from the safety of your tried and true routine and into the claws of what looks like certain disaster, have faith. Even the deadliest of predators makes mistakes.
So perhaps the greedy, thoughtless idiots who have gotten us into this mess have ran away in time to leave us with enough space and opportunity to figure out a way to get back to the business of living our lives the way we know we should. I say let's replace the idea of unbridled growth with sustainable growth toward a leveled off, sustainable future. As Yogananda's teacher, Sri Yukteswar said, "The goal of a yogi is contentment in all circumstances."
As two people who believe that to be true and, incredible as it may sound, have actually found that kind of contentment in our admittedly blessed lives, Amy and I do not look at this time as any different than any other time in our life together. Each day is another opportunity to be grateful as I share love with Amy and Zane and, to a lessor degree, everyone I meet, and do my best to be worthy of the plants and animals that have died so I can live. I am not going to let the Chicken Littles of the media tell me the sky is falling. Maybe their sky is falling, but here in the Enchanted World we are doing our best to stay true to our values.
We send blessings to you and yours. We're all in this life together and together we will make this world enchanted.
|
|
|
  |
|
 |
ShareThis
