Inspiration: Seeing the Garden Through the Doorway

Blessings of Being Awake: Learning for me has to be on my terms, I learn, like my teachers the Baal Shem Tov and the Buddha, by my own experience. Too often in the past I have felt like a failure trying to fit into someone else system, as in repeating the 5th grade because I could not get the multiplication tables down...reversing too many numbers or in grad school in quantitative statistics when I just could not get the concepts. Deep breath!! And here i am again on the edge of learning something really big and it involves all of me, head, body, spirit. I am learning to be consciously vulnerable with people who I think need me to be strong. I cannot hold my suffering in to myself any longer.
Spiritual Challenge: I need to believe and trust that this learning will benefit the world; that what I am practicing and getting good at is not just about me. And I need to remember that while I am saving my life and uncovering my pure soul by bringing me back into my heart, I am also living a life knowing i am unconditionally loved by the Ayn Sof, the One Without End, and am connecting with all that there is that is being loved. There is no hierarchy of who is loved.
Spiritual Practice: Deep breathing in and expiring and emptying all doubts and creating space for holding me and the pain of separation from the universe. Sitting in meditation knowing that this still time with me is building a relationship with me. And I will be laughing out loud at me for trying so hard to be perfect. I am taking the advice of two wise people. Nick Vacc of blessed memory, chair of my doctoral program department who told us PH.D. candidates, 'settle for a B'. And Pat Ryan in Improve Wisdom writes, be average.
Blessings of the Vav: I am no longer staying in confusion, i am more clear what my path is, so the 'but' is being left out fairly frequently from my vocabulary, as it is with my friends and clients and colleagues. And as I become more clear, my world opens up and I am feeling the blessings of the Unconditional Lover. Yes and, I am ready to cross the threshold into new learning.