But along the way I’ve also been doing more personal writing, primarily for myself, to help me connect with my feelings, sort through my experiences, refine my understanding, develop new skills, and decide next steps. A few of these pieces have made their way into periodicals, but most have just been accumulating in the ever-growing back burner of my mind.
However, recently I’ve been feeling an increasing urge to share more of these distilled remnants of my life process. I’ve decided to start offering them in this blog format, because I like the freedom it’ll give me to explore, experiment, and hone my ideas, in ways that are still connected with the experiential inspiration that created them. I’m taking the risk to be vulnerable with these, and I hope that you will receive them in sweet safety, and through that encourage me to offer more and deeper.
So what will you find here? First, I’ll share some of my favorite useful and resonant insights into life’s journey, what I’ve discovered and developed after trying out so many theories and techniques — and banging my shins not just a few times. I’ll also map out some key life skills that I wish I’d been taught early and systematically, thus saving me so much time and energy thrashing about and figuring them out from scratch.
I do warn you, though, that I expect to push the edges of what we often hear on this topic — looking past the easy aphorisms, challenging the contradictions, and weaving knowledge from seemingly disparate arenas. For me, the off-the-shelf domain-constrained answers often didn’t give me the guidance I needed — or, worse, produced negative outcomes that drastically differed from their claims. So I’ve had to look deeper.
I’ll also seek to steer clear of the too-common dogmatism in this arena, where beliefs are fixed, conclusions dictated, and agreement required. I think that this often keeps us from connecting directly to life’s wellspring and shaping a path that fits our own unique divine design. Instead, I’ll simply offer my experiential reports from the front lines of my journey.
But mostly I see this blog as a chance for me to listen to life’s deeper resonances, to tune into the nourishing wisdom of the inner compass that too often gets brushed aside in our busy lives and disconnected culture.
Because I very much treasure those moments when we can sit in our flawed-beautiful selves, searching through the fog in this strange-confusing-amazing time on earth— and touch something deeper, something more raw and less certain, the aching divine infinity in each moment. How thrilling it is to feel life’s dark/light edge and glimpse into life’s vast hologram — even if it’s just through a hole in the fence, as we blindly describe the part of the elephant that we see.
So, I look forward to seeing what emerges here, and hope that it’ll interest and enrich you as well. Please share your responses in the comment sections, especially what you find of value. Perhaps if my jottings resonate with you and others, I’ll decide to shape some of them into versions that I offer to other outlets. Your participation and encouragement are vital to how this plays out!
To start exploring, you might want to read my next post, "Threads of Sorrow & Joy: Giving Birth to This Blog." It talks more about my vision and instigation for this blog. Or explore "Blog posts by topic" (see that option on the right). And perhaps even sign up to get alerts when I have new posts. (Just enter your email under "Follow by email" to the right.) Thanks for your interest!
With sacred blessings -
Patricia Dines
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Blog content (c) Copyright Patricia Dines, 2014. All rights reserved. Links are encouraged! My content is also available for reprint. Please contact me for permission first. Thanks!
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