Time to Move On

Wednesday, March 29, 2006 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico

I'm lying down, resting for tonight's New Earth Initiation Teleconference (last night's, if you're just receiving this via e-mail).

Tonight has great significance to me for several reasons. First, it marks the two-year anniversary of my first God Activation Teleconference, launched in 2004 with a certain degree of trepidation - around both its concept and name.

Now, two years and three names later, these twice-monthly teleconference calls are coming to an end, at least in their present style and format. Which is another reason for tonight's significance.

The guidance to end these calls couldn't have been clearer. And, when I realized that the final teleconference would fall on this anniversary, all doubts as to its rightness vanished.

And yet...

For those of you old enough to remember The Mary Tyler Moore Show, you may remember an episode where Mary Richards has accepted another job and is going to leave the WJM newsroom that has become her second family. At her going-away party, she is so overwhelmed by the outpouring of love that she decides to stay.

Part of me feels like Mary and longs to announce tonight that it was all a mistake...that staying is preferable to leaving...that the calls will continue...that nothing will change.

Even when leaving is the right choice, it can be hard to let go, hard to embrace the unknown when the known still seems to be working just fine.

Twelve years ago, I was living in a comfortable one-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto. It was cute, convenient and affordable. There was no logical reason to leave.

Less trusting and more fearful than I am today, I resisted the guidance to move.

I delayed and delayed and delayed, rationalizing my decision to stay put (ie, remain stuck) in many inventive ways.

Finally, renovation work on my apartment building became so unpleasantly disruptive that I had no choice but to surrender and move on.

Seven months after carting all my belongings (including 40 boxes of books) to Toronto's west end, I had sold or given away most of them, bought a Dodge Caravan and was on my way to start a new life in Nova Scotia.

It took a lot to blast me out of my stuckness back then. I had been in the same Toronto apartment for 11 years. I haven't been in any one place longer than 21 months since.

Over the years I have grown to understand the value of trust and to experience the rewards of surrender. And today, as I prepare for my final regular teleconference, I surrender more easily and heed my guidance more willingly.

Today, I recognize the need to move on...whatever that means.

Of course, I mourn the losses I wrote about the other day and have certain fears about the void I am creating. But unlike Mary Richards, I won't change my mind tonight, even as parts of me long to hew to the known.

Author Ray Bradbury once likened the best kind of writing to jumping off a cliff and trusting you'll sprout wings on the way down.

Authentic living works much the same way as authentic writing. Why wouldn't it, when both are profoundly creative acts?

Over the years, like the Tarot Fool I wrote about in my March 22 newsletter, I have stepped, jumped and allowed myself to be pushed off more cliffs than I could count.

Not once have I failed to sprout wings.

Many years ago, before I was pushed out of that Toronto apartment, I had a dream. In it, I clung to the roof ledge of an old office tower. "Let go," I kept hearing. "Let go!"

But let go I would not!

In subsequent days I revisited that dream in meditation. Each time, I heard the same call. Each time I couldn't let go.

Finally, I did. While I didn't sprout wings, nor did I plummet earthward.

Rather, I floated gently, feather-like, until I landed in what I can only describe as the arms of God.

Today, as I contemplate a life without these regular teleconferences, I am once again letting go an old structure. Like the office tower, it has served me well. Like the office tower, it serves me no more.

An hour before call time, I already feel those wings starting to sprout. Whatever is next will be newer and better than what I'm leaving behind. Whatever is next will be Divine.

The above image is one of the cards in Doreen Virtue's Magical Mermaid and Dolphin Deck