What's It All About, Alfie?

Thursday, June 8, 2006 ~ Palm Desert, California

This song title floats through my mind as I check into a Best Western in this oasis community in the middle of the California Desert.

I thought I was driving to the Laguna area today to spend the weekend with a friend...until he phoned to tell me he'd just been called out of town.

Suddenly, Laguna's pull dissolved and I found myself in a Phoenix parking lot, the outside temperature a searing 110 degrees, with no idea what to do or where to go.

In the end, I felt drawn to Palm Desert...so here I am...wondering what it is all about.

Sudden, whiplash-inducing shifts have been occurring with disquieting frequency in recent weeks. This one is only the latest in an increasingly uncomfortable sequence of seemingly fickle guidance.

Frankly, it's been crazy-making, a test of faith that I haven't always passed with stellar grades.

It's altogether natural for me to want to know why I'm still on the road, what purpose it serves...when I get to stop.

It's human nature, a function of the way the mind is wired, to crave understanding. We long to know the consequences, the results, the rewards.

If I do this, will my book finally be published? My movie get made? Will I find a place to settle? Am I still doing energy work on the land as I travel? Why was I called here?

In the past, having answers to questions such as these has boosted my courage and propped up my willingness to stay on the road.

Yet I realize now, admittedly reluctantly, that that's an old paradigm.

If I'm truly following the lead of my higher consciousness and highest self, I don't need to know anything but that I'm following the lead of my higher consciousness and highest self.

"You either trust or you do not," insists M'nor, the moon, in my novel, The MoonQuest. "There is no halfway in between."

I believe nothing in the Universe is without meaning. I know too that I may never know any aspect of that meaning as it applies to events in my life and the consequences of my guidance. I may never be able to consciously associate a future reward with a past action.

Releasing my need to know is an act of profound surrender. I have lived that surrender in the past and am now being asked to go deeper...and deeper.

It's not comfortable. Relinquishing control never is.

Yet M'nor is right: I either trust or I do not.

Today, in this moment, I choose to trust. I choose the surrender that releases me from needing to know anything beyond the fact that I was drawn to Palm Desert.

Tomorrow will have to take care of itself.