January Endings in 2014 Journal

January is turning out to be a month of loss. Peter, my not so elderly (but several years older than me) ex-neighbour died early January. Now OD is almost dead. Another loss of some very nice people from my life. The difference with OD though is that those very nice people are still breathing but just 'lost' to me through the OD website demise. I do hope that I find some of them on here.

Looking back over January, I realise that it is not all loss, doom and/or gloom. There have been some very positive moments too; some inspiring moments; some happy moments and some 'strange' moments.

Regarding the positive moments, I am not sure if it is January that has presented them to me or if it is me who has regarded each moment with a positive frame of mind. I am (finally perhaps?) now finding it easier to just 'be in the moment' and when that happens it is as if there is a spiritual 'space' between my feet and the earth. I have learned this month how to meditate whilst walking. Oh my! What an exhilarating experience! The sense of floating along really is out of this world. This type of mediation, for me that is, is one of total connection. In the past, whenever I have tried to sit, relax and meditate I found that my mind just raced away with itself. Now as my body walks through the woods or school grounds my mind is still (mostly, that is).

Inspiration, in whatever form the fickle Muse teases me with, has been lurking around also this month. Art has taken a back seat but writing has come back to me. Writing in the form of diaries and one poem. It has been a very long time since I have written a poem. I have even found myself thinking 'stories' that could be worth putting down on paper. Maybe this year I will have a new story to tell.

My happiness comes from within and I have found it starting to spill over towards those who are a little bereft of it at this time. In helping others to find their own happiness I am somehow healing myself. I am more content now than I have been for many years. A contentment that is borne out of acceptance.

For a long time now, many years in fact, I have accepted that 'strange' things happen around me and towards me. Last night, walking back up from the senior boarding house after meds, I had a 'strange' experience. What made it even more strange was the fact that I instinctively 'knew' what it was and related to it. I think I must have slipped off into a short walking meditation because I had that 'floaty' feeling again. I was just approaching the junior (main building) house with Millie by my side and I heard lots of happy, loud singing (young voices mainly) accompanied by a piano. In my head I was 'singing' along to the tune, feeling happy that there was so much fun and laughter, eager to go and join them (I seemed to know who 'they' were). All of a sudden, as I turned to go to the back entrance (which I had not been intending to do), I realised that there was no music; no singing; no reality to what I had just experienced. The voices I had 'heard' had not belonged to any of the children in the junior house. There was no master/mistress playing the piano. I could not even recall the 'song' I had been humming to myself. Just another 'strange' experience.

January perhaps is not about loss after all but more about transition.

May your God or Gods go with you, ~A~