nightyv

I find myself both a bit nervous tonight, yet totally laid back. We will head over to Santa Cruz tomorrow and check into the hotel so that we don't have to drive from here Saturday morning. I would never get there by five something in the morning. I am open to the experience yet I wonder how uncomfortable it will be for me. How will I spend an entire day being present with my spirituality. How will I do with no distractions and will I truly open to it? All I can do is throw myself towards it and see how I come out. I can't go looking for miracles.

When I was quite young, maybe 11, I had my first real serious psychotherapist. He was a large, bearded and bespectacled man who I could just imagine smoking a pipe. He was posh and intelligent and never once spoke to me like a child. His name was Bernie and he taught me some very valuable things. Those are not what I remember most. I remember his dimly lit office and plush leather chairs. I remember all the art work on the walls and the rows of books. He had a miniature zen garden next to his chair far before those things were "in". His desk was covered with gorgeous glass paperweights and the thing I will never forget. In a modest frame sat an image that I can see as clearly as I were standing before it: a photo red, pink, yellow roses with a crude hand painted sign stuck in the middle "I never promised you a rose garden" it said. Of course I'd already read the book and I think I knew every time I saw that image that my life was never going to be quite like they'd dreamed for me.