What Do You Want in Life?

More surfaced from last Friday’s coffee time with Pat. After reflecting on the Borysenko readings, Pat asked, “What do you want from life, Gary?” I found I could come back with what I felt was a satisfying answer. “What I want in life is to be fully present and undefended to what is.  I want this so that I’m not sucked in by people appreciating my recordings, my blog, my photos, etc. I notice that when I am not present and when I am feeling defended, I experience an insatiable hunger for more, more, more — tell me more about how you appreciate me!  And secondly, to be present and undefended so that I’m not shut down or thrown off center when I am triggered by others’ or my own behavior.”

Pat took that in, and then asked, “Gary, is some of all you are involved in a crazy way to live?” I responded instantly, “My exact thoughts upon arising this morning!” Pat observed that it seems that we are not creating the life we want for ourselves. “I would like a more balanced life,” Pat remarked, and then added, “We both have the achilles heal of getting caught up in doing. Doing is who and what we are! This is what we seem to believe at some deep levels of our being, conscious and unconscious.

She then stopped.  A friend of ours from the journaling group, let’s call him “Joe,” had died suddenly a day or so earlier. It had shocked us both. So Pat then said, “Tomorrow I turn 65. Let my heart feel that Joe and I are one. Then she added, “Some day it will happen. Someone will turn to another and say, ‘Did you hear, Pat Peterson died?'” She then went on to say how she shared Joe’s death with another friend in the journaling group and how they had remembered Joe’s deep journal writings — his rich sharing from his heart.

All of this seemed tied together with, “What do you want in life?” The words “Did you hear, Pat Peterson died?”were with Pat the next day as well.  They were percolating in her as she turned 65. Yes, “What do you want in life?” A worthy question to ponder, and more importantly, to live by.  May it be so.

PS. As it turned out, when I went to the gym on Friday after our coffee time, I chose, quite by random, to listen to the recording of Pathwork Lecture #5. Its title captured my attention (Happiness for Yourself, or Happiness as a Link in the Chain of Life), and when I got into the lecture, its words once again got to me, to my heart. Once again I was feeling connected to and supported by Eva and the Guide, feeling the love that went into communicating the wisdom and love of this lecture material.