ah…. the shadow of me cascading down the stairs had my dog Izzie bark at it.  She had it be whatever it was that had her bark…. Threatening and scarey, not playful and dancing as I saw in my shadow. It was no less real for her than it was for me. The same shadow in time. She barked, I laughed.

Am I barking at shadows?

I find myself constantly critical of my choices. I should have done this, I wish I did that, what was I thinking that I didn’t do this? Where has the time gone? I am barking at shadows—-of love lost, time lingered, where I’m at, where I’m not, where I could be, where I should be.  Bark bark bark.

Shadows. Real or imagined? What are my shadows?

One of the things about aging is you start to notice, like it or not, how much time you have left. Oh, I’m not old by any means…..but I am an old soul. I have always known what is up for me to do in this lifetime.  Exectution…fulfillment. So many things I want to do, I need to do and now.  Time wasted, decisions questioned, choices made, choices squandered. Is it? Is it really?  If there is perfection functioning…the principal of the universe, nothing is lost or gained. It is all as it should be, all perfect and whole…..no mistakes. Barking at shadows…nothing real. Shadows arecast in my world of language. A world made up by my interpretation..my filters, my making.

I capture on film a moment. A shadow dance.

It is not real. You can’t touch it or hold it in your hand. Each moment is completely different from the moment before and after it,  until it disappears entirely. I am grateful I am there to catch it momentarily again. and again. and again, different each and every moment….appearing and disappearing.  Witnessing those moments that exist only in my seeing. Voyeuristicly witnessing something that doesn’t exist. You can’t touch it, taste it, hear it. Like memories, it it fleeting and made up by me the seer. It is mine and only mine.

My dog Izzie sat on the top of the stairs just as it was getting dark, barking at the windows at the bottom of the stairs. I looked to see what she was barking at and saw nothing.  A few minutes later she started barking again as if someone was there. I looked again…nothing. I walked back and forth on the landing getting clothes for a meeting tonight and noticed out of the corner of my eye, a long shadow I was casting all the way down the staircase toward the window on the landing below.

Izzie it seems was barking at my shadow. It got me to thinking…almost immediately as I let out ahead shaking laugh, where in MY life am I barking at shadows? Everywhere, most of the time it seems. Where are YOU barking at shadows?

more on this in my next post…….

I’m finishing a book cover design for the reprint of the book “CHRISTIAN SCIENCE RE-EXPLORED” by Margaret Laird, C.S.B.   The book is being reprinted by The Institute of Metaphysical Science based in LaJolla, California, now with a index. It’s been a gift to dig through the book again as I get side tracked from retyping the original book flap description for the final redesign.

The book is being reprinted now and will be available from the Institute of Metaphysics web site as well as the publisher. They’ve added an index which is incredible valuable to researchers and students of scientific metaphysics. I’ll add the url of the publisher once it’s ready. In the meantime, check out the IMS web site.

Here’s some thought from the Foreward of the book I want to share.

The world is a kind of spiritual kindergarten where bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.  -Edwin Arlington Robinson

John Dorsey states his medical and spiritual truth as: “It is divine to be human and it is human to overlook it.”

Mary Baker Eddy states “As human thought changes from one stage to another of conscious pain and painlessness, sorrow and joy,–from fear to hope and from faith to understandings,–the visible manifestation will at last be man (note:not man as in gender by man as in conscious identity, or thought) governed by Soul, not by material sense.  The mariner will have dominion over the atmosphere and the great deep, over the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air. The astronomer will no longer look up to the stars,–they will look out from them upon the universe; and the florist will find their flower before its seed.”

Bicknell Young adds: ” Infinity is ceaseless unfoldment. Seeing that there is nothing conceivable and nothing really conceived outside of Infinity. God must be forever unfolding Himself, and because of being infinite, He never repeats Himself. “Behold I make all things new,” is being fulfilled daily and hourly in our understanding and practice. Old things are indeed passes away. Therefore, do not think backwards or even forwards, but now and infinitely.”

And H.G. Wells states ” A day will come when beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amid the stars.”

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I use the word God, or God-idea, Mind. and Divine interchangable–they are the same–the principal of existence. Consciousness cannot be divided into inner and outer since it is infinite!

For one moment of my life I would know how it feels to be free.

-Nina Simone

"Trust Yourself" mixed media by Kate Pabst

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look inside your heart. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside, awakens.”  -Carl Jung

The secret of life is to have a task. Something that you devote your entire
life to, something to bring everything to, every minute of the day, for your
whole life. And the important thing is, it must be something you can’t
possibly do.

Henry Moore (1831-1895)

“He told Yogi Krishnan of his hunger for wealth and obsession with work. He revealed, with great emotion, his inner turmoil and the crisis of spirit he had experienced when the once bright light of his life began to flicker in the winds of an out-of-balance lifestyle.”

“I too have walked this path,my friend. I too have felt the pain you have felt. Yet I have learned that everything happens for a reason, ” offered Yogi Krishnan sympathetically. “Every event has a purpose and every setback its lesson. I have realized that failure, whether of the personal , professional or even spiritual kind, is essential to personal expansion. It brings inner growth and a whole host of psychic rewards. Never regret your past. Rather, embrace it as the teacher that it is.”   -excerpt from “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” by Robin Sharma