Oh blog, I come to you…with first thoughts. I wrote something I actually like. It says alot. Here is the link: https://janerothfeld.com/about-jane/. (The contact button on the page does not seem to work, so ignore that for now.)

So my husband just brought the whole composting toilet into the yurt, because it was too frozen to open in the shed where it lives. Usually we can just bring the “necessary parts” into the yurt, because, yes, it needs to thaw before it can be cleaned. Even with that – having to bring the poop bucket into the yurt to let it thaw, which is (so much) more than enough – he said, “This comes under the ‘things I never thought I’d do’ category.”

When those things you do that you never thought you would do are ultimately thrilling – the marathon, parachuting from a plane – that’s one thing. What is this thing he and I are living where almost-daily we do unpleasant things we never thought we’d do? Humbling. Yes. Sucky. For sure. There’s more to it, I write about it all the time, but we don’t get the thrill. I can guarantee that.

About his awakening, the spiritual teacher, Lester Levenson, said, “I was lucky. I had a gun to my head.” He was referring to the fact that he had had a serious heart attack in his forties and was told by the doctors to basically go home and die. Instead he went home and underwent a profound inner inventory and completely woke up from the illusion of duality. The fact that his life was on the line was a vital accelerant.

Is that the formula for waking up? Nope. Just as getting ready to hang yourself, as Eckhart Tolle did, is not a formula for awakening, though that was his story. Same with Byron Katie who experienced her awakening – when the “work found her” is how she would put it – while on the floor of a halfway-house because she felt she did not deserve to sleep in a bed. None of these are formulas for waking up. If most of us attempt to hang ourselves with a rope we will die.

However, when the soul wants to accelerate awakening, it will often bring in a “gun to the head” situation. In my case, jobs & savings completely disappeared and did not reappear. For other people it can be a serious health issue, like Lester Levenson and many others I know right now.

These back-to-the-wall situations pull an intense focus and allow your soul to move through resistance and illusion that you, the human side of the construct, would maintain…at all costs. Hell, I would. Wouldn’t you?