“I feel like Alice in Wonderland and somebody’s changed all the signs through the forest. They’re all pointing in different directions, and I don’t know which way I’m supposed to go.”

My client was frantic and scared, confused most of all. She sat in the middle of transition, of change. Nothing seemed to calm her spirit. I called on that place in me that knows confusion, feels lost, doesn’t know which way to turn.

We all know that place, try to keep the door locked, to lose the key. We struggle to feel inside and to be close to whatever we find there, to be whatever we are to be. We have to shift, like a kaleidoscope, trying out different meanings and directions until one fits our experience, our own path through the forest. Then we know we’ve found our meaning, our path, our next move.

It’s in the in-between times we grow, find the “new” we need to wake our angels. It’s living in between states of knowing, without fixed expectations, that we stumble into our raison-d’etre. We realize, while we were waiting for something to happen, something or someone was waiting for us. The universe was opening up to us as we were opening up to it.

It’s not a passive, but an active waiting that’s key, a straining to see a face on our  becoming, a waiting to hear a voice that might speak, or not. We have to be quiet to hear those closed places in us opening up, stretching to the light; to sniff out the hidden light that’s present in all darkness, to lean into it until our dark is light. It’s an Old Testament waiting, a making ourselves available for possible encounter. 

Being in between times of growth is like moving through the dark phase of the moon, when we can’t see light from our perspective. We know the potential is there, brilliant in all its luminous radiance, hidden, just on the other side. We just can’t see it yet. It’s the same with sensing the presence of that invisible reality that supports and sustains us as we move through visible reality. We know it is there, just beyond our conscious awareness, yet we don’t know it. 

Then, as with murky waters, our feelings clear. We see beneath what’s been there, all along. The waters still, the dark night subsides, the flip side swings back around. We see our face as if for the first time, witness ourselves taking on our dark companion on his turf, see us move into energy we didn’t know we had.  

It’s as if some inner body steps outside us to lead the way. We move with that inner body, keep pace until it’s our own pace we’re keeping, claimed, enfleshed, enlivened. What we don’t know is supporting what we do know, what we can do, until these two fall into line as one courageous movement forward. Grateful, we toss aside all understanding of what is happening in us and just allow it to have its way with us.  

As the waters still, we see our signs through the forest were not turned around at all, not changed by some trickster’s hand, but clear and bold before us. It was our perspective of them, our narrow vision, the way we saw them, needing them to be a certain way, not seeing possibilities. They hadn’t changed, only pointed in directions we could not decipher with the map we had.

The signs — the next right step — come from within ourselves, from our own experience enlarged one step, just beyond our ordinary way of seeing things. Signs pointing from the world soul, through our own, and into our field of time. Direction at last! Energy at last! We step beyond the fear even though we do not yet see clearly through to the other side.

Arriving at this inner place of knowing is a different task for each of us. For some, waiting until we know the next step is soulful. For some, coming to decision by first trying things out to see what suits us, what helps us to know the next step, works best. There’s no one way, only better for us. We each have to forge our own way through the forest.

As for my client, I could only tell her to wait, to wait until the waters cleared, to wait until she saw herself doing what she loved, to wait until her passion began to stir once more. I could only assure her that her full energy would return, with direction, with focus, within a new cycle. All I could do was to wait with her, to witness her journey through the forest, to know it was all there within herself, waiting to lead her home