“I have come to believe that “the quest” is a metaphor for the willingness to live and wrestle with the perennial questions that underlie the mythic answers that religion offers. My “question” is the “quest I’m on.” – Sam Keen – Hymns To An Unknown God

Human life is a journey whose end is not in sight. Searching, longing and questioning is in our DNA. Who we are and what we will become is determined by the questions that animate us, and by those we refuse to ask. Your questions are your quest. As you ask, so shall you be. ~ Sam Keen

(Photo: Pamela at

I’ve been living alone for the past few months, enjoying it more now that I am no longer constrained by a cast on my right foot. In living alone, I have found, as Krishnamurti notes, a “greater awareness for self-discovery”.

“There is no such thing as living alone, for all living is relationship; but to live without direct relationship demands high intelligence, a swifter and greater awareness for self-discovery.” ~ J. Krishnamurti

Alone in the garden of many…

(Photo: White Tulip with Red Stripes ~ c. Pamela J. Leavey 2012)

“Acceptance, tolerance and understanding are pivotal to any and all relationships. Today, I will practice these three skills towards everyone whom I meet and come in contact with. Today, I will acknowledge that it is not my job to fix or change anyone. Today, I will acknowledge that everyone is perfect, just the way they are.” ~ Pamela J. Leavey

(Photo: Summer in the Secret Garden ~ c. Pamela J. Leavey 2011)

When we give our heart to someone, we never expect it to get trounced on.

Marianne Williamson says in A Return To Love:

“Love is a participatory emotion.”

It takes two people to participate however… and if one isn’t showing up in that relationship… Well, it wasn’t love to begin with, was it?

(Photo: Osprey’s Nesting at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge ~ c. Pamela J. Leavey 2012)

I’ve found it difficult to write over the past few days, my head has been fogged in by a loss for words. It’s been 9 1/2 weeks since I fell in my driveway and ended up with a Lisfranc sprain in my right foot. Finally nearing the end of my initial treatment for the injury, first being in a hard cast for 6 1/2 and then an air cast for 4 1/2 weeks, I head back to the ortho on the 26th and I am hoping he OKs me to start physical therapy.

It’s been a long tough haul… Stuck at home, alone, day after day, unable to drive, dependent on my daughter and some friends to first bring me supplies and then start to get me out of the house occasionally.

My right foot was completely atrophied when the hard cast came off. Much to my chagrin, I did not realize how badly atrophied it was until I slipped out of my air cast and prepared to step in a nice Lavendar scented hot bath. What was I thinking? How am I going to get into this bath tub with no strength in my foot and leg… and worse, how the hell will I get out?

Strength be damned, I was getting in that tub… I grabbed hold of the shower height bar and slid down into the tub. Once in I knew getting out was not going to be easy… So I relaxed into the hot water and gave thanks to have the cast off my foot at last. With visions of having to yell upstairs to my neighbors to help me get out of the tub, I somehow managed to pull myself out and didn’t try that stunt again for a few weeks.

A Lisfranc sprain isn’t a swift healer like some ankle sprains can be. It’s not even a very common injury, 1 in 55,000 a year get a Lisfranc injury… Just my luck. I’d have rather won the lotto, but I don’t gamble. Or do I?

About 2 months before my fall, I gambled. I took a huge leap of fate and trusted the Goddess to guide me as I began to date someone I met online. He was persistent and seemed oh too good to be true and he swept me, the storied Ice Princess off her feet. And that was the beginning of another injurious fall.

First, I fell head over heals for this knight in shining armor who was promising me the world, and then with in a few short weeks, I fell from grace it appeared, as I managed to land myself spread upon my driveway with scrapes, bruises and sprains.

After the fall, the phone calls started to dwindle. There were no more dates, the promises started to fade. The weeks not seeing him stretched into a couple of months and there I dangled like my injured foot, with a heart crushed by the promise of love.

Sometimes life sends us some very difficult lessons and sometimes they come heaped together like a big bowl of stewed troubles. It wasn’t enough I should fall on the ground and sprain my foot… Hell no… I needed to have my heart stomped on too.

My faith was sorely tested in the first weeks of my injuries as I realized that that which I thought I had found was slipping away, as I sat stuck at home alone, unable to drive… trapped like a prisoner in my pain. Loss of freedom, loss of love, wrapped together like the vines of a wicked bramble bush waiting to ensnare.

Ah, but even after injurious falls, life does go on. My strength is finally coming back in the physical sense from my injuries and I drove today for the first time in 9 1/2 weeks. It was liberating…

My heart, I fear will be weary to trust again, for it took so much for me to take that leap. Promises can quickly turn into broken promises. Some are better than others at keeping them. And the ones that can’t keep them, well they really show their trues colors when they bail on someone in need.

I’m still working on figuring out the lessons and hatching ideas of what’s next in my life… Reflecting on what was… Looking forward to brighter days…

(Photo: Berries & Brambles ~ c. Pamela J. Leavey 2012)

A photographer can capture an image in mere seconds with a camera…

But is what we see always the reality of what it is, or do we see things sometimes in more abstract views that make us question reality?

To question reality can often bring us a new way of viewing what we see.

Sometimes what we see is simply colored in black & white…

And then at times we see things with a very abstract view of color…

When we process both the reality and the abstract in our hearts and minds, we can often find a deeper answer to what is real.

(Photos: Hawk in Tree Silhouettes in 4 versions ~~ c. Pamela J. Leavey 2012)

I was first introduced to the teaching of J. Krishnamurti while studying A Course In Miracles, with Tara Singh while living in Los Angeles. Since then I have found great comfort and wisdom from the teaching of J. Krishnamurti…

The center of suffering

When you see a most lovely thing, a beautiful mountain, a beautiful sunset, a ravishing smile, a ravishing face, that fact stuns you, and you are silent; hasn’t it ever happened to you? Then you hug the world in your arms. But that is something from outside which comes to your mind, but I am talking of the mind which is not stunned but which wants to look, to observe. Now, can you observe without all this upsurging of conditioning? To a person in sorrow, I explain in words; sorrow is inevitable, sorrow is the result of fulfillment. When all explanations have completely stopped, then only can you look -which means you are not looking from the center. When you look from a center, your faculties of observation are limited. If I hold to a post and want to be there, there is a strain, there is pain. When I look from the center into suffering, there is suffering. It is the incapacity to observe that creates pain. I cannot observe if I think, function, see from a center- as when I say, ‘I must have no pain, I must find out why I suffer, I must escape.’ When I observe from a center, whether the center is a conclusion, an idea, hope, despair, or anything else, that observation is very restricted, very narrow, very small, and that engenders sorrow. ~~ J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Let go of the suffering, I believe Krishnamurti is saying here. Release it. Sorrow is inevitable, we all go through it. We can’t get past it if we hold it at our center. It’s a hard lesson, but in time we must release the sorrow and suffering and move through it.

This quote caught my eye earlier today…

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy. ~~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge, 1943

Reflecting on the subject of taking delight in something “while we have it,” I think back to times of great joy. We know instinctively in the midst of sheer joy, that that joy will not last forever, but we still revel in it while it is happening.

And then, is that joy not our solace, when we slip down into a period of the dark nights of soul. It is there, lost in the dark nights of soul, that we reflect deepest sometimes. And that reflection at first can appear messy, like the reflection of the clouds amidst the winter trees in the marshes.

Difficult as the path may seem, it is taking the journey through the dark nights of the soul that clears our hearts and allows us to find strength in the notion that “nothing in the world is permanent.”

(Photo: Reflection In Hellcat Swamp ~~ c. Pamela J. Leavey 2011)

Word Press ate my thoughts… I had rambled about being in the “still” and added a photo and when I hit publish all I had was a title.