Per­se­vere Through the Mid­dle

By Anne Round

Published The Magic Happens Magazine April 2021

Image by Anne Round

Won­ders lie be­yond our imag­i­na­tion on the un­seen path ahead. The un­cer­tainty of the fu­ture is a hu­man con­di­tion that our mind gen­er­ally holds with fear. In our minds, we plot and plan down to the finest de­tail our fu­ture en­deav­ors and ac­tions. In our hearts, there is a quiet know­ing that we can trust the process of life un­fold­ing.

While we sit with the dis­com­fort of wait­ing for a fu­ture path to un­fold, we are en­cour­aged to hold the new in a state of ex­pand­ing cu­rios­ity and joy. We tend to let our mind creep in with a gro­cery list of what if’s and how could items. These men­tal ob­jec­tions are usu­ally the first in­di­ca­tor that our path is open­ing to the new, with a bar­rage of judg­ments from our past ex­pe­ri­ences or imag­ined flaws. Our way ahead is to thank the ob­jec­tions for show­ing up and choose to be ex­cited and ner­vous si­mul­ta­ne­ously while stead­fastly mov­ing for­ward.

When a new po­ten­tial is be­gin­ning to form, I of­ten find my­self speak­ing of the swirl of ideas and pos­si­bil­i­ties. It seems to be crit­i­cal to ground the new path by writ­ing or speak­ing. The next step is to let go, al­low­ing the con­coc­tion of ideas and plans time to trans­form. Dur­ing this mid­dle stage of deep trust, the vi­sions will blend to form some­thing new. It is like bak­ing, the unique in­gre­di­ents get mixed, and the oven trans­forms them into a de­li­cious cake.

The stage I am most in­trigued by is the time in the oven. It is the heat in the mid­dle that we have to en­dure while em­brac­ing the out­come. The phase that we do not get to watch. The trans­for­ma­tion is sci­ence tak­ing place. Heat cre­ates re­ac­tions that make bub­bles that cause the cake to rise. It is the in­vis­i­ble phase. It is the mag­i­cal phase. When we find our lives in this stage of un­cer­tainty and un­known change, we need to be pa­tient and gen­tly hold what is be­fore us with per­se­ver­ance and deep trust.

On a shamanic jour­ney re­cently, I started with my in­ten­tion and then found my­self rid­ing a horse, fast and pow­er­fully across the land­scape. Dur­ing this time, I felt the shift­ing in my be­ing as I joined with the horse and felt the pas­sage of wind and time. At our des­ti­na­tion, the vi­sion was a clear fu­ture po­ten­tial. The mid­dle re­mained blurry through­out the ride. Like the time the cake hides in the heat of the oven. It is where our pa­tience gets tested, and our prac­tices be­come crit­i­cal. We hold the fu­ture dream del­i­cately so that all the re­quired cre­ations can line up in the per­fec­tion of di­vine tim­ing. We ac­cept the time the cake takes to bake to per­fec­tion, fluffy and light. We also ac­cept the evolv­ing new path for our­selves even though it is in­vis­i­ble and un­known.

The chal­lenge is ac­cept­ing the mid­dle phase, that goopy, un­cer­tain phase of be­com­ing some­thing new, some­thing more. For me, this is the time for con­tem­pla­tion that holds the dream lightly and gen­tly. For jour­nal­ing, all that our mind ob­jects to and all that our heart sings as pos­si­bil­i­ties. I like to get it all out of my sys­tem so, I also dance. Dance what is hap­pen­ing day by day. Dance with a deep trust that our feet root on this beau­ti­ful earth and our ideas are alive in the cos­mos be­com­ing form. When the danc­ing is com­plete, it is time to sit qui­etly and con­tem­plate once again. It is our nat­ural hu­man cy­cle, move­ment, and still­ness. For­ever, know­ing and trust­ing that our dreams en­liven into be­ing along an in­vis­i­ble path.

May per­se­ver­ance and pa­tience al­ways guide our path.