What if your soul is asleep?

             Life’s natural pain can cause us to pursue every kind of anesthesia. Patterns can hypnotize. Monotony tranquilizes our courage.

             Meanwhile, as we use ten percent of our potential, our life passes.

          Resting on a lamp-lit sofa, I read about a woman who lived fully awake – a being of light. Because of her nightly rounds to check on the wounded in the Crimean War the most
famous image of Florence Nightingale casts her as “The Lady With the Lamp.” 

             “I close my eyes to see,” artist
Paul Gauguin wrote.

             The world’s light shines without. The light of our spirit
shines from within.

What The Explorers
Teach Us

             We know that Nightingale's lamp symbolizes the search we all pursue to find “The
Light.” The light Nightingale sought was a system that would bring healing to
all those in need. 

 
           Nightingale was an explorer. The
journeys of the world’s saints and pioneers offer fascinating stories that can electrify
your personal search.

 
           Explorer Ponce de Leon spent his
career searching Florida (which he named) for the Fountain of Youth. Columbus,
of course, sought a new route to India.  

             In both cases, the explorers found something different and more
important than what they sought. Yet, neither recognized the value of their
discoveries.

             Your light shines before you now. Can you see it with your eyes closed?

 
           Perhaps most renowned of all searches
in the Western world has centered on the pursuit of the mystical cup that,
according to legend, Jesus used at the Last Supper and Joseph of Arimathea
later used to catch the blood of Jesus. Touched by Jesus, this vessel is the
Holy Grail of legend – a thing so precious that many lives have been lost
seeking it.  

 
           But, we have to make our way through
traffic and too many patients each day and may feel we don’t have time to
bother with such stories. However, when we look at our own story don't we want
it to include our own pathway to "The Light?"

Isn’t it time to break the patterns that have trapped us in ruts?

“The Old Patterns”

             “Once you start to awaken,” John
O’Donohue writes, “no one can ever claim you again for the old patterns. Now you realize how precious your time here is.”  

 
           Frustrated, tired of trying, or
perhaps believing there is no such path, you may have given up. Yet, if
you are reading this, you may well be continuing your travels.

 
           Good. There is no more important
journey than our one towards the light. If we give up, we fall into the
half-light of a world devoid of real meaning.

 
           The single most riveting truth is this:
The light is always there, waiting for us to find her. We must
rediscover our path to her every day. 

             O’Donohue’s eloquence beckons us: “You
want your work to become an expression of your gift. You want your relationship
to voyage beyond the pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation
dwells.”

             Find courage. Or find your life
caught forever in patterns that promise safety but deliver mediocrity.

 
           What does The Light look like to you?
Is it peace and serenity? Does it lie in the eyes of a healed patient? Does it
live in a glimpse of the sea? Does it flow from the music of a laugh or through
the paint on an artist’s canvas? Does it circle your heart when you are in the
presence of the one you love?

 
           All of these experiences tell us that
although The Light may be awakened from without, it lives within.

     
       As Gauguin wrote, you must close your eyes to see
it.  

-Erie Chapman

[The above essay is excerpted from the forthcoming book for caregivers, "Inside Radical Loving Care."]