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Rosmert had appeared recently during my Inner Grove exercise. I’d been discouraged about my progress. So many setbacks. Autumn had come, and projects I’d set for myself over a year ago remained distant goals. After I recovered from my surprise at his appearance, I realized I had indeed been asking for help. Of course, when it comes, I often don’t recognize it. I nearly snarled at him to go away. I’m glad I didn’t. But that showed me how out of balance I was.
My awareness shifted from inner grove to my living room and back again. Half the time I saw Rosmert sitting on a tree-stump. Half the time he was perched on the edge of the recliner in the living room, facing the woodstove. At first I scolded myself for lack of focus. Then I realized it just didn’t matter. Grove or living room, he was still here. So I just went with it. I told myself I could figure it all out later. Soon we were in it pretty deep.
“You mean there’s a law behind even the randomness of things?” I asked him. So many obstacles, it sometimes came near to breaking my spirit.
“Yes,” said Rosmert, stretching out his legs in front of him. “But it’s not only a physical law, even if it accounts for physical things. Spirit is at work throughout all the worlds, continually keeping everything in balance.”
“That makes it sound like there’s still room for slippage,” I said. Overhead, heavy storm-clouds and sun competed for equal time. “Between one interval of growth and inspiration and another, there can be an awful lot of bad weather.”
He nodded. “In a world of change, the adjustment is continual,” he said after a pause. “So the tests we face, the people we meet, the problems, excitements, opportunities, setbacks, decisions, challenges, sorrows and joys are expressions of spiritual energy finding whatever opening it can into our consciousness to expand our awareness and our understanding of life.”
“Doesn’t it also sometimes shut down, or diminish? Or maybe we do that to ourselves? All I know is that we certainly take a lot of sidesteps, or steps backwards, too.”
Rosmert gazed steadily at me for a moment. “If we’re trying to get a mile further down the road, a flat tire looks like a delay. If we’re learning how to travel, it’s just another lesson. Keep a spare. Have your tools ready. Change your tires before they wear too thin. While you’re in the moment, though, a flat tire can definitely seem like a major setback.” He grinned and leaned forward.
He was about to continue when I interrupted. “What if the ‘flat tire’ is your life? Not just a small setback on the journey, but all-out disaster.”
Unexpectedly, he laughed. “The human consciousness does love drama at times. And Spirit creates as it flows. That’s what it does, what it is. If we choose to create disasters as it flows in and around us, that’s what we’ll usually get.” He laughed again, this time at my scowl. “Yes, we encounter lesser and greater cycles of spiritual movement and flow. Some of them involve a whole lifetime. Some remain small, and fit into the larger cycles. We each work with spiritual energy in our own way, as it flows into us, and as we give it back to situations and people according to our state of consciousness, through our words, deeds, thoughts, feelings, and imagination.”
He stood up, turned slowly in a complete circle, and then faced me again. “Have you ever gone horse-back riding?”
I shook my head at the sudden shift of topic. “What?” I said.
“We can move with the horse, or we can bounce on every up and drop an instant late on every down, out of the rhythm all around us. That makes for one really sore butt at the end of the day. It’s a choice that solidifies into a pattern and then into a destiny. For a while. Then we choose differently, moving from one pattern and trying another, learning, and sometimes crashing and flailing as we go. For a long time, we’re all slow learners. Then we begin to notice the patterns, and finally maybe even look at the choices. What is it you say? ‘Been there, done that’?”
“So is there a way to increase the flow, or does that kind of pushing also throw us out of balance? I guess my question is, can we speed up the process?”
Rosmert didn’t answer right away. He breathed slowly and steadily four or five times. Then he said, “The goal of the most useful spiritual exercises you’ve been learning is ultimately to invite a greater inflow and permit a greater outflow. We need both. We also need balance as we learn to do this more effectively. Bottle it up without letting it out-flow and the result is the same as if you shut the inflow off completely. To put it another way, we need to complete the circuit. As we become more conscious of the movement of Spirit in and around us, we’re able to relax into this current that is always in motion, and live our lives more fully. This is our own individual spiritual path to greater love of all life.”
“So if we stop resisting the complete flow,” I said ruefully, “we won’t get beat up so badly.”
“Right,” he said, chuckling at the expression on my face. “It’s a practice. Who doesn’t have some scars and bruises, and a broken bone or two?! We keep practicing till we get it right. Let’s stop here and go for a walk.”
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Updated 23 April 2015
A Druid Way 