The burning bush (reprise)

Whenever you seem to be receiving an unexpected jolt from the Universe, make every effort to note precisely what it was that you were thinking at the moment you took in the message. ~ Wayne Dyer

When the tree caught fire – heralding, quite possibly, a life shift of biblical proportions – I was fully entranced in one of my favourite documentaries, JK Rowling, a year in the life.  What fascinates me most about this short film is the inner process that leads a person to cross the threshold from an entirely unremarkable (and often unsuccessful or even painful) life into something bigger, something they have felt called to all along, the life that makes their whole being sing so that the world rises up to resonate with them in ways they could never fathom until it happened.

Carolyn Myss calls it crossing the drawbridge, my shaman-teacher-man calls it doing the Nike thing (“just do it”), and my sister and I refer to it as flicking The Switch.  Whatever it is, it’s a process of dropping all the excuses, seeing through the illusory barriers, and just getting on with the thing that’s burning inside. Like committing to such a monumental creative undertaking as writing a book – or in JK’s case, an entire seven-part series.

When my panicked neighbour knocked on the front door to alert me to my flaming conifer, I was engrossed in the bit where JK – Joanne - returns to the flat where she lived when she finally committed to follow her inner urging, no matter how dire her circumstances, to write the story that was burning inside her.  She had no way of knowing, as she wrote longhand in whatever time she could snatch while her baby Jessica slept, the abundance that was unfolding magnificently with every page.  In Joanne’s words, “…I turned my life around, completely.  My life changed so much in this flat.  I feel I really became myself here.”

She was completely unaware that this process would turn her life upside down and inside out, in ways she was unable to imagine. That she would return nearly 10 years later with a film crew and find a set of her published novels sitting on the shelf of the news tenant’s bedroom.  All she knew was the urge that burned inside of her, her indeniable yearning, and the commitment to follow it, no matter what the outcome.

This is what I was thinking about when I received my unexpected jolt from the Universe.  Very burning bush, don’t you think?  Could the Universe speak any clearer?