In the previous post (testing the universe part 1) you saw me leaving the Ancient Yew tree at 4am in the morning, heading into a day that it had promised, I would get a lesson and an opportunity.
Well, it is still that same day and only a few hours later I was at work and feeling both annoyed and puzzled. As it happens I was helping a friend with a website. I had fixed what he wanted me to fix but the fix had left a small defect in the way that the site was looking. I had been trying to fix this (it shouldn’t be there) bug for twenty minutes and was at a loss as to what to do next.
I took a deep breath and decided to step back from the situation for a moment. My focus drifted away from the problem and to the music that was playing in th background…You know how sometimes your eyes glaze over and you are not seeing what you are looking at? That kind of zoning out occurred for me and I was lost in time and space. My thoughts drifted to the mornings experience at the Yew. When would the lesson come? Would I recognise it? Was the lesson itself the sign? For a few moments I was not in this world. Then when I returned I looked again at the offending issue on my screen. I looked closer and closer. And with one of them dreaded self-deprecating moments I realised…I reached out with my hand and rubbed at the screen. The mark, which I had assumed was on the website was actually a fleck of dirt on my computer screen.
Lessons!
That whole fifteen minute or so experience wrapped itself into a box and presented itself to my thoughts. That’s how I saw it straight away. It was the lesson. Without question. I had seen a sign, I had tried to deal with it, I stood back from it and I came back, saw it again and…tested it. It wasn’t the universe I was testing, or as the Yew had said, not directly. I was testing my view of the sign.
I know, it might not make sense here, as I write it, but I’m telling you an epiphany of some magnitude had occurred. It wasn’t about not trusting the universe or yourself, it was about testing the process between the two.
Are you seeing the sign for what it is?
Test your perception was what the Yew was saying. How could I do this? What can I draw from the lesson that would answer that? I pondered the lesson and my considerations from earlier that morning. Without taking you through a blow-by-blow account the conclusion I reached was this.
You have to stop the world, become still, get as close to becoming the observer rather than the interacter. So you can see imperceptible movements, movements that are as little to do with you as possible. Then have patience and wait. See what happens. The universe will continue on its way and you will get a glimpse into its working.
A question that got asked is why was I so concerned with signs anyway and the potential misinterpreting of them? I realised it was because I thought that time might be wasted if I missed them or get them wrong and indeed I might follow an erroneous sign to a bad end.
What I learned was that the secret was in slowness and inaction. Does that sound like a definition of patience to you? You’re damned right it does.
And the tale doesn’t end there…
As the Yew tree had said, I would get an opportunity to try out this lesson. A couple of hours later I did and indeed am now practicing slowness and in-action. That tale is a private one I have to say and may be told at a later date.
