Breakthrough Burnout
Cultivating wonder is what I do for a living. Which makes it, you know, my day job - and, every so often, I lift my head from my work and realize, "I am getting bored with miracles."The daily grind of same thing, over and over wears on everyone - but when it happens with miracles, it double sucks.'Breakthrough Burnout' is a peculiar malady, specific to mystics and psychics and healers and intuitives who juggle white light for a living.The symptoms: Ennui in the face of the miraculous, frustration and overwhelm with the sheer number of angel feathers and pennies from heaven they are asked to store; and a general ho-hum with the notion that there is a Divine intelligence that loves and engages us.Ho hum with miracles? Seriously?When I catch myself in this place, I laugh - often in public places, in full view of 'normal' people. Which does not help. I ask myself: How is this even possible?When I ask this, I am speaking to the miracle-maker, the One who sends the feather, the rainbow, the handful of glitter that endlessly flutters around my life. I ask because I can't believe it. Can't understand it.How can a person be jaded, 'over it,' bored with miracles?The Senders of miracles seem to find this amusing, too. I hear them kinda chuckling, in a familiar, we're in this together sort of way.And then They up the stakes.
- They set my car on fire.
- They send wild technicolor dreams that wake me gasping and amazed
- They double my income, overnight
- They make me finally, really fall (profoundly and deeply) in love with my husband after 26 years of marriage - and they do this while I am writing a memoir about the heart (and planning, as I used to do, to leave him when I got my first royalty check)
Then, they up the stakes again.They start talking out loud - so I can hear them. They send me three books to write, for them, as a ... channel.I used to think they were doing this to get my attention - to re-generate wonder - to take me out of auto-pilot but that's not what's going on.They're not doing this to me. I am.They're just always there. Always flowing. Always ready and eager and willing to play with me.When I ask them what to do, they tell me.
- Put down the miracle story for a while
- Walk, talk, touch things
- They make me remember: I have a body and flash images through my mind of healthy meals, lemon water, long walks, yoga.
- They flash pictures of nature and encourage me to re-engage with the physical, material world (preferably in a way that does not involve shopping, since shopping only presents more miracles.)
They remind me that, because I live in a universe of miracles, my way of cultivating wonder can be, engaging the mundane. I can wash the dishes, feeling the slimy smooth lather of the dish soap on my hands, fold the laundry, burying my face in a towel, inhaling the out of the dryer fresh scent. I can walk the trash to the curb, my whole body shivering in the December chill - and love the way that feels.I can go and talk to my husband about his work - and actually listen I can call my mother - and pulse heartbeats of love to her. I can visit my dad at the nursing home - and hold his twisted old hand.For me, cultivating wonder won't involve writing in my journal or prayer or meditation. It might mean that I go to yoga and stay in my body the whole 75 minutes - a TRUE wonder for me. It might mean that I stop and pluck the dry leaves from the geranium, the hydrangea, the African violet.At some point, I will feel the whisper of wonder return. It always does - it always will. The miraculous was there all the time. It is the house where we live. And through cultivation of the delights (and miracles) of everyday living, we open the door and invite ourselves back home.