Everything you want fits in one basket

There is a story from Mark Nepo's "Book of Awakening" in which a man is trying to carry so many things into his house that he can't open the door. He winds up dropping and ruining everything.That story is clearly meant as a parable about setting things down - and focusing on one thing at a time.Yet, right now, it strikes me in a slightly different way.I'm working, in my own life, with the way that expansion makes me feel overwhelmed and up against an edge in myself that always seems to be asking me to choose between one thing and another.And I've been seeing that this choice may not always be the real choice. Sometimes, expansion comes as a call to find a bigger 'basket'  - a basket that is deep and wide enough to carry both of these things (or all of these things) into the house.We've been discussing this idea in the Soul Caller Circle, where graduates of my programs gather to discuss what it's like to live real, normal lives - while applying the principles of the Soul Caller Training. What does it mean, we ask, to live a spiritual life right in the middle of the life you have?So this 'overwhelmed by carrying too much at once' was coming up a lot.It came up in a phone call with a friend.It came up in a chat with my mom- and another with my sister.It came up in my weekly conversation with my shaman.Once again, I found myself thinking - and now, writing - about capacity.How much can we hold?How much can we carry?Though we can only fully focus on one thing at a time (the mind is made that way), I want my 'one thing' to be a whole thing.If I focus my attention on the basket - and not on the fragments - my life flows more easily. The parameters of my house expand.I enter and set down my deep, wide light-filled basket in the foyer and close the door behind me.Everyone and everything I need is here. I am finally home.