The Birds are Still Singing, You Just Haven’t Noticed
When I wake up in the morning, I go to my altar. I sit down on the same little cushion that I’ve been sitting on for six or seven years, giving a little bow to my irreverent altar of nick-knacks and anime heroes. I then sit very still for a certain amount of time with my eyes open. Lately it’s been warm enough on those LA mornings to have my window open too. And I think that I might be starting to open up my ears.
I just wrapped up working with the healer that I mentioned in my article last month. It’s been a really cool experience. I won’t go into all the details, but I feel like it helped me sort out some imbalances in my current state of affairs and gave me a bit more to meditate on. One thing I’ve been sitting with, amongst a host of other things, is where I’m going next.
If you’re reading this, you no doubt know that I released a book last month on Amazon. The support and feedback has been positive thus far and I’m starting to reach that edge of my circle. Now it seems time to consider ways of venturing out into other circles where there may be individuals who can vibe with the general feel. That bit of marketing certainly takes time. It takes a bit of brain power too. And it has, at times, pulled me away from some of the more menial tasks within my other career.
A good friend once told me that life is like a garden, and you’ve got to water your interests with time and energy.
As you get older, you develop more responsibilities and may not be able to give the same time and energy to something that simply brought you joy. Decisions have to be made as to where you will allocate resources. And those decisions are never easy.
But this is not a new challenge for me. My first ever girlfriend in Los Angeles often commented on the dichotomy of ‘Kevin’ and ‘Dr. Davi.’ To her it seemed to be a bit of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation with the two sides competing for superiority and the eventual future of me as the vessel they were trapped together in. At the time, she wasn’t wrong. I still had a lot of frat boy in me and wasn’t too sure that I even wanted to be a physical therapist. I also had a ton of professional in me that I could turn on in an instant because it was the hat that I had been taught to wear when I was in the clinic. For her to see both sides must have been confusing. Hell, it was and still is confusing to me.
So I don’t really want to be a frat boy anymore, but that writer's itch has certainly grown a bit. The fact that some people have actually enjoyed what I’ve written has begun to build a bit of self confidence and the thought that I might actually have something worth saying that people might benefit from hearing. However, I also know that over the past eighteen months I’ve been doing some really great work as a healer. I’ve developed better boundaries with my business and personal life. I’ve created a system where I have regular and irregular clients balancing out the schedule. I’ve even started committing some regular time to the dreaded administration work.
I know I’m developing into something that I perceive as good in one sphere. I know that I’m just starting to get my feet underneath me in another.
What’s a Libra to do?
One of my favorite practices performed with my healer Hannah, and there were many, was a self visualization where we dropped into a meditative state and then visited my seven year old self, my twenty-two year old self, my forty-three year old self and then my current self visualization. I let seven year old Kev know that he was so much more than what went on between the lines of the soccer field. I let twenty-two year old Dragon (an interesting college nickname with a story for another day) know that he could be a physical therapist and still be himself at the same time. Forty-three year old Kevin told me not to worry too much and to make my bed in the morning. He also said going bald ain’t that bad. So there’s that to look forward to.
Then we journeyed on into this sense of self. I remember that as we sat across from each other in the typical Lotus Posture, I could feel my limbs being incredibly large and weighted to the ground. My physical body seemed bigger than the room itself. And even though I could hear her, I really couldn’t place Hannah anywhere in the room. She started guiding me through myself and my body and my higher purpose. I was in a pretty open state so she would offer a question to which I would try to respond without thinking. I’m not sure if she had asked how I view myself or what I was doing in the present moment, but the image that came up for me is pretty seared into my reality.
I saw myself barefoot and bare chested walking down a dirt path not dissimilar from the ones that I typically hike on out in Malibu. I wore what looked like hempen pants and a loose fitting satchel around one shoulder. I also held a walking stick that I know all too well. My hair and beard were both long and scattered. My skin was brown from the sun. And I was just walking along the path.
It didn’t seem like I had much of a direction or anywhere to be. The steps that I took were neither rushed nor very deliberate. My gaze wandered up into the clouds overhead, towards the trees on my path and to the lizards scurrying away from my feet.
A smile graced my face that I could feel in my heart space.
I shared this with Hannah who thought it was beautiful. Hannah thinks that everything is beautiful and at times I wish I had that much joy in my life. But it felt very right to be wandering trails without any endpoint in sight. It felt like that Kevin could wander the trails endlessly and would only make the choice of left or right when he specifically came to a fork in the road. Maybe that’s what all the me’s in attendance that day were trying to tell me.
This week I was driving home from a client south on the 405. I wound up behind an eighteen-wheeler and this time didn’t make any moves to pass him. It was at this point that I noticed I had been driving without any music or podcasts on. I had just been taking the path home that was laid out before me. We often cultivate or manifest the situations that we want in our life. A little music here, a touch of color there and next thing you know we have created this container that is exactly how we think our life should be. But since when do any of us really know what we want out of life?
It sounds crazy but amidst all the mechanical noise that goes hand in hand with that awful stretch of highway between Santa Monica and the valley, I swear I could hear a couple of birds singing. And I wonder if they were only singing because I was listening.