Forty-Two

Sitting in the ICU watching my heart try to flutter like a butterfly while beating like a drum, thinking of the meaning of Life, The Universe and Everything. In A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the answer is 42.... which is probably as good an answer as any of us will be able to articulate.For me, a successful life is one that has made the part of the world it touches even a wee bit better. Today, all three of my daughters came to see me, the two by choice and the one by blood. I cannot say how proud I am of all three. When I look at them, I know the magic will continue for all of the children whose lives are touched by these three wonderful women. If I am responsible for even a little of this legacy, then my life has been a success.No, it's not time yet! Only time to contemplate both past and future on this Journey. I can not provide a path, a destiny for anyone other than myself, but perhaps I can provide some light on the questions that start a search for one's path.What is life? Why are we here? Is there life after death? Do we have a purpose beyond being born, growing up, reproducing, growing old and dying? I know that we do. I have found that once we start asking questions, we start being steered in the direction of answers. We see things, hear things, read things that we had not previously noticed, that sometimes resonate with a place deep inside of us that simply says "This is true!", and we have found our first answer. Our answers are all within us but we must seek them out. After the first one, they start to come faster and faster. We get better at asking our questions and recognizing the answers.There is a saying that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. While that is very true, it does not always happen the way we expect. Often we are led to situations, circumstances, evens, or people which give us only one answer or even just a hint at where to look next. We may well not recognize these fleeting teachers.As we progress, the corollary of that saying may well be "When the teacher is ready, the student will appear. On this path to Awareness, we are all teachers and we are all students. We must walk our path with one hand stretched out in front to receive help when we need it. There will always be someone there to guide and give us confidence when faced with a new threshold. We must also remember to keep a lookout behind to help those who follow when they need it most.We all experience times when we feel that life is progressing as it should, then suddenly life will turn upside down on us. Like any up hill path to the summit, there will be easy times and hard times. When it is hard, we need someone to remind us that it is always darkest before the dawn and that a new dawn is coming in all it's glory for us too.After surviving a few of these dark nights, we develop faith in our Selves and our Path. I suppose that one way of putting it is that we become Survivors simply by learning that we do survive..............and suddenly we begin to take responsibility for our selves. No longer is life happening to us, We realize that we can choose many of the events in our lives, and even when we can not choose the event, we are in control of our reactions to it.More and more, we chart our own path, make our own decisions, own our own lives. What a wonderful adventure we begin when we find our volition.Everything changes, we have found our Self. The great Journey begins in earnest. Each day becomes an adventure. We stop running from and start running to. We have truly begun our Journey Into Being. Each new truth leads to another. We are Awakening. We seek out and find others who are Awakening. We become seekers after light. We begin to carry an inner light and a mirror in which we reflect others truths back to them as ours are being reflected to us.Like the ripples on a pond, our knowledge grows wider and wider. Like the stillness beneath the surface, our conviction grows deeper and surer. What has been set in motion can not be stopped., We are Awakening. We are part of All That Is. We are part of the One. We ARE!