I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

I am taking a break from blogging.

I have been taking a break from blogging.

I am feeling called to something Else.

I have bills to pay. I have a need to go out and earn some income. And I have vertigo - I keep losing my balance. It's like being drunk without the drinking. It's like I go this way, but my body goes that way. I am moving in two directions, at least, at once.

My doctor says the vertigo comes from an inner ear infection. I am ill in my inner ear.

The ear is for hearing. The inner ear controls balance. I am off balance.

Maybe in my life as well as in my body.

I can't help feeling that this particular illness cropping up now is some kind of indicator that I need to listen to something inner. I am off balance from not listening to my inner self. The self that is working through something.

My ego-self is nudging me. Come on, we have to pay bills, we have to finish the play, get our film funded, and push our concept paper forward...

The inner self is drawn to the altar. It wants to meditate. I focus on my breathing. Where did I get that idea? Later that day I read about it in a Buddhist magazine. This is part of becoming mindful - watching the breath, watching thoughts as they arise. Naming them, but not engaging. 'Oh I need to rewrite my concept paper for my dissertation and go shopping and get blueberries and blueberries are full of antioxidants I wonder if my body needs antioxidants and that's why I am attracted to them yadayada'....I label this bunch of thoughts 'busyness'.

Ever notice how business is busyness? How close these are? Don't people in business engage in busyness all day long?

I watch my thoughts come and go. Don't follow them. Just watch.

I had a feeling that my dissertation was morphing into an exercise in philosophy. It seems that I am trying to get at the ultimate nature of reality. I disguised this effort poorly in my concept paper, pointing everywhere but where I wanted to point.

I had a feeling yesterday that someone older was going to come and help me. I had three conversations today with older people - they all helped. One encouraged my letting go of ego. One blew apart my ideas, leaving me levelled so I could look at what's really trying to work through me. And the last one opened up a new world for me.

I feel so vulnerable. Like a snail with no shell, ambling about a very big garden.

Hopefully what I am is fertile ground, and something is trying to root, to grow, maybe even to bloom.

So for now, I am taking a break. Let me see if quietude helps that inner voice get heard...