I have been listening again to don Miguel Ruiz’s Voice of Knowledge and thinking about my life creation. For many years I have listened to this periodically, but since June I have listened to it many times, and each time I hear it as if for the first time. I am working toward believing in the fact of my responsibility for my life and what is or is not in it. Believing that I am creating my life through attention and intention.

It is so easy to scoff at these ideas–these “New Age” ideas–because our cultural belief system, deep down, does not support this notion of responsibility. It denies the here and now for a someday Heaven and a god who no longer speaks to us, who is as far removed from us as we are from our natural selves. A system that encourages us to throw away here-and-now reality for jobs and entertainment and neverending busyness until we feel anything but in control over our “life creation.”

Scoff. Yeah it does sound kinda hippy dippy from the perspective of a slave who is whipped and ordered about by a crazy woman in a chariot. This is my crazy woman, but I imagine she has a whole lot of sisters and brothers. I noticed her at Christmastime when I had a few days off. Actually, I went walking in the woods and noticed her absence. That was when I pictured her clearly: flaming hair surrounding a face that makes Cruella DeVille at her worst look tame. Furious and hell bent on driving me on, on, on! Two part-time jobs; school; family; cooking; house cleaning (wtf? really?); shopping; and the desire to create–with paint, ink, pencil, and words (wtf? really?) had me feeling like a ragdoll. Add Christmas into that and I tell you what, it was a very jolly holiday indeed.

Discovering my own personal fury has taken some of the sting out of her whip, and made me curious about my life. All those elements I feel I have no control over, like having to work two jobs and fit myself into two different work cultures…well, how can I possibly stay centered and move out of that place when I have got to do this?

So I’m listening to Peter Coyote narrate The Voice of Knowledge again, hearing again that I can create my life–that I do create my life through the stories I tell myself, through my beliefs, through my attention and intention, and I believe I am ready for an experiment. I am ready to consciously limit the field of my activity and begin to consciously work on creating my life based on my feelings.