The Purple Light: The Shiniest Tool

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

The Shiniest Tool

by Catherine Viel

Posted on March 15, 2023

The good tool smooths

rough lumber underneath an unforced hand,

unwarps the warped board, trues the untrue edge…

With good tools

The edge falls plumb and all four corners square.

And there is order…

~Andrew Hudgins, Tools: An Ode

We’re constantly bombarded with conflicting information and instructions. How to be, what to think, what to believe. What to trust or not trust.

The worst part is that this bombardment can be largely internal. Without glancing at a screen or speaking with someone, our mind continually sifts and sorts through its layers of detritus.

What is my belief system today? What is my heart telling me? How do I know if that really is my heart informing my consciousness at the moment?

Our internal guidance system seems as fallible as weather forecasts. It’ll be sunny and mild tomorrow! Yet the dawn of tomorrow brings rain.

But the forecast said…but I’m sure my heart told me…

And yet here we are, caught out without an umbrella, caught out wondering if we can trust our own intuition. Intuition said to do such and such, and we dutifully obeyed. And then reality gives us the pratfall to end all pratfalls.

*****

Absolutely pouring rain this morning in our “historic-drought-afflicted“ Southern California. School was canceled and some businesses closed due to potential flooding, and parts of Goleta, Santa Barbara, and Montecito are under evacuation orders. I’m basking in the glow of gratitude that I’m not in one of those areas.

I sometimes feel as if human beings are like obsolete computers, given more data to process than our circuit boards were designed to handle. Without a steadfast connection with intuition, our minds have difficulty navigating the basics of day-to-day life at this tumultuous stopping place in history.

Even though at times my body feels more like a prison than a beloved companion, I’ve come to rely on it for my most accurate personal forecast. What am I really feeling? What is really going on? What is truly my best course of action, in the next minute or the next millennium?

Why did my throat tighten up yesterday every time I contemplated buying silver? I haven’t thought about it today, and my throat feels just fine, thank you.

My mind is notoriously unreliable in guiding me. Asking my Angels and Guides to manifest my best and highest good with whatever’s happening has become so automatic it can feel inauthentic and rote. I scrabble through the toolbox labeled “things that will help me feel better,” and I’ve been encouraged (or indoctrinated, depending on point of view) to always rely on Spirit first. My perpetually contrary mind wonders, though: is that really Spirit’s guidance on handling the situation? How can I truly know?

Which brings me back to body as my most tangible access to wisdom. My body tells it like it is if I pay even a modicum of attention. Still, it’s hard to appreciate the aches and pains and the exasperating and increasing amount of treatment and prevention my body demands just to walk me through a day. Like a fretful toddler, it always wants more, more, more, even if it can’t tell me exactly what that is.

*****

Hopefully, that is all changing, not in the distant future but right now. Many believe that humans are transmuting from a carbon-based composition to crystalline. Perhaps that’s the upgrade we need in order to comfortably survive the current turmoil of Earth. Instead of obsolete circuit boards, we’ll move so far beyond circuit boards and the analogous brain and body we now inhabit that we’ll become unrecognizable to this current version of self.

Until I get there, however “there” will be defined, I’ll continue to consult my toolboxes and ask for guidance in choosing the right tool for the moment. The shiniest tool I see right now is this earthbound, contradictory, sometimes glorious and sometimes grim vehicle of my own body. If my throat tightens up when contemplating the purchase of silver, I have to acknowledge that whatever anyone else says, whatever alternative pundits claim, it’s not for me, not right now.

Since I feel most of my decisions are made following a process like throwing a dart at a spinning dartboard, my real trick is to remember that I truly am where I’m supposed to be, right now. Wherever that dart landed on that movable target, it landed true.

My body sighs and relaxes, and tells me, yes, this is so. And now that you’ve figured that out, let’s go get some lunch.