"The Last Mile Is the Hardest..."

It is an overcast day. A cold has settled into my chest. I work to keep it from my heart, to find light inside. Last night I lay on the couch in the dining room with a lovely load of books from the library--as much getting outside as I could do. I read bits and pieces of Lives of the Composers, by Harold Schonberg, who believes that the person who writes great music is as important as the music (the architecturally sublime Bach came across as stubborn, angry, visceral). I read a book about--blogging! (I still can't get photos on this thing; I think I need JPEG and a digital camera. Technology keeps running ahead of my short legs.) It was a very nice book, by a woman named Castro, published by Peachpit Press here in Berkeley. I read a book about retreats and residences for artists, with great interest, and realized that all this book proposal writing has brought me much more confidence about the ability to propose other things, later on. I thought about applying for residencies in my general area of California and Oregon and Washington, and even places I've never been, like Minnesota (not in winter). I realized I was envisioning wanting uninterrupted writing time to complete The Blessings Ledger once the editor at the publishing house accepts my manuscript for publication.

I am not, apparently, a person who can visualize whole cloth what I want and jump into it. Certain pieces have to become realer to advance the next frame of imagining things as possible. I could try to envision myself reading to crowds of thousands, singing into the sky, creating harmonious prosperity from the innermost place in my being. But for now, to know that I could apply for writer's residencies and be served meals while I write amidst rolling hills, traveling creeks, arching horizons, is a large and wonderful step.

I have been so left-brain focused for so long. I do give thanks for this ability. But sometimes I feel tired, even worn out, and in need of a breath with no purpose other than to enjoy the miracle of breathing. The irony is that this is always available to all of us. Every moment. Whose insistence on left-brain living is this, anyway? My introjected own.

The book proposal creeps to completion. Creeps, reluctantly. The Overview has, now, certain details in it--Elizabeth Lyon's good book suggested making a "problem/solution" list so you can present your book as THE solution for the problem, whatever it is. So, grudgingly, obediently, I did this. Actually it was valuable. I'll include it soon. It's just that when a tiny bird perches outside my window on a tree and helps the branch lose a leaf, am I right there to witness the miracle? Living in both worlds...isn't that always the task, the challenge, and the dance?

Why is "the last mile always the hardest"? What makes the almost-there part so much of a hurdle? Is it fear of the ending of this phase? Fear of being catapaulted into the unknown, even the successful unknown? There must be something to it, beyond my own experience, for this cliche to even exist. Is it remembrance of being born, cellular memory of that last push? I was born in the days of forceps deliveries, and though no one ever told me that had been my means of birth, I'm pretty certain it had to be. So at the very end, when all that movement, effort through the canal of passage between the worlds is almost over, your own juice, fear, eagerness is taken from you and something mechanical pulls you out into the cold, denting, for the moment, your tender skull...

As I write this, something feels right about it. For I have, for a long time, feinted in the almost-end, forgotten my strength, wished for some external reprieve, deliverance, as if the memory of being forced out before I was ready was still upon me.

I can barely describe what relief comes about simply in saying this, here, on a blog read at least by Prema, and maybe no one else. To know what is moving me and not moving me, and to have a root-cause for it, is a relief.

And there is a way in which that last-ditch effort required does ask for an outside intervention. Except that it is not outside oneself, just larger than the ego's expenditures of limited energy. It's not about despairing, now; but it is about surrendering. Letting it all go, trusting in what happens, whatever it is. Appreciating the opportunity to have given myself all this concentration and muscle.

Here is the comparative "problem/solution" chart:


PROBLEM: We don’t have a common language for what lies beneath our problematic relationship to money.

SOLUTION: This book provides that, by reaching into the foundation of self-distortion and adaptation that afflicts most of us in childhood, and follows us into adult patterns

PROBLEM: Therefore, people feel isolated (even if they have money) and ashamed, or at least confused—a vicious cycle that doesn’t lead to healing

SOLUTION: By following my story and identifying with me, readers will be led on a healing journey that will affect their own consciousness and relationship with money and one another

PROBLEM: While there is a good deal of attention on money management in books, ads, classes, there is much less attention on the inner emotional and spiritual life; therefore, the fix is from the outside in

SOLUTION: By exploring the inner relationship to money, as it comes out of a dimming experience of the divine and an increasing narrowing of the self beginning in childhood, this inside-out approach heals the root of the dysfunction, allowing its symptoms to disappear and be replaced by outer fruits of the healing

PROBLEM: A mechanical approach

SOLUTION: A holistic approach

PROBLEM: Our inner lives are disconnected from our relationship to money, and this shows up in the culture at large—e.g., consumerism, emotional isolation

SOLUTION: By relating all things to do with finances to the inner life, a thread of continuity becomes apparent—magical links through time, and evidence that life seeks to fulfill our true desires

PROBLEM: Our financial template is essentially patriarchal

SOLUTION: A feminine, being-centered relationship to abundance, in gratitude to the earth for what we are already given, offers us all that we need

PROBLEM: The focus on financial independence has created not only strength and higher salaries but also a false-ego relation to life, as if we can control everything

SOLUTION: Financial interdependence is healthier template of human financial interaction. It mirrors how nature works, and relieves the burden and stress of holding up the world by oneself

PROBLEM: Debt is staggering, per individual, family, country—and it is the norm

SOLUTION: Getting out of debt is not only a financial experience but an inner experience of clarity, forgiveness, and redemption

PROBLEM: More money doesn’t necessarily make you more happy

SOLUTION: Experiencing a positive connection between the inner and outer life provides meaning, spiritual awe, and the realization that we are co-creating our world.

PROBLEM: Understanding and managing money is usually mediated by experts

SOLUTION: You can find your own way, in a way that works for you, and have your own direct experience and self-trust

PROBLEM: Most of us don’t get to go inside someone else’s evolving intelligence, trials and errors, aha! Moments, etc. We just see the finished product, or what we think is the finished product, of, say, someone standing in line at the bank counter, dealing "perfectly" and privately with their finances.

SOLUTION: The point is to see the work in progress—the evolution of ability and understanding, in a human realm. By coming along for all the narrator’s learning curve, including the missteps, the despairing, the finding her own way, even figuring out how to apportion her deposit while standing at the bank, the reader (a) has access to the inner workings of an illuminating mind, and (b) learns how to trust their own capacity to learn, and apply it to the otherwise "external" realm of finances.


This needs to be prioritized and greatly edited! But though I don't tend to like lists, particularly comparative lists, I must admit that it gives details to fill in the blank of my almost-at-the-end mind. It may be part of the forceps delivery, but this is the hospital I'm birthing the book's presentation in, and with God's help not only will I make it to the end of the passage and into the light of a friendly new world, but the dent in my skull will right itself soon, and the soft spot where the real passage between the worlds takes place will somehow still manage to whisper me home.