Good morning. It’s still howling and blustery outside but the snow seems to have stopped. The storm is supposed to move out by noon today. It’s hard to say how much snow we got because it’s all blown about. They were saying sixteen to twenty-six inches for my area and eighteen to twenty-four for Denver. The ground along the side of my house is swept bare, but then I had to push against a snowdrift to open the front door.

Last night I was in a very heightened state of awareness. Reading two books in a row with Native American themes snapped something back open in me. There are certain traditions that I always circle back around to, Native American being one of them. I knew when I stumbled across those books at the library that I was meant to circle back here now.

What is it about their culture that gets me? Last night spontaneously everything in the room kept morphing into Native American objects. I truly felt like I was living in two worlds. There was my embroidered rooster with the triangle points at the bottom lying on top of some fabric. Repeatedly when I glanced that way it became a bead work design on the front of a dress--not of a rooster though--and the fabric underneath became the draping of the rest of the dress. A towel folded in half lengthwise and flung over the bathroom door looks like sweet grass that was knotted at the bottom. The room kept switching back and forth between my room and a Native American.

The other thing was that my ego largely vanished. I was looking back in this journal--I forget what I was trying to find--but everything I wrote about seemed absolutely petty and trivial. I mean, this is all I can manage to make of life, all of these trivial concerns? How have I gotten so caught up in the petty dramas of the ego?

I’m asking big questions these days. Is there a way I can be of service to humanity? Can I surrender my ego and live a life in service to the spiritual? What on earth would that look like? When I think this way I think of folks like Gandhi and Mother Teresa--these large players in this world. Can I so transcend my ego that I could really make a difference on this planet? Is that possible for me in this lifetime? If I can just break through this barrier above me I’d be able to see.

Now night has fallen and it’s day four of this spiritual retreat I had no idea I was going to take. Poor John. He’s being so patient with me when I tell him I need to be alone. This is good for me, so deeply good for me, especially the evenings, sitting here by candlelight.

I don’t know, but each night I keep getting overwhelmed by how perfect the objects in this room are. It is a beautiful space, a very nourishing space for me to do this work. I’m not exactly sure what work I’m doing but at least something seems to be stirring.