One Block at a Time

“The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” ~Chinese Proverb

While playing Lego blocks with my daughter, yesterday afternoon, my attention was piqued by a home she had built for one of her little miniature dolls. She had erected the walls around the figurine, and in the excitement of the moment, she had forgotten to include a door.

Here was the poor little doll, sitting in a cluster of colored plastic bricks tightly intertwined together as fingers in prayer; her painted eyes were fixed against the wall in front of her, and her hands rested hopelessly at her sides – a prisoner of her own play-world.

When I mentioned to my daughter about the missing door, she raised an eyebrow and studied the situation for a moment, then began to remove blocks – one at a time – from one of the walls. In no time, sunlight streamed through the opening and kissed the blonde hair of the doll with a sparkle of gold. My daughter smiled, and said: “See mom? All you have to do is remove some of the bricks”.

Her words opened another door - one of awareness, this time. How often do we build walls around ourselves, and do so gradually and slowly enough that we forget they are even there? Since childhood we are handed out blocks by people and events, and we quietly stack them one above the other as a reflex. We are given blocks of rules, religious convictions, societal manners, external judgment, and we arrange them around ourselves as we try to determine who we are. Once adults, we continue to build with extra blocks that we accept and make our own as we shape the course of our lives.

Once the walls are built, they appear impenetrable, and we learn how to live within their confines if we fail to see a way out. Yet, it is always possible to get out. Regardless of the situation we may be closed into, we are never fully trapped until we believe we are.

Walls are made of individual bricks, and those bricks can be removed, one by one, in the reverse order they were stacked up. Knocking down a whole wall at one time would require too much energy, and, frankly, adjusting to such a radical change would be more traumatizing than remaining within the protective walls we have built overtime.

Removing one block at a time allows us the opportunity to grow stronger with each phase of the removal, and gives us time to integrate the new awareness within the folds of what we deem comfortable and acceptable. As a prisoner who’s been locked up in the darkness of a cell for years, we need time to adjust to the brightness of sunshine.

Once we finished our Lego house, my daughter looked at it with pride, and no better words could have been spoken that when she said: “Look, Mom, Kelly is happy now – she has a beautiful house and she is free to go out to play.”

From the Inside Out

“A lot of people say they want to get out of pain, and I'm sure that's true, but they aren't willing to make healing a high priority. They aren't willing to look inside to see the source of their pain in order to deal with it.” ~ Lindsay Wagner


About a week ago, my oldest son got hurt playing basketball. What initially appeared as a red, slightly swollen bump, changed color over time, and became a silver-dollar-sized brown and yellow bruise covering the inside of his wrist.

The other night, he reached out to pick up something while I was cooking dinner, and I asked if his arm still hurt. He shook his head and looked at the bruise; “look mom,” he said, “the bruise looks like a doughnut now.” And it really did. What used to be a solid blue mark finally faded to a rusty brown circle encrusting a small area of healed skin.

To my surprise, he said: “Isn’t it strange how so many things that happen on the outside seem to relate to experiences inside of ourselves?”

When I asked what he meant, he replied: “People think that you heal from the outside and you have to treat your body, but even this bruise shows how things truly heal from the inside out.”

I was stunned at his ability to embrace such a philosophical view of things at such a young age, and became quite curious about his theory. The way he explained it was simple, yet it was probably more powerful than most complicated versions I’ve heard before. Adults can make a mess of things when they try to inflate their ideas with big words to impress, desperate to appear erudite and wise; kids have no time for garnishes, and go straight to the heart of things.

With the perception of a fifteen-year-old naturally fascinated by electronics, he sees the outer body as a machine fed by a central “life engine”. The energy received from the central source is then distributed through an intricate wiring to reach all areas of the body and mind, all filaments connected to one another. If one bulb burns out, a whole section shuts off, and doesn’t receive energy.

The central supply is continually fed by our daily experiences and it runs freely at the center; if something happens to it, or if it slows its flow to a trickle, all the filaments depending on its power gradually turn off.

I thought about this theory long after my son went on his way. When our flow of life energy is slowed down or interrupted, a compromised sense of wellness is the natural consequence. The most important question at this point would be whether wellbeing can be restored if the flow is once again regulated. Would the secondary channels be irreversibly damaged after not being fed for a long period of time, or could they fill up with a new supply of life energy and resume their work?

Personally, I believe that some of them – those that have completely dried out over time – are probably irreparable, but I also think that a new network can be created once the flow reaches new, consistent strength.

Our work doesn’t revolve around producing the energy itself, as it is self-renewing; all we need to focus on is the removal of blocks that prevent it from moving freely.
Guilt is often the mother of all blocks, followed closely by anxiety and fear. We can easily picture our blocks like sandbags we place around the source of energy to block its flow; if we remove the sandbags, nothing can stop the energy from radiating out from the core.

If we can learn to heal from within, just as Stephen’s bruise is doing, we can hope that when the process is complete, full power will once again be restored.

The Book I Never Wrote - First Edition Misprint

Last night was a bit of a rollercoaster. After reaching the top when I received the copies of Housekeeping for the Soul I had ordered two weeks ago, I took a fast dip when one of my contacts sent me a message and told me that the advance copy she received today for review was misprinted – right jacket and wrong book inside of it!

I am of firm belief that people’s paths cross for a reason, but this unexpected merging of literary children created sheer panic. Within a matter of hours, I went from being elated that books were already on the way to Amazon and other retailers to being utterly terrified thinking that the one copy was not the only hybrid.

I opened the carton of forty books I received along with the advanced copies, and I held my breath while I opened each book. I found thirty-three legitimate books, and seven misprints. Now, every author wants to hope that misprints of their book’s first edition will be worth something some day, but for the time being, I can only shudder at the thought of unsuspecting readers opening their packages and finding a book they didn’t order.

My hope is that only those eight books got mixed up at the printer, but I have no way of knowing that. I immediately sent messages to the publisher and to the distributor, and they will hopefully correct the problem before the books go out to people who pre-ordered them. Quite nerve-wrecking…

The thing that fascinated most is that the author of the books I accidentally “embraced” into my jacket and I seem to be birds of the same feather. Here is a small excerpt from his biography on Amazon: "We Are All One. When we allow ourselves to become aware of this statement in its purest form, we open the doors to reveal the oneness of being.”

Most people who are used to the concepts I consistently discuss will probably recognize the similarity between my message and the other author’s; I, for one, was pretty impressed by their twin-like nature.

I suppose time will unveil why our books connected at this point of our literary journey, so I’m just going to sit back and see where the road will lead. I hope the powers that be will be able to correct the problem, and that nobody will receive the wrong book, but at this point I can only cross my fingers, hope that everything will work out and that, if a reason indeed exists for the mix-up, it will be revealed to me in due time.

And of course, the real dreamer in me wants to believe that if one or two misprints remain out there, some day they will be popular enough to be auctioned for charity. Now, wouldn’t that be fun?