Who are your spiritual guides?

Throughout my life, I have toyed with the idea of therapy. At
times, caring friends and family have told me I need it. Sometimes I
agree. Yet, there is something artificial about it that repels me.
Myss writes about therapy, while helpful and valuable for many, works
mainly in the plane of the material world, keeping us rooted in it
and, at times, prohibiting transcendence.

I spoke with Jenna today, on the phone rather than our indirect
blogging dialogue, asking her about spiritual guides. She and her
husband found one. I wondered how you find one and also how you
become one. Caught up in a world set on degrees and titles, it is
like moving into an alternative, underground world, it seems. Myss
has her Ph.D., but how do you become 'qualified' as an intuitive?
In my life, I have had close relationships with pastors, but they are
limited as guides in their dedication to the church and to that one
ideology (not that they are closed-minded, but it is their choice to
see God in a particular way that I do not subscribe to fully). I
wonder, though, if this is something I need or should seek in lieu of
therapy. Or do I just need to knuckle down and do the work I am
called to do on my own?

In speaking to Jenna, we reminisced briefly about our collaborations
in film school, sitting up all hours of the night with call sheets in
the assigned DP's apartment. I remember lots of coffee, alcohol,
cigarettes (the DP was a chain smoker) and the underlying frustration
inherent in collaborating with students who were all vying to prove
themselves. That is where Jenna and I, two of the small number of
females in our class, clicked. Thus, it should not been surprising
when, after a few years of sporadic contact, we reconnected on her
visit to Los Angeles in December of 2005, realizing we were both on a
quest to follow our "Personal Legends" (a term used in The Alchemist).

And then today, Daphne left a beautifully insightful comment to my
blog about The Alchemist: "With regards to the oasis, maybe it's
not an "out there" thing either??? There's a font of nourishment and
nurturing within you that'll always be there, wherever you go and
whomever you're with. It'll never leave you. It's not a mirage,
except for when you forget that it's there or when you think it's
found outside you. :)"

Spiritual guides, I see, are all around me. They always have been
throughout my life, reminding me how blessed I am. Like Santiago in
the Alchemist, who was always open to learning from each person that
entered his life.

As I sit and look back to the wonderful times, looking at the picture
over my desk that reads, "Remember the good times, the fun and the
time to chillout," I wonder how to balance such memories with
staying in the present. Again, The Alchemist. As Santiago goes
through the dark night of the soul through the desert journey, his
heart speaks to him of all his strengths and all he has learned, of
his ability to love, trust, and have faith. This, I realize, is the
purpose of memories in our dialogue with the heart, to sustain us
through the journey, so we don't give up, dying of thirst just as the
trees come into view.

Art, I believe, is a way for one person to be a spiritual guide to
many. Paulo Coehlo and Salvador Dali have guided me in seeing the
unity inherent in all life over the past month.

And today, The City of God, a beautifully heartbreaking film, showed
how violence and anger carry energy that harms not only the one
person, but, in this case, an entire city and nation. My chest
literally aches even now, making me look forward to my return to my
regular yoga class in an hour. I would like to think that room full
of people, meditating and working to foster inner peace and
compassion might act as a counter to the despair and fear and
hopelessness that probably still exists in cities like The City of
God, or that I know exists in the streets of East and South LA.

The closing scene created a sense of deja vu, with Rocket and his
friend walking down the street casually talking about his new
internship as a photographer and about sex -- essentially talking
about the joys and potential of all of life -- followed by the new
gang of kids talking with equal casualness about death and violence,
each passing each other on the same street but essentially living in
and manifesting two different worlds. I remember going from the
halls of my school where profanities are shouted from one end to the
other, an underlying language of aggression, fear, and anger to a
class at UCLA where I was surrounded by conversations with an
underlying current of openness and inquisitiveness. A huge
generalization, but you could feel the vastly different current of
energies that go beyond words and their meanings. I am sure the is
pain and fear in the hearts of students at UCLA and I know there is
love and hope and peace in the hearts of students at my school,
barely heard under the din of the others.