New Age, Alternative,
Metaphysical Publication
Aquarius-Atlanta.com

Self

Self Article continued from last page

How do I find my communities?

To experience yourself as a growing, developing human being you need four kinds of community. Your Creative Communities are made up of those who value, nurture and encourage your creative life while understanding the inherent risks of creating. Your Emotional Community consists of those who love you and whose presence gives you a sense of acceptance, safety and well being. Your Resource Community includes all those who provide the knowledge, skills and services you cannot provide for yourself. And your Receiving Community encompasses all those who seek, appreciate and respond to the products of your creativity.

To experience a fuller sense of self, it is important to identify and nurture your communities. Ask yourself: Where are my communities? What are my needs, based on who I am becoming? Have reverence for those communities not initiated out of your needs and be certain to cultivate the others, as well.

How do I engage the other?

How do I let the other know who I am? How do I find out who they are? Thoughts, dreams and concerns about the past or future reflect personal truths and offer opportunities to achieve the purpose of conversation: to speak your truth and to listen for the truth of the other. Sacred conversation is the sacred intercourse of two souls, and we can't get enough of it. It nurtures fullness.

In answering these questions, no matter what your age, you can look backward to how you were and you can look forward to what you long to become. In doing this it is helpful to be aware that our lives are configured in periods of twenty-one years. The qualities of interactions between the self and the world change dramatically during the four, twenty-one-year periods of adult life: 21-42; 42-63; 63-84; and 84-death.

We can sense an overarching gesture of gaining and giving in the fullness of each span: we give youthful enthusiasm and gain confidence and competence through work and relationship, between 21-42; we give mature service and gain deeper meaning through responsible leadership and sound influence between 42-63; we give seasoned guidance and we gain freedom and renewed interest through helping others and engaging in new activities, between 63-84; and we give loving wisdom and gain peace of soul through objective introspection and generous listening from 84 and beyond.

Remember, a wonderful life is a life full of wonder. Wonder at your fullness every day.

Lynn Jericho and Bethene LeMahieu, authors of Ground Zero and the Human Soul, can be contacted at foursq4@aol.com.