~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
I always have a teacher.
Whether it is in business, where I watch one of my current business partners maintain negotiations by expressing very little at all, letting silence reign, or whether it is in spiritual matters, where I work with a mentor to get at the "heart" of the matter, I am the perpetual student.
Because the one thing I discover is that the more I experience, the less I know and I am constantly being humbled by how much more I have to learn.
I remain teachable, in all areas.
But I realize sometimes, when we are in the midst of change where everything feels like it is closing in on us and maybe our dark place has taken up most of our light, it is very hard to see beyond it.
I have recently undergone changes in my life without my normal identifiers to offer continuity. The people have changed, the work load is different, the responsibilities have higher stakes. Even my coffee routine has changed. Where I would greet the young girls in a coffee cart on my way out of town, it's now a walk around the corner to see Joel, my new friend who gets my cup ready when he sees me coming. Every morning.
There are comforts in routine. There are comforts in normal identifiers where we don't feel like a stranger in a strange land. Where everything feels right in our world and our insides match our outsides.
And then there are moments where all of it feels like a struggle, a question mark, a "What? How did I get here?" with no real answer to any of it.
In times of change, the pendulum might swing both ways before it finds the middle.
I've been told by astrologers who read charts that because my Moon (emotion) is in Scorpio in the 12th House (dark and hidden emotion), that I am prone to a more intense experience of life. And while I have been more privy than most to experience dark places and make sense of them and go where most people fear to tread, I have also learned how to let those experiences have their way with me (albeit sometimes reluctantly).
In other words, for better or worse I feel qualified to talk about it. 
To begin, I want to say this: There is very fertile soil under ground. A lot is going on under the sun. And even though all we might see is the darkness - it is just beneath the surface, where new life is taking form.
One of my wise teachers reminded me this week of an Emerson quote that inspired this memo. She quoted him as saying, "Around every circle, a larger circle can be drawn".
I take this to mean, within the context of our life, or what we are understanding about our life, there can always be more going on that meets the eye.
I speak to the person who wrote to me about her "dark DARK place" (she tells me her friends call it "going to Barstow") or to anyone who is in the midst of a place of unknowing.
There may be a bigger picture that from this vantage point, we are not privy to.
Whenever something is going on in my life that I don't approve of, the first question I will ask myself is, "How is this answered prayer?"
We are always asking. Sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. But we are always asking. Life causes us to do that. When we don't have strength, we want to have more strength. When we aren't in a meaningful relationship, we want to be in a meaningful relationship. When we are not doing work we love, we want to be doing work we love. When we are not making enough money, we want to be making more money.
In the living of life is the prayer, always asking for something different or more of something similar.
But sometimes we don't expect the way our prayers might get answered.
We don't just get "more strength", we get the experience that makes us find and call forth from inside of us, strength we never knew we had. Or we aren't given the work we love. We are laid off, giving us an opportunity to make a new decision. Or, we might not be given the perfect relationship, but instead clues we needed to learn about ourselves that keep us from the perfect relationship.
Or, we want to be more decisive. We are not granted the ability of being more decisive. We are given more choices and opportunities to make more decisions until we trust the decisions we make.
Or most common, the woman who wrote about her "dark place", about not being able to withhold judgment toward herself. We want to feel more love, kindness or compassion for ourselves. We want to befriend ourselves. This isn't granted us, but instead, we are given opportunities to find, allow and practice self-acceptance.
Sometimes in the midst of very difficult circumstances.
It's like that saying, "Don't give a man a fish and feed him for the day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime."
We're in prayer saying, "just give me the goddamn fish - I don't want to learn how to fish."
We want instant gratification, prayers answered, the path before us, clear. We don't want to have to figure it out.
And yet our circumstances are asking us to grow into the people we most want to become, let go of false constructs we may have identified with, stay in a place for a while that may feel empty or that doesn't make sense.
The circle can sometimes feel small.Suffocating.
And yet, as Emerson said, "Around every circle, a bigger circle can be drawn".
There may be a larger circle in which there is meaning, and context and prayer being answered. Or maybe not meaning and context, but space.
Space to grow into something new, something different, if not something better, something greater.
Even when it doesn't feel like it. Even when we don't know what we've been praying for. Even when it feels like an awfully "dark DARK place" and we don't know what it means or when it will end.
There is still life happening. And the pendulum is in motion. Prayer is in motion.
And there is a "still" place somewhere. A still place of "center".
That we will soon find.
