“What is stopping me from reaching my goal?”

All of us have asked ourselves that question at some point.

Michele woke from a dream with the question clear in her mind. The dream gave her focus on what she most needed to know in her life, but left it up to her to seek the answer.

She decided to put her question to the world in a rather special way. She arranged to go hiking in the Adirondacks, and seek clarity by a mountain stream by performing a personal ritual. After walking many miles to the site she had chosen, she stood over the water with a favorite crystal in her hand, composing herself to ask for guidance from the powers of nature. At that moment, a friend who had accompanied her on the hike distracted at her by yelling to her to look at “something blue” in the water.

Michele slipped and fell into the fast-running creek, struggling not to lose her crystal. She was carried part of the way to the falls before she managed to stabilize herself and grab hold of a tree root protruding from the bank.

Drenched and out of sorts, she clambered back to the original site. She found that the “something blue” was the ragged remains of a man’s denim shirt,. “It looked like something that was decomposing.”

She realized that, through her slip, she had received two strong messages in response to her question. She formulated them like this: (1) Don’t let other people divert you from the direction you have chosen; (2) Don’t get caught up in old stuff involving men – let it go, let it break up completely.

When we have a question on our minds, we can take in on a walk, in town or in the woods, and see what the world gives us in response. As in Michele’s story, we may find our guidance in what is showing through a slip, in one sense or another.