Leisure
Growing up in a community similar to the Amish, I’d been programmed to follow the same path my ancestors had followed for hundreds of years. Church members could only drive black cars, and the women all wore white caps, black bonnets, and long dark dresses exactly alike. Forbidden to own a television, go to the movies, wear makeup, serve in the military, or even press charges when someone robbed our home, we lived a life cut off from the mainstream. Having friends outside the church was discouraged, as they invited corruption. To leave the church was to be excommunicated and shunned by everyone near and dear. In some ways, the simplicity and isolation made it idyllic, even if it was also repressive. For men, only a handful of paths were acceptable. Allowable occupations were mainly confined to farming, business, or mechanical jobs to avoid becoming “worldly,” and college was discouraged for the same reason. And for women? Only one path was permissible: enter the church, marry only a member of that church, obey my husband, and have many children. And then . . . destiny intervened early in the way it sometimes does . . . After being catapulted out of the only world I knew as a child, I heard the Call of my Wild Soul. I followed. I acted. It took me places I never could have imagined or orchestrated. After obtaining my private pilot’s license in high school, followed by an appointment to the US Air Force Academy, I became an Air Force pilot, an aircraft commander in war, an international airline captain responsible for hundreds of lives, a life coach, and a medical qigong practitioner. The little girl who at a very young age began preparing for her expected future by learning to bake bread, sew clothes, cook for a large family, garden, can and freeze food, and be extremely obedient wouldn’t recognize this life. I’ve come to see over and over that the Universe always begins with the end in mind. It’s a far better travel agent with far more information at its fingertips than I have. It whispers an invitation to your personal path of transformation, beckoning you toward greater freedom and power—and especially toward the evolution of your soul. All you need do is listen and summon the courage to follow. Every transformational adventure in my life has arisen out of a quiet voice that said, “Go here,” “Try this,” “Persevere,” “Leave,” “Revise this belief,” “Let it go,” etc. Sometimes it was an inner voice and sometimes an outer one. Often the path didn’t unfold in a logical manner, go as I planned, or lead where I thought it would—or should. And yet it always led to more freedom and deeper contentment. Many of my journeys were incredibly arduous. Had I understood how difficult they would be, I probably wouldn’t have agreed to go, yet I don’t regret any of them. I’m awestruck by the magic of this process, and it has led me to call myself by a term many people haven't heard before—the title of "practical mystic."