Original publication date: October 21, 2008

I've noticed something happening with many self-awareness events where I am giving multiple informational reading sessions.  There's often a common theme.  We can speculate on why those themes appear, such as the current world events, or maybe a group awareness, but these people rarely have a common connection, and likely never even notice the presence of the other, let alone compare notes.

This anomoly occured again with the Body Mind Spirit Expo in Portland Oregon.  So you may ask, what was that reoccuring theme?  Allow me to share this concept with you through a quote from a famous observer:

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

We are thinkers, and doers.  As we grow we are guided by others to teach us how to survive.  You can see this in the teachings a cat passes on to her kittens, showing them hunting and hiding.  They interact with one another to learn their strength, or weakness, and practice those survival skills.  As people we learn how survive on many levels.

As we continue up the chain from those basic hunt and hide skills into those skills you can call more cerebral or spiritual, where do we turn for our answers?  Yes, we can satisfy the mental analyitical levels through higher education, and we can achieve so much through those avenues.  But that academic source falls short when we try to substitute it for our spiritual source.  The question remains: where do we turn for direction and support?

There are many avenues.  Some criticize the whole "seeking self" movement, believing that there are many who take advantage of our desire and need to know ourselves.  I see this in a different light.  I think there is more value in the seeking and asking than in finding and knowing.  That space in which we ask the question is what leads us to grow.  Sure it can feel like a struggle sometimes, but that discomfort causes us to take action.

We have our physical sensory system that prompts us to move away from the campfire when it is too hot, or seek out food when we need nourishment.  Our higher level sensory system tends to act with different signals, but isn't it really just the same?  Just with the physical responses our spiritual senses create a question or discrepancy that makes us wonder.

As I type this story I find myself drifting from the original idea into the whole spiritual awareness concepts.  Let's pull the two together at this point:  "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted".  Many of those who I gave readings to during the Body Mind Spirit Expo in Portland, Oregon had a common thread, and I found myself giving a similar message to several.  "When we turn to the world and ask for confirmation of ourselves, we will get a million answers, and those answers always come filtered through the thoughts of each person we ask.  Your spiritual answers, the definition of you and your path can only be defined by your connection to your source, and that connection can only be found when you turn within".  

We strive for balance between our interactivity on the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels.  Would you turn to your dog for advise on how to tune your car?  Would you turn to your mechanic to bark at that strange sound outside your door?

We have that amazing, treasured ability to question and seek.  Isn't half of the pleasure derived just in our act of asking?  I think that much of our dis-satisfaction comes only because we are trying to use a generic master code to unlock our custom made, individually mastered combination.   "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."  Let's take that a step further, and say that not everything that can be counted can be done using the conventional methods.