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2.28.2015

treading can lead to diving

            source:tumblr:photojojo

Remember that viral blog post, Don’t Date a Girl who Travels? Here's more about that from another writer. Find the original here: http://bit.ly/1zqeV4P

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"I read this post and smiled, recognizing many of the values identified as ones that I have discovered in my own life of travels. It’s tone empowering, fierce, a life lived unconventionally, a women wisely choosing to follow her own will, not that of someone else’s.

Yet I couldn’t help questioning; Why not chase life right along with her? Why has an article celebrating a passionate woman ended with a proclamation to let her go? Why is confidence and daring curiosity in women so often paired with solitude?

So, here goes my response…

Do date a woman who travels.

She’s the girl sitting with a warm cup of coffee, hair pulled away from her face with a knotted bandana, feverishly attempting to turn her experiences into stories. She’s not trying to impress anyone as she is used to being anonymous. She pauses frequently looking up from her journal, gently biting her red painted nail, eyes slowly scrambling over her surroundings.

Date a girl who travels because she knows how to create adventure. She’s not the type who needs entertainment to smack her in the face. No matter where she is in the world she will suggest going out and discovering new things, renting bicycles even if the fields that lay ahead are familiar.

She is committed to broadening her view of the world, she yearns to ask better questions, knowing that answers rarely allude to the complexity of any situation.

She will never make you feel like what you can offer monetarily is of any importance. Her backpack is already full. The way she sees it expensive goods are no indication of love.

She’s no stranger at pushing herself to fly far beyond her comfort zone, in fact unlike most she thrives on it. She takes immense pleasure in seeing what she is capable of accomplishing and chasing after it, and guess what? She thinks ambition is sexy, she loves hearing what ridiculous goals you want to undertake because she believes you are capable.

She’s spent enough time on the road to fully appreciate the value of home. The simple pleasure of cranberry walnut goat cheese, the warm embrace of family, and conversation with long time friends devoid of finicky explanations and backstories.

Date a girl who travels and you will never worry about her ability to adapt. She can fall asleep anywhere, is used to undesirable bathrooms, days without makeup, hair that tastes of salt, and plans that often dart in new directions.

She values time spent in the present. Dilly dallying in the past happens once and a while but more often she will grab your hand and drag you out the door, because there are new market stand treats to be sampled and streets to wander down.

She’s opinionated and stubborn. Unafraid of the echo her voice makes in theoretical small spaces.

Date a girl who travels and communication will never be something you need to worry about. You’ve got a girl who is used to making sure that she is understood, and knows that sometimes patience with others is the only way to decipher what they are feeling. And when bumps in your relationship arise, which they will, she will want to work through it aware that things often unfold in seemingly imperfect ways.

She has learned that trust is at the core of happiness. Trusting herself and those around her has always been imperative, meaning she will have no problem trusting you.

She’s passionate. Get her talking and it will be hard to stop her, but that doesn’t mean she also doesn’t know how to listen. In fact, getting to know other inspiring folks is why she keeps at it, this traveling thing. She takes note of everyone who crosses her path valuing the unique ways in which each person shapes her journey.

She knows how to be alone, she won’t need you to be there with her every step of the way. In fact she will encourage you both to discover new places together and on your own accord. That doesn’t mean that she won’t lean on you often, curl up against your chest, and admit that she is lost. She’s not afraid to ask for help.

So date a girl who travels, one with her own dreams, one who is ambitious and courageous. Fall in love with her, challenge her, but also let her lead. Value her independence and promise to keep up."

2.26.2015

cutting bonds


From Instagram today. @fourfootedshadow if you want to join the fun. 


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When I gave myself permission to unlock total self expression I really meant it πŸ‘΅πŸ‘ΈπŸ‘©πŸ‘΄πŸ’€πŸ‘½πŸŒžπŸŒšπŸΊπŸ΅ The energies on the planet are working me like a half ton sled pulled by chickens. Right now, I am being asked to share so much more than what is comfortable and to stand in what is true, which surprises me and revs my engine. Things are grounding and stabilizing in ways that delight me while my finer senses are opening in ways that I have been longing for. I have been out of my natural state and out of my heart with misidentification and here, now, I'm invited to step into a role of creator that I know nothing of, and there is no one to navigate, and I feel the next step only when I trust and surrender to ✨ALWAYS dancing with the sparks of my own heart, ALWAYS running with the rivers of my own joy✨ I mean this concretely, if it's joyful it's a yes, if not it's a no. I'm alive for a short time this go around and I no longer believe in a world that isn't exactly how I make it to be. What will arrive in that space, the space I create? I go directly against the thought forms that still occupy so many minds and I do it with color, spice, and the love of a thousand angels. 🌈Are you able to access the love that you are?🌈 To beam your smile into the eyes of another and reveal something of your true self? I see you putting a hand or foot out to test the water, I see you leaping off the nearest cliff, I see you denying that anything which your five physical senses can't register could be real, I see you recognizing the shifts in Gaia's magnetic core and sensing the source of those shifts out into the Mystery. I have released my voice in such magnitude that in order to continue to speak, to share, and to fully dig into the gifts I have to offer, which come through senses so subtle, through exposure of the most delicate, through the heart as the guide of my life, I have to allow the last of my own construction to fall. I am awed by the centerless space that reveals once the walls are down, more home than I've ever been on this sweet planet, as memory of who I am begins to spark. I am accepting my call, and putting away my distractions. Let the great adventure begin.

2.23.2015

alchemical crucible

                  lauren kolodny

Owl medicine to untie the binds and unwind the wounds of the heart. Put all of your fire on display, undressed by winged sensitivity, and emerge from the alchemical crucible of your body.  

2.22.2015

soul words

                        luis royos

I want to give birth to the sun each morning into my own hands, to wash myself in the light that reflects as my flesh, revealing moss and loam and damp, rich mineral, I paint clothing out of clay, dress myself with curves and lines and shades, making marks of claim and release, I weave trees and flecks of mica through my hair and gather serpents and lizards atop my head as a crown, spring water falls from my eyes to feed the fields of flowers at my breasts. 

I want to live with the blue sky all over me, with the wet gray fog gathered about my shoulders, slipping off enough to reveal the plains of my skin where the gold of sunlit grasses spreads across my neck and arm and back, and when you look closely you see the buffalo and the hunter, you see the birds rising up at dawn, together, you see the coyote use his tail to pull the sun down below my horizon, you see an old woman, an even older mountain, an even older lake. 

I want to dance with the feathers of eagles at my feet, veins of gold and silver catching light, flowing from my navel, where the drum beats, gems fall with my breath along my wake as I find the sacred steps, my shadow at my side, its four legs silhouetted in the shape of loyalty and the silent bravery of those things which are one with their source, to whom the great plains and deep forests are rich with ecstasy in the dark hours, and when the rhythm goes quiet and the silence comes to reign, both I and my shadow wrap in the wild cloak of space and stars, we settle against the land that bore us, opening a well of senses where we enter and will shelter to await another day. 

2.19.2015

going all the way into life with the one who fails



The forces of contraction are potent right now and something has come up that I don't want to speak or write about, so I have to. 

This is hard. 

I have been lucky to have met a true soul sister in this lifetime. Someone with whom it felt as though we were picking up where we left off, from a time beyond the time I can see, and with whom I sensed a tremendous ability when we joined force. The sense that we could spread an even brighter light together than we could alone, and that our light would call forward many others, growing and joining in a community of marvelous high-vibrational potential.

And here's what's happening in me as my days go by. I realize that, because of who she and I are, I may always feel that I am in her shadow. The reality is that I don't know that we are moving something forward together. And I suppose how could I, at this time. She is a true extrovert, I am a true introvert. She is younger and appears to be much more magnetic because of her fantastic extroverted personality. I am older and my immense power is quieter, I notice only the very bright are even able to see me, still I rarely experience anything beautiful reflected back to me. 

This concerns me, as I can't shake the sense that I truly might be as ugly as I believe I am, as unworthy as I believe I am. This shit is old. I'm tired if it. There is no amount of seeing the story as it is, no amount of accepting or rejecting the story that has had any effect on changing it, releasing it. Not yet. I beg for some response from the world that I am worth my own existence, and I continue to breathe, so that must be a sign. Some days are good, some days all I can do is give my entire self over to a ripping pain. I feel the pain of humanity as if it were my own, no scratch that, as my own. How do I even bear this? And how do I transmute this paralyzing pain into strength, or rather, how do I flip the switch and see that strength is present more than I can see, that strength IS the beauty and power if this incarnation? How do I establish knowingness in my body of what my spirit already knows? How do I allow the tremendous pain that I have created a life of defensive personality to counter, be?

Part if how I'm doing it is to spill out the ugliest and the worst, as I judge them, along with the most beautiful. This is so that both are honored in the light. I need to share the worst and most judged parts of myself. Not in the context of 'healing' them or making them transmute into some sort of ridiculous idea of human enlightenment. No, the way to my own soul is to wade right through this shit, without picking it up, without making it need to change, without doing a damn thing but knowing that the lesson is the same even when the teacher appears different. 

None of this means that I will leave and go off to continue my journey elsewhere but it makes me hesitate each step of the way, aware that I might be moving in the wrong direction, that I might be giving up the important work of my life in order to follow in the wake of another's power. As I write this I have a niggling voice that says 'keep going, you haven't even begun to see what you are, and no one will need to reflect anything back to you when you do'. 

I am aware that so much of this is happening in a time of such personal transition that clarity is not available, and I must continue without a sure sense of my feet. 

If I can scream out to you that I am ugly and stupid and that I want to tear myself limb from limb in a rage that rises from the core of me like a banshee in the night sky, what will you do? What will you say? Will you try to fix me? Or will you reveal your own unloved nature, pushing aside the curtain to expose to me a final union that signals the end of seeking, that finally sends us both into the gushing flood of release from holding back? 

The mental attempt at spiritual practice is great, so that with enough reputation, when you arrive at the point where only howling into the night sky with your hands digging into the breast of your mother will release what is at the end of your search, you will have a bridge to walk across, into the depths of an infinity of emotions and sensations, as you fully release yourself for a sprint into the unknown. That's the only point where you can become spiritual practice, leaving trying in the dust behind you with your shed skin. When meditation as an act becomes meditation as life, some divine primal being is set free into the wild. Enough inadequacy is enough. Stay close though, don't go until you are entirely run through. 

2.18.2015

light from the shadows


lord shiva, unknown artist 

Last night the entire Hindu world reveled in Maha Shivaratri, known as the destroyer, the aspect of creation which lords over dance, dismantling to make way for new creation. A god of extreme compassion, his gifts are given to sweep you into freedom, to unchain all that doesn't serve you at your highest, to pull from your throat the no, the stop, the end so that you can reset your path again, his strength infusing each step towards consciousness, his invitation always there to birth your world from the deepest yes in your heart. Shiva is total Silence. 

Once years ago, a man who could speak to the Devas did a reading for me. He spoke words from Lakshmi, Ganesh, and all the rest of my dear, lifelong aspects. What struck me the most was what he said regarding Lord Shiva, whom he quoted as saying, 'I try to bless her but she won't accept my gifts'. Somewhere buried in me, this communication stayed and gave birth to my pilgrimage to Mt. Kailash, and an ever more magical relationship ever since, to this gloriously fierce aspect of creation, a shared partnership with my beloved Durgha, Kali Ma, the one who resides in my pelvis as a pure force of energy, the one who knows yes and no and who acts accordingly, without doubt or hesitation. My first series of journaling over the last two weeks, following the first Circling immersion weekend of the course, gave birth to the following, the clarity of insights blooming to fullness during the night of Shivaratri. My assignment was to write about my ex-husband or other relationships where there seemed to be a spark of emotion or a relationship to a current state, and as conscious light moved onto shadow, to see what came through.

Here's what came. This is truly a journal entry.

When I've attempted to see into my shadows regarding past relationships, everything I touch there dissolves in the tiniest puff of smoke and it's gone. Shadows are not of substance. The ideas I have about who and when and where are just ideas and I go in and look for their bearing on my body and it's not there, and so, since I don't have to play with them, I've gone deeper.

What is here is that I have such extraordinary sensitivity. I have extraordinary...not empathy, that's not the right word, not empathic, that's too small. I have a sensitivity of heart and soul and body that guts me. When I was a child I came in with no known borders. The sensitivity to being hurt, to such big sensations, to fear, to the magnitude of what it was that I felt, to what I experienced others feeling, to what it was that I picked up and tuned into in the energy around me everywhere-it was so overwhelming that as a survival mechanism I began to construct a defense. I began to stifle the natural energies that ran through me, I ran so much Shakti, so much sexual energy, so much life force, I was so vivacious, too much.

And so I started to shut everything down and I lost myself and I lost myself young. I remember by the time I was seven I was angry. It was too much for me to be here and I was angry and very scared. Any illusions that I've had over the course of my life that I was angry at my parents because they did this or that and they abandoned me this way or that way were falsely gathered. And so those shadows just puff up in smoke. I abandoned me, rejected me. I didn't have a choice. There's no blame there, there's no problem, there's no fault, there's nothing. I had to check out in order to be here, to survive. I had to at the time in order to remain acceptable within my family and societal structures. Because if I had not, well I'm not sure what I would have been, but I felt on some level, from this life or some other life, who knows, that persecution can come when one is noticeably different. Especially when that difference creates difficulties for fitting in because of unacceptable, uncontrollable hyper sensitivity. And so as I've gone through all the false layers of everything I've ever done with anyone, of all relationship with everyone I've ever known, shadows are there, I carry those memories in my cells.

But they don't have substance when faced with the power of no. The only place where there's any grip is around my heart, and what that is is that I have been hurt. I've been deeply, deeply hurt by people, by others, by others actions, sure, and that's there. But that's also a little dandelion puff in the wind, because underneath that the hurt that I bear, that gives fruit to the flower of story, is that I have denied myself. I created such a sophisticated structure as a child of self-denial that I was no longer able to discern who I wanted to spend time with and who I didn't. My radar was completely off. I no longer listened to my body. I stopped listening to my body and started shutting it down probably around five years old. So lets say by the time I'm fourteen years old, I've had a lot of practice rejecting myself and I'm not really going to have a proper skill set to read another human being and their energy. So from this, I'm going to be destined for a good part of my life to say yes when everything in me screams no, because I am no longer listening. And when you add enough of those yeses that are really nos together, there's a powerful energy signature to that comes to be carried.

Because I convaluted my abilites, my delicate readings, my own deep energetic connection to my body and what it was wanting and not wanting, I found over the years that I was no longer able to distinguish anything. I was barely able to relate to anyone in any way because I was so full of all of damage from all of those yeses. So I was not able to open up even a tiny corner of myself to people, and this became a survival mechanism in itself. I certainly was not able to show myself as a being, a woman, I was not able to show myself in my own life force energy, my own sexual energy, because I was misusing it. It was either a game where I played the part of prey or something was going to be exposed that was way too vulnerable and I was going to get preyed on because of it. I did not have a clue as to how to have a relationship with anyone that wasn't somehow mixed in with predator and prey, with possession and crushing control. Regarding ones self as prey, on an energetic level, will draw the hunters. There was no opportunity for sweet flirting, I was always poised to be captured because I knew my own pattern to say yes when it was no. Anything that came my way was threatening, all the more so because I knew what I attracted, and I didn't know how to do otherwise.

And I'm purging those yeses from me right now. Regardless of their context in my life, these yeses that should have been nos, still they move into light and as they go the entire construct of my being becomes new. That funny, sophisticated little methodology that I developed allowed me to dance a dance with so many things that I never would have allowed into my life if I'd been able to embody and retain my sensitivity. I was never taught this, there was no one in my life who could possibly teach me, so young. I've been my own teacher and every relationship I've had in my life has been my teacher. I am now in a position where I'm viewing all of this and I'm suddenly so aware of what a no is and what a yes is. The light that's flooding into new parts of my body, into new connections with my soul, is the light of this recognition. I am releasing maximum sensitivity, I am putting away barriers, I am shining light on so many things that dissolve as soon as the light touches them. There's a tremendous amount of compassion for myself and forgiveness because I had to do what I had to do and I'm here now.

So as things fall away I find that I'm left with greater and greater sensitivity, not peeled back and exposed like an onion, but revealed as whole and fully formed, with less and less reaction to the sudden change in light. I find that I experience not only this dimension but others, that I communicate not only with people embodied, but that there are many other communications that happen. This is fine, but it's the communication with myself that has me floored. The newness of this creature that was always here, but always lost. I find that an extraordinary gift that's come in the last couple of weeks is that I can see and know the yes and the no clearly. I've turned off the manual override. I'm here in my body.

I've had the gift over the last couple of weeks of being drawn into that pattern again and to see it and act on it and to say no where there was a very strong no and to be so aware of the ways I was trying to override that into a yes. And just yesterday I had a very clear example of what a yes is, my voice deep and connected to my deepest root. The two experiences, both regarding men, were so remarkably different, so clear and I mourn a little bit for how much of my life I've lived in absolute misery, when this is so easy. How much of my life I've lived spending so much time with men who energetically repulsed me, but overriding that because I wanted something to anchor myself to in this world so I wouldn't just careen off into myself and all of the fear that sat just below the surface of my life waiting for me. That fear has long been faced, and the body, such a dense little thing still, took its own time to come to realization. But at one time I didn't care if it was a no, I went ahead, and that damaged me deeply. I lived in a constant state of fight or flight, a constant state of self-revulsion. I had sex just because I thought I was supposed to, to keep someone around who I did not know I deeply did not want, for so many years. And only last year when I was thirty-six years old was I given the gift of a man crossing my path who completely changed my concept of sexuality entirely, who showed me what it was like to be truly sexually awakened, connected, who showed me a potential from within me that I had no idea was there. As it needed to be, we didn't have sex, and that was part of the gift. He wouldn't sleep with me without months of knowing me, observing me because he was too emotionally sensitive to the effects on himself, and he knew himself well enough to know that if he slept with me too soon and then we broke up, it would be too hard on him. And I honor that in him. He was a dick, but he was only a dick on one vibratory band of his personality. The rest of it was magical. I realize that if I go back through all the men in my life, there was one yes in high school and after that all the way up until January of 2014, there were no yeses. If I'd said no much more often, the quality of people in my life would have dramatically increased. Every man that I've been with between then and last January was a no that I made into a yes, some more than others. And last fall I had my wake up call. I fell hard in love with a no, that I made into a yes, but this time my body and psyche couldn't bear it. All of the lights that were still turned off popped on at once and blinded me so that I had to go in and look at what was going on, and I sure as hell did. I had never made the energetic distinction within myself between adversary and lover, and I had confused the two through all my years. I thought I had to fight to pull love, to draw it out. I didn't know that it was just available, glowing and alive, but only when I turned my attention to yes, to soft, to true.

I notice now that I'm getting more chances to practice. Some nos show up that I wish were yeses, but they're not, they are nos and that's that, no need to think about why or how I might change that, what a weird load of crap that would be to put on myself. The extension of my voice that I'm just coming to know is the one that says no with such love that I'm drawn to saying no, rather than anxious about it. This is hard to explain but there is a burst of self-love that comes when saying no that envelops both me and the one I deny. It's worth each step of practice and each test.

This knowingness extends so far beyond my relationships with men, or my friendships with humans in general. I'm already pretty good with 'Do I want to do this or not?' and most of the time it's a no. I am an introvert. I'm very choosy about what I do and with whom I spend my time. And I'm feeling throughout my life the reverberation and the resonance of saying yes when it's a no, especially to men and to polarity as solace. I feel like this is the core of where I'm at right now. This is the core of the coming power. There's much more to my power, but if I don't employ that no when it's true, I'm denying myself and am diminished. Any form of saying yes and feeling no reinforces so much anger and self-loathing, smallness, and it feels repulsive and crushing, as though my insides are turning inward, a sea urchin closing right up. I feel that it's my job right now to stay very, very, very close to the no and to the yes. To get to know them much more intimately than I do now, although they've become very clear, visceral, physical and require me to become increasingly sensitive. It requires me to allow the sensitivity to grow again, to allow the overwhelming physical and emotional experience of being in this world to simply overwhelm me.

I know within the core of my body that this sensitivity revealed in its entirety without protection, without concern for damage, is my strength. That strength isn't even on the other side of the sensitivity. There is no side, there's no place to get to. The strength and the sensitivity are the same thing. Total openness is required. That doesn't mean, and this is important as a distctinction for myself, being open to everything. Total openness means 'Hey, this is a no', 'This interaction with you is a no', 'This relationship with you is a no', 'Putting any attention on you at all is a no'. That's total openness. That's me being totally open to me and what's here. 'No I don't want to do this', 'No I'm not interested in that', 'No I don't want to hear any more of your story right now'. Wow. That's it, that's life, that's a long buried shadow of strangulation rising to the surface and being free. And the yeses stand out in bold relief. And there are very few.

I don't know what's next. But this feels like such a damn fine relief to see, to experience, that none of the stories of my life bear substance or weight against the power of a true no and a true yes. To find that there's no story I can go to that doesn't immediately dissolve in its own construction, and to honor the childhood need for the construction just the same. Except one. And that story has to do with myself and my ability to provide for myself. It has to do with my relationship to nature in terms of money, abundance, and prosperity. That is the only area where I remain in story. Everything regarding the men in my life, the things I have done, healed by exponential degree when I realized what no was, and my relationship to it was, and what yes was, and where that relationship could take me. I realized my role in choice.


The fact that I can now choose to have this sweetness in my life. That I can say no to anything and everything that does not fully resonate with the vibration that I choose is a revelation that sinks down through all the layers of my being with the joy of celestial celebration, something from the highest part of my soul has made its way into my body and my psyche and it grows. The most important job I have is to establish it once and for all through authentic practice, through raging life, through listening so simply, sweetly, and by fully disempowering the thought form that I once identified with. Life is always just a little more about coming into voice than letting go of pain. The pain is not for dwelling, analyzing, no. It is a signpost to where voice is lacking, to where truth is repressed. The wisdom of the body will stop any story in its tracks.

2.17.2015

tuesday alchemy



Today I want to share something beautiful. The following is from The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho. 
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     But she still stood there, shouting, "It's all your fault! You humiliated me!"
     One window opened, and then another. Well, anyone working to change the axis of the world must be prepared for the fact that her neighbors won't always be happy. I went over to Athena and did exactly what she wanted me to do: I put my arms around her. 
     She continued weeping, her head resting in my shoulder. Very gently I helped her up the steps and into the house. I made some tea, the recipe for which I share with no one because it was taught to me by my protector. I placed it in front of her and she drank it down in one gulp. By doing so, she demonstrated that her trust in me was still intact. 
     "Why am I like this?" she asked. 
     I knew then that the effects of the alcohol had been neutralized. 
     "There are men who love me. I have a son who adores me and sees me as his model in life. I have adoptive parents whom I consider to be my real family and who would lay down down their lives for me. I filled in all the blank spaces in my past when I went in search of my birth mother. I have enough money to spend the next three years doing nothing but enjoying life, and still I'm not content!
     "I feel miserable and guilty because God blessed me with tragedies that I've managed to overcome and with miracles to which I've done credit, but I'm never content. I always want more. The last thing I needed was to go to that theater and add failure to my list of victories!"
     "So you think you did the wrong thing?"
     She looked at me in surprise. 
     "Why do you ask that?"
     I said nothing but awaited her answer. 
     "No, I did the right thing. I went there with a journalist friend, and I didn't have a clue what I was going to do, but suddenly things started to emerge as if out of the void. I felt the presence of the Great Mother by my side, guiding me, instructing me, filling my voice with a confidence I didn't really feel."
     "So why are you complaining?"
     "Because no one understood!"
     "Is that important? Important enough to make you travel up to Scotland and insult me in front if everyone?"
     "Of course it's important! If I can do absolutely anything and know I'm doing the right thing, how come I'm not at least loved and admired?"
     So that was the problem. I took her hand and led her to the same room where, two weeks before, she had sat contemplating a candle. I asked her to sit down and try to calm herself a little, although I was sure the tea was already taking effect. I went to my room, picked up a round mirror, and placed it before her. 
     "You have everything and you've fought for every inch if your territory. Look at your face and the bitterness etched on it. Look at the woman in the mirror, but don't laugh this time, try to understand her."
     I allowed her time to follow my instructions. When I saw that she was, as I intended, going into a trace, I went on. 
     "What is the secret of life? We call it 'grace' or 'blessing'. Everyone struggles to be satisfied with what they have. Apart from me. Apart from you. Apart from a few people who will, alas, have to make a small sacrifice in the name of something greater. 
     "Our imagination is larger than the world around us; we go beyond our limits. This used to be called 'witchcraft', but fortunately things have changed, otherwise we would both already have been burned at the stake. When they stopped burning women, science found an explanation for our behavior, normally referred to as 'female hysteria'. We don't get burned anymore, but it does cause problems, especially in the workplace. But don't worry, eventually they'll call it 'wisdom'. Keep looking into the mirror. Who can you see?"
     "A woman."
     "And what is there beyond that woman?"
     She hesitated. I asked again and she said, "Another woman, more authentic and more intelligent than me. It's as if she were a soul that didn't belong to me, but which is nonetheless part of me."
     "Exactly. Now I'm going to ask you to imagine one of the most important symbols in alchemy: a snake forming a circle, swallowing its own tail. Can you imagine that?"
     She nodded. 
     "That's what life is like for people like you and me. We're constantly destroying and rebuilding ourselves. Everything in your life has followed the same pattern: from lost to found; from divorce to new love; from working in a bank to selling real estate in the desert. Only one thing remains intact-your son. He is the connecting thread, and you must respect that "
     She started to cry again, but her tears were different this time. 
     "You came here because you saw a female face in the flames. That face is the face you can see now in the mirror, so try to honor it. Don't let yourself be weighed down by what other people think, because in a few years, in a few decades, or in a few centuries, the way of thinking will have changed. Live now what others will only live in the future.
     "What do you want? You can't want to be happy, because that's too easy and too boring. You can't want only to love, because that's impossible. What do you want? You want to justify your life, to live it as intensely as possible. That is at once a trap and a source of ecstasy. Try to be alert to that danger and experience the joy and the adventure of being that woman who is beyond the image reflected in the mirror."
     Her eyes closed, but I knew my words had penetrated her soul and would stay there.
     "If you want to take a risk and continue teaching, do so. If you don't want to, know that you've already gone further than most other people."
     Her body began to relax. I held her in my arms until she fell asleep, her head on my breast. 
     I tried to whisper a few more things to her, because I'd been through the same stages, and I knew how difficult it was-just as my protector had told me it would be and as I myself had found out through painful experience. However, the fact that it is difficult didn't make the experience any less interesting. 
     What experience? Living as a human being and as a divinity. Moving from tension into relaxation. From trance into a more intense contact with other people. From that contact back into tension and so on, like the serpent swallowing it's own tail. 
     It was no easy matter, mainly because it requires unconditional love, which does not fear suffering, rejection, loss. 
     Whoever drinks this water once can never quench her thirst at other springs. 


2.16.2015

emotional intelligence



My pain is speaking today and rather than wait for it to pass, as I usually do, I'm choosing to write. I feel completely exposed in this, as these are the dark thoughts of my life, the ones I push on, the ones that crush me with incompetence to feel. I feel completely suffocated. I am unable to accomplish, learn, or study any of the things my heart is calling for. I am likely unable to afford to continue on a journey that is important to me, as usual, as has happened with all the journeys I've embarked on myself over these last four years. I continue to move forward toward my own sensitivity, to all the real life places where this existence in this place is too much for me. Places I've grown callus over have to come into exposure and one of those is desperate for motion, flow. Money. Abundance. Proven ability that I am here on this earth for some purpose. Is this the grand adventure? It must be. What is at the heart of this? I feel that I am cast out. I did not take care of my own interests when I was young, in favor of being in love and being able to rest in that. I did not want to worry for my survival but to focus on family, which is what I wanted most as a child, to mother and to serve the sweetest possible forces. I entered a ten year relationship that fed and clothed me, sheltered and provided, but sucked the tender life from my bones, leaving me nearly dead and completely crushed. I don't have confidence in my own abilities. I don't even know what they are. I never chose a career. I wanted to hide from the world, protected in a castle, able to be fully in control of my surroundings, to be rescued. And so I work menial jobs and am constantly pushing on a brick wall of frustration and pain, inside my chest, belly, and pelvis. Why is there no work that I do in the world? Why am I unable to draw meaning into my life and use that meaning as a foundation for self-reliance? I set off on an epic journey last year, sure that I could take my amazing grandmother's work out into the world. She is an extraordinary artist, with the karma to never have made a living from her work. I thought I could move west, connect with the tribe I was sure was there, and introduce her designs into the textile world with a bang. That didn't happen and as I spent the year homeless, with no stable place to land, no community to join, and total incredulousness that this was my life, I began to fold inward. We had small victories with Dharma Collextive but the truth was that I couldn't afford lunch, never mind afforded the creation of a stable space from which I could work. My heart just shatters for this. From the moment of my divorce, when I consciously traded security for the possibility of a happy life, I have been hit with a series of life events that constantly have me checking in to see whether I still want to be here, on this planet, in this life. What my responsibility is to this, as far as I can tell, is to stay alive and keep going. As each day passes I mourn a little for what could have been, in a happier life. I am a true introvert, and a shy one at that, and that has been picked on in the ugliest way, by people who believe that sweet means weak, and that shy means closed down, when none of that is remotely true. I am stronger than steel and as open as the night sky. I know I am not this sad thing, but I reject her, and so she stays, clouding my vision, adding weight. My heart is heavy for all the time I have lost, all the years that have been wasted. I wish to make up for this. To work in the world with joy, to serve. I realize that I am so isolated that I don't have the life skills that I see others using, I simply don't know how to get things done. My instinct is to go inward, as deeply as I can, into my meditation practice, into not wanting anything at all from or in the world. It seems to be in moving towards desires that I face the wall of impotence. I share these things with only two people, because I'm afraid that if I share my despair with you I will face judgement and shame. This comes from experience with this, as well as a lifetime of being a bewildered introvert in an extrovert's country. For most of my life I've been shamed by ignorance, by those who are not comfortable with pain, who see it as unnatural and something to be rid of, and I have taken all that on. A personality was created that uses a sophisticated defense system when under perceived attack and that has gotten me absolutely nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I was never able to grow up where there was allowance for my sensitivity, never mind it being looked at as a gift and encouraged by those who knew what kind of strength was on the other side of the coin. I was never safe. We live in a world of absolute stupidity, of total insanity in the belief in the absolutes of human ego and human mind. Our emotional intelligence has withered. I want to be part if the reblossoming of a kind of relational sensitivity that hasn't been seen yet in the world we know of, except in small pockets. I want to share the gifts I don't believe I have with those who may see in me what I can't see. I know my emotional capability, I know my capacity for love, I know my own stability in this body in this earth. What I don't know is how to make my way in this world. I will state it plainly, to show myself that I am no longer going to be concerned that if I reveal this, I will be labeled by it, and all that is strong and clear and beautiful and wild and bright and able and sacred and precious about me will be looked over and discarded. I feel that I am worth nothing, that I produce nothing of value, that I never will. From this place, the self-hatred is extraordinary, real, visceral, and powerful. Just because this is only a part of me doesn't make it any less real and powerful to experience. Regardless of what I know to be true, this too exists inside of me, this too is experienced by this incarnation. I am thirty-seven years old and there are many reasons why I feel I am a failure. I am honoring the process if growing by acknowledging the wholeness of my experience publicly. I am a writer first, before any other vocation, and often it is the only way I can communicate, unless I'm certain that you can hear and hold my heart. I care nothing for the ego and still I have to face my own, and continue to let it scream what it wants to at me and at itself and at the world, and pick up every bit of my discernment each day, every shred of solace and fruit from all the other faculties of my own extraordinary capacity to be whole, and keep on moving, keep on coming alive. I have to understand that those who can't see me just can't see me. It's time to completely discard the burden of taking in as true, what was always just the unverified opinions of those who could not see. I am walking across this bridge as though down a narrow plank, from one great ship to another on a stormy sea. The ship I am leaving is burning and I'm the one who set it alight. The ship I move towards is a crystalline paradise and so simply, I just can't see that I am supported on all sides by hands that serve both the burning and the rebuilding, that I could not possibly fall, and so am desperately trying to maintain my own balance, still certain that if I let go, I'll never make it and will be swallowed by the sea. 

2.15.2015

valentine's day




Dear One,

If you are not divided, you will find a home in me. You are already full, having known your own heart, your capacity. You understand the following words. I dive and swim in the land of the goddess, of the divine, and that connection is the love of my life, the wholeness of my life. I am an extension of Her, an embodiment of extraordinary tenderness and sensitivity, that is as delicate as lace; a steel strength and fire that will destroy you and rebirth you again and again if you are willing to face what you are not; and the embodiment of a primal sensuality that far exceeds mere sex, and possesses a longer and deeper pleasure. I draw the vibrant and rich earth up through my body to connect with the very starstuff from which we are made. And I am strong in that and it has taken a long time for me to stand in that and connect my voice to my truth. I will run through forests, be naked at the banks of rivers, tend to the garden, decorate my own body with beauty, move about in this world with no need to please you because your pleasure is gained most fully when you bare yourself. I need to scream when screams come and to cry freely when tears come, without false comfort, matched by your screams and your tears when it is your time, and to laugh inappropriately at any time, because it's all so very fucking funny. I wish to speak truth at all times, our truth a living being, as devoted to you and to I as I am to the God who is my home, and you hold me only to this. You are as undivided as I am, as unified in desire to dig your bare hands and human heart into higher forms of love, to bring together all that you seek into yourself, and to find fulfillment in what you can give, as willing to move into the very center of life, and as determined to withdraw your own center from it's own ideas of it's own importance. You are all human and all divine and you want to meet me as I am, already full, but still working, always trying to pull the bow further back, to take better aim. Human love as a way to fully express the divine.  I don't need this in my life, because I can make the world the lover for me, but I have a feeling it's coming. I have entered deeply into a love affair with my own heart, and all the world can become the children I bear, but I have a feeling I will also know my own. By not listening to my own heart and worth, I learned the ways of giving, I learned how to be true. I have an extraordinary amount of light to bring through to this place. This year I've vowed to bring her out, the her I have tried not to displease you with, and to allow her full reign through my life, to force her voice if necessary, to fuck up, to say too much, to change my mind in a moment, to run free, to howl, to believe, to be true. 

**************************************************
Below are words fom my beloved Ara, of The Goddess Circle:

"There is no fear in love. No holding back, no barriers. When you spread yourself wide open in vulnerable surrender you should be met with the same. Open yourself to the one who is bare with you; drop down your guard and be fully transparent with the one that lusts for your heart, body, mind, and soul. 

"There is no fakery or imitations in real love; no games that are absent of heart that are played, no fraud or trickery. Love is paved with two smiles, hearts wide open and two bodies that cannot get enough of one another wrapped in deep conversation between two souls. It's so simple yet so powerfully compels all in the same breath, the dance of the divine. 

"I want you to believe in love. I want you to feel it as your birth rite. A love so consuming that it takes all of you exactly as you are never asking you to be anything that you are not...I want you to know it belongs to you. I want you to know it is real."

I would just add. THIS LOVE IS YOU. 

2.13.2015

wordless fridays




I've started five posts since my last one. Each one is me trying to write about something that, after one or two sentences, is totally done. I have something to say about this and that, until I realize I'm not interested. My energy is running elsewhere. By the time I put words to one experience, a universe of others have already been had, and even I am surprised at how fast this is happening. I am no longer a linear human. My life does not run from moment to moment creating a continuity. It runs from infinite space to infinite space, creating something I can only stay completely present to, with no center. Trying to create a center creates pain. I realize now that I am in the in-between. There are many words for the Dreamtime. The Aboriginals have a whole bunch, not one which is translatable to English, except the ridiculous Dreamtime. So it is. But I am not in the Dreamtime, I'm in the Dreaming. I am embodying vibrations, conduits of light. These bright points have been on the move, with journeys of infinite miles taking space in a few seconds, with insights that bring with them a complete rearrangement of the bones, none of it metaphorical, all of it metaphysical. I want to write to you with words that don't exist, any grasping for them brings a blank wall with no secret door. This is because I want to talk to you in words less and less. Instead I want to touch your hand, to connect our hearts, and watch what happens when we soar in true communion. This exchange is entirely of this plane and this planet but lives away from identity, and seems to require people of extraordinary magic to accomplish it. So often, when I am with you, I have to make words and I'm tired of that. I am looking for those for whom silence is more full than a coffee shop on Sunday morning. And to make things even more special, I'm looking for those who have gone so far into the silence that they are now full steam ahead as creators in embodied experience. Those that throw logs on the fires of their own burning. Many people say it, even passionately, but very few actually do it, for it will destroy your life, and rebuild it without your permission, into something so grand your tiny human mind will never comprehend, but by then you won't be using your mind to comprehend when you've discovered much better senses for that. Those for whom God is not only an interior space, but something to strive to melt into, something which seems like the only appropriate place to put one's identity. So far for me, this creature who lives at my core is Divine Mother. A Love so extraordinary I will burst. I have been leaking steadily, but soon will come the explosion, and all that reveals in that pure hot ash. I have tried to write about my shadow this week, like I am supposed to for my Circling homework, but every time I turn an eye to what seems like shadow, I face light. Every time I turn my sight to my ex-husband, or my father, or any other event or person in my life where there should be some residue, some sticky bits, I get nothing. As though there is no cause for any of my behavior, any of my internal workings. As though what matters is not that they are answered to in the light of inquiry, but that they are not in fact the accurate sources of anything that goes on in my life now. So I have asked what this is, and what I should do, and am not surprised to hear mirthful words to the tune of, "Just do everything differently than you have always done. Feel, then be, then know, in that order, and remember that this is the proper order. There is no shadow and there is no light. There IS and the speed at which you harmonize with IS is all there is." Here's the funny thing about waking up, it's not a thing or a project or an endeavor or a process, it's just a reveal back to what's natural. Oh, you thought there was a man behind the curtain? Ha, ha, there is no man and no curtain! You are the one you seek. So I realize for me that looking back to see where and how something happened is a weaker form of healing, whereas looking deeply at what is happening right now is everything. Only my mind believes there is relationship between any moment other than the present, only my mind believes I have a past and it transfers that belief onto my body. I like to get things done quickly, I like to burrow through the pile of things that don't quite fit to get right to the perfect garment and I know what it is before I've seen it. Once you thoroughly trust God, however you see your source, God will turn your attention to thoroughly trusting yourself. Once you awaken you have to keep going, you will forever be awakening, and great pleasure will be created in just being alert. Capacity to be present is awake and healing happens, as always and forever, without ever needing to be understood in order to be real. The friction of relationship wears down the one who relates to her very basic self. And birth is constant, a thought before a thing. How deeply can you trace the quietest lines of thought into flesh and bone and back out again, how carefully can you sew and knit the entirety of this garment that decorates your soul?

2.06.2015

guts and power and bursting life



It's not that I've been resistant to writing. It's that for the last week of travels, moontime, rashes, and deep adjustment and release, I've been unable to form words and the entire frontal cortex of my brain has been hiding from me. Still right now I'm almost entirely absorbed in a somatic process of unfoldment that is happening entirely on the inner planes. It is exquisite. 

My mother is a healer. She is of a caliber that truly has very few peers and she and her work have been shifting and retuning through these last years, as many of us have been, the things that defined us melting away, revealing newness only as gently as we are able to let go. What I'm going to begin to use words to define today, my mother's work is a part of. 

True power comes from the guts. Many people I know will attest that their power comes from their lowest pelvic organs, their balls, their womb. This is only a partial truth and to stop here and seek to empower those organs will only reveal partial power. Life force energy encompasses sexual energy, giving it a place to reside, encouraging it to flow ever upwards, ungrasped. 

The very second that direct experience of the life force of the guts (otherwise known as rage, gotcha!) is inquired into, that's the moment of decision. Do you want to tell a story or do you want to sink so deeply into your own force of power that you become it? We are given this simple choice every moment and seem to have written scriptures for millennia that try to define it for all. Living inside a transcended state of awareness as a human being is to reveal the full force of this energy to ones self. It feels like rage, unless you've already transcended that. Pure rage with no object, no one from your past, no parent or family member, no lover, not even yourself can be the target if such rage because it is not rage at all. Destructive, sure. But equally creative. Forceful, yes. But equally able to be in somatic dialogue with wisdom, not reckless. This is the animal we seek. 

The inquiry went like this. I was talking to my mom about how frustrated I am with the rash on my forehead, remembering the last time I lived with such a thing, which was during my marriage while living in Boulder. I was attempting to draw knowledge out of myself as to what the cause was and what I might do. Then she asked me, "what is the emotion of this?". Being who I am I stopped and felt and nothing would reveal. "Fear?" Nope. "Joy?" No. And I felt deeper. "Frustration?" No. "Anger?" I felt a whole body clench start as the clarity came through. "Rage" and I sobbed and she asked me to stay there and I did. I discovered that rage is a name given to an overwhelming sensation of energy in the deepest part of my root core, it is a word used as an access point to this energy. She asked me to whom it was directed and there was no one, nothing. In the space of half an hour I watched a deeply repressed life force come into bloom, both in the light of my conscious awareness and in the light if my embraced somatic experience. Spontaneously, as is happening lately when something is revealed. The opposing force began to stir, and I felt a systematic shutting down, a forceful push downward within my body, effectively shutting off this glorious force of not rage/rage. I was so connected with my body at this time that I was able to feel each chakra area close down and a very familiar feeling of disconnection entered my awareness. In a few quick moments I had traced the line of this disconnection through my life. 

Now for the good stuff. My mom asked me where the source of closing down was located. The thought that popped in was 'my throat' but it took another few minutes for me to speak to it. When I did, my mom made a suggestion that I grab into my throat and squeeze, and to do it until I was fully present to the sensations of my windpipe. As I became able to to really use some force on myself I noticed many things simultaneously. I noticed that as I squeezed, pressure was created in my face. I began to cry as I increased the pressure. I noticed that it was not at all uncomfortable. I noticed I wanted to squeeze harder. As I did I felt the suppression let go. I felt the force of power begin to rise again and as I let go of my neck, I witnessed the two forces meet in an energetic pas de deux at and just below my solar plexus. One force pushing downward, dominant, repulsive. One rising up, more powerful but more untested. This left me relatively speechless and I've spent the last day with this experience. I've spent the last day falling in love with the energy that I've been the most afraid of. This rage is beyond love, the core of which may be deeper than my soul, and IS love. 

I realize this is the core energy and experience of my life. It is what I have run from. It is what I developed all sorts of sophisticated suppression methods as a child to hide. I had tremendous fear of it, of it running the show. I denied myself my own core embodied experience and all of it's treasures. The energy I ran from is the energy of me; my truth, my guide, my grounded self. It felt too strong to bear without breaking apart. It is all I wish to bear. I can now hold the current and roll out a red carpet of fearlessness that has new meaning, that I will have to rise to and grow into. I believe in my own ability. It is a creative power that encompasses and surpasses sexual power. It is abundance, wealth, worth. 

Durgha, Kali, I'm in love. I've avoided coming all the way into the embodied home of the destructive force, the way-clearer. Because what if I did not want to do the things this force asked me to do, what if I wanted to remain separate from the responsibility of being my whole self? The last grasp I had on trying to construct this life has let go as I realize that to give each moment to my own deepest life force is now understood by my body, and my body won't allow otherwise. I'm still completely awed as I allow new neurons, new energetic connections to be made rapidly within this body. I am newly made today. I wish I could truly share this experience. I realize I can't now, but I can plan to in the future. To truly share it, if I am meant to, in transmission, in my own healing practice. There is a somatic key that is currently not included in Circling, but will be. I desire to help bring that key forward. I commit to moving in and towards, gently and thoroughly touching the entirely of my somatic experience. 

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is quoted as saying "Love is bold", that is love is powerful. The force of existence is so powerful and we are
walking around every day with this absolute miracle humming through us, touching all our parts, waiting for us to reach out for it. To come into our primal life force and roll in it, reveling, is very different from cerebral energy. It feels as though it can overpower cerebral energy, but once unleashed, it can't. There is only harmony. Checks and balances. And a sureity of embodiment that comes like water after a long drought. 

2.01.2015

cancelled flight


     
Do you become different in each place you travel? I do. I kind of marvel at my pliability, my lack of substance. It won't take me long to pick up a tiny bit of an accent, or inflection, that I find charming. Like a parrot. Do you notice the laws of nature of the place and the people influencing you, navigating your inner compass to a slightly different position? I feel transparent. Is that why I love to travel so? 

We had a family brunch today and afterward I talked my dad into taking me on a Sunday drive down south. We drove to Jamestown and took in the ridiculous, sweeping beauty of the bay, heading out to the lighthouse and then back through the farmlands around the university. Right now I am rooted in all the land, everywhere. I am a real child of the world. My home is in the New Mexico mesas, and in the rivers of the Tetons, and in the wood shingled Maine coast cabin, through Ojai and into the Los Padres, and in the sky, on the train, in the car on the 10, anticipating the turn onto 29 Palms and up to Joshua Tree with date shakes and avocados in hand. My home is in the city, sort of, because I still can't keep my adrenals happy in New York, in Atwater, in Dallas. I keep opening, I keep learning how. 

I have been traveling so long. Can I rest? I have established a territory running from my heart to anywhere, never mind from Maine to San Diego and Arkansas to Seattle. Pin me down, narrow my scope, let me run out of fuel somewhere beautiful, where the land generates life and I can feel the ecstasy of the buds bursting in spring, of the wolf with it's catch, of the water that flows underground and hums a ley line of desire through me. What am I searching for? Am I even searching or is this what I do because I need to be light and free? I don't seem to have any reason on my own to stop. I don't mind that so much. I love the foreign, the loss of self when confronted with an unnavigated road, I love to get lost. If I want to plant even a shallow root, I suppose these yearnings will gain a new outlet. I suppose I will find fulfillment where the was none, and close my eyes into vast inner motion, while the outer remains still, in a way more complete than I've yet known. This is good. My flight was cancelled.