The Day of the LEAP

Inexplicable, Joyful & Absolutely Necessary!

February 29, 2012  Leap Day (do we actually call it Leap day?)  Truly a day almost discovered as if out of some hidden place that everyone goes about acting exactly the same as they did yesterday and will tomorrow without even realizing this mystic and liminal space that has shown up in our daily worlds as if it just belongs here.
FIRST THINGS FIRST
     The energy of the year we are in is one that has long been discussed and debated;  is it a new deadline on doomsday, a time of some prophesied Second Coming, perhaps the year of global crossingover?  There are as many interpretations of the meaning of this year as there are people living it, and from a sense of just adding up the numbers, slowing down enough just to add up the sacred geometry of 2012, we are smack dab in the middle of a year of CHANGE.  a year where life has sped up; events, traumas, moments of note are flying fast and furious and it is up to us to slow down, find the space of meaning in those moments...and step into our own place of change, progress, awareness in how we embrace this shift.

and nextly....
in the middle of all this Fast and Furious, we are presented with (is if a neatly tied package and gift from on high) the gift of a whole extra day.  the entire calendar has split wide open to grant such a day.  oh sure, you say, this comes every 4 years, what's the big deal?  well, there isn't one, unless you want to make it that way.  and i, for one, intend to do so.  Not with any huge party; horns blowing and lot's of drinking...really more of an inner big deal, if you will.  How do i intend to Leap into the energy of change that is knocking so loudly at my own door?  It doesn't feel like any sort of 'out with old, in with the new', it simply feels like a willingness to look at every moment with new eyes, being open to the possibility that i know nothing, the shelf life of all my assumptions on this earthly plane has truly expired and i am embracing the new truths that teach themselves to me in each moment.   Wow, that's a tough one!  my hands kinda move into the GRIPS just with the mention of all this letting go, how come i'm so trained to Fear this kind of Release?  Why are we (and not just the royal we, but the cultural society i have learned some of this gripping behavior from) so nervous about the letting go?

So just for this one day--all my beliefs, assumptions, common practices, habits of behavior--out the window.  In this beautiful, in between, mystic moment of a day that doesn't typically even exist in my year---i choose to behave and believe with the same come from.  Leap Day--Set up to make adjustments in our 'typical normal', repair the rift of time that the last 4 years (if not 4 generations or 40,000 years) have taken us off course from, even if every so slightly just in the microscopic methods.

So no more expectation of the END OF THE WORLD. 

This time of change is really just the beginning.  am i willing to put down my old ways, the heaviness of how i used to do it, allow for some bit of newness and lightness to seep in at the edges?  You bet i am!!!  Today i am new, Nice to Meet You!!!!

A man is born gentle and weak.

At his death he is hard and stiff.

Green plants are tender and filled with sap.

At their death they are withered and dry.

Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciples of death.

The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle.

A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

The hard and strong will fail.

The soft and weak will overcome.

Lao Tsu

2012 Time to do a Little Shapeshifting

Well we've all been saying it for months at least, if not years...how life feels like life is going so much faster, how what used to be huge and major deals in our daily world have now become par for the course, how we feel like something is about to break wide open!!!

Welcome to the 'breaking' people--the breaking wide open and wrapping your arms around the notion that a new self is at your doorstep!  The energy of this year has long been building, it is a year of CHANGE, of growth and progress, of looking into the new selves we want to become and taking off our blinders of ambivalence and actually embracing the new Us's that have been begging to show up. 

'what is she talking about?' you say

So since i spent my wonderful 2 weeks of self-imposed retreat from goal-setting at the start of the year; goals, notions for projects, strong intentions have been bubbling up in my world left and right.  They refuse to be ignored.  But almost as soon as one idea feels really good, it exhausts itself and a new one becomes The Thing.  i might be nursing a tiny crick in my neck from all the "whippin my hair back and forth!" (big props to will and jada for nurturing this song out of their teenage progeny, willow.  i'm not sure what i might have labeled my own angst without that tune).  and now that i seemed to have dropped right onto the "Highway to the Danger Zone" (the song titles just keep rollin today it would seem) i realize it is not with a little bit of anticipation i keep craning my neck to see what is up ahead. 

and deep breathing is required...

i realize i have this pattern of calling all my practices and learning together and embracing a sort of stillness in the eye of the storm, and then shifting into heavy virgo planning mode to see how i can best approach the frenzy, whether it be a tempest in a teapot or the perfect storm.  i find myself doing the craning thing just now, what is up ahead, how can i handle it "the right way", what is it i am wanting to accomplish and how do i get it done?  this makes for a bit o' the mid-winter madness i'm sure many a groundhog has felt when upon witnessing it's own shadow turned tail and moved back into hibernation for a bit.

well i feel pretty certain i don't want to shift back into hibernation, i also feel like the time isn't quite here for immediate action--and so i practice what i know about the silence--welcoming the change, showing up for myself daily as the next steps present themselves, trusting that my heart and soul are very understanding bedfellows and they won't lead me astray as i, yet again, peel back the layers of who i am to reveal the new, fully, shape-shifted and mewling new babe underneath!  Gentle would be good here!  

reminiscent of this...And the Mind Stood Still and Sit, Stay...Stay....