Teachers, Travelers, Tricksters and Thieves

ok, i really have written like 3 brilliant blogs in my own mind this past week while driving, really compelling stuff people.  and where is all that brilliance when i sit to write?  is it too much to ask for a voice command recorder in my car when i say something like..."recorder on, blog post activate"?

so since i haven't gotten that technology installed yet in my "starting to show its age around the edges" vehicle, i must go straight to the source and allow what comes up now to be the thing.  and here's the thing, it's about being open to what is...and the beliefs i have about that.  i guess this is sort of a Byron Katie question, but with a broader twist.  what i have been learning the past few weeks is about the way in general i accept circumstances, results, behaviors in my life as if they were the only thing that is true.  I know better than this don't i?

lemme paint a brief picture...Mercury has been in retrograde for that past little bit.  for those of you that question this whole astrological influence thing, that's o.k. you just go on questioning.  But i challenge you to do it while paying attention to what cycles come through your life.  for example, A woman's "moon" cycle rotates every 28 days, the tides as pulled by this gravitational force influence so many aspects of our own lives in their own ebb and flow.  and certainly what happens during Mercury retrograde seems to reveal more and more introspective places of examination and shifting.

In general, Mercury rules all means of communication, commerce, education and transportation and people who use their energy in these areas like; writers, spin doctors,teachers, travellers, tricksters and thieves.
And somehow this energy moves into energetic glitches in electronics like phones, cars, computers--something in their operating system seems to go awry.


So why does this seem important to share?
i've found myself all wrapped around my own need to communicate, from just making phone calls in general, to sharing my deepest emotions and feelings in new ways.  and during the past month, while this need in me grows to be more clear, transparent, open to connection and loving, by success at these connections has met with some interesting ripples in the process.  i find myself circling back around to old ways of doing things, wondering why i'm ending up here again, and then realizing that habit is begging to be let go on a whole new level.

Mercury's retro phase tends to bring unforeseen changes and blockages, 

but the aggravation and frustration that many of us experience during these periods

is often due to our own inability to roll with the punches. Is this due to our ego-fixation?

I think all that brilliant drive-time self-writing/ talking has been this subconscious beginning of finding a way to iron out the wrinkles.  It may be that some of those wrinkles are just perfect to learn to navigate around, and it may be that when this time of retrograde arises it is an offering.  Opening an energetic space to restructure how we think things "should be", how attached we are to our belief about the way a thing must look.

i like to think that with all these teachers, travelers, tricksters and thieves being triggered, it's no wonder i find my own face in each of these characterizations and that each demands its moment in the sun, with the light of exploration revealing what has been kept in the shadow until that moment.  and so, gentle, gentle, gentle...be kind to self, love what comes up--allow it to be the thing!

Funny how this introspection cycles, see what other Decembers have brought up in me here

and ebb...

A major obstacle to creativity is wanting to be in the peak season of growth and generation at all times . . . but if we see the soul’s journey as cyclical, like the seasons. . . then we can accept the reality that periods of despair or fallowness are like winter – a resting time that offers us a period of creative hibernation, purification, and regeneration that prepare us for the births of spring.
-Linda Leonard, from Call to Create : Celebrating Acts of Imagination

Drinking from the Fire Hose

it's just 24 hours before 25 young men and women arrive for their 2 week excursion, i've been at our site for 2 days and what seems like 3 lifetimes since i got off my plane.  i keep having this vision of some kind of reality show where some guy named joe appears atop a high perch and announces loudly-- 
turn on the hydraulic, max-suspension, state-of-the art, smoke 'em if you got 'em FIRE HOSE.  
Whoa nelly, and i think somewhere deep down inside...did i shave my legs for this????
  Before y'all get too nervous or worried for my actual sanity or anything like that...let me start (well start now) by saying, i think i'm all right...in the words of the Monty Python Players..."i'm not dead yet".  i have to say in the past 2 days and 3 lifetimes i have thought many many times that if this were a year ago i might not be able to handle all this shit!!!  and now, today--it really doesn't even smell like shit.  wow, life has handed me a completely new service project, a coordinator who missed his flight and won't be here early to prepare, several in-country employees who suddenly don't work here anymore and a lot of possible drama about the how's and why's of that, two women who are my absolute heart connections that i will be eternally grateful for becoming their friends who can't welcome me into their home because of possible family trouble....these are just the highlights...and with every new rock that gets overturned i do this sort of ...am i drowning yet test, when i realize i can still breath, i take a deep one and keep paddling.

funny thing here--i've got muscles i never knew i had...muscles of expansion and contraction, of living in some serious ebb and then finally stretching for the flow that are now flexing their apparent JIEnormous selves.  or it may be what they say about an adreniline rush...when stress hits in the biggest of way, our hormones kick in to help us cope.

so here's the gratitude...i don't feel stressed.  hmmm, lemme check, no, not yet anyway (and i don't want to jinx myself because i've got some big weeks ahead of me) this brand new muscle i've discovered, i'll call it the River Breather, nestled right between the lungs --adjacent to the diaphragm, this one has been building for nigh on many months now.   the gratitude comes from the recognition of the tiny and persistent moments when holding the breath teaches the River Breather to build a bigger capacity, when screaming at the top of my lungs teaches the River Breather how to call in all angels and guides possible for assistance, how praying with all of my heart teaches the River Breather that there is absolutely nothing it can do--powerless to aid me at all, it stops breathing altogether to allow the true higher power of all i surrender my ego and will to , to step in and administer CPR ....

ahh there it is, now i see it...i thought this was a fire hose and it is godly CPR...it's all in the perspective isn't it...and last month i was the one PRAYING RAIN wasn't i?  silly wabbit!!!

chime in folks...how's the month for you?  is the fecund, fertile and final month of summer summing itself up with any learning for you?

And through it all, a river runs...

Next week i lead a group of 25 kids and young adults on a service mission to Brazil...along with all the powerful lessons of service, loving humanity and opening our hearts to so many who are so different from us...i imagine the opening of a perfect space for self-examination and growth has never been more serendipitously crafted.  While we all indulge our own sense of adventure through service and believe that we are really going to be there to help others, i am constantly recognizing the revealing truth--that the very biggest gifts of learning and growth will be internal, personal and life-changing--for myself included.  As i frantically buzz around completing last minute schedules and work plans, making sure i have put all motions into action that these kids can learn from, i have to laugh and recognize that the exponentially more astute and powerful godly practice of the universe has already called in all the characters, done so much homework and has the greatest possible solution already dialed in--not in a predestination sorta way, but in a do you understand the energetic web i'm weaving sorta way.

In our pre-planning conference calls with the group i often talk about the spirit of the "River", how we can plan and perfect whatever our tiny brains think they have some level of control over, but when we step off the literal and figurative plane of our previous journey, we step into the river--where the flow of spirit embraces, uses, bashes against the rocks and rolls up on the shore right where we are praying to be, whether we see it that way or not.  This thrumming sense is that of the subconscious and the Almighty joining a course of energetic flow as they follow the current of our own design.

As i set out on this fool's journey, I thank you in advance for the echos you share here--your own reflections on the current, i love how that resonance fills my heart with being seen. It seems that the world is in full tilt, and we are all in need of sharing our take on the spin. in my own vertigo spinning, left of center experience i am warmed by hearing the human side of all of your lives.

"when I am alone in the half-light...existence seems to fade to a being with my soul... Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through ." 

August: an INNER course of action

The warmth of the sun, the composting time for the earth, planting deep roots and ridding ourselves of weeds that spring up unbidden...time to allow thoughts and patterns that no longer serve to be turned under, let the filter of Mother Earth and Sister Moon offer the gift of mulching, ebb and flow, seasonal shift.

Time for a personal inner search this month. I will be in Brazil for the month of August--what better place to observe and swim deep in the RIVER and invite a shift in current. This is a challenge, an urge from within, to meet my soul in the deep underworld of its growth and emerge into the sun with the piece of spirit that is calling to be heard.

Oh say what is truth...

thanks and blessings to the many and few who contacted me concerned for my immediate life longevity. it gave me an even further chance to reflect and refine the depth of emotion i went through last week. let me say this again--it's been a while...this is one of the places where i seriously rant, vent and express. in the very moment--my feelings, thoughts, expressions are all true, but what is truth.

a filmaker i know is working on a little short of byron katie this week and was wondering how he would characterize her at all. while i am eager to see what he comes up with, his statement of what he would actually have to say about her, made me reflect on my own self, and what is actually true. in the moment i wrote my last blog, i never felt it or knew it more strongly than at that moment. what an end of the world feeling.

this week is completely different. i'm so much more willing to be in my moments, expect good things and am actually finding that to be true. once again a reminder of how life moves in ebb and flow, and where i'm standing in the tide makes all the difference on how i experience the truth.

stars or diamonds? it's all good...

last night, after a long day of playing with kids in a very inspiring(this means mary poppinsish and equals extremely tiring) and ultimate 'auntie' like way i entered my brother's house with feet ever so slightly dragging for yet another family gathering. it was my sister-in-law's birthday, her 40th, not to be missed--a big day for anyone and because that number is getting ever so much closer for me, all the more real.

in a large family like mine, gatherings--especially on a sunday--seem to come around more often than not and sometimes my boundaries pull a full stop and require that i abstain from participating. a house full of children, siblings, guitar hero, jacuzzi water fights and any other number of fantabulous diversions can only go so far into the goodtimes zone some nights when all you want is a little down time, a hot bath, maybe a good book and solitude. but we all don't know what's good for us all the time do we? i really did want to go to the b-day party, i just wanted the downtime as well--and since there's always more time for down, off to the party i went.

i have to admit, i was a tiny bit excited. i actually had an awesome gift to give-- a little homemade delight that came straight from the heart and lifted my spirits just in the making. how great is that, to begin to shift the tired and overwhelmed energy--really just by thinking of someone else with warmth and love as you make them something tiny and thoughtful? why do all those wise sayings of 'find yourself in service' or 'get outside of yourself to find the love' begin to ring so true in this instance? when i gave the gift, my sister-in-law was delighted with it, but i'm not sure that's even what did it for me, it was really in the space where i imagined giving her spirit a gift of myself that i was able to warm the very cockles of my heart. (so funny, actually spotted a tray of 'cockles' straight from new zealand the other day in the grocery store. have you ever even known what cockles were? they're sort of like mussels--but the image is so much more complete for me now. kind of like,if you open them up, they are even shaped like a lumpy and imperfect heart).

the evening progressed, songs were sung, crepes were made, snow angels straight out of the jacuzzi were attempted and overwhelm returned to gray the edges. then a moment of transformation overtook me, and i abandoned my tired ego to the joy of the evening...in the room just off the kitchen, two little girls sang into their microphones with wild abandon!!! They didn't care that adults and teenagers looked on laughing, they didn't care that they had never even heard this song before, they only cared to wrap their arms around eachother and rejoice to 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' !! how can they even read the words fast enough to keep up with the song, much less imbue it with such real emotion? a momentary illumination took my own heart, i questioned this week about just what it is parents are teaching their children, the much more important and very life changing question is ..."what are the children teaching their parents?".


aha, notice taken, joy expressed, and cockle-warming diamonds dancing all over the sky.
----------------
Now playing: The Beatles - All You Need Is Love
via FoxyTunes

Sit! stay....stay.....

so i have to be fair and admit that many of my purposes for writing this blog thing are selfish, well probably most of my purposes are selfish--in fact, i'm open to suggestions about any reasons you can think of that this really isn't a wholly self-involved endeavor. that being said, however, i am coming to some really interesting realizations about myself as i write and read the things that appear in this blog. it seems i write differently for an audience, no matter how imagined or inflated in my mind that audience might be...i try to make more sense, come to some conclusions, be a little more reflective than i might be when only writing for myself. i get extremely stream of consciousness when it's just little old me, can't hold a train of thought to save my life, and certainly glad that so far it doesn't seem to be a requirement i care about when doing my personal journaling.

but should i really want others to follow along with general interest, a modicum of appropriate flow does seem important. so why is this point important right now? because when i review myself i find that i've made some really good points that if i would just pay attention to would really go a long way in helping me not to give in to my ultimate demise. case in point--the whole hiberNation theme--clear back in december i actually put it down in black and white that this season didn't feel like any other, and that my body and spirit both seem to really be calling for a respite. in black and white people, and yet here i am clear into january, new year's intentions clearly set and moving full steam ahead. aha, but here's the thing...(i love here's the thing don't you? there always seems to be some kind of thing) my only new year's goal this year was to live a life fully listening to my internal vibration, if you will. to actually pay attention to when my sense of inner self is vibrantly responding to what i am doing or if it is completely disgusted with my current choices.

now i don't mean this on the grand scale, well yes i do, but i mean it on the petite scale as well. to really start to listen to the little choices that lead to all the moments of my day....do i really like this music, does it open my spirit to connecting to those around me in the way i want to connect right now, how do i want to connect right now, do i want to bring that subject up with him or will it be o.k. to just handle it myself, do i want to go out tonight or is a hot bath just the ticket--these are all questions that play in the most brief of ways through my mind and sometimes i just ignore them, plow right on through with my original plan. writing this out like this makes the plan seem very simple and sort of juvenile, but you try it. go ahead, i dare you to be aware all day long about the tiny choices. the thing i like about doing this is the practice, if i practice just the tiny things, it puts me in the right frame of mind or into the zone to feel it when the really tiny tremors come up to help me pay attention to the important stuff--these are signals i miss all the time unless i am in the practicing zone.

back to the thing--if i am acting on this intention then here's what i hear right now...this is not the time to move into any kind of full swing. what actually feels really right on a vibrational level is to allow the learning to flow to me, not to check things off lists--just allow the space for the really good stuff to rise to the top of the list and become the thing i am in the middle of doing. my words in december are ringing in my ears..."the soulself understands the nature of a time for... allowing the universe to catch up with intention". how is it so easy to lose sight of that simple truth for me? does anybody else struggle with this one?

so i'm adding to the epiphany phrases that pop into my brain, the vibrational hints my spirit sends. last week it was let go and let guy,--the whole living in the now thing, but i want to amend that one... how does let go and let dog sound? in the same hibernation blog, i gave myself some inner coaching to Sit and Stay--the same instructions we give our faithful friends when we want them to slow down and take note of something we are trying to teach them, or not to get too excited, or to wait for a damn doggy treat. the dog's life can provide amazing insight into our human lives if we watch them for a minute. so lama, sit...stay...stay... strange as it may sound or read in this case--the phrase goes a long way towards quieting the errant mind and allowing the much needed respite.

(hmmm, so this posting seems totally stream of consciousness, hope it made sense to anyone else but me; if not, thanks for allowing the rant)

----------------
Now playing: Elvis Costello - Alison
via FoxyTunes

what is this "nation" of which you speak?

i'm curious about this state of the nation that has appeared
to descend on me with full force over the past month or so,
whether i like it or not. The "state" to which i am referring
is the "hiber--nation" and it has closed in on me like the frost
on a canadian wolfhound's muzzle in a snowstorm.

over the past few years i have grown much more conscious of so many things as they relate to the seasons, tide, cycles of the moon, resonance with the natural world, but this has really been the first winter that i have been conscious of my own inner cycling attempting to go into hibernation. i am struck almost daily with an inner conflict of the me that means business all the time, and the me that gets things done by setting the intention and moving in that direction. for years, and i mean a whole lifetime here, the me that means business has been the leader of the pack. (hey if we're building a nation, there may as well be a pack of us that live here right?) As i learn a few things about myself, and open my eyes to a more conscious me, i recognize that there are different ways to live my daily life--not by changing the things i do or really even say, but by changing the way i am, perceive, respond, feel, choose to recognize, risk, love and relate with those around me.

the business side of my persona--run by the ego--has a plan for absolutely everything before i even get up in the morning, even if i don't have anything on my agenda for the day. the ego side of me plans what to wear, how to fill the hours, where to go, what route to take, what kind of coffee to drink, hair up or down, up or down, up or down, boots or heels, boots or heels, boots or heels....etc., etc. etc. silly ego, sit, stay...stay.... this is the game i have now entered into with the ego/business side of me. to tame the rabid beast into moments of quietude. how full can one person's head be of all this minutiae and effectively live a life? let me rephrase that, i'm so damn grateful that somehow i became aware of the question "how full can my head be of such minutiae, when my intention is to be living from my heart?"

so this place of living from the heart is a new habit for me, and while i operate from that place with more consistency each day, the ego is a hard habit to break. this brings me back to my original query regarding the state of the nation. truly with the seasonal shift into winter this year, my heart and soul--responding to seasonal, emotional and perhaps spiritual cues moved into some level of hibernation. it was not a conscious choice that i made to settle in for a long winter's nap, but like the bear to it's cave, my self that creates the movement--whoever she is today--is answering a subconscious call to sit, stay...stay... it is a temporary cease fire, if you will, between the doer and the be'er inside of me (funny how be'er is really beer without an apostrophe, i do wonder about the significance of that). my ego me is so incredibly impatient for results, results of things just begun, or even imagined; while the soulself understands the nature of a time for "ebbing" allowing the universe to catch up with intention--allowing long flexed muscles to build and store energy.

if you sort of say the word hibernation with a french accent, the "b" can ever so easily be heard as a "v" and then things slide into focus. if the word is hiver(not hiber)--french for winter--then this pack of selves just shifted into winter mode. and "en hiver" one must do as the bear's do, and go into hibernation, the spring will bring such glorious surprises won't it?

----------------
Now playing: Soul Coughing - Coffee Song
via FoxyTunes

waxing gibbous

ok, so where the hell did the term "waxing gibbous" come from? i'm sure with just a bit of research the answer would be mine, but that's not the answer i seek. really i'm looking for something the other side of the gibbous moon. they say that accidents and suicides increase every full moon and there are some months when i can absolutely understand why.

i can't provide any concrete reason and all indicators should point to a thanksgiving-glazed over sense of bliss, but the ebb season has kicked in with a vengeance! this commentary in no way discounts the many people and experiences for which i am viscerally grateful, that sometimes makes the ebb all that much more difficult to be in with any sort of grace. when there is no real reason to be unhappy and malaise seems to haunt my every thought, it gets a little much to understand. when i really take this feeling out and poke it with a stick, it isn't actually anything resembling depression, i don't have a name for it, just a sense of square peg in round hole

so maybe that's it, i keep on trying to wrap my fucking brain around the situation and it doesn't have a thing to do with the thinking part of me. this is a lesson i seem to need to learn with some consistency of late, that i choose to live based on intuition and feeling, asking that my everpresent "figuring things out" ego/brain dynamic duo kick in really more as a tool than as the director of this one act play. this lesson takes discipline...and honestly, sometimes more discipline than i seem to posses. this is where the whole "lama school" thing really calls for some kind of guru.

maybe that's it, what i am looking for is someone to just spill this all out to and get the ultimate answer, what is this and how do i fix it? damn, even as i say it, my inner-guru is already shouting the answer while standing on a podium in some sort of very large hat...a la rick moranis in space balls. so since i have already spilled it all out to me a million times, the little man with the large hat is screaming get over yourself, you know this isn't real and it will pass so just ride the wave. that feels like a really good answer, but doesn't serve my current need for wailing and gnashing of teeth. ahhh, how do we ever break the terrible cycle of seeking drama?

maybe that's it, just a great big sobbing fest, mirror staring, zit-picking extravaganza. i seriously do think there is something to be said for the sobbing therapy. my mom and a friend of hers--both therapists--came up with the "sobbing therapy" the other day on a road trip, and as they shared their recent lives with eachother, they decided that it would be great to just cry it out even if the tears were crocodile. i like this crocodile drama idea, everything feels stuffed inside and just needs to come bursting out in extreme loudness, breaking of a little bit of glass and maybe just a little hard core dancing to very loud music.

ahh, and now i feel calm, the right answer just appeared in this rant, hard core dancing therapy. this will have to be further discussed in later blogs because now is the time on schprokets when we dance!!!!

thoughts on the labyrinth

i wrote the poem below last year amidst a great deal of chaos in my life. i have been revisiting its themes of late and sensing a different approach. Feeling some pieces of my life to be in a bit of chaos at the moment i read into my own meaning and am a little put off by it. who is this girl and how did she sound so enraptured with absolutely everything around her? while i still love the message of truly entering the dance, boldly stepping into the journey knowing that movement is the direction which brings change, my mood right now isn't feeling all glorious and groovy about the path.

rather i feel quite unsure...what is in front of me, i honestly haven't the faintest idea. i have some pretty clear intentions for myself, and i have learned that specifics are where things can get sticky, so while there are ways i would like things to look in my life, i am feeling this deep underbroiling shift. wow, on the constantly rolling waves out here on the sea of life, how do i gain my sea legs before i drown?

i have this idea that life rolls by us in these patterns of ebb and flow. while it may seem desirable that things are always going my way, i have learned the value of the waves flowing in the opposite direction from time to time. that's where they seem to be flowing right now, not actually against me, just opposite from how they have been flowing. typically i would want to interpret this as just plain against me, but i can't really say that now. it feels more just like i needed some learning from another source or an awakening from alternate resources. so the universe starts to shake things up for me when that kind of learning is at hand. some days it really is just not so easy to embrace the big waves in the spirit they were intended, as some kind of thrill ride. (now i understand how silly i have been to speak the words outloud..."i'm a bit of a thrillseeker")

at any rate, the labyrinth winds on and i weave my way, i'd fancy a scooter about this point in the game for a few moments of leisurely cruising.

Labyrinthine Life

Winding in, gathering up, collecting all
Starting a journey, uncovering where healing steps lead
Do craftsmen commence their plan at its end or is it in beginning a craft that
paths bend towards reward?
Each step a choice that leaves a choice behind, no wonder shoes are so adored
Each pair marks a moment, an occasion, a fleeting glimpse of lessons learned and meaning gained, soul’s therapy revealed in pampering each precious toe
Feet set firmly on course; walking running tripping down, up and around.
Each bump in the road unearths a moment’s memory; how the wind blows, when children play,
Will there be dancing and singing—there is love and laughter.

Reaching center, becoming still, conscious and aware
Hand on heart to hear the rhythm beat its song—is it nourished, cared for, cherished?
Slowed steps at center, closer attention to soles, shoes, path—sticks and stones
Grateful for mercury’s thrumming wings guiding feet to halcyon heights,
And the soulful grounding of steps in guarded message and symbol’s gilded tongue
What a gift this place—right in front of us,
Life’s edges become clouded outside this moment;
And what gods we think ourselves in judging past and future by casting suspicion on the now?
In time, perspective shifts, mirrors reflect another image,
a story untold, a way not yet made known;
How now to learn the fairytale’s end, but to turn again and enter the maze

Arms open wide, wrapped around middle, raised in praise
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Dare we recline as Ophelia, blossoms upon our lips only in death?
We must not refuse to plough the furrow, gather the wildflower,
harvest the thistle and drink the blessed wine,
With fermentation, gestation, determination reaching unchallenged heights and countering blows in glorious song.
Life’s coil, poised to spring, unveils evolving plot
Light shone on fear reveals and releases its mystic power,
Urging us to leave known and familiar; embrace unseen and shadow
Choose a new path, conjure undreamed frontiers, birth brave new worlds
Grab your slippers and enter the mist dancing, rejoicing
A voyage is not sailed; passage not conquered,
way not made clear for those who will not begin the journey,
Paint each little piggy, thrust on your shoes and join the throng with those who run the race; not to win—but to run, to spin, to love

august 2006