6 Degrees of Indra's Net

     Sometimes i think if i were a composer and notes were words it might be easier to sit at the piano to write my thoughts; I would just be the music inside pouring onto the page.  With that in mind' i sing this little tune...

It's been hard to write this month; the music is a little dissonant and i feel sort of in the "thick of the trees", but it's in the writing that the song streams again and i get a better view of the "forest". Life never ceases to amaze me with how intricately its purposes weave through all our many connections.  How the 6 degrees of separation between one person i know and another are not just accidental degrees and when Indra's net of connectivity reveals how much we each are a part of the ONE.  the line in the pattern of the weave that connects me from one to another always tempts me to pick through the intricate design;

how the melody flows from one person to another; one experience to the next; always building on those chords and making the refrain that much more sweet?

This week I went to an earthshaking, heart-beating, drumming, healing night of greatness.  The drummer who began our beat, Toby Christensen (introduced to me by a friend from home), told the group of his own learning in a time spent travelling and exploring his gift with a woman from the West African Dagara tribe.  The further he got into his story, rhythms and beats i realized he was speaking of one of my dearest teachers in 9 Gates Mystery School.

Sobonfu Some 

As Toby began our night of drumming, i set my intention for a rhythmic prayer of healing and with this layer of meaning and relationship i joined in the soul-clarifying work of the drum for myself and so many in my circle-- lessons i recognized from my own study with Sobonfu.


This night of drumming stands out as a pivotal moment between the struggle for understanding i have felt in the past few weeks and the guidance this struggle gives as i prepare to return for another journey in my mystery school training.

in preparation for this journey, I've been clearing through the pressing work on my desk.  this week marked the beginning of our year end campaign for donations, and i began a series of personal calls with major donors.  my deepest desire in these connections is to create a bridge between the heartgiving, passion building spaces of my donors to the needs and deep openings of my programs and their participants--a way to invite their own hearts' song by connecting through spirit and giving.  even as i write this part i start to laugh because the day i sat down to make these calls i lost my voice.  along with a strong cold that i have this week, came pretty intense laryngitis and i wasn't able to make a single call.  So i started writing e-mails, opening deeply to spirit and the words i felt guided to write to these donors.  really simple e-mails, but at the end of a few days of this process i realized what a strong gift the power this listening provides.  when in full voice, i typically find myself ready with some seemingly brilliant thought to share or guidance to offer...and through this week learned, on a much more present and demanding note, the power of listening intently with my heart and getting out of the thinking space of my brain.(a brain/ego set upon producing a clever bit of info or string of words)

Now as i sense the beat calling in the "tribe" of 9 gates--those souls who still unknown to eachother are already members of a deeply heart-bound tribe--i feel so blessed for the very real lesson of listening.  Returning with the intention of service i am so grateful to learn yet again how to get out of the way of old physical patterns which demand attention for the conversational brilliance of an egoic chatterbox, and opening to a deeper space of listening; opening to the opportunity of being of service, answering a request of need, recognizing the wisdom of spirit as it calls for what it needs and i make myself available to answer that call--truly both for myself and others.

Ah the space here of a sounding board, where words truly do become a rythmic song and all the coincidental and synchronistic moments of learning reveal their melodic weave.

The sway of genius...

i will be the first to admit that it has been too damn long since i have spent any real time writing. personal writing time has been incredibly limited of late; however, i will say that i have come to the coffee shop at least 6 times in the past few months with the intent of getting a little introspective, drinking a little warm brew and seeing what comes out of the mix. i did the same thing this morning and what rose to the top? 3 hours of responding to personal e-mail, visiting friends' blogs that i haven't seen for ages, reading a few chapters in books that have been buried under finance reports, spreadsheets and business requirements documents.

and through it all a few thoughts finally took form that felt like something to share more than something to pack away for later...

one e-mail i got held a simple personal call to action... or sort of action, really more an internal attitude adjustment whenever we/i feel action might be required...

T.I.T.L.
"trust in the love"

when faced with the pressures of life, the pain or adversity or joy that shows up in our relationships, interactions, internal journeys and public endeavors--the admonition to see that love is at the root of all these experiences builds the lens and the attraction that love really does conquer all.
when life comes at you in the full force that it has a tendency to do, how can we respond/interpret/act in a way that becomes something we can embrace as a means of helping us on our way to happiness and fulfillment? Turning this question on myself, i love the portence of the quiet statement above. it beckons me to trust that life is always holding me in a sincere and purposeful, loving embrace. the intention for all of the experiences that life sends at me is to find the love there, the beauty, the support, the means of holding me in the greatest aspect of caring and fulfillment that i welcome as a method of learning life's lessons and moving into the fullest and most joyful expression of me.

in my reading today i came across a quote from Heraclitus--predating socrates and plato, "ethos anthropoi daimon". meaning can be interpreted in ways too numerous to count, but for me today the path i went down was this...

frequently interpreted to mean "character determines fate", i meandered through the possibility that character is something we build, it takes an infinite number of tiny moments; becomes much more the wave than the particle, and this for me is the "sway" with which we walk. not just our physical step, but our internal urgings, emotional responses, unique means of being in the world.
along with the sway comes our personal call to perform--not just the loud, public, celebrated performance that sometimes defines a man or woman; but the intimate, constant, glorious and terrible pursuit of our own genius that creates the path of the soul.

so for me this is the sway of genius--daily essence of self moving towards the inner call of the soul, in tiny- inner heartbeats, infinite strokes of genius, creating our own path of learning; may not be extreme, may not be famous, may not ever seemingly appear to deviate from the norm, but we know on the inside how we respond to our own essential call to genius. how we match the burning inner need to realize certain aspects of our own genius on this journey through life.

it was the tiny and meaningful statement of "trust in the love" that honed this realization for me today. life is built to love us/me into the most perfect sway our/my own genius can create. there was a photo accompanying this Trust In The Love...the author's child in a pumpkin patch, how else can this beautiful child behave than to trust that pumpkins will grow, mom will think he is amazing, dad will tear up when he balances on his bike and souls will rejoice as he grows in love!!!(i hope she won't mind that i included that picture bursting with potential above.)

"All life is sorrowful; there is however an escape from sorrow; the escape is Nirvana – which is a state of mind or consciousness, not a place somewhere, like heaven. It is right here, in the midst of the turmoil of life. It is the state you find when you are no longer driven to live by compelling desires, fears, and social commitments, when you have found your center of freedom and can act by choice out of that. Voluntary action out of this center is the action of the bodhisattvas – joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. "
The Power of Myth Joseph Campbell

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Now playing: Peter Cincotti - Sway
via FoxyTunes

milieu

the translation of milieu from french is something like "neighborhood". it seems to have the feel of the word "environs" as well, sort of--whereabouts if you will. i have been giving a lot of thought to the idea of milieu in english of late. applying my own take on the definition, my interpretation for purposes of this blog, is the figurative water in which we swim. this applies not only in general application such as the people who we hang out with--family and friends and the things we like to do, but in tiny nuanced ways as well--these nuances arise all the time and in the most inane or innocuous ways. standing in line at an eating establishment to turn in your dishes and overhearing the kitchen staff talking about the coolest book they've been reading on only eating locally grown food, later hearing that same staffmember singing to themself a little creedence cleerwater and realizing i could really hang with this person whom i've never met; sitting at coffee on a sunday morning next to a stranger, a man, who for all intents and purposes could pass for a nineteenth century train engineer with hat and watch fob intact, then learning that he handcrafts classic furniture from that time with period tools--how cool is that?

so i've been looking at "the water in which i swim" of late and questioning some of my own preconceived notions about my own milieu. exactly how big is this pond i'm swimming in? is it fresh or saltwater, maybe iced tea? are we all just a bunch of salmon swimming upstream to our deaths or is there the occasional exotic interloper who refuses such a call of nature and is frequently satisfied with sunning on the beach? just how often does the water get changed?

it feels to me like my ego does this whole song and dance number to come up with the milieu that feels and looks o.k. to me, with experiences that are welcome and sometimes challenging, but generally within the typical realm of expectations. so what if i begin to shift my expectations radically? what if i realize that my ego has been in control far too long and i no longer care to swim only in safe waters? what if safe/unsafe waters is a bogus notion created by my ego to keep life manageable? and what if the whole notion of a manageable life is exactly what we make of it, not what our parents or compadres have taught us, but just exactly what we as individuals are willing to see in our own environs?

i'm not exactly sure how this applies for me on a day to day basis, what it feels like is that i have been doing this little glide along the lazy river thinking that the banks were way to high to get over and the water moving much too fast, when in another reality i can sprout legs at any minute, jump off my tube and onto the shore--"amphlibious"(ahhh-superpowers at last, walking on land and breathing underwater). the implications are vast and unsettling--my ego is on the run, computing and contriving to pull the plug on this line of inquiry. i get a little happy thinking about the expanding milieu that suddenly opens its way to my line of vision, there is a certain excitement in opening to new possibilities, recognizing new ways of being, opening parts of me that haven't been visited in a long time and finding a milieu for all of it. suddenly the idea of aperfect stranger humming "bad moon rising" is enough to make you want to howl at the moon or at least join the in the humming!