Healing Ceremony: Invitation

The Universe says to me, Love.  Burning to ash has had its use, now become the deep well that forms at the center of the glacier’s melting.

Self Portrait (accidental)

Invitation: from where you are, when you are, I ask you if you will join me in a Holy Ceremony, sacred and spontaneous.  The Universe is holding to me a mirror of the places I refuse to love—the parts and pieces within (and without) where I refuse to receive the love so abundantly offered.  Here are the stories I tell and the myths I believe that prevent me from fully accepting and loving myself, and here are all the reflections of that unlove in a seemingly broken and imperfect world.

Really, there are no words.  In the space of Weaving that was born out of the primal sounds of sacred toning with friends, I saw the web of which you are a part.  A ritual was asking to be born.  This is how I bring it into form: I write an invitation.

Waterfall, Davis Trail, Nay Aug Park, Scranton

Will you stand as a human representation of Love for me?  Will you stand in that space as the External Witness, shining Love out towards me that I might learn to receive it?  Will you let me stand in the place of dissolution, until I melt down, receiving, loving, becoming Love?  Will you let me stand for you as a representation of unconditional love pouring through a human form?  Will you permit me to Witness not only your Wholeness but also your acceptance of that Perfection?

For myself, I will be standing in Ceremony tonight and for as many nights as it takes to come to stillness at the bottom of the well.  I will be calling on the images, the lessons, the offerings of Love which you have (consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or not) offered to me in my journey. I will be (not standing in the fire but) diving into the deluge of this amazing way (relationship) that the Universe instructs the Being in the arts of loving.  If my intuition holds true, there will be a shattering, a cracking of the ice, a melting of all of the myths that I have honored that say I am not lovable, I am not enough, I am not trustworthy, I am not deserving, I am not desirable.  The myths that talk of shame, hatred, loathing, powerlessness, lack, loss, and imperfection will lose their grip here. I’ve already begun to taste the emptiness and freedom of this surrender, and I have glimpsed the Knowing of perfection that is already present.

I call out for help and support and I do so because of what I saw tonight in the vessel of Sacred Sound.   I offer the Image that came to me of the web being woven.  You stand in the place of loving; I stand in the place of receiving.  I stand in the place of loving; you stand in the place of receiving.   Each of us in turn offers apology, love, forgiveness, and gratitude; the line between self and other blurs.  And since each of you will have your own net your own web your own weaving….it’s a re-gridding and a birthing anew of the sacred tapestry.

If I didn’t Know it was already so, I wouldn’t think to ask. The invitation is what is important.  Time, space, distance have no meaning here.  This is work so important and so vital.  It is what it means to be free, to be fully Human, to Know the Divine.  I accept all consequences of this magic, and I’m honored that you are part of the tapestry.  Spirit asked me to ask you (to ask me to ask me) (to ask you to ask you) (to ask you to ask me) to be (part of) this.  And I said Yes.

Thank you.  And Love.

Dreaming is the Secondary Function of the Womb

“…Dreaming is the secondary function of the womb—the primary being reproduction and whatever is related to it.  They told me that dreaming is the natural function in women, a pure corollary of energy.  Given enough energy, the body of a woman by itself will awaken the womb’s secondary functions, and the woman will dream inconceivable dreams…”—Florinda Donner, Being-in-Dreaming: An initiation into the Sorcerers’ World (HarperOne, New York, 1991).

I’m going to start doing some writing around women, the womb, and blood in general, and the Bleeding Time in particular.  I’ll probably though sex in there, too, and relationship, just so it stays interesting.  It’s been brewing for a while, and if I don’t start giving birth this baby is going to fester within me.   It’s time to be Dreaming more deeply, and to risk walking into the world more visible, more vulnerable, and more feminine.

For nearly two years, I lost contact with my womb and with my grounding.  This, would of course, seem to indicate that I had been in previous intimate and permanent contact with my body or women’s center.  I may have been, though not consciously.  Fortunately, the magic of living means that life continues even when we fail to notice.

It doesn’t surprise me that, being a sensitive being, I developed some confusion around the deepest place of the sacred feminine housed in the flesh of my body.  My mother’s womb was surgically removed (for sound medical reasons, I’m sure) shortly after I began to bleed, and while I recognized the sacred magic of my own seasons and cycles of fertility, I didn’t find those images honored or recognized in the larger world.  I crafted my own coming of age passage, learned to track my moon, and yet

While I never rejected myself as a woman, a subtle pattern of androgyny crept in under my skin.  Attending a women’s college, I was surrounded by strong, smart, funny women, yet as I trained in biology and I undertook the rigors of an education that supported a drive to results, activities, and a very full schedule, it took more digging to uncover the slow, still, receptive moments of nurture.  One cannot be schooled in feminine wisdom; it is something embodied and gathered in from generation to generation, womb to womb.

I’m telling my own story, because it contains the words I have to describe the sink and decent into an understanding and acceptance of the void, the power of creation, and the deep inner knowing that frees and empowers us as women living in the world that is struggling to wake up out of a dream that I describe as a denial of the Sacred Feminine and a wounding of the Sacred Masculine.

***

I work, primarily, as a solo eclectic, and also in depth and sacred partnership.  I weave the sacred and the magic into a budding network of loose collectives, women, men, warriors.  I work within the world, within the culture, within the dream of a modern society that is remembering the balance of the holy.  I work within the vessel of my Self, my body, my mind, and my spirit.

Canyon Cave Womb

Gift of Life 1 (c) Corinna Stoeffl (http://www.stoefflphotography.com/) Thunderstom over Mt. Pedenal

On the most recent trip to NM, I spent 15 out of 21 days sleeping without walls (3 days traveling, and 2 days inside).  How I hunger for this.

Between time in the wilderness outside of Grants NM and my time in Las Vegas at Rose Mountain, I spent the night in Abiqu (think Georgia O’Keefe), on my friend Corinna’s land. (Check out her photography, she has such soul!)  I walked in the canyon which held me for half of my retreat time last summer.  The August Full Moon marked the Lunar Anniversary of that personal solo, a month mostly of solitude, silence, and the space of non-doing in the wild places.  This time, this next moon cycle of remembrance and moving forward, is a month of checking in to the depth and mystery of the canyon.

Bean Creek.  I wandered back into this chasm in the earth more deeply on this brief trip.  Last August, I spent much of my time in a shady space of the canon where the wall made a cave of cool dimness still open to the sky.  Then, the ground was level, open, and wide enough that I spent over half of my waking hours lying on my yoga mat being restructured by the Universe in body, mind, and spirit.

A huge rain washed out the bottom of “my” canyon-cave.  As I left last year, and as I now find, there is no real floor left there.  Now, I journeyed back further along the vaginal curves of the wash to the very womb at the heart of the canyon.  There, for this one afternoon’s visit, I could curl up and dream.

I know better than to speak out loud too many of a canon-cave-womb’s Mysteries. Yet, I am reminded of the continued journey, the continued rebirthing, and the sacredness of the land of the heart.

“Door of my heart, open wide I keep for Thee

Wilt thou come, wilt thou come?

Just for once, come to me.

Will the day fly away, without seeing Thee my Lord?

Night and day, night and day,

I look for thee night and day…

Door of my heart, open wide I keep for Thee…” –Paramahamsa Yoganandaji

Out of the Office

It’s been a while.  The blog, it’s coming back.

If you sent me an e-mail any time between the end of July and the middle of August, you’d receive a reply:

Hello!  Thank you for your e-mail!  I’ll be out of the office July 25-August 11, 2009, and will return your message as I am able.

For much of this time, I was cooking for a retreat called Deep Listing at Rose Mountain, Las Vegas, NM.  We had a fantastic menu (if I do say so myself), acres of wilderness, and small solar panels to run our simple lights and pump the rain catch from storage tanks to the roof for gravity pressured running water.  No cell phone, no land line, and certainly no e-mail.  Cabin-tent (just like Scout Camp) and outhouse (with great reading material and an even better view).  Oh yes, Full Moon, Lammas, Eclipse, and retreatants drawn out to play with sound, silence, dreaming, creativity, and movement.

Dusk out back of the Cook-Cabbin, Rose Mountain

Mikva, the living waters

It was great.  And I got two extra nights on the mountain, which gave me the first proper Sabbath I’ve had in a very long time.  Gratitude is an understatement.  As a friend’s reply reminded me, my “away message” is somewhat deceiving; as it turns out, my office is a very large place called the Universe.

ps – (writes Cal) I love that you refer to yourself as being “out of the office”  I guess I never think of you as being in the office, but I’m glad you’re getting out of it.  very, very out

Really, these days, I’m always in the office, especially when I’m “very, very out”.  My trip started with deep partner work in the wild places outside Grants, NM.  With that energy still processing its way through my structure, I prepared to transition up to Rosemountain.  I love it when Spirit sends me to amazing places for assignments, and these day’s I’m recognizing how (be it inner, outer, or some combination,) there is always an assignment from Spirit to See and be Present to the moment.

My foot. Las Vegas Wilderness. Sabbath.

So what do I do on assignment?  Tend carefully to a variety of special food needs, help nurse a participant through an acute attack of altitude sickness (we were up over 8,200ft; he is from the sea), wild-craft herbs for stimulating morning elixirs and soothing evening tisanes, and, yes, sharing a kitchen and cooking for 19, for starters.

Channa Masala, our last supper.

I was quietly conversing after supper with a few retreatants, gently offering some healing work, when someone asked, “Is all of this part of your job description?” My pause time is shortening as learn to reply, “Yes, it’ is part of my Job Description from the Universe, though not necessarily part of what I was hired for here.”  “I like that,” she replied.  “It’s good to recognize your real work.”  Yes, yes it is.  And to do it unwaveringly wherever I am and see how I’m always paid well in the process.

When looked at in these terms, as a Spiritual Warrior, my employer (Spirit) is first rate, the benefits (what with the grand views and the witty repartee of the supportive minions) are good, job security is tight, and I’m seeing more of my (human and non-human) colleagues these days (hallelujah!). I’m recognizing that my role is to be wherever I am, which casts me something like a “Healer or Teacher in Residence” (which is not all that unlike “chief cook and bottle wash,” or “friendly garden gnome” but requires less particular costuming.)

Now that I’m recognizing my job description on a 4-D level (that is the level of the heart, soul, and spirit), it’s even starting to come through in 3-D.  (i.e. the kind of “jobs” that come to me in terms of money, look for me in the kitchen, at the conference table, or at your local yoga studio or community event; it may look like I’m cooking, taking notes, or folding blankets, and I am, while also listening, weaving, seeing, and touching.)

My job description is: “To be present and show up fully to the myriad of invitations presented by the unfolding universe.  Stay vigilant to opportunities for personal and collective transformation.  Take each encounter as an opportunity to expand freedom, grow, and in that way be of service.  Please, do not take yourself too seriously.”

Creation is about relationship.

Bright blessings on your journey.

“To bare our souls is all we ask, to give all we have to life and the beings surrounding us.  Here the nature spirits are intense and we appreciate them, make offerings to them…sealing our fate with each other, celebrating our love.”  –Alex Grey

In Training: The Yoga of Travel

Tr-yoga/ Yog-ain

Tryogain

What would you do if someone handed you eight hours, whatever you’d packed in your bag, and a small, well defined space to be in?

Las Vegas Train Station, the adventure begins

Watching my fellow train travelers, some of us become delighted (hmmm….can I do yoga here?  Look, an outlet and time to write!).  Some of us become distracted (how many phone calls can I make, texts can I send, or attempts can I make to connect to a mysterious wireless network?).  Some of us become irresolutely malcontent (there was “poor Aunt Peggy’s” niece who seemed convinced that Amtrak was playing out a personal vendetta through the series of engine malfunctions delaying arrival.)

Our first view of the East-bound, South West Cheif, over 7 hours behind schedule, but who was counting?

Travel in general, and travel by train, leaves no room to imagine that I am in control of arrival, speed, or conditions.  It reminds me to surrender early and often.  And it gives me time to write.

If cross country train travel is the only time I write, I might need to start traveling more.  Certainly, as I find myself on an east bound train currently almost half a day late, there is ample time to think, space to write, and a lot of humanness to observe.  A friend reminds me that the unconscious life is no easier than the engagement required of the spiritual life of evolving freedom.  In that there is a point where the choice is irrevocable.

I’ve chosen and am chosen.

Certainly this last span of time hasn’t been easy.  (A friend calls these times AFGO—Another Fucking Growing Opportunity; constant growth is productive and not necessarily comfortable, but I’ve written about that before.)  Really, I’ve been so busy living, growing transforming, that there hasn’t been time to write.  My ordination in March fired me to undertake a ministry that I didn’t fully comprehend, and so when nothing appeared as I thought it would (even though I wasn’t conscious that I had a set of pre-conceived notions), the dynamic tension between polarity of the inner landscape and the outer reality became too much.  Or was that inner reality and outer landscape?

Two weeks in Santa Fe for healing, and a prayer:  “Okay, Spirit, I heard you call.  I came.  And I can’t do what you ask alone.  So, if there are others here—colleagues, playmates, friends—that I am blind to, open my eyes.  If they aren’t here, could you send some really, really fast.  And if they aren’t coming, could I go back to where my people are until others arrive or until I can lure folks to come back with me?”

As a beloved elder commented when she heard this prayer, “That’s being Real with God and shows you know that God is real.”  Amen, sister.  It’s all as real as it gets.

I returned back to PA to step back into the fire; a do or die move.

More to the point, things shifted.  Especially once I realized that while I feared that undergoing the transformation that would heal my sense of disconnect because I thought it would in some way further alienate me and make it impossible to stay with the situation at hand (rather like an electron that become super charged and jumps a valence level), my greater fear was that I would resolve the duality and suddenly no longer have to struggle to stay.  I’d be free to stay.  I’d be free to go.  In that kind freedom endless energy becomes available and it becomes possible to stay on even the most arduous course.

Beautifully frightening, scarily alive.  It’s not always easy, but it does tend to be remarkably simple.

I began to realize that heart breaking grief, bone shaking anger, gut wrenching fear were not signs that something was wrong.  Likewise, effortless joy, heart melting bliss, and soothing contentment were not necessarily signs that things were right.  As right and wrong began to lose both their polarity and their meaning, my whole world opened up.

First, I stepped into some intensive work that was highly rewarding and called on every skill I’ve ever cultivated and used every experience, job, and training I’ve ever held.  Then, I met some new people, discovered other yogis and healers (literally right around the corner).  Moreover, some of the small, subtle tensions that come up when an adult daughter moves in with her adult mother came to a head, and mum and I stepped up to the plate. (It’s not over, but it’s started.  Relationship is like that.)

Yesterday, sitting for seven hours on the hard brick yard of the Las Vegas, NM train station waiting for the train, I felt how, while there is often a bit more work involved in making an east bound trek, this is nothing personal.  I’ve just spent a week in the Mountains, cooking, praying, meditating, eating, breathing, sleeping, sitting, walking.  I’m reminded that just being is a creative act.  And that all the need to do, to be busy, to use this time of waiting is somehow less interesting than breathing and being grateful for the moon rise.

I find that I’m neither looking forward to the blessed moment when I can unpack my bags and stop moving nor clinging to this luminal space of travel.  In the mountains I noticed how constant my mind chatter is and how effectively this constant thinking keeps me “me”– small, tight, and “safe”.  The unpredictable motion of the train makes being present easier and being with strangers lets me hear and unravel the stories I tell; there are so many fewer options, so little I can control, and it is so clear that worry and effort will be ineffective.

Have Mat, Will Travel. (This picture is true to form though I cheat--it's was actually taken in the Atlanta Airport on Route to Santa Fe, not on the train. I won't tell if you won't tell...)

In the café car this morning, I found a bit of space and made it through my yoga practice.  Every pose is a balance pose on a moving platform.  When the attendant came down (just as I made a vigorous step back into Warrior II), he said, “Ooo-kay.  Don’t kick me, right?”  I promised, “I won’t kick you if you let me keep stretching.”  Later, he shared his (brief, positive) experience with yoga and we talked about hip openers.  Moving with grace.

I have gratitude that I can use this spaciousness of waiting and delay as a gift and not an irritation.  I’ll have a full day in Chicago, money for food, and a bed for the night.  (Amtrak rocks, by the way, in the way they deal with a less than ideal situation.  I’m impressed.)  Just to be in the spaciousness that allows for this, the level of nourishment and the clarity free from fatigue…such a blessings, a mitzvah.

You are Brilliant, the Earth is Hiring.

A friend just sent me this post of a commencement address by Bill Hawkins.  According to the e-mail, “Paul Hawken is a friend of CharityFocus, renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist, founder of Wiser Earth and author of many books — most recently Blessed Unrest.”

Commencement Address to the Class of 2009
University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009

Here’s some quotes:

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world….

….The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy….

….So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past….

For the whole brilliant rest, follow this link.

e.e. cummings – INTRODUCTION from New Poems

The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople– it’s no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than the squarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings; mostpeople are snobs. Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to mostpeople? Catastrophe unmitigated. Socialrevolution. The cultured aristocrat yanked out of his hyperexclusively ultravoluptuous superpalazzo, and dumped into an incredibly vulgar detentioncamp swarming with every conceivable species of undesirable organism. Mostpeople fancy a guaranteed birthproof safetysuit of nondestructible selflessness. If mostpeople were to be born twice they’d improbably call it dying–

you and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough. We are human beings; for whom birth is a supremely welcome mystery, the mystery of growing: which happens only and whenever we are faithful to ourselves. You and I wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find it becoming. Life, for eternal us, is now’ and now is much too busy being a little more than everything to seem anything, catastrophic included.

Life, for mostpeople, simply isn’t. Take the socalled standardofliving. What do mostpeople mean by “living”? They don’t mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science,in its finite but unbounded wisdom, has succeeded in selling their wives. If science could fail, a mountain’s a mammal. Mostpeople’s wives could spot a genuine delusion of embryonic omnipotence immediately and will accept no substitutes.

-luckily for us, a mountain is a mammal. The plusorminus movie to end moving,the strictly scientific parlourgame of real unreality, the tyranny conceived in misconception and dedicated to the proposition that every man is a woman and any woman is a king, hasn’t a wheel to stand on. What their synthetic not to mention transparent majesty, mrsandmr collective foetus, would improbably call a ghost is walking. He isn’t a undream of anaesthetized impersons, or a cosmic comfortstation,or a transcedentally sterilized lookiesoundiefeelietastiesmellie. He is a healthily complex, a naturally homogenous,citizen of immorality. The now of his each pitying free imperfect gesture, his any birth of breathing, insults perfected inframortally milleniums of slavishness. He is a little more than everything, he is democracy;he is alive:he is ourselves.

Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn, a human being; somebody who said to those near him, when his fingers would not hold a brush “tie it to my hand”–nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false, nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal. Nothing ordinary or

extraordinary, nothing emptied or filled, real or unreal; nothing feeble and known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints childrening, innocent spontaneaous, true. Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden, but actually flowers which breasts are among the very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted;brain over heart, surface:nowhere hating or to fear;shadow,mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making;only each other building always distinct selves of mutual entirely opening;only alive. Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno,impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong;never to gain or pause,never the soft adventure of undoom,greedy anguishes and cringing ecstasies of inexistence;never to rest and never to have;only to grow.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question

Miracles are to Come

“Only a few achieve the colossal task of holding together, without being split asunder, the clarity of their vision along side an ability to take their place in a materialistic world. They are the modern heroes….Artists at least have a form within which they can hold their own conflicting oppositions together. But there are some who have no recognized artistic form to serve this purpose, they are artists of the living. To my mind these last are the supreme heroes in our soulless society.”–Irene Claremont de Castillejo

Sometimes it’s trial by fire.  And sometimes, it’s a flood of tears.  I’m not holding them back, these tears.

Sometimes it’s vibrant.  Sometimes it’s a rock and a hard place.  The Warrior’s Calling becomes even more keen when being born feels like dying.

These prayers for connection, integrity, and embodiment are not only my own.  I can hear the Earth praying with and through me.  The Mother’s prayers mirror my own desperate longing to heal the split between Heaven and Earth, Idea and Form, Philosophy and Practical Reality.  I’m praying for help.

There is a huge sadness in my heart like I might feel in the space before the telephone call saying that someone dear had died.  I have a Knowing that is a Feeling and yet no reason (and every reason) to go with it.

As far as I can tell, all my beloveds are safe and sound, so I wonder if some part of me has died or is dying…this happens.  Sometimes this is necessary, often this is beautiful, frequently this is healing, clarifying, and strengthening.  We are a Resurrection people, after all, so perhaps this is fitting.  Dying and being born.   And then part of me feels like I am dying, being snuffed out, not as a phoenix rising from the ashes but as a damp and smoldering campfire.  I’d be worried if I weren’t so tired.

That said, this tenderheartedness is making me bold about stating the disconnect I’m seeing.  And in many facets of my life it’s mirrored back that others are grateful for this Seeing because they too See, and yet don’t know what to say.  So in my Warrior’s Stance, I’ve vowed to speak it in a couple key places.  I know I can’t live in a state of incongruousness much longer–it breaks my heart and drains my energy so that I have little left to live, breathe, or dream. So I pray for the energy to be so bold as to state the incongruity and to pull myself together to gather the energy to dream differently.

I pray that what I Know and See and Speak can be received and that it will gather other hungry hearts together to build a new model.  If not, I pray that Way will open so that I may depart and open into community that does feed me.  Perhaps this means I can learn to live in the split world without being split myself.  Perhaps, I will be freed (or free myself) to rejoin the pockets of beloveds that are dreaming differently and live wholly and holy; for long or short, a respite to heal this breaking heart and remember a space of not being split feels more than necessary.

Mating Dance

Keepin’  the connection real.  I’m playing with words like desire, want, will, commitment, value, and priorities–and there are lots of things circling around that urge renewed clarification on all of these things…Most specifically, I can feel the challenge and the charge around “wanting” anything and the “risk” to set and act on clear intention.

I spent most of the day in a kind of courtship dance with an Integrative Health group called Inner Harmony and Wellness Center.  As that courtship continues, I will come to choice points and need to be clear.  I feel a lot of openness, but not a ton of excitement around the whole thing.  Am I cautious, callus, or a cold?  What does my womb think of all of this?

Much of this aloofness stems, I think, from a certain hesitancy I feel in my willingness and ability to vision and commit to being here long term.  (How do I want to live my life and can this place support that?)  There, too, is the question of whether my life purpose and Dream support and are supported by being on the cutting edge of Integrative Health in such a way.  Regardless, as things shift and settle, I will be making some choices and commitments while also evaluating past choices, commitments, and priorities which could have huge ripples on all the ways in which I live.  As poet David Whyte says,  “Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”  I’m feeling simultaneously too big and too small for the whole concept and conversation.

What brings me alive?  You alive?  Us alive?  Is this courtship intersting simply because it’s nice to be courted or is there good chemistry?  And is good chemistry enough?  Would I sleep with, eat with, sweat with this?  Would let a baby develop from this seed and nourish it with my own life blood?  If yes, is it the dashing grin or the sports car that is most sexy?  If not, what am I looking for in a mate of this (or any) kind; where am I afraid, frozen, or numb?

What are my values, what is my value, what do I value?

Tomorrow I get to have a long awaited conversation about an idea that I keep dreaming about creating living/retreat space for myself at Spring Hills Tree Farm and being part of the retreat setting they are creating.  Friday marks the 2nd of 3 Whole Foods Cooking Classes I’m offering (which seem to be very successful and are generating enthusiasm).  And I’m tired.  Muddled.  Restless.  Evaluating.   Not feeling exactly sexy or turned on by any of this;  where stems the low libido–inside or outside? If the tickling finger moved a little to the left or touched the back of the heart, would everything blossom open?

I’m wondering what life is, and the value of existing for existence’s sake.

…what are you lookin’ at?

Blessed Unrest

Blessed Unrest.

So, I just bought a ticket for a workshop in Santa Fe the first weekend in June: Mantra, Marma, and Asana—that’s Sound, Touch, and Movement if you want to skip the Sanskrit.  (I’m excited.)

It’s a plane ticket.  (I’m not excited).  On one hand it is a fantastic opportunity to deal with inner conflict, to break through all sorts of stories and moral judgments upon myself; on the other it’s just another opportunity that feels like self-important pedaling up hill.

At first, I looked at flying and found that it was going to be significantly less expensive…at least in terms of cost to me, hours of travel, and ease of pick-up/drop off…social, environmental, and energetic impact…well these are more expensive.  I can see all the other expenses, and I can’t plead ignorance.

Then, there was an extra fee.  And then the ticket was purchased.  And then I realized that if I end up taking the Airport shuttle up from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, my net savings is approximately $70 (and 4 extra days in Santa Fe).  So, here I am with a plane ticket, and all the value and savings have evaporated.

I’m heart-broken.  I feel like I’ve lost my inner compass.  I don’t know what I value, where I am, or the energy of connection, consciousness, and collaboration I can and want to create.  I can do nothing wrong and yet I can do nothing right.  Airport and flying, and here it is National Train Month.

A deep exetestnetial uneasiness. A final meaninglessness.  I’ll be writing more about the Suburban Dream (and the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium I went to last weekend) and how it is increasingly uncomfortable to be living within it.  It is a blessed unrest; as I stay with it, it will catalyze a shift that is unbreakable.  There is, of course, an opportunity to move into equanimity and equilibrium with my own conflict around the disconnect that is common in the world around me.  To recognize that we are all doing the best we can to wake up and move into wholeness and to embrace my wholeness regardless of the external environment.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter.  We exist, we experience, and the universe continues (with or without the human species or even the planet Earth.)

A master moves in and from stillness.  Can I stay within this blessed unrest, this time of deepest potential, to clarify, refine, sharpen, soften, and complete metamorphoses?