What's Different??

      A few weeks ago, I heard a voice three days in a row say to me, "Do something different." For months already I had taken on the practice of looking for what is different on and off all day, or after a particular conversation or event, or for no reason at all. I would notice how I felt, what was happening in my heart, my body, my energy, as well as what was appearing in the field around me, in my life. I am still doing this now, although it is more of a 'happening' than a 'doing'.
     This is a wonderful way to increase brain plasticity and break the primitive neurological habit of constantly looking for the same thing, while not seeing the new things that may be arising right in front of us or within us.

     I notice as I rapidly approach the age of 65, (totally in shock by the number!) there is a tendency to do what is easy, simple, stay in my comfort zone, at least in terms of the outer world. My inner world is much more expansive than my outer world and I am responding to the Call to shift that. I am increasingly aware that life is short and every day counts and any day could be the last.

      It's like the story of the Natives on the shore not seeing the ships coming in because they had no reference for them. They didn't see the ships, but we can begin to expand our horizons and references for what is new and different by choosing to look for that, thereby becoming aware of new possibilities beyond our limited imaginings.

       How many times have we prayed and asked for things to change or shift and feel like nothing much is happening because we already have an idea or image about how it is suppposed to look, or how it will arrive. What have we missed doing this, instead of looking for what's different?
       What if we gave up all ideas and images about how things are, how they should be, how something we've asked for should look or be? What if we put forth our requests and prayers and simply know nothing? We really don't know anything - it is only the egoic mind that thinks it knows or pretends to know.
       What if we are already "standing, now, quietly, in the new life" but don't recognize it because we are hooked on seeing things in old ways?
        So, looking for what's different and taking on the practice of doing 'something different', no matter how small, ordinary, or seemingly insignificant, will take us into new 'neighborhoods' both in the outer worlds of our experience, as well as within our own minds, hearts, and consciousness.

      We are inter-dimensional beings... why not travel the many parallel realities available to us, using the vehicle of simple questions and behaviors that take us out of the old, conditioned attitudes, beliefs, and ways of being and doing? We can ask simple, open-ended questions like, "What could be different here?" or "How can I be different here?" "What am I not seeing in this situation?" "What is possible beyond my imagining here?"

       Looking for what's different, doing things differently, opening to the field of all possibilites is life changing. Now is the time to step up and step into our fullness of being, without any idea of what that is, what it looks like, or what is even possible.

Info on the Photo I Wrote About

A dear old friend sent me a link to Wikipedia's info on Kevin Carter, the photo-journalist who took the photo i wrote about below. Here it is--it speaks of Kevin Carter's life and death, and shows the photo...still heart-breaking to see and feel.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carter
We live in a harsh world, with exquisite islands of sweetness and beauty and trancendance. I seem to have a call to look at the darkness as well, to hold it in sacred space as the polarity of light that it is, knowing that the essence of both light and dark are the same, come from the same unified field, same Source--a concept the egoic mind cannot grasp, but our hearts can. This image, once again, breaks my heart open... Some are called to bear witness to these horrors and allow our hearts to be broken open into greater love and others have another calling or path in service to the world... Om Shanti Shanti... May all beings be at peace...

Re-decorated the Blog this Morning!

I received feedback that my last color scheme was hard to read so this morning I decided to re-do the colors. I hope you can see it clearly, please let me know if there is a problem. I also added some writings on various things, and hope that something touches your heart in some mysterious way.

Bearing Witness

            I wrote this on Winter Solstice of 2004 and when i woke this morning, I felt guided to put it up on the blog. I often have no idea why, rarely know anything about the guidance I get, so I just follow it and see what happens.  At the time I wrote this, I had been deeply mindful of the imminence of Light with the Solstice happening as well as the religious holidays.  There was for me a strong  presence of the Holy Child. 
            It has been my practice for a long time to not know what anything is and to ask, to pray to be shown through direct experience rather than what my mind tells me.  This practice evokes a deep conversation with the Mystery and is one of the main things happening in our new Boulder Temple group.  When the conversation arose in the community about bearing witness I asked to be shown.  
            Last week I went with writing friends to see an exhibit of the Pulitzer Prize winning photos since 1941.  I had no idea ahead of time what an intense and powerful experience this would be.  There were many very large, mostly black and white, photos in several galleries, and each had a written description of what was happening when the picture was taken, as well as comments from the photographer about his/her experience taking the photograph.  There were a handful of light, happy photos including one of five beautiful Nigerian women hugging and jumping in ecstatic celebration as they realized they had won an Olympic bronze for running.  Amidst a sea of deeply disturbing and heart-breaking images of war, famine, assassinations, and people falling from burning buildings, I was drawn to an image of a small child in the Sudan. 
            At first I was horrified, my heart clenched, and I burst into tears.  I had to take deep, slow breaths to open my heart wider in order to keep looking, in order to keep seeing, to truly bear witness to this little girl.  The impulse to draw back was strong, but the pull to be there, to really bear witness was stronger.  I couldn’t leave.  I couldn’t look away.  I saw a tiny, skin-and-bones African child, a little girl, squatting on the dry earth, bent over with her arms extended and leaning into the earth, her face down in the dirt.  She had beads around her neck and bracelets on her tiny wrists.  Her little hand was clutching a piece of straw.  In the background were some straw huts.  About three feet behind her sat a huge, white-masked vulture looking directly at the child.  Waiting. 
            I could not take my eyes away.  I bought the book of the photos.  I felt compelled to stay with her, to let her live in my heart.  I prayed for her, for her family and people.  They starved to death or died of the diseases that run rampant from the lack of sanitation, clean water and medical treatment.  I couldn’t write a word—there were no words—until almost a week later, a week of just being with her, being with the vulture, being with myself, being with the Mystery of it.  Once again I realized that nothing is what we think it is, nothing is simply what it appears to be.        
            Through the sitting with it, opening to it, feeling what arose, doing Samyama, layers of direct experience began to unfold: the horror and pain of the fact that entire villages have been wiped out, people now, today in 2004, are dying of starvation and disease.  Why?  How can this be?  I  recognized and felt my own inner Little Girl who knows that place of utter aloneness, that place we all know way deep inside, of being on this planet alone and utterly fragile, separate and cut off from our own mother’s love, feeling totally separate from The Mother.  As I opened to this utter aloneness I could feel that place of collective separation, the point where spirit enters human form and our sense of union with Ultimate Love gets forgotten, at least obscured at times by being in a human body.  It’s an archetypal wound we carry, to some degree, and may have gotten translated as “original sin.”  
            Like this little girl, we are all trying to make our way to the “feeding station”, the place of true nourishment and connection, the place where the human experience of separation is finished.  Sometimes we know we are there, one with the Mother, sometimes we feel we will never get there and fall into deep despair.  I tuned in and could feel the world-wide suffering, the collective despair and starvation of souls at all levels.  I prayed for all the souls on the planet that feel ravaged by this life, by war, starvation, abuse, betrayal, by simply being human and having to walk this walk.  Starvation in the Sudan is no longer some fact on the news for me, and this child is not just a number among the famine victims.  I feel the devastation, the fragility and tenderness of being human, humbled by what I am given.  I feel more love flowing through my heart for having “met” this little girl.  Bearing Witness, I am discovering, is a true, deep meeting—with other, with self, and with the Mystery.
            I tuned in the vulture and have spent a lot of time with her, too.  From the place of being that child, face-down in the dirt, barely living and clearly dying, all alone, the vulture is a loving, comforting, benevolent presence for me.  I recognize Her energy.  I know this vulture, this Being, at some level already.  As the child, I feel relieved she is there, relieved not to be alone.  Death is preferable to being so ultimately alone at the edge like this.  I feel into the vulture and realize She is the Divine Mother in one of Her terrible disguises.  Her presence and love hold me. 
            My experience of the photo has now completely transformed.  Bearing witness, allowing myself to open and step into it, receive what is there beyond my thoughts about what is there, has taken me somewhere unexpected.  My mind has stopped, my heart now is flowing with love for the child and the vulture.  I feel deepened and touched by the Mystery.
            Curious about vultures, I looked it up in Alice Walker’s Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (I highly recommend this book), and discovered that the vulture is an ancient totem of the Great Goddess.  In Egypt She was called Nekhbet, the vulture-headed Mother, worshipped as the origin of all things and the guardian of the gates of death and rebirth.  Nekhbet is one of the Two Mistresses: in the east is the serpent goddess Buto who was said to bring the sun to birth; in the west, Nekhbet daily ordained death.  Nekhbet is a Kali figure, a Presence I know so well.  The Egyptian symbol for grandmother is the also the vulture goddess.  This brought another synchronicity, because the week before going to the photo exhibit, I experienced a visitation by the spirit of a beautiful Love Child, a granddaughter, not yet born.  I immediately recognized her, knew her, and was completely melted by the Love that she is, that she emanates, and evokes.  Her Light is ineffable.  Whether she will incarnate, take a body, I don’t know.  The Love she quickened in me continues to flow through me like thick golden honey.  So I have the bookends of this Child of Light and the Child of the Darkness and realize that, beyond all appearances, the Love is the same.              
            All of this has been utterly profound.  My heart feels larger, softer, more tender, and both of those little girls, as well as my own inner little girl, now rest here in my heart.  I am grateful for the gift of Bearing Witness, the revelation of the Mystery and the grace of the Mother that is always present.  I discovered once again, that everything is a portal to the Mystery, no matter what the appearance is.  What calls to us, either by attraction or revulsion, is an invitation to a conversation, a meeting, with the Mystery. 
            The last part of this story is about the 33-year-old photographer who took the photo.  He wrote that several times he chased the vulture away, and sat under a tree and cried for this child and for his own heart-breaking, gut-wrenching dilemma.  They were told not to touch any of  the famine victims because of the wide-spread diseases they carried, so he did not pick her up, though his heart cried out to.  Later when the photos were out in the world, and he won the Pulitzer, he received a lot of attack for not picking up the little girl.  Shortly after this, his best friend, also a photojournalist, was murdered, and then he took his own life.  The photo of him in the book showed a very beautiful, sensitive looking young man who had spent most of his career bearing witness to the violence and horrors in South Africa.   He also rests in my heart.  I am in awe of the mysterious ways we are connected and our lives are tied to the lives of people who, at one moment were strangers, and in the next, our beloveds.  May you feel the Holy Child in your own heart and find the Mystery in the ordinary moments of your life.

 

Our Hearts & the Planetary Shift

      There was so much talk about 2012 and shifting consciousness, and in the midst of the most astounding de-construction of life as we have known it. Some thought 2December 21, 2012 was going to be another anti-climactic re-run of the milennium. Some though it was to be the end of the world, yet we are still here in 2013. The ground of our lives and the planet is shaking and shifting. We can see and are being affected by what is going on in the collective field, not to mention what may be de-constructing in our own lives, inner and outer. We are the collective field, we are participants as well as sacred witnesses. We are part of the holographic universe—what’s happening ‘out there’ is also happening within each of us, and what occurs within our own hearts affects what goes on ‘out there.’ I am mindful now that every day is the end of our world as we knew it.
      There is no 'out there' and there is no 'then'--it's all here now. There is no us and no them, either. We are literally in a cosmic shift—an astronomical shift of the planet on its axis, as well as a shift of consciousness like no others witnessed by anyone alive on the planet now. Some say it began in 1987 with the Harmonic Convergence. I am just beginning to read up on what people are saying about 2012, and find i am most interested in the facts, the astronomical facts, the information about world ages that can be verified geologically, and also the ancient prophecies made and left to us by people who lived through the last shift of a world age. They left information for us and it's up to us to look at it and make choices about how we are going to go through this transition from one world age to another. Astrology tells us we are moving from the Piscean Age into the Aquarian Age. What does that mean? What is 2012? We are the ones at the cutting edge now, we are in the front row of what is unfolding. We are the ones to choose how we go through this death/birth on a personal and a collective level.
      We are passing through the end of a world age, called a yuga in the Hindu tradition, and we are witnessing the de-construction and dissolution of old forms and structures in the outer world, as well as within ourselves and our own lives. In august 1936, Edgar Cayce, from one of his trance states said, “…there is a shifting of the pole. Or a new cycle begins.” The Maya and other Meso-American people have predicted this, with the Mayan calendar being a very clear physical ‘map’ of this event.
      There is much chaos and fear in the collective planetary field, in the U.S., and perhaps in our own lives and hearts, as the ground we have known shakes with the tremors of big change and dissolution of the known. We are being affected by the economic crises, climate changes, natural disasters, the crisis in food production and famine, wars around the world, political and racial divisiveness in our own country and the world, the extinction of precious animals and sea life, diseases for which there are no cures, stress on our immune systems by so many toxins, the health care crisis, greed, deceit by government officials, inhumane acts, violence in our schools, churches and towns. The list seems endless, solutions can seem overwhelming or impossible, and yet, something else is happening, too, something really amazing, powerful, and quantumly unimaginable.
      Our own lives may be turning upside down and inside out in ways we never imagined. These difficult times are forcing the realization that we are all inter-connected, we are each in the holographic food chain, affected by and affecting everything else. The Hindus call this cycle of darkness the Kali Yuga, and in their calculations it is actually short-lived compared to previous cycles. Some have called it a time of great purification, which is one way of looking at this stunning display of shadow and evil run amok.
      Before shadow can be transmuted, it has to be revealed, seen and met, whether it’s collective or personal. What’s ‘out there’ is in here, too. How do we meet all of this in our own lives? How do we deal with our personal stuff and our participation, our contribution, to the hologram? To meet it with fear adds to the chaos. We can meet it from the Heart with compassion, gratitude, love, and tenderness, for ourselves as well as for others. Wise and holy people of all traditions are consistently saying that the way to meet what is happening, the way to find real solutions that serve all of humanity and the planet, is to open our Hearts, to learn to meet it with Heart. Love is the Medicine. Big Love.
       The challenge and the opportunity for us is to access this Big Love. To do so requires that we be present to each moment, to each arising within our Heart, whatever it is, the holy or the horrible. We are called to meet our own shadow, the unwelcomed, unwanted, unloved parts of ourselves, the ‘me’ that we have hidden or denied, as well as the fears, anxieties, terrors, grief, and the breakdown of life as we have known it, from the Heart.
      Heart is the magical vessel, the temple within, where the power of transmutation of shadow lies. It is also the portal to peace and non-dual awareness, wisdom, compassionate action, spaciousness, Silence. This can be directly experienced no matter what is happening in our lives or in the world. Peace and presence are a phenomenal contribution to the planetary hologram.
      This is not fairy dust, as the Heart is truly an alchemical vessel, as many of us have experienced directly with Samyama over the last 16 years. It is also an unusual organ in our body with its own ‘brain’, its own neuronal circuitry and capacity to make decisions separate from what the brain thinks. The heart communicates with the brain neurologically, biochemically, biophysically, and energetically. You can read about this in The Heart Math Solution by Doc Childre and Howard Martin. Their studies show that when many people create a collective field of coherence we join with the field of the earth to create a great change that sustains life in our bodies and on the earth. Emotions like gratitude, appreciation, love, and compassion create coherence and alleviate the stress waves moving through the earth.
      Those of us practicing Samyama have also experienced how the peace and spaciousness that we experience through Samyama visibly affects our families, friends, and even our work situations. Many have reported distinct changes in the energy and feeling of a stress-filled meeting or have seen a personal situation shift from intense upset to peace and reconciliation when they have gone into their Hearts with Samyama right there in the moment. Gregg Braden, in The Divine Matrix, talks about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of Transcendental Meditation, who found that large groups of people meditating could activate a shift of consciousness in large populations. He wrote:
      “In 1972, 24 cities in the U.S. with populations over 10,000 experienced meaningful changes in their communities when as few as one percent (100 people) participated in the studies. Those involved used specific meditation techniques to create the inner experiences of peace that were mirrored in the world around them. This is called the ‘Maharishi Effect’ in honor of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who stated that when one percent of a population practiced the methods of meditation that he offered, there would be a reduction in violence and crime for that population.” Braden goes on to state that ‘the minimum number of people required to ‘jump start’ a change in consciousness is the square root of 1% of a population”.
      Think about that. The more people involved, the more change is possible. I personally have witnessed extraordinary shifts of field consciousness in groups I have facilitated ever since Samyama came on board as my central practice. Truth and clear-seeing become more accessible when we are not in our heads, and can 'listen' and take action from our Hearts. The impossible becomes possible in ways we cannot imagine. When we bring Heart Presence to any situation, miracles can happen. Anything is possible.

The Return of the Muse

     It seems that the creative Muse has been in retreat since i submitted a story August 1 to an anthology called Living Through Grief: Love Revealed, which is soon to be published as a Kindle book. The writing of that story took me deeply and intensely into myself and the past. Much was experienced, embodied, revealed, rejoiced, and redeemed in writing it.      Over a lifetime of creativity being central to my existence, I have come to understand that creative process has its own seasons and cycles, and, up until a couple of weeks ago, most of my creative energies have been underground since August 1. I did get into learning about raw food and not-cooking this summer. Nothing was happening with writing although a little art-making continued, though not in a very juicy way. Even so, it has been a wonderfully deep contemplative time for me, stoking the fire within with inspiring readings, spiritual practices, learning new things, and the joy of my ongoing work with others.
     Allowing it all to be as it is, is my essential aspiration, prayer and practice--has been for many years. My children are master teachers for me in this neighborhood.
      People for whom creation is central, come to know these cycles of great fecundity and fallowness. I don't fret as i know that the Muse is gathering her energies and ideas when she is not so visible on the surface. About two weeks ago, the Muse re-appeared and i was very happy to greet her and eager to see what she would offer.
     So far, a new store for digital download meditations has appeared on the Temple site, writing is happening again, i am learning new recording software so that i can offer some newly-inspired meditations, i am playing with photography again and painting is opening up--all wonderful callings in the midst of a very cold Colorado winter. My interest in quantum physics and engaging the Mystery in ongoing conversations led me to Matrix Energetics, which i have also been studying and practicing.
     The Mystery works in strange and mysterious ways! One of my favorite prayers to the Mystery is: "I am willing, you arrange it."
     Feel free to investigate your own creative process. Do you listen and take action when a creative urge arises? I find the more i respond to the Muse, even in tiny gestures, the more she offers...      
     Life on the planet these days is so uncertain. It always has been but the veil of illusion that we know anything from one moment to the next is gone. We have NOW, and cannot count on tomorrow. What is your creative longing, what are you called to now? Are you willing to listen and respond to even the tiniest creative impulses, longings, inspirations?

The Power and Grace of Sacrifice

       The element of sacrifice has been very present throughout my spiritual life and is an ongoing event in the life of every human heart. We are called to make small and large sacrifices in the name of love and ongoing life.  For some, the word sacrifice has a negative or frightening connotation. It actually comes from root words that mean to make sacred.  When we can look at a loss of any kind as a sacrifice, it changes the context and the whole vibratory experience to heighten our awareness of the sacred dimension and the grace that is already present, inherent in the loss. 
      Twenty-eight years ago I was given what may be the most important teaching of my life by a Cree Medicine Woman named Rose.  I had been told in meditation that I was to meet a Medicine Woman.  I thought this strange because I was not involved with Native American spirituality, nor did I know then that I have Cree ancestry in my mother's lineage. Shortly after this meditation, I saw a photo of a very impressive looking Cree Medicine Woman in full tribal regalia in the local holistic newspaper.  This happened before Native Americans were so generously sharing their teachings in the wider world, so it was a surprise to see her in the paper in Washington, D.C., and more of a surprise that her arrival was announced in my meditation. 
        I asked for a dream to see if this was the medicine woman I was intended to see. That night, I dreamed that she and I came face to face at a gathering of my spiritual community.  We had a strong, non-verbal interaction where it became clear that she was the one and that I had to be utterly scrupulous in my meeting with her.  The power she exuded was scary and she seemed fierce in her requirement that I be scrupulous in my interactions with her. When she looked into my eyes, I felt that she penetrated my soul with her piercing eyes and I had better be very clear and in alignment when I met with her.  
     We had two meetings. In the first one, I told her the dream and she felt it to be confirming and significant.  She then told me that before she could pray with her sacred pipe to see if Great Spirit wanted her to work with me, I had to bring her some object that was precious to me in some way, not in terms of monetary value, but something that I would never ordinarily consider giving to another person. I meditated for days, prayed, looked at all of my possessions, and finally I knew what the object was by my response: NO! Not that!  It turned out to be a multi-colored afgan made by my mother, one of several beautiful crocheted afgans she had given to me. Of all of them, this one was my favorite and there would not be any more afgans coming. My mother had died the summer before I met Rose. It was clear and I was willing. I felt like I was bringing her a slice of my heart, the pain in the giving was so sharp. 
       I gave Rose the afgan along with some other items she requested. A few days went by and I received a call telling me to pick her up on a certain morning, as she was going to spend a few hours with me. On the day I did that, the 20 minute silence in the car was excruciating, and at my house we settled into a more comfortable time of talking as two women. She offered no ceremonies, but she did say that she prayed for me to Great Spirit who told her to come and spend time with me. I fixed her a strange lunch of fish, steak and salad because it was what was served at the potluck in my dream of Rose.  She was delighted and told me that fish and steak were two of perhaps five things she could actually eat due to a medical condition! We sat by the fire and talked about her life and mine—all very simple and ordinary. 
      Little did I know then that making this sacrifice of my mother’s afgan was utterly life-changing. The ritual itself pierced and opened my heart in new ways.  In less than two years, the women’s mystery school came into being and we built a building for Temenos and the mystery school in the country. I felt and still feel that giving my mother’s afgan to Rose had everything to do with it.  It was many years later that I learned that my mother’s Canadian mother was of French and Cree blood.  I came to know Rose on the inner levels over the years, and continued to share the precious teaching of sacrifice with my students. I can say from here that this teaching became ongoing and central to my own spiritual life. Everyone and everything we love comes and goes, eventually including us and our lives. We can endure these losses, and do, or we can align with them. Making sacrifice is one way of doing that, of making visible the grace that is inherent and available when someone or something dies or leaves.  
        I came to understand the power of making sacred. We do not make sacrifice to get something, and yet amazing happenings always seem to follow the making of true sacrifice. We offer this ritual if and when we feel called. Rose's teaching showed me that we can make any loss an intentional sacrifice, give up what we don't want to give gracefully, even amidst resistance, by choosing to make it sacred, by honoring whatever the loss is as an intentional sacrifice. Spiritual support aligns with that intention. It still hurts, our hearts break open, and we grieve as we would anyway.  Yet the difference is that we are in alignment with what is, we are saying 'yes' even when some part of us is still in the "NO" of it all.  There is room for everything and the inherent grace surfaces and surrounds us. I noticed early on that it allowed me not to feel separate, but to feel part of a larger circle of life and community. Doing this for past losses and un-reconciled losses brings the grace to the surface, as well as a sense of peace within our own hearts. Possibilities we cannot imagine open up.
          We can also make conscious sacrifice as prayer, in service to some intent or request for another or ourselves—not to get something, but to humble ourselves and express our sincerity. We cannot fake this, just as I could not fake anything when I met Rose in my dream. Being scrupulous is required and we are the only ones who know whether we are being that or not. It is a very powerful Teaching and Teacher.    
           I invite you to consider making a ritual of true sacrifice if you feel called. Ttake the time to meditate, pray, to discover the right, true object to be given.  You will know it when you feel that resounding "NO" within. Tune in to see to whom you are to give the object that you would never consider giving. Notice your resistance, notice the stories that arise, notice your willingness and your longing. There are times when making sacrifice is the only thing we can do, and other times it is just not here to do. Your heart will know...