Inspirations: POV

Unanswered Prayers & Lessons In Magic

What is fate!  Does it exist?  Do thoughts create a fate? Just how much control is there to plan the life we wish?  Does synchronicity rely on our point of view?  And if our point of view changes the outcome of an event, does that make the science of life more a form of divination? Is the placebo effect a true healing?  Do some of our desires and prayers not fit the soul we inhabit? Is it therefore fundamental to find the right suit to fit our form? How can we know which dreams are the ‘right dreams?’  Which are to be the magic of un-answered prayers? If we could enter life backward, with 20-20 hindsight, none of the above would be of concern.  But we have been asking some form of these questions since the beginning, and we still have no answers. This is scintillating in itself.  Perhaps the only important part of the equation is that we ask the questions, that we struggle with the whang of a world constantly re-bounding through unseen connective tissue.  If there is a living unity, a World Soul, the Anima Mundi of Plato, Pythagoras, Plotinus, Ficino and others, then our energy-syntax, our patterns, and grid have to affect others.  If a thought jiggles a tiny web, twanging another by synchronicity, then do we get the ‘perfect storm’? The birth of computers? women’s rights? Penicillin? Six inch platform heels and skinny jeans? Life remains a mystery tour, despite constant discovery and feedback. Just when we think we know, we are surprised again… how truly wonderful. What?  You didn’t think I was going to answer these questions?  No, for I am like you, an alchemical, archetypal Oroboros, (Uroboros,) twisting in winds of change, trying to find my tail, and swallow it so I might… Read more »

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Women Of Wonder

“Breathe, Believe, Battle.”  This is a perfect mantra for the London Olympics, the arrival of the woman.   The command comes from one of America’s great duo’s, the beach volleyball queens, Kerri Walsh, and Misty May.  Kerri offered it to a microphone when they asked, ‘how do you come back from disappointment, and loss to win?’  Kerri said it was the instruction from her old coach, Terry Tanner. This mantra could be the energetic expression behind every Olympic participant who struggles and works to take it to the next level.  But it is particularly feminine in its word-order.  A man would be more inclined to chant, “Battle, believe, grunt.”  Placing the breath first, as undergarment for belief, and belief as the injunction for battle, puts a different spin on the road to winning. As every true warrior knows, the battle is always over self, not over other, and when we begin with breath, it is the feminine giving instruction to the masculine within so that the masculine can then take correct action. We come into being when we breathe.  Respiration is life force.  Under ‘breathe,’ the fifth meaning in Webster’s New International Dictionary is, ‘to feel desire, aspiration,’ and ‘to express, manifest, to give forth.’  All this takes place within a breath,  when we are conscious.  With breath, we listen, allowing time and space for thought and spirit to manifest.  With life force, we believe…in something: angels, devils, self, others, heaven, hell.   To believe is to have a ‘firm persuasion, faith, and confidence’ that we know we have it right.  This is the courage it takes to carry us into battle. If setting out to win the Olympics seems daunting, think – Joan of Arc.  Every single body that walked through the Olympic gates experienced this transmutation in some way.  It… Read more »

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Miracles & Wonder

Paul Simon had it right.  “It is the time of miracles and wonder.”  The Universe is instructing us to let go, to devolve, to embrace divine discontent, and it doesn’t matter how we do it.  In this new ‘embrace,’ do we see how destructive we’ve grown, how carelessly we walk upon the earth, how intolerantly we stand against one another?  These are high surf warnings, but they are also part of the miracle-equation, for miracles are born of balancing anxiety and change.  We also demand them when on high alert in high surf. If “violence is anything that causes separation,”*  then hold on to hope for the wonder of miracles, for it is here we are most capable of change.  In extremes, we see what is toxic, and what is not. We are able to perceive ourselves as ‘separate from.’ Despite, great effort, we remain tribal.  This is about societies unable to rise above petty desire and small world- views.  When we cannot embrace ‘the other’ as self, division contaminates the country.  The issue is, we’ve allowed this violence within, otherwise it would not live without. When we shift from allowing the patriarchy to dominate- and begin equally trusting the feminine, when we learn to value feelings as well as logic, when intuition tells us as much as intellect, then we are on our way to the miraculous. We are on our way to union. It is in the balancing of the other, not in the dismissal of one over the other that we create wonderous possibility.  The masculine call  “to do” rather than “to be,” forces some of the speed we are struggling to master.  At a breakneck pace, we are only in our heads, going in the direction of will, with little-to-no fluidity.  The ability to listen to our feelings, to connect… Read more »

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Right Relationship

For some strange reason- the world decided to begin a new year in winter’s thickness, when natures turns in, and the north wind summons silence and long sleep.  Perhaps winter’s slow and quiet offers needed space to review and consider how best to begin again?  It takes fortitude, desire, and generosity to forgive and surrender the past, to liberate a new journey, to expand ‘right relationships.’ When young, we don’t think about these things.  We jump in, shouting “Ole!”  But older-wiser faces a New Year heavier with regrets, and lack of exuberance.  The gift of older-wiser is consciousness has expanded to at least make different mistakes, to hopefully have fewer regrets from connecting to greater compassion and understanding.  We come to see that being in ‘right relationship’ is coming into safe harbor after a storm. Right relationship is to steward ourselves with mastery and maturity and therefore stand more confidently from deep within.  The compass we’re using guides us to share, rather than dominate, to allow long-held beliefs to morph, and float off when no longer viable.  We walk our talk more and more, or perhaps we walk in the flow, able to listen to the watery nature of our bodies, relishing what we see about Self, and other, and honoring all the relationships we enter into, as though entering into  sacred marriages. We perceive that our relationship with Self is reflected and danced in partnership, as well as friendships, groups, and society.  We understand that the right relationship with our work is reflected in that of our relationship to abundance.  We are growing the ability to be present to un-expected relationships, able to shape-shift and allow more generously than we ever thought possible.  Our Practice in standing the mat is to grow a profound relationship to Yoga, that ‘Yoga’-… Read more »

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Last Breath

Posting the last Breathe of 2014, waving farewell to 12 months of living, leaning back before plunging in, time to ask, “What have I learned?  What was the cost in life-energy?  Was it energy well spent?” Dealing with these twisty times takes its toll. It teaches and refines our vocabulary.  It offers un-expected solace, redemption, and gifts, along with the hard-scrabble lessons and loss.  It is all about balance, the act of mitigating and refining the actions and point of view between: ambition and disappointment; memory and beginnings; rest and willfulness; honesty and charm; despair and anger; solitude and friendship;  vulnerability and strength…to name a few. Before we can balance, we must see.  We must be able to perceive without judgment exactly what is. If we see every wounding as a fatal flaw from which we cannot escape, then we cannot.  We remain twisted, unable to straighten up and fly right.  Our lives take place as our viewpoint dictates.  Unfortunately, most of this view is buried deep within unconscious waters. It may be that some of the great work of the New Year is to clear away old POV’s.  Releasing our contortions requires the gristle of honest appraisal, a dedicated daily bone-stacking of step by step forgiveness, and a robust heart for self-acceptance.  Without these practices, despair immobilizes the body.  Life energy is spent. Once we perceive the tortured twists and cracks, light enters.  Leonard Cohen got that right!   There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.  

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Mystery & Mastery

This time of year takes us into the dark, our inner core of sustenance, which does not have to be mysterious, but when given half a chance-is.  As explored in last week’s Breath, we are in that straddling time of endings and beginnings, of work and celebration, of fall into winter, of questioning past results in order to produce a better new year.  To survive 2012, we’d best learn to go into the mystery in order to grow mastery. We have become a fast facebook nation of tweeters who disgorge and cannot dis-engage.  We are plugged in from every pore recycling other’s ideas, and appeasing our friends by liking them.  Our appetite for the mundane is voracious, leaving little room for the numinous.  Like anything that is not black and white, going into mystery takes time.  It is a practice of silent intention and repetition.  It is a sacred, solo practice away from errands, kids, work, friends, chores- and yet it must hold all that and more. We do not live in a cave on a mountaintop. Whatever mystery is, whatever the numinous holds, and however we go there, it is not achieved by the instantaneous. How do we master what is unknown?  How do we make space for the grey areas, the non-defined, and non-denominational?  I fear the growth of my own trigger-happy habits, of fitting in too many things, making over-quick decisions based on too little information.  I fear for my creativity that has to produce something, anything in order to be heard, to be seen, never mind to be ‘excellent.’  I wonder who’s really listening to all these bodies so insistent to be heard and seen. Perhaps Daily Breath shall take a vacation-a great exhale of surrendering in order to beckon what is numinous, and more compelling…. Read more »

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Engaged In Mystery

We can choose to perceive the mundane as a grand, and weird mystery, or a boring dump.  We can, and do, edit our viewpoints from multiple perspectives in every moment: spiritual, self-absorbed, short-sighted, hopeful, angry, in awe, confident, un-knowing, detached, add-on ad-nausea.  As Buddha said, if you are sad, wait until the next breath.   In last week’s Breath, my viewpoint struggled with personal boundaries, and short-sighted-crankyness. Buddha was not at hand, but you were.  Many took time to remind me what is important, and how to cross over old thresholds.  You held the vision until I could pick it up again for myself. I am grateful to all of you who wrote.  It helped turn the corner toward the mystery, and magical thinking held in this week’s Full Moon, or perhaps I needed to simply wait until Buddha, with my friends, came forth. Last week, another far more mysterious and seemingly difficult boundary was crossed by Steve Jobs. But since he said with his last breath, “Oh wow.  Oh wow.  Oh wow.” We might assume impossible shifts of perspective and consciousness come when we need them, and come when least expected. They come as we live.  By that, I mean, they are highly personal views and expressions.  Steve Jobs’ life was extremely passionate and full of wonder.  “Oh wow.”  Is just what his personal ‘practice’ said time and again.  When George Harrison died, his last words were, “Love one another.”  That was the sound of his life, those were the songs he put into the world year after year. Last words are the most powerful because who has time to re-think death with half truth’s and correct syntax?  The breath can only hold the core of the soul at that point.  What will you say on dying?  Where is the… Read more »

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Time Brings Me Nothing

This hour is holy.  Why?  Because I choose to be wholly in it.  No pun, please.  Summer in New England is precious because there is never enough except when we stop to be it, to match our spirit to its own. Part of summer’s sacred-Self is that it removes longing for an unknown future.  My prayer is that a minute from now, two days from now, it will still be now.  That indeed is a holy indictment, one where I remain alive and present only to being in this now.  I’ve noted that when future circumstances, or a sense of anticipation, or anxiety rise up that ‘the now’ freezes and disappears.  It’s like a film, running across the eyes obliterating the present repast.  What was an exquisite moment of ‘being’ becomes ‘what does my ego want?’ What will these unknown circumstances require? What will I compare them to? How shall they affect the coming days? Time brings me nothing.  To wait for something creates an energy of not having.  Time is not continuous.  That view is only superimposed by looking back.  Time is deceptive, as we think there is something more than ‘now.’ Only by comparison do we think we had a happy time or a sad time.  When we compare, the ego lives loudly, not a bad thing, just a smaller point of view.  When we compare, we are not peaceful.  There is always that sense of this is better than that.  I like her more than him.  I wish I were back there, not here.  Anticipating a future moment assumes that time will stop when it arrives.  My plans will be served.  I will be happy then. We cannot make time work.  We can only be so fully present that past and future are holy within us, opening… Read more »

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