DAILY I weep for too many dying alone~ That so much love goes un-shared. Let death become a sacred talisman To love now! And bring us present in grief Embracing All Life. The pandemic cries, “Be One Heart! Show up empty handed. Join in reconciliation Reclaim Grace.” “May all that is un-forgiven in you, be released. May your fears yield their deepest tranquilities. May all that is unlived in you, blossom into a future graced with love.” (John O’Donohue blesses us with the last three lines.)
Read moreInspirations: Loss
IN EVERY BREATH
lub dub love in every breath.
Read moreBarn’s Burned Down, Now I Can See the Moon
If after tragedy we step out under the stars and actually look at the moon, we shall survive the tragedy in good form. If after profound loss we feel a new life growing somewhere within, then the good guys win. When we can move beyond the burned barn that housed our stuff, our beautiful stuff, the accumulation of life-memories, we are lit by a transcendent light off the moon. The Chinese got this proverb right. Great loss, whether of stuff or worse, of life, is a test of both courage and compassion, a time when choices take on greater poignancy. Are we able to standstill and admire what is, or are we paralyzed back to childhood fears? Can we recalculate and respond to new, unknown goals, and wider perceptions of dharma? When discussing dharma, life, loss and tragedy, the hidden planetary energies of Pluto are present, for She is the Goddess of the underworld, moving underneath times of crises and death. Her presence does not signify we remain in Hades, rather that we pass through its gates. Pluto’s real job is to offer life-altering experiences so we may learn to choose. She asks if we have we grown fortitude and muscle to cross the river Styx. Are we willing to relinquish the old life so it may die? Are we capable of transmuting its shadow? Pluto evokes the divine in its most primitive and powerful expression. Her love is willing to let us die so that we learn what we must in order to transform, and embody our divinity. Because we have a good friend whose house just burned down, we have been standing as witnesses to the transformative process within her. Hourly, we observe her ‘see the moon,’ despite the barn housing what she owned burned to ash. Sharing… Read more »
Read moreAngels All
Today is the anniversary of the death of the woman who gave me a second life, Helen Rosenstock. Because I am a late bloomer, she entered my life late, when I was finally ready for her vision, her tools of a transformative baptism. The person you know as Samantha, is not the person I started out to be. It’s true none of us are, but some of us are unrecognizable. When I found Helen, she saw I had walked to replace the original imprint. A year ago, when Helen died, she appeared to me as a plume of smoke, stopping by as if to say, ‘remember~ life is magical. She was magical, but part of her mystery was in her gifts being of the earth, and for the earth: She said, “In order to see what you think is mysterious, open your eyes wider to possibility. To perceive and listen to the invisible is a talent everyone has. She taught that I need only be willing, for transformation to begin. To grow intuition she reminded me I required silence to hear what is unspoken. To heal, I needed to become an empath, and to maintain a body strong enough to heal itself so that it could hold that power for others. One day, as we stood at French doors, she said, “To heal others, you do not need to know what they should do. Simply open the door so they can walk through on their on own legs. Stand as their witness.” She taught me to be an ‘ambulance chaser’ one night, by asking what I thought as sirens filled the air. “Loud,” is what I replied. She said, “You have a choice in consciousness. You can direct healing light to a stranger in need, or you can think, ‘loud.’… Read more »
Read moreLife Links
What is your primary link? If someone asked, “What is your life-line? Your staff of life”? How subtle, how deep, how intangible is your shifting paradigm of bridges connecting you to life?
Read moreShamanic Dialogues
The mind-like the wind- is a hard mistress. She turns every which way; turbulent, twisty, erratic. Finding shelter from the storm becomes imperative, especially in seasons of change when the world is neither hot nor cold, and we are neither fish nor fowl. Part of the underpinnings for fall and spring is the Ayurvedic- Vata Dosha, a spacey, creative, un-grounded imbalance that occurs when we are working to shift gears, have intimate dialogues, and anchor new ground. Vata also increases as we age, adding a steeper incline to its slippery slope of mobility and instability. As we shape-shift only faster, with old anchors giving way, it becomes a creative time to grow more resilient shelters, to encounter touchstones of reality we didn’t envision before, to spend time with our transformative Shamanic-Self. Tranquility and sweetness are no longer assumed to follow us all our days, which adds to the anxiety and emotional upheaval, and Fall has the added intensity of being under the direction of death. It is the last hurrah for the year, a time of accountability. Astrologically, it is the Scorpio field of deep, dark realities, those of sex, death, and taxes. Though blithely put, Scorpio tells us how we manipulate pay-backs, who owes, who doesn’t, who has the power, and who will survive because of controlling those issues. At this time, the ancestors knew whether they would survive the winter. The old harvest was a visible fruit of labor. The new harvest is an invisible fruit. Both bring urgency to see results, to count the year well done. How are we to assess this if we no longer understand our world, if old structures and lines of power have vanished, if our spirit has not grown to hold the larger need? Taking care everything above the radar cannot… Read more »
Read moreAlchemical Lives
If we are to live, we are to be blown off course. It is the willy-nillyness of the blow that calls spirit down off its high horse in the high heavens so that we learn to wallow. It is in those dark hours, as we perch precariously between the moat of crocodiles and a fire breathing dragon, that we wake up and come alive. In ancient alchemical tradition, this blackening process was the beginning of transformation. Blackening has everything to do with going down, being off-course, and suffering. It is 2013, another year in the 21st century. It still the same, time worn process. As a society, we have grown more and more masculine; working longer, taking on greater responsibility, trying to be more spiritual, if not religious, and attaching ‘excellence’ to all of it. These are ego driven elements of fire and air. They hope to push and pull us out of the mundane, off the earthy, to take flight. What balances this yang expression? The yin of earth and water. The higher we ascend, the more fiery and ballistic we react, the more we require the grounding of practical earth solutions, and slower muddy waters of emotional silence. You can’t see very far from down below. The only exceptional view is within. Ascending a spiritual mountain, home to gods is far easier. There is nothing wrong in standing tall among at the peak, except it usually comes at the expense of suppressed yin. When we don’t use or allow balancing yin energies, there is a rise in violence, addiction, depression, and illness. They behave as un-invited guests at the bliss-banquet. It is the old spell of the 13th fairy godmother who was not invited to Sleeping Beauty’s christening. As you know, anything not invited, not listened to, or… Read more »
Read moreTipping Point
When we are shattered, pieces lie everywhere, our shards creating new prisms of light. At rare times these fragments are born of bliss, but more often they are from the implosion of unfathomable sorrow. At the very least, pain is honest. It keeps us on track even as we stumble. There is something very centering about these times. Despite feeling lost, we are ushered toward endings, and beginnings. We begin to see a long, lonesome highway leading into unknown territory. The inconsolable ache that grows from the well loved, well known richness of the time before the shattering is the tipping point that reveals essential self. It is that emptiness that lets in the light, that gives birth to the new, that assimilates the foreign, that learns the language where the tongue twists around oblique innuendo struggling to express the over-muchness of emotion. We stand forlorn, if we stand at all. Mainly we lie in pieces. The new journey must begin with the disintegration of despair. When we can’t begin again, we practice. We simply imagine showing up. We sit in a corner making our breath bigger. We totter to the corner on rocky steps. Sometimes the steps have to move us off the ledge before they can move us forward. If we are very lucky, someone reaches out a hand and we grab hold, then the glue begins to set, new and old shards meld into a crystal revealing profound mysteries. Asana: Paschimottanasa/Forward Fold Pose. Sitting with legs extended, on the exhale lift the belly, extend from the hips, reach forward and grab the big toes, if possible. Don’t hunch the shoulders, or round the back, simply extend as far as possible, release and breathe. Paschima means the west, referring to the back of the body, as the east… Read more »
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