Inspiration

The Autumn Equinox is one of the four potent crossroads in the year’s cycle. Many cultures through time have marked these four quadrant turnings with prayer, ceremony, and celebration. They symbolize gateways in the relationship of light and dark, spirit and matter, outer and inner life. These moments when the world stops to shift, offer animal and vegetable-life doorways of change.  Death or life? Renewal -or Same-O-Same-O? Ritual and ceremony create not only greater power and recognition of an event, but deeper connection to layers which remain hidden.  Most of the modern world has lost its tribal roots as well as its dependence on ritual.  We may be more connected with more people, but we depend less upon each other, and we rarely celebrate sacred moments.  We cannot change the world, but we can we create a balancing between these polarities of loss and gain, sacred and profane, which in its own small way will contribute to transformation. This is a true and good undertaking at the four quadrants. Each of the portals offers a moment to focus intention, and step into a new demand. They are “energetic gateways” (Stephanie Austin) that support and re-set desire.  The Fall Equinox, particularly, asks us to come out of extremes and re-align center. The question for this moment might be,  “Which polarities do I want to continue dancing?” It’s important to honor and use what is best of ancestral heritage, as well as leaving its tribal excesses behind. Mining and moving with the earth’s energies gives our efforts greater ease and support.  We don’t fight the current so much.  As the Sun moves into Libra on the Autumn Equinox, dance with the polarity of your own unique being and that of ‘the other.’  Place your choices on Libra’s ‘scale of justice,’ to tune……

Each of the four seasons offers a particular impetus that feels natural to the body, fitting the logos of that season.  In the shift to fall, we reach for a fresh start, and may pull back in dismay, feeling overwhelmed. Spring’s bright beginning has an entirely different energy to its new life. The fall ‘new year’ carries weight. Perhaps it is childhood years of beginning a new grade, and adjusting to an unknown teacher? With falling leaves, the psyche is assigned to grow and own itself in new ways, expressing itself in better forms. Ancient memory-bones that gathered in the harvest, preparing for winter, celebrated bounty, or knew death approached. It is a serious time.  There is less possibility in this beginning than spring’s exuberant birth.  In the Northern Hemisphere, the first stray turning of green to gold announces summer’s somnolence over. Even tropical locations contain signs of a new dance, replacing August’s easier waltz. Astrologically, moving from Leo’s creative enjoyment to Virgo’s perceptions of refinement, and integration, ask we separate wheat from chaff, that we take inventory for the time ahead, and bring talents into alignment.  Virgo asks the soul, “What is your sacred work, and what do you need to heal to grow whole?” Along with the Sun’s entry into Virgo, Rosh Hashanah, literally ‘head of the year,’ symbolically gives fall an extra new year oomph. In the Jewish oral traditions, Rosh Hashanah marked the completion of the world’s creation, and perhaps some world-memory feels we now have to go out and do something about it.  In Virgo fashion, we’d best do it impeccably, and preferably looking as chic as possible. Whether we love fall, or loathe it, follow the Jewish faith, or none at all, facing these shadow elements gives pause, and can bring anxiousness.  The anxiety……

The hawk, spiraling on thermals.  Swoops in, black wings spread, Warning screes piercing somnolence. The rabbit, its own size, Object of desire- squeals terror, Song birds silenced, perch hostage in shadow. The day, drenched in its heat, The round light consuming slow hours, Stopped for a small death. The stillness disturbed long enough for Time to turn against the light Pausing Cicada’s thrum, and Summer’s headlong extravagance.

Our 14-year-old dog Abbey died last month.  The day after she passed away my 4-year-old daughter Meredith was crying and talking about how much she missed Abbey. She asked if we could write a letter to God so that when Abbey got to heaven, God would recognize her.  I told her that I thought that we could, so she dictated these words: Dear God, Will you please take care of my dog? Abbey died yesterday and is with you in heaven. I miss her very much. I ‘m happy that you let me have her as my dog even though she got sick. I hope you will play with her. She likes to swim and play with balls. I am sending this picture of her so when you see her you will know that she is my dog. I really miss her. Love, Meredith We put the letter in an envelope with a picture of Abbey & Meredith, addressed it to God/Heaven.  We put our return address on it. Meredith pasted several stamps on the front of the envelope because she said it would take lots of stamps to get the letter all the way to heaven. That afternoon she dropped it into the letter box at the post office. A few days later, she asked if God had gotten the letter yet.  I told her that I thought He had. Yesterday, there was a package wrapped in gold paper on our front porch addressed, ‘To Meredith’ in an unfamiliar hand. Meredith opened it. Inside was a book by Mr. Rogers called, ‘When a Pet Dies.’ Taped to the inside front cover was the letter we had written to God in its opened envelope.  On the opposite page was the picture of Abbey & Meredith and this note: Dear Meredith, Abbey arrived safely in heaven….…

July 25, 2013   Breath #400…Now that’s a marker!  Are we grown more thoughtful? Wiser? Kinder? Sillier? Contemplative? Wilder? Creative? Connected? From these past years of ‘Breaths?’  Do weigh in.  I should so love to hear your ‘Breath-stories.’ Thank hevvins for bad TV.  I’ve turned to reading.  One of the books was recommended by the author, Janet Wong.  The book is,  APE How to Publish a Book, by Kawasaki & Welch.  It begins, “How to read this book.”  First, I think ‘how stupid, then I realize, that makes me feel safe.  This is a direct correlation to my daily reactions of dealing with too much technology, and not having instruction, or worse, incomprehensible instructions.  Most of the time, I don’t even know the right question on what has gone amiss.  Ergo, the omnipresent, quivering safety factor.  Yes, even with a book. This first question is followed by a second, “Should you write a book?”  Too late.  I’ve written the bloody thing.  I’ve bought your book instructing me on how I might deal with mine, and now you’re asking if I should have even written it ?  This bombshell is immediately followed by third.  “To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.”  Aleister Crowley.   I know of Aleister Crowley.  I’m completely cowed.  Books, mine and theirs, go back on the shelf. This is like asking, “Should you take this incarnation?”  Too late.  No shelf-life available.  I am here, I’ve become me, I’ve passed the ‘400-mark,’ and you’re still here with me.  I take heart.  I take the bloody books off the shelf.  I begin again.  Self publishing has to be just that, no?  It’s a self, for better or worse, god-like or not, sharing thought-life with those who care….…

(Summer Reading) How do we become who we are?  How do we emerge from the nexus of childhood?  Why and how did we choose that tribe? That particular moment of birth? Providence or accident?  DNA or the Moira of our ‘allotment’?  Luck or Karma? Random or synchronistic?  These are watery, Cancer questions, and Astrologically, we are awash in Cancer energies, making moms, family, tribal connections, country, ancestors, and emotions of utmost interest. Rilke wrote, “Never believe fate’s more than the consideration of childhood.”  Since Rilke was a poet of profound heart and thought, I agree.  But what composes the matrix of childhood?  Like Yoga, Astrology, myth, and psychology multiple layers, seen and unseen, are tangled together in that ‘fate.’  One does not argue about the layers, only their substance, their consciousness, and perhaps, their timing. If we think mythologically, as in Greek, members in a family come together from a litany of tragic connections.  The hope in each incarnation is that ancient wounds of slaughtering and being slaughtered tale opportunity to heal, and that old curses be laid to rest, ‘paid in full.’  Myths may be florid and over the top, but looking at their archetypal patterns we still act out similar energetic tragedies, much of it remaining unconscious, which is why it remains powerful.  Is this allotment, or our choice? Perhaps archetypal patterns within the family help create blood and bone, the DNA, of biological heredity.  The conversations, the silences, the habits and wounds, the  dis-connect, as well as the love enmesh the closed family circle.  These are the amniotic fluids of Moira.  If we are born with innate predispositions, and if we are choosing to work through particular myths, then it may be true, as many believe, the soul chooses to take on a lifetime, the parents, and……