Inspiration

  Solstice Reverie   The sky arcs up and out as earth lifts herself Awaiting the long-night. The Sun God moves to stand-still  Leaving seductive seed. We guess this secret dance Abandon life to it And await the lover’s descent, The earth’s quivering brace  Feet dancing the belly of the beloved Who offers warm milk-teats, The breast of God Lifted from rolling fields of hay. Winding roses wrap bare thighs Seducing The Sun long past his hour. Now spent, they whisper Late, late into the longest light.

It’s odd.  As life grows ever more bumptious, and out of control, there are fewer and fewer wild places in the world. The garden is not wild, unless it is wild with weeds, and one can’t consider garden’s wild anyway.  Daily life is driven, but it is not wild unless we are living in Syria, or sky diving, or listening to a doctor tell us we have a deathly disease.  The last undiscovered, wild places on the planet are discovered, claimed, and filled with Big Macs, the kind we eat and the kind we work on.  And despite feeling out of control, most of us are not wild.  We are crazed.  That is not wild. There is a growing need for us to express a capricious wild side, if only to balance  the over-committed, dedicated, work-weary self.  What has happened to the lion tamer in the Zebra skin, one-piece? What of the trapeze artist, in pink tights, and sequined tutu?  We did once dream of being wild, and extra-ordinary?  Trouble is, we feel we have enough problems and challenges without being weird and possibly asking for more.  Trouble is, we have winched down and positioned ourselves for the least amount of friction.  Not a bad deployment except- trouble is, no one is laughing. When was the last time you roared, wet your pants, and couldn’t catch your breath?  When was the last time you kicked off your heels, ripped off your sport coat, and let ‘em have it…whatever ‘it’  is, it ain’t your norm.  Our ‘norm’ is working so hard to keep us in the norm-zone that we’ve disowned parts of our whole in order to stay safe inside the norm-lines.  When this happens, we erupt volcanically, or we are confronted by strangers who do, taking us down with them….…

We are being asked to trust the unknown is ways we’ve never imagined.  Venturing out from the safety of the past, and the known, grows ever more difficult, yet it is the task.   In order to go into the unknown, Osho said that we cannot be in the mind because, “the mind is the accumulated known.” But as the world is hurled around in inconceivable ways, we yearn for that familiar known. In Astrology there is a set of points on one’s chart called the North and South Nodes, They speak of the dilemma of choosing a bigger life.  The South Node represents the past, what and who we know, where we come from, what is comfortable.  We repeat South Node patterns usually well into our late 30’s or 40’s.  It is only as we grow bored, stale, or begin asking big life-questions that we turn toward the North Node.  It is the fork in the road demanding we grow and move toward our destiny, or fall back, too afraid to take the path of maximum resistance. In these days of upheaval and chaos, it is time to not only to listen and trust instinct,  to grow accustomed to not knowing answers, rather sensing the next step.  The mind, which knows, is orthodox and conservative.  The mind is not interested in being courageous or trusting.  Au contraire!  To move past boundaries of safety requires fearlessness, an awareness of being, and an ability to listen to the inner self, that adventuring voice of the  6th sense. Life has always been dangerous. This is not new.  In order to grow courage, there must be danger.  It’s why we’ve chosen this earthly life.  Take a huge breath, stand on the precipice and dive, knowing your heart will save you. Don’t forget to grab……

Hands are magical instruments; multi faceted, powerful, tender, destructive. They can be gnarly, spatulate, pudgy, delicate.  The fingers, as emissaries, touch the world, bringing back thousands of impressions full of information.  Brains are activated and trained by working with fingertips, especially during childhood. Hands and feet possess abundant nerve supplies which light up large areas of the brain. Every finger has its own life, it’s energy of giving and receiving, its particular ability, or quality.  Areas of the palm, as well as fingers, relate to planetary energies, to meridians and body parts, to chakras, to the five elements, and states of being. Acupressure and Acupuncture use points on the fingers and hand to stimulate healing through different areas of the entire body.  There are also reflex zones, and marma points that are stimulated for healing.  The art of palmistry is not magical, rather it is knowledge of multiple levels of energy revealed in a hand. Using fingers to form hasta/hand mudras reveals yet another layer of information.  Mudras, like Bandhas, are locks, and locks conceal secrets.  Each mudra intends to connect to the divine, to cosmic consciousness, which is one of the primary goals of Yoga.  Through the mystery of mudra, hands reveal our longing to connect, not only by touch, but by the shape of a mudra. When practicing mudras, the brain is lit from conscious and un-conscious information housed in the fingertips. With intention and practice, mudras can change character traits, create healing, bring serenity, and offer awareness.  There are 25 essential mudras, and many others that have been added along the way.  You can make up one, once you know the energies in each finger.  Simply by rubbing or pressing the fingers, you awaken dormant energies within.  Next time you reach out and touch someone, or grab……

When Ma Nature expands to burst into bloom, when life is at its birthing zenith, we can get as crazy.  There are times when we, and other strangers, also burst into un-stoppable bloom.  These personal ‘flowerings’ are often zealous and fiery.  The energy is unstoppable.  We are convinced of our total right to bloom, and ka-boom.  We become instilled with our beautiful, flowering truth. We more easily slide down this slippery slope of ‘sure knowing’ after hardship, or disappointment. The axiom, “What do they know?  I’ll show them!” comes to mind.   Sometimes the hardships are so extreme we become Peter Pans who believe that to die would be a great adventure, the next right step.  We stunt growth when living with idealistic absolutes.  We stop being human when we live in black and white words….  ‘I know and you don’t. ‘ Another myth, before Peter Pan, was about Zeus and Metis.  Metis was the first wife of Zeus and the first goddess of wisdom.  When she became pregnant with Athene, the gods whispered warnings to Zeus that he would be dethroned by any child Metis bore.  In one fell swoop, he swallowed her, and the unborn child.  Soon, Zeus embodied wisdom in his own right, and in time, after a splitting headache, he gave birth to Athene, who became his favorite child, and the acknowledged goddess of wisdom. Why was Metis a threat?  Why eat her? And what has this to do with blooming zealots?  Symbolically, it seems Metis was a radical extremist, as she had not yet digested her wisdom.  She was right, she knew she was right, and truth stood on her side.  She was an anarchist of un-incorporated wisdom.  Her righteous knowing remained outside of Self.  When Zeus swallowed her and the baby, he made her wisdom……

Under the green moon And the scent of love We succor the wounded Healing what cannot be helped.