Inspiration

Leaving the non-duality of paradise for an earthly incarnation, we must abandon Eden, that somewhere faaaaabulous Garden of perfection. When we choose to eat of the apple, i.e. open our eyes and see, we open Pandora’s Box of tricks. Taking that hard right turn out of the Garden leaves us vulnerable to imperfection. This is grating when we hold a cellular memory of being faaaabulously perfect. If you don’t think you struggle here, think again. Remember the last time you beat yourself up for not hitting the mark you thought you should? Or every time you say to yourself, “Oh, how stupid can I be?” That tyrannical voice remembers Eden, and holds us to some perfect image, a time when we could do no wrong. We could do no right either. We did not work with polarities. Without sight, there is no light or dark, good or bad. Lucifer’s light of sight and conscious choices, has to wait until we stumble and free fall to earth. This is all ancient history, but consider a modern twist. What if the way back to Eden is to open ourselves to every polarity, accommodating every fear, vice, with bad habits as extra, and accept that they all live our greatness? What if the only thing blocking our way back is that we remain blind to our ability to accept who we are? Perhaps we are already what we most desire? Perhaps, with wider eyes, we would see the soul’s choice to fall from Grace, struggle, flop around, fail, learn, flop some more, and grow, despite knowing we were perfect all along? That would be a BIG OINK. We are learning to take the blinders off. Sometimes blinders are good. They help keep us focused on the path when life spins us off. They……

The rich sabor of August comes from more than turned-over earth smells, tastes of warm vine tomatoes, and owl-screams piercing the night. There is something about her heat and somnolence that imbues luxe perception–when we take time. August herself could be one of Titian’s queens, or Rembrandt’s Graces, where more is definitely more, and more is weighty, sensual, and sublime, fat or no fat. We want more from her days for we feel summer slipping from our fingers. I don’t know if we become manic depressive, swinging from extremes of doing, and not doing, or whether the imbalance comes from attacking one issue, letting all else melt in the sun. These slow and simmering hours offer time for greater awareness. The playful hours feed our inner centers where we grow consciousness. Beauty in the outer world transforms the inner, where we grow new roots, informing the Shakti, or impulses of our inner rhythm. These serve as pathways of communication to lead us ever deeper. The bi-polar sweetness of August demands we stop, taste, nap, AND get it all while we can. There’s a part of us that remains a forever-child saying, “School in five days, six hours. How much can I do before I’m locked away?” I need help in creating and holding a balance, and have stationed ‘Guardians at the Gate’ to protect both the quiet of growing Shakti, AND the explosions of work, and adventuring. I need help in honoring both, AND I need them in equal measure. These Guardians have been given orders that when they see me moving off kilter, giving too much attention and time to one, they are to protect the balance, call me to center, and serve my highest good, no matter the whining, or dragging of feet. (We never grow far from……

We like grooves. The groove is known, dependable, and requires minimal upkeep. Woe unto us if we remain in the groove. But wait! Isn’t a groove all about warm, soft, honey-home contentment of the known: The shoes that fit our feet, the face that fits our persona, the habit that makes us likeable, the automatic smile surrendering our power? Making something ergonomically fit until we are ‘it’ makes us prey. You could name it the ‘me’ or ‘mine’ prey, when our helio-centric hero/heroine becomes the be-all of the only face you’ll ever see. Nothing wrong with that face unless it’s grown from a groove that it can’t leave. This is dangerous territory, because some lives are meant to be lived in a sweet groove. They are ‘resting lives’ when we recover and rest up for the next round. They are lives well earned and hard fought. All honor. Most lives here are not meant to be in resting poses. We win a lottery ticket to earth in order to learn. Fabulous, but not groovy. Groovy moments waiting for the next curve ball is the best most can hope for. There are many conundrums to these thoughts, like the human condition…confusing. One of these is that most of us work hard to bring our various ‘faces’ into a single alignment, the one for whom there is praise and gold. When we finally subdue our other recalcitrant faces, read ‘not-self faces,’ faces we consider non-cool personas, we hope they never return to un-balance our groovy apple cart. The problem with the fabulous, read applause, face is that it becomes drunk on power and takes over, thinking it is ‘the one.’ And absolute power corrupts absolutely. That face does not want the ugly, the weird, or fearful faces to…show their face. As the……

We walk hand in hand Facing forward into leaf-dappled sunlight Straight from last night’s slivery silver sun-straffed moon. In between we dreamed This is the dream. This hand in hand hour seen Precious, shimmering, passing. A morning’s ephemeral mist, A breathless breath rising Here and gone. “Only a dream,” we say Except, we held hands, We saw. Wordless words crossed space Informing cells Their memory of secrets holding everything— Retrieved and wondered over when all is lost. But this, this informs the new life, another cycle, This, our expanded, grateful now Holds steady through broken days, When clouds of mourning dull the eyes, Obscuring sun and stars. Storehouse of beauty bank coals within. Let my hand remember his.

When earth takes a human voice it flows through the flowers of my garden. Each morning they open to bless our time together and later, they offer balm to the closing of the day. In our cycles together a potent relationship of student and teacher grows. These are a few of the lessons I have come to absorb. These blooms are delicate, fierce, wry, and so attentive in their detail I am forced into total awareness, less I miss their life. Our relationship speaks to me of paradox and patience, frustration and trembling anticipation. I harvest dreams here. When I meet with failure, ‘there is always next year,’ the gardener’s mantra. They have knighted me with stewardship; the high honor and passion of mentoring their landscape, harvesting their beauty. They offer their lives to my learning, and applaud my efforts, even my failures. The garden teaches me scale. Running my fingers through her rich soil, I know there are more microorganisms in one cup of dirt than humans on the face of the earth. Fondling this warm life, uprooting weeds, moving earthworms from exposure, I know myself a tiny, and oh so important, microorganism indeed. Gardens are always in motion, even under three feet of snow. They are planning, laying themselves out for future splendor and betrayal, preparing to inform me in the spring. If you are fortunate enough to live in a garden you become a lover first, and a dancer second. In planting her seed I become the visionary of great things. On hands and knees, a true supplicant, I drop tiny black seeds, one by one into waiting earth. I envision their life. I can almost smell their grown leaves wilting under August sun. The seeds inside me are waiting to be dropped into fertile soil, imagined……

As an adult, every Practice I have chosen, or that has chosen me, has been working to bring balance to the chaotic, adventurous, off-kilter drama of an extreme childhood. Somehow I had never noticed the subconscious efforts to re-align until this moment. Some of my choices to become more adult were not random, others– very haphazard, as in ‘why do this?’ Or better, ‘how can I possibly do this?’ Seen from this long corridor of time, there is realization of the great inner need for a sustaining, quiet, balanced platform from which to dive into life, especially the creative life. Perhaps a person, grown in an over-quiet, un-emotional home needs to have chaos and drama woven into his adult life? I used to think, if I thought about it at all, that creativity was spawned from drama, chaos, and wild adventures. Not so, or at least not for me. Drama certainly supplies a well from which to drink, but if that’s all there is you end up drunk. Drama is an expensive habit. I see that the Saturnian requirements of a Practice, any good Practice, have come to serve me and save me, and send me toward abundance, not boredom as previously assumed. ‘What! do the same thing over and over until it’s right?’ The basics of discipline I dance with, around, from, and to every day. For like any good addict, I struggle with a wild-self, an un-tamed melody that does not fit into the greater composition. I am still drawn to the cymbal/siren sound of chaos and drama, but in much smaller doses. The price is too high. Any ‘long view’ gives opportunity to see where we stand in the arc of life. What we did not get in childhood, we unconsciously, or consciously seek through partners, jobs,……