Inspiration

Today is my birth date.  I am an earthy Taurus being with simple soul-tastes, and big demands.  What am I demanding of this re-birth? “Who has the GPS?  Where am I headed? What do I need?  Will I arrive safely? When? Why go there?” Last month we went to Spain and used a Spanish GPS whose every second direction was, “recalculando, a la izquierda, a la izquierda.”  This is to say, you are to recalculate direction and go left.  It became funny very fast.  We spent lost time with wonderful family, discovered new places, had adventures, ate large lard sandwiches, and drank rough red wines.  The balancing~the recalculating that life required. I’ve chosen to see the silly GPS symbolically, a directional guidance for the year.  Despite fears telling me to drive headlong and hard toward a goal, the reverberation of “recalculando” offers an image of a musical, circular path, one of unknown turns leading left, or listening to the left; that feminine, invitational voice asking for trust; She of inspiration and intuition~ A la izquierda, That Left of subtle realms and inner guidance.  Is my GPS right to go left? My history of trusting the Cosmos has brought its share of disappointments.  It is not without anxiety and fear.  For a Taurus of practical bent, learning to move toward the visionary has been a long and arduous journey.  My Spirit hopes for happy.  My soul sings to surrender limiting beliefs.  But the mind is mule-ish, reluctant to trust, to not work hard, to not step on the gas, to not know. As I watch news of Syrian and African refugees fleeing home and country,    throwing themselves on the mercy of ‘coyotes’ who abandon them at sea; the fateful portals of Scylla and Charybdis  loom in the imagination.  My fear is inconsequential,……

Her silent re-birth comes A silvery scythe cutting the night Tender as a new scar A lone, mewling shadow-light Setting unknown templates Initiating up-grades. Sky-walk with spirit. Heed the call to beginner’s mind With courage as your sacrament, Talisman held to the heart. Face the unknown journey Push back the darkness.

The world is always asking we become visionaries, never more so than now.  To create visions we must stop, take time, and offer space for them to unfold.  They hold more power when we become clear, when we are willing to be a visionary creative force.  Visions prefer anointing those who embody the dictates of their visions, who follow through and expand what is offered.  Receiving the vision is a feminine, receptive event.  Creating action of that gift, is the balancing masculine drive.  The two must unite and dance together to awaken and embody Shakti, the sacred power of the goddess. Civilizations have spent 2000 years denouncing the goddess, the feminine Shakti of creation, but her time is returning, and she re-enters in full force as not only loving and nurturing, but fierce.  She is the authority programing separation.  She is the violent power shooting us down the birth canal, severing bodies from the safety of the womb so that we begin to participate in the dance of who and what we are to become.  She infuses us with sacred light.  She also schools us in chaos, paradox, and violence.  Without the brutality of her warrior aspects we could not be erotic, nor would we have enough fierceness to transmute the shadow within.  Her unrelenting chaotic madness inspires us to commit.  She becomes the knife cutting bloodied karmic bonds.  It is only in her chaos do we come to understand the importance of harmony and peace. This is not western views of divinity, which are limited, especially of the feminine.  In other cultures, and other times, the multifaceted divinity of the feminine is what created life, and transmuted the ugly into the beautiful.  This Shakti vision holds that everything is loved, nothing is rejected, as nothing is outside self.  In……

This is a March for the record books.  This is a month we usually try and high step through sleet, mud, and relentless frozen landscape. It is a tippy time of chaotic polarities, weather and otherwise.  Bodies, like the earth, are bursting with a spring desire that cannot yet be expressed.  In warmer climes, where the scent of jasmine defines March, the madness is less tippy, but nonetheless imbalances are alive and well.  Consciously, and un-consciously, we anxiously await new birth.  Easter, Passover, and Holi, or Phagwa, did not happen from, “Oh, by the way, we need more eggs.”  They are rituals of regeneration; festivals that affirm that this earthly birth is partially formed from spirit. They ask us to re-boot, re-confirm, and re-align matter, spirit, and soul intention. This March happens to be a seminal, pivot point for transformative and highly charged options in the arena of birth, as the electro magnetic field is being pinged by extraordinary possibility. The body may be exhausted.  The mind~ over-loaded.  But the future calls, and it calls from the alchemical polarity of spirit and grounded reality. You may feel in meltdown mode, but it’s time to step up and learn a new dance. To move into the nebulous, no-boundary territory of spirit, the ego must be solid, of firm structures, and clear realities. Before we can move beyond anything we must be it.  We rely on the ego’s foundation to support movement in the world.  The mystic, or spirit-self has no boundaries, no structure and this is terrifying to the ego, especially a weak ego. For the ego to be well it must do.  For the mystic to do well it must be.  Being requires attentive loving. When the ego loves, it goes outside self to find affirmation.  The mystic goes within….…

Come to the mirror of sacred imagination, Stand close to yourself, Palms open, listen, wait First notes reflect the spirit.  You brought your anger and sorrow Now, dance upon them Allow darkness to reveal the new dream Call this to spiral, rise, and twist within Descend and root in solace Emerge from grief. Blow last kisses to the magic.    For those who have danced Shakti’s “The Magic Moment,” you’ve experienced the layers in this moving mudra that twists in and opens out, revealing secrets of self to Self.  You have felt the beauty in the music of the Ahn Trio, and moved deeply into the simplicity of the dance that roots the body in a magical space, and calls our divine nature forward.  For those of you viewing the dance for the first time, I hope you become part of this magic. Connect to mysterious forces by sitting in jnana mudra. (Touch thumb to forefinger.) Mudras lock in secrets, and awaken the unconscious to heal, seal, and support mind/body connections.  This is are also the territory of Shakti Yoga Dances.  The Jnana connects human consciousness to cosmic consciousness.  The index finger is symbolic of humanity, the thumb symbolizes the divine.  When joined, they create a lock, a particular symbolic meeting of forces which is part of a mudra’s mysteries. Please go to shaktidances.com, or You Tube, Shaktiyogadances, or Vimeo, The Magic Hour, or Face Book YogaWoman and hit ‘like’ and ‘share.’  Thank you!

Now is the time to know that all you do is sacred.  In late 1300, Hafiz wrote the poem, Now Is The Time.  His words remain resonant in 2015; an ancient call to arms reinstating what is always needed, and has always been true.  There is never a better now to expand consciousness and consecrate the body.  For the body, like the earth,  beings of the natural world, are being eclipsed by technology, intellect and speed.  Intuitive complexities are losing a battle to the ease and safety of straight lines, and analysis. … Now is the time to understand That all your ideas of right and wrong Were just a child’s training wheels To be laid aside When you can finally live With veracity~ And love  For the most part, we are secular beings. We set aside a few moments to ask God for help, or to rage at Her/His unfairness, rarely allowing veracity~ And love to settle in and soften life’s blows.  The body as sanctuary takes practice. It is a rehearsal hall full of mirrors in constant use, requiring intention, resilience, and Windex. … Now is the time for the world to know That every thought and action is sacred. This is the time For you to deeply compute the impossibility That there is anything But Grace. Now is the season to know That everything you do Is sacred. Cleaning the mirrors that reveal us to ourselves is the daily practice of ‘chop wood/carry water’ that grows our light.  In choosing the sacred now, we elect to integrate head and heart.  We expand old visions beyond original teachings.  We re-calibrate polarities of shadow and light, admiring both the convoluted and the narrow.  The profane and hallowed live side by side where we fear beckons courage to grow. Our……