Pickalily: Follow Your Peace

I posted this on Defining Spiritual Presence, the old incarnation of this blog earlier this year. this topic of self worth is still a hot topic in my life, cause I haven’t licked it. This reposting is an internal conversation really…more for me, then for you…but I hope you get something out of it also:

There’s a song that often travels through my mind when my thoughts run over the topic of being focused…”I step into the flow and then I let go…I open my mind, my heart and and my soul…I surrender, oh I surrender…”

It’s a mantra that really says it all about staying focused.

This year, that sense of being in the flow has been tremendously difficult for me to invest myself in. My life, my prayers and my soul’s intention has demanded that I take a look at a view point of myself that doesn’t match my purpose, integrity or authenticity. You see, I had taken as my own the false message that I was unworthy. It was a message I received about who I am at a very young age. I was susceptible to it, I guess, and I took it on as if it were true and proceeded to live my life as if it were true. That false belief about myself colored or even spoiled many opportunities in my life.

It is, of course, not true that I am unworthy. I am a beautiful Divine soul that’s as full of the love of the Great Mystery as anyone else and just on that basis alone, I am no less worthy than anyone else…and there are plenty of reasons that otherwise make me worthy as well.

False humility is a limitation in life. It keeps you small and stuck.

My soul refuses to be small and stuck. It’s not in it’s nature.

This process of reclaiming the truth of my self image has been a tough one for me. It poked some deep sore places in my heart and I met alot of internal resistance as a result. In the mean time, I found myself wishing for distractions from that pain and I had a very hard time staying focused on my overall soul purpose while this was going on.

Yesterday, I spent some time with a sweat lodge fire pondering the questions of; What do I want? What do I need? and What will I do?

I didn’t have a clear cut answer for the first question. There are alot of things that I want, but none seem to keep me feeling solid in my soul purpose. No matter what turned over in my mind, it felt like my energy system just emptied itself instead of remaining empowered and simply interacting with something nourishing.

When I answered the second, I felt as if a flow surrounded me and I felt so good, so nourished that I just surrendered to it. I didn’t have the sense that it was related to any particular person, place, thing or event. It simply seemed a state of being that took me to what I needed…sort of Following Your Peace.

The third question didn’t seem to have any answer either that made me think I had a clue about what’s next to do…but when I went back to the imagery of stepping into the flow, it seemed the answer was to Follow my Peace….to simply step into the flow and then let go…to follow the flow of my own empowerment into the future.

Message from the bushes of my heart:
Kindness to self reflects self worth

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Tea: Sage

Mood: Grumpy

Munching: Nothing

Song: None

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Stuff on my mind:

Seeing a friend tonight, some wishes I made, my books…wishing to cure the distance between myself and a couple of my dearest friends.

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This Week’s Card(s):

My Angel Card:

Expectancy

Meaning from the book:

Your attitude toward the future builds your experience of it. Hold a positive outlook. Stay miracle minded and open to surprise.

Here

Fairy Card:

“You are the sweet burst of freshly picked blackberries”

No link available, out of print.

Here

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Friday’s Feast:

Appetizer
What is your favorite carnival/amusement park ride?

The most exciting one I’ve ever been on, I can’t remember the name of. You get in a car that is pulled up about four or five stories in a way that leaves you laying on your back facing the sky, knees in the air. On the way back down, you go free fall facing the land knees first. The brakes don’t engage until the last story. Scared the hell out of me. I was shaking so back I could hardly stand up. Then the adrenaline surge hit and I was all ready to get on again. Man what a high.

Soup
How do you react in uncomfortable social situations?

I get silent and watchful. I may step out of the room if it is too much, regroup and go back. I also observe until I decide if or how I should respond.

Salad
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how much do you enjoy discussing deep, philosophical topics?

Depends on the topic. I’m not much interested in semantics. That’s just irritating. Once I’ve determined where someone stands on things, though, the subject dries up for me. I’m certainly not going to try to persuade them to my viewpoint if they don’t agree and if they do, there’s nothing to talk about anymore. The only time it holds my interest is if I am learning something or someone wants to learn something from me.

Main Course
Did you get a flu shot this year? If not, do you plan to?

I don’t get vaccinations. I nearly died from a reaction to one when I was 25. I got all the symptoms of Lock Jaw from a tetanus shot, including paralysis for 12 hours.

Dessert
Approximately how many hours per week do you spend watching television?

It varies…but if I bother to watch at all that day, its only prime time and its between one and three hours. I can only be bothered with a handful of shows. Now the answer would be different if you asked me how many hours I watch movies. *winks*

 

The Soul of Fire

I posted this on my first blog ever and when I moved my blogging activities to Blogger, I reposted it on Defining Spiritual Presence. It continues to be a topic that I love and when I found it nestled in the archives at Defining, I knew I wanted it here…so yet another reposting of this soulful subject. *smiles*

“I love fire. I spend alot of time with it. At least twice a month, I keep a fire going to heat stones for ceremonies I participate in.

The other day, I was helping a friend with his bon fire for brush. I had offered to help and that day he took me up on it…to my great pleasure. To me it was alot of hard work, but it was also yet another chance to be with fire.

I asked my friend what the definition of life is. He looked at me a little puzzled about where that left field question came from. I had a point to make and he knew it or I wouldn’t have asked such a specific random question. He answered that it consumes and breaths. I said yes and it reproduces, needs heat to live and leaves waste…then I pointed to the fire and said, that is alive. By that definition fire is alive.

I have come to believe that fire is a living entity. I have seen amazing things happen around a fire…especially in the company of people who have made a special relationship with it. I have a close friend whom I have watched put his bare hands on a flaming log, pick it up and put it where he wanted it, which was back covering the rocks the log was supposed to be heating for ceremony. Flames danced all over his hands, but left no marks. He didn’t know I was watching him until he was done or he wouldn’t have done it. I have seen this same man and several other people I know well pat and rub stones that were red from the fire as they entered the ceremonial space.

I have been making a relationship with fire myself over the years. I can’t do those things that I just described, but I have been healed instantly after the fire has kissed me. I’ve had my hair, eyelashes and clothing burned but not been hurt…so many times I can’t count them. Often times I don’t even know it has happened until someone points it out to me. I’ve been singed now and again by heat from the fire, but the fire itself has never hurt me. Even those singe marks are always healed without scarring by the following day and sometimes even within moments. I have grown to trust fire…and I have grown accustomed to getting right in close to large fires and I love the heat of it…the vital life of it. My friends call it dancing with the fire.

Being with fire this way reminds me of loving. It is a dance. It is a risk. It is a living breathing experience of life. It is not predictable. It is a relationship that has to be nurtured. It is easy to get hurt. It is entrancing, beautiful, mercurial. It is life.“

This was a post I wrote on an old blog…from May or June 2006 I believe….My relationship with fire has evolved in these intervening months….and I had some more to add.

I don’t think it’s a philosophy or a personal story that I have to share. It is more a visceral experience to put words to…

The sense that it is untamed…

That might seem like an obvious statement, but by this I don’t mean that it will consume what it wishes…I mean that it is so ephemeral that we are not able currently to understand it’s spirit, only it’s science…no by untamed I mean just that…that we can lay no claim to it’s spirit. It is beyond our ken, though it is a living being. It is something that we can birth as we choose, that we can make alliance with by controling it’s environment…but we have no true power over it… Sooner or later it will burst the walls we place around it and find a way to be free…and isn’t that really the one quintessential aspect of life that’s so Divine, so hopeful, so inspiring?

Its been a long time since I reposted this on Defining. I have again evolved in my relations with Fire. I have even more respect for it than I did when I updated my thoughts last. I have had some far deeper experiences with it in the last year. It seems a being of Love to me now. Before it was an untamed essence…not a thing…but also that in fact. Now it is an entity of Love…in every sense of the word…something that takes care.

I know that must sound quite odd…but I see this being as intelligent now…or at least something capable of being a robe for something very beautiful and Divine. I do not know which. To me, if it was the Fire and something More. It was seamless….and I was mesmerized and awestruck and rendered speechless on this subject for months now. I still cannot set words to it. I can only say that at the end of the six days that I got to care for this fire during a special ceremony I attend each year, I knew that I had not deepened my relationship with it enough to care for it safely any more. I had to step back and out of that fire or be burned.

I have always thought about what I was taught as a child in Sunday School. I had asked by we couldn’t see and experience God directly. The teacher answered because it is so brilliant, so beautiful and refined that it would burn us. We are not ready.

That’s how the fire felt to me on that last day.

I aspire to be ready some day…to dance in that fire even on the last day.

I wonder what changes will arise in me from doing so…?

Visual Meditation #10

 

What do you see?

 

 

 

 

 

Authors of both pieces are unknown.

Monday’s Candle Moment: Some quotes I like

I had a reader find my old blog Defining Spiritual Presence and he commented on a post that I hadn’t remembered. I remembered at that point that I’d meant to go through that blog to see what else I might want to move over here. This is a repost that I thought had some terrific ideas in it that makes it a wonderful post for the Candle Moment:

Here’s a few things on my mind lately:

amidabuddha.org - Daily Meditation: “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. - Oliver Wendell Holmes”

Now that’s a tru’ism if I ever heard one….*smiles*

amidabuddha.org - Daily Meditation: “We say, ‘In calmness there should be activity; ‘ in activity there should be calmness.’ Actually, they are the same thing; to say ‘calmness’ or to say ‘activity’ is just to express different interpretations of one fact. There is harmony in our activity, and where there is harmony there is calmness. - D.T. Suzuki”

This one is deep enough that it could take years to have visceral understandings of it…to make it second nature….to make that balance in your life a way of being…

Living Tantra: The Dance of Giving and Receiving: “Compulsively rescuing others is draining. You constantly give away your energy in trade for some nourishment you imagine you will receive in return. But since you are in a state of fantasy and fixation, you never get back what you want. And you don’t even know what you actually need. Exhaustion is the inevitable result. Service, on the other hand, may be physically tiring, but it is fundamentally nourishing for a whole situation, one that includes you. The key quality of service is that it is reciprocal: it is an embodiment of the understanding that we live in continuity. Two Sanskrit words convey the sense of service as reciprocity in a state of continuity: sevā and dāna. Sevā is selfless service without attachment to the fruits of one’s labor. You just serve. The activity is complete in and of itself without any other reward. You don’t have to try to enjoy it, or grin and bear it. You aren’t striving to be good or nice. You are just expressing the natural devotion of Self to Self. You are Self serving Self. There is no difference between you, the act of service, and the one being served. Everything flows like a beautiful, precise dance of devotion. There is no other joy to be sought. This is pure seva-ānanda. Dāna is giving. The real meaning of dāna is nothing less than the total”

This is only a little of the whole article. It’s a deep teaching that I learned and am still learning about. There is a concept in Siberian Shamanism called Windhorse. That is; the shaman earns power through good deeds, right lifestyle, service to Spirit and others and through making right relationships with the Spirits and with humanity. Now power, so far, for me, means that I am healthy and able to heal others. It may come to mean more things as time passes…but that’s what I’ve learned so far….

Only thing is…it doesn’t work if that’s your primary motivation. It only works if you are willing to sacrifice yourself…if you start in a place of gratitude and the simple desire to give.

Pickalily: Exquisite Moments

A few days ago a dear friend passed on a poem that she’d been sent. Here it is:

The Gift

By Hafiz, 14th-century poet
Translated into English by Daniel Ladinsky

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and could give the Beloved His choice,
Some nights He would just drag you around the room by your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds all your erroneous notions of truth
That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,
Causing the world to weep on too many fine days.

God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us up in a tiny room with Himself
And practice His drop-kick.
The Beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know quickly packs their bags
And hightails it out of town.

It is a poem that makes you smile isn’t it? When my friend shared this wonderful poem with me, I was suddenly struck by a very clear experience of the first time I ever heard this poem….and I paid attention, because I do not usually clearly remember much of anything specific from a retreat and that’s precisely the instance that I first heard this poem; on Sufi retreat. For those of you who don’t know, Sufi retreats are usually taken in silence, with sessions for meditation guided by a retreat guide. The retreats are traditionally a certain length of time and are conducted with some form of fasting in them. At the least, very simple meals of rice and vegetables that are served with no condiments or spices of any kind and a retreatant is welcome to just stick to water on shorter retreats. In any case, as you may imagine, during retreat we go pretty deep. In this instance we’d spent the retreat focused on the seven heavenly planes of existence. We were pretty far out there….so far out that we didn’t want to talk…not even to prepare a meal together. It was in the late afternoon and most of us were ready for a good long nap before dinner and were solemn with the beauty of these astral experiences….and the guide read this poem…There we were…in a serious place of existence, faced with the nakedness of our truest selves and she reads this silly, funny poem and we just burst with laughter…

It was such an exquisite moment. I’ll never forget that….and yet I do. For long periods of time, I do forget these things…these little moments in deep places because they are usually beyond normal memory and it usually takes people or situations which take me into something beyond normal memory to trigger the recall.

I love that about my friend. *smiles*

Another exquisite moment was Thanksgiving. I spent the day enjoying a feast with my chosen family (our friends), my husband and my boys. It was wonderful. I ate meat for the first time a long time. I’ve only had meat one other time this year….It felt like love with our meal and I really enjoyed it.

When we’d finished our meals, we chatted a while and then finally wandered in to the living room to get out the instruments and have an impromptu jam session. We had a djembe, a hand drum, some guitars, a mandolin, and a bass there…oh and my son had his flute, but we didn’t jam with it as a whole group, just my boys, which is why everyone got started on the music. *smiles* We sang all sorts of classic blues and folk music and a few classic rock n roll songs too….and lots of bluesy gospel. It was great fun and we sounded wonderful, if I do say so myself. Most of our friends seem to be professional musicians currently or in the past, so we have great fun with our music.

When we’d music’d ourselves out, we sat around telling jokes…which started out G-rated and went to gross fast. LOL! I really enjoyed the day….an exquisite moment. *smiles*

Message from the bushes of my heart:

Joy is broadcast into the garden of your life through gratitude.

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Mood: Happy

Tea: Sage

Munching: Cashews

Song: Listen by Inanna

 

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Stuff on my mind:

Getting my books done. I just really feel an urgency about that. I think that another huge change is on its way into my life and I’m getting anxious to get this work done before the distraction hits.

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This Week’s Card:

Here

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Friday’s Feast:

Appetizer
What is one of your Christmas traditions?

Making a wish on each ornament that I hang on the tree.

Soup
Who is the easiest person on your list to buy presents for?

My husband

Salad
What is your favorite Christmas scent?

The mixture of Bayberry candles burning, pumpkin pie in the oven and evergreens from the wreath we always get each year.

Main Course
If you could give a fellow blogger a Christmas gift, who would it be and what would you give them?

I would send Anjolie to the Tango retreat I know is happening at Kripalu

Dessert
What’s something on your Christmas wish list this year that you need (not just want)?

A new can opener. I know. That’s dull, but I need one. I can’t open cans by myself with a bum wrist with the worn out one we have. *smiles*

“Beloved”

Happy Thanksgiving!

A song by Karen Drucker

 

This is a repost from Defining Spiritual Presence which I had forgotten about until a stray reader cued in on it the other day. I guess maybe I should take a second look at that blog. There may be some other stuff there I want over here after all. *smiles*:

When I regularly attended Sufi events, I often made time to join in on Dances of Universal Peace

I was remembering the dances recently when I was reading a blog post about Tantra and spiritual eye gazing. There is a particular dance that is done for soulfully greeting fellow dancers. The music and the song that go with this dance is a willowy, gracefully swaying rhythm which has a tendency to make a person dive into the belly and view the world from that rooted, quiet perspective…yet it also is one that increases the blood flow and so it simultaneously draws out a lighter, more rapid breath pattern and you find yourself shifting to a dual perspective in which your face infuses with light and you begin to radiate love from the face.

During this dance half the group is going clockwise and half counter clockwise and at various points of the dance, the dancers pause and bow to one another. In the first phase of the dance, the leader allows the dancers to let the music work it’s magic to arouse the soul…next the leader will have the dancers view their bowing partner with a deep eye gaze. It without fail will cause most of the dancers to begin to weep at the beauty and vulnerability this causes in each other…

To be seen deeply when each person is suffused with such love of the soul is a thing which cannot be truly understood until you experience it first hand. It is a viewpoint that allows no hiding…yet it is unconditionally loving. That is incredibly beautiful.

Make no mistake, many people resist this experience. They cannot hold the gaze. Those who can still hold the power of this gaze on their partner and allow the love to wash over them….usually by the time the dance is completed, each person has over come their resistance.

By the time the dance is completed the room is pulsing with the power of this Divine series of touches upon each other…and the dancing has only just begun.