Listening to the Natural Rhythms

It is winter. I am seriously needing down time, quiet time, time to rest, hibernate, do less, do little, stop, rejuvenate, and slowly, to be creative. Time to nurture myself and my inner life. I am already staying home a lot more, doing less socially, working fewer hours. But I'm needing more--more quiet, more nurturing, more rest, more creativity, more time to listen and tune in.

This is what winter asks of us. We can't keep ignoring these natural cycles and rhythms. As a culture, it is part of our sickness and pain that we do this. And it costs us dearly.

I need a break. I need a break from the way I've been doing life. No, I need change, not a break, real change. To stop running on anxiety about survival and the need to please others and do what's right and expected, to stop being powered by a low-level, and sometimes not-so-low-level, panic to keep up, pay the bills, excel, be a perfect friend, do everything and do it all perfectly. There's a call within and it's pressing. I don't want to keep contributing to the madness of our culture, pretending i believe in it, furthering it.

What will it take? What do i need to do to change the way i'm living, to be in harmony with what i know to be true, with natural rhythms, with my own rhythms? What will it take for me ot have a life that supports my gifts, my joy, my creativity and passion and song? What will it take for me to have a life i truly, whole-heartedly love, a life that doesn't violate me or others? What will it take to really be true to myself and to the "big picture"?

I'm tired of feeling overlooked and discounted, violated by my life. I am longing to live in accord with my deepest truths, my highest calling, to honor self, Divine, nature, and from that basis to honor others. Skipping over my own needs too much, i am becoming depleted.

Can i listen to what i need? Can i trust the world to hold me? Can i jump into that free fall?

Let's Start Now

Let’s Start Now

Here’s the thing: starlight, case study,

glimmer, frog—it’s all the same

and not—differentiated and yet one—

one giant bolt of cloth furled out of heaven’s gate

but the pattern so varied as to be

unrecognizable at times, until

you see certain fractals repeated

in galaxy swirl, sea shell, wave formation,

inner ear—how strange

and miraculous—and what are we

to make of it, carrying our briefcases,

stuttering on stairwells, confused and

full of longing, frustrated, indifferent,

afraid. Let’s face it, we are afraid

of one thing or another—even you who claim

you aren’t, will happily jump from the sun-

studded cliff with a gleaming sail,

will you tell your mother why

you are still angry? Will you let go completely

in another’s arms? Will you tell an audience

your deepest wants? You too

are afraid.

So then, if fear is the condition

and love the antidote,

let’s get on with it, shall we?

Stop beating ourselves up for our anger,

fear, limitation, inadequacy—they aren’t

going away—and start

dancing and chanting under the stars, touching

ourselves with tenderness.

Let’s start now.

43 Years Ago

Forty-three years ago today, it was Thanksgiving day. In the morning hours, people were waking and drinking their coffee and tea, feeling anticipation about the feast day ahead, beginning to prepare food or traveling to be with friends and family. At that time, on that day, a child came into this world of joy and sorrow. She was born on the day of gratitude to learn giving and receiving, to develop a generous and grateful heart. She came with certain gifts to share, with creativity and imagination and sensitivity, with love and grace. She came to learn and to teach, to create and to share joy, to help and to be helped. And all along the way she found friends, lovers, teachers, companions, and also challenges, to help her live out her path.

On this anniversary day, I give thanks for the life that was given to me, though I have not always wanted it, and I give thanks for all the help, joy, beauty, teachings, blessings, and companionship I have been given in such abundance. I make a commitment to live my life each day from heart, to be true to my deepest self and the purpose I was brought here for, to live in service to the unique expression of Divine spirit in me, for the benefit of all beings. I dedicate my life to this.

The Words You Don't Say

The words you say, the words you cannot say. How hard it is for me to express what i am feeling to others, especially if there is any anger, hurt, discomfort, worry, embarrassment, unmet need, desire. It's easy to love myself, to be myself, when i feel radiant, alive, open, joyous, loving, but can i make space for the feelings when i feel small, vulnerable, lonely, depressed, scared, angry, hurt, tired? It's hard. Can i make it easy, effortless? Can i give that, learn that, so that i can help others to give themselves that?

I want to shut it out, deny it, reject it, hate it, but that hasn't worked so well, doesn't allow for the fullness of being. Can i practice making a large, inclusive space around this in myself? Can i practice a new way of being? Can i make this a dance too, part of the dance of my life? Can i let these difficult emotions dance in me, express, find a more inclusive home? And through this to become more accepting, tolerant, of others.

The wind moves the trees outside. A storm is coming. The sky is a white-grey with streaks of blue-grey. Most of the leaves left on the oaks are more brown than yellow, and they drift down in the wind. The wind makes a shushing sound, like a long exhaled "ha," and the leaves rustle in response.

If absolutely nothing is wrong, if everything is ok just as it is, what then? How might i live differently from this awareness? What does it mean to open my heart to love in this moment as i sit, watching the gathering winds outside and the fire in the woodstove inside, feeling my shifting feelings, seeing the thoughts as fleeting as leaves on the wind and less substantial?

Opening my heart to love seems to be about not rejecting this: this that i am feeling, this that i am, this milky grey light filtering in the windows, the blustery cold day, even the things in my life i have to do and don't want to do. Is there a way to include them and my feelings about them? I think of Marshall Rosenberg talking about never doing anything that you can't do with the joy of a child feeding a hungry duckling. I love that vision of life, and i crave it, and i do not know how to get from here to there. But it feels like life itself depends on it. But then the voices battle: Is that really possible? Is that realistic? Aren't there all sorts of things you do out of necessity and not love, or can they truly all be done from love and joy and the deepest presence or else given up? This feels like the most urgent and important question.

Giving and Receiving

Yesterday afternoon I was tired and crabby from work and feeling stressed and overwhelmed from too much to do. I had promised to cook dinner and bring it to a friend who just had a baby and to pick up some things at the store for her. Cooking through the tiredness and overwhelm, not wanting to bring those energies to the food, I began to relax. Then as I loaded the car with this beautiful meal I had made, I felt that amazing wave of GIVING. What a gift it is to give, how healing, how full of grace.

Then I got to sit and hold the baby and hear the birth story and bask in the glow of love of these new parents and their beautiful boy. Coming home, there was an unusual pile of envelopes in my mailbox, including two bulky ones. Five checks and two donations of beautiful yarn for my raffle! The first wave of gifts for this project. So powerful, healing, amazing to open those envelopes, one after another, and feel all that love and support. The grace of RECEIVING. Wow.

Realizing in my life I have had trouble receiving because I don't want to be indebted to anyone, feel dependent or a loss of power or autonomy. Now I see how completely untenable and full of hubris that attitude is. I am indebted in so many ways and to countless beings and spirits for every single thing in my life--the clothes i wear, food i eat, books i read, friendship, house, abilities, teaching, etc, etc. There is no way to get out of the chain of indebtedness, and no reason to want to. This is exchange, like breathing. You give out and you take in, constant flow.

Last night I was so excited by the first yarn donations and promises of more that I searched for a pattern that used many colors in a beautiful, artful way. The joy i felt at working on designing this beautiful blanket i will make for all of you and for one of you was another form of giving.

Suffering

I smile, realizing that the Buddha's First Noble Truth could be translated, "Shit happens." As I understand it, it's actually one word, "Dukkha" and, is more accurately translated, "Suffering is." or "The...re is suffering." I love the simplicity. It's not "Life is suffering," which is not true, nor "There is always suffering." After all, the Third Noble Truth is about the end of suffering. . .

The Hole at the Center of My Being

In recent months I have looked into the vast hole at the center of my being, the gaping hole of need and want that feels like it will never be filled, the painful hole of emptiness that makes me try to cling to experiences and people desperately with an addictive craving and a feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness at the same time. I have looked at that hole, that shadow self, that darkness, head on. I have felt its grief and terror and painful need and longing. I have looked at the very thing I never wanted to look at or acknowledge or feel. And in looking into that hole, it has lost some of its power over me. It's not gone, by any means. It's just less terrifying than it seemed.

And now I know on some level that it is not real. It is an illusion. There is no hole at the center of my being, no yawning cavity waiting for someone or something else to fill it. At the center of my being, at the center of every being, is an indescribable fullness, a richness, and the source of all that we truly desire--all the love, all the healing, all the wisdom, all the guidance, all the joy.

Although I often feel utterly cut off from this source now, I am not cut off from the knowing that it exists, that all I want and need is within me, and I do notice that the "power" of the hole is less and the fear of it is less. I no longer believe someone or something else could fill it. I no longer believe it would kill me if I were to look into it or feel it fully. This is a blessing, the beginning of freedom.

The Grieving and the Dying

The grieving and the dying
just go on and on. It's amazing
what a life they have,
this life of loss.
Neither right nor wrong,
this fucking heart.
Who knew the story
would be all about pain?
Who knew
you'd be asked to give everything, then
give up some more?
How is it
that the birds
singing and chirping this morning
are so unconcerned by this,
do not even know
loss's name? How could humans
have ever thought they were better
than the animals, a life
of suffering superior to a life of song?
You'd do me a great kindness,
you gods, to let me come back
with flight and music as my only goals.
Of course,
they are my only real goals now—
but i don't reach them
with the ease the birds do—
except for love—
that's the one, the hook
where i am caught and the flesh
around my mouth tears,
and i bite down harder,
unwilling to let go.

Living in Love

I am understanding now that part of how this transformation is working in me is to push me to surrender to Divine will, really let go of trying to run the show with my mind, with fear and the desire for control and sure outcomes, and instead to live from heart; it is pushing me to find real freedom within. And the way it works is that everywhere i still hold on, everything i cling to, causes me great suffering now. Amazingly i still do hold on, but the gods are making that very tough for me now.

Also, anytime i dwell in fear, anger, judgement, criticism, i feel terrible pain until i return to a state of love and trust. They are making so that those negative states become more and more unbearable in myself, and i also feel increasing discomfort with those attitudes in others, when people are going into fear and judgement or petty thoughts. My friends still attempt to "advise" me from this place, out of a genuine desire to help and protect me, but it just invokes amazing pain if i start to believe what they are saying--i.e. "he's just no damn good"--or else discomfort if i don't.

As this slow, agonizing transformation in the chrysalis takes place--my old body disintegrating and a new, unfamiliar one forming--i feel a widening gap with some of the friends and family in my life, harder to relate to them, to find common ground between my way of living and seeing life and theirs. That's hard. I cannot live a lie or pretend to be that way now or that it's ok for me to be negative. More than ever i am moving toward total honesty--always a passion of mine--and the truth of reality, which is that it is all Divine love. This isn't just an abstraction, it's the way things are--and being out of alignment with that, which i frequently still am, causes me to suffer horribly now as a means to push me back where i need to live--this deep state of love and surrender, not knowing, moving from heart guidance, even when it seems to make no "sense." There's no other way. The gods have created in me a no turning back situation.

My intense longing for wholeness, peace and liberation is created by the agony of not being in it. Robert Fritz (The Path of Least Resistance) would say that's not a good way to create, out of a desire to avoid something negative, that it doesn't work in the long run, and he's right, it's not a heart movement. I need to create out of a vision of the positive. The vision of the positive i have is love, real love, universal love, the experience of love everywhere in all things and abundant within myself, the experience that there is only love, and the joy, freedom and aliveness that brings. That is my vision.

Focusing, Awareness and the Dance

I've been discovering Focusing lately--the book, the technique--and I've had some lovely results with it already. It works well for me in that it is body-0riented, allows a lot of space for my feelings while encouraging me not to drown in them or get lost in my thoughts and in analysis of my problems. It allows the wisdom of the body to speak. As I've started using it, I already find myself modifying it some to work for me.

Last night I did some Focusing on the feeling of a very angry child within who is holding onto my pain for dear life. I could feel that she is holding onto this because it feels like the only thing left i have to hold onto, and because it is a way of lashing out at life/the Divine for mistreating me, a form of revenge. "I will be in pain and shut down as a way of retaliating for being treated unfairly by life. I will refuse to shine and give my gifts to the world." It's a way of feeling some last shred of control in a world where i feel i have none, and of hanging onto something in a world i feel takes everything away. And it's a way of expressing my anger. It's a big Fuck You to the universe, and so that part of me says, "No way am i giving this up." I still feel robbed by life in some part of me, and i'm furious about it. And the anger is also a protection against feeling the loss too deeply.

I wasn't able to really shift it in a big way, doing the Focusing, but i was able to open some space around it, to bring some compassion and awareness to it. And that is very healing.

Awareness is the healer. I am seeing this more and more. It may work quickly sometimes or very slowly and gradually, but it is the gentlest and most effective healer--just bringing awareness to all these thoughts, feelings, behaviors. Awareness as a form of love and compassion. Like i tell people in my Contact Improv classes if they are feeling some pain in a part of their body, some stiffness or soreness or injury or lack of range of motion, to just bring a loving awareness to it, not to try to change it or need it to be different. This spacious awareness is both powerful and gentle, yielding and strong.

Sometimes i lose faith in it for myself, thinking i need something more dramatic to heal me, fearing i will never change these old bad habits, this painful conditioning.

Last night as i was feeling into wanting to hold onto my anger and pain in order to hold onto control, and the feeling of having no control over my life, i thought again about the metaphor of the dance that both my dream and E used. Life is like a dance. We don't know what's going to happen next. As my dream told me, the joy and fun are in the not knowing, responding moment to moment, feeling our aliveness and capacity for creative response. As E said, when we dance, we give ourselves fully to the dance, even though we know it will end. And this is how it is with life. Impermanence does not have to limit our engagement; it can enhance it. I've been having trouble with this.

But i realized last night that it's not true that i have no control over the dance. I looked again at how i am in my best dances. I have a tremendous amount of creative input and influence on how it goes; i can play with intention and allowing, as i have my students do in Contact Improv. We are not just passive subjects, being done to by our partner/life. We are half of the dance. So when i feel i have no control, it's really not true. I am a co-creator of my life. I can't dictate exactly how it will go, and that would take the joy out of it. But i can play with my desires, intention, creative input, and enjoy that play. In fact, life wants me to engage this way, responding with all of who i am to the dance.

Realizing this intellectually is one thing. Getting this in my body is another. This is where Focusing, dancing and other practices come in. I still don't want to give up my pain and anger.

Being Receptive

I've been thinking that the I Ching hexagram The Receptive is not only about the importance of deepening my connection with the feminine in me and with the Divine Feminine, but also simply about being receptive--listening, being open to divine influences and messages, receiving rather than doing.

So I come outside to sit on the porch again this morning, even though it's a cold, wet, windy morning. I bundle up, so i can sit and listen to the wind, which is very active this morning, so i can be outside. Important to get out of my head at least partially and more into my body, though I sit here writing.

A light rain begins with a sudden shhhhh through the leaves. Everything is soaked from rain all night. Now the rain turns heavier and the sound shifts. It is beautiful, simple, alive, real. Compare this to a computer screen. What are we doing to our lives?

I need more love in my life now, and it seems the way back to it is by falling in love with the world. I asked the dictionary several days ago (bibliomancy) what question to be asking re my unhappiness over J not calling me, and I got something about "solvere: to loosen" (within some etymology of a word). I took that to mean the question is "How can I loosen up around this topic and loosen my grip on it and him?" So I asked that question, and got the word "pansexual" as a response. I think it means the answer is to fall in love with everything.

Now the light shifts, brightens considerably. These changes are not signs we must decipher, but rather the story of the world being told, a sacred story that i am a part of, though it's become hard for me to feel my place in it. All i can do is listen, open myself to the wind and rain, these forces moving through the world, moving in me, if i wish to find my way back to my place in this pattern, to a self i can be happy inside of, to a love for the world and from the world. I can bring my pain and emptiness out here and lay it at the feet of the world.

It's not about reassembling a self, as i had thought. It is simply a paring away to get to the divine essence, to who i really am already and always have been, and letting that shine forth in all its radiance.

I sit here a long time without writing, listening to the rain, watching the way the wind moves the treetops, and i am soothed and stilled. I could sit here all day if i could be warm enough and patient enough and have the time, and i would learn and learn and learn in the gentlest of ways. Everywhere is evidence of Her beauty and of the inherent harmlessness of the world.

There is a profound dance going on out here between the wind, rain, trees and other life. I still feel alien to that dance, outside of it, having no place in it, so unlike it, but that is a lie, a misperception that needs healing. I look and think, How can i possibly be beautiful and wonderful and amazing like these trees dancing in the wind? I feel clunky, a mess, confused, awkward, out of joint with all this beauty and wisdom and perfection? How can i be party of it? How can i be made of the same stuff? How can i belong?

But the same thing that made these trees and rain made me. Somehow i do fit in, though i can't feel it. And my lack of feeling it is the origin of my loneliness and separation from self, others, Divine, world, and can be healed through connection with these divine forces dancing the world, dancing me. We are the dance; Life is the dancer. Let me be danced. Let me surrender. Let me feel the dance moving me.