Category Archives: Essential Journey

A Cry for Peace

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IMG_5842I cried yesterday. I sat on the ridge overlooking the river and tears spilled gently over my eyelids kissing my cheeks as softly as dew clinging to a leaf in early morning light.

I cried for the children who will go hungry tonight. For the boys who will hoist guns as long as their bodies and kill in the name of a peace they have never known. And for the little girls whose childhood’s are lost to faceless men who believe the only way to know love is to rape it from another.

I cried for mothers who weep at the gravesites of their loved ones lost to war and famine and disease and for the father’s who desperately want to teach their sons to grow into men, and do not know the way to quiet the fear within their hearts that their sons too shall never find their way to peace.

I cried for this world, this planet upon which we each rely for our existence, this planet we take for granted and treat with such disdain.

And I cried for humanity, our humanity, our human kind lost beneath our history of destroying one another in the name of God, Allah, Yaweh, Satnam, All Powerful, Vishnu, and 70 x 70 names I do not know but hear whispered upon the cries of millions of others dying to defend their right to worship at the altar of their choosing.

These were needed tears. Gentle. Cleansing. Healing. They were the words my heart could not speak out loud.

IMG_5846And when the tears were shed, when they had run their course, compassion flowed freely like the river winding its way through the valley bottom below, each passing drop changing the course of the one before.

And in their passing, I was left alone upon the hillside, sitting in the sun, cherishing the beauty of the day, savouring the gentle autumn breeze caressing my skin, the sound of the grasses whispering, the geese honking their plaintive lament as they journeyed south.

There is darkness in this world.

And there is light.

It is in the darkness the light shines brightest.

Yet, I want not to see the darkness. I want not to know its thrall, to feel its drag pulling me under. I want to steer clear of the darkness and still I know, it is only through acknowledging its presence that I will be free to shine my light fearlessly. It is only through letting go of fear of its nature I will be free to stand fearlessly in mine.

IMG_5851I cannot rid this planet of war and pain and sickness and hunger. I cannot heal the children of the world. I cannot silence the guns.

I can create beauty in my world. I can create peace around me by letting go of my fear that to witness the darkness is to let go of the light.

It is when I hold onto light for fear it will go out that darkness takes hold.

I cried yesterday. And I will cry again today. And in my tears, I find myself flowing in Love and compassion, holding onto nothing than the truth of who I am and all that is possible when I let go of fearing I cannot change the world.

If not me, who? If not now, when?

We are each capable of changing our worlds, of creating peace where there is discord, healing where there is pain. We are each capable of putting down our guns and holding out our arms in love, peace and forgiveness.

If not us, who? If not now, when?

 

 

You are where love will find you. always. completely. forever.

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IMG_5492There is no edge to love. No line that marks its beginning and its end. There is only the sea. The vast, limitless waters where love flows free of the boundaries we set to mark its territory.

Try to hold love in a cup and it will flow over the edges the minute you put your hand within.

Tie love to a fencepost and it will untangle itself from the rope and run free as the wind.

You cannot contain or tie up love.

Love is limitless. Forever. It knows no ends.

It does not come to her and not him. To them and not me.

Love doesn’t judge who it visits. It arrives unbidden because love never left, even when you slammed the door on love’s presence.

Love simply is.

Here. There. Everywhere.

Love is.

All. Completely. Everything.

It is we who measure love. We take out our yardsticks of life and count the moments we felt, or missed out on love and recount all the reasons why we are lacking in its worth.

We tally up the hurts and bruises, twist the arrows and knives that have pierced our hearts, and call love all kinds of names it does not know. Lacking, lying, untrustworthy, invisible.

And still, no matter how we measure it or what we call it, love keeps flowing. Love keeps being what it is because love can be nothing other than itself.

There is no edge to love but there are limits to our capacity to be open and present to love. And in our fear love is not enough, we close off parts of our hearts telling ourselves that love hurts, or harms or kills.

Love doesn’t hurt just as guns don’t kill without a human to pull the trigger. We do. We the human beings who live within the sea of love flowing all around, frantically grasping onto any support to keep ourselves from drowning, we are the hurting and the hurters. We are the limiters of love. The ones who dole it out in measured drops for fear there will not be enough to fill the ocean of need within our hearts.

And in our frantic scramble to hold on to what we believe is not enough, will never be enough, we hurt one another. We do ourselves harm. In our fear of swimming freely we cramp up and stop breathing deeply. In the shallowness of our breath, we lose the freedom to live fearlessly in love’s flow and die, one breath at a time, of starvation.

There is no edge to love. Just breathe, deeply, and you will find yourself in its embrace. Just breathe, slowly, and let yourself go, let go. There is no need to hold on to love. It isn’t going anywhere but where you are because where you are is where love finds you. Always. Completely. Forever.

Like a tree – healing from the inside out

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~Minnie Aumonier

 

Yesterday, I walked home from the C-train, the September sun warm against my skin. I walked along tree lined sidewalks bordered by manicured lawns, and piles of dead branches. As I walked I kept looking up to ensure there were no limbs of trees precariously hanging, threatening to fall to the ground.

IMG_5831It snowed here last week. Twice. The first snowfall was bad enough. When I wrote about it, I thought it was a freak September anomaly, Mother Nature having a hissy fit. Maybe she was experiencing nature’s form of menopause. The heat got to her and she snapped.

And then, the snow fell again, two days later. This time the skies dumped a heavy, wet oppressive blanket that caused significant damage to the urban canopy, as I heard our Mayor call it yesterday on the radio. $4.5 million dollars worth of damage and counting.

The view down our street

The view down our street

The trees in our yard were saved. No giant branches falling. No limbs snapped off from the trunk.

It might have been different.

In our backyard we have a giant and beautiful crabapple tree. Four years ago, when the arborist came to trim its companion birch tree, he pointed to the inside of the crab apple tree and said as he pushed a stick down into her trunk, “See here. She’s a beauty but she hasn’t been very well cared for over the years. She’s been rotting from the inside out because waters been getting into her trunk for quite some time. She’s drowning.”

“A tree will always try to heal itself,” he said and he bore a hole on each side of her trunk and slid an iron rod into it. “It will give her strength and prevent her trunk from splitting.” And he showed me a limb where someone had trimmed her, on the other side of the piece that was rotten.

He shows me the end of a branch that someone has cut back. “Someone cut her back but didn’t leave any place for her to heal herself. Cut her on a dead limb. She tried to heal but she was already dead beyond the cut. There was no way she could heal herself.” He pauses. Taps the cut off piece against her trunk. “She wanted to heal. She really did. But sometimes, even nature can’t overcome bad cuts.”

Like that tree, sometimes, we have to cut off the dead pieces to heal. We have to jettison the parts that no longer serve us well to give ourselves strength to heal from the inside out.

“She won’t be as pretty to look at when I’m done,” he says. “But she’ll be healthy. She’s got good roots and next year, she’ll be even more beautiful than before. It’s all in her roots and how we tend to her above ground.”

And she has been, more beautiful than before, and stronger too.

Our tree survived the storm. She’s got good roots. Her canopy of leaves continues to shade the backyard. Crabapples ripen on her branches, their bright red fruit poking out from between her leaves.

And I wonder… Am I keeping my roots healthy? Am I feeding them what they need to stay strong? Are there things I need to cut off that are leeching me of strength? That no longer feed me, nurture me, strengthen me? Things that limit my growth because I haven’t yet had the courage to cut out the deadwood?

My roots are strong. To keep them strong, I need ensure I am not carrying dead or dying limbs of thoughts that are leaving my roots exposed to the elements, drowning me from the inside out.

No matter what life brings, no matter the weather, the times, the hardships, my roots are strong and with strong roots, I grow and prosper and flourish and leaf out into beauty, as long as I care for myself, no matter the weather, no matter the times, no matter the hardships.

My roots are strong and as long as I take care of nourishing myself from the inside out, my natural capacity to heal will strengthen me from the inside out with every breath I take.

I see you. You are beautiful just the way you are.

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When I walk into the Choices seminar room on the Wednesday morning, I know that miraculous happenings are afoot. That wonder and awe are in the wings, waiting breathlessly for the trainees to arrive and step into their embrace.

And I know Love is always present. And in its presence, there is nothing that has happened that cannot be healed. There is nothing that we’ve done, that cannot be forgiven. There is nothing that is not possible.

I see it every seminar. Trainees walk in feeling worthless, lost, unforgiven or unforgiving. They avoid. Hide. Run away. Argue. Fight for their limitations. Put up walls. Dive deep into silence.

They carry their wounds, their backpacks filled with regrets, their hearts full of woe. They wrap themselves in the belief they are alone, that no one understands them, that no one loves them. They push down their tears, their broken hearts, their anger and fear and stand defiant. No way will anyone break through their shield.

And still, Love finds them where they’re at, exactly the way they are.

Love always loves.

Being in the Choices seminar room is always a testament to the strength of the human spirit and our desire to LIVE.

We hurt one another. We call each other names. We abuse, bully, push and prod and poke and preen. We talk back. We shut up. We force our opinions on each other. We bend under the opinions of others. We know the pain of abuse, divorce, death and the things we cannot speak of that have happened in our lives.

And still, we live. We breathe through every moment, fighting for solace, for relief, for a moment to catch our breath. And even when we don’t find them, we keep breathing, keep taking another step and another until we think we cannot take one more step, one more breath. And we do. Keep stepping. Keep breathing.

Our shoulders slump over. Our hearts harden. And still we keep stepping and breathing.

For some of us, we go our entire lives without ever learning that the past does not keep us safe. It is not a weight to drag around just in case we need it. We believe our death will be the only thing that will bring us relief, and still we keep stepping and breathing.

I used to think it was because people had given up on themselves, on others, on living free. In their resignation, not knowing what else to do, they just kept on doing what they’ve always done. Stepping and breathing.

After years of being in the Choices seminar room, of witnessing miracles transform broken hearts and wings unfold, I realize it’s not all about ‘stepping and breathing’. That their journey isn’t all about hanging on until death comes knocking.

I believe, deep within, no matter how grim or dark our lives may feel, each of us has a deep deep knowing of the sacredness of our being human. It is a sacred space within that we secretly tell ourselves we must protect if we are to survive. So we build up walls of anger, fear, regret, sorrow, despair and push back against the world in fear the sacred essence of our being human will be violated if we do nothing.

Truth is, there is no power on earth than can violate the sacred essence of our being human.

There is no force strong enough, or evil enough, that can desecrate our soul.

We do not have to do anything to protect it. Preserve it or prevent it from being harmed.

The soul cannot be harmed. It cannot be broken. It cannot be corrupted.

It is the essence of our magnificence and it is indestructible.

Yet, because life happens, because we learn to fear ourselves and one another, to hurt ourselves and one another, to protect ourselves with words and acts of destruction,  we forget who we truly are when we are born. In our desperate quest to remember what it was we knew at that moment of our first breath, we spend our lives fearing we never will, and fall under the spell of believing, we are not worthy, wanted, needed, seen, understood, acceptable, forgivable, loveable.

Truth is, we are magnificent. We are each and every one of us miracles of life. Unique. Shining and brilliant.

It’s just life and living has gotten in the way of our remembering who we truly are in the sacred space of our spirit shining brightly for all the world to see.

I watched miracles unfold last week. I stood in the light of many souls shining brightly as Love entered and said, “I see you. You are beautiful just the way you are.”

Namaste.

 

 

 

I will not write of Snow in September!

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September Snow Angel

September Snow Angel

I will not write of it, I tell myself when I awaken. I will not!

Why should I? Twitter is filled with references to it. My Facebook page is littered with photos and comments about it. My eldest daughter even had to send a photo of it not being there, with her, on the coast.

I will not write of it.

Instead, I shall write of the little girl on Sunday at the Market Collective (you are invited to LIKE their page on FB) stage in the East Village who twirled and twirled and flung her arms out in abandon, giving herself up to the music of The Ashley Hundred. She wore purple butterfly wings and a blue flower patterned sundress and a pink ribbon in her hair and as she spun, her dress ballooned out and we were all transfixed by the pure joy in her presence.

And the music played on.

And the sun beat down and C.C. and I sat in the warm late summer heat and soaked in the music, the smells, the river flowing, the birds soaring high above, the people wandering the stalls and pausing to listen to the wonderful sounds of the band.

The memory of that little girls spinning has stayed with me. I remember watching her and thinking how I wanted to spin with her. How I wanted to be so free it didn’t matter what others thought.

As I looked at the faces of the crowd, I could see that same yearning in many of them.

Remembering, summers long ago when we too danced just for the joy of dancing.

When we too spun just for the joy of moving.

When we too didn’t know that there was such a thing as other people’s opinions to worry about.

When we too didn’t know that there was such a thing as ‘the proper’ way to behave in a crowd.

I got caught up in my mind’s thinking I was ‘too old’ to be free on Sunday. I got caught up in telling myself, “You can’t do that. People will think you’re showing off. Creating a scene. Making a spectacle of yourself.” and in my confusion and fear, I listened to the voice of ‘Don’t do it.’

I sat on a concrete bench and listened to the music and moved my body in time and tapped my foot and did not get up to free myself in the moment of dancing for joy.

And I remembered the market square in San Francisco when C.C. and I were last there and how when The Family Crest played, people got up and moved and danced and spun about and how I joined them and loved the feeling of the sun beating against my skin and the motion of my body dancing in the heat.

There is safety in numbers.

I didn’t feel safe to dance out loud on Sunday. Trapped in my conventional wisdom to not make a scene, I sat and watched and listened and loved the music and the scene, anyway. But I did not dance. I did not get down and silly on the concourse in front of the stage. (You are welcome A & L) 🙂

Which is why, yesterday, as I sat at my computer reviewing files for a meeting I have today, I decided there was only one thing to do.

I was not going to write about the snow covering the ground. Instead, I was going to go outside and experience it.

The willow tree in the front yard needed my assistance to lighten its branches. I stood beneath its drooping arms and held the handle of a broom above my head and shook the leaves and let the fresh crisp whiteness of the September snow fall upon me and all around. It was magical! Enchanting! Fun!

And then, I went into the backyard and lay down and made a September Snow Angel on the ground.

I will not write of snow but I will write of freedom. Of doing what makes my heart sing. Of releasing what gives my spirit wings so that I can do what I want in the moment of now without fearing the opinions of others.

I may not dance next time either. But, then again, I just might!  Hope you do too!

Enjoy the sounds of The Ashley Hundred (they are awesome! – LIKE them on FB) on this snowy morning (and more to fall today)


And The Family Crest (you can LIKE them too on FB) — they rocked me in San Francisco and still do whenever I play their CDs! Love them!

The past is not the only avenue to the future.

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When asked, “What did you fear most when you were homeless,” Gladys* answered without hesitation. “Dying on the streets.”

Recently, I met with the board of a community association where the foundation I work for is considering building a 25 – 30 unit apartment building for formerly homeless Calgarians.

It wasn’t an easy meeting. It wasn’t all sun and roses and welcome to our community.

There was openness. Curiosity. Awareness and a desire to be inclusive and supportive.

There was also fear. Concern. Misunderstanding and misconceptions present.

And there was possibility.

It is the possibility I want to stay with. To expand. To stretch out across the room, the community, the city so that every Calgarian can understand, fear of dying on the streets is real for some people. It is a constant grinding away at their existence. A continuous eating away at their experience of life leaving them to believe, there is no other way, no other street to walk. There is only this existence that is killing them.

Gladys no longer worries about dying on the streets. She is living in an apartment now. In her new way of being she is supported by people who understand her fears, and who believe that with compassionate care, she can thrive in community.

Her thriving will not look like yours or mine. It will be different. But then, mine is different than yours and yours is different than someone else’s. It is our differences that create the vibrancy of our communities. It is our diversity that builds strength into the intersections of our lives.

There is possibility in our differences. There is connection.

When I left the meeting, I marveled at the similarities of our perspectives and experiences.

One man at the meeting, in an attempt to ‘do good’ in a community in another city, had bought a building that was in receivership. He renovated it and provided low rent housing for individuals living on the margins.

It was not easy. It was not a good experience, he shared with the group. I will oppose this project 1,000 percent, he said.

I can understand his fears.

Like Gladys (*which is not her real name), his fears are built on an experience that did not meet his expectations. He set out to ‘do good’ and felt bad with the outcome. He felt abused. Betrayed. Confused. Why would people treat his property so badly? Why couldn’t they see he was trying to help them? To make a contribution to society?

Like Gladys, this man is stuck in his experiences and fears, in his belief that no matter what he does, or anyone else does, it can never be another way. The past dictates the present and determines the future.

My experience is different. My experience has led me to this place where I believe the past does not make the present a repetition of what happened then, again and again. My belief is that when we use our experiences of the past with the intent to inform our actions for the better today, we can create better, we can make a difference.

There are people living on our streets today, and in our emergency shelters, who have given up on believing there is another way. They live with the constant fear that dying on the streets will become their future.

In the streets they walk everyday, they have lost sight of possibility. They have lost hope for a new way of being present in the world.

There are people living in our communities today, who have given up on believing there is another way. They live with the constant fear that without high fences, without holding onto to what they have, they will be unsafe in their homes and in their community.

In the streets they walk everyday, they have lost sight of possibility. They have lost hope for a new way of being present in the world.

For my world to change, I must change how I see my world.

When I look at it through eyes of fear, I know fear.

When I breathe into possibility, when I open myself up to allowing possibility for another way to arise, my world becomes a reflection of what I want to create more of in the world around me.

We all know fear. We have all been touched by change and its constant hammering away at the walls of our comfort zones demanding we learn to stretch, to find new moves that will take us away from where we are into that place where anything is possible if we let go of holding onto to what we know and tell ourselves we cannot let go of.

Just as Gladys is learning to let go of street life so that she can embrace a new way of being present in the world today, the possibility exists for each of us to create the kind of world we want to live in. The kind of world our children can live in too. To find a new way of being present in the world today, we must we let go of believing the past is the only avenue to the future.

 

 

 

 

Safe journey

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I feel rushed this morning. Hurried. Rain presses down upon morning’s awakening, a sodden blanket of sleep lingering long past the hour of awareness breaking through my dreams.

Lesson 2 of my course material waits in my Inbox. And I lay in bed listening to the rain and the wind chimes in the backyard.

Get up, Louise, my mind encouraged me at 5:30am.

Sleep some more the critter whispered. You don’t have to get up yet.

The critter won. I lingered in bed drifting in and out of wakefulness.

And morning rose and I held my eyes closed.

Time is running. It is time to greet the day, to get busy.

This morning’s lesson included a photo of a spiral staircase. Looking down from above it, looking into the well of its spiral, there is a light at the bottom.

And my mind quickly carries me into the light. I look up and find myself rising. Stepping up through the tiny pinprick of light curving up into the open expanse at the top of the stairwell.

What awaits above is a mystery greater than what lies below, my mind whispers, and I breath deeply into the expansion of this moment right now.

I am not rushed. Hurried. Time does not change because of the slowness of my awakening. it expands out into each breath, opening me up to wonder and awe and mystery.

I stop racing. Stop trying to fit it all in and breathe again into this place where all I am and all I need are all that is present.

Letting go of searching for the light at the end of the tunnel, my heart hears dawn’s breath awakening within me. And my eyes open to the beauty of the rain falling, the wind whispering and the chimes tingling in anticipation of another day opening up in mystery and wonder all around.

My eldest daughter, Alexis, returned to the city where she lives by the ocean last night. She said a final farewell yesterday to her father’s mother, her other grandmother who turned 94 at the end of July. Two days before her birthday she was told of the cancer that would steal her life within a week.

Alexis’ gratitude for her holding on until she got here to see her one last time is palpable. She got to visit every day. To spend time with this woman who was the first ‘other woman’ to care for her on the day I got out of hospital after her birth. She has been there for both my daughters throughout their lives and now, she is in hospice. The end approaches, shrouded in mystery, in finality, in darkness and in eternal rest.

For my daughters, with both their grandmother’s life-breath growing shallower, this has been a time of uncertainty. Of sadness. Of letting go. Of recognizing the delicate hold life has on each of us is only as strong as time’s willingness to hold on to our beating hearts, the deepness of our breath moving in and out.

Time passes and soon this woman who shared so much love and time and care and attention on my daughters will pass away in time’s hands moving beyond her last breath.

And I breathe and take time to honour this woman who has meant so much to me and to my daughters. This woman who has given so much time and love and care.

Fare-thee-well Jill. Safe journey to the other side.

May we all travel safe today. May we all be held in loving hands, our hearts beating freely in the knowing, we are loved. We are loving. We are love.

The Way of the Monk. The Path of the Artist

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The path through the trees

The path through the trees

I walked at the river yesterday. It is only the second time I have walked there since Ellie, the Wonder Pooch, passed away. I walked along the escarpment, sat at the spot where we used to sit on the edge of the cliff overlooking the river. I travelled down into the river valley, a trip made much easier without Ellie urging me to go faster, faster. I walked along the path that skirts the edge of the river, deep into the forest, back along the river. And then, I sat in the warm autumn sun at the edge of the water and breathed in. Deeply.

I have started a twelve week online course The Way of the Monk. The Path of the Artist at Abbey of the Arts. The course offers an invitation to explore the two powerful archetypes of the monk and artist. As the course outline explains, “Our “inner monk” is the part of ourselves that seeks the ground of all being and a mystical connection to the divine source, longing for what is most essential in life and cultivates this through a commitment to spiritual practice. The “inner artist” is the part of ourselves that engages the world through our senses, and is passionate about beauty, seeking to give it outward form and expression through a variety of media (including visual art, poetry, movement, song, gardening, cooking, relationships, etc.). Both the monk and artist are edge-dwellers, ones who commit to living in fertile border-spaces and who call the wider community beyond the status quo to alternative ways of being.”

I am standing in the liminal space where the path of the monk meets the artist. It is unknown territory for me, hallowed ground where I honour what is present and release what is not needed at this time.

I don’t know what walking into the mystery of this course will offer. I do know it will serve me well.

The invitation in yesterday’s course email was to slip into the meditation, open to the invitation of a word or phrase shimmering at the edge of my awareness.

The word that came to me was ‘roots’.  The phrase that rose up to embrace me was,  “her roots are as deep as the mountains grow high”. I live along the plains at the foot of the Rockies, north of the 49th parallel.  I have always wondered what it means to have roots — believing that roots are physical, that we must be of one place to know them.This past weekend, celebrating my mother’s 92nd birthday, it struck me that while my roots are not deep in Canadian soil, relatively speaking, they are deep in the spiritual essence of family.

As I sat in the silence, the thought arose that roots are metaphorical. They are not what grounds me. It is family. Life. Love that holds me steady.

In the meditation, I found myself breathing into my heart space — the invitation to release all that was not needed at this time gave me space to be present with all that is needed at this time — and that was Love and the knowing that my presence here on earth is not, as I recently read in an article by Peter Rengel, to transcend my humanness, but to revere myself exactly as I am right now.

And in that space, my heart embrace the truth at the root of all I am — Love.

It is all I need in this moment right now to know, I am safe. I am free. I am One with the essence of life flowing all around me.

I have roots and my roots are grounded deeply in the nourishing soils of Love.

And my heart skipped a beat

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Art Journal Entry August 27, 2014 The Possibility of Flight

Art Journal Entry
August 27, 2014
The Possibility of Flight

I have been exploring open eye meditation. Stepping into the sacred silence with my eyes wide-open.

It is challenging. Being in this place where I am not at ease. Staying in this space where my mind, intent on its mission to see what is beyond, wants to wander away from finding peace.

Like anything new, it takes practice. Patience. Persistence.

Ugh. I’d rather just close my eyes and tune my eyes looking out, inward.

And I prevail.

This morning, as I meditated, a thought went scampering through my mind. Well, actually… truth is, many thoughts scampered through my mind, it’s just this one took hold and begged a question be asked!

Yesterday, C.C. was in Vancouver on business. When he is engaged in working, he is extremely single-minded on what he is doing. Taking time to check-in is not high on his agenda. Yesterday was no exception.

In meditation this morning, that little vignette skittered through my mind. I noticed how I am not holding onto resentment or anger over what in the past I have judged as lack of consideration, thoughtlessness, or awareness of my presence in his life. I did notice however that my awareness of its happening was still with me. I noticed that underneath the situation, there is a current, a thread, a belief that is unrelated to what is happening now.

“What about this situation is connecting to something from the past?”, my curious mind asked.

A feeling arose from within me. It had no name, no label. All it had was tears.

Ahh, my heart whispered. You are remembering feeling invisible, unseen, unimportant.

My tears whispered back a quiet, ‘yes’.

Are you invisible? my heart gently asked.

No, my tears responded.

So you know the truth, my heart stated. You are not invisible. Unseen. Unimportant.

Awoken to the truth, my mind had no problem responding. Yes. That is true.

What is underneath the lie? my heart prodded.

The answer slipped in with the ease of an autumn leaf falling to the ground. Sadness.

Slip into it, my heart urged. Wear it. Embrace it. Become this sadness. Explore it. How deep is it? What colour? Texture? Can you see in it? Through it? Over it?

And I slipped quietly into the sea of sadness that lay calmly beneath the surface of my awareness. It did not flow. It simply held space. Warm. Serene. A misty blue, it felt silky against my skin. It was not deep. I could easily slip through it to the other side where sunshine flooded a field of wildflowers gently swaying in the breeze.

Knowing its limits, I rested silently in its presence, breathing into its essence within me.

Is it all of you? my heart asked.

I smiled. No. It is simply a presence. An element of my being that sometimes surfaces to remind me that within me is a sea of memory that holds sway when I let go of what is true for me today.

And what is true for you today? my heart asked.

And I breathed deeply, a sigh of relief flooding my body in the remembering of my truth.

I am loved. I am loving. I am Love.

And my heart skipped a beat and leapt for joy.

Not bad for a girl who was resisting meditating with her eyes wide-open!

 

A gift from the quiet hours before the dawn

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coyote

In a burst of exuberance, the wind swept down from the mountains 
whispering stories of faraway places.

“Runaway with me and I will show you the world!” the wind called out and Coyote laughed.
“Here is where I run free,” he told the wind. And the wind blew on and Coyote ran free.

Art Journal Entry, August 26, 2014

There was a time when she believed if she could just be somewhere else other than where she was, everything would be okay.

There was a time when she wished for nothing more than to be someone else other than who she was.

What she couldn’t see in looking for another way of being is that no matter what she wished for, she could never be anyone else other than who she was.

What she couldn’t see was that the parts of her that didn’t fit her well in this place, would not fit her any better in another.

Fearful that she would never find her way, she attempted to jettison her past, extricate herself from being herself to become someone she thought others wanted her to be. “Perhaps if you change directions, or even just your clothes, you’ll find yourself another way,” her nimble mind whispered like the wind blowing down from the mountains, calling her to run away.

And she ran, and ran and still she found herself where ever she was at, trying to run away from the one she could never leave behind, herself.

“Perhaps if you simply stand true to who you are, stay present to what is here in this moment, you’ll find yourself right where you’re at,” her loving heart whispered into the howling of the wind.

Frightened by her heart’s calling and tired of constantly running away, she fell to the ground and rested right where she was at. And in her sleep, her heart beat strong, and her mind grew restful as the truth of who she is set her free to run wild like the wind through her dreams.

“There is nothing to fear in being you,” her heart whispered. “Who you are is who you’ve always been. Perfectly human in all your human imperfections. Beauty and the beast. Loving and loved. A child of the universe, seeking her way into the light of her own brilliance shining brightly on the path of her creation.”

Like coyote and the wind, there is always a calling to venture into another space, some distant place where what is here will not be there. It isn’t until I quit searching for somewhere else to be that I discover, everything I need to be free is here right now, because, no matter where I go, I am where ever I am at.

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The painting and story above came from my meditation. Like the caterpillar story yesterday which came from a dream where I awoke with the image of the unhappy caterpillar and his desire to be anything other than himself,  the image of the coyote slipped through my mind as I sat in silence.

I was seeking a peaceful mind and still the wind blew in.

I tried to push it away. Instead, it insisted on leaving its mark in the form of a coyote, the trickster of Native American lore. I asked coyote what he had to tell me, and the image and story were born.

In my practice, both here on the written page and on my art journal page, I have learned to trust in the process. To allow the words, and images, to appear without trying to discern them before they flow.

It can be challenging. I like to control. I like to dictate, to organize, to force and cajole things into being, just so. I also like to judge what I create. Measure its worth against some unseen yardstick in my mind.

Learning to trust in the process without judgement means, learning to trust in me.

A big leap.

Which is probably why, when I awoke at 3:30 this morning with the image of a cliff in my mind, the words appeared, “Leaping off the edge of what she knew to be true, she found herself believing in the possibility of flight.”

What a lovely gift to find upon awakening in the quiet hours before the dawn.