We are at home, happier, more expansive when invited to the party. Prana is the same. This energy, or life force is pervasive. It is source material. But when we beckon it to connect to breath with awareness and meaning, we make the party come alive.
Read moreInspirations: POV
Barn’s Burned Down, Now I Can See the Moon
If after tragedy we step out under the stars and actually look at the moon, we shall survive the tragedy in good form. If after profound loss we feel a new life growing somewhere within, then the good guys win. When we can move beyond the burned barn that housed our stuff, our beautiful stuff, the accumulation of life-memories, we are lit by a transcendent light off the moon. The Chinese got this proverb right. Great loss, whether of stuff or worse, of life, is a test of both courage and compassion, a time when choices take on greater poignancy. Are we able to standstill and admire what is, or are we paralyzed back to childhood fears? Can we recalculate and respond to new, unknown goals, and wider perceptions of dharma? When discussing dharma, life, loss and tragedy, the hidden planetary energies of Pluto are present, for She is the Goddess of the underworld, moving underneath times of crises and death. Her presence does not signify we remain in Hades, rather that we pass through its gates. Pluto’s real job is to offer life-altering experiences so we may learn to choose. She asks if we have we grown fortitude and muscle to cross the river Styx. Are we willing to relinquish the old life so it may die? Are we capable of transmuting its shadow? Pluto evokes the divine in its most primitive and powerful expression. Her love is willing to let us die so that we learn what we must in order to transform, and embody our divinity. Because we have a good friend whose house just burned down, we have been standing as witnesses to the transformative process within her. Hourly, we observe her ‘see the moon,’ despite the barn housing what she owned burned to ash. Sharing… Read more »
Read moreAngels All
Today is the anniversary of the death of the woman who gave me a second life, Helen Rosenstock. Because I am a late bloomer, she entered my life late, when I was finally ready for her vision, her tools of a transformative baptism. The person you know as Samantha, is not the person I started out to be. It’s true none of us are, but some of us are unrecognizable. When I found Helen, she saw I had walked to replace the original imprint. A year ago, when Helen died, she appeared to me as a plume of smoke, stopping by as if to say, ‘remember~ life is magical. She was magical, but part of her mystery was in her gifts being of the earth, and for the earth: She said, “In order to see what you think is mysterious, open your eyes wider to possibility. To perceive and listen to the invisible is a talent everyone has. She taught that I need only be willing, for transformation to begin. To grow intuition she reminded me I required silence to hear what is unspoken. To heal, I needed to become an empath, and to maintain a body strong enough to heal itself so that it could hold that power for others. One day, as we stood at French doors, she said, “To heal others, you do not need to know what they should do. Simply open the door so they can walk through on their on own legs. Stand as their witness.” She taught me to be an ‘ambulance chaser’ one night, by asking what I thought as sirens filled the air. “Loud,” is what I replied. She said, “You have a choice in consciousness. You can direct healing light to a stranger in need, or you can think, ‘loud.’… Read more »
Read moreRecalculando ~ A la Izquierda
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,… Read more »
Read moreVisionary Shakti
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… Read more »
Read moreThe Sacred Now
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… Read more »
Read morePucker Up
May I please stand still, not grasping, yet holding this moment as a prayer, better yet~a kiss. Let me pucker up for this one wild, ordinary~extraordinary moment.
Read moreLife Links
What is your primary link? If someone asked, “What is your life-line? Your staff of life”? How subtle, how deep, how intangible is your shifting paradigm of bridges connecting you to life?
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