Dichotomy

I remember a while back in my "studies" of new age spirituality I came across the simple notion "There is only Love and Fear" a reframing of the old duality of good and evil, God and Satan, etc. These ideas are old and ongoing for a reason; there is truth there. It is becoming more and more clear to me that so much of my life is just about fighting fear, or perhaps "managing" fear. In moving away from fear, often it follows along, as in "every where you go there you are." So moving away from fear has to be more than that. It has to be a moving towards...something. As I consider the duality of "There is only Love and Fear" it implies an opposite. So if I am running up the number line of fear, I see negative integers, then I would be running toward the Love numbers, headed toward an infinity of love. but I don't think it is quite that simple. I run in circles. And i in truth I am not all that clear about love. Fear seems more obvious. Love is so multifaceted, so misunderstood, a word so over used its meaning is unclear and its practice in application is even more vague. I'm working on it. Love comes up like a scent that passes on the road, fleeting and unexpected. In between be build on other things, patience, companionship, and even duty.

So in the flight from fear toward something... I think maybe the duality is with peace. Out of the quiet and safety of peace, love may grow. But peace I think is the leading road sign.

So many nights i wake up and my first thought is I feel small. I feel small. I feel it now, just to write it. My heart tightens, my eyes blur a bit, my shoulders fold to hide my heart, the world looks very large and very frightening when one is so small. I have learned this is my version of anxiety, the daily uniform of fear, when it is not in its monster sunday best dress, instead the pajamas and barefoot fear, anxiety. It is for me a base state. My stomach is growling agreement. Once a teacher asked me if I was aware of my anxiety. i literally stopped walking on the street where we were. I said that is like asking a fish if she is aware of the water. Always swimming in it, everything colored by it, breathing and eating it. But never noticing it, never seeing it, having no thought to it. My body raises it up before me day after day in nearly every form of stress related illness one can name, all the symptoms come and go, over and over, sign posts, dark colors in the water, sick scents in the the stream.

I do not know if others swim in anxiety. I guess so considering the use of drugs, medicines, alcohol, considering the violence, and illness, and strife, I guess it is the same sea of fear and grief for us all.

Seeking peace sounds simple enough and parts of it I am good at. I thoroughly avoid conflict. I live slowly. I live very quietly. My one remaining child at home is a quiet gentle man. My lover is a lover of quiet. But quiet is not the same as peace. My former husband was quiet, we were quiet together, but we were not at peace.

I can do peace. In the depths of prayer it descends, the holy spirit like a dove. But this language does not communicate it. My charge is not just to sit at prayer in peace, which I do, but to remain in peace at all times. When I struggle with purpose, with destiny, with mission, with all these big words, the only command I am charged to obey is to remain in peace. All else springs from that one thing, health, purpose, calling, abundance, all else.

I do know that when I am least at peace, when I am seriously angry it is a field of energy around me so intense that electronic equipment ceases functioning, small children cry without a word from me, it is a cloud of dysfunction that radiates even as I stand wordless, still. No fist needs to fly for me to wound in anger. A wise woman told me that if the field is that intense outside of my body, imagine what it is doing to the inside of my body. Indeed. So the cause to move from fear and anger toward peace is important. I cannot function with out it.

But of course most days I am not angry; am not within the monster costume of fear. Rather I am in the pajama clothes of fear, the ordinary anxiety that robes me in smallness, in aches, and procrastination, in hiding, the paralysis of waiting and pretending.

Indeed I do see there is a great dichotomy of fear and peace. I am seeking peace, little steps, as best I can, seeking peace. As I wonder that direction the scent of love floats by once in a while, flowers and manna.

There is no absolution.

Calculus of Peace

So many people talk about the "go with the flow" thing, or if you have a different theological orientation, it may be "walk in the spirit." Either way it is about surrender, and peace, non- resistance. The idea that if we are pushing and pushing, begging, demanding, pleading, desiring, craving, NEEDing something, anything, that the force of all that trying makes it very difficult for the desired thing to happen. I have heard many stories about this seeming to be true, though I cannot explain the phenomenon as to why, but I wish I could. As for me I was raised in a household of try hard, work hard, plod, plod, dutifully plod. And we do. (In the bible this is called "living under the law," which means follow all the rules, very strictly, and that makes everything okay. Jesus came to end that by bringing grace and the Holy Spirit).

The dutiful plodder method does work, for some things. However, it is slow, methodical, and ultimately joyless. And it doesn't work very well for some things, "minor" things, like love. One can build powerful obligations and commitments, decisions that look like "love" by that method, but not Love, not that adoration and comfort in the joy and wonder of the other. And I am thinking maybe not destiny either. Certainly one can achieve goals by the plod harder method, but perhaps not Destiny.

I have been plodding for a long time. I am a plodder. One could look at my resume, and see only a very short list of very similar professional positions each held for a long time, a long plodding tenure through my career, a career that has come to an abrupt halt. An Intuitive Soul Reader I went to points me toward a Destiny. She said I am at a point of no return, that I must surrender. Surrender had already come up in prayer. So I thinking about this surrender thing.

And that brings me back to the "go with the flow" thing. Today I was praying. As I often do I wanted to ask, "whatamIgoingtodo?, whatamIgoingtodo?, etc." But as I began I felt the presence of my beloved Goddess at my left side, towering over me, sheltering me, drawing me close to her. I began to ask my question as I often do. But she said no, just listen. So I just listened. Then came her outpouring of grace. It is difficult to explain and I may have already lost the few readers I have. It feels like just relaxing, a breath, and the flesh finally lays gently on the bones, muscle and sinew drape like a veil of gossamer. The heart slows, respiration slows, the subtle trembling that goes unnoticed stops. A slight weight comes to the top of the head were the light pours in like a funnel, invisible but having a slight mass, like a very tall hat, so tall it goes up into heaven. So there I sat in that place of relaxation, of no worries for the moment, of peace, of surrender. And Goddess said this, this is what you are going to do, this is all I want you to do.

That seems nice, but what about client contacts, and forms to fill out, and only one report left to write, and bills coming, and bank accounts draining, and all the myriad chaos of unemployment, of out of business, of no where to turn? No, she said, just this, just the surrender, just the peace that passes understanding. Anything else that you do chose to do must be done from here. I immediately go to arguing, how can I possible stay here? I would look like a stoned flaky fruitcake from LaLaLa Land. She said one day, do it one day. Then do it one more day, one more hour, one more minute, just do it and when it doesn't work, do it again. So I think, okay I will Try.

But do you remember Yoda? the funny little big ears guru in Star Wars? He said "There is no try, there is only do or do not do." I had a guru once and she showed me that too. She said "Stand up, okay now see that chair over there? Go try to sit in that chair." So I went and sat in that chair. She said "No, stand up again. You did not do what I said to do, you sat in the chair. I didn't say sit in the chair. I said try to sit in the chair." So I "tried" to sit in the chair. She said "No, now you are crouching and hovering over the chair. I didn't say crouch and hover over the chair I said Try to sit in the chair." It reminds me of calculus as one approaches the limit of zero, "No, do not divide by zero, only approach dividing by zero." Well, it works in the faith based religion of calculus, but it doesn't work in the world of real geometry, a math that can take to a real place, or going to a destiny.

So if you look for me today I am here in this flaky place, of relaxing, of surrender, of peace, at least in little pieces, string them together, adding fractions of infinity.

Saving "lost" and "saved"

What does it mean to be lost? I used to worry about getting lost, still do. I remember as child our family would sometimes go up on Roan Mountain at the state line between Tennessee and North Carolina. It is a magical high place where the rhododendron gardens bloom. Rhododendrons are huge bushes that remind me of mangroves. They only grow at a few select high places. These bushes are as tall as twenty feet, woody and wide. Their leaves are long ovals, dark green and leathery, like magnolias. They make round multi-fowered blossoms bigger than your hand in early June, soon now. The whole mountain top looks mauve pink when they bloom. At the park there are paved walkways and picnic tables through the rhododendrons gardens. My great grand parents loved that place. We would have my Grandmother's birthday there the first week in June, with fried chicken and cake in a rectangle pan, potato salad and baked beans in covered dish wrapped in a towel. And every time we went there my mother would warn me to stay on the pathways, not to wander off into the rhododendron. Children got lost. In my memory some never returned. I imagined being lost among the rhododendron, sleeping on the deep shining green pads of moss as big as a bed, wandering alone searching for human contact, to be found, to be saved from sure death in the cold where the high mountain wind blew even in June. I imagined the spirits of long ago Indians haunting me and helping me as I wandered lost. It frightened and beckoned me. When I heard a story of a child actually lost there in the park, we waited to hear that the child was found, that the child was saved.

This week I have been thinking about being lost, and so often I see lost people wondering among us. I think about being saved, about how to save them. It seems the words have gotten tarnished under some religious rust, a coating of flaky meaning after reaction with too much oxidation, too much air, too much talking with those words, lost and saved. The meanings are lost. And this week I have been lost again for a while, and perhaps saved again, perhaps only for a while. I was lost here at home, in my house, lost in pain, in memory, in worry. I make myself sick, get lost under the covers, perhaps hoping not to be found. But of course needing to be saved. And like all the bad dreams we make, we hold all the starring roles ourselves, the little lost child and the big strong rescuing parent.

One of the strings that lead me back up out of the labyrinth of lost was Sara Griscom of Gypsy Hands Healing Center http://www.gypsyhands.com/ She is a gifted intuitive. I made and appointment for myself to see her, an act which was like throwing myself a life preserver. I waited a week for our meeting. Her office was dark, and warm, and scented. She had just finished working with a beautiful man who wore a kilt and a red handle bar mustache. I was shocked by how attractive I found this strange man as I watched him in the lobby. His presence lingered for a moment as I entered Sarah's office, but as we settled in it was entirely her space again. She quickly related that as I had waited a few moments for her, she had meditated on me and saw a number of things. The reading proceeded out of this awareness. I won't go into the whole of it. But the point was that she validated all that I had seen, validated that I am seeing direction, which again is a life preserver. The message was you are beyond the point of return, the transformation is underway and must proceed. The remaining old things must end. Drop the chains and go, now. She saw my Granny Guide, Dolly, who said "No more excuses, hop to it." Dolly points her bony finger at me and points me out to go, Now.

My mother tells the story that when labor began with her first child, my sister, she decided she didn't want to have a baby after all, she changed her mind about it. But of course it was nine months to late to change her mind. The transformation was underway. No turning back. It was time to push. To stop now would be death for mother and child. So this time of being lost is pause in my labor pains. I remember when my first baby was coming and finally got a an epidural, the spinal block pain killer. As the anesthesiologist made me lie still on my side to push the long needle between my vertebra, I told him "this baby is coming now." I was already in transition. But they did not believe me. When the pain relief calmed me and the doctor looked again inside, he said "this baby is coming now." He said "it's time to push." I thought "Fuck pushing, I'm Resting." But the contractions did not stop. And I had to push on. The baby was born in minutes, all eleven pounds and twenty four inches of him.

So what am birthing? I know only a little and I will tell more about it later. I have prayed to make me a blessing, to use me, to send me a higher love. I have gotten in the boat with Jesus to cross over to the other side. The storm is raging and Jesus sleeps. (Mark chapter 4) I shall wake him and we shall see. I am lost and shall be saved.

Passing storm

I got a great massage and energy work. i feel much better.

Dark Storm

I have been in a drak storm for a couple of days. It is not gone but it is passing. I wish this would stop. It is strange to look in the mirror and see different people on different days. I have been taking photos of the different poeple there. They are not pretty pictures. This time the storm came with pain, a lot of joint pain, swollen knobby hands and feet, pain everywhere. The picture of my body self inside looks like chains, I am in chains, heavy chains of the old self. It does not matter, that is part of this place of being in this dark place, the sense that nothing matters, none of this stuff. In dreams the trees are falling on the house again, crushing and explosion. I hate sleeping in pain, it always brings nightmares. Today I was driving and began to grieve that the pain and dark days always return. I felt that hopelessness, the waiting and wasting of days and years. Then there came an intense pain in my chest and heart fibrulations. It lasted for about a minute. It was diffcult to breathe and as it worsened I felt that a heart attack was beginning. I was driving and frightened. I knew that it came with my thoughts of dispair and heart break. It has happened before. I have even gone to the emergency room over it in the past only to get a bill of good heart health and a bill of thousand plus dollars. So I knew what was happening. I prayed scripture (that is why you memorize it). And the heart pain and arrythmia stopped. Then i realized It is me. It is me driving this body. I drive the bus here, the bus of my body, of my life. Holy shit what a horrible thought. I can think myself into a heart attack just like that. I have spent two days in bed over joint pain because my mind is the chains of repression and unspoken anger after visiting my mother again. I am driving this crazy bus, this bus stopped on the side of the road, side lined, unemployed, on hold, unpublished, unspoken, invisible, in pain. I am doing this. I empower everything inside this little realm of my life. I call forth all of this. I want off this bus. I don't trust this driver. I abdicate.
then I read a blog at a friend's blog. I will link when I feel better. She told a story that I was present for. It was about a mutual friend singing at our womens group. She told about listenning in love. Oh what was her words. i will find it. But the mutual frined was blessed. My blogging friend was blessed. And this little group was something I organized and have tried to develop. I drove that bus too. There it is blessing someone. I cried and creid. Becasue that has been another of my heart breaks this week that that group is not doing what I had hoped, not meeting the needs of some of the poeple. But here, my friend told of a small blessing, of having an impact.
Maybe this storm will pass. My girl friend asked how long the joint pain might last. I told her it felt like I would always feel this way, that I could not make an assessment from this place. I driving the bus. Oh help. I know in my mind this does not last. It has been a cycle of madness for all of my life that can remember. I know that it passes. But it is hard. And it gets worse over the years. And every time i want to die to jjust have it over to just go home. that nothing here matters. But I know it wil pass. And now i see a little light, that maybe maybe some I do has meaning. I may not post this, it is too dark, too naked, to whining. It is as it is. It is the other end of the divine madness. my star stff is cold and sharp, I have flown off course into the cold cold night. I must stop my hands hurt again.

Another Ordinary Vision

Star Flight

Like the fragments of plasma
that burst from the surface of the sun,
I see the billions
of us, fragments of light birthed from the surface of god,
that great center of energy, of knowing, of being.
Each of us believing we hurl alone into space-time
a separate being on a separate line.
But it is a momentary flight of star stuff
a fragmentary fleeing of god stuff
exhaled into the night of space-time.

As we fly deeper in delusion of disunion,
fly solo on our line of space-time,
like a magma splashing from volcano
we cool as we go,
a crust of matter forming around the hot star,
the radiant god stuff that we are.
We fly a hurling trajectory life,
a momentary flight
falling ever away from god light,
cooling ever more heavy,
an encrustation of matter at the edges,
the thick weight of earthy matters darkens,
ever darkens, our shine.
Falling away, ever falling short of the glory of god,
the glory of the stars that we are.

In our flight we tumble in among
the flying lights, the others that surround us
their hot lives hurling around us.
We stumble against hard edges
where the cold night of our space flight
has shaped us and as we crash as we trespass
against others, as they trespass against us.
We crash in the crusted mass,
all that seeming matter, and we shatter.
Like eggs in the Easter day game, which will crush
and which will rush on?
But all are broken.
Shattered shards twisted outward and poking inward,
hardened edges thicken, ever colder,
ever deepen, ever dimming at the center
of our being, the star stuff that we are,
whirling in our flight, lost in cold, cold night.
So some become the studded bludgeons that roar among us
pouring life force from us.
All their hardened broken shards
their outward edges pierce all it touches,
their inward edges pierce them heart-ward
every touch a sinking blow
opening holes as they go.
Around them others thicken their shields,
others sicken their fields,
ever colder as they go, ever hold in
heavy matters. Shields too deep to reveal
the dim glimmer of dying star stuff
their fading god stuff deep within.

But just as plasma blasts up out of the sun
so too it falls back and to resume its place.
So we too arch back from space
and move to our origin again,
like a child throws a ball, watches it fall,
and catches it again.
As we tumble home, we stumble among
starry hardened ones moving closer to the hot spot
where god begot us, we melt.
We melt; we melt the hardened shards.
As we glow radiant, we go making it ever closer to home
the cold edges melt back to heat,
the heat of our love god makes all things new.
Where the sharp shards finally slip back in,
we begin anew, in silky skin
so thin the light shines out, shines in,
a light, a heat, the radiance of god
a light heat of love.
So hot it melts the shards of others poised to pierce
they are nothing in its heat
the bludgeoning ones melt where we meet,
or rush into the night
for the heat of perfect love casts out all fear.

And as we fall back home, as we humble up against each other,
it is a heating meeting of star stuff, a heating meeting of god stuff,
as we trespass against others, as they trespass against us.
All the matter retreating like glaciers defeated in the suns glow
melting as we go, flowing into one another
our glowing star stuff moving in union,
finally reunion, teary singing reunion
radiant now and falling, finally falling home.