Stop Making Sense

Imagine every single atom in every single cell in your body vibrating at a the frequency of Spirit, beyond the speed of light. Every single cell’s operating system emitting such a high frequency that you become boundless energy and infinite joy.  Moving beyond the linear field of Newtonian physics into the quantum field of limitless possibility.  See yourself as a “light” being, unbound by matter, invincible creating an electro magnetic field more radiant than the sun.  I believe anything is possible.

You are light..  You are love.  You are joy

David Byrne – Talking Heads

Longing for Connection

Who does not want to belong, to feel seen and heard?  But consider the possibility that longing for connection can actually being separating.  Needing another’s attention, approval, love and support, though not inherently misdirected, can be misconstrued.  In an attempt to form meaningful relationships we often manipulate ourselves and others.  We present an image of who we think we should be to the world.

I myself placed all my hopes of popularity into looking good, smiling, being pretty and being needed.  Twenty five years spent taking prozac, dieting, exercising, and putting on a happy face did not bring me closer to others.  In fact, my obsession with the “false self” I was working so hard to cultivate was actually left little or no time to invest in meaningful relationships.  I did not understand that to have friends one has to be a friend, available, loving, compassionate and forgiving.

Ironically, it took getting sick and learning the true meaning of suffering for me to realize that if I am ever to connect to others, my real connection must first be to myself and to the Divine from whence I came.

Richard Rohr writes that “like seeks like.”  The more connected I am to the Divine, the more I see the Divine in others and they in me. Being filled by Divine light inherently means that the light within will spill out into the world. Thus giving and serving come not out of need for attention but from an overabundance of love that must be shared.

The essence of the Divine, of creative love is our natural state of being.  When we tap into this heart space, into universal consciousness, we can live a solitary existence and yet be connected to the whole world. We can reach out to others without fear of rejection, because there really is no rejection.  All connection arises from the Divine within and moves out from one soul to another.

Sharing our pain and our joy

On Monday mornings, I have the honor of delivering Meals on Wheels.  As a part of the ministry of MIFA, The Metropolitan Inter-faith Association, I take prepared food to 8 or 9 people, all elderly, mostly shut-ins.  Yesterday, I was feeling a little blue.  Temporarily discouraged by my digestive tract’s slow recovery from a recent surgery, I was keenly aware of the bodily limitations that can affect our ability to interact in the world.

On first delivery, I encountered a mobile, happy woman who kindly thank me and closed the door.

At the second home, I was met at the car port door by a lithe, slightly b lading gray-haired man, who when he opened the door, smiled and motioned for me to put the food on his kitchen table.  I asked him if he had family in Memphis to which he replied, “I have two daughters, one in Atlanta and the other in Knoxville.  I am 98 years old and legally blind.  yesterday I washed my car.”  Stunned, I told him that I hoped to live that long.

At the next house, I found the front door ajar, so I walk in calling out, “Hello, anybody here?”  The house was a montage of old photos stacked every which way on tables, on the piano, the walls and even on the floor.  The dishwasher door was hanging open and all the lights were burning brightly.  A smiling, sprite of a woman appeared from the recesses of the house.  She thanked me for bringing the food in and asked me what day it was.  When I told her there would not be a delivery on Labor Day, she innocently asked, “What is Labor Day?”  I gently hugged her and told her it was a holiday set aside to honor working people.  As I was leaving, the garbage men emptied her bin and I asked if I  could push it up to the house.  She accepted and thanked me for being so helpful.

And so it went.  At each house I took time to interact with the recipient and was in turn met with gratitude and love.  One  beleaguered man, who cares for his mother, said, “We are so grateful.”   I reached out to give him an awkward hug and banged my glasses into the  side of his face.  He smiled and said, “I needed that.”  Funny, because I was thinking the same thing.

At my last stop Jeanne, who usually answers the door in her pajamas, was fully dressed and very talkative.  She is 88 and like all the others I had seen that morning, living independently.  She explained that due to health issues she could not always get out so whe paid to have meals delievered.  Then went on to tell me that she had lost her check book and was delinquent in her payment.  “The Lord wants us to be organized,” she said. “I am working to declutter my life.” I laughed and told her I thought the Lord was compassionate and understood our limitations.  She blessed me and returned to her organizational efforts.

As I headed back to MIFA, I marveled at how much better I felt.

Monday Morning

After a restless night of sleep, I managed to get myself out of bed.  I really wanted to sleep in, but I had instructed my husband, who is always up before me, to be sure I got up.  Mornings are so important to me.  After I savor my latte, I meditate for close to an hour and then walk 4 miles before showering and getting presentable for the day.  I find on days, particularly during the week, when I skip my meditation, I am less focused, more self absorbed, and less likely to delight in the miracles rise up to meet me.

The child of two alcoholic parents I growing up in a chaotic home rife with verbal and physical abuse, I learned to live life in the shadows.  Any attempt to be seen or even noticed likely resulted in an altercation usually between me and my step-mother, whom I loathed.  In retrospect, I now see her as the saint she was, working to support a family of nine while my father slept all day and my grandmother, innocent though she was, did all she could to interfere with Elaine, my stepmother’s, efforts to maintain some sanity in our wicked violent home.

The meditation I just finished puts me in touch with something greater than myself, greater than the darkness that once engulfed me.  Immersed in the field of limitless possibility, I pray for my past to be transformed, for my cells to return to their natural state of prefect health, for my compulsive thoughts and behavior to be replaced with peace and tranquility, for the opportunity to serve and to be used, for my old state of depression and mistrust to be permanently replaced with vibrant joy and well-being, for a deep connection to my soul and to the souls of all mankind, for a willingness today to leave behind any thoughts that do not enhance my life or the lives of others and to remind myself that life is inherently good and well worth living.  It is absolutely necessary for me to begin the day this way, deeply connected to the essence of my being, connected to limitless love and hope.

Thus I begin my week, grateful for the life I have been given.

 

 

failure to launch

What happens to the artist, in particular the writer, who chooses not to write?  And why on earth would he or she make such a choice?

For me there are many lame reasons why I avoid the blank page.  I have a great fear of posing as a writer only to be outed as a hack and a want-to-be. I also tell myself with some frequency that I am self-indulgent and myopic because my writing leans toward memoir and has been a life long journey of self-realization.  I am afraid of being abandoned by family members who find my writing to be too self revealing and do not want to be mentioned on the page.  Their personal desires put me in a bit of a bind.  What is autobiographical writing if not about the life one has lived.  Leaving out key experiences that involve other family members stifles creativity.  But, let me be clear, it is no one’s fault but my own that I chose not to write.  I struggle with the idea that writing without a  goal is meaningless.  “Are you working on a book?” people ask.  “No,” I respond, “Just writing to do it.”  But that is not entirely true.  Ever since I was a child, I have believed that I was meant to write a book.  Is time running out?  Will the voice inside me which cries, “Tell my story,” eventually be silenced by neglect?  Am I afraid to fail?

I am now reminded of what I have so often told my children.  “The only real failure, is the failure to try.”  The hardest part about trying for me is believing that I have something universally meaningful to say.  Selfishly I want assurance that I will be profound when really my only job is to write.  The rest is out of my hands,  If I try to edit before a single word  touches the page, I am defeated before I begin.  And isn’t that the hardest part of all?   Every day a new blank page.  Every day the risk of failure.  Everday beginning anew.

Back to my original question, why would one chose not to write?  Laziness?  I recently attended a workshop with Dr Joe Dispenza, an international lecturer, researcher and teacher who is driven by the conviction that each person has the potential for greatness and unlimited abilities.  He said, “Ignore the fear and step into the river of change.” There I am standing on the banks of a raging river, afraid of drowning, standing like a statue watching the wild current push downstream.  I want to fling myself into the current, not because of a death wish, but because I want to live.  I want to dare to take the wild ride into the unknown with only my own words to buoy me, to carry me.  If I do jump, my goal will not be just to reach the other side.  No I want to boas far down river as I can.  I want to see what lies ahead.  Where will the journey take me?  Is that not inevitably the real reason to write?  To find out who I am and why I exist.

Deeper meaning.  Ever deeper. That’s what I want.  How deep can I go?  My now deceased mother often told me, “You create your own problems.  Why are you so serious?  Don’t ask so many questions.”  Who would she have been had she dared to ask, “Who am I?”  She made it indelibly clear to me that I was not to air the family’s dirty laundry.  Piles of untold stories never to be cleaned or hung out to dry, but just left lying damp in baskets stacked to the sky and beyond.

I would be amiss if I did not mention my fear of depression.  It has now been four months since I last took a Prozac the antidepressant I was first prescribed in 1992.  Yes 35 years later, I finally weaned myself off this powerful drug.  In the past, my forays into writing have more often than not triggered bouts of deep sadness. But today I have a new life.  I have no intention of isolating or of  forcing myself to write.  I will simply sit down each day and wait.  Isn’t that’ the hardest part, waiting to see what arises?

Because, you see, not to write is to die, and now, more than ever before, I want to live.  I want to venture out onto the page of life where I hope to thrive, to find adventure and to hear the voice of my soul speak to me and through me.

Waiting and Wanting

Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying, planning and dreaming – so much time spent in”tanha,” our unquenchable desire for more.  More what? Money, attention, sex, food, alcohol, nicotine, travel, friends, freedom from, ability to.  Makes my head spin just thinking about all the time I have used up waiting and wanting, and hardly ever landing, even for a split second, in the abundant now where all my needs and wants are effortlessly met.  We really need very little, but our identification with the “false self,” the social and mental construct we have created to please others, to get us started on our life journey, can be a stifling box of shoulds and should-nots, a laundry list of what we must get and acoomplish in order to be desirable, in order to impress others.

“Jesus would call your “false self” your “wineskin,” which he points out is only helpful insofar as it can contain some good and new wine. He says that “old wineskins” cannot hold any new wine; in fact, “they burst and both the skins and the wine are lost” (Luke 5:37-38).  “The old wine is good enough” (Luke 5:39), says the man or woman set in their ways.” (Richard Rohr)  The “false self” is not good or bad, but it is, in the words of Richard Rohr, “bogus” because it pretends to be more than it is. In order to keep up the facade, the false self must constantly be acquiring, procuring, and protecting which leaves little or no time for growth and expansion.  The “false self” is afraid of the unknown, of limitless possibility and would much rather stay entrenched in its egoic operating system.

The “true self” which is now and forever connected to the Whole has no need to prop itself up or separate itself from others.  True freedom and liberation belong to the realm of the “true self,” who “lives forever and is truly free in this world.”  The “true self” recognizes that “regardless of what we thirst after—junk food, healthful food, sex—the thirst, the tanha, fosters an illusion of enduring gratification. When I see anything tasty, I imagine how good it will taste, not how that satisfaction will inevitably fade, leading to the desire for more.” (Robin Wright).  The “true self,” through contemplation, knows that gratification is fleeting and the freedom to choose how and when we satisfy our cravings is more than making a wise decision, it is claiming our ability to discern and in so doing claiming  we claim out connection to that which is inexhaustible, the field of infinite possibility.

 

Came to Believe

Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.  Sane, soul , soulful, sound mind and body, spirit, immortal – words sprawled on a page, but to what end?  Is it not the meaning we attach to a word that gives it power?  For instance, catastrophe. I often hear this word in reference to the events of the past year. Whether they be political or personal, labeling any event as catastrophic pretty much seals the deal.  Once so labeled, there is little or no room for possibility.  Take the definition of catastrophe, a disaster, a calamitous event, especially one occurring suddenly and causing great loss of life, damage, or hardship and lay it over a life event, any life event like the loss of a loved one, a divorce, a diagnosis, a betrayal, an apparent failure and so on and what is left?  Bereavement, sorrow, irreconcilable resentment and anger, depression, insurmountable grief, and possibly utter and irreparable despair, (the complete loss or absence of hope.)   What is life without hope?  How can there be meaning without trust, without destiny, without the Soul?  I believe that our sole purpose to is discover The Soul our unique blueprint which was to us given at our conception and lies in wait for us to discover it, choose it and live it into eternity.  I find that words like disaster, sanity, catastrophe, and the like impede our Soul’s journey by denying limitless possibilities

I tried for years to adhere to the definition of sanity, (the ability to think and behave in a normal and rational manner; sound mental health), with little success.  I know now that I am not normal (conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected) nor do I wanted to be labeled as such.  I am supernormal, exceptional as are you and you and you.  We each have within us the power to choose our destinies.  This power is the extension of the soul and is not preoccupied with form.  On the contrary its sole purpose is to give us the courage we need to discover our deepest selves.  The soul accompanied by its innate power is not interested in making people comfortable.  “The soul is who you are in God and who God is in you. We do not make or create our souls.  We only awaken them, allow them, and live out of their deepest messages.” (Richard Rohr)

I heard my soul’s voice loud and clear _ “Stop chemo.  It is killing me.”  I did as I was told.  Does this make me sane?  Who cares.  Certainly not me.  I am more concerned with adhering to the urgings of my deepest self than I am to the meanderings of my wayward analytical mind which makes sensible decisions based on available information.  You know like protocol, statistics, studies, percentages, and cold, hard facts.

So to paraphrase, I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to luminosity and depth of seeing, to the “light.”  May I welcome life on life’s terms and not deny “the wonderful underlying mystery that is everywhere, all the time.” (from Breathing Underwater). Every life event is a call to believe in a power greater than ourselves, to believe in the possibility of miracles, to believe that healing is the byproduct of loving self and others unconditionally.

Thus I came to believe that there are no disaters, no catastophes, no failures, only limitless possiblities to heal. By healing, I mean cultivating the capacity to live out of the clear, simple and uncluttered presence for it is in the present that we encounter The Presence, whether we call it God or not, matters little. What does mattter is whether or not we can learn to let life come to us trusting that God in us, our Soul, has called us, and that God, i.e. The Soul is incapable of failure.

 

haunted

Convalescing – to recover one’s health and strength over a period of time after an illness or operation.  this verb assumes there was health and strength prior to the illness or operation, but what it that were not the case.  What if said patient had spent a lifetime undermining her body’s ability to be healthy, drinking, smoking, provoking depression by brooding on the past?  What then?  Would not convalescing then be the discovery of health an strength, the creation of a new life, one that does not deny prior difficulties but which instead uses them to bolster the desire to live more fully now.

If I am no longer haunted by the past can I now risk living in the unknown, in a life free of fear and resentment, while waiting for the new me to emerge? What will I do?  How will I think now that I have stopped running away?  Seems that every moment of my life, prior to the onset of the disease that has ruled these past 12 months, was pregnant with waiting and wanting…wanting a different life…waiting for the life I had been living to end, perhaps even in death.  What now?  Now that I want more than anything to live.  What does this future hold?  Que sera, sera?

At least we know there has been an end to one haunting.  I am no longer nor will I ever again be pursued by my past.  Now I must learn to release ghosts that hold me hostage to a disease I will never again have.  I release my diagnosis, my doctors, my treatments, my diagnostic tests, the operations, the weeks of recovery, the time away from work, apart from the world, and the time spent in fear of dying.  I now claim my life, going forward with an intention to live fully no matter what the risk, to live into not away from the new life I have been given.

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“Im Still Here” Ram Dass

Putting it into words, words that convey the meaning of a state of being beyond description, a place to which few chose to travel, but where many arrive they know not how.  A wrinkle in time, compressed by pain and stretched by courage.  The overlap of what once was and what would never be again, a salient point – the absolute knowledge that nothing, nothing will ever be as it had been, not good or bad, right or wrong, simply irreversibly different as is, though unnoticed, every moment of every day.  No two seconds are the same.  Even the vain egoic attempt to take the past and pale it over the future with what one believes to be an indelible imprint is sheer folly.   It is absolutely impossible to predict the future let alone control it, cajole it into giving you what you think you want, what you say you must have to survive.  What Tomfoolery.  However there may be the possibility, in fact I am convinced that there is just that, of living the future now, of taking the bucket list of things you say must happen in order for you to be successful, to be happy, to be inspired….take that list and start checking them off one by one.  Do it now.  Live as if all your dreams have already come true.  If that were the case, how would you feel?  Grateful? Gratitude sounds reasonable, does it not?  Gratitude is the ultimate state of receivership.  Could one’s destiny be directly linked to the amount of time spent practicing gratitude.  Destiny is wither a choice or it is fate.  Which will it be?  I  chose the former.  Not fighting to change what is, not forcing something from nothing, but standing erect on the ground of this present moment with an eye to a vibrant, adventurous future. I am now living ispired by the shimmer of what is yet to come.