Keeping my eyes on the hawk...

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming – "WOW – What a Ride!" 

                                                                                                                        ~Author unknown                     
The grim woman at the vehicle department states: "No, you can't license your scooter until you have a motorcycle license".

"What? I don't want a motorcycle license." Back home in Nova Scotia the only motorcycle people I hear about are the "Hell's Angels." And several of them are on trial for murder. Besides, I'm sixty-two years old.

"Well, you won't be riding your scooter in Arizona then." Her set lips end the argument.

In the early years, spending the winter months in the southwest, I only had a bicycle with which to get groceries. After several years of growing leg muscles, plus wanting to be more mobile, I decided to buy a scooter. The adventure was turning out to be more than I first thought. 

Now I have to take this motorcycle course I don't want. Two weeks later and twenty miles out in the desert, I wait before the gate titled, "Stock Car Racing." It's desert cold and six-thirty a.m. The sun is just coming up, back-lighting the saguaro cactus. Instructors and students are beginning to arrive. Soon eleven throbbing motorcycles line the track. My heart thumps like those cold machines missing a beat and needing the throttle.

The instructor introduces himself as "Dan, the Man." Really! He asks, "Who has not ridden before?"  Mine is the lone hand. Yet seeing several women, although decades younger in the group, comforts me. One of them leans over and whispers, "They say he was once an instructor in the Marines." She looks thirty years younger yet appears as vulnerable as I feel. 

The instructor points me to a Kawasaki 350. Then the command, "Mount". I swing my leg from right to left. "Hey you, mount from the other side." I try again. He continues pointing out what seems to be obvious to the others: starter, safety starter, foot brake, hand brake, throttle, gas, foot clutch and hand clutch. "Now," he announces, "You are ready to ride." Does he think I’m going to remember all that in two minutes time while balancing this thing five times above my weight? He does.

Being in the middle of the pack, the sounds of eleven revving motorcycle engines assault me. I timidly attempt a "rev" or two. It works! I creep with considerable wobble out of my stall. One foot up, kick it into first, whoops, it jumps ahead. Brake, where is that brake? The guy in line in front of me is coming up fast.

After a day of riding and two hours of classroom work, I am exhausted, defeated, knowing I am going to fail -- no matter how much I need that scooter for groceries. Besides it's dangerous! One rider hit the hand brake before the foot break sending her half over the handle bars this morning. The motorcycle twisted somehow landing on top of her. A bad spill. She could not move for awhile and then had to be helped off the track. I am glad my kids can't see this. Another went down doing the figure-eight. Now, surviving the course without physical injury is my goal, not passing!

During the first day Dan kept telling us, "Don't look down at the track or you will follow your eyes and land on it." To this beginner not looking down at where the wheels are going is next to taking my hands off the handle bars. Then I spot a hawk hovering eye-level at the end of the track. OK, I am not taking my eyes off that hawk.

Three days later, grading day. I have survived the machine, the clutches, brakes, the two-by-fours and figure-eights on the obstacle course. Numerous red cones dot the grading track ahead. Dan informs us, "If you go down once you fail the course." His arm goes up, the snap of his timer makes me jump. First two riders make it through, some cones topple. The third person, an experienced rider, is down in the figure-eight. "You're out." yells Dan pointing to the side of the track. Throughout the course it was this rider's confidence I wished I had.

My turn. Rivulets of sweat tickle my cheek. Several hawks swoop and hover just beyond the track. My hands are glove-clammy. If only I can keep my eye on those hawks. The instructor's hand goes up. I gun the machine. No time for wobbling. In and out of the red cones.  Dead ahead is the tight figure-eight, seemingly the size of a postage stamp. Can I wrap this machine around it without falling?

The exam is over. The motorcycles, minus riders, are lined colorfully on the sand. Mine is red. Seven of us stand next to them waiting in anticipation, the other four have not made it. Dan checks his clipboard. The first two guys pass. Another fails. I am next. With a little (possible) smirk he ask, "Augusta, how do you think you made out." The question surprises me. He didn't ask anyone else that. 

After a pause, I answer, "I don't know." Several (possible) snickers from the others.

"Why don't you?" He shoots back.

"Because you told us never to look down." Pointing to the desert I tell him, "I kept my eyes on the hawks. So I have no idea how many cones I knocked down or how many lines I crossed."

He laughs, "Congratulations Augusta, you not only passed you came in the upper half of the class." 
And, this news I am sure, not only shocks me!

The course is over. Thank goodness. Yet, as I am leaving the track I feel disappointed. Why am I going home to a scooter? I want a red motorcycle.

photo source: fotolia.com

Tickling the universe...

"If you are in joy, the universe is in joy."
                                                            ~ Eckhart Tolle

My friend was telling me this morning she had what one could call an enlightenment. She understood in a totally new way that she is here for a purpose. Of course, I assume everyone is and so does she. Yet when thinking of my life's purpose my mind imagines achievements and projects slightly tinged with grandiose design. Continuing she stated, "My purpose is to expand the universe." I laughed. Having never been sure of what my purpose was in the "big scheme of things," I knew mine never could be that.

The idea itself feels self-defeating. However, I do refer to myself as becoming larger, increasing my experiences, raising my vibrations and expanding inner/outer space to where I love more, laugh more with that quiet knowing of being One, in and with this universe.

The question is, does the universe expand, experience a simple joy when I do? Scientists are beginning to understand that the cosmos works on the "tiniest of scales." When one particle is "tickled," then the other particle, separated by miles, responds instantly -- "even from the opposite sides of the universe."

We are all made up of particles and so is the universe.  Thus, every piece of joy I experience, every insight, every glimpse of the bird on the branch that I pause to acknowledge, that tickles me, affects it all. As Tolle reminds us, "If you are in joy, the universe is in joy." I think of last night's sky, of holding a "small" gratitude up to a star, feeling its expanding power, its beaded love. Presence in whatever mysterious form, expands. How do I know? I can feel it -- no matter what the Putins and Trumps are doing.

Last night, my daughter, son and myself visited my brave ex who has had Alzheimer's for a decade and within the last month has survived several strokes. On arriving, the Senior's common room was full of wheel chairs. They were having a music night and only one musician had shown up. We pitched in with fiddle, piano and guitar. Although my ex is numbish on his left side, he still plays the bones with his right hand.

It was a slow start not only for the audience but for us, too. We didn't know most songs the harmonic guy played but in spite of missing notes and muffing chords those bones kept the beat. I'd look over and catch his eye. Merriment and caring zipped between us. We stumbled on.  Requests started coming from the audience. Someone, not in a wheel chair, got up to dance. Before long we were rocking, laughing with a little foot stomping.  The audience seemed to come to life. It was like, how could I miss so many chords, make so many mistakes and still have such fun? But it was happening.

Life was expanding with every note. Feeble and shaky hands were clapping, faces once somber were
smiling. Memories were awakened, old songs requested. Bill Bailey rocked, Johnny Cash wanted to get out of that Folsom Prison and, of course, those Old Saints came rolling in. Amazing Grace certainly arrived. I played it with my eyes closed -- hearing voices that hadn't sung for a while.

No, we were not good, far from it, in fact sometimes we were pretty bad but who cared or who bothered to notice. We were alive with memories, music and the sheer joy of it. Even the universe may have felt a little tickle.  Later, a staffer came up with smiles telling us it was the best singsong they have had there in sixteen years. And I smiled, thinking, "Probably the least perfect, too."

I think my purpose will be to tickle the universe on "the smallest of scales." Go for that expansion -- in the little things, the little hearts, where we come alive rather than merely exist. And, as my friend concluded, "You see, if I meet you and we share an insight or our souls meet in a kindness or an understanding, the universe does expand."

"How old are you Grandma?"

My Grands ask, "How old are you Grandma?" (No doubt, I seem ancient.)
I reply, "I don't really know but I must be a hundred and fifty or maybe even two hundred." They nod in agreement.

I have a birthday coming up. I look in the mirror and down at these wrinkled hands typing:  yes, seasons have passed so I must be "old". Yet, the sense, feel and image I have of myself is essentially and shockingly timeless -- love doesn't get mil-dewy, wisdom keeps flowing, be it uphill at times and this lake and I are in relationship.

Being a day younger, would not hold today's passion and these I wouldn't miss.The ideas that filtered through my mind yesterday wouldn't have a chance ten years ago or even three days ago. Swimming this morning, I chatted with four ducks, not two feet from me, coming out of the morning mist trailing their rippled V's  past my shoulders. Would I have even been aware of our energetic connected-ness a few years ago? Just walking by the piano, I feel excitement. My fingers want to dance those 88's. Four years ago, I felt nothing but avoidance. Being younger again, even by a day, holds little appeal.

In spirit there is no age. In fact, I am in a spirit growth-spurt right now and love it. I am not my wrinkles anymore than a pregnant woman is her stretched marks. There is no physical organ called person-hood, nor one called joy, sadness, love, excitement, enthusiasm or grief.  They just can't be found. Yet they are who I am -- not the body but the spirit. Thinking of myself as a face, grey hair or a hand is not realistic. They could be ash tomorrow.

I have discovered a secret, the most wonderful secret. I am not my body. My mother was near bent to the side walk when she made her transition in her nineties. Yet, courage, integrity and a back bone of steel belied that image. I must not let my eyes fool me. They can so easily. Yet I have another far more important form -- Me, We, Us and Oneness.

Age is only one part of the weave as my aliveness waits daily to be played with a fresh heart and new eyes. However, I need to be careful and source from the natural self -- from inside out rather than outside in. The deeper level begs the question, "Has the grace and beauty of aging been lost in this consensus reality that only sees bodies?" And unfortunately, I too, have looked to the wise and only seen obsolesce. Yet, I feel like the ninety-year-old taxi driver who in his wisdom stated to the younger man in the back seat, "Listen to me, I know a lot."

Yes, I have a birthday coming up. What is this life force inside that has nothing to do with my skin, the color of my eyes or my heart rate? I am not my "aches and pains", in fact they are not even mine: they are this body's I've been given to walk around in, to love with, to experience this exquisite aliveness that moves the wind on the water or swirls the cloud in a flawless sky.

This age I am entering in a few days will be a great new house to build and live in.  A billion things have been missed, yet a billion timeless things wait to be experienced before I pass into the invisible.


Photo source: www.ourfamilybiblestudy.wordpress.com

Taking one conscious breath...

One conscious breath in and one conscious breath out is a meditation.
                                                                                                       ~ E. Tolle

Imagine, only one conscious breath. Now, I can hardly say I don't have time to meditate, or "I can't fit it in, I am booked." For years I have tried to be aware of my breathing as I often mentioned in my writings. Initially, the challenge was even to remember to notice I was breathing. And my first observation of air lifting my chest was merely a physical sensation -- cooler air coming in, warmer air leaving.

It stayed merely physical for a surprisingly long time.  Yet, practice and persistence works. If love crossed my path in a particularly conscious way I would take a deep, slow breath and associate it with its feeling. It  seemed to be more fun to play with my breath, a bit of felt joy got breathed in, as did any feeling of gratitude I had at the end of the day. Sadness got breath in without judging it as bad until it penetrated its own velvet depth.

The mystic Simone Weil wrote in her classic, Waiting on God, that if we want to come alive, to become conscious of the beauty and truth that saturates our moments and discover one's presence as love and lover she states, it will all happen "According to the attention."

Like a bird sitting on her egg, my breath needed consistent attending. Then at some point, its life hatched on its own. This breath, I discover, is alive, has a resounding stillness, a resonance that renders me present to lovely Presence. Two little girls have just come in to Starbucks, I would guess maybe four or five-years-old. I over hear their mother is taking a holiday and is dropping them off with their grand parents for the day. They are excited. Watching the exchange, without 'manually' becoming aware of my breath, there it is, a warm faceless essence, a gentle expansive caring seems to be its substance.

The great Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh has written numerous book, given countless presentations world-wide about conscious breathing. Like Einstein, who changed how we look at the Universe, with his Theory of Relativity which he summed up in three letters, E=MC (square), Hanh distills several thousand year of practicing the art and science of meditation and encourages, "One conscious breath...Be with your breath."

Surely I can take one breath of awareness, then hopefully it will lead to two. And, after many suns, I do feel its aliveness, its deep stillness, its resonance; then, breath (dare I say) begins to feel like a lover, loving me back. Visiting the shore this afternoon, I breathed in the salty tang of the waves splashing against the wharf. Looking up, the sea gulls, without a movement of wing, are on their own invisible highways in the sky. I draw the feeling in slow and deep.

I am here for my breath, as if breath itself is the lover and now I am not sure if it isn't.

Photo source: fotolia.com

we are life, laughing...

If only our eyes saw souls instead of bodies how different our ideals of beauty would be.
                                                                                                                    ~  Author unknown

I wake from a dream it's 4:20 am. I know I've just been looking with my other eyes, the one's that see better than my physical ones.

About 10 ft away is my lovely ex.  He is to the left, looking straight ahead.  I don't think he knows I am here; maybe, more like I have come in from another dimension. I am struck by the stark realness of his unsmiling presence. Not unhappy, honest.

In the dream, his head and upper body are formed but the lower part fades off into a series of lines.
Beyond him, to the right of his head, is a beautifully drawn violin/fiddle as if created by a master artist -- flowing in a freedom of swirls and lines in space. (He is a 'Down East' fiddler.) Just beyond, him creating a circular pattern is also drawn what I interpret to be the other 'special stuff' of his life.
I keep catching glimpses but the view feels ephemeral like the smoke curls which form beautiful, graceful, mysterious 'in and out' patterns in space after one blows out a candle.

I wake in a poignancy, a sweet sadness -- experiencing loss that mingles with an intense joy. Yet, this is not a loss of his presence as I have that.  He is in his spirit/human self: dines here, plays fiddle here, opens presents here. Nor is it a loss from divorcing the institution of marriage or that he has Alzheimer's. This dream is generic. I am being shown how beautifully drawn we are -- living the most ordinary 'things' of our lives, be it, stubbing a toe, not remembering or catching the wind rocking a leaf.

I also wake thinking how shockingly non-physical we are and can be. I better understand (possibly) the Dalai Lama's divine humor (he chuckles) in harsh circumstance. A sage told me a year or two ago, "When I see a person who exist in love, I am able to see through them." Was that not what I was seeing in the dream? No clunking there in denser energies, just pure essential being.

When I was fourteen my parents took me to Florida for the winter. Not going to school, I could roam Clearwater, Tampa and Tarpon Springs. In those days, the latter was known for its deep sea-divers who harvested sponges. The divers clunked the wharf in heavy gear and iron boots.

This physical suit called a body that I have to wear to be a human, shows me, in comparison, how much I clunk around like those divers, in bone, skin and mental 'stories'. Yet I want to be more see through, I want to float. What swirls and wispy curls of dream like spirit-fragrance and divine humor emit from my struggles, my 'problems'?  How beautifully drawn are my energies, vibrations, frequencies? Where am I hopefully half drawn?

After all, I am - we are the music, wind, and the sound of the sun, We are life, laughing -- or can be.

photo source: fotolia.com
quote source: HealthyPlace.com

Never a written understanding...

"Spiritual knowing will never have a written understanding."*
                                                                                              author unknown

There is a place here in Tucson where I go to stand several times a day under a palo verdi tree. This is a great shade tree with lots of feathery hanging branches. It also gives me a closer look at the Santa Catalina Mountains and the Pantano Wash.

This year, standing under that palo verdi, just after I arrived for the winter, a flash of ruby-red bobbing up and down on a branch caught my attention. A little humming bird was resting there not four feet from me.  I thought the breeze moving my large, floppy, sun hat would disturb the bird and initially it did. After a week or two, it began to stay longer. I generally stood about ten to fifteen minutes in stillness. Sometimes, I would do some editing which would extend the time.

I started to play a game of who could be in stillness the longest. Off it would go, yet strangely, every time it returned to the exact same branch, five inches up from the tip of the lower branch, to sit at the top of the V.

We stood there daily and sometimes twice a day if I was home. One morning, I wondered if this bird was ignoring me or just didn't see me. Seemingly, as soon as I had the thought, it zoomed like a projectile past my left ear and in a flash landed back on its spot. Had it miscalculated its flight pattern? But not so, for this past month I have felt the movement of air close to my ear, repeatedly.

One day, standing in stillness, looking at the cloudless blue sky, I was trying not to think, not to label, not even to judge this beauty as 'sky'. I also did not want to notice this little creature keeping me company as a 'bird' -- thus reducing beauty, aliveness and intelligence to mere object.

 In a few days I fly back to Nova Scotia, I am almost packed.  Standing under the palo verdi tree this morning, a thought, "I am going to miss this little bird but will you even notice my absence?"  Ruby-red lifted off its branch and before I could blink it was a foot from the middle of my forehead, hair level, hovering in one spot, then back to the branch.

Two days before leaving: I take my place again, the bird is here. I watch it a little differently, thinking, yesterdays flight has 'gotta be' coincidence. Again, it darts toward me, same hairline positioning but this time it makes a perfect 180 degree semi circle around my head. A premeditated  flight plan? I don't believe it. Yet, it is so fun to hear the vibration of wings, to think maybe it is responding and to get a close look at its under-feathers.

I check Google. How long do humming birds live? Ruby-throated humming birds live five to nine years and apparently, he is male. They are seasonal, solitary and not necessarily social. Plus, they can travel nine hundred miles over water without landing.

Back in Nova Scotia: This morning, I miss his four months of daily presence. Spiritual knowing indeed "will never have a written understanding." Yet, maybe, he will be back next year  How will I know him? Oh yes, he will be 'five inches up from the tip of the lower branch, above the V' in the palo verdi tree.

* www.sound.shift.com

Don't take anything personally...

Don't take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the  opinions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.  Don Miguel Ruiz

I have had several 'big-bangs' of awareness in my life.  One of the most freeing and caring things I discovered over the years is what Ruiz says is wonderfully true. "Don't take anything personally." Others' expectations, opinions and judgments I have discovered with great relief are not about me. Every human being is relating from their own sense of self or lack of it, their level of consciousness and how they see the world. Yet, when such statements are delivered they can feel very personal and very hurtful. Worse still they can rob us of our own sense of worthiness as they are, too often, offered as truth.

When I was young and discovering an identity in the world independent of parents and others, I needed society to mirror a nurturing value and identity back to me. I needed all the things we need until we don't need them. Thus, peoples' opinions mattered, most everything anyone said about my value pro or con, mattered.

Another season in life where opinion and judgement ruled was my divorce.  Everyone seemed to know what it was about but me. I experienced it as a 'good wife' waking up to the fact that marriage itself was a social institution and not a holy writ. Love and relationship are sacred but the institution, at times, does not necessarily serve that end.  Thus, I left the institution but my husband did not come. I was asking too much. Nowadays, people can "live together" wonderfully in relationship, but not then.

Adult parents of adult children also need a good dose of, 'It isn't you and it isn't personal.'  This is a great training ground. When we wonder: why don't they call, why don't they visit more often, it merely is another opportunity to learn this most freeing of soul-lessons, 'It isn't about you.' Parents are loved, no matter if they are 'axe murders.' So most of us have made the grade. Maybe they don't call because they are engaged with growing careers, family, etc -- or -- yes, maybe their actions are neglectful, careless and thoughtless.  Thinking back, I know mine were, at times.

We are all growing, shrinking and achieving more insights daily. I still catch myself judging others, will half-know a situation and then pontificate as if I know the complexity of others' lives, what their soul-lessons are -- their wounds and heart aches. Yet indeed, there are places for opinions and assessments as long as we know whose they are and don't accept them as gospel.

Thankfully, over time, a freeing immunization from others' opinions has developed. "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."* I love the freedom of knowing "It's not personal." I love others' 'light-being-ness' as well as my own. Thus, my litmus test is when hurt or my value gets a dent, I ask, "Would a 'light-being' which we each essentially are, be careless, neglectful, put me down or make damaging remarks? I don't think so. Plus, my guess is, if I lived with the angels and in my own sense of Presence, I'd feel wonderfully helped and alive after most encounters.

photo source: fotolia. com
* Anais Nin