Lightly child, lightly...

"Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly...even though you're feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days... (and) there are quicksands all about...That's why you must walk so lightly." Aldous Huxley

I have loved these words of Huxley's. Yet, it was just not "presto" learning to "lightly let things happen and lightly cope...," especially in the situations that thwarted or wounded me. I had to grow considerably before discovering a level of living where grace rides gently, leaving me the freedom to follow such wisdom.

Initially, I thought "darkly" only resulted from what happened outside me. Then I learned that was not true. As the cartoon character Pogo observed, "Ah, I have found the enemy. It's me." And it was. Only to discover later, I have the power and choice to do something about me. Starting to hunt those shadow parts, I found their gems of understanding and compassion made a fun friend for myself. My moments were beginning to flow, ebb and dance on a river of taking things lightly.

However, like Huxley, I was, at times, "so preposterously serious in those days." Even little mistakes, too often, were weighted as if they were "crimes against humanity." They certainly did not encourage a "light and merry" anything. Yet, stepping back, I began to notice that some mistakes resulted from naivety, inexperience and lack of development. Some mistakes were simply
"bad calls" which I delightfully learned did not make me a bad person. Identifying these gremlins proved to be solid-gold learners. The universe loves giving out second and third chances. And I love taking them.

However, one cannot force their growth. I'd love to be wonderful and fully enlightened. Yet, trying to arrive before I have arrived is like wanting my emotional or spiritual plant to produce a flower before it's time. Maybe my developmental-stage is first to create a beautiful "leaf".  Accepting where I am
 is comforting and confirming. Then, a wonderful, sacred and growing self comes out to play and I am on my way, again.

Lastly, Tagore like Huxley knew to "feel lightly even though (they were) feeling deeply." The great Indian poet lost his beloved wife, child and dearest friend in a shockingly short period of time. His life changed. Going to the mountains by himself, he wrote poetry from a larger horizon, a more exquisite energy source which each of us is and can access. Thus, spreading my emotional and spiritual "wings on the sails of light and shattering into gold my every clouded thought," no matter how darkly the world seems, I continue to say, " Lighten up, Augusta, lighten up."

photo source: nancy10 - fotolia.com

there are more things in heaven and earth...

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Shakespeare

In the last few weeks several readers have asked, "How do I get in touch with my spiritual guide?* A challenging question for those of us who see material objects with human eyes.

However, there is another way of seeing, feeling with the body, with the mind. An inner seeing, an inner sensibility that swings us out beyond our five or six senses. After all, a dog can hear more frequencies than we humans, a bird of prey can spot a meal three kilometers away. Here at the University of Arizona in Tucson mediums, Tibetan monks and yogis come from all over the world to participate in researching our abilities "to think outside the box" --  to see "outside the box" of conventional wisdom.

Early on, I began to identify that a deeper knowing than my own was operative in my life. In difficult situations, some solutions were smarter than I could "think up." I recognized intuition and instincts served me well but what were they?  I had no idea about guides, yet, began to recognize "larger hands at play." Surely, this caring-compassion that got me through specific difficulties, couldn't be mere coincidence. Thus, I began to say "thank you" to whatever particular part of "God" seemed to be working on my behalf.

Starting to identify the "information" as somewhat separate, experiencing its dependability and caring,  I began to relate to it personally. This energy gradually grew more into a felt form -- very like in a dream when a stranger appears, yet you recognize the energy to be someone you know. Asking questions out of need or curiosity, a thought might emerge that felt a little different, had more weight than another and was indeed smarter than my local self.

Thus, it was natural to begin thinking of this help as a guide. So I asked for a name. A word came to me; I have no idea why, as I had never heard it before and wasn't even sure it was a word. Nevertheless, a name furthered my awareness.  In hindsight, the value of identifying this experience as personal allowed it to work more powerfully in my days. This added presence was life-enhancing and healing.

Years ago, no book could be found on the subject of spiritual guides. Now, go to any book store and there are whole sections devoted to the subject. However, I never lose sight of what we well know, divine guidance is infinite and needs no name, no image in order to permeate our lives.  As "very best friends" do not come highly numbered, neither in my experience do spiritual guides. Yet, in our walk each emits love, healing and Presence.

Note:
For the readers who asked the above question, the following suggestions help me focus.
- Intention: I generally have a need, a curiosity, a question or want more information about a situation.
- I pick a place, a spot that has resonance and meaning for me, be it the kitchen table, outdoors, looking at the stars or on my bed.
- Then settling myself by breathing softly, I ask my question and wait to see if anything comes -- an image, word-thought or feeling. If nothing happens, I might take a guess what the guide could look like in order to stimulate my inner-seeing.
- Then, like a friendship, allow it time to grow.

Photo source: painted between 1850-1899 by Jose Ferraz de Almeida Junior commons.wikimedia.com
*If the word "guide" does not line up with your meaning system, change it. Maybe "helper" or "angel" or some other term will feel more personal.

beautiful and wild forces...

"There are beautiful and wild forces within us." * 

I was brought up as a luke-warm, "had to go to church" Christian. Prayer for me was not much more then words and "Jesus" was a question mark. Saying prayers too often happened without feeling or meaning. After all where did they go -- these words thrown into a fog. Their destination was too invisible, too not there and too not here. Then adulthood came along and turned one inside-out and upside-down in all the human stuff: growing, marrying, parenting, divorcing, and aging. In other words, enjoying and suffering this experiential loop called living.

What I didn't know as a child or as a young adult is that something deeper inside me was being nourished, cultivated, in spite of my inattention -- a heart beat, a hum was emerging which I eventually recognize as Presence, mine and Other. I discovered the feeling of beloveding is the feeling of these "beautiful and wild forces" of which St Frances spoke. This deeper sense of awareness was like gradually falling in love with an aliveness that was intimate, personal, impersonal, faceless and powerful.  And it really does live in my cells and in my chest.

What is this divine force, heart-energy and intelligence I can access, turn too and feel a part of ? I sit here at the desk and wonder why I, the desk and the water in the lake just don't fall off into space. There is certainly nothing seemingly holding us here. This force, in  labeling it "gravity" makes us forget the invisible power that resides in such a little word. Thus, I lose the wonder, the awesomeness that I am actually hanging upside down in space with no nails in my shoes. Why doesn't the whole thing give way? What invisible, caring, compassion keeps it all from falling into space?

What divine intelligence is at work? Everyone I know has ten fingers, a nose and a chin. Imagine. How did that happen? And the exact number! This is the beautiful and wild force within -- a power and relationship available in each of us. It's language, we call prayer.

Praying comes in as many forms as minutes do in a day. Sometimes it's words, sometimes it's the space between the words. In the last writing prayer came in the form of a table grace. This morning, being busy, I will try to bring my non-feeling "in from the cold". This will necessitate getting up from the computer, moving over to the rocker and saying, I am here** on the in-breath and wait on the out-breath for my mind to touch my heart.  Surprisingly, after breathing a few times, my busyness begins to thaw. I start feeling connected. Later, I may be lured out on the deck as those infinite number of frosty, ice-crystals also wait on the rail to ignite my amazement which is a swift road to gratitude, the root and route of prayer.

These beautiful and wild forces speak the language of the heart that unites us all.  I need this understanding, compassion and healing. I take my vitamins daily to keep my body healthy. Maybe praying is like taking my spiritual vitamins daily to keep my Being healthy.

Image source: fotolia.com
* Saint Frances
** Thich Nhat Hanh

On the gurney, peace is always beautiful...

The table is set, beautifully. The scallops, veggies and red wine wait. In it's candlelight, I bow my head for grace. With all of my "wealth", I am moved to pray for, at least, someone in Syria but hopelessness is all I feel. How can my little prayer have any affect, there? Will it really do any good? I feel small and defeated.

This morning on BBC, I heard that millions of Syrians have been displaced and are without homes or passports. Before the conflict they too were at their tables, nicely set, with lights of the season twinkling, their special foods before them, their middle class jobs waiting Monday morning, their middle class doctors accessible around the corner and their grands were off to school, safely, to start a New Year. However, now, the lights have gone out, there is no table, the schools are barrel-bombed, the doctors dead or escaped, the houses, condos, apartments are rubble. Yes, they were me a couple of years ago sitting in their "wealth". In comparison, I can't even feel the extent of this grace I live in. Would any prayer I say ever make a difference?

Then I remember, an emergency room in Tucson. The gurney was surrounded by white coats, I knew they were trying to keep me alive. I had been run over by a truck. (My femur artery was severed, etc.) I remained conscious except for the impact and the time under the truck. A card this Christmas quoted Walt Whitman saying, "Peace is Always Beautiful." Lying there on the gurney, a helicopter ride minutes ago and with what seemed like "madness" going on around me, I felt that peace accompanied by the warm-water feeling of love in my chest -- a feeling I have in prayer yet I was not praying. Too much pain, too much going on with my body. However, my thought and comfort were, people will start praying for me in Nova Scotia when they hear. Then water was dripping on my face. I tried to brush it aside and bent my neck to see the leak in the ceiling. There was the face of my friend Ben leaning over me, crying. I tried to lift my arm to comfort him but a fractured arm does not work, either. So I said, "Ben, it is alright."

Feeling the prayers, I wasn't praying made me "alright". Growing up I had heard a butterfly wing touched in the back yard can be felt on the other side of the earth. It always sounded far-fetched but somehow, deep down, I knew it was true. Now, after countless scientific-experiments, physicists are discovering a particle, like one of the countless number that make up you and me, when separated can be tickled and its entangled counterpart will dance, instantaneously, no matter how far away the second particle is. *

Medical technology saved my physical-life that day but prayer - my velvet feeling of well-being - was saving my inner-life. I would have died without either one being activated. I could not pray laying on the road or on the gurney so maybe my Syrian-grandma counterpart cannot either. Surely then, this small table grace tonight, like a butterfly, will waltz above a stream and step straight through the firmament.**

photo source: en.wikipedia.org, an oil painting -- Angelus by Jean-Francois Millet, 1859
*paraphrase: Bruce Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, author of The Fabric of the Cosmos
** paraphrase: Emily Dickinson

"I love that guy..."

The real story comes from a love-source that cannot be understood with the intellect... Mark Nepo

My granddaughter paused in the hallway on her way out the door.  We had just put up some Christmas decorations. There, newly unwrapped for this year, was the foot-high Santa standing on the hall chest. She fingered his beard, his red velvet coat and then took her time feeling all the little presents sticking out his pockets. Gazing for as long as a four year old gazes, she finally looks sideways at me and states, almost solemnly, "I love that guy." And from her look, I knew she meant it down to her little toes. Her face reveling she has entered that place of wonder and love.

Earlier, she and her brother unwrapped the manger scene for the mantle. They know they have to be very, very careful as Jesus slipped from smaller fingers last year. We would have lost him if he hadn't bounced on the floor. They reverently, as reverently as enthusiastic four and six years olds can be, handle each figure -- the cow, one-eared donkey, three kings, shepherds, and the baby Jesus. This year a thumb is off one of the kings and the shepherd has lost a fore-finger. Yet somehow none of this matters.

However, a problem presents itself. The cow might be my grandson's favorite, yet it's Jesus's head, not the cow's they both want the light to shimmer over.  Unfortunately, it keeps falling in the hay. "Grandma, we need a prop." he states. A little candy box lies empty on the coffee table. Presto, he is down off the stool. Now the "star" shines securely over Jesus's head (see low). Even the Smarties box does not feel irreverent -- any more than a Christ Child does, born on hay with munching cows.

Thinking I might add a little depth of meaning to the events, my grandson quickly assures me, "I know." Hmm, maybe better than I as they both have the feeling, the whispered hush, the sparkling Christmas lights shining out their eyes and fingertips. Does it matter whether it is Jesus, a Christ Child, Buddha, or whoever my granddaughter is loving in the red suit? I don't think so. What matters is they feel this story is in some magical way, theirs.

They both know the one inch presents in Santa's pockets in the hallway are empty and the seemingly inanimate manger scene is far from perfect. Jesus's birthday is three weeks away, so this exuberance is not about something under the tree. Watching them I think, where are my feelings? Where is my excitement, my joy de vive, where can I hardly contain myself with true aliveness? I know I don't love the guy in the red suit. I am too logical. Plus, my feelings get lazy and some get "killed off" by thought: "Oh, Christmas is just for children." or "Yes, Augusta (Virginia) there is no Santa Claus."

However, I also know our deepest feelings are the lodestar that weds us to each other and the magic of the larger story. When Christmas is born in us, we are re-born in that love-source that can be known only as a person is known.* Now the lights from the tree twinkle as I walk by.  If I squint I see the beautiful prism rays that are us if we could see, energetically. When I let them play on my irises, then glance up at the mantle, there we all are -- wise women and men, birthing new Babes of our own, new insights, new behaviors as we follow our Star. And the air is alive with the kindnesses and goodness that shower us every day. 

We radiate a heart-hum. It doesn't matter if the grands have to do "time-out" for eating the candy they were told not too. Nor doesn't it matter how many mistakes I make, how many friends I have lost this year. In great sadness is great love, in our anger is our wounded-ness and our healing. The story is always larger than we think, always larger than our emotions, always larger than the hay in the manger or the empty Smarties box that is upholding the light.

* Mark Nepo
photo source: fotolia.com

the sun flower...

the sun flower...

The end of the garden
belonged to the sunflowers,
sedulously drawing
the sun’s power inward,
and rising above him/her
who bound them to poles...

The end of the summer
belonged to sunflowers,
languidly casting
downward their haloed heads -
the Crucifixion of a season
offering... the feast...
          Sally Belenardo, From “Jacob’s Garden”

Leaving the restaurant, holding her wing-like arm, I just want to get my ninety-one year old mother to the car without her falling. Yet stepping gingerly off the last step, she stops with surprising strength, jerking me to a halt. I look down at her. She was inch shorter, now she is a foot shorter. Her gnarled spine cast her face to the ground. In her younger years she encouraged me to “put your shoulders back and stand up straight”-- as she carried herself.

About to urge her toward the car, thankfully, I begin to recognize she is meeting with an old friend too seldom seen. How beautiful to watch her raise blind eyes to the September sun.  Like an enchanted sunflower, she stands “sedulously drawing the sun’s power inward.” Long, deep breaths. I hear the raspy inhale. Then another and another.

People keep passing us on each side. She, who would be quick to step aside, ignores them. Her back pain should have propelled her toward the car several minutes ago. Yet, she is basking. The sun is lovely for her.  The “end of the summer” does truly belong to the sunflowers, “languidly casting...their haloed heads."  I cannot say,  “Let’s go Mother.” when she knows how to embrace the sun like this. And I wonder, who is embracing whom.

*written a year before my mother made her transition, her birthday would have been several days ago
Image source:  Artur Synenko - Fotolia.com

the gold fish bowl...

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight,
in a bud
was more painful
then the risk                                                                                                
it took
to Blossom.  Anais Nin

A piece of research, I read recently, observed what would happen if gold fish were taken from their bowl and put in a large bath tub. One would assume they would make a dash to splash and play in the larger body of water. They did not. They remained swimming within the confines of their non- existent fish bowl -- their environment.

I create my own fish bowl and it becomes my mini-universe. My inner environment, beliefs, thoughts and perceptions limit my swimming range. A few centuries ago my ancestors thought the earth was square. And what a fish bowl that created -- no sailing into unknown waters. Then, only a few decades ago I considered my body solid, skin was skin, bone-bone and the cat was a cat. I also thought the end of the world was limited to my five senses. Now Einstein tells us it is all an illusion be it a convincing one. Science is proving (which the shamans, Buddhist monks and mystics have known for eons) that it is a multi-dimensional world with parallel realities. And the breaker of limits is: I am 99.9 percent energy with essentially no solidity other than the one who thinks there is sitting here typing. So my fish bowl is having a hard time telling me the earth is square, that reality ends at my limited perceptions.

My outside environment can easily be confined by habit, routines and old patterns. They make great fish fodder. These well-worn pathways are useful, dependable and offer me comfort and security. They are familiar, like family to me. Yet habit and routine done long enough become mindless and automatic, taking life rather then giving it, dulling heart-eyes, zip, zing and spirit. They build up an energy field which I can easily mistake for essence or reality rather than a tool to make life easier. I create them then get trapped which I suspect keeps me from an ocean of life or, at least, a bathtub full of living that I have yet to splash and play in.

What gives me fresh, new aliveness, what dulls it? What takes the shine off my days, my minutes? What keeps me from a big swim in the whole tub? Where am I stuck? Picking up my self-evaluation spy-glass I need some distance, be it geography or head space. When the children were smaller I went to Toronto every five or six weeks for committee work.  It was a different positioning being out of the comfortable, the habitual activity. For a few days, periodically, I lived outside the fish bowl. I was not a mother or wife as much as I loved being both. Distance gave me a new ledge from which to check out what gave us life and what took it away. Tucson gives me the same opportunity -- space, distance, and detachment which does challenge Nova Scotia routines.

Yet, I don't have to go far for the same opportunity, I just have to go different.  The smallest choice, one simple step can result in a meaningful ocean-swim. After writing here at the desk for a spell, I can so easily click on the TV and "numb out" convincing myself, I am just relaxing. Again, good fodder. However, remembering that TV is not exactly a source of fun and laughter, I head outdoors. "It doesn't take much to do a lot" or to swim in fresh water.

Stepping out the front door, I hear a little voice from next door calling, "Gusta".  I've been spotted. And here he comes heading my way, arms extended until they wrap my knees. So much life just delivered itself at my feet. I can hardly see his face for the red hat hauled down to his nose. Two-year old language is hard for me but he definitely has a story to tell and if I could understand, I know it is about the most exciting happening. No fish bowl here, just innocence, fresh eagerness, a child's aliveness and now, mine.

And isn't it at the edges of living, where we are energized, where the "ah ha's" happen, where we are surprised again by this magical, mystical place that invites us to swim beyond out-dated beliefs and old habits. Here, we can splash and play in the rest of the tub, in a new freedom. A place where cattails talk back and a two year old, knowing no limits, has the most exciting story to tell?

photo source: fotolia.com