a very simple secret...

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.    Antoine de Saint-Exupery

When I was eight a thought kept coming to me. "What am I missing? What am I not seeing? What is around the corner?" A childish, nonsensical question? Maybe, but somehow I did trust there were magic gardens and another side to the moon.

As I grew I kept discovering there were various sides to life and that most were invisible to the human eye but not to the human heart. The latter seemed to have had its own intuitive powers of seeing. I also learned, if I wanted to claim life's freedoms, its sacred heart, I could not put my trust, merely in the side I could see.

In early adulthood, wanting to learn how to draw, I found a classically-trained art teacher who lived near our home. With pencil, paper and enthusiasm I arrived at his door. Ready to draw that first line, his first instruction stopped me as he said, "I am not going to teach you to draw. I am going to teach you to see. Puzzled I thought, "but I can."  As I drew and painted, I learned I had to account for the whole head, the whole tree and not just the visible part. That line under the cheek bone, for example, had to take the eye around the unseen part of the head and come out relating to the other cheek bone for it to complete its natural wholeness.

I proceeded to learn when seeing "rightly", everything natural completes a circle from visible to invisible. There is the other side of the moon, the earth and the rainbow. Winter is invisible to summer but summer will come. The sun cannot be seen nor its warmth felt through the clouds but it never falls from its orbit in the sky.

I continued learning. Another side of anger is sadness and of fear is love. Then, there is the other side of me. What does encompass my wholeness? What is beyond this one-sided self that is always in danger of poster-like living? As a writer I depend on the the next word, the next thought that comes from seemingly "nowhere". What is the other side of speaking; where do the words come from? Is there a language of the invisible? Maybe, it is our intuition, instinct, imagination and a knowing deeper than logic and reason. Maybe, the wind speaks at the exact moment of a deeper thought telling me to wake up, pay attention.

However, most times, this living is a trust walk or I might never take pen in hand. My ancient friend who was more on the invisible side than this one, used to say to my doubt-ings, "You don't need to see oxygen to know it is there." I only recognize wind exists when it moves the trees or cools my cheek. The white caps on the lake are dancing to something. When feeling moves me I know it exist and no longer have to wonder, "What comes next?" In fact, it all existed before I sat at the computer this morning. I merely have to "join the dots" from one side to the other.

Yet, I still ask "my eight year old" questions?  What am I missing? What can't I see? Where is my wholeness when drinking my morning coffee or suffering from inner and/or outer wounded-ness? Trusting only one side too often leaves me flying on less then one wing or maybe on one little feather.  Yet if I peek in, through and beyond the visible, there it is with it's palpable joy and a love force which cannot be measured but can transform one, instantly.* This magical garden where the heart beats and the rainbow points echoes through the canyons of my life.

Yes, there is a secret, a very simple secret... We are always larger than our stories. What is essential is, it's the sun's birthday,** the birthday of life, love and the invisible-visible...

photo source: us.fotolia.com
* paraphrase: Barbara de Angelis
** paraphrase: e.e. cummings

The Gift...

"This little flute of a reed (me) thou hast carried over hills and dales,

and hast breathed though it melodies eternally new.

At  the immortal touch of thy hand ... my heart loses it limits in

joy and gives birth to utterances ineffable."  Rabindranath Tagore

“My breath” I have always claimed as mine. I am healthy so I take it for granted. It moves in and out of my lungs unnoticed like a trusty old pump. Yet following my breath in meditation often leads me to a love of Presence.

Breath is a gift given to me at birth, taken from me at death. Even though, it is a life force of its own, independent of me, I think of it as merely air - lifeless and inanimate. Every living thing breathes.

A new thought startles me. What if my breath is not mine? What if breath is animate, a life force that the mystics call the Beloved. Many of the world religions connect spirit to breath. Tagore was a Hindu witnessing, “thou has breathed through {me}  melodies ever new....”  The writer of the old Christian hymn implored, “Breathe on me breath of God, Fill me with life anew....”  Both are a lover’s witness and a lover’s request.

So it is not me breathing, it is me receiving. Imagine, ordinary breathing is the breath of Presence which lives with me, acknowledges me, accompanies me and loves me unconditionally. Can it be, when I breathe in, the Spirit makes love, when I breathe out I make love?

As my fingers dance on these keys, I accept this Gift.  I draw this Breath in slowly, release it gently. I hear the bird songs which a minute ago, like my breathing, were ignored. And, I feel love.

Photo source: Lisa Teryl

spring green...

"Our task is to stamp this provisional, perishing earth into ourselves so deeply, so passionately, that its being (arises), invisibly, in us."  Rainer Maria Rilke

What a miracle spring-green is. When younger, I was always on my way to "somewhere"  that was more important than spring-green. This year my destination seems to be more Now -- walking now, feeling now, observing now. Everywhere, my eyes are taken with all the emerging every-things.

Looking out these windows the color green, except for the lake, fills the landscape.  As common as it is, how can I be enchanted? Yet, I rather am. Recently, I headed north from Arizona as did my friends the migratory birds. There is no green in my front or back yard in Tucson. The desert, having it's own unique beauty, is speckled with grey, purple-brown sand dotted with sun-worn cactus, sage and tumbleweed which is not the iridescent green we know here. When looking up at the night sky there are no young sprouts of grass on the moonscape, no early morning sun inching, feeling its way, caressing the newest leaf as it unfurls its sails. Nor does green exist on any other planet we humans know.

A decade ago, I also had a little help wakening my spring-green eyes. After an accident, I was stopped for many months. Everything moved slowly in me and by me. I wrote in my journal, "My new passenger status and cane offer me countless early-green encounters.  Looking out the car window a lacy pattern of new maples and poplar leaves dance their iridescences in a backdrop of blue. Grasses and new shoots pass me in slow motion. Looking to the top of the hill, in the distance,  cows are munching their fill of this rich spectacle. Lazily I wonder, "Will it give them a stomach ache?"

My journal continues, "Imagine, I have to wait another whole year before I see these exquisite sights, again. A thought stings me, death now rides a little closer on my left shoulder. There are no guarantees. I nearly missed this spring. And no matter how much belief I have in life continuing in some form, I also believe the texture, the solidity of my feet in this new spring-ness and the tender slide of the young poplar leaf velvet-ing my fingers may not be the same on the 'other side'."

Although this morning, a decade later, I try to describe what I see out my window here, I still can't. I go to the poets, they can't. So I won't. I can only take a deep breath, look and passionately desire another spring with it's iridescent green.  Like Rilke, maybe my task is stamping this earth into my being, so it's beauty and mystery can arise within. 

photo source:  Sunny Flowers, www.Fotolia.com

Duckie...

Spring is here in Nova Scotia and the first duck families are swimming by our lake-front.  A mother is often followed by a half dozen or so puff-balls. Initially, you can hardly tell they are ducks. Yet, every week they shape more into little ducklings. Sometimes, their daily path swimming by our lake-shore seems to be a "road-way" shared, morning and evening, by muskrats, geese and beaver.

In summer, we often have supper on the lake-side deck. My two grands like to sit on the "high" chairs so they can lean over the second-story railing. Tonight, my granddaughter, who is four, spots a duck swimming near the shore. She starts sporadically calling to it, "Duckie, Duckie, Duckie." Pausing, she eats a little more supper then starts calling again. Momentarily, the duck disappears behind the bushes on the shore line. With delight she repeats the call. A half hour passes. Her persistence is striking. 

.

After a few more bites of food and more calling, the duck lifts off and seems to head our way, but I know it will angle off over the trees. It doesn't. My granddaughter leans forward with anticipation as I grab her shirt-tail. I am suddenly looking at feathers on the inside of its wing-span.  

Now eye-level and seconds from the potential collision, I see fear in the duck's eyes. I instantly feel it myself. The bird's wings grab air frantically. I am looking at a "back-peddling" duck! A strange sight. I have never seen a duck try to fly backwards and for seconds, I think it does. My guess is that "Duckie" and I are having an identical experience, one of fear and confusion. After achieving a slight space, the bird makes an unnaturally sharp ninety-degree turn and heads over the trees. 

Regaining my wit and looking at my granddaughter, I see her experience is quite different. Her face is lit with delight and laughter. Of course, the duck comes when she calls. Magic happens. She, unlike the adults present, had every confidence this wild creature would fly a hundred feet in a straight diagonal to meet with her on the deck! She knows she can talk duck-language. She believed it would respond as strongly as I believed it would not.

My questions are obvious. How much of this world, how much magic do I miss? Most of it, I suspect. How important it is to feel out beyond my own "dead-end" expectations. And what doesn't happen because I don't?  Do I expect the wind to be more than the wind, that the prayer really will be answered in whatever mysterious ways prayers are answered? That old Christian scripture might have a point, "Unless, you become like little children..."  Will I ever enter the Queendom of the Duckie?

Drawing by Shawn Scott

visited by half a leaf...

Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitations. Look with your understanding (your heart-eyes). Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly. Richard Bach

Several days ago I was talking on the phone with a friend while looking over my deck onto the trees below. A half leaf in sunlight caught my attention. The other leaves seemed shadowed. My eyes wandered beyond the translucent green to the lake and then, wandered back. There it was, one little patch of green dancing in the sunny-breeze. As my friend talked, I watched its play of movement. Surprisingly, a small "hum" began in my chest, a feeling of warmth. And against my logic, a thought -- is this lighted-leaf loving me?

I want to soak it in. I must remember this location, this feeling that has just visited me. Witnessing imprints. Before hanging up, I share my leaf experience. She graciously realizes our conversation did not have my full attention.

An hour later, going to the store, I check the odd time to see if the leaf-feeling is surviving. It is. Coming out of the store, a sun spot (bright and sparkly as they are) catches my eye on the next car to mine. And, yes, it is caring for me! As I walk the car's length the sparkle seems to keep pace, shoulder to shoulder. I giggle.  Playing, somewhat like a child with her shadow, I back up a bit and there it is again, emitting that leaf-feeling.

The wise ones of this earth tell us we are one with everything. We are not separate, not a label any more than a leaf is. "Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitations." We merely have named it a "leaf" but is it really? Maybe, it is pulsating, caring life that is "written off" by calling it something. Science and new technology is showing us that nature responds to us, to our feelings, words and music. I am reminded again of my daughter's dream of seeing the sparkles on the water that said, as if amused, "You think I am only sparkles" and of course, I did. Even my ancient friend, when I would refer to the "breeze coming up" would look kindly and muse, "And you think it is only wind?" and, of course, I did.

Labels make things solid. And I need them solid for security, comfort and orientation. It's like a tool I can use. However, solid is merely energy that at a certain frequency solidifies the same as water solidifies into ice at a certain temperature. Then calling myself by name or the leaf, a "leaf" I forget who we each really are, a caring, humming, pulsating "I am-ness." Maybe earlier on the deck, unwittingly, I had slipped into another frequency, a less solid, more loving one, that did not say, "Oh, just one more leaf".

The experience is beginning to fade. Now when I look down off the deck into those countless leaves I can, at least, remember and feel that one of those leaves has loved me actively -- not in theory, but for real. Might that mean they all are loving me back? Is the leaf saying (in leaf-language), "I have been waiting for you to wake up from your illusion of separateness." Now maybe, I will be able to leap frog this human logic and again, feel loved by half a leaf. And are we not, one pulsing-heart -- vaster and as unending as the sky?

photo source: L. Teryl

a post script to "crying strong"...

"Every time one has a thought, there is a biological reaction in the brain -- you make a chemical."
                                                                                                                                         Joe Despenza

Since I consider myself relatively stress-free, the "pill and pharmacist" situation (in my last writing) twigged my curiosity. What function do tears play in stressful situations? There were periods in my past, in my childhood that contained long-term stress. Most children have some and adulthood can offer it's own variety.

Recent readings have not only offered me wisdom but have confirmed the way I work with life-woundings (mine and others) which come in all sorts of packages. The study of neuroscience is now telling us that every time we have a negative thought-stress-experience, there is a biological reaction in the brain that releases a chemical cocktail of toxins called neuropeptides.* These are responsible for our feelings.* If I think negative, I feel negative, if I think fear, I feel fear. Said another way, thoughts are things that leave us feeling bad or neutral when not identified.

Yet, stress can be creative. If chased by a tiger we need to get the adrenalin up, fast. However, for this post script, in repetitive, hurtful situations the stress button can get stuck on* robbing us of life-energy; then instead of relief, one is wounded further.  The situation with the pills, instantly, without me consciously knowing it, had me re-living in flesh and tears a repetitive stressful situation in my earlier years that had nothing to do with the present. A friend calls it a memory-magnet where the old experience overshadows and superimposes itself on the present in vivid, emotionally unwanted- technicolor.

Yet the "biochemist William Fry points out that stress-induced tears actually remove toxins from our body that build up courtesy of stress. They are like a natural therapy."** Also neuroscience has proven we can change our brains -- old neuron connections can be pruned and new networks of neurons can be forged.*  In other words, with intention and practice, we can change our thoughts, beliefs, feelings and live a larger story, be a larger person and give off a chemical cocktail that leaves us living in light and a joyous freedom. Thus, as "book-friend" Joe Despenze observes, "You have to think larger than the circumstance of your life (and) to change is to be greater than your environment." He added, "Ghandi never allowed the conditions in his environment to control his way of being."*

So I hang on the clothes-line (in my mind) only one thought I want to change. Now, there it is soaking up the sunshine, swaying-breathing in the fresh-salted tang blowing off the Atlantic. And hopefully, it is in the process of transforming my psychic leaving the "pill-pharmacist" experience stress-free next time.

*Resource: Dr. Joe Despenze's book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself.  He was also a researcher interviewed in the film, "What the Bleep Do We Know." He works in the fields of neuroscience and brain chemistry.

**Resource: Therese J. Borchard

crying strong...

*

"More than happiness love wants growth, a widening and deepening of awareness...whatever prevents (that may cause) pain... love does not shrink from pain."  Jack Kornfield

Yesterday, counting out important pills the doctor had instructed me was necessary for my health, I discovered a two week shortage. I called the pharmacist in N.S. feeling they could be mailed or sent by FedEx. Yet I was not sure. So in my happy, seemingly no problem life (in the moment, at least) I started to tell her my dilemma. Emotion blocked my voice. She asked, "Are you crying?" When I could speak I told her yes but I had no idea why, other than I felt helpless. Then feeling embarrassed, I apologized. What I did know was the tears had nothing to do with pills or the pharmacist. I had experienced unreasonable stress.

Growing up in my generation I learned tears were shameful and revealed one as weak and a mess. One thing, it was hard on the self-value to be a mess and they seemed only to get me in more trouble. Besides, anyone that cried very long, past a few minutes, would be "cracking up". So for the next numerous decades hardly a tear pass my eyelid.

Then I attended Elizabeth's Kubler-Ross's** workshop on "Death and Dying". The first few minutes she told us to look at the back wall -- Kleenex boxes were from floor to ceiling. She informed us those boxes will be gone when the week is over. My response was, "What is she talking about? And what have I got myself into?" One young woman who had four small children recently learned she only had a few months to live. I had four small children! However, the majority of the seventy participants were not dying but they had their pain -- childhood and adult wounds. These long buried hurts surfaced. Men and women cried. I thought, "Humpty Dumpty is falling off the wall and how is she going to put these people back together."

A surprising thing happened. Tears helped them identify their sources of pain, stress, fear and other emotions. By the end of the week, the Kleenex boxes were gone. The healing that happened was truly "other worldly." And no one was more shocked than myself. I had learned tears and healing are partners. They are flags, sign-post to places in us that are not free and need some loving tenderness.  Rather than "fall apart" I now knew the paradox. Tears heal. We aren't a mess (just feel like it). I won't "crack up" and if I want to cry for a week I will. One of my daughters when younger was crying for some, now forgotten reason. Her brothers had teased her. I watched. Instead of backing down, she advanced stating, "I'll cry if I want because I am crying strong."

An age old belief had been shattered. Tears are our friends. They point the way to inner growth-work, healing and freedom. Growing and learning do not stop but just begin when we leave grade school. Life offers everyone the opportunity and choice to expand our often cramped, wonderful selves, inviting one to clean out darken corners which hunger for light and healing.

Back to the present  -- the pills. What to do? I know from experience to follow the emotion. What did I feel? Nothing much at first except helplessness. I continued the pursuit. Hmm, definitely self-pity -- a much maligned virtue and healing treasure. Does not this hurting need our own compassion and understanding in order to heal? I called someone who was following her own trail of crumbs through a dark wood. We talked. She asked some questions. Describing the situation and hitting some sore spots, the old wound got identified and cleaned. I hung up with more understanding but did I have a greater freedom?

How many Tucson pharmacists will I have to ask the "pill-question" to before I can do it without stress? I ventured forth and wobbled on the first try. By the third, I had the freedom I sought. An ancient friend of mine once told me, "The opportunity to do our personal pain-work leads to the most honored human state, consciousness of Presence."

* Image source: Vyozovskaya - fotolia.com
** referred to in a former writing