Lughnasadh

This is part six in the series of celebrating The Wheel Of The Year.

All the "Cross Quarter Days" of which it is the third in the year, are celebrated about halfish way between the Soltices and Equinoxes. They are generally on the Eve's or day of of the first of the month- so Beltane is celebrated May 1, Samhain (now Halloween) is the night before All Soul's night. Lughnasadh (also spelled Lughnasa) is typically celebrated August 1 and is also called "Lammas."

Some references say this was one of the fire festivals, others say it wasn't. Traditionally, it's the first of three harvest festivals. First harvests of grains were celebrated with breads of all sorts. Harvest fairs dotted the country side, people danced in celebration of the bounty of the crops. This was a time of handfasting for either temporary considerations or commitments to longer marriages.

In my world interpreting and celebrating this festival, I see this time in the corresponding Wheel of Life as full on adulthood..not quite to "middle age" but no longer a young adult. It's an extension of the energies celebrated at Litha, celebrating our maturation in life. In my geographic location, the harvest has been in full swing for some time now. Most of the berries have come and gone. We've had peaches, pears, apricots, plums and nectarines for a long time, now. All sorts of veggies have been around for weeks and weeks. Some of our crops are done, not just beginning. So I saw this time as celebrating the life journey of the 30-40 year old...beginning to master things in their field, make a difference. Many are married with families, kids well on their way to growing up. There's a comfort level with the self that wasn't there in the 20's...knowing the self more and celebrating life's achievements, finding one's place and also letting go of youth.

My favorite way to celebrate this holiday was to continue to acknowledge and honor what we had created in the year so far- to really hoan in on the ways in which we were harvesting our intents made at Imbolc, both overt and subtles ways on all levels of our beings. As it's also a time of "stepping out," so to speak we usually did a ritual of acceptance of our bodies.

We would meet at a river, make a fire. At the end of the ceremony of ackowledging ourselves, we would do a meditation then take berries and eat some, while smearing them all over our naked bodies- giving thanks for this vessel that carries us..our ultimate expression. Initially we would smear the places we had "issue" with...blessing them and envisionsing these place in new ways. Eventually we changed it to smearing the places we didn't like AND the places we especially liked to make them one in the same. I really liked that. After drumming and dancing around the fire for awhile, creating all sorts of mayhem and happy whoopings, we would dive into the river and wash ourselves off. It was a BLAST!!! Highly recommended especially for CEO's, teachers, doctors, police officers and stay at home moms (well....yes...especially for everyone).

Tantrically, this is the time when we would have built our trust of each other in the group to being doing really deep work, delving into who we are and healing past woundings to make way for a more joyous "second half" stage juicy conscious living. In my group, this involved doing healing massage on each other.

Questions to ask the self at this time of year when we have opportunity to assess where we've come to and make new conscious choices about how we want to move forward:

Am I living my full juicy self? If not...what's holding me back? Self-limiting beliefs? Am I willing to revisit those beliefs and see them in a new more enlivening way that is more of my choosing than something outside me?

What have I accomplished in my life? Are they still my goals? What are my goals for life? What do I want to do before I die that I haven't done yet but still want to?

How has my immediate world supported me in creating the visions I've had? How can I begin to "give back" to Life, thanking it for its abundant cradling of my soul?

How do I celebrate myself? Do I do it enough? What are some little ways I can show myself I love me?

I encourage everyone to go find at least a berry to smear on their face. It really is quite liberating, fun and keeps all this serious stuff in perspective. Juicy Blackberries work best. Plus, they're real pretty.

Blessings!!

Images:

Dancing at Lughnasa from here

Blackberry by Scott Bauer

Woman at Burning Man 2003 by Brad Templeton

Powerful Living - The Victim

This is the first in a three part series on how I came to live powerfully...or at least what I consider powerfully for me. Karen, over at Live The Power is having her Blog Birthday and having fun celebrations for it. Go check it out along with the rest of her blog as she's always got some sweet, gentle wisdom to share.

Karen asked what living powerfully means to us. The more I pondered it, the more I was able to identify three specific areas where once I shifted my understandings of them, my life completely changed.

One was when I finally understood my Victim Voice.

Another was when I truly faced Death.

And the final one was when I learned to Unconditionally Love All Of Me.

These are all intimately intertwined for me. As this was starting to be a book, I decided to break it down into a series of posts so as to be more suitable for BlogLand.
__________________________

Victim is the most powerful Voice in the psyche and the most influential in our lives. Think about it- what else keeps us back from living all we are meant to be? It's power lies in the insidious ways it influences us...hiding it's covert power from us by pretending to be small with it's little voice of fear:

"I'm wounded... I can't do that. What if I fail? What if I'm harmed? What if someone out there will criticize me? What if I succeed...what will be expected of me then? What about my early life and how I was treated...how can I expect to be someone whole and healthy and successful because of it? What if it happens again? I've been hurt...take care of me...how can I shine with all my problems?"

Victim has all sorts of imaginary scenarios and excuses to hold us back, keep us small. And one really sneaky aspect of it? The minute you heed its siren voice and feel "sorry for it," it's won and will continue to keep you spiralling down forever. It's one of the Voices that I refuse to let wiggle even one inch because I know the trap of its seductive nature. I am lovingly brutal with it.

When I dive into the deeper energy of Victim, what I feel is lack of Trust in the Path. At its core, it's about being disconnected from our Source that trusts that everything in front of us is a piece of the whole, that all is well and that I am Loved.

When I learned the tricksy nature of Victim, I finally understood the Truth (for me), the power and the extent to which I created my world. (these days known as Law Of Attraction or LOA.) I'm kind of a cut and dry sort of mystic in this arena...and this arena only. I don't waffle here with this, don't find relativity here--except in that my whole worldview is just one more piece in a huge world of relativity. But within this subset of Relativity, this law is constant. It's the only thing that Is and from which all experience stems. I create my world. All of it. Period.

I never understand why it is that people somehow discount LOA by pointing to the inhumanity of the concept when applied to genocide, whether it's the Jewish Holocaust or the current one in Darfur. Or Cancer, or rape. What about the victims there, is the cry. How heartless it is to imply that they created this for themselves.

I don't get it. The available alternatives I see are either a random chaotic universe in which there is absolutely no meaning at all....or....there is some divine omnipotent something out there that has created certain people who are destined to be suffering victims. Are these people being punished for something? What? Are they not believing in the right god? Have they not made it to the energetic upper class getting to be one of "the chosen?" Are they, after being created by this god, now found to be arbitrarily unworthy only to be given no opportunity to amend whatever random thing they've "done?" To me, this is incredible arrogance...like somehow because I didn't arbitrarily end up over in Darfur, I was somehow "better" and "got" to be here and not in their pain? How is not creating my world supposed to be a heartfelt, loving, compassionate perspective? Huge disconnect for me.

No...to me, it's much more logical, humane, compassionate and poweful to see that Spirit sees no good or bad, no right or wrong. That all is just a Dance and that some souls choose to come back and experience that negative "contrast" (what Abraham calls it) for the expansion of the All. That from contrast comes new creation...the Dance. That this particular life is small in the scope of The All and its extension, this everlasting soul. And just as when something fails in a smaller way in everyday life, then opens to much bigger and better things, that same energy also applies here. That no, it isn't comfortable or fun or easy for anyone to understand why we would create pain and suffering for ourselves. And that what Victim labels pain, Source sees as Pure Experience, no judgement, no happy or sad: Just. Experience. Even Death is not a bad thing to an eternal soul, so why would any of the rest of it be?

What happens when we take responsibility for our lives but stop blaming? I've touched on this before here, but want to talk more about it, in more grounded mystical terms.

While I live in a world where I take responsibility for everything in my life, the trick is to not label it with judgement and therefore blame. I'll take that I created a rape to spiritually learn something rather than be a Victim in a world where I have been damned to a life of suffering by a God for some stupid arbitrary chance event. Victim thrives off blame. Someone/something out there is stopping me from being me. Someone has hurt me, therefore I am now not responsible and don't have to look at myself again, don't have to learn, grow, add to the All because I hurt. It ensures that we don't have to ever again operate from a position of unconditional love because we are justified in our position of being "wronged against." (a saying of the Hendricks).

Another criticism of LOA is that people are outraged at the concept because now the Victim starts blaming themselves for their stuff...and aren't we bad LOA people for making them be that way. Please, people..please see this is Victim speaking and hooking into other people's Victims.

When we create our world, there is no hierarchy, nothing to blame. Hierarchy is required by Victim...it says there's me down here, and you up there. Therefore, since I am weakly down here, I am not responsible...you are higher than me, you are in charge/the cause of whatever happens therefore you are to blame when something goes "wrong." An evolutionary transition in moving from Victimhood to taking responsibility is a temporary rest stop in this dynamic where instead of blaming someone outside us for our pain, we blame ourselves. Tricksy, yes? These Voices are really really good.

What's powerfully tricksy about this is that it takes so long to discern when we're doing this to ourselves. Hierarchy and the need to blame are so ingrained that we miss them. We think that because we no longer blame something outside ourselves we've now taken responsibility. But really all we've done is shifted blaming an outwardly imperfect, victimizing world to blaming our own victimizing imperfections. "Why did I create this? What's WRONG with me that I would DO this to myself? What part of me needs fixing to make myself not create this again?" It's so subtle, so insidious.

So what happens when we get outside our normal responses and look dispassionately for just one minute and imagine seeing things differently? What happens when we take the pain of having had something "happen" to us and reframe it by dispassionately saying "...Hm...that's interesting....what are the gifts here?" What happens when things are reframed into seeing it as the Dance, not personal, not that we've done wrong or been wronged against, not that we're damned but that we chose to gently and lovingly learn something here that will bring us back to Source?

Which feels better? To consider that I have such strong energy that something big had to happen to learn that I wanted to create the drive and commitment to something equally powerful? Or that I'm a victim and have no control over my life, on any level, much less an energetic creative one? I'm liking option one, thank you very much.

Not all may agree with me. No one has to. They can embrace Victim, holding it tightly in their justification as to why they cannot be all they want to be. While I might want them to be empowered, feel sad they don't want to, understand this isn't easy....in the end, it's their choice. I honor that in them.

My first step to living powerfully, then, was to see and take responsibility for everything in my life without judging it or blaming myself for it. There is no: I didn't create this mess and am now empowering myself to not be a victim in the future. It's: I did all this...hm...must be something wonderfully powerful here or I wouldn't have done this. Hm....let's see what it is.

Am I able to maintain this all the time? Hell, NO! I get seduced by Victim all the time. I call it "The Suck," where I feel like I'm on the edge of a black hole, then falling into it big time. I've made no bones about these past two years and my re-emergence. I felt lost, out of control, wronged against, all of it. It was intense.

But the pain I created around it wasn't nearly as intense of what it would have been before. If I had gone through that stuff twenty years ago, I might just be in a psychiatric ward (some will argue that I belong in one now, hehehehe.) Instead, I feel kinda like Persephone, actually. But rather than the more well known version where Persephone is kidnapped, raped, and destined to return in Hades because she innocently ate six pomogranate seeds (random or what?), I prefer to embrace the more Feminist based version.

In this telling of the story, she goes down to the UnderWorld unconsciously at first. But once she's gone there, and re-emerges back to her Mother, she continues to return out of Choice. Why the Choose to return to the Dark? When she met all the Souls who feel stuck in the darkness, she wanted to shed her light so returned to keep them company and remind them of who they are. This is the archetypal shift I choose to embrace- that of transforming My Victim into a Woman Of Power.

Art:

For this piece I've chosen pictures of Gaia as a symbol of power in the face of seeming victimhood and the power she holds in self healing and rebirthing. We may end up not OK, but she will endure, heal herself, and do so with grace and power.

Mother Earth by Susan Seddon-Boulet
Awakening of Gaia by Staldren
Gaia Protects Earth from the Folly of Man from here
Momearth from here
Gaia's Party Dress by Francene Hart

2nd Level Solo Tantra Exercises

Best to read this for background on what the three basic exercises are before doing this one. I will make sense then. Helpful, aren't I??

Once you have the Basic Breath, Pelvic Tilt and PC Pump down, now you get to have the real fun of combining them. At first it can be awkward, I know. It's a bitch to have to think about all this stuff and get the body moving in different ways when it's not used to doing so. But, as I tell my students, think of it as a sport or ballroom dancing. You learn certain steps slowly then combine them. At first you are gawky, but with practice it become second nature.

Even if you don't want to do all three at first (or ever), combining two of them can make feelings and sensations different for you and start to open the Kundalini Pathways. Please remember this is NOT serious business. Play. I would suggest starting with two of these until they become second nature. Then, if you want, add the third in the mix for some real adventures.

The easiest combination (and most powerful, in my opinion) is the Breath/PC Pump variation, so I would suggest starting here. Who knows?...maybe you end here. The important thing is to do what feels right in your body.

The Technique: As you breath deeply into your belly, you can slowly tighten your Kegels ( for new or forgetful readers, this is just a different name for the PC muscle group.) As you release your breath, do a controlled release of the PC. Play here, varying the tempo and rate. Some people find that their natural way, the way in which the body responds best, is to reverse the flow. So for this, you would tighten the PC musles as you exhale, instead of inhaling. Play with both to see what comes more naturally. I learned it the first way and used to only teach it that way, but feedback, primarily from men, was that the reverse felt more "in tune" with their natural rhythm and bodysense. It doesn't matter. What matters is the tuning in to the nuances of the energetic movements and shiftings in the body.

Adding the Pelvic Tilt gets a bit trickier. It helps if you have both the this exercise and the Breath/PC combo mastered individually to the point where you don't have to think about the mechanics of either one. Rather, you just have to focus on the combo of all three.

Again, as when learning the Pelvic Tilt alone, it's best to start on the floor so that you have the pressure of the floor against your back for sensory feedback. The way I learned it: As you breath in, you tighten the PC, and arch the pelvis away from the floor so you have the arch in your back. As you release the breath and PC, you round the back so the sacrum is against the floor.

It can also be done with the tilt in reverse. Again...many of the men I know feel this reverse movement is more natural to their bodies. So with this variation, you would be breathing in, tightening, then rounding your back. Or, if you did the reverse with the PC Pump, you would be breathing in, releasing the PC and rounding the back all at the same time. Confused? In the end, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you find what feels good and get a good, smooth rhythm going.

As with the individual basic exercises, it's best to do this for a few minutes every day until you have it down. It's great to combine with any other meditation you do. Bringing the breath deeply into the body and getting the energy stimulated is great for your endocrine system and furthur stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system. But, as with the individual basics, it, too is a basic. The next stage is learning to consciously bring the energy up. I'll talk about that next week.

Please go visit my Tantra Sister, Greenwoman for this week's Thursday's Tantra post. We're doing this informal webring thing so if you write on Tantra and want to be included, please let one of us know and we'll start linking to you, too. Blessings!!

Art:

Primal Essence by Elaine Toland

Powerfully Living Heroes

My Sweet Friend Karen over at Live the Power is having a superduper celebration for her Blog's first birthday. She's got games, incentives and lots of fun prizes she's giving away in her monthlong party/fest. If you have a blog and want to play along, then be sure to visit her and find out all the fun things she has planned. If you don't have a blog, then be sure to visit her blog for the neverending, sweet, positive, uplifting message she has to share. Like me, she is an Abraham fan and has won the Abundance thank you in my sidebar twice now. I can report with full authority that she is as kind in email as in her blog. Blogland is Blessed to have someone who cares so deeply about others. Plus, as a bona fide hedonist, I, too, celebrate my birthday for at least a month, so want to support others in that vital endeavor.

Karen has tagged me to write on Unlimited Power and what that means to me. She says "It can be about challenges, reaching goals, achieving dreams or just living the life you want. It can be about Life lessons, Empowering Resources or Daily Habits. It can be about the past, present, future."

I like this topic. Like Karen I am more of an intuitive sort of writer...the stuff has to flow out or I don't like what gets put down. I've been pondercating this long and hard and the more I do, the longer it gets. In fact, so far, it's become a three part posting about Self Love, Death and the Victim that isn't quite ready to flow out yet, but is still percolating. But I did want to start celebrating her and her blog.

Along with that three-ish part post, I've also decided to start chronicling some of my heroes. These may be, but are not necessarily, ones in the news. Mostly they will be ones I run across in my everyday life. They are people who touch me deeply and send me little messages from God every time I see them. I learn best by hearing others' stories. This is why I write mine so often. I can't often put what I've learned down unless it's in metaphorical terms or "re-feeling" and going within with what my experience has taught me. These heroes are people who remind me of what Powerful Living is. For me, examples of powerful living that touch me aren't usually in the headlines, it's in our small circles. One of the things I love about being a human here is that we get to be Teachers and Angels for each other all the time. These people are mine.

The Little Old Lady

I live in a fairly smallish town that has tons of local characters we all see, know and love. Most of them hang out downtown, but this woman doesn't go there. I don't think she can get there from the three miles that our neighborhood is from town center.

I see her every day in her hat, windbreaker and tennis shoes,walking the length of the busy road we live off of- maybe a little over a mile, back and forth. She must be at least 75 or so, with severe osteoporosis or maybe an accident resulting in a body that bends about 60 degress at the waist, kind of angling over to her left side. Her left leg drags and she moves very slowly...her body is so bent and misshapen that she has a walker.

Usually, I am in my car whizzing by, in the middle of Very Important Things. But I am never so busy that I don't see her. One day, I was walking, too...and we crossed paths. When I looked into her eyes, I saw strong, passionate sparkly Life flowing there. She hailed me with her sweet melodious voice wishing me the best for the day, her laughter ringing like a bell. She was joy. I am thankful for her presence and constant reminder of the gift of being alive, no matter what our exteriors might mean to other people. I so love that this woman gets herself up and walks, holding onto her body in all the ways she can and does so with joy. This, to me, is the most powerful living there is. I am humbled.

I would like to tag Greenwoman, Warrior , Deb, Annie, and Alexa to speak about how they live powerfully.

Butterfly from here

Thursday's Tantra: The Three Basics

Greenwoman returns soon!!! I can't wait until she shares what adventures she can with us upon her return. In the meantime, I am continuing her request to do some Thursday's Tantra posts. I've been enjoying them, so may continue the tradition. Perhaps we can get a whole slew of people writing about Tantra on Thursdays and have an unofficial webring or something.

There are three exercises that I always teach as the basis for any Tantric work. They are Deep Belly Breathing, the PC Pump and the Pelvic Tilt. It's best to learn each independently first so they are second nature. After that, you learn to combine the three.

The Breath

It's always best to start with the breath. You would be amazed at how difficult it can be to breathe correctly. Some people cannot feel their bodies. If you are one of these people don't give up, just keep trying and with practice you will get it. You want to really concentrate on taking a slow full breath in. Expand your belly, give room for your lungs to expand fully. Then when you want to exhale, just relax. Again, this may sound easy, but if you experience difficulty in isolating your belly and getting it to go out on the inhale lie down on the floor on your back. Put your hands on your stomach or a book or something so your awareness has somewhere to concentrate the sensation on.

When I coach, I always suggest starting any practice slowly so that you actually end up doing it. For most people an hour commitment every day just seems too difficult so they never begin. But if you start with three or four minutes a day, just lying in your bed before getting up, breathing deeply and consciously, you might actually keep doing it for more than two days. Then the more you do it, the more desire you have to remember to breathe this way. As time goes by you might want to more of it in the morning because it feels so good. You might even start to think of it in the middle of the day and check in on your body to see if you are breathing deeply or not.

People often wonder why I suggest learning this and stress it so much- it's because there is nothing on the planet that brings us into our bodies and brings us more present to the now than the breath. It's life and increases life force in our bodies, opening up orgasmic channels that help kundalini to flow.

The PC Pump

Women have been taught about this, the Kegel or PC (pubococcygeus) muscle, and how to exercise it for childbirth for years. We have been told that it reduces the incidence of incontinence that can develop with age. What isn't communicated, however is the importance of this exercise for men. Studies have shown that doing this exercise reduces prostate problems in men.For both sexes, this exercise enhances your sexual experience. For men it is the basic exercise for learning ejaculatory control and for beginning to learn to be multi orgasmic.

For women, it helps bring on orgasm and enhances your sexual experience, too. If you are a heterosexual woman, you can really enhance both of your and your partner's experience by learning to milk his vajra (Tantric word for penis. Another is lingham) with your muscles... it feels great to him and wonderful for you.

Some people have a hard time finding the muscle, but it can be easily learned. You just use the same muscles that you contract to stop the flow of urine. If you have any question as to what that feels like or which muscles you are supposed to be using, then practice the next time you pee. When you tighten the right muscle the flow of urine stops. You can start and stop numerous times to integrate the feeling. Then just replicate that feeling when not urinating, going back to checking when you are, just to make sure you have the right muscles. Many people think they are doing the right ones when they are really just contracting their lower stomach muscles. It's really a good thing to check.

Once you get the basic feeling down, you can play with the the PC Pump in a variety of ways: try tightening lots of times really fast. Then tighten it slowly or alternate fast and slow.Try doing it R...E.....A....L...L..Y slowly, hold, then slowly release.Tighten it to about a third of the way, then again tighter, then again. Then go down in increments.For women, when you reach the bottom, bulge that muscle out like you are pushing a baby out. This is one exercise to begin to ready your body for ejaculation, ladies.

For the women: you can stick you finger inside yoni as you do the exercises to understand the feelings and to give yourself a sort of visual or more integrated kinesthetic knowing of your body. This can be especially helpful when learning milking.

The Pelvic Tilt:

When first learning this one, I have found that the easiest way to feel the sensation is to lie down on your back with knees bent, feet flat on the ground. Take your fingers and feel the area right above cheeks of your butt. Most people have a bit of an indentation on either side of the top of a triangle bone called the sacrum. The bone then continues down into a point about five to six inches or so. This is where you focus.

Usually when lying down in this position, there is a natural curve to the back, with this triangle,or sacrum, slightly arched, leaving a space right above it between your back and the floor. To get the motion down, tighten your thighs a bit and flatten only that sacrum part of your lower butt/back to the floor. Don't round your whole back, just that part moves. Now press it under a bit more, arching the pubic bone up and tilting it at an angle. Then release and arch it the other way slightly exaggerating the space between the back and the floor. Again...this does not involve the whole back, just that sacrum area.

Try it a few times, then when you feel comfortable, do it rhythmically to a very slow beat, arching first one way then the other. Once feel you have the sensation of what it is supposed to feel like with the added pressure of the floor, you can then sit a zafu (or other pillow) on the floor or on a chair with no arms. Sit up straight on the edge of the chair, spread your legs and begin the motion in that position. Again..all movement is just in that lower part of the body- only movement below the waist should be going on. You can imagine that your pelvis is on a fulcrum moving back and forth while the rest of the body sits still.

Once you have this down, you can practice it in a variety of positions, always focusing on isolating that very lowest part of your body. Eventually you will feel so at ease with this, the Breath and the PC Pump exercises that you will be able to combine them for enhanced meditation practice, increasing orgasmic energy flow throughout the body, controlling sexual orgasmic release and grounding. I'll talk about that some other day in another post.

Images:

Diaphragmatic Breathing image from here

Pubococcygeous Muscle from here

Pelvic Tilt from here

Karma

I received some interesting news in my inbox this morning. Two people who were instrumental in playing a part in my spirialing down and misery last year are under investigation and are in DEEP doodoo. These two people lied in a myriad of ways. Much of it was senseless, stupid, baffling stuff, some business stuff...all of it boggles my mind. They lied to us, to clients about business and spread lies about my partner in his business world. One was a person he had mentored and trusted. This mentored guy and I spent time together on a business trip and I thought we had a nice connection. It now feels like it was fake, but I don't know. Even liars have a heart somewhere in there. I know they do.

He knew what he was doing. He emailed me and five others (not my partner) who were involved on the periphery and trusted him, a powerpoint presentation on Karma, Love and the Dalai Lama. One of the people cc'd was his girlfriend. He sent these email on the same day the two "partners in crime" made a major move in smarminess. He then disappeared with the "powerful" lying woman/partner. I'm not too sure what message he intended when he sent that to all of us, but I thought it real interesting when we got documents, checked the date of his email and saw they were the same.

So today I'm thinking about Karma.

Having been raised a Roman Catholic with ideas of heaven, hell and purgatory, it was an easy segue for me to find meaning in reincarnation and karma. The numerous lives before enlightenment were correlated in my mind with the Catholic purgatory. Instead of Catholics' record of sins, Karma was explained to me as a record of all acts, thoughts, words, intentions that were recorded in a book somewhere called The Akashic Records. Both our positive energies and our negatives were tallied at the end of a life, then that glump of a soul was "rated" so to speak, and the soul's next life would reflect their level of dues payment required. So if you were born disabled this life, you got that way as atonement for a past life of "bad" behavior. Maybe karma wouldn't wait until the next life..maybe you pay your dues in this one. But all could be assured that if you did something "wrong" you would eventually have "to pay." And if you did good, you would be rewarded with happies.

After a short while, this notion of reward and punishment, of a judging "something out there" became increasingly dissonant inside me. It conflicts with my experience of an unconditionally loving GodSource.

As my spirituality shifted from one based on dualities of good/bad, damnation/salvation, chosen/damned to the Oneness of unconditional everlasting love, my understandings of Karma shifted, too.

I really don't think there's anything "out there" judgmentally tallying what we do. Whatever we do, it just loves us. It knows that if we commit a crime against another, we commit it against ourselves, and we do so in immense pain. In its neverending compassion and Oneness, it does not see good/bad. It just sees The Dance of its own expansion, existence, creation upon recreation and the eternal nature of its own love for us and itself. It knows there is no death, so doesn't see death as a bad thing. I don't buy into the idea that this world is somehow a punishment on a wheel of ickiness and that if I get enough brownie points I don't have to come back. I like it here. I see "here" as a precious gift. And I know my Spirit sees it the same way because...um...we decided to come here.

So then, what is Karma to me? Karma is merely Law Of Attraction. We get back the energetic beliefs (conscious and un) we put out into the world. I believe our Souls incarnate here with intentions. Part of those intentions may have been started in another life and didn't have completion then. Our souls might have as one intention to come back this round use the creative opportunity to learn more about it. It might decide to incarnate in a body that is disabled to learn how to "be" or be a vehicle for other souls who want to learn selfless service and unconditional love. It might come back as a criminal to remind the rest of us of how we don't want to live and to live lives in alignment with our Source. Maybe it comes back as a dog trainer to serve that loving energy and their masters. We can't always understand the why's by oustside observation of that which we can't understand due to our little disconnected eyes and minds. If anything, I think karma is "accrued" when we don't forgive ourselves. We set up a cycle of not loving ourselves so separating from our Higher Selves, which leads us to an act which leads us to guilt, which leads to less self love and on and on.

So the people who I heard about today? Are they paying for their crimes? Is their Karma "getting them?"

I will admit, I've had anger..ok...rage about them and how they treated my partner (what they did to me was big to me at the time, but negligible in comparison). I will admit that I wanted them to get caught because I hated knowing that this kind of behavior continued unfettered in this world. The WarriorWoman in me wanted to find a way to make them stop so they wouldn't do what they did to us to anyone else. But there wasn't a way. I, at least, wanted to tell them what I thought of them, but couldn't do that, either. Business.

Swearing and crying went on for a few days (it was big). But then, I mostly let it go and got to the feelings underneath, which were cycles of being sad that this kind of thing existed. It required me rethinking my world and trusting humanity. Quite frankly, it required huge growth to get out of my small mind to see a bigger picture. I thought this stuff only happened in movies and here I was living it.

So...shift, turn, breathe, feel, shift, open, in and out of cycles, try to understand why I would have created this, what did I want to learn here. When I opened the email this morning, I had a morbid curiosity. Here they were...finally being called on their stuff in a very big way and with nowhere to hide. I gave a huge thanks, again, that we had been "deceited against" at the time we were and had nothing more to do with them, instead of continuing to trust people who have the capacity to live that sort of a life. I feel blessed, protected, taken care of. I learned at even deeper levels to trust the flow of my life, to let go of that which is not mine...because I can't see downline potentialities and my Inner Being can. I learned, again, that even when things look bad, they're really positive in the long run. I've learned lots of what all this was for me and trust humanity. That's how I want to live.

I think of that young man I spent time with and how fun he was. I remember watching his inability to sleep even when he was exhausted, smoking constantly, always jittering and moving around, biting his nails to the quick. When I think of all the things he told us and what we discovered once we knew he wasn't to be trusted, I was shocked. Pretty much all of his life was a lie. How tragic. I hope he heals.

Just a part of The Dance.

Art:

Common Karma from here
Image by the Sea from here
Man with open arms from here

Carnivals!!

I've got some posts in a couple of Carnivals this week and wanted to send you their way for some wonderful writing by other authors.

Momentous Feelings was chosen by K-L Masina to be included in her Be Conscious Now's Carnival of Truth #4.

My favorite entry in this Carnival and below was from a new to me blog called Diary of a Bad Buddhist. Love this writing and the way she is so honest and not all flowery. The article submitted this time was Bad Buddhist vs. The Fourth Precept . Great fun.
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And the post called "Thursday's Tantra: Letting Go" was featured at the Meditation, Yoga and Spiritual Growth Carnival hosted at Treehouse Jukebox:Adventures In Earth.

I enjoyed this article at Zen Chill Power called "The Power of Letting Go." I'm guessing it was a theme this week for me.

The other one I really loved, mentioned above is Bad Buddhist Signs On posted at Diary of a Bad Buddhist. The Subtitle on the blog? "I'm going to follow the Eightfold Path if it fucking kills me." These are the reasons I love carnivals. I LOVE this blog. The whole thing...I want her to write more and have put in my official request.

Edges Meme

Garnet David of Glittering Muse has tagged me for a Meme that was started by Adam of "Monk At Work" called "What's Your Learning Edge?" Adam asks us to

"Write a post about your “learning edge” and what you’re into these days. Feel free to mention any books you’re reading, classes you’re taking, people you’re learning from or collaborating with, etc. Tell us about the gems you’re picking up, the fun you’re having, etc., especially if they’re shifting the way you look at what you do."

My Edge? The place that occupies most of my mind these days? It's learning to trust my Voice above all else. It's showing up in two basic arenas:

1) to trust the Path I've chosen (trust my Inner Voice) even when I have no outward manifestation to support it

2) to trust my intuitive hits, then bring them up and out of my mouth. (Trust my Voice in the outer world.)

Why are these such edges for me?

For years I was tortured and unhappy. I lived a life of "shoulds" offered from every other voice but mine. Although I could list chapter after chapter of the story, the story doesn't matter. What matters is that I woke up about fifteen years ago and slowly started to live My Life.

The friend and Teacher I count on is Abraham. The words I hear on tapes soothe me when I forget that all is well and to trust. I do the practices I learned from other teachers in the past- The Hendricks, the practices I learned from Margo Anand, The Voice Dialogue work I've done by Hal and Sidra Stone.

But with this edge, there really is very little that one can learn outside oneself. It's more about paying attention and taking the risks as a daily practice. So I speak what I feel, instead of holding stuff in because I am hesitant to offer information that is unasked for. In my coaching, I am trusting myself more and more to know exactly what will work for a particular situation. After the session, I'm quite surprised and happy how things progress for people when I am with the moment instead of having things planned. It's about watching my mood, staying very intently with my breath- bringing it all the way down to my first chakra and feeling/listening with my whole body as to what my intuition tells me is my next step. Then I take it, no matter how "odd" it may seem in the moment.

And now I get to tag two others. I am going to tag Jennifer and Karen. I am so curious to see what their edges are!!

Thursday's Tantra: Letting Go

I am sending zappies of Love to my friend Greenwoman, who usually does this Thursday's Tantra series on her blog. She is away on a Spirit Journey Ceremony adventure and asked me to fill in for her for a few weeks. Blessings to you Greenwoman!!! May your journeys be fruitful for you in all the ways you want them to be!!

I thought I would share a ritual that helps release the connections of past partners whose energy you no longer want to keep in your body. I first did it in a women's group. We were told that esoteric thought is that all women keep a cord or energetic connection to every man they have slept with and that until we cut the cords, our energy is drained. And while I don't live in a world where I think anyone can do anything to me that I don't allow, I do hold to things unconsciously and this exercise has helped me feel better a number of times.

I don't know if it also applies to men, but I got the impression that it does not. I can't help but think it a useful exercise for anyone to do, especially if you are having a hard time letting someone from your past go.

For this meditiation/visualization I think it's important to not think about if it works or how it works, but that you are aiming to feel better. You don't have to figure out if it's "real." Many people don't "see" when they do visualizations, they just feel or sense. It's all OK, there is no right way to do this.

If you are not familiar with the Chakra system (and there is lot to be familiar with but all that stuff is not important for the exercise) then here is a nano-primer-

The Chakras are energy vortexes in the body that send and receive energy. There are many different systems which say we have anywhere from four to twenty or more of them, but the system we are most familiar with is that there are seven main ones. There are located as follows:

1) base/root- location perineum, color red

2) above the pubic bone- orange

3) belly- yellow

4) heart- green

5) throat- blue

6) between the eyes- indigo

7) top of the head- violet or clear

The exercise:

Find a time when you can take upwards of an hour. Not that it is necessarily needed, but if you want to milk it, it is nice to have that leeway, especially if you are doing this for the first time or if you are really hurting. Turn off phone, TV, and tell everyone you want privacy. Light a candle, setting the intent to find peace, love and release.

Breathe deeply until you feel ready to begin. Then put all your consciousness at your perineum. Feel. Without forcing anything, see if some one comes to mind. Maybe there isn't, maybe there are tons of them, whatever. See or imagine any cords that might exist, any connections you might feel that connect you to this person. They may be strings, they may be ropes. Let them be what they are, don't edit.

You see the relationship. You acknowledge both of your parts in the Dance. You feel the feelings it brings up and you don't judge the feelings (even if you end up judging, don't judge the judge). Just be.

If you find someone there that you love and want to keep connections to, then just feel the happies. If you cannot remember names or faces but know that there is someone there or a number of people there, that is OK, too. Just imagine anything that feels OK with you to symbolize their presence. It all works.

As you are just being there....if you feel someone there that you no longer want there, then..you take your hands and hold them over the top of your head. Lace your fingers together so that your hands and arms create a "blade" so to speak, from shoulder to shoulder. Then, keeping your finders interlaced, the blade intact, take your arms and CHOP that cord. I usually make a noise of some sort to accompany it, but do what feels right. I accompany this with seeing my part of the cord coming back to me, and theirs going back to them. I also say something to the effect of "I release you, ________ with love, and I take my energy back to me with love" or whatever hits me in the moment.

If the relationship was particularly icky-sticky and you still have anger, and you are not at the place yet to let go of anger, then maybe you want to tell the person (in your mind's eye) that you are on the road to letting go of your anger as you don't want the energetic connection any more. You are cutting them now and will continue to cut the cord to them. You just want to let them go.

Then work your way up through the rest of the chakras, doing the same thing. Different people might be in different places, the same person might show up in more than one chakra.

Know that these cords may come back with time if it was a particularly intense relationship. I had many sessions to release the HUGE (sucker was at least six inches across) rubbery, veiny umbilical cord that ran from my solar plexus to my ex. It required sawing many times to finally release that one. I came back to him many a session over quite the time period. Sheesh.

It's always nice to journal after, as it is not easy to remember stuff when you come out of a meditative space. It's often like a dream which fades with time.

Then, when done, sit with yourself and feel your wholeness, all of you back to you. Put out the candle. And, if you can find more time, figure out a way to continue to renew your energy in any way you do that for yourself, be it a bath, taking a walk outside, dancing.

Art:

Polyamory from here

Chakras from here
Awakening the Chakras from here

This post was included in the Meditation, Yoga and Spiritual Growth Carnival hosted at Treehouse Jukebox: Adventures In Earth.

My Friend, Abraham

I have a confession to make. I've only finished one book on self help or spirituality in about the last six years or so. I've started a few others after listening to friends rave, but I generally get bored after a few pages and stop. It all seems to be the same message to me, just said differently. And while I know it hits everyone in different ways at different times and am happy it all exists, I just got to a point where I couldn't read them any more.

But....I do have one friend that I am definitely hooked into and depend on as a guide: Abraham.

I've been on their weekly tape program on and off for many years. I have to admit that just like I've mentioned above with books, there is nothing there that's new for me. I see Abraham as my friend. So just like any other friend, I glean things that I'm missing...seeing pieces of the picture in different ways than I saw them before. But truth is, I get just as much enlightenment from conversations with my best friend on our morning walks. Like Abraham, she sees the world pretty much in the same ways that I do, but with just enough difference to call me on my stuff, or provideinsight on a situation that I might have missed. I love the conversations she and I have and I love conversation with Abraham.

I went to an Abraham workshop in May of 2000. When I went back to listen to the recording of it to have it fresh in my mind, I was shocked at how much time has passed. I thought it was just a few years ago, but that's the date on it. Wow. Time flies. While there, I got to ask a question. My question was about trying to understand what I saw as a glitch in what Abraham was saying and the things I perceived.

At that time, Abraham was stressing the importance of turning away from the negative and focusing on something positive whenever negative emotion came up. The message was: Go to a movie, pet a cat, do anything to get the mind off it. There was talk of how an issue is like a stick and with the two ends being the spectrum of emotional possibility- the one that feels good and the one that doesn't. And if we didn't feel good, to just be certain to pick up the right end of the stick to get in the alignment that would result in allowing so creation would occur. From all I heard on the older tapes, the message was to just NOT THINK about what doesn't feel happy.

I understood this...saw the logic of it in terms of LOA, but there was a subtle glitch for me. If I am to NOT think about what's really going on, forcing myself to focus on the positive, isn't that a form of "not allowing?" Plus, everything I had learned, and had reference to, spoke to how when I'm in the place I'm in...allowing all of me no matter what it is...then things have the opportunity to shift and transmute of their own accord, instead of being buried (which is what I was interpreting the message to be).

So I came to the hot seat with my question about the gift of being where I am, but couldn't really communicate it in the ways I wanted to. So I brought up all sorts of examples of what I was talking about:

- a Morman woman in labor who is demure in life, but dialates quickly in labor when she animals out.

- when my back hurt, I stayed with it, trying to be positive, but the pain persisted. When I screamed for a long time, feeling rage, it disappeared

- in talking to people who are into BDSM, submissives report the same ecstatic state that I have experienced in Tantra with breathwork. So embracing pain can lead to ecstasy.

-that when people do things that aren't always considered to be politically correct, that they heal faster and are happier than those who are trying to be positive pleasers

...things like that. Abraham's reply was the one that they stressed at the time: that whenever the negative is focused on, it increases through Law Of Attraction so to only focus on the positive. I was my persistent self and just kept asking more, thinking I hadn't communicated effectively enough. It even got to the point where Abraham asked me what it was that I had come there to tell them. (hehehehehhehe)

Fast forward a few years. I am listening to a tape and hear, for the first time, Abraham talk about being with whatever feeling is present in the moment. That if you feel anger, feel it. If you feel revenge, feel it because when you are with wherever you are, you allow the energy to shift. Now this, the question I had asked years ago, is the main message that Abraham stresses.

So what did I learn here? I learned that Teachers love students that question them. I appreciate Abraham and am so thankful I found them..it was quite magical, actually, how they came into my life. I give huge thanks to those tapes for reminding me of what I know when I am in fear and forget. I keep wondering if part of the reason I had such a difficult time last year was that I was on an energetic downslide partly a result of not having listened to the tapes very much the previous year. When it gets scary for me, I need help....from whatever friend is there for me.

I don't think that Abraham or any other real Teacher wants sheep. They like being challenged. We all have the capacity to figure all this stuff out, to tap into the knowledge that comes through Esther. Abraham will be the first to say it, and also affirms that they want those on the leading edge to ask questions as this is where new creative thought occurs.

Another great lesson: I'm continually learning, on deeper and deeper levels, to trust myself and my Voice. It's taken many years, but I'm getting there more and more. Yes, I slip back, yes I fall of the Path when I fear. But even just these past few months, I'm seeing, again, that there have been way too many times when I've suggested something, been met with resistence or denial, started to question myself and then get the affirmation that I am right on track for me.

So the gem that my friend opened my eyes to this morning?

That if you have tons of people "worried" about something you're doing, it's a great sign. Why? Because it means that in this moment, when they are warning you about something, their negative energy is an indication that their inner beings are not in alignment with the thought they are having about you...so you know you're in the right place. I loved that as it is SO applicable to my life these past two years. These ah-ha's are the reason I keep in contact with my friend.

Art:
Friendship by Pablo Picasso from here
Friendship from here
Friendship Circle by Laila Campbell from here

This article was featured in the Law Of Attraction Carnival hosted at Evolving Times
Thanks, Edward!!!

Mayan Calendar and 2012

A few days ago, my good friend, Adrienne told me she'd read an article by Charles Berner. He developed a Spiritual Process she's into around Dyad Meditations. This article, or series of articles, was about "The End Times." We talked about the Mayan Calendar, other psychics, Abraham, who have all talked about these times as happening soon, the Bible, and all that stuff...and isn't it interesting that they all say lots of the same stuff....and isn't it interesting that it all seems to point to pretty soonly here.

We also talked about how when the topic of aliens, psychics, The End Times, Atlantis, etc., come up we both find them interesting in a detached sort of way, remain open, think they probably have Truth to them but don't focus on them as they aren't our in our daily consciousness or experience (except that she has had a few alien experiences, but doesn't get caught up in them).

So we had our conversation, that was that, it crossed my mind fleetingly during the day, I let it go, and then I went merrily upon my way.

And then the next night I was at the gym on the new-to-me spiffy treadmill with its own TV (and how cool is that???..can we tell I'm easily impressed?). I was flipping through the channels and came upon a History Channel show that showed a Mayan scene. Before I even tuned into what they were talking about, I knew. It was about The End Times. When something random like that comes up in my life twice in a little over 24 hours, I pay attention.

So I listened, remembered some stuff and learned other things.

Hmmmmm.....

I've known about the Mayan calendar thing for years. I even got that Dreamspell game thingie that Jose Arguelles made years ago, when it first came out. But I am a simple person and didn't understand all its intensity so gave it away. I knew that the Mayan calendar (as well as the Hopi Calendar) both call for the end of time to be 2012.

As I haven't been paying attention to any of this for years, what I had forgotten, and in some cases didn't know, was that the predictions said a whole slew of things that have already come true. And that they predicted that the End would come on the Winter Solstice at 11:11GMT when for the first time in 26,000+ years the Sun would line up with the Earth in the middle with the line extending out to a "rift in the Universe."

What I also didn't know was that Scientists found a black hole in the center of the Milky Way that and that, in fact, on the Winter Solstice in 2012, this line up will occur.

Hmmmmm.....

Then it got even more interesting. I mean...I was already curious with the Mayan Calendar's specificity, but then the show started in on Terrence Mckenna and the I Ching and this thing he discovered called "The Timewave." Believers, the curious, sceptics, neutrals, scientists are welcome to google Terrence McKenna and I Ching and find all the hits I did. Pretty interesting stuff. Let me see if I understand it enough to give a short coherent explanation of it.

The easy part (because I used to play with it many moons ago): The I Ching is a divination tool developed by the Chinese long long ago. You throw three coins. If they are predominately heads you write a solid line. If tails you write two lines. You throw the coins six times, writing down the single or broken lines on of top each other, starting at the bottom. When you're done you have a hexagram. There are 64 possibilities. They look like this:

You then find the text for the specific hexagram in the I Ching book and it gives you considerations for your question.

Mckenna did a computer program where he put these hexagrams through 64 cycles of the 64 possibilities, assigning them a date starting when the I Ching was created. He came up with energetic cycles of the hexagrams on a timeline that predicted world events. They predicted wars, and other stuff. Guess when the 64th cycle ends? Yup....on December 21, 2012 at 11:10.

Hmmmm......

I'm not too sure what to make of all this. Years ago, when I was in my 20's, I heard a theory that the Earth had tipped on its axis long long ago. When I heard it, my immediate mind flash was that it would happen again in my time. That feeling has come back from time to time. But I'm no psychic so I take that for what it's worth (nada). All during the History Channel show, they continually talked about the Earth tipping on its axis because of the electromagnetic influence with the alignment of the Sun, Earth and Black Hole. I've also felt for a long time that Christians want their Judgement day so much that they would energetically create Revelations to prove the Bible "right." Truth is, I think it could happen. And maybe not.* For some reason I don't understand, the imp in me gets kind of excited at the thought of a new world, no matter what the cost. I keep getting the image of Earth shaking off the human-fleas.

But then I get terrified as my daughter, Morgan, who doesn't have a thyroid and needs technology to live.

I haven't stopped thinking about all this. In fact, it seems to be coming in lots. Usually I focus on appreciating now, but there are times when I get scared about Morgan. Funny what we focus on, given all the other ways she could die just by walking out the door today, much less participating in the predicted evolution of the End Times.

But mostly I notice the gift of having the awareness in my consciousness. Kind of like I wrote before about how death makes me so aware of and thankful for being present to Life. I have no idea if it will happen or not. It's not like I am becoming an armageddon person, ready to go stand on a corner with a sign that says "The end is near." I'm just observing my world with great interest.

I've amped up noticing its beauty and its wonder. I've noticed a subtle internal shifting. I was giving thanks for lots in my life before, but am contiually doing so now. Everything is a gift, every tweak is relative to what may come. Things I was thinking important...just...aren't.

I'm not worried about me dying. I am worried about having to live without my children and grandchildren--so I'll probably make them come be with me on December 19, 2012 just in case. I figure if we all die we all die and won't care. I've decided that I will continue to watch how things go and that if the end doesn't come, certainly nothing has been wasted by appreciating my world more and being more present in my gratitude for my loved ones and all that surrounds me. One thing's for sure: I'll be hoarding thyroid medicine. I've learned the wisdom in "trust in God and tether your camel" enough to live it.

*my personal vote is for "not" because, truthfully, it sounds like lots of un-fun work. Plus what will we do without Botox?

Images:

Mayan Calendar by Eve Andersson from here

I Ching hexagrams from here

Momentous Feelings

My emotions always flow, one into the other, never constant, always shifting, changing. One minute I can be fine, the next, some sadness may come in. I believe they are one of my greatest gifts. They tell me what I want, what I don't want, who I think I am. They are Life. They've brought me tons of pleasure, and pain. They are my Teachers, I want to feel them, I want to embrace them all.

Today I am wondering, again, what they are, why they are here, where they come from. Yes, I've already learned tons from Teachers on what they are. I know what the Masters say about them. I know Buddha's opinions on them. I know that many feel the best way to deal with them is to transcend them and attain BlissBunnyEnlightenment.

But since I'm ornery and don't really buy into what anyone else says, I've not bought into that one, either. And I guess, if truth be told, I don't even want to explore how to deal with them today (I would much rather be than do). Today I'm just curious, ever watching myself, as to what exactly they are, what rings true for me.

Sometimes they are influenced by my hormones. I know that when I feel, a whole set of chemical responses are elicited in my body that cause a physical response to what I'm feeling. Sometimes, depending on my cycle, I am touchier than others because of it.

Sometimes during my BleedingTimes I have so much joy that I'm close to tears for days because of Life's poignant beauty. I'm constantly in wonder of the BodyMind and how the pieces and parts influence and play with one another. I know all about molecules, syapses, receptor sites, etc., and find that whole thing fascinating as I love science. But science doesn't go far enough, is in too much of its infancy to have those considerations be the endplace for me. Whenever anyone wants to reduce emotions or feelings or sensations to a molecular event, I will always ask what the Prime Mover is. No one can answer that because (thankfully) that's still a mystery to us.

Sometimes, all at once, I'll run into tons of people who are dealing with many of the same core issues or feelings I'm having. When it finally gets surreal enough for me to be asking "what the heck is going on here??? I find out that some planet is void of something or some other star configuration is going on and I breathe a sigh of relief. So I feel that I'm connected to energies outside me in ways I don't always understand but just accept because my Mystic Logic Scientist sees the connection. It's seen it way too many times for way too many years to think differently.

I was talking with a friend the other day about how we think emotions evolve. First, we have things conscious and un, that we believe. When something happens, we have a response to those beliefs. This is why sometimes when I'm feeling really good, nothing effects me. But if I'm not, caught in thoughts that don't serve me, I have a different emotional response to the same thing.

With regards to having feelings "about someone" (positive or negative) I believe it's because they have qualities which we have identified as desirable or worth our feelings (whether happy or un). This set of thoughts, both conscious and un, result in an emotional response in us. These feelings can change with more information as the situation becomes more "itself" than our projection. We then have an emotional response to our emotion. Things can build both postively and not so inside us. I've also learned I can retrain myself over time in relationship to shift my emotions depending on what I focus on.

And then there are the situations that excite me and that I live for that confound and delight me and make me appreciate and watch and...perhaps not place so much weight on my particular emotion in the moment. I've seen it dozens of times in myself, those in my personal life and those I've coached. Where do feelings go?

Emotions are so ephemeral. Things that were so intensely important, both painful and positive to me in the past, make no difference to me today. I look back at some times when I thought I would die over something and I can't help but wonder now why I was so involved in them. Or why they were so important, or how I was so attracted to someone and now they don't even cross my mind. Or if they do it's with detachment. Or how I can feel very close to someone and then not...and then do again...and then don't want to even have contact with them. Or one day I miss someone and the next not only don't I miss them, I want to avoid them. I watch my daughter who has been so distant for so many months, silent and unreachable and she writes me a letter of her "beefs" with me, I don't get triggered at all (as I saw it had nothing to do with me) and now she is a sweet, cuddly person who initiates conversations with me and is affectionate.

I've obverved and experienced so much of this that I wonder: how is it that I'm supposed to take any feelings as "real?" They hide one another, or lead to one another or are gateways to deeper feelings that only come into expression when the masking one is fully felt and spontaneously released. There are way too many times that I've felt something fully, finally, and it instantaneously shifts and explodes into something else, or gives me a message about something deeper to just stop at one and think that's Truth. I'm thinking perhaps this is the nature of creation flowing through us...never stagnant, always changing, one building to some new creation.

I find God in paradox. The only place I feel emotions today is that they are my creative messengers of the moment. I can only find Truth in the paradox that they are the most intensely important things in my life in the moment AND that they mean absolutely nothing at all.

Art:

Flowing-Passion by Javier Lopez Barbosa

Sadness by Yvonne Munnik

Joy by Liz Cohn

Passion by Paul Curtis from here

Wrath by Santiago Mapache

Mobius by Cliff Teja from here

This article has been included in Be Conscious Now's Carnival of Truth #4.

Tagged For Making A Difference

The Goodly, Gracious and Gorgemous Jennifer with a bunch of wonderful blogs has tagged me. I love all her blogs...what they have to say, their loving energy... and plus...it's way fun to play with your cursor on her one blog Goodness Graciousness and get mezmerized. Go check them out!!!

She tagged me with the honor of receiving a "Bloggers for Positive Global Change," award. The meme started at Climate for our Future, with its mission to "change the world we live in for the better." I must say I was tickled as I am a newbie of sorts here and love finding new friends. Yum. Thank you SO very much, Jennifer!

The rules:
Rules of the Award
1. When you get tagged, write a post with links to up to 5 blogs that you think are trying to change the world in a positive way.
2. In your post, make sure you link back to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Leave a comment or message for the bloggers you’re tagging, so they know they’re now part of the meme.
4. Optional: Proudly display the “Bloggers For Positive Global Change” award badge with a link to the post that you write up.

And now I get to pass this award on to five others. My choices are eclectic.


1) Karen Lynch at Live the Power is a new and good blogfriend. I love her dedication to Spirit, sharing her love of Abraham and for being so supportive of others in Blogland. I appreciate her balanced and aware presentation of the Abraham material. She is one of those people in life that I run across from time to time that I just sit in awe of because I feel she is just good. A good person. Nice. Kind. Caring. Good.

2) A brand new read for me is Garnet David at Glittering Muse. I'm liking the variety and scope of his experiences and sharings. I feel he has a voice that serves the world in a unique, gentle, warrior way.

3) Adrienne at Tell Me What Another Is, talks about her journey of Spiritual Polyamory, Enlightenment Intensives, and being gently present to life. Her blog speaks to an online community and I also know she is serving the community she lives in by opening eyes and hearts to loving more.

4) Lyman at Creating A Better Life has great reminders and exercises, links on personal development, anything to enhance life experience to share with people. I mean, heck...look at the name of the blog!!!

5) Olivia Delamare of Diary of an English Courtesan is one of my five top blog reads...probaly top two. Her heart is huge. Her service to Spirit is unique and one I am very familiar with as we have both approached this life in a similar manner with consiousness. Livvy is a fun and funny woman and quite delightfully saucy. Many of her posts have me rolling in laughter. You'll find posts on art, antiques, Courtesanship, sex and disability with a very heartfelt perspective. Some of my favorites of her posts are the toys and gadget ones. And if you read between the lines, you will find a deeply spiritual, highly intelligent woman with an ability to open her Self to the men she serves in a most Sacred way. Vital healing work for the planet. She is an Angel and I adore her.

Much love to all of you and thank you for your contribution to Spirit Work in all the unique ways you do!!!