I never realized that I have a right to my reality–just the way I decide to choose it.  I didn’t know I had a choice.  But by communicating to others (not mind-reading and psychic control), I can manifest a life pleases me.

But that means that I need to tell people I love that I must be sitting quiet.  I am susceptible as others to the deep material belief that there is not enough love to go around, a limited amount.  So if you are not paying attention to me, but something else, you have taken my love and spent it on others.   If I spend time simply transplanting a flower, or vacuuming my home, folding towels or sitting and reading a book of god’s love for the fifth time, it doesn’t mean my love for you has ever changed.  In fact, filling myself up with the love of sweet soft quiet time, means more runs over for others.

As Yogananda I think once put it, it is like whining about an empty thimble without clear water (love) and standing with my feet in a rushing gurgling crystal clear endlessly flowing river of love.

I choose to be filled all day today with that sustaining water of Her Love.

How to seek and find refuge in the Divine with all the noise going around me every day.  From chanting in the car during a commute, I see the brilliance of morning light over the black silhouette of the firs, the glistening of the lake, the coral shine on the mountain.  And the next mini-second I am tense in my body imagining a conversation.

Oh to see Krishna’s spirit in everything everywhere–“the taste of pure water and the radiance of the sun and moon.  I am the sacred word and the sound heard in air, and the courage of human beings.  I am the sweet fragrance in the earth and the radiance of fire; I am the life in every creature and the striving of the spiritual aspirant.”

Thus as I strive, seek, and knock, so I am inside the One I seek.  Thus my day begins within the Way.

Over the last couple of days I have been staring at the ocean waves.  Long roaring pounding foaming continuous unrelenting ocean waves.  Long “sneaker” waves coming right up to the tall coarse dune grass.  Sinking slinking waves going out pulling pounds of dirt churning into the earth.

It’s life, isn’t it?  Something building up to happen, smooth and rising, cresting and crashing and then it bumps into something else starting to get momentum.  Waves bursting into waves rising and falling.  For ever.

Somehow it makes me feel completely tiny and yet having thorough integrity as just this little me on my own dharma path.  To be me as best as it happens without excuses or regrets.

I am a perfect wave on the eternal Ocean of One.  I have the power and the depth, the fierceness and the sweet, the barnacles and the starfish.

I am not here right now.  Not here, not now.  As I write this, if anyone
does read this, I am not here writing this.  Actually that happens each
time I write this, but really, this time I will be on a sandy beach–in
a storm I hope, with blustery winds and crashing waves.

Allowing
the time to do what it will.  Nothing to do and all day to do it.  A
little vacation from the normal daily routine on the Oregon coast.  My
and my honey pie.  What a gift.

In the midst of my emotional
storm, there is a calm when I can walk into a storm of nature.  And let
nature seep into my soul through my eyes and ears and skin and hair and
face and chilly bones.  Sitting in the trees and settling into the quiet
until I hear them talk to me.

This is the peace I seek.

Tonight, Halloween, is the “hallowed evening” before a day we honor the dead.  Day of the Dead they call it in many countries.  We bless those who have gone before us, giving us life, showing us the way (or even showing us not the way!).

The longer my life, the more I recognize the gifts of honoring the dead, actually more like talking with the dead, having conversations with those on the “other side.”  They are very wise, but don’t talk much to me.  And only visit when invited. 

The spirits of my dead family and ancestors always offer reassurance and hope, kindness and support.  They remind me that this life is a gift, not a dreaded drudgery.  However it is in how I look at it.  Some days, it is recognized, I need to be in the shadow of darkness, despair, sadness and pain so the sunlight is not taken for granted.

Both light and darkness are part of this world, this journey, and today I honor the night.

Amazing how hard that is–to respect myself.  I guess looking over my life, I can see the value in my life.  But sometimes I get lost in the details and lose all perspective in any effect my little tiny cog of a life has in the whirlwind of nature and humanity.

I guess that’s why keeping in the here and now is the best focus.  Right here right now I am involved with a deep intention–to speak words of compassion for myself and the world through a connection with the One and the Way.

I sure don’t have any guaranteed ticket to be on this trip in first class, on the “right” Way, or with the “right” One.  I am just truly deeply willing to fall back into Her arms and let Her have her Way with me.

Are we, as humans, able to be at peace?  Or are we meant on purpose, to be passionate?  The Bhagavad Gita says:

Free from self-will, aggressiveness, arrogance, anger, and the lust to possess people or things, he is at peace with himself and others and enters into the unitive state.

Yeah.  Right. I have to be willing to pull myself out of bed.  Aggressive enough to say no to certain requests and angry so I can fight for what I believe is right.  Heck, that’s what Krishna says to Arjuna in this story, telling him not to vacillate, but to do his dharma as a warrior fighting against evil.

Because, and here is the heart of the story, Krishna says “there has never been a time when you and I and the kings gathered here have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist.”

When time is endless, and spirit’s life is forever, passion must be in that clear crystal moment of right-ness, when every fiber of your being is focused on the here and the now.  Like here.  And now.

So I hit the wall.  Time screams in hilarity at my efforts to do.  Codependency rubs it’s hands together, relishing how I believe I have to do everything for everybody.  Anxiety thrills to the hard tight aching muscles.  And my masseuse is delighted that it will take her months to manage the concrete in my back.

Now I’ve hit the wall before in life, I’m old enough to recognize the splattering blood from my weakened stunned body.  Brushing away the sweat and grime from my eyes takes time so that I can see the path turning–sharply–in front of me.  Time to make a choice.

When I finally, tentatively, weeping, step onto a new path, the forest seems lighter, and I hear the birds twitter at my humanness.  The stream giggles at my resistance to just going with the flow.

There are still strange roots and rocks along the Way, but I am moving very slowly.  I am bruised from running nowhere.  I am watching for soft ground and I will sit and sit and sit.

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet.
Around me like circles on water,
My tasks lie in their places
Where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then, what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
And the fear of it leaves me.

It sings, and I hear its song.

Wendell Berry

That’s what it feels like to change.  But that’s what is needed when a stupid solid “cock-sure” force hits a wall at 90 mph.  I’m barely conscious to see the rough chunks of brokenness around me.  I’m not near the idea of what to do with the fierce breaking apart of my story.

I think I’m together–I’m apart.  I believe I help–but I may be hindering.  I feel in touch–and I am lonely. 

However, moments and more moments I do see myself sitting in the forest.  Allowing the leaves to travel in a symphonic stillness through the air, from branch to sweet carpet of earth.  I watch the sunlight settle through the tall tenderness around me.  I hear the soft nothings twittering and shifting. 

No matter the tears and the anguish and the stories and the fierce hypnotic insufficiencies that plague me, I breathe the fragrance of pines, release all human silliness and drink in Your Love surrounding me always.