One way that I can identify the Path that is mine, is that it is NOT what I would have chosen.  It really isn’t my idea and my intention to be laid off my job of 6 years.  But that’s what happened yesterday.  I was fired from the fun house.  HA!

And so the back and forth discussion goes on between heart and mind: “whoopeee, we are OUT of there!”  vs. “Holy crap we are so screwed.”  Both are stories, and good ones, but now I get to be conscious of the very tiniest step in front of me–the very smallest next indicated action.

First things first allows me to walk a path in the fields and the woods with my dog where I am soothed with the reminder that my feet can never fall off the path, that I am safe in good shoes, warm clothes and even an umbrella so the rain can lullabye me with divine love songs.

Today is a day where I let the Lady have her Way with me.  In me.  With me.  As me. 

Being willing to change is a silly thought, as change happens every time we breathe.  Like I’m willing to be alive.  I guess it has to do with being committed to where I am right now.  Acceptance–where’s the gift I am being given.  And it is not up to me to FIND the gift, just assume it is there somewhere.

So in chaos, confusion, doubt and insecurity I just nod and say “yes, that’s terrific.”  It’s not quite joyful expectation, but maybe cautious expectancy–I like that better.  But it can’t be about living in the future, as then I am off balance, just as if I life in the past.

Funny how challenging it is to be here and now exactly.  Thus I honor and admire and pray to the trees: Sweet Strength, let me be you today.  Give me the steadfast trunk that stands in all weather.  Let me be your embracing and stretching branches.  Allow me to let each leaf fall gloriously on it’s own, not even considering the spring when they will confidently re-emerge from the stiff wooden bare limbs.  And grant me the deep rooted faith where you entangle your feet in the sensuous loving One that holds me.

Choice and decision are good words for me when I move into a new intention.  I choose now to eat healthy.  I now decide to live free.  Of course, the contrasting option looms there right behnd the words–anxiety, addiction, settling for less, dropping into the familiar and the lame.  But when I use those words I am reminded that I do have a choice.

Why don’t I choose the “best” for myself?  Why is there a “best” and a “not so good” choice?  Am I stuck once again in the illusion of duality?  What would it be like to live in the archway that eternally connects these two bickering siblings?

Living in the archway that connects all opposites.  The tarot, the Kabbala, the Kybalion all remind me of this–that as humans we get stuck seeing the columns rather than how they are connected at the top to hold up the building.  I suppose when change happens, often the roof caves in, and all that seems to be left are the two opposing forces.

What an interesting adventure we’ve chosen, to take infinity and push it into these bio-sausages, arms flailing, mouth wagging, mind chattering, feet shuffling. 

I look to the bare poplars in the dense fog this morning.  Be clear they say, be true, choose ease.

What makes that so difficult?  Watching feelings, sitting and allowing them to move through the body without reaction.  It is like my body is a tinderbox, filled with explosives and that any little spark will create a blow-up.

I’m certainly better than I used to be.  And there are those times when I feel like a huge sponge, soaking up other people’s feelings, swallowing my urges until it squashes all over me in tears or pouting or being sick.

I stand in satisfaction–no matter how boring it seems.  I sit in being filled up.  I vibrate in fulfillment.  I am that I am that I am.  How long must I chant that to feel as good as when I believe I feel better with one aspirin or one fast swallow of a whole Mt. Dew.

Welcome to the monkey house.

While working on being comfortable with uncertainty, I also have to keep in mind the practice of being at ease with satisfaction.  To be moderately satisfied with life.  YUK–for a drama queen, chaos-addict, this sounds like a fate worse than death–at least dying would be an adventure!

Being comfortable with serenity has been like re-wiring every bone, nerve and cell in my body–and I’m not “cured” for sure.  When nothing is wrong, something feels out of place.  After growing up in a constantly changing, unexpected, unspoken sense of unfulfillment brought that very familiar belief that life is struggle.  There’s always a problem, it’s one thing or another, preparing for the other shoe to drop.

In peace that passes all understanding, in the middle of my dad’s memorial service, laughing.  Supporting my mom with a gathering of siblings that hadn’t happened in over 3 decades, we are joking.  We sleep contentedly on the floor of a tiny apartment.  Shit on my shoes is just a cuss word or two while I wipe it off.  A fruit fly hatching in the kitchen means I stay out of there.  But in the struggle mind-set, it is horrific, it is smelly and awful and it is wrong to be laughing at a funeral.

Perhaps it is about the false beliefs that we carry around that perhaps served someone in our past at some time.  Maybe so much of survival is seen as a struggle that it becomes a multi-generational tradition to worry about money, fight against the machine, rally for rights, argue for my position.

I am so grateful to recognize that I can choose to anchor my body, soul and heart in this here time and place, the lullaby of fingers on keys, bread baking in the oven, autumn sun on brilliant leaves.  Nothing to understand or figure out. 

A human just and brilliantly being.

Probably this is done in many places, but the best belief that works for me is a combination of the mindfulness of the bohdisatvva (I know that is not spelled right!) and the fun of connecting with a Divine Face.

The practice of being comfortable with uncertainty, doubt, fear and idiocy is not my first faith muscle and is more of a concentration for me lately.  But enjoying the vast and colorful faces of God has been fun for me for quite a while.

There is this program of human recovery–growing up, dealing with addiction and obsession (that NEVERending delight–that said I could fabricate (my words) a Higher Power just the way I understand that best to be.  So doing research in the god section of the library, being amazed at how many more divine images there were besides the poor Guy on the cross and the Big Bearded Daddy in the clouds, I chose them all.

At any time of the day I can lean on Ganesha for removing obstacles, Isis for bright light of transformation, the Tao for balance, or the Carpenter for compassion.

Today I get all those lovely Presences hanging around with me like the support of a popular wireless phone service and continue my practice of ease and unconditional friendliness to myself watching the river of life–sometimes flooding, sometimes quiet, always flowing

Prayer is a pretty standard thing for diests–that is, those that believe in a Higher Power, aka God.  It is to beseech, to ask, to request and very often to freaking demand that something be done that from our tiny little blinders-on-the eyes vision really needs to be done.

The problem with prayer for me is that by its very nature it implies that something outside of myself will come to the rescue.  If I believe that the Divine Creator split Herself into millions of billions of pieces and sows them into the millions of earths, then there is a seed of the Divine in me–as me.  Thus I don’t need to beseech, but perhaps ask for guidance–which way should I grow, how can I be at peace with the forest around me (why should I care, actually?).

But one thing I have found is that recognizing and speaking to a Higher Power, an entity that is not just the little me but the Bigger Me, Higher Self, the One that is connected to the All, does effect results.  That is, when I do entreat for support and remind myself that I am embraced and surrounded by this Presence, it leans back into me.

Plus I like to play.  Whatever the Divine Creator is, she has GOT to like to play.  I mean, look at the platypus, the Badlands, the grouper fish, the alpacas and puppies.  Like any artist, She thrills to color, design and infuses us in Her own image (in His own image if you are a guy–or whatever).

For today, I hum and ohm and speak and rock and roll with that which carries me, leans into me and guides me.  I have no need to beseech, but to recognize and smile as we play in this paradise together.

There is only One of us.  I keep coming back to that chant.  But do I really believe it?  There is no way we all agree on anything.  Even in a majority vote, there is that irritated minority screaming about lack of representation.

We live in this canvas of Gaia with the colors of duality: right and wrong, yes and no, black and white.  Part of our mission is to laugh at the columns defining opposites, and recognizing the archway beneath which we walk.  The curving ceiling that connects the sides of our home, the jury decision that fabricates the facts, the feet that finally cross over a bridge built girder by screw by metal plate so slowly.

From difficulties to dreams we make connections.  From one continent to another we communicate.  Our conduits are investigation, attempts, new questions and celebration.  When we celebrate what we have, it spills over to the path we intend.

Today I am grateful for my fabulously exciting adventure of a job.  I am thankful for a home and partner that supports me in coziness.  And I celebrate my willingness to play with the belief of a Divine One that I lean on and whisper to, even when I am so distracted in arguments with the contrast that I forget She is there.

I let Her have Her Way with me.

Inspiration is and then it isn’t.  Inspire–to breathe in, to be filled with spirit and air and life.  This is, of course, the state of humans until they die.  They–we–stop breathing.  The spirit moves on somehow somewhere, the body wears out or just doesn’t breathe any more.

There are theories that we know and even determine when and where we are to expire–the breath leaves us.  Other stories say it is all a bad dream here in the body.  Still more philosophies just ignore the “blackness” of the non-breathing arena.

I believe in miracles and heaven and fun things and big parties with old friends and family.  It just makes life a bit more fun and less heavy–like I have to achieve something for a good report card.

But what about life.  And what about those gray days when breathing is just breathing.  I pull the air into my chest and feel myself in the center of the ancient tree.  I am rooted and I stretch.

There is only one of us, and when we practice that awareness, we can have compassion with others.  But those of us brought up in households where the “no talk, no feel” rule is rigidly–if not unconsciously–upheld, we learned the fine art of mind reading.

Walking into the house, I remember sniffing the air and realizing how angry my mom was.  I didn’t see anyone except the dog sneaking out as I was quietly entering.  It was confirmed, I was off to my friends house for dinner.  Feelings were not expressed or discussed.  In fact in most cases, it was a dangerous idea that could bring about screaming and yelling: “That’s NOT what you feel!!”  Nothing like doubting feelings you can’t even express.

So when we get to this “loving detachment” idea to mind my business instead of someone else’s, it is completely perplexing.  I’ve lived my life as a chameleon, matching what I think you need, reading your mind and preparing myself for the best outcome of what I should be.

Today I practice being in my own body, my own heart, my own feelings and asking the Divine One to surround me with loving detachment to and for myself.  As the Tree outside mywindow is caressed by the wind, but is not the wind.  The leaves blush and shine with gold, but they drop on their own, I am.