So here we are in the fog on the purported edge of essence and matter.  Humans–the stuff makers, the manifesting extension of Gaia Mother, Cosmos Father. All you see around you came from a human thought–even the plants, the trees in the neighborhoods, the movies, the concrete, the wars, the awards, the scientific “advancements” pretending to discover that which was already there.

The funny part is that we don’t really have to do anything but dream.  Dream strong, dream true, dream at night, day dream, vision and visualize.  A thought plus a feeling regularly watered and nurtured becomes a thing.

Let’s try it.  Grab a wispy dream–not a big one, but one that perhaps can fit in a day or on your kitchen counter, or carry in your hands.  See it in your mind’s eye.  If you can, tell one good friend, or one good stranger, or write it down in a paragraph or two.  The trick is to see and feel and write it as if it has already happened. 

Well, I’m going to give it a go with a book in a month.  It might be a bigger than a breadbox kinda thing, but it calls to me.  Can’t see it as a novel, but let’s play with it.

Partnering with whatever the Divine is, whoever, whatever set the universe in motion to yield this wondrous orb of blue-green, the silvery moon, the warmth of the sun, the spectacle of the mountains, the brillliance of the dawn.  There is a Life Artist out there, and She is calling for me to join Her.

In the middle of the darkest night, even beyond the deep cover of clouds that steal the headlights from cars, are the stars.  The moon might turn its face to keep staring at the sun, but the stars stay constant, like the truth of hope.

Say the relationship turns sour all of a sudden, arguing is bitter, the merry-go-round of talk is no longer fun, but just makes us dizzy.  We keep saying and hearing the same things over and over and over and over and going no where faster and faster.

The hope is that indeed we can step out of that terrifying bad game where we keep getting hit with our own balls we throw fiercely at the other.  It is fear, just a little orb of fear that when we throw out inevitably comes back, hits us in the chest and it looks so much as if the other person, the closest, the most loved, threw it into our heart with vengance.

Hold that ball, look at it, describe it, get to know it, be friendly to it.  It will talk to you like a crystal seer, a magic window to your soul.  Fear is only lonely.  When I can talk to the other about this ball of fear I hold, keeping it as mine, sometime the stars come out, the sky clears and I see the path before me.

Instead of fierce fighting, there is that compassion and proof that we are One.

It always is “situation normal–all f’d up”.  I mean that seriously.  We are continuously intercoursing with each other.  That’s just the nature of nature, really.  The blades of grass entwined within the soil.  The branches reaching and bending in the wind.  The bosses in the office talking with each other deciding how us core center group will relate to each other.  Directing the intercoursing.  Is that like a sex therapist?

In any case, we constantly intermix with each other.  When hands do this to a violin, it is called a symphony.  When we tap our feet on the floor, we’re ready to dance.  When someone pounds on a drum, now we’re rocking and rolling all night long.  But when people bump there is whining and crying and fussing and fighting and accusations and blame and shame.

We are powerless over these behavioral patterns, and when we are lucky enough to be aware of them, we find ourselves in a life that is completely unmanageable.  How can we manager our life when up all night arguing the same thing over and over?  What kind of life is it anyway when we feel that no matter how we move, we hurt someone?  Where do we find solace when we are told by those we love that we are unlovable?

I have come to believe that there is a higher plane of consideration, a focus above the tangled briars that gives me direction.  And there is that dear inner compass that keeps reflecting my heart off the moon and the stars in Her hair.

The ocean is my vessel, I cannot drown.
She leads me to steady winds and the constant stream.
It restores and refreshes my soul.

Even when I sail through the valley of monsoon waves,
You are there with Your sure hand on the tiller to guide me. 
The salt of Your safety is the blood of my body.

I am anointed with sacred oil.
My table is filled with the rich fruit of Your womb.
No pirates can touch the treasure hidden within me.
You lead me along the best course with the starlight of truth.
My nets overflow.

Surely the beat of the waves will fill my heart all the days of my life,
And I rest in the rolling and rocking of this peace forever more.

(for Jim, and all those sailing rough waters.)
ktk

It is a bright crisp blue colored autumn day.  Perfect for a football game and I’m grateful I’m not called to sit on the hard benches for hours.  The day is about the clarity of gratitude.

Having gone through the valley of the shadow of fear of fear, I am on the hillside overlooking the view.  Wide-reaching horizon, deep rich hidden crevices–all that I seem to know and don’t know.  Taking risks despite the darkness of the twisting path unseen ahead of me.  Only in the fog finding the sweet siren song of Sophia.  Wisdom as the braiding of intellect, kindness and goodness of the Way.

Today the sun is spread like homemade butter on warm thick bread.  I am rich with the now of Yes.

Today I’m off giving a pitch to the new boss (“same as the old boss”?) to hire someone with managerial experience.  It just seems logical to us on the ground floor and in the middle of this machine.  But since it makes sense, I have to let go of even being heard, let alone anyone from a “higher” perspective seeing what I see, or believing what I believe.

Finally in life I recognize that I have a godness-given big mouth, that I am called to speak (one manifestation of what you see here).  But on the other hand, I have this hysterical illusion that I know best–a recovering know-it-al.  So an ongoing lesson is that I don’t, actually, know much at all.  Remember the political party called the “know nothings?”  Or was it “no nothings”.  In any case, I identified early on with those guys.

I have been anointed.  I can seep myself in the spread of goodness that surounds me.  I am led by the Lady to soft fields, restful waters.  She restores and refreshes my soul.  Surely goodness and kindness will be all I speak, all I see, all I know.  My cup thus runs over and over and over and over and over.

If there is a “peace that passes all understanding,” then it is not something that the mind would recognize.  And there is the problem.  The mind completely and thoroughly recognizes chaos and anxiety and change and difficulties.  In fact, that’s what the mind excels at–discerning problems. 

So I pray for something that my most active human component won’t recognize.  In fact, the mind often sees serenity as boredom, or the calm before the storm.  What a long haul it is to retrain that most excellent protective friend.

That is why I chant over and over “I love you.”  “I am safe.”  “Pure peace and ease surrounds me.”  Today, going into change, ambiguity, shock purported to be better communications, avoidance behaviors declared as “working things out together,” I will loosen the grip of the frantic fear that NOTHING MAKES SENSE.  WE ARE BEING LED BY IDIOTS TO THE ABYSS.  I will just allow that fear to go through me, perhaps grant myself an indulgence and let the mystifying moment pass.

(One good benefit of this time is that it has made me aware of my own insane illusion–that more caffeine, Mt. Dew, and sugar will help!  Bring on the hysterical laughter!)

Peace of the purest path meets my feet.  The Divine Lady beckons, even when she seems to slip beyond the curve ahead.  I breathe her light green fragrance, I see the blooms that have opened in her wake.

My dad walked with me today in the dog park.  I called him forth from the other side.  He was standing so straight and tall and true.  The old arthritis curved spine and hesitant standing weak legged frame was gone.  His form was so slender and clear as a logepole pine in the forest.  His joy in his vertical body shot him up to the sky in freedom.  Not even as a kid do I remember him so happy in his existence.

Or shall I say, in the freedom from his bodily existence.  His message was clear: be straight and tall and true.  Stand free.

But he is on the other side, and I am achy from food that doesn’t serve me and a long night of intense tarot readings with young fashion donors to eradicate AIDS.  Each set of eyes longed for deep attention and craved answers.  Some would never trust, others dropped their shield with surprise when the cards told me to send an electric probe into their coral-covered heart and drag it out flopping onto the table.  Speechless, they would only nod when asked if the reading sounded familiar.

This is my bliss.  But I have not yet stepped over to that other side when I can channel this Divine energy openly, clearly, standing straight and true.  I breathe deeply and fully into the fresh scent of my father’s love.

Let it be.  Sit in it.  Like a tree, stand and watch the smallest branch bend in the wind.  Soak up the mist through your hair.  Grab everything you can through your senses.

Watch the crinkle in his eyes as he laughs.  Let her touch to your arm sink in your skin so years after she is gone you remember that soft caring feeling in your body.  Listen to the children in the park squealing, let it wash over you like a fountain of cool water. 

Allow the now to refresh your soul. 

Life is shit and then you live.  We are made of the earth dust, and back to that dust we eventually transform.  And life is what happens in the meantime. 

Now it’s not a bad thing or a good thing, actually.  It’s about circulation of good.  Good food to best absorption to good shit.  Lovely water and drink through the body exercise to sweat and piss.  Bad food, well, good puke. 

If you’re analyzing what life is–this is one true experience of all beings: scat, piss, sweat, snot.  If we are made in the image and likeness, maybe we can get some clues as to the spiritual story here.

Shit: you experience life, take what you like and leave the rest.  Sometimes life is spicy or rotten, and you have to let it go all the way through for relief.  There are times you absorb life, eat it up, and it doesn’t even get halfway down and you know you have to puke it up undigested.  There are excrutiating times of life that make you sweat and stink; when/if you realize it–you take a shower of water and let it go down the drain. 

Piss, toe-jam, hair in the drain, warts, body dust–all are signs of taking in this wondrous adventure called human life and letting go what no longer serves us.  It rests in eternal Gaia who takes all creatures and presses them down with millions of years of long true hugs into jewels.

Let me shine the diamonds of Your love today.