This conscious mind thing is a bitch.  Always comparing, judging, discerning.

I remember being a tree with rain being rain, cold being cold, lost branches just falling.  Birds in my hair, squirrels climbing, bugs eating.  Life was merely a flow of growth–reaching up and digging deep.  My clan, the trees, keep whispering these truths.  They are puzzled why I chose this incarnation as a walking, talking, thinking tree.  So am I.

The reward for the work comes from the work.

Today I struggle for the Presence. Body throbbing from some stretch of food.  No more bacon at night.  And allowing it to bring me to Your cheek to cheek to cheek to cheek.

What if there were no comparisons?  No thoughts of “need more,” “it is better over there,” “it was more fun with ___?”  What would it be like without dwelling on “this is not the place, the job, the person, the day, the outfit, the time–for me?”

Instead it would be complete acceptance, allowance and gratitude I suppose.  Still a stretch to imagine, as I am not there.  I have arguments before I get out of bed, what to wear, the route to work.  Work.  Not work.  Complete allowance of the day would be so much true faith in the Way.

How does this match with Abraham’s teaching to pay attention to feelings and have them guide to new experiences–more, in many cases.  Still true, we create our reality most distinctly.

So balance between peaceful flow in the now, and faith in the path chosen, walking step by step.  Without comparisons.  And not doubting myself on this distinct-less endeavor.

What an adventure, this spirit as earth-full life!

I was told recently that I’m not good at endings.  Pissed me off really.  But it is true.  When I’m pissed, it is my warrior trying to protect me.  She’s protected me a bit too much in the past, so I hear her defensiveness, and ask her to go outside and spar with someone else for a bit.

Thus today I take lessons from the season.  Recognizing that cycles are not endless endings, but waves of here and now, there and then, present and gone.  The leaf that passed by my window will not return.  But there will be countless new ones in the spring.

The forest is becoming transparent without the maple and birches dressed.  But now the bones are visible, the true structure, the skeleton of faith that holds us up.  Even the fir trees will shed needles in the wind.  Making room for more.

I bow to those who brought me here and are out of sight.  I am warmed by that which and who nourish me, and I turn my appreciation to them.

And the trees clap their hands in applause.

Sometimes I want to shout about the words that come through me.  I worry about how to present them, publicize, get an agent, in a book, and worry that I’m not doing what is whispered to me, coaxing me, driving me to write.

But soft overcomes the most rigid.  Thus I surrender to this little gurgle of a brook each morning.  More to be revealed while I sit near this lilting stream of sweet nothings each early light (or dark) and be as open as possible for Her words.

There is a tiny sprout of a maple tree I spy through my window, huddled at the edge of the forest.  The leaves of the season are bright yellow surrounded by dark corners, animal dens, blackberry, firs and bushes.  She just smiles in her soft glory and waves.

It is not yet a full moon.  In a day or so.  Bringing out feelings, heightening senses, emotional determinism and a lot of cookies perhaps.

There is an up and down to waves.  There is night, there is winter, even if you live at the equator.  Flowing with them, instead of against them, is a Way.  Struggling to move the course of the river, the cycles, the nature of things–is a Way also.  There is no way that is not the Way.  There is nothing that is not No-Thing.  No-Thing is everything.

Got it?

Hope not.

Ha–She says if I go with the flow, I am a flower.  I am Her Flower, and She lives through me–at my best times.  She is the light inside me that shows the Way when I am at my lowest.

“I am the Light the Truth and the Way,” She has said.  (Ok, there are some texts that quote Him saying it, but She whispered it into His ear, I know.)

In any case, with all the trimmings of a human being–caffeine, just the right shirt, cranky at plans changing, tired–I bow to the universe-wide gratitude to be Her Flower.

My brother and I share a dream.  Whether through sleeping or meditation, we’ve found ourselves in an amazing grange hall of our ancestors and family.  He studies genealogy, so he’s met those who fought in the early wars, plowed the land, raised the frontier families–now buried in tiny hidden cemeteries in the foothills.

My recent visit brought me surrounded with my grandparents.  Those I have dearly remembered, and some I have never met.  They were all excited about my soon to appear first grandchild.

The mirrors within mirrors of lives yawned before and after me, wrapped in my Nana’s fur coat of love.  She pointed out children and mothers and grandmothers that were bustling and laughing and feasting throughout the hall.  I sit this morning and feel her soft cloak and arms embrace me.

Here’s another gift of being human, all you bodiless angels in the audience–dearest sweet check to cheek love.

Be aware of the Tao condenses to “Be Tao.”   Just as “Be still and know that I am God” reduces to: “Be.”

Flow and stillness.  Practicing serenity is for me about enjoying the flow.  Watching the waves and knowing that even as I am in the water, there is nothing but flow. I am, somehow, as endless as the mountain river, constant as the sky, steady as a tree.

And the fun really begins when I get better at surfing.

I do remember how freeing it was to say “I don’t know.”  It turns out, that’s the wisest thing to say.  The truth of the infinite endless conundrum is that we are only a small leaf bouncing down the eternal flow of Tao.

Pretending to know is a pain and a struggle.  But the continuous human design is to make decisions, at every breath, without any certainty of the outcome.  Like a rollercoaster–will we die or have the time of our lives?

To mirror the Divine. What a calling.  Without knowing which step to take, job to pursue, schedule for the day.

Maybe life is just about have fun while you have no idea what to do or where to go.  If the Divine would sneak through to the world as me today, what would She want to do.  Maybe to sit under the covers, laptop on her lap, watching the sun touch the top of the trees.  And then take a walk.

I’ve been visiting a chiropractor, a gentle one.  He walks with quite a stoop and flirts unmercifully as the old gents do.  It is comforting.

He said my head wasn’t screwed on right.  (I’ve heard that one before.)

He is moving my bones.  My very structure standing on the earth is shifting.  As a tree finds new rootings with an earthquake or flood, I’m being transplanted.

What was I aligned with–leaning to much on another?  Reaching out and becoming out of balance?  Sprouting branches that were broken off in the winter’s wind?

Not sure.  But there is a shift going on.

In the meantime I sit in the dusk of morning watching the trees peek out from the night.  Welcoming gods, reminding me to stand in my good, soak up the tears for good, bow to the good day.