Cats, Candles/Agapanthus, Aloe Vera

The last two days have been devoted to yard work and I'm tired of it. I ache. Aging is for the birds. I lit candles tonight, put a favorite oil into a diffuser, drew a hot bubble bath, put on some beautiful, meditative music and soaked in Lavendar Chamomile with extracts of marigold, chamomile, soy, lemon grass, aloe vera, and vitamin E. Organic of course :-). Throughout the work day each time I came into the house I found my cats affectionately coiled up in my chair, on my towel. Sweet creatures. We hired a guy to help us, thinking maybe 5 hours today, 5 more tomorrow. He was young and did everything we wanted him to do in 1.5 hours! We forget that we move slowly. It was nice having a young strong worker to help us. We are simplifying our yard, moving more into a Zen direction with lots of gravel and far fewer plants, for the purpose of having less maintenance. Besides, I'm tired of everything we plant growing so fast and aggressively that in no time at all the landscape feels like a jungle. It's too much. I separated the agapantha clumps and replanted 6 small plants, tossing all the rest in the burn pile. The same with the planter of aloe vera plants, most went into the burn pile while 3 youngsters got replanted in the wooden flower box by the garage. It's a healing plant but the thorns can be nasty.

It's not easy going for 2 full days without doing yoga, I miss it. Dale is moving slower and slower with each passing day and yard work is becoming too much for him, even though he loves getting out and puttering around in the yard.

Time for bed. I've been leaving my roller shades fully open at night. It welcomes the night into the room, and allows the cats to peer out at all the nocturnal critters. Spring is here and the days are growing longer. I had lunch with Jeff and we both agreed this is one of our favorite times of the year. It's been fun catching up with friends for lunch and making it to more men's yoga classes.

Folks that are Dear

This is my third blog attempt this morning. My mind isn't wildly out of control (I don't think), but it seems to be searching for just the right words, for the opening through which my thoughts can flow unimpeded. Have you (comments welcome) ever had a positive, meaningful, connected interaction with someone whereby when it was over and you were moving away you felt part of that person was still with you? Furthermore, the part of that person still with you took on the form of an animal? Something like the residual energy of that person was still contained in your energy field but in a mythical, symbolic way. Is this just utterly ridiculous? Is it simple projection? Is the mind/spirit on a deeper level connecting with something primordial? In a certain way it's like wakeful dreaming, and our thoughts take on *unfamiliar* forms that are not immediately accessible and clear.

Example: I dreamt the other night that I was in the company of a very angry woman. I think my mind was expressing a need to release something that I was refusing to acknowledge on a conscious level, something that I was suppressing, to do with anger, with anger towards the feminine aspects (of myself), or the life and people around me. Aha, now that makes sense. Because truly in real life I was pissed off at someone but I absolutely could find no way to constructively express or release that anger. In fact the anger was misplaced, and actually expressing the anger towards that person would have been totally inappropriate because that anger had nothing to do with that person, but everything to do with me. So the anger came out in my dream, through my subconscious mind, and found expression and release that way. When we don't act out, when we sit with stuff, it can be amazing how certain issues find resolution on their own, without our own conscious intervention and meddling. Besides, hell has no wrath like a Goddess scorned. Never underestimate the power of the Goddess.

After practice the other day I had lunch with a group of guys, five of us in all. It was quite an enjoyable get together, and the conversation flowed freely, moving from one topic to another in a somewhat stream of consciousness sort of way. In retrospect, I realize that I didn't have a clue what was being said half the time. Really, it was gibberish to me. So I just honed in on that which I could understand, listened and responded. Nothing unusual in any of this. But when you do find someone you feel deeply connected to, it's downright rich, and often transcends words and simply being in the presence of that person leaves one feeling sated.

Deer. Such majestic creatures whose bodies move seemingly without effort, gracefully defying the laws of gravity. Powerful yet vulnerable, feminine yet virile, swift with fleetness of foot yet unable to discern their primary enemy in the urban jungle (the SUV, the automobile). "The deer depicts meditation, meekness, and gentleness but also signifies love-sickness, solitariness and melancholy, when associated with the maple (in the Chinese tradition). In the Celtic tradition they are messengers of the divine, supernatural animals of the fairy world, fairy cattle. Deerskin and antlers are ritual vestments."

Personally, I have lived in the company of deer for the past 30 years, feeding them, observing their social hierarchy, matriarchal led herds of does and only young bucks who are kicked out as they approach young adulthood. It is sad to see the young buck literally being kicked and hoofed by his mother, aunts and sisters. He must leave and live alone, at times running with other males. I struggled mightily with the decision to ban them from our property a few years back, but decided that since they were eating our garden and all our deer-proof plants, especially in times of drought, it was the only thing to do, hence the 7 1/2 foot fence. Now when I gaze out I see the landscape devoid of deer, and find something lamentable about that, and so I lament as I inhale and exhale the reality of injustice.

*******

I just read in a newsletter put out by Spirit Journeys, the following, which I thought apropos:

"There is much fear swirling all around us these days. Let your Inner Warrior stand fast in the knowledge that fear is an untruth spoken by those hiding in the Shadows or living in the Dark; only Love is real and stands openly in the Light."

Still, it's a great time to be alive.

Spirit Energy Flowing, Taking Notice

How often it is that I have to remember to just slow down, stop and pay attention to life as it unfolds. I felt drawn to a young man who is a licensed masseur when he asked me at the car wash if I wanted a chair massage. I said no, then something compelled me to say yes. His hands were healing and therapeutic. His spirit bright and energizing. I ended up taking his card and have had several deep tissue massage sessions with him. Yesterday after my first sports massage with him, we were sitting at his kitchen table eating tangerines, discovering those threads of connection and trust, moving into those first moments when you feel so at ease and bonded with someone new. He began sharing and telling me about the path he was following, the path of his heart, a path deeply connected to nature, and how it was leading him (and his girlfriend) down a very fulfilling and rewarding road, that doorways to discovery were happening for him, he was learning what touched him and made him feel in tune, and what made him feel free from dis-ease. Suddenly a door to the bedroom opened, and I looked to see his girlfriend walk through, but she didn't. A moment of complete silence. Apparently the wind very gently and noiselessly blew open the door just a few feet away. It was kind of eerie. It was kind of magical. Nothing superstitious, just one of those little moments where you feel that nature is answering back to you, confirming what you've just said. Good energy flowing. The cast of illumination.

I'm driving a friend to Kerrville this morning to visit his father who's in the hospital there. He's 83 years old and was in a pretty bad car wreck in which his car was totalled and he had to be pulled from the wreckage. For unknown reasons, an ambulance wasn't called, so he was not examined by doctors or paramedics, the cops simply drove him home after the accident. After arriving home he called his insurance company, and while on the phone he collapsed and fell to the floor, shattering his hip. So now he is confined, for at least 6 weeks, to a rehab center, unable to walk. The doctor has told him his fall had nothing to do with the car accident, which pretty much cancels out any compensation from the other driver's insurance.

Something strangely unpleasant and unusual is going on in my lower intestines this morning. Yesterday I dug up the crowded clumps of Irises in the Zen garden and separated the bulbs and replanted the new growths and discarded the old and rotting portions of the shallow underground root/bulb system that really should be done every 2 to 3 years. I love the feel and smell of earth, digging into the soil with bare hands. A google search answered my questions about Iris bulbs, and also said that the old, rotting bulbs should not be placed in the compost pile. When I snagged a fingernail whilst digging I automatically brought it to my mouth and immediately realized I probably should not have done that. There must be some chemical in the bulbs that is toxic, I don't know. Maybe that's why my lower belly is growling and misbehaving this morning. Another message from Mother Nature? Vata out of balance?

I received a very nice email from my massage therapist in which he asked if he could possibly practice some newly learned light energy healing on me. Of course I said yes, then read a little about energy healing in the Shamanic traditions. I was immediately struck by the word luminosity, and balanced chakras. After my sports massage J mentioned that the techniques he employed were motions that moved the blood back towards the heart, and also released many toxins.

I was reading from a blog I follow in which the blogger posted a quote from Jack Kornfield's "A Path With Heart". It was a quote I had underlined and put an asterisk by in my copy of the book. It struck me as very relevant to recent experiences. Page 158, first paragraph, begins "Initially, in our enthusiasm for our practice, we tend to take everything we hear or read as the gospel truth. This attitude often becomes even stronger when we join a community, follow a teacher, undertake a discipline. Yet all of the teachings of books, maps, and beliefs have little to do with wisdom or compassion. At best they are a signpost, a finger pointing at the moon, or the leftover dialogue from a time when someone received some true spiritual nourishment. To make spiritual practice come alive, we must discover within ourselves our own way to become conscious, to live a life of the spirit."

All the little connections can leave the mind reeling. Maybe that's why it's best to try and tell the mind to just leave things alone, and slow down, stop, and just pay attention with the heart.

Be Quiet, Hear the Roar

I've been thinking of family, which began with a rare phone call from my Uncle James, my mother's only sibling, now 85, wondering what to do, where to live now that his wife's advanced Alzheimer's has permanently separated them both mentally and geographically. Struggling with health and financial issues, struggling with not knowing, yet facing life with an incredible sense of humor and independence. As a kid I remember him as tall and lean, thick light red hair, an outdoorsy kind of guy like an adult boy scout. For 7 consecutive years he drove from New Orleans and took all of us on extended camping trips to Camp Riverview on the Frio River, not too far from Garner State Park. It was always magical for me, sleeping on cots under an open sky, snorkeling and swimming every day, tirelessly riding the water on our air filled plastic rafts, nursing sunburns, listening to the constant flow of the river and the wind in the sycamores, late evening hunts in the shallows for crayfish. Always my uncle could built a campfire using only one match. I am guilty of all too often dwelling on childhood memories that were wounding--hence needing attention and processing--and forgetting the safe, nurturing, and peaceful moments that are also important collections of one's personal history. Is it me, or is it human nature to want to feel good, happy, joyful, contented, safe...most, if not all the time? My uncle reminds me, yet again, of the importance of learning to find peace with our troubles when they arise. Remembering to ride the breath, like all those countless moments of floating down the Frio, the fast moving shallow rapids, the slow moving calm of the deeper water, the step by step feel of earth and rocks beneath toughened feet.

Yoga training is nearing an end, and I'm glad for that, although I know I will miss the structured learning and growing process I sought, and found, and I'll miss my classmates (two are with child), and most of all, my teacher. It's been an enriching experience on all fronts--deepening my practice, meeting and interacting with new people, paying attention to that which resonates, moving into zones of discomfort, and much more, but in summary, feeling more awakened and alive to life and growing into that, growing into yoga. What I missed is staying home with my partner, and our pets, working in the yard. The accumulated projects will provide for a busy spring spent outdoors, getting my hands dirty, working with plants, painting the unfinished part of the gate and courtyard wall, digging up the bamboo and separating and replanting the lilies. Feeling the sun. Hearing the chimes. Hearing the quiet. Yes, the quiet.

We baked an Angel Food cake yesterday, and will serve it up today covered with sweetened, sliced strawberries and whipped cream in celebration of several birthdays. Little nieces running around the house just being kids, being very noisy, coloring one moment, crying the next. I look forward to it, and then I'll look forward to it being over. Yes, the quiet, but not too much quiet, not for me, not for too long.

I had a brief but wow moment yesterday when I ran into Mary K R, and she wanted to know why I didn't return to the immersion a year or so ago. So in response to her gentle probing I was totally honest and told her I found her to be cold, unloving, detached, and not very friendly! And in saying the words out loud, to her, the truth revealed itself so clearly. I just wasn't ready at that time. I had projected my hypersensitivity on to her, and made up a story which I bought into and acted on by leaving, by not returning. At the time, I think it's what I needed to do as I just wasn't up to that particular struggle and learning process. It was a moment of synchronicity. I hope to learn more from her in the future, if it's in the cards.

The Prevalence of Fear

Lately, as I'm preparing for bed, I hear the haunting call of the owl. In the darkness of predawn I hear the owl again, but this time I hear two owls, engaged in their song of call and response.

Something deep within me stirs, something sacred, mysterious, and slightly foreboding. I wonder if I'm dreaming--each time I fetch my roommate to come and listen, there is only silence. Doubt arises. The sound I hear is deep and guttural, a string of connected multi-syllable vibrations, legato, that float like notes on the wind. It's very much like a chant, a mantra, coming from the darkness of night when the earth has spun us away from the light of the sun.





It's hard to read of the devastation the Australian wildfires have brought to thousands of animals--burnt, scorched, seared, wounded, dehydrated, frantic, panicked, and dying; for most there is nowhere to go. These kinds of disasters make me wonder about the realities of life that are baffling, both in their beauty and in their incomprehensible horror. My two cats have been acting particularly needy of late, vying for a spot on my lap, curling up against me so close that I wonder if something has triggered feelings of insecurity. Both are rescued and adopted from shelters with "no-kill" policies, while thousands of others are euthanized. Is it any wonder that most of us, who strive for some kind of awareness, are often visited by the many faces of fear?




In the Spring 2009 issue of tricycle magazine, Ezra Bayda tells us that by truly getting to know our fears, we begin to break the spell they hold on us. He describes three basic fears: fear of losing safety, fear of aloneness and disconnection, and the fear of feeling unworthy. Within each of these categories he includes just about every fear known to mankind. Bayda tells us that these multitude of fears are not just mental, but are written into the cellular memory of the our bodies, particularly in a small part of the brain called the amygdala. Therefore, he writes, simply knowing our fears on an intellectual level will not free us from the dominion they hold over us. So how do we deal with these fears? We face them head on, we do not run away from them or deny them, we sit with them and see them for what they are. And what are they? Illusions? Most of our fears are not rooted in reality. They are imagined and created. They are stories that our minds spin out like long threads of cotton candy, with thousands of sticky strings that melt away once we touch them. There really is not much substance there, but there's little comfort in knowing that. The recent issue of the Shambhala Sun has a series of articles on fear: Anxiety Soup by Alice Walker, The Fearless Lineage by Carolyn Gimian, Beyond Fear and Hope by Margaret Wheatley. The cover of the magazine invites us to "Smile at Fear".





I'm struggling much more than I'd like with an injured shoulder. I'm learning that I don't know how to align my shoulder properly, and despite all the attention given to this matter, I still don't have it down right--it's all counter-intuitive. The needed muscles are undeveloped. I'm still learning. I've been doing it incorrectly for so long. The physical therapist fusses at me and I tell him to be nicer. Fear creeps in and want to find another therapist, I fear I won't be able to do yoga again, I fear the pain won't go away. I make up all sorts of stories. But I do show up and I do the exercises, and I know my imaginative fears are like a runaway horse on the wind that I try to rein in. It's particularly comforting when I realize I'm not alone. That's only one reason why community is such a potent antidote to fear. Fear is with all of us, and learning to rest in that, to smile at that, is a task we are called on to tackle regularly. I guess that as long as we strive to be steadfast warriors on our paths to find truth we are doing all that we can do. And so that is that.

This most resembles the sound I hear. Click on this only if you have an updated version of Quick Time, otherwise one's computer gets "stuck".

http://www.naturesongs.com/ghow1.wav
Great Horned Owl

The Nonsensical Expressing of Pineapples with a Hoot

We watched a whacked out comedy last night--Pineapple Express--filled with shoot em up pot smoking drug dealing bloody murder and mayhem with car chases and explosions and I was totally laughing my ass off. I really needed that--just crazy, nutty entertainment to let go off all seriousness and be goofy and silly. Comedy makes us laugh at life, at ourselves, at others, at our condition, and I think that holds high healing value. Hasn't it been proven in some scientific lab somewhere that laughter releases some chemical that is healing? At any rate, common sense says laughter is very good for us. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the movie, but it was certainly just what I needed after a weekend long yoga intensive that was both energizing and tiring. I am SO grateful for learning from Mark F how to position my shoulders (Anusara) during asana practice to prevent injury. The head of my right humerus bone has come both up and forward out of its stable position and therefore certain muscles need to be trained and strengthened to bring it all back into proper alignment. This has been bothering me for over 6 months, and gotten progressively worse, so I'm now working with a physical therapist 3x a week. After the long weekend of study and lots of asana practice incorporating the proper alignment of the shoulders, I noticed yesterday morning when I got up that I could feel no pain at all, as if some profound healing had taken place, which is pretty amazing. Recently I've been feeling slight discomfort in my left shoulder as well, which probably means the same thing is going on over there. Last night in bed I could hear the hooting of an owl, not that unusual out here, but very unusual to hear it from inside the house, so I knew the owl was perched nearby, probably doing a call and response with another owl. As I sit here writing, I can still hear the hooting. In most cultures the owl is ambivalent as the symbol of wisdom and darkness/death. Over the years more than just a few yoga teachers have told me to not be so serious; many more have corrected my shoulder position. Obviously there was wisdom and knowing in those words of advice, but I'm not sure I knew how to heed their cautions. Now nature is telling me to be wise with my body or I'm going to injure it, and perhaps I need to lighten up and come out of staying too long in the "darkness" of seriousness and step more often into the light of laughter. Hoot hoot.

Carry the Banner of Love and Acceptance

I watched a powerful and touching documentary the other night--For the Bible Tells Me So.

I wept.

Earlier in the day, after class, I saw Devon and he continued his intense work on my shoulder, then I saw an excellent MD who gave his affirming opinion that I probably don't have a rotator cuff tear but rather tendinitis with some calcification in my upper right shoulder along with some impingement. Prescription: evaluation and physical therapy 3x a week for 8 weeks! (and a cortisone injection if I want one). No painkillers and no anti-inflammatory prescriptions! I like this doctor! I was so excited about his referral to a clinic that specializes in shoulders only to learn they do not accept my primary insurance carrier and therefore my secondary insurance carrier won't cover me at all. Just another Catch 22 in the American system of escalating medical costs and dramatic decreases in insurance payments, hence the epidemic dropping of many insurance carriers, especially Medicare.

So what now? Find a clinic that accepts my insurance, if there is one, get another referral to a different clinic, or work out a payment plan and pay out of pocket. This system is really broken. It's just shocking how many doctors and clinics no longer accept Medicare. What in the world do retired people do if they can't afford to pay out of pocket? (We should all know the answer to that if we simply watch the evening news or know retired people who paid into Social Security and MUST accept Medicare as their primary carrier).

How does this tie in with the documentary? Maybe it doesn't, but clearly the ignorant and uneducated leaders of the influential christian right propagate the totally false notion that the Bible, being the word of god, condemns homosexuality. It is hatred in action, which is rooted in fear, that's been used for centuries to condemn women, Jews, blacks; to justify slavery, to justify concentration camps, to justify condemnation of fellow humans. It's the opposite of love and acceptance. It's selective perception, literalism of a few select passages from the bible yet ignoring all the other passages that are equally absurd when interpreted out of the context of the time, the culture, and the language in which they were written.

"It's okay to have a 5th grade understanding of the bible so long as you are in 5th grade" stated one Biblical scholar. As a result of this preaching of hatred against gays, families are torn apart when they learn of a gay family member. Parents reject their children based on what their church leaders have been telling them--it really is brainwashing at its worse. Gay teens are 5 to 7 times more likely to commit suicide than their peers, and 20 times more likely to attempt suicide. It gets me all riled up, and brings to memory the homophobia I've had to deal with in the past. The homophobia that begins with oneself. The shock and total rejection that this could be happening to me. The painful loneliness and isolation. The excruciating fear, followed by the months of conversion therapy I underwent, thank goodness not with a fundamentalist, but with a misguided Freudian shrink, a Rhodes Scholar, who thought he was doing what was best for a frightened 16 year old who could barely utter a word. To be honest it wasn't so much conversion therapy as it was a means to get me back into high school, back into my home, stop the "incipient delusional formation"and get back into some semblance of normalcy in a typical small town high school filled with people I felt totally alienated from.

Years later, out of the closet and in a long term relationship, I learned how homophobia can be rampant in the workplace, and how it finally, in it's relentless berating and humiliation can bring you about as far down as you'd ever want to go. In a most dramatic exit, like a scene from high drama, I left my workplace on a stretcher, surrounded by medics wheeling me down the long corridors of learning, with throngs of curious onlookers, many of them sympathetic fellow co-workers, watching the scene unfold. Yet another crowd awaited outside, as the ambulance, with sirens screaming, headed for Breckenridge Hospital. I just didn't have the energy to wave at all my fans. :-). Act II, the hospitalizations, the therapy, the consultations with shrinks, social workers, psychologists, tests and more tests, and lawyers. Act III--he's totally nuts, he's so fragile, he brought this on himself, we were rather mean to him, he didn't have a clue how to take care of himself, it's all his parents fault, let's donate 12 months of paid sick leave from the pool! It's Religion! It's the worse of institutional bureaucracy gone awry! What do you expect from a deviant? Let's say he's mentally ill!

If only we can be taught to learn to love and accept ourselves and others as we are, as they are. It sounds so simple, it seems so easy, and in fact it is. But people are taught otherwise by people in positions of authority and the cycle of hatred begins falling like a long row of dominos, gaining momentem, spiraling out of control, and is easily justified because our great leaders told us so.

(As one of Hitler's henchmen said, "If you tell a lie long enough, people will begin to believe it." )

I like to think the same theory applies to telling the truth, and that ultimately it yields far more power. I hope so.

http://www.forthebibletellsmeso.org/