Flying High

Monday morning and back to normal.  Meditation, a little healing practice, making energy drink, gathering recyclables and garbage to drop off on my way to the Y and yoga class.  Then the bank, a couple of other errands in town, buying groceries, and back home for a lunch, nap, maybe a bit of time in the hammock, and yoga class tonight.  Typical Monday.  Except, I'm changing.  Maybe that's just who I am - constantly changing.  My connection to Spirit and all things in Nature is growing by leaps and bounds - thanks in large part to our group meetings on Sunday afternoons and to my increased repeating meditations.  FINALLY, they are becoming habitual and I am becoming eager to do them!  The parasailing photo fits my mood this morning - feel like I am flying high!  That's me and Sam a couple summers ago.

Visions?

I can't believe the week has been so busy I haven't written since Monday!  It has been filled with two hour-long meditations most every day and preparation for being at Omega for two weeks October 11-27 for my final shaman training and pondering the compulsion to continue the Finding Spirit Here Now meetings on Sunday afternoons from 2:30 to 4:30 at the Yogatorium.  We will try it.  More about this later.  For now, I want to let you in on a secret - I have been having delightful visions (that's the only thing I know to call them) nearly every morning just before I come fully awake.  This morning I saw a beautiful tiny heron, I think a Great Blue Heron, lying on a stem, branch of a tree, I think.  Interpreting these sightings is truly educational - using Ted Andrews' Naure Speaks and Animal Speak as reliable sources.  The closer I get to nature and spend time there, extended time, the closer I feel to my True Self.  Now, time for a meditation.

little "i", BIG "I"

A member of our Finding Spirit Here Now group yesterday suggested these words for my turning point:  Spiritual Bankruptcy.  She hit the nail on the head.  I had not before had an explanation since I couldn't really point to a "dark night of the soul" which seems to be an often-used explanation for spiritual awakening.  But, I had spent fifty years "outside the church" and also outside spirituality.   Busy "building my container," as Richard Rohr says in Falling Upward, our group's current wisdom source.   I am so grateful for my awakening, even though I can't truly point to a single event in ordinary time when I was "saved."  For me, awakening is an ongoing process - a journey.  I am working on being saved from my "little i" (ego or false self) and becoming my "big I", True Self.  (Satchidananda's words).  One of the great benefits of a spiritual community like Finding Spirit Here Now is learning from each other.  We are blessed.  You are welcome to join us.

Love - Eliminating Expectations

"Love as though you've never been hurt before."  I mentioned that in my last post.  I want to write about it but I'm stumped.  It seems too  personal.   But here I go.  How many times have I been hurt by loving and losing?  I can remember one which is funny now.  Wasn't at the time, but in retrospect ....Al was a soldier stationed at Fort Jackson in Columbia.  He went AWOL riding his motorcycle to my home and asked me to marry him.  I said "Yes."  The next morning he shipped out to Korea without even letting me know!  Found out from his buddy.  I've never figured that one out.  ......Regardless of all the losses, I am beginning, just beginning, to love more freely - without restrictions or demands or expectations.  That's the hard part, eliminating the expectations.  Where do we get the idea that we need, or even want, love from everyone we meet?  What is love, after all?  If we give it freely does it come back that way?  I'm thinking so.  Then the trick is to give love freely and whatever kind we give we get back?  Are we dancing on a tightrope?  Maybe.  For me,  eliminating the expectations is still the kicker.

Dance as though no one is watching you

Mailed a birthday note to Sydney, my dancing granddaughter with these words:  "Dance as though no one is watching you, love as though you have never been hurt before, sing as though no one can hear you, live as though heaven is on earth"...... at least occasionally.  Just this past week I ran across the words in a shared email that made me laugh out loud:  "What the neighbors think about you is none of your business."  I LOVE THAT!  Today, I shall live as though what the neighbors think is none of my business.  I am dancing as though no one is watching me.    For, in truth, no one is.  Well, the yard man is mowing the grass, but he is surely intent on his work and has no interest in what I'm doing.  I know where my obsession with living  hoping for approval came from - My Mother was forever saying "What will the neighbors think?"  And, she got that instilled in her by her father.  Anyhow, I'm old enough now to know that joy comes from dancing as though no one is watching and today is a good day to dance.  While I dance, I'll contemplate loving as though I've never been hurt before.

New Flower

Ironweed - TTR Roadside

Found a new flower blooming this morning on my walk - just one, but I had to bring it home with me to show you, too.  Finally found it in my book - Ironweed, but I could't decide which one. Anyhow, what a delight to discover it.  There are a very few daisies in bloom, but the climbing butterfly pea is gone now.....Began cleaning out pantry and found a Whole Foods sack with lentils in it stuffed way back behind the bottles of vinegar.  So, cooking them now. ....Still collecting figs and cooking them up couple times a week, and enjoying them on my cereal.  Amazing how sweet they are with no sweetener added, no nothing except enough water to cook them.  Then, the fruit goes into the freezer and the juice goes into my tonic water cocktail in the evenings.  The blender does a great job of turning them into a spread with almond butter on english muffins.  Heard somewhere figs are source of potassium.

Meditation - Drum Circle

Autumn equinox this weekend - celebrate with us beginning Sunday at 7:30 pm with meditation, labyrinth walk and 8:30 fire ceremony, drumming, chanting, etc.   Everyone is welcome!  Meditation time is increasing for me - now up to an hour plus.  It is truly amazing how much more significant the period is now.  In my reading of From the Finite to the Infinite by Swami Muktananda these words about  meditation spoke to me this morning:  "We keep looking for love outside ourselves, and in this constant search for love we become weary and tired.  But when we go within and find love there, our weariness ends and our seeking is fulfilled...........As awareness turns within, more and more bliss begins to arise.  The world within is vast, it is great, it is divine--and through meditation, one gets to know that world." What is surprising to me is that taking more time for meditation seems to make more time to accomplish other tasks.  Somehow, I get more done.  I'm even finding time to knit again.  And, of course, that activity is also meditative when I allow it to be.

Sacred Dance

Richard Rohr - Falling Upward - writes of doing a "survival dance" or a "sacred dance."  I seem to be spending more of my time in a sacred dance each week, but there are times when I find myself submerged in the survival dance until some kind of hunger gnaws at me and I climb out.  It is so much easier to fall into the survival dance mode than to climb up into the sacred one.  And yet that is where real joy is found, the sacred.  Those times when I hear birds singing, see spiders weaving their web, watch hawks fly down and feed on a small animal in the hay field across the Pond, see fish jump or hear a turtle plop into the water from a floating log, a red sassafras leaf on the ground or fallen persimmons and figs, watch geese fly over and honk -  at what?  Then I am dancing on sacred ground - "standing on higher ground", as Barbara Streisand sings.  From this vantage point, life seems holy and I feel whole.  

Rewards of a Simple Life

Center of Labyrinth

Red sassafras three-lobed leaves are on the ground now - other two shapes will fall later, I suppose.  (one or two-lobed, mitten-shaped).  Mother always protected any sassafras tree from getting cut down and I, too, love their colors and different shaped leaves - even on the same branch at times.  One stands just behind my mailbox on the edge of the pasture......This is my second day walking in the opposite direction on my road and both days I filled my plastic grocery bag before I even got to the stop sign!  Still at least one more bag there.   It seems I've found a perpetual opportunity to "walk the Earth softly."  What kind of person throws onto the roadside bottles, cans, styrofoam boxes and cups, cigarette boxes - I didn't even know they made Camels anymore! - and many more pieces of trash for Mother Earth to mulch? When I began this project, I never dreamed it was a lifelong daily endeavor on less than a half-mile stretch of my part of the world.  As I'm climbing in and out of the ditches I often think erroneously I've completed the work when I bag even tiny pieces of styrofoam.  But no, there is always more.  And then, I do what I'm doing now - sit on my porch and watch the surface of the Pond ripple toward the rising sun coming up over the trees and I'm glad I have found a way to do something that makes me feel good.  After all, that's everybody's hope - to feel good, to be happy -  I do and I am.

Fire in the Forest Meditation

Last evening time around a fire in a hole dug in the woods was magical.  All kinds of interesting thoughts arose when studying flames and coals.  Gazing at fire always brings peace to me.  I can't imagine feeling anything else.  Flames seem to say "we're sending your messages to the Universe" and coals provide a kind of reassurance that all is well.  I am at peace with the world.  It was difficult to leave but as darkness fell, making my way out of the woods was a bit tricky.  There are many stump holes left behind by trees that have died and dissolved back into Mother Earth.  There are spider webs, occasional fragments of barbed wire left over from very old fences, and many sticks, briers, vines, rotting tree trunks, and root balls to make my way around.  Somehow all reminiscent of life's obstacles.  And finally the clearing is reached, a few stars have showed up, the moon has peeked over the tree tops, and I am back in the ordinary world.  But a different person has come home.  Each fire changes me, helps me grow closer to my true Self.  Time for my walk.

Stone Solicitation

Labyrinth at the Yogatorium

A new pickup load of stones added to the labyrinth now beginning to define the outside ring.  Still more to go, as you can see two lines without stones and several lines incomplete.  Calling all friends to bring a stone and place yours in the labyrinth.  Small ones find their place but big ones "more better" as we say in our family.  The labyrinth is always available for your walking so come on out anytime you need a solitary soul listening session. Join others for a very special time coming up September 22 (Autumn Equinox) with meditation and labyrinth walk beginning at 7:30 and at 8:30 drumming and  ceremony at the fire ring.  Call Jaquie at 506-4063 for more info.

Osage Orange

Osage Orange

On my walk this morning I picked up this osage orange.   I doubt that many of you have ever seen one. It is a small example - about 3 inches in diameter. They often grow to 5 or 6 inches.  Thought you might enjoy seeing this interesting fruit.  The trees were often planted as fence rows since the branches have stiff thorns and the wood is very strong - yellow, often used by indians for bows.  I suspect this one was part of a fence row at one time.  Squirrels eat the seeds.  Each "bump" contains a seed.  Just a brief lesson about a tree from an old forester.......  I walk in my old sweatshirt - front side says "Old Foresters never die" the back "They just pine away."  Corny, huh?

Look inside

Sara

Here is my latest wisdom teaching - from Rumi:
There is a force within which gives you life
- seek that.
In your body lies a priceless gem
- seek that.
O wandering soul,
if you want to find the greatest treasure
don't look outside,
Look inside, and seek that."

Meditation Makes Time

An early rise this morning gives me a bit more darkness so can't trash walk yet.  Had a nice fire last evening and sent spirit arrows with new intentions.  Also a second day of very long meditations.  Can't believe how little the two hours meditating does NOT affect "how much I get done".  In fact, I seem to get more done than usual and I don't meditate.  How can that be?  At any rate, I plan another repeat today.    Yoga classes last night were great - new people keep showing up!  My appeals to Spirit are getting heard.  I am still focused on reaching as many as I can with the yoga message - that of living a life of healthy body, mind, AND spirit.  Time to stretch my legs and see what shows up on the side of the road this beautiful morning.

Hi-Tech and Figs

Figs at the Pond

Technology is so amazing!  I'm actually listening to one of my favorite vocalists on I-tunes while I type this post.  I just learned how to do that this morning.  Last night I watched a Netflix movie on the laptop.  Also listened to an Indian guru chant while I meditated on the porch before daylight!  I'm beginning to feel joined at the hip with my MacBook Pro.  So, I guess I'm coming closer to joining the rest of humanity.  At least in this regard. For the first time, I even contacted Apple customer service yesterday when it locked up and spent an hour on the speaker phone with the guy going through the process of eliminating a virus, etc. etc. etc.  Fortunately he was a southerner (not an Indian) so I could understand him relatively well - even chatted via computer with him after it was fixed!   I truly don't miss my tv anymore - except in a very pleasant way.  The energy in my home has changed perceptibly - at least perceived by me.  .......The latest fun thing at the Pond - I'm "putting up" figs!  As simple as cooking  them in a bit of well water a while and then putting them into jars with lots of room and sticking them in the freezer!  YUMMY!