The Work of Love
My soul is rising through the anger and fear, up to the love that holds everyone so dear…… Snatam Kaur Whenever I drop inside for guidance about how to be and what to do about the state of the world, I get the same messages. Over and over again I hear, Stay close to God, and, Do your work. I’m jolted each time. It’s like being yanked back to center. It’s both embarrassing and comforting, and, it feels completely right. But why jolted and yanked? Because, as much as I might understand and comply with the pulse of my life, I continue to stray from my soul’s assignment sometimes. I continue to be seduced by conditioned ways of thinking and traditional ideas about relationships and forms for social change. Why embarrassing? Because, you’d think by now I would have fully embraced my soul’s mission here. I’m still reticent to share from the depths of my being that which is true beyond measure. Simply stated, that would be how much I love the world and all the beings in it. Part of me still wants to fit in to the over-personalized, competitive, soul-denying culture in which each of us struggles to survive. It’s a lot better than it used to be, but there’s still a ways to go. And yes, comforting and completely right. I’ve been following the rungs of the ladder of love and devotion all my life. It’s just that in the early years I didn’t know it, and now I occasionally lose my way. The comfort of the reminders from Deep Intuition strengthen my resolve. My perspective has grown and deepened as Spirit cleverly and often breathtakingly reveals itself to me. I’m now facing into an acceleration of intent and mission, the upping of the ante if you will . My sense is that God, the All, the Oneness, wants more of me. It wants me to trust in a deeper way. It’s taking me into new territory. I strongly sense this, and it’s compelling. The push comes from within. Luckily, Love is in charge, not me. My task is to fine tune my ability to follow inner guidance. Learn to take exceptional care of myself so that I’m always available when called upon to do the work of Love. Listen carefully and notice opportunities to contribute to the sweetening of the atmosphere for the beings I encounter. Resist cultural seductions and set aside conditioned concerns, knowing they are false and unnecessary. Know that true change comes with being with the way things are. Explore what comes without capitulating to anger and fear. Let myself be held by Love. As synchronicity would have it, last night, after an afternoon of writing all of the above, I clicked on a conversation on batgap.com between host, Rick Archer, and Terry Patten. Terry spoke eloquently about how to bring heart to the center of social activism. He’s put out a call with his new book, for “spiritual people” and anyone else to fully grasp the us-ness of the global crisis, and to recognize the immediacy of the moment and engage with others in heart based conversation and action in the political arena. In other words, set aside anger and fear, and lead with love. Have a strong spiritual practice and register people to vote! Then, as if that wasn’t enough, this morning, I came upon an audio of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preaching to his people about the power of love and how to love your enemies. It’s the sermon he gave on November 15, 1957 from which has been extrapolated the famous phrase, Darkness...
Read MoreMother Moon Supermoon
Mother Moon is drifting high Silent in the starry sky Feel the shadow of her eye Moon is on the rise. — Mother Moon chant* The full moon tonight is called a supermoon. Evidently, there will be two of them in this first month of our very new year. It’s heartening because it feels like the heralding of a turn for the better. 2017 has been tough for a lot of us and we could use some relief from the chaos and destructiveness of our world. Mother Moon’s power is subtle yet strong. It’s beautiful. She lights the night sky like a giant lamp, pulls on the oceans to create tides, and calls to us to awaken to ourselves. She influences the healthy growth of plants according to many gardeners. I have a personal relationship with the moon. I love her and look to her to help me through difficult times. She reassures me and reminds me that everything will be alright and to stay present with the way things are. She sits up there in the heavens looking beautiful and wise, and sometimes that’s enough. Many of my interactions with her have been spontaneous and surprising. They are always uplifting and empowering. There was the day I was feeling sorry for myself and feeling like no one understood where I was coming from no matter how much I explained myself. I strolled along feeling a little sad and lonely. It was morning in the wilderness a number of years ago, and the moon was on her way to setting in the day bright sky. It can be a little startling to see the moon in daylight, and I hadn’t realized she was there. I just happened to glance upwards. Moon shrugged her lunar shoulders and communicated gently and matter of factly. “I’m the only moon,” she said, “and it’s okay.” Oh. My God. Thank you, I responded, breathlessly. Thank you so much. So obviously right on. I certainly wouldn’t dream of wanting the moon to be different from the way she is. I adore her uniqueness, so perhaps I could appreciate my own as well. No reason to feel bad because you’re the only one like you. In other words, it’s okay to be just me and not necessarily understood by anyone else. My loneliness and sadness faded. Mother Moon’s message to me that morning was visceral. It bypassed my mind and went straight to my heart. It instilled the kind of knowing that resides in the tissues of the body and floats along in a sea of humility. It feels so true and right that all you can do is relax into the truth of it. There’s nothing intellectual about it and so it requires hardly any thinking. It is experienced as a gift. Tonight we will be treated to a full moon, a supermoon. May you be graced by the power and promise of Mother Moon. I wish you good tidings and a Happy New Year full of love and peace. *an arrangement of my Mother Moon chant was recorded by Sound Circle and can be purchased here....
Read MoreNot A Matter of Belief
Spirituality is not a matter of belief. It is a matter of experience. It’s experience that lights the way, guided by intuition and the forces of the universe. A compelling urge carries us along and points us in one direction or another. It’s not about what we think, although thoughts play a role in the delivery of information. If anything, belief seems to get in the way of spirituality. Belief creates disbelief, which can block receptivity, which is the key to full experience. Staying open to my experience allows my perceptions to form around what is actually happening rather than what I believe could or should be happening. It gives me the freedom to directly encounter the mysteries of life. It allows me to not know and not understand, which is ultimately liberating because it lets me simply be with whatever is happening. Staying open creates opportunities for profound humility to enter the picture. This is turn fosters the ability to continue to open to what might want to be revealed. Truth feeds on more truth, just as peace creates more peace. Joy shows up, too, and though it is merely a byproduct of the process, it pervades the field and seductively creates more openness. This morning is a perfect example. I started out in an utterly foul mood, having had my sleep repeatedly interrupted by my old cat. Yet, I lit the candles, sat down in my chair, and was taken over immediately by openness, connectivity, and a flow of information. Yes, I’m making myself available, but that’s the extent of any doing on my part. And, even the making myself available part doesn’t feel like me doing anything, but rather like life experiencing itself. It really does feel like life experiencing itself. The practices have established themselves. There’s a flow and I’m in it. The craziness with the cat is in it, too, it’s just not the most pleasurable part. Being disruptive, annoying, exasperating, frustrating, and infuriating doesn’t make it any less a part of the flow. Staying open to the flow of experience makes life far more interesting and enjoyable. Staying open reduces suffering to more appropriate proportions. It allows for more accurate perspectives and possibilities for healing. It creates peace even in the midst of chaos. What we call spirituality is actually the complex flow of life through all levels of reality. Whatever names and labels we put on it are attempts to capture the uncapturable. There’s nothing wrong with all the words and concepts, but it’s important to remember that that’s what they are. The deep knowing that comes from experiencing different levels is a felt sense you can feel in your bones and also in your heart, the center of your chest. Breathe into the center of the chest, relax, and let reality reveal itself. It’s unlikely you’ll be...
Read MoreMorning Practice
Every morning heart and habit take me to a chair in my study where I can relax and simply be with whatever is arising in the moment. It’s a time of peace and opening, even or maybe especially when my mind is roiled by problems it thinks it needs to solve. Once the candles on my altar have been lit and I’ve taken a few slow easy deep breaths, I am usually able to sink into just being there. A large cup of nettle leaf tea, a string of prayer beads, and my journal are my only companions. Sometimes my body hurts with one or another of its myriad stresses and strains. I’ve learned that if I move a little and stretch before sitting down, I can find relief and balance. Sitting becomes easier then. It’s my very own morning yoga, a series of movements from my dance training, physical therapy exercises, and a bit of study of yogic asanas. I do what feels right in the moment and what I have learned works well for my muscles and joints. Added to this is the awareness that the sun is rising into a new day. A central practice for me is what I’ve come to call meditative writing. It’s a form of journal writing and is always a part of my morning practice. I write in a medium sized notebook with blank pages (no lines). It’s a well-made bound book, the kind ostensibly used by Ernest Hemingway and other famous writers. I love the feel of it, and the unlined pages give me the freedom to record whatever comes to me in whatever way I like. I note the day, date, and time. If it happens to be the birthday of someone close to me, I note that and send them a silent wish for happiness. If I’m engaged with a formal mantra sadhana, I note the number of the day of that. There’s a flow to it all and to any writing that follows. Any subject, thought, or feeling is eligible for the page. I’ve learned not to edit or censor what comes, but simply to write it down. Even if it’s upsetting. Even if I’m not sure what it means. Even if it seems like it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Meditative writing gives voice to an intuitive stream of consciousness, a heart stream if you will. It isn’t served by the rational, analytic side of my brain. It comes from more of a whole body brain, the place that occasionally produces songs and poems. The intuitive stream of consciousness is in touch with timeless realms of existence. It is actively receptive and open, which allows it to form questions and receive answers that might not otherwise be accessible. It advises gently and wisely and occasionally firmly. It opens to a deep joy of being, even when it makes me cry. Pauses occur where I am dropped more deeply into meditation. Breath slows or asserts itself boldly; there are fewer thoughts. I’ve learned to go with the flow of this, letting go into nothingness, relaxing and resting, letting the natural rhythm of the stream guide my mind. Eventually I “come back” to the sitting and the writing. Or, I sense that I’m done for that time and I get up and go on with my day. In these challenging times, it’s easy to feel scattered, ungrounded, disconnected, and overwhelmed. A morning practice strengthens and aligns you from within and can have a powerful corrective impact on your state of mind and ability to function. It can empower...
Read MoreMoving Forward Into the New (and Trusting)
The longer I live, the more I learn the beauty of each being’s way of navigating life’s changes and the spiritual openings that come to magnify and deepen each life. How are you doing with the choices and changes life is bringing to you? Isn’t it amazing how caught up we are in the continuous movement of the Forces? For many of us here in Colorado, it’s been all about the Great Flood of 2013. We’re still recovering from the powerful waters that moved through our area in the form of the thousand year rains and the 100 year flood. For a while it was hard to think about anything else. But life reasserts itself and moves on regardless of shocking events and traumas. It doesn’t allow us to stay any one place very long, but rather, commands us to continue on, receive healing, and apply the lessons we are learning from our experience. Life asks us to trust even when we feel like everything is going wrong. I wrote a guest blog post about this recently. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here. The essay is also on my counseling website here. The underlying theme of my book, Life Choices, is the importance of exploring and understanding how life on Earth really works. Choices made by women and men about sex and pregnancy are part of that, but the overarching teaching of abortion and its related issues is the way life is in relationship with itself through birth, death, and everything in between, and how individual conscious awareness comes into being through experience. I can’t think of anything more important than learning how to trust. It’s almost impossible to navigate the twists and turns of our lives if we don’t. Trust often grows from surviving challenging experiences. Our experiences are tailor made to allow us to become more conscious and aware on all levels. As we open to what our experiences have to teach us we become more trusting. I’m speaking of deep trust here, the kind of trust we have in the changing of the seasons and the rising of the sun. Moving forward into the new, I have created a workshop called Trust the Sacred-Trust Yourself. It will debut on Saturday, December 7 in Boulder at Holo Being, LLC as a HoloLive! production. You can find more information here. You can sign up here. I am excited about this new form because it brings together the teachings that I share with private clients and out on the land during the annual vision quest trip. Learning to trust the way of things gives us a key to connection with ourselves, with each other, with earth, with sky, and with the divine. ...
Read MoreGratitude Then and Now for the People and the Teachings
I want to share with you my gratitude for some wonderful people and their work in the world. Here is a piece of writing that is both playful and serious thanking NASA (yes, that NASA) for using the word abort correctly. Accolades to Peg Johnston for this and other articles and for her ongoing steadiness in advocating for the health rights and empowerment of women. I’ve received tremendous support from Peg for the message I’m bringing through in Life Choices. She is someone who knows how to welcome everyone into the circle of care. Thank you, Peg! Charlotte Taft is a brave leader in feminist thought. She and I are of the same generation and share a depth of understanding and love for the emergence of women’s consciousness world wide. Thank you, Charlotte, for your perseverance and leadership, and your long term personal support for me in the writing of my book. When I hear the word Texas my mind goes immediately to Amy Hagstrom Miller. Amy has been in the news a lot lately because she is the founder and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, a national provider of abortion services that began in Austin, Texas in 2003. While I don’t know Amy personally, I want to thank her for being strong and clear during the grueling fight in the Texas state legislature over abortion rights. She is an inspiration for all of us and especially for younger women looking to be part of the movement. There is an incredible group of people who put out “the newsjournal of Catholic opinion,” aptly named Conscience. The group is Catholics for Choice. The journal is published three times a year. I’ve been aware of it since the 1980’s and it has kept me informed and uplifted through its progressive, thought empowering news and opinion. Thank you, Conscience! I’m sure you’ve noticed how the current political climate in the United States is becoming increasingly hostile to providers of legal abortion. I am deeply impressed by the courage and fortitude of those who are isolated in states like Mississippi and North Dakota. Unfortunately, it continues to get worse in many places. Not so in Boulder. Our community continues to be solidly supportive. A few weeks ago, I was invited to attend a board meeting of Women’s Health here in town. Susan Levy, the center’s director, asked me to come to tell the story of the founding of the then Boulder Valley Clinic in 1973. Most of the current board members did not know the history or how it was at the beginning. There will be a 40th anniversary celebration this fall. Time is moving along! Speaking of time, it feels like I am entering a new period in my life. I’m approaching 70 and feeling an even greater depth of connection to All Life both personally and professionally. I feel it as a writer and a healer, but also simply as a person living on this Earth. I am lucky to be blessed with good health and a widening community of friends and colleagues. The Quest work I do (wilderness rites of passage for women) seems intent on continuing probably until I’m unable to walk the land anymore(!). Deep gratitude for this. The work in wild nature is truly the living edge of reality consciousness. Kudos to those who found the courage to join us for our most recent 9 day journey in July and also those who have come in past years. My only wish is that more people would avail themselves of the experience. By the way, dear activists and health care workers, this sort of retreat could be a great renewal...
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