mnemosyne's well

equinox comes, and i return from the underworld.

2010-03-19T17:31:00.000-07:00

in the mythology of my name, this is the time when i crest the surface of the earth again from a long journey beneath her tender skin. i have again spent the winter in the depths of the crucible, being stripped of power and re-dressing myself in truth so that i can emerge as a gift of life and creation, bring the buds out from their protective limbs and shower this earthly realm with the light of fertility once more.
i might change my name, take a load off for a while. but who knows? maybe i'm just destined for this madness of intensity. i must like it, anyway - i keep grooming it from the wild garden of potential.

i know why.

i hunger for purity. for purity of my spirit and my mind. for purity of intention on this earth where even my tribe feels like a microcosmic re-hashing of the bigger melo-drama of the "world" as it's unfolding and collapsing out there. we're going to flourish, but we're still a bunch of puppies in a box, crawling all over each other trying to get to the nipple for a drink.
an ideal exists in my spirit that tells me that my tireless quest for a free-form truth-in-communion in the human realm is a worthy quest. that there is yet a golden kiss at the rainbows end and my horse has yet the will for the journey over the cliffs edge. it tells me that i don't have to sign up for a weekend-long processing workshop of neo-tribal dialectically specific inter-personal soul searching to find it (though sometimes i love those weekends, too, expensive and self-referential as they are). and every so often, as i wander the ferocious ludicrous of this third dimension i find it laying on the ground in front of me, glimmering it's gold-nugget glimmer on the pavement.

i had the curious gift of a journey cross-country in the winters last raging storm last week. it was insane - it's been a couple of years since i spent so many hours breathing deaths breath through a kiss that, gratefully, never landed. it didn't land in my body last time, either, and i've known it every time it comes as the close eye of god scrutinizing the nature of my soul and the progress of my work in this incarnation. i had an opportunity to remember what a friend of mine told me about how prey animals deal with the shock of being hunted if they survive - while the hunt is on, they get clear and do whatever they can to escape. then when they arrive somewhere in safety, they completely freak out to discharge their nervous system. then they get on with their lives. i think if not for the story telling nature of the mind, my journey would have played out much the same. peril, navigation, freak out, sleep, get on with it. as it stands, i'm currently resting in an attic in the burbs of pennsylvania, allowing my whole spirit to come back into communion in one place and re-assuring my body that it's okay for it to trust that my minds decisions are not solely an act of insanity and that we can make the journey home all in one piece.

and i found incredible things in this journey. that people are eager to help each other, and awaiting no more than an invitation to do it. that people are living as well as they can coming from and through a system that is so incredibly well designed to crush the average spirit that it amazes me how many of us not only survive, but flourish. that god will crush me with the most insane test, but soothe my ravaged soul with constant reminders of support, love and security all the while, if only i will keep on 'til the end and let the whole lesson play itself out.

i came to the edges of my capacity in new ways this winter. in a moment when what i really, truly needed was deep, silent rest, a dear friend of mine discovered cancer in her belly and asked if i would help her with her journey. knowing nothing, i said yes, and embarked on a crash course in service. from the position where i started - only child, loner, gypsy, self-employed and generally self-indulged - it was a radical shift in reality on all levels. what does it mean to show up for someone else? what does it mean to give, to really give? in those six weeks, i just barely began to know. and the knowing is flourishing within me. then i still needed that rest and the next thing that came to me was the vine and the ladder, to clean out the empty well and then replenish it with a fresh spring. then came this mission. now, four months later, i am finally resting.

i don't claim to know what has happened within me over these last months. only that profound change has occurred. the knowing will express itself as time unfolds around me, new relations arise and offer themselves for experience and i respond to them perhaps differently than i would have before. it is the responding that illustrates the transformation in my reality. i learn by continuing to experience, and by studying how i choose, and choose differently. i have a new appreciation for myself in the world, and if nothing else, this winter needed to happen for that. i have a mission here, and a path to follow. it is time for the steps that fall on it to be assured and solid in all the dimensions. i cannot live forever in the dream world, this much i now know, and for that i am grateful.

so i return. and the first thing that i have done in my emergence is lay deeply into the ground, wet and fertile as it is, breathe deeply of the fecund eros of it's eagerness for life, and relinquish the electricity of the experience to her skin. i am finally smiling again, tenderly as i may. i am finally peaceful again, in my solitude. from this, i know i can walk with steady steps forward into the rising sun, singing the love songs of creation to the birds who taught them to me in death time.

seeded for something

2009-12-26T18:12:00.000-08:00

brilliantly a half-moon lights the snow covered ground in blue
and the quiet winds of the high desert mountains are clarifying in that way that only sub-zero can be
there's a special beauty to a night tending the fire
nursing the tea-cup
and learning beautiful songs from cultures which i have never seen in this life
but whose tones and topographies i know in my bones

we have shifted on our axis again and the day lasted a light kiss longer
than the ones before
the arbitrary "5:30" of tonight san that brilliant cobalt still fading into the star-studded black
where yesterday it was "an hour" earlier.

i wouldn't know the difference for the clock
but i know the quickening of my blood towards the sun
and the emergence of my spirit from it's shell

i still yearn for the cave
but not in pain
for the pleasure
of simplicity.

this life is such an awesome and strange experience
of mediating the relationship between the terrestrial and the transcendent
they are the threads from which life is woven into a beautiful blanket
that becomes the heirloom passed in mythology
to the coming ones
and offered as an homage
to the ones already gone
it is the blanket i fold before the altar
to kneel on in prayer
it is the blanket i wrap this body in at night
for dreaming
it is the blanket that shelters me from the wind
the cold
the sun
and loneliness

i know i am god
i know i am beauty
i know i am horrible
i love it all
because i am the universe unfolding
dancing its miraculous dance with itself.

and none of it could be without my magic
and yours
through the window i hear coyote howling
and i hear them scatter as my feet touch the ground
they tease me
remembering what i have yet to learn
they remember for me
because we are one

the only reason the great glory of unity delineated
was to relate.

so here we go.

lift the anchor

2009-12-20T11:23:00.000-08:00

i go to the well
draw up from its depths a blessd cup of rememberance
and pour its crystaline beauty into my carved cup
so that i may drink deep these replenishing waters
and be healed

i am well
i am wonder-filled
but i am not quite whole.
i feel that because i have touched god within
and i know what free love is, how it feels and that it's not always here
i have called back so much of my scattered soul
from the winds that have spread it far and wide
i have placed it all on a special altar that ebbs and flows into and out of this world
i have begun to sew it back together

and i am still sewing

these are new threads that i bind my being with now
and there are new parts
ancient
quarried from the same spirit land as the self that i have travelled thus far with
but shining differently

i giggle over these crystals like a child
or a crow
i am both

the aeon.

this world is a horrible wonder of beauty
and i am working to re-wire myself so that i can hold all of this dissonance
serve and relish
be angry without being destroyed
be joyous in full wisdom
find my teacher and streamline my education
so that i can become what i am in time for it's application

is every life this strange and wonderful?

i'm here in the world outside again.
you know what i mean. or you don't. that's fine.
i'm in council with the "rest" of creation, serving with the brilliance of my love-heart
and all my tools are to test now
and even this, just barely.
we ain't seen nothin' yet.
i had said, bring it on. i meant it when i said it.
now i say, wait just a moment. the moon is so heavy in me and my heart is learning a new language.
we're quick, but not immediate.
i just want to see the wolves before the wheel turns towards the underworld.
for just a while i want to live with them.
then i can live or die in peace.

so i set down my comforts now
and go to their homes
this human world is a second home for me.
and my first home
is an unknown terrain
whose contours call me in dreams

i am coming.
i am coming.
it may be a minute.
but i am coming.

drawing up

2009-12-18T20:28:00.000-08:00

drinking from the crystal cup of remembering
i am heaving against a long life of dissociation
the survival strategy of a savagely empathic child
working to reconnect the circuits of my heart and consciousness
so that the world
in all it's glory and horror
can flood in
and i can answer the calls that cry through my cells
with a true motion.

it's been a while.

i used to be awake in a way
of rage
in a way of anger and hatred
blame and poison
the love that had borne through the womb with me
was dissolved in a dejected sadness
by an awareness
that my youth could not cradle in options
and i painted my hardened shell with flat black and toxic red
daring anything to touch me
biting what did
though when i laid into the arms of love
i would lay so heavy and hard
that they would almost break
and need, to care for themselves,
eventually
to lay me down

and i would be broken again.

and when i had finally smashed all that life had offered to me
in a vituperative, impotent, self-righteous and lost rage
i sat in the wreckage
weeping
before i cast myself out to sea
looking for death to take me
or for life to breathe again within me.

yes.

i died.
and i rested in the other worlds of fusion
then i dreamt a new dream
and set forth to re-emerge into life.
i cooked and cultivated in the womb
and was born

and now i am me
a miraculous child of phenomenal wisdom
audacious
a bit naieve
a bit brilliant
a bit uncertain
and a bit hungry

at the threshold again
and wondering
but now i know not to be powered by thinking
or the workings of the mind
but rather
to be powered by the love of the heart
to be gracious with my pace and persistent with my considerations
until the fruit of their beauty can reveal itself to me
and i can walk a path laid out for my feet alone through these woods that i know so well.

reconnect the circuits
and let the passions of the world direct me towards my station in their complexity
how is the wisdom that i carry best employed in the world?
where can i best be of service, thriving and flourishing for the benefit of all?
how do i serve my wolf kin with the gifts of my dance and my voice?
how do i serve in shifting the consciousness of my human family so that they remember to love the earth
to love each other,
to love themselves?
this already i do, but in a one-on-one way which i love
but which i feel is not enough in this moment.
there is more
there is more
there is more
now is the time

time to go to the silence of the mountain.
to know in remembering
what the soul has coded itself to accomplish in this life.

silence. stillness. solitude.

yes.

i am born again.

moon bombing

2009-10-08T23:33:00.001-07:00

tomorow morning at 6:15 a.m. (09/09/09), nasa will launch rockets from
florida aimed to crash into the moon. they're "looking for water".
now, why they don't take all the money and other resources that this
ridiculous mission will require and direct them towards taking care of
the water here on our own planet, infinite amounts of speculation
could be directed towards. scientists in those positions seem to have
a fetish for unreasonable endeavors that cost a lot of money that
could easily be used for obviously better things.
but i'm spreading the word as it has come to me in the hopes that who
cares about it will set their hearts, minds and voices towards it in
prayer and whatever other impulse passes through the vessel of you.
if you are called to raise your voice in dissent, do it. to raise
your heart in prayer, do it. to raise consciousness around you in
awareness, do it.
i don't get it. i don't get humanity, i don't get science, i don't
get how such an idea could pass through all the minds it had to pass
through to come to fruition in this way. it is an act of contempt of
the most audacious order that people would do such a thing as bomb the
moon. it's an act of power whose basis is in arrogance disguised as
progress.

native americans pray a lot for forgiveness from creator for having
strayed so far from the true path, and for having heaped such contempt
upon the creation of which we are one aspect. i don't think that
creator is something out there - creator is the self that knows the
truth of being in beauty and cries every time we turn away from it in
fear, ignorance or arrogance. when we disrespect nature, disrespect
each other, disrespect the awesome potential of our experience by
being ridiculous in ways such as these, we are beating down the
eternal wisdom and innocence within us that shines as a star of love.
we are telling our own selves that we don't matter, and that our
beauty is irrelevant. it is true that everything that we do to the
web we do to ourselves, for the creator is the created, ad infinitum.
there is no other. that's not an idea, it's truth.

how miraculous would this reality be if we lived as if that were so?
begin.

2009-10-01T23:15:00.001-07:00

night flows through the body

a river cascading in the depths of a dream lost to time

but remembered in space

given here to the realms of truth

held close to the bosom of creation in a protection that does not exclude

only filters

i am a child

naked in the eye of the sky

clothed in the wisdom of ages

offered without temperature to a golden dawn

did i know myself before you remembered me?

i only smell because the earth musks at my lust for her

we are symbiotic, her scent for my glands

this is the crafting of space for content

of content for context

of love for pain

each polarity is a gift for its opposite

each breath is a love for it's exhalation

dream me awake, sweet forever

i am surrendered into your wisdom

bedside wonderings

2009-08-30T11:34:00.000-07:00

the summer sun is slanting now into the horizon more deeply, the breathy sigh of the frolicking lover resting a little more deeply into the curves of the beloveds arms. we are all settling towards the internal now, though we may yet to know it. august draws to a close with the fanfare of a lazy month, waving a noisemaker, but slowly. or perhaps that's just me, hazy as i am with these weeks of hashish and lovers.

i'm okay with that.

but aeray asked me yesterday, as we were in our deep sister drop-in, what are all these powerful men in my life about? and i've thought about that a lot lately, being and observing myself in relation to them. they are about so much, things i can see and things i can't, things that i know and ways that are inscrutable and mysterious, yet to be revealed. kings and emperors, and i the eternal priestess. it seems so much of this journey is my body and where it lays with whom, but there is more to be revealed, not the least to me.

that's at least an aspect of the crux with these epic men - the danger of suffusing into their journeys, and the invitation to fully actualize my own. they are so powerful! they have done so much! they have molded the world with their will, by the energy of their fires, and their potency is a gift to me, to support my own becoming. but i am such a kitty. i just like the potency, i'd lay there in it all day. but no, there is stuff to do, my stuff. and now the time to do it.

so that's been the question for me these past two days as i've extracted my clarity consciousness from my indulgent transdimensionality - what am i here to do? i'm not asking in the way of not being clear about that, but in the way of noticing how comfortably and easily i wander from my own actualization into the beds of beauties. i'm so venus.

album.

ritual.

lovesong project.

money.

art.

dance.

laughter.

support mama.

serve reality.

there, once more.

for the eyes of all

and the souls of me.

love love love

eye

illumine

2009-08-26T12:39:00.001-07:00

i came to the incubation castle, this white shrine in the oak groves of ancient magic, with my heart in my hands as a brilliant gemstone, polished by years, glimmering magic, forged by fire, indestructible. i am one with the essence of all creation, for all creation is the essential one, no aye nada otra. perfection. the gifts of my anguish have been an ellucidation of my joys so translucent, opalescent, so vast in their boddhi universal tonality, that i revel and soar in this newly dawned sky as a raptor of ten thousand wings, brushing clear the stories of time with my grace. and for this, to the source i may come purified. i am renewed, the vestal virgin whose body is the principle of eternal generation. i am the temple and the priestess. we are the night sky in which all the stars may dance. gallaxies are woven in the spirals carved by my hands flowing in the open space of being, the universal song is the dance of my purity. sung through me, for me, with me, the symphonic of creation in love with its own art. and each are one note in the symphony. all the notes must sing if the symphony is to be full. the only silence is artistic silence, woven into the fabric of the creation by intent of grace. there is no hiding unless it is ones part to hide. all the devils will out to play round the fire this night, and the boughs of ancient trees will whip with mad abandon in the cleansing wind of god's laughter, breaking the starlight into grand patterns as it filters down through the boughs to the wondering eyes of the wild creatures. is it really that mythic? yes. your body in my arms is the folding of great rivers into my open heart, the hearth on which i will set your glass and pour into it my essence. amrita, the gift. drink from me, for i am the fountain. into this union i dive as that great shining raptor, sinewy through the open air, intent. it is the joyous plunge into silky emerald waves of the caress of renewal consciousness. we are each the fountain of eternal life, the tree of life, the garden of eden. we must feast on each others fruit to fulfill the vision of original delineation. for why to separate from eternity if not for the pleasure of communion? in all these ways, we serve. how we commune is a constant choice of attenuation. what am i creating by this communion? what am i writing into the akashic records by this choice? revel in all choices. wisdom is attention. this is freedom

essential wisdom

2009-08-17T16:26:00.000-07:00

there is no "out there"

or "in here".

there only Is.

the deciding factor is me.

becoming

2009-08-10T15:42:00.000-07:00

so here i am, sitting in a coffee shop in weaverville, california, on a bright and hot monday afternoon, sipping a cappuccino and eating chocolate after having come out of the latest faery magic forest zone to take me in for a night.

no seriously, i was where? the land is so rich for me here, it blows me open as a burst of light cracked the shell of creation and pushed everything that exists into the ethers, making "matter" and "space". i'm five hours from san francisco and five hours from the coast, deep in the tall pines and steep angles of the shasta-trinity national forest. i lived here through the winter with my lover, and haven't been here since march, but whoa. it's amazing to be back. the time that i spent here before was some of the most activated, clear, potent time of purifying the filter and shining the light of my life. i was studying, making love and practicing. all of these things being deep passions in my life, they all flowed into the magnificent in their incarnation, but even still, an essential gelling was not there. that specific, special something that tunes something from the pretty to the gorgeous. that tuning has been singing and singing in my reality evermore since having come to this place (indeed, it is the progression of years, of the whole stretch of my life). now that i am returned with a new, independent invitation and therefore a grounded empowerment in my place here, the whole symphony is singing. i am no longer here on the invitation of a mercurial love situation, i am here at the invitation of the land itself, of its stewards, and the invitation is in the vein of stewardship. there is somewhere with a place for me, and it has called me specifically home in the brightest and clearest way.

so we see. there is much to being here in this land, and i am experiencing something equally interesting playing out over time in this era of my experience.

i must stay on the move. i must remain in this wondrous tension between the deeply rootedness of being-in-place and the absolute autonomy of being-in-all-places. this is a time for dropping in deeply with the warrior allies and forging our bonds on the brown grit of the land, the soft embrace of leaves and the gentle healing song of birds and wind in ancient trees. the whole world is opening the golden clamshell to me, and all i have to do to enjoy the richness of it is receive it with open hands, light feet and a soft and gracious spirit.

i'm so glad i love my car. we will be spending quite a lot more time together than i had thought.

the kin are emerging from the sea of faces that is this world in which i move. sitting with my new brother this morning, i was able to so fully embrace the beauty of his immersion in the world through the lens of our polarized ways - he is alchemizing immersed, and i am alchemizing in the spirit realms. it was amazing to experience, sitting across a table from each other feeling the whole scope of archetype stretched out and activated between the pillars that we grounded at the extremities of the energetic. what a trip, this journey of living between realms of existence. the spirit is so close on that land, on this land, in this forest... a dragonfly landed on my fingertip as i stretched my wet hand up towards the sun beside the mystical immersion sanctuary this morning. a hawk landed on the bough above my head just as i opened my eyes on the spot this morning. she sat there, beholding me with her tail twitching and her head moving around as if to gather different perspectives on my auric field. yesterday, first witting with the sacred bath, the recently gifted song of power flowed through me so mercilessly, so joyously, i trembled for an hour afterward, my molecules stretched and elated at the growth. pure divine channel, babay. the presence of spirit kin of the highest caliber nourishes, pushes, expresses me, and all i have to do is be exactly as i am for all the doors of heaven to open, and for all the angels of creation to emerge from those open doors.

so, my beloveds, i offer you this.

whatever your dreams, desires and pure drives of your spirit rest yearning within you, invoke them from beyond the veil into reality. write them down, if need, everyday. speak them aloud, dream about them, dance and sing them into being. hold them clearly in your mind and with diligence and patience keep at the magic. i swear, it all shall come. persist. dedicate. create. dedicreate. be the light that you wish to feel shining on you and it shall, indeed, shine. always remember your loves, draw them forth from the sea of potential and be what you are in this world with all systems go.

creation dreams of only this, and it is dreaming this through you.

en la'kesh, familia.

eye

have love, will travel

2009-08-08T21:44:00.000-07:00

resting here in the homespace that i carved out for myself in my dreams, i am awash in the energetic turbulence of reality interfacing with fantasies and potentialities. the stars shine brightly overhead as the bells ring in the ancient oak groves, swaying in the breeze that blows the pine tree tops against each other to make that rustling love sound that so defines the forest and nourishes the soul. this early cool of evening settles my skin which has been ravished in the heat and activity of the day - the emotional journey ever unfolding as one steps into and out of proximity with the mystery of being and the mystery of loving. the human field is simplified, i am alone with my thoughts and my feelings, my heart, my spirit and my mind. i am alone with this story, and wondering what i am doing here.

i am learning about unconditional love.

there's this luscious, spectacularly complex and fully formed scenario that the universe and choice has dropped me into the middle of, and i am inclined to recoil from it as much as i am hot to immerse in it. i have seen it like this - there is a place to which i am called and wanting to go, and it rests, shining in golden sunlight, on the other side of a storm that rages right before me. the place is ready for me, calling through me, inviting me, and it is where i want to and need to go. but the storm makes me nervous. it's not that i think i couldn't make it through, it's that i know that the passage will be anything but easy. i do not believe it will be a long journey, but i have not quite got all my gear for passage yet. the time is not quite right. so, for now, i sit with the storm and look at the light beyond, feeling into my mild chill and my nakedness, knowing that i will cross when the impulse is clear and the time is right.

not sooner and no later than this.

there is a great work to be done to liberate love from the slavery of fear. i am in this work, amongst other works, and it is good work. the opportunity feels so important and so real... so strange. there is such an inclination to retreat into myself, to curl up around what has already been wounded in me and make sure that no light and no air touches those raw nerves. but i know that healing is in the oxygen that fows over the surface and suffuses the cells. i know that healing is in sitting upright with that discomfort and loving it, loving myself, until it changes. because all things change. isn't that the thing that we know the most? that all things change? we hold on to love so fiercely, holding it in place, holding it in our hearts, holding the body that represents the principle for us. holding so much, hoping that it will never change. but love is of the bird tribe, love is wings and feathers and the soft body in powerful flight. love only thrives in freedom. and we are only truly experiencing love if we are in the mode of freedom with it. if we are grasping, holding, owning, then we are not loving, we are fearing. we are fearing the loss of the external thing that makes our internal reality feel whole.

so there's my (simple yet profoundly difficult) learning endowment. i am not full in love within myself, so when i engage love in the world, i grasp it with the fear of loss. i can feel the vacancy in my body right now because i touched into love and then it left again. i am experiencing the machanations of my mind as it works to turn the story into more pain for my pain-body. and i experience the moments of radical liberation when i actually rest in the expansive nature of true love, and feel that there is love within me that is all the love of creation, just as there is that love within everyone.

i am everything i need. i am the love of creation. i am the light of truth. i am grace, wisdom power, beauty and freedom.

this is the essence, yes? this is all that matters. when even one of us is balanced into total integrity, the whole field is brought closer to integrity. i have a new innerstanding of integrity, of its nature, that drives me evermore towards that as a goal of being. one cannot be in partial integrity, for that is not integrity by definition. one can recognize the ways in which one is harmonized to the radiant truth essence within, and bring evermore of the self into that harmony which, when fully tuned, will be integrity.

we can all do this work. we must all do this work. there is truth in the idea that our survival depends on it.

let's do it.

creatrixter

2009-07-30T18:45:00.000-07:00

the walls of this canyon rise all around, holding in the energy of the star kin gathered here as a stone circle might, were it built into the planes of an ancient and sacred place to focus the energy of the ritualists gathered there. we kinverge on this land from and through the directives of spirit, answering a call heard deep within the cells of times body. these beings i have encountered over many years, in many places and ways. all the while meeting more, experiencing more - more immersion, more communion, more reflection and becoming through relation.

the angel whose voice and love carried me through the time of the searching within death came dancing towards me along the shores of the river serpent, naked and joyous, shining in the brilliant sun of the afternoon and singing my name. where else would we meet but here? and that river is a serpent, indeed. sinewy and sensual, it weaves a green and blue pattern of light sculpted in its depths through this super-charged sliver in the body of the earth. it carries all these songs to the sea, the prayers of the faithful sung in the voice of devotion to the soul of creation. we are a galactic gathering of earthling aeons, frolicking in a sun that almost overwhelms the senses. but it is this overwhelm -coupled with the depth of practices as varied and dynamic as all the various spiritual traditions and innovations of the world in which we, as gypsies, carve our paths by walking - that so enriches and enlivens the soul that endless streams of music, art, flowetry, healing touch and ever more course through us as the eternal rushing of creations pulse. we have primed the channels to conduct the kundalini without frying, short circuiting or otherwise missing the mark. we are target bound with the needlepoint focus of our intensity of desire to restructure the context to suit our content.

yes, take that in - restructure the context to suit your content.

we shall adhere to no falsehood or reduction in our manifestation - we are crafted of stars to bring the light of all creation into the crevasses of this earthly moment. we are tuned with the songs of angels to sing with the hearts of birds. was there ever a more perfect instrument than me to orchestrate the expression of god and grow a garden in which all the world may dance? certainly not.

and you know what's nice? i'm one of many.

and looking back into the pages of journals and the scent of moments spent before the altar, moments in envisioning my perfect scenario, i have arrived at just what i requested. oh, yes, i think to myself, this is just what i asked for. it is actually more than i asked for. it is the perfect stepping stone, because it arises as that which i want and enjoy with a few parts that i hadn't considered (filter this aspect out, call that aspect in...) to facilitate more in-depth crafting and cultivation of the field.

dedication, my friends. persistence.

it's been years that i've been calling in the seat in which i now sit. and i am almost not ready for it. i am still a little bit shy. i am still a little bit too hasty here and too slow there. but then i know even more that i am in the right place because my lessons are so obviously, so archetypally kinnected and interwoven with the whole unfolding of my lotus journey. it's all archetype. i'm a muse, a musician, a performer and an empress, an inspiration and an overwhelm. i am white buffalo calf woman, kali ma, gaia, ishtar. i am the archetype of the dynamic feminine, so yearning for the healing of touch while clawing the hand that reaches for me. it is still this same thing - sit and wait, work the field, tap a line here to watch how the web shivers in the evenings slanting sunlight. patience, persistence, awareness, action. it all feels very transient and crucible-hot to me. many beings, many options, and this is a station. not the destination. where am i going, i wonder, as time unfurls around me. out of the country by the end of the year, this much i know. to somewhere i've never been in this body.

if you could craft the world to suit your gift and beauty, how would it look and feel? guess what? get on it.

all blessings on your creative process, worldcrafter. only the best.

river of eros

2009-07-23T13:41:00.001-07:00

my only directive is to sit softly in the seat carved for me from the white stone of heavens cloudy ground and hold my head up and my eyes open and clear as the world crystallizes around me. an exploration of total responsiveness. as the blacktop dimension buckles under its own weight and the ripples of an expanding space-time communion show where the level of manipulation had smoothed the ground, i rest in the grace of groundlessness, with no attachments, responsibilities, or directives other than to exist within the field as it exists and answer the call that calls my name.

my name keeps changing, but i know what it feels like when i hear it.

i have nothing to lose. all that i have has been freely given, shall move through me on its own journey, and shall arise again later as a new form of the same nourishment, and even perhaps as something new altogether. i have nothing to gain. all that rises to my touch will fall away again, for i am the field in which all things do this, arise and fall away. i have only balance, and that is not a thing, it is a life in which i rest my center, contemplating the extension of the field in all directions around me. to receive, open the hands, palms up. to offer, open the hands, palms down. to go inward, turn the hands over onto the knees and close the eyes. no more, no less, than this. here is the expression of free-will in harmony.

in these moments, anyway. a long night of play, ceremony, dance, beings, smoke and sensual promise has brought me to this magnanimous balance, a grace into which i gratefully sink, sipping another glass of coffee, listening to alpha-theta brainwave music to lift this languid energetic from my senses without dispelling it. no rush to action, i relish the respite from go-do. not that i have much of that in the first place, but when it's there, it's really there. i like when it goes and i'm again in this place. my first name was toby. to be. that's all i'm here for, and that's quite a lot. soft in creation and light in the moment. all things becoming what they should be in this soft summer place. the deer creek cleansed me with mountain snow this morning, bringing the dispersed facets of my energetic body back into the same time co-ordinate together. here we dance still, summer heat gathering over the valley as the hours of linear time roll away into the hills, a strange and elusive creature whose breath i always feel on my back, but whose teeth never sink into my skin. i don't meyend the presence. that's erotic, too. i like erotic. it's all vision for me. the water calls me still, and yet there is land that beckons me, "come, rest, worship here. eros, eros... come to me, to dance, to be..."

yes, beloved. i'm coming.

but yes, ground, ground. i am looking for something still. a hat to keep the sun off my eyes as i work the fields. fields to work. bodies to work. musicians to make love songs with. immersion, cohesion, the depth of the depths of experience, the radical opalescent brilliance of actual mystical experience as a way of being, and not a moment in passing. yeeeeesssss, the serpent that crawls into the crystal cave, tail shimmering and the sound of its passage a kind of deep-throated hissing that permeates the pineal from within and expands it beyond the bounds of being into full expression. that's where i'm at, that's what i want and that's what i'm looking to create. enough of this solid-world, flat colors, harsh sounds bullshit. whose idea was the siren, anyway? we're going back to the council ground and laying the map out again. we went the wrong way.

i want eros in creation. i want passionate madness and pearlescent grace.

searching, searching... how did i get into this reality in the first place? how did i become 3-d, human, gravity bound, physical? i don't mind, but the veils need to be spread apart now, without medicine and in less than an hour of meditation. working, working... that's the goal. i've seen it, touched it, suckled it, and i'm going to live there. everything else is child's play. we are not only children. i am eternal, the aeon. i am the beauty of creation, and i am resplendent with universal nectar.

drink deep from the spring of my body and swim in the spring of eternal life. i am the rowan angel, the immortalitree. make a tincture of my sap and dance within my skin for the blessing to unlock your own immortality.

yes, i'm serious. what are you afraid of?

was there a track there? perhaps i came off from it.

we'll see.

there are three things i'm set to accomplish. i need to see wolves in the wild, i need to make love with a ferocious angel, and i need to perform ritual dance and song for ten thousand people.

so mote it be.

polyamory: to love many

2009-07-15T11:14:00.000-07:00

such a beautiful gift we have in the presence of this meme, polyamory. it conceptually and essentially represents the true nature of love, which i shall henceforth consider simultaneously as liberation.

poly} many

amor} love

to love many.

love is care. time. presence. energy. sex is an endeavor into deepening love. they are connected, but not inseperable. to fully embrace the magnitude of sexual union, to fully honor it's magnitude, one must be first and foremost in the essence of love. if not, what flows through the sexual union is the corruption of the love principle as it resides in the respective partners and their kinnection, instead of the perfection of the principle. which is all right, if everyone's down to be present with each other to work out their own parts and their inter-related parts.

what i find for myself and for the people of my own experience, is that the degree of vulnerability inherent in that way of communion is challenging for all parties in different ways. what i see, generally, is that women have a more difficult time with the emotional process that gets instigated for them with the introduction of other lovers into the kinnexion, but they are able to work with their difficulties and be communicative. men seem to have their emotional difficulties as well, but have a very hard time communicating about it.

my previous lover ran out of energy for being present with my emotional process and bowed out of the kinnexion. the lover before that had never explored polyamory before being with me, so he went and explored and decided that that took too much energy (he's naturally monogamous). before that i had two lovers who could neither deal with, nor articulate their inability to deal with, the whole scenario. very difficult. not fun. messy.

so i contemplate, as i relearn the topography of my inner sanctum, what is it that hurts us in these processes? of course people are attracted to many people at once, because people are so dynamic, and there are so many ways to engage the human experience. that, in and of itself is not hurtful. where the hurt comes from in the inter-relation is the respect with which we hold each other on the journey.

my desire to be "the special one" is my danger zone. that's only mine to be accountable for and to work out within me. relationship triggers that, either supporting and empowering it or challenging it. it's a bit of my personal work at this time to dismantle the mechanisms of that element, and it's not easy because i am special and i am perceived that way and celebrated. but it's got to be kept in balance. my work.

my desire to be in a kinnexion of mutual respect is natural and reasonable. that's what i offer to my invitees and only if that invitation is there will i engage with someone. not to say that i am in complete integrity (indeed, i have to own that i certainly am not), but i am always available for communion with the people that i have invited into my field. especially if i have invited them into my body. when someone comes into my body, they are entering my event horizon, the field of me as an aspect of creation, and they are imprinting themselves into my signature, and therefore my whole experience. that's a big deal. i expect for that to be respected with continual presence and care. and if that presence or care falters or disappears, i go kali. i don't have any patience for that shit.

and that's where my hurt comes from.

so the respect is the issue. the roots, always go down to the roots. whatever arises on the surface and causes response has roots so much more deep as to be nigh unfathomable. i say nigh because in the presence of silence, stillness and introspection, all things are fathomable. however, i also believe that we can only see as much as we can process in a moment - what would we do but short out if otherwise? self-awareness can be... uncomfortable. HA! the best kind of discomfort, it allows one the opportunity to clarify their incarnation and have the best experience possible. shit, what's more worth it than that? in all of living, hold the gifts bestowed upon you with the utmost tenderness and attention, especially if you have asked for them.

then i have to expand the meme beyond the concept of the lovers bond. if i am polyamorous, and i am a world bridging, world crafting, integral part of this whole experience of reality unfolding, do i not have, in that memetic field, the opportunity to love all of creation with that same degree of magnitude?

yes. yes i do. and that's a hell of an opportunity.

so i bring animals into my field of polyamory and vow to them to do my part to end their holocaust. more than a billion animals are tortured and slaughtered every day for food, clothing and various other purposes. not only in other countries, plenty of it is here. if you bought it at a restaurant, that's what happened. if it says "organic" on the package, that's still what happened. don't let that organic shit fool you - the FDA owns the word and it doesn't mean anything anymore. seriously - you can use 90% of the available pesticides and other chemicals available for farming and raising animals for slaughter under the auspices of the term "organic". and codex, the international food safety codification system that essentially declares any food that's not GMO and pesticided to be unsafe for human consumption, isn't even in place yet (check out healthfreedom.org to learn about codex. it's an important thing to know about).

if you're not raising, hunting or fishing yourself, don't eat it. you didn't earn it, you don't deserve it, and somebody who is sensitive and defenseless was tortured for it. blessing your food doesn't alleviate the suffering of how it got to your table. you know that. let's all get real. imagine if the slaughterhouse reality were happening with people inside of them instead of animals - people would be signing petitions, attending rallies, raising cain all over the world. but we subject our animal kin to the most heinous torture imaginable because... we like ice cream? not acceptable. i scold myself along with all of us because we all know better.

so i declare myself the great lover of all the animals of the world and dedicate myself to their liberation. through word, deed, act, diet and conversession, i will serve them with my polyamory. because they are the many whom i love.

along with all of us. so how do i best serve, through expansive, explosive love, my human community?

first, through dedication to my own integrity. by dedicating to the emergence of the absolutely clear incarnation of my soul essence, i am deeply serving the world from the core of my being. everything that comes into contact with me can touch into the integral space within itself and rise to that occasion. not because i am a leader or a teacher, but because every healthy cell in the body holds the health of the body within it. therefor every cell that touches it can re-embrace or more perfectly calibrate its own health so that the whole body will resonate back into perfect health.

i was contemplating it with a thread like this for a moment - "well, i'm integral in these ways, and not in these ways". then i laughed at myself, because that means that i am not integral, i am fractured. some parts of my own body know their health and perfection, while others don't remember. so we're all in the work together. i am holographic of the universe, as a re you, as are we all. let's dedicate to our own individual health so that we can serve the rememberance of the field back into its original integrity.

pinky swear?

word.

bless.

wombafesta

2009-07-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

breathe deeply, move slowly and make every word a blessing. give three times as much to the world as it gives to you. pray in the morning, during the day and in the night. give thanks for everything whilst calibrating the field to reflect your inner vision. nourish your soul with the light of your loves. be in the journey of your soul truth.

go forth and do your thing.

sigh deeply, summer night

2009-07-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

a blue deeply different, crystaline with emerald songs and irridescent cobalt, shines through a quality of water and latitude quite different than the skies of my homeland. the world is my homeland, again, as i put on the gypsy boots in dress for the bigger ride of the four-wheeled exploration of space time and potential hearthside. great swathes of my inner world are along with me on this ride, not just the bare minimum of the previously minor institution of me. the institution has grown. now, through the generous benefaction of just enough work at just the right moment, my facilities have expanded to accomodate more tricks in my back seat than ever could there have been in my backpack. everything i would need to make the littlest nesting in the right space has come with me.

i laugh.

following the language of spirit as impulses in my behavior i have wrapped my whole reality in a red crow carpet and flown the security of my little mountain town. five days on the road, deep desert solitaire to vegas rollercoaster (literally), morning rises on me blanketed in the desert and sun sets on my salty body naked on the san francisco shoreline. all the while i go with prayers, always prayers. and laughter. as each moment unfolds a brilliance brighter than heretofore known glimmering truth, i bow in gratitude and whisper mirthfully, "more".

she has called me here in this moment, and now offers me the gift of choice. families stretch around me with great wide-open arms inviting my rest on their couches, in their apartments and fields, in the open trust of their loving hearts and the different tapestries of their communities. i am received so innocently and so completely i raise my eyes to the setting and rising sun in wonder} "what's going on here?".

i was gifted the book, "worldbridger" two months ago by my friend casey whilst undergoing a peculiarly difficult process in my personal purification. in a moment in which i was searching for a deeper yes than i had previously encountered, the book landed as a complete yes at the cellular level. i checked the internet for kinnexion opportunities, and there were four ceremonies slated for the time when i was intending to arrive in california in spite of the strange dissolution of my supposed trajectory. the ceremonies are to reconnect the bio-electro-magnetic circuitry of the human body so that the whole human self can be activated for presence in the incarnate field.

yes, it is perfect sense.

so here i am. i got here on friday in the aforementioned rain of magical circumstances and in the company of a bright and wild native dark dancer elf named leah. she gave me her apartment for the days of the weekend, held my heart with the utmost care during our journey across the country and into relationship, and generally loved and wowed me from moment one to forever. she was sent to me as an emissary of creation to further my journey and bring me into this land in the swddling blanket of sistarhood. i'd not come here in that company before - i'd always come naked, or with men. this is a very different initiation. it brings me into here in the context of peers, family, and community. men are a narrow lens through which to view a world, if they are how i arrive there. something in the energetic. not a big priority to figure that out right now, but on the radar. friends and kin are a lens on the whole field.

this morning i woke up with grass valleys breeze already blowing across my skin. this afternoon i arrived here, and i feel the great breath of joy that the place breathes to receive me. it has called to me so insistently in these last few weeks, this valley (where i am gladly perched on the mountainside, learning the ridges of the distant mountain through the filter of the short oak trees and the golden light of dusk turning pink as the sun moves), and we are glad to feel each other as lovers who have never kissed are glad to finally meet. the expansive potential of this field is erotic, figuratively flowing into the literal. the men are already curious, because i am new and i am bright in these days. the women are open, present, guileless as i have encountered them in their bright open inquiry of my origins. i am invited, there is no fear.

and of course, i thank my newly earned wisdom principle that is subtly, profoundly at work} observe. learn something of the season of this place before jumping in. don't touch anybody till you've met lots of bodies and understand something of how they've touched each other. don't get starry eyed - it's still a monkey circus. Ha Ha! a worthier caution i have never met. life, i love you. keep it on.

i look forward to the feeling of this new angle of the sun on my skin. i have breathed deeply the scent of the mountainside, curious how it changes morning to night, cool air to heat. there is a signature of water but no water itself in the air, so curiously different from new mexico in this moment, where there is an abundance of water and still such arid charge to the air. how the environment knows itself and what is experienced in the moment. the miracle of the remembrance of moments in the experience of the linear time model. the land remembers its own patterns better than you remember me. a grander relationship.

arriving empowered and humble, i dance and sing into the evening sky. she welcomes me, and we fall into passion with each other, for she is the ear crafted just to hear my song, and i am the sound sent just to caress her skin.

symbiosis.

beloveds.

bless.

canyonlands natural miracle

2009-07-09T10:58:00.001-07:00

the long red road goes through utah.

yummy....

more to come

witness me

2009-07-02T14:12:00.001-07:00

the funny thing being that i'm sitting in a cafe with the biggest steaming mug of chai beside me, having opted out of a rainy, muddy, monkey-filled rainbow weekend for the last few moments of beauty, serenity and comfort in my beloved home. aaaaah, that just feels better.

the day after tomorrow, i embark on a spirit driven journey to a destination only physically known - the essence of the engagement is not work on the material plane, it is not community in the relational sense, it is none of the things that one would say, "oh, i am going here for this". it is a directive that i follow because i want to, and because to not would be to deny the unfolding of destiny, and relegate myself to fate, the difference between destiny and fate being conscious participation. spirit has spoken through my instincts and impulses clearly in these last moons (or, more to the point, i have finally grokked the fine art of hearing the communications), driving me to innertake, with total equanimity, strange and miraculous processes - buying a car, discording from my lover, burning the body of my beloved cat, packing up my mountain monastery, heading to the valley that held an earlier stage of this awakening by supporting me with just the right ratios of blessing and challenge for my alchemy to be perfect for emergence. strange ways, these mysterious source forces, mysterious and brilliant. opening deep and meaningful relationships, the likes of which i have been calling in for moons, only to leave them for this mysterious mission. hmmmm, spirit - what'choo doin'? yeah, yeah, of course i'm here, i'm just curious. but i'm glad not to know. there is something so deeply profound, so wildly mystical, so ravagingly erotic about being sent out in this way. my wisdom teachers bless me and remind me of the essence, echoing from external forms internal words of being, knowing and guidance.

i am held deeply within the cradle of love and the outspread arms of the great mystery as i journey, now potently joyous in this state of being naked in the storm. this way is my home, my way, my medicine. fierce, tender, arrogant, humble. curious.

so here, i pray. i have learned much of praying in these years as i have learned to still and deepen my being, to allow grace to flow through me easily and without grasping, to experience the deep subtlety of universal essence as it moves through this vessel.

prayer is loving creation. prayer is allowing creation to love me. prayer is involving myself in the unfolding of the journey of the collective in the field. it is calling upon the deep intimacy between my incarnate self and the source that creates me, directs me and is me as old friends call upon each other, not just in times of need, but in all times. source is the original relationship, before even the mother. the essential self must first delineate from source before it can travel the realms of potential to become a spirit, an embryo, a being. prayer honors the reality that i am source, and that i am voice apart from source, so that we experience each other.

i give myself to what created me, and i create what i am and what this world is.

so witness me... and in the circle that is cast, pray for yourself, your loves, your world, and then celebrate

eastern morning, of innocence and new beginnings

southern day, of journeys, growth and learning

western evening, of arrival, completion, reflection

northern night, of rest, root, metabolization of wisdom

father sun, the life giver

mother earth, the life maker

sister moon, witness and regulator

infinite universe, field in which all things arise and flow away

from the center within

where all elements meet and dance

i call out in prayer

i lift my voice to you in gratitude, blessing and wonder

as the aeon, the universal child, i come to you

empowered and humble

wise and innocent

full of being

and empty

i cast for myself a circle in which to continue the holy journey of becoming

this is a circle i have sat often

and we have sat here together

here i know that we are one

and here i know the unique mystery that is this moment of "me"

for this, as for all things, i give thanks.

i come to you, this moment, great mystery, with prayers.

there are things i will ask for. thank you for hearing me, and knowing me

for being me

and receiving my requests with an open love

may all my motions mirror this magnanimity

first, spirit, i pray for myself.

i pray to unify all that is fragmented in me into it's orignal wholeness

i remember that state in which i arrived, and i know that it is there for me to live in and be in again

i am ready for that. so, so ready.

i am ready to channel that much energy all the time, and to use it in the way that it is meant to be used

i am ready to be completely accountable to and for my whole energetic reality

i am ready to fully and uncompromisingly arrive for this incarnation as an active member of the unfolding story of humanity on the earth

i am ready to live my destiny

i am ready to be as potent as all the storms of creation, in full view of the whole family of being

so please assist my journey of weaving all of me together again, instantly and for eternity

in the purest and best way

for the benefit of all creation.

i invoke and draw forth from the unmanifest into the manifest plane

a life experience of journeying through the world on the winds of music, ceremony, and dance

a life experience full of performance which is a weaving of ritual, music, dance and eternal wisdom

a life experience of creating the context for divine communion with the gifts of my voice, my dance and my word

i invoke and draw forth from the unmanifest into the manifest plane

the appropriate allies for accomplishing this work

the appropriate support for accomplishing this work

the appropriate energy for this work to be a nourishment for, and an aspect of, the awakening of the whole incarnate family on earth and beyond

third dimensional financial support for the process, ease of manifestation

in the purest and the best way

for the benefit of all creation

i invoke and draw forth from the unmanifest to the manifest plane

a rich ceremonial life

full of beautiful medicines

beautiful songs

beautiful places

beautiful traditions

beautiful kin and allies

beautiful ways and moments

a mentor to share these experience with, someone to reflect with and process with

a good companion to deeply mirror and complement me

a mode that flows easily through me, is clear and powerful and new in being

that i may offer as a garden of beauty in which all the world may dance

in the purest and the best way

for the benefit of all creation

i call forth continual communion with the animal kindred

the ancestors

other dimensional beings and fields of experience

the deep, wild, subtle wisdom of the earth, sun, moon, and universe

the field of creation

source

and essential self.

in the purest and the best way

for the benefit of all creation

i invoke and draw forth from the unmanifest into the manifest plane

a human experience of deep, interwoven community

based in, growing from and fostering in the world

honesty, integrity, personal power, transparency, health and wholeness

spirit(uality), divine communion, physical cultivation, wisdom, learning, growth and transcendence.

oh, yeah, and big love. real love. open handed, open hearted, love with integrity, respect, grace and beauty.

i invoke and draw forth from the unmanifest into the manifest plane

that in all these human relationships, there be a balance between the energies of the incarnate sexes. between men and womyn, womyn and womyn, men and men.

i invoke and draw forth from the unmanifest into the manifest plane

that everyone get over their bullshit behaviors by rising into the inherent perfection of integrity awaiting attention within each of us so that we can do more than process sexual and romantic experience as we journey through this time of ascension together.

in the purest and the best way

for the benefit of all creation

i invoke and draw forth from the unmanifest into the manifest plane

a continuous open flow of prosperity in my experience

including financial nourishment

raucous laughter on a regular basis

yummy sensual and erotic experience with emotionally balanced and mature beings of light essence

opportunities for artistic and energetic expression of my essence

opportunities for ever expanding and ever deepening learning on my path

and opportunities for ever deeper immersion in the mystery of being

in the purest and the best way possible

for the benefit of all creation

mmmmmmmmm.... breathing deep, the ocean flows through...

so much gratitude, creation. i hear you hearing me.

with deepest, joyous, humble, empowered gratitude i send these prayers out into the field

offering myself in service to creation

eternally

i am in service and devotion

to beauty

the prayers i make for my beloveds i will not speak to the world

those prayers are a gift of trust from them to me

and from me to spirit.

but in this moment, between the self and the world, we pray for those and that which we love immediately - our family and friends, our animal companions, the things which we often touch and are deeply kinnected with.

take this moment to pray for that within your own reality, as a i am now praying for that within mine.

breathe.....

and in this moment, deep mystery, i pray for my world

i draw into my heart all the energy and beauty of creation so that i may know,

in this moment,

that for which i pray.

oh beauty

you dance on the wind as the wings of a great bird in the universe's sky

you dance within me, moving my body and my spirit to rapture and grace

you dance through me,

inspiring the beholder with that grace, inspiring yourself by moving me

you dance over me

chilling my skin to eros and i revel in the scents carried in your unseen currents

dreams and visions of far-away and very near places

times that i haven't lived and the many-layered moments of my interdimensional self

moments yet to unfold

dear, beloved beauty, i praise you by being you

by knowing you

by seeing, feeling, hearing, tasting and smelling you

devotion.....

yes. boundless.

so, for the sake of beauty, and to the wisdom of the ages, i pray for this world.

first

so much thanks, deep mystery

for the tide of ascension coming into the shores of experience

through the quickening of the opening and awareness of the conscious self

through the quickening of magic and synchronous moments meant to re-calibrate the field

from destructive chaos

to nurturing chaos

from madness

into balance and harmony

and for that tide arriving in the wisdom of the new people coming through

the new children are a brilliance to behold

learning, teaching and being at the speed of light.

so much thanks for this, great mystery. thank you for making me an integral part of this becoming.

great mystery, turn your loving attention to the animal kindred

they are suffering a holocaust at the hands of humans

protect them

make them invisible to hunters guns and arrows,

guide them safely around traps

away from poison

and into the full, radiant glory of their inherent freedom.

hold them in light

great mystery

as they travel through their own trials of these times

ensure their survival

nourish, nurture and protect them.

and whatever work is mine to do to ensure their wellness,

great mystery, do not hesitate to send me forth on their behalf.

with such infinite love i make this prayer.

so much gratitude for the animal kindred. hold them in light all}ways.

and great spirit,

please attend to the sick and mutated beings amongst us

who wage war on any scale

who rape other beings

who destroy cultures, peoples and the earth

who live in and perpetuate pain

who dishonor self and other through murderous mentality

attend to their awakening

to their recalibration and purification

that we may all live a life of freedom, beauty and fullness in this world and beyond

in the purest and the best way

for the benefit of all creation

immediately and for all time

with deepest gratitude

and hold the great mother earth in her purest divine light of beauty

with all of her systems intact, even if they go dormant

nourish, nurture and protect her

and all of the life living on and through her

that we may continue to thrive in this most gorgeous temple of creation

in the purest and the best way possible

for the benefit of all creation.

with so much gratitude for the awesome gift of this life, spirit, i send this prayer out into the field. i love so deeply, so fully, so boundlessly, in these prayers. hear me, direct me, answer me. so much gratitude...

breathe...... so deeply, breathe. call in all that you see in the world and pray for it's purest form to emerge in the field. give thanks to spirit for hearing you, for hearing me, as you pray.

and then,

celebrate

AHO! great spirit!

i raise my voice in a song of cantankerous love!

i swirl and dance in the garden of miracles that we have created for all to enjoy.

the light of the sun, filtered through a powdery cloud, landing on a woodpeckers wing as it hops up the body of the tree, peck, peck, peck, looking for bugs, is beauty almost incapacitating.

morning dew on the sacred grass, birdsong in the dawn, beautiful bodies frolicking in the summer sun, move me to rapture and madness most divine. the kiss of cold water on sun-soaked skin, the boom of bass and sweaty bodies groovin' under starlit skies, songs sung at sunrise when i can barely keep my eyes open, i've already danced so hard - miracles! gifts of the most radical caliber of creativity and brilliance! i am drunk on the magnificence of living, the whole world spun up in my wild song and dance. god is my playmate! god is my me! god is my lover, and we are reunited after a long journey has travelled us both across the seas of learning, and you know how good that's gonna be. HAHA!

i am mad with love for this life, great spirit!

thank you for flowers

for coffee

for sunrise

for ayahuasca

for hot boys

for mountains and oceans

canyons and meadows

for animals and paint

for music and dancing

for everything

for all that is this journey

for loving me

for being there for me to love

and for us being one.

so deeply, so fully, so fiercely, i love.

great spirit

great mystery

great creation,

so deeply so i love

with utter devotion

complete humility

radical gratitude

and infinite openness

i send these prayers into the field

in the name of the light

the life

and the love

for the benefit of all creation

from the source to the source.

AAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

angel in the office

2009-07-01T17:42:00.000-07:00

the concept that spiritual experience happens in spiritual settings is a crock. spiritual experience is all that's happening, and we either realize that or not. as a great character in a book once said, "why not have beauty when we're shitting? you think spirits not there because your pants are down? have beauty all the time, honor spirit all the time".

yes, yes...

so it happens, today, that in the insurance office, i have what (if memory serves) is my first incarnate experience with an angel.

angels is not a concept that i relate to very freely. it's only been in the last few years that i've related to it at all, and it's been an archetypal relationship as opposed to a specific one. this is the way with me - i don't directly experience gods or goddesses, i don't travel into the pyramids when i'm journeying with transdimensional friends, i don't hear spirit in my head talking in english, none o' that. i experience pure energy, pure impulse, and every so often it dresses in a dress and feels like something more specific than pure energy.

so today, sitting in a little room in the blazing hot afternoon of a desert summer day, with the flourescent lights blaring and the air-conditioner plugging up my nose, to experience a full-on, white-light radiant angel was, well... very natural in a very strange way.

story }

i went to the state farm office to get insurance on my new car. i've not done much of this bureaucracy business in my life, having been a dedicated member of the house of fuck-the-system, so i didn't know what they were going to ask about or look for, but i wasn't worried. i am, however, tight with time for accomplishing rigamarole like this - i leave for a big journey the day after tomorrow. that's me, too. lots of things in the last minute, not particularly caring about what the state and the laws have to say about what i'm supposed to do. i've said to a cop who was asking me why i went over a fence that said "no trespassing", "i'm an animal. i don't read signs, and i don't follow directions if i don't think they make sense for me. i wanted to be in there, so that's where i went". that was an interesting conversation.

but anyway, there i was sitting in the office with my new friend jeremy the insurance agent who's also a musician and likes my tattoos, when he asks me something about has my license ever been suspended. "no", i say. that's not true. in that moment, without being fully cognizant of it and while i speaking that word, i called on whoever my assisting angel may happen to be to come sit with me and clear the field so that i could easily move forward with my work and my missions. in a strange tidal type of energetic, as this whole curiosity was unfolding on many different levels, the thought rose to the surface of my mind along with the awareness that that was a different thing for me to do as a presence arrived into my field. not arrived, materialized. there's a spot on my back where my energy is always spinning especially fast, as if the center of a chakra were sitting on the surface. as the call went out and the contemplation came with it, a soft internal touch began to emanate in that place. it was simultaneously warm and cool, solid and etheric, and it felt like the impression of a hand, but it wasn't a hand that was there - it was the impression of a hand because that's how i would be able to relate to the sensation. it was a golden energetic blooming in my back, a deep soothing presence of radiant light.

she grew from there, weaving herself in light from the touch of that hand, till she sat there next to me. with my eyes soft and pointed forward, i could completely see her in my inner eye. beautiful, smiling, long and beyond space with her form, the seeing her was an internal experience. i contemplated for a moment, "is this my imagination?" and the answer emanated that there is no difference between imagination and reality. imagination is the internal experience of all of the different dimensions of reality. imagination is a reality-crafting tool. i turned in her direction with the intention of seeing her, and my yearning faded her presence. the touch lessened, and i couldn't see anything. but when i looked forward again, softened my eyes and rested into the expanding moment, she was there as a complete sensory experience. her huge wings, so over-plumed that their feathers were more a principle of flight than a mechanism, radiated out from her body, and then our body, filling the physical room and then bending the dimensions of the room to continue expanding. have you ever felt that? that radiant stillness of universal expansion? it feels like the essential hum of being, flowing like starlight from nowhere to nowhere. all sound became muffled, the voice of jeremy far away from my body but completely present in my sensory experience, still asking questions which my form answered while my essence sat in the field of this being. she felt like michie, the essence of michie coming in this new form to guide the flow of the river for a moment so that i would be free in my motions. she moved the moments for us, smiling a soundless smile, speaking to me me in unheard wisdoms sent through my cells.

and then, just as easily as she had come to the moment, she went from it. and there i was, signing a paper for my insurance while breathing regular breath again.

we "concluded our business" in the ordinary way, and i went outside to my bike with the arid white hum of her visit around me. it didn't register for a moment, that "something had happened". it didn't register for over an hour, actually. and then it was a slow realization. that is remarkable unto itself, that it felt so completely natural to have an angel hold space for me in an insurance office. now i leap and whirl in the beauty of it, wondering and marveling at the beauty of it. it makes me so much more curious about my journey to california and the nature of the destiny unfolding before me. i've done a lot of praying in my life, done a lot of ceremony, been in a lot of hairy situations and sacred spots, and i've never experienced an angel like that before.

awakening happens in the most strange and wonderful places.

so much of my life has been hiding, has been resistance and polarization, has been refusal. i arrived here into this reality with a brilliant array of talents and beauties, and i've fought with myself and everything else about bringing them forward into manifest expression. polarization is a good word for it - i've pushed away what i've drawn in. a very frustrating way to exist.

i decided recently that i am done with that way. and for the first time, i completely mean it. there's a depth of conviction, a depth of shifting in the decision of that moment, that has allowed for my whole reality to shift. it is as personally monumental as the melting of the ice caps that dries the tropics and soaks the deserts. it is a fundamental shift in the attenuation of the being in its and to its experience in manifest reality. that shift allows for whole new realms of being to rise and fall as the tides of creations ocean. it allows for tangible experiences of transdimensional realities beyond the scope of whatever i've experienced before. it allows for angels in the insurance office, and owls flying in front of my car on the night that my cat left the earth to tell me that she was in good hands and good guidance on her journey through space to her own place in the continuum. it allows for specific premonitions and dreams full of messages. it allows for "leaping empty handed into the void" because my whole inner self says "yes" in a new way and i have no ground in rationality for what i am doing, but no fear. all this because i know that i am not just resting in the great mystery, i am the Great Mystery. and my pledge to honor, serve, love and represent it in this life has become true in the way that that can actually be what is.

beyond the idea into the being.

so i get called to buy a car, pack up my sanctuary and roll out to california. i set it all in motion. a book comes into my hands and i look for the ceremonies on line, find them, talk to the facilitator, and sign up for them with the completely fearless certainty that they will affect the whole tone of my reality and all plans are tides that flow in and out. only ceremony and fulfilling the essence matter now. everything else will be revealed through that journey. no attachments, no worries.

something more that i've realized, or something that i've realized more deeply} up until now, i have experienced the world and reality predominantly through a mode of resistance and polarization. not solely, but predominantly. so i've formulated my value system and my worldview based on the information gathered through this lens. but in this moment, my roots have shifted. i don't know anything now, because what i could say about what i know or feel is based on a perspective that i'm not moving through. my whole ground of being has shifted, and i am, in this moment, as the aeon. i am the universal child, infused with the wisdom of the ages whilst completely innocent.

i am free from the past, and free from the future. i am infused into the moment and the moment into me.

freedom is an internal reality that then arises in your external experience. just like everything else. we are truly creating reality every moment because we experience, inform the field, then experience and inform the field, and we have been doing this since we came and before. we are the creators and that which is created. this is not an idea. it's a fact.

so call on angels in the office, allies on the mountain, guidance through the grocery store to the chance encounter that will change your trajectory forever. mysticism is not something that happens somewhere - it is what is, only awaiting your awareness.

thank you creation

bless

wildlife is a principle, not a thing

2009-06-30T15:43:00.000-07:00

the crows rustle and tumble in the twisting wind, chasing each other through swells and hollows in the invisible force of nature. the latest of summers raging storms is rolling over the mountains with the fury of the gods tumbling in the clouds, soaking air and skin in rich waves of cool water, filling the river so that it happily flows at two whole inches deep, hallelujah. children run and dance in the park, lovers roll lasciviously in the grass, teenagers smoke hookah with the detached cool of the adult archetype that they hope to become and the day moves on slowly, a celebration muted by the elements.

i'm very concerned about what's happening with the wolves here in our "land of the free". here in the southwest, there are 52 mexican wolves left in the wild, most of them in a wilderness south of here called the gila.

52.

in the interior northwest, there are a few hundred wolves in wyoming, montana, idaho, oregon, northern california, the dakotas. not many. enough to count in the mind. for the last 20 years, there have been dedicated, ongoing efforts by a number of grassroots organizations to ensure the survival of the wolf in the wild. it has not been easy for a number of reasons. somewhere along the line, people cultivated a ferociously irrational loathing of wolves. it has been perpetuated through stories and cultural memes for hundreds of years. "mad as a wolf" and similar phrases are used to describe unscrupulous, dangerous people. innumerable folk tales use the wolf archetype as a symbol of intelligent, depraved violence. but wolves are not violent. they hunt easy prey (which is partly why they hunt captive "livestock" like sheep and goats), mate for life, have extremely well cultivated social systems, and care for their young and for each other with awesome tenderness and dedication. they are highly civilized, among the most highly civilized creatures of the animal world, on par with gorillas for order.

so what an interesting thing to use the vilification of them as marauding, bloodthirsty savages as justification for hunting them in hellicopters and shooting their young in their dens. what a very interesting thing.

somewhere, in the human journey, there came a conceptual form that urged to turn land into property, and move the sustenance base from hunting free creatures to raising "stock" animals (that term pisses me off as much as the concept of "game" animals. how the fuck did any creature get to be "stock" or "game"? where the fuck did that perversion come from?). anything that didn't obey the sanctity of the border has been summarily exterminated.

buffalo.

jaguars.

wolves.

indigenous people.

wolves are an amazing example of the perverse and petty fear of nature that has infected humanity ever since we got mutated and diverted from the divine blueprint by an invading alien race (yes, i'm serious). they are a highly sophisticated creature with highly sophisticated social systems, family processes and interpersonal principles. they are such a magnificent intelligence, such a miraculous wisdom. they may choose to live in space with other creatures, including humans, but they cannot be domesticated. they are inherently autonomous, i would say more so than humans.

they do not seek to dominate territory, their approach is more of a graceful magic than that. they claim their territory, mark its edges with their piss, and root down into it energetically. their presence, not their force, is their primary mode of maintaining the territory that they have described for themselves. they do not seek to run us out of space, nor will they capitulate their space to our encroachment. if a rancher sets up shop in wolf territory, the wolves eat from that ranch. the presence of the wolf requires a sophisticated balance of energies, wherein everyone needs to be present to learn how to work with and respect each other.

derek jensen, an environmental acitivist and writer, wrote about living somewhere in the company of wolves, and them eating chickens that he was raising. one morning, sitting at his desk and looking out the window, he spied a wolf entering his yard, intent on the coop. it felt his eyes on it and looked up at him. in that moment, they exchanged a silent, energetic communication wherein derek asked the wolf to please leave his chickens alone. they held silent presence with each other, and after a few moments, the wolf turned around and walked away from the yard back into the forest. it did not come again.

wolves are true sorcerers. violence in never their first approach to a situation. even in hierarchical fights, the violence they apply is symbolic, not actual. it is an expression of potential power, and the process is a part of working out their social order which holds the whole pack in place. in this way, they are actualized in the scheme of natural reality in a way that humans are striving for and only a few have achieved.

true power has no need to express itself out of turn. true power is transcendent, and entrains the things that it comes into contact with. only imaginary power uses violent force to express itself.

being wild is a power.

the relentless attempt by the "powers" that be to eradicate the presence of wildlife is actually a more sinister reality than is commonly acknowledged. it is an attempt to destroy that which is wild within the soul of all beings, it is an attempt to neutralize the dynamic beauty of life and reality into a grey monotone of easily controlled experience where people are feeders for the machine and all of nature is feeder for the people. what is wild within us is free, and freedom doesn't subscribe itself to the inane bullshit that the system is always feeding us about becoming "responsible, contributing members of society". we will only become that thing if we follow the truth of our essence and arrive to experience with all the unique magic that is only ours to carry into and through this life. my friend the biologist tells me that i am that rare bird that ensures the survival of the species, because genetic diversity is what perpetuates life.

we are wild. we are sensory systems designed to interpret and interact with the earth and universe, which has been designed to interact with and inform us. symbiosis of the highest order, the natural relationships between delineated aspects of universal source energy. civilization, as it stands, is designed to rupture and fracture that natural relationship by streamlining the human experience into chairs (which disrupt the flow of energy from the earth core to the body), transportation modalities like cars and planes (which disrupt the connection of the body with the subtle spirit realm, the gravitational field and natural time), foods that are not natural or nutritious, frequencies that corrupt the natural electromagnetic field of the body, and boxes for houses, right angles that deaden energetic flow in space, separate us from sky, earth and air, dispell night with lights... on and on. and the social processes of human society are outrageous. it's a taboo to be naked anywhere that someone can see you. what? everybodies naked! get the fuck over it! it's a taboo to say what needs to be said because someone might be offended by it. it's a taboo to do all kinds of things that are the most natural things for us to do, and that's a slavery, kids. it's not a cool thing.

consider the middle east.

in muslim countries, women are covered head to foot their whole lives. they cannot go around where they live on their own, they need to be escorted by a man, and then only one that is their husband or relative. if they are seen talking to a man who is not one of these things, they can be tortured and killed for it, no repercussion for the man who does the torturing. what's this all about? the idea that a man cannot control himself if he sees a womons hair or ankles uncovered. imagine that for a moment - there is a whole segment of our world where, instead of doing the work to learn to relate in a harmonic and balanced way of mutual respect and regard, the social system was designed to support this complete lack of relational development. women are enslaved because men are considered to be totally incapable of controlling themselves in the presence of them.

give me a fucking break.

so the womyn get enslaved, and the men get relegated to a state of perpetual violent idiocy instead of having to learn how to deal with their sexual energy. interesting solution. and what gets killed in everyone through this method? the wild spirit within that yearns for freedom, for breath and flight, for eros and love and ascension. no one is free when others are oppressed - this means more than just my freedom to do whatever i want versus their slavery. this refers to the system of slavery in which, no matter what position you are in, you are enslaved. the slave master is a slave to his slaves as surely as the slaves are slaves. everyone could be free if we all agreed to show up with the whole spectrum of our intelligence intact and available for the journey.

i have a proposal. let's live like the wild creatures we are with the full possession of our potential for ascension intact in all of our relations. what would that look like? in the nice it looks like being naked whenever and wherever you want to be naked. smiling at everyone you see when you feel good and growling when you don't. eating with your hands, walking barefoot across lawns instead of always in shoes on the streets, dancing as often and as madly as possible, laughing uproariously at whatever you are amused by. it means never excusing yourself for farting or burping, picking your nose when it's full of boogers, or touching someone that you pass in a crowded space. acknowledge them, yes, do not excuse yourself. it means being as erotic, clowny, challenging, stimulating and fascinating as you have the potential to be.

in the intense it means speaking up to injustice when you see it (how did it get to be "none of your business" when you see someone beating their dog or their kids? how did that intervention get to be taboo? violence only stops when the people intervene, and isn't that what we all want? a peaceful world?). it means being defiant when the authority structure is coming after your wild ride. it means being ferocious when something you love needs you to be that, including yourself. it means being totally in your power and not needing to wield it, but not being afraid to do just that if the need arises. it means being dangerous, but not violent. it means being fearless when the guns are drawn, when the moment calls for more than you think you can give, for something of the extraordinary to flow through you in an emergency. wild people do not allow the world to crush the dreams of other beings. because we are so passionate about our own freedom, we realize that we must use it to serve the freedom of the collective.

wildlife is a way of being. bring it off the playa, out of the festival, out of the house party, into the streets. wield the wild within in a place that it's not safe to do it. use your own wild nature as an invitation to others to engage the world through their inner wild.

people love a leader. it is easy to lead by example, to be a context in which people are safe and encouraged to make their inner beauty radiate out into the world. you don't have to hold anyone's hand, just hold yours open as you live to your fullest. your beauty is an invitation. remember that always, and everything that you are shy to express will flow from you in that most conducive of riverbeds - service. if you want to go there, but you're scared, remember that someone or something around you wants to go there too, and needs a pal to make it feel right.

be wild. scream and howl, laugh and dance, be luscious and lascivious with a spiritual flavor and an irreverent grace of dedication. oh yes, get your groove on, right in the middle of the street. or the train, or the office, or the house. just get it on.

you'll love it. i promise.

holographic grace

2009-06-24T11:36:00.000-07:00

"the solution will not be created at the level of the problem." ~einstein

i got trained to facilitate the "Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream" symposium for the Pachamama Alliance a year and a half ago. the symposium is an incredible body of work, and it was a wonderful experience to be trained, filled with hope, bright possibilities, eager awareness blossoming in the water fall of a new tool to use in the ongoing quest to Wake People Up. so many good and wonderful things there, so much honest, earnest dedication to the earth and to change in the good way.

and yet, something about it didn't fulfill me.

changing the situation that we're in collectively is not about finding new "green" ways to live the paradigm that has so divided the spirit of the world, so strangled the mother home. we cannot hybrid-car and solar-panel and energy-efficient-lightbulb our way out of the the animal holocaust, or the melting ice caps, or the perverse and pervasive war mentality fueled by political and religious ideologies that say "do as i say or die". or even just "die, regardless of what you do".

that's not a mind issue. that's a frequency filter issue.

form follows energy. the being is not the origin of impulse, it is a transducer of impulse. it takes the impulse of the universal continuum, translates it through the particular energetic grid of itself, and motivates action according to that relationship. we each hold the whole spectrum of creation within us, and yet are each specifically and differently calibrated to channel it in specific and different ways. intellectually, we know this. energetically, i don't think that's widely or deeply understood.

what that means is that no one is separated from source. that's not possible. if one is breathing, source is flowing through. if you've ever seen a dead body, you realize that it's dead because source and spirit are not there anymore. the body doesn't work without them as fuel and fire. but what can feel like separation from source is actually a state of corruption in the transducer. the filter is fucked up, so the signals are moving through it in a compromised way, causing compromised energetic impulse and action in the being. that can be fixed! but not through the mind alone. the mind is one ally in the work. the whole self needs to be involved in the process, or what hasn't been accounted for will pull the being back out of alignment. like if you get chiropractic work and not massage : the bones will move to where they're supposed to be, but then the muscles will pull them out again because they haven't been realigned to the original blueprint. they're still over there in compensation mode. isolation approach doesn't work.

so something like the symposium is a wonderful attempt at solving the problem at the level that it was created. it is a mind approach to a frequency filter issue. it doesn't touch the core. it goes deeper than most mind approaches go, because it gets into the emotions, but that's still not the root. people come to the symposium, get all fired up to Change the World, go off on it for a few weeks or months and then go back to doing what they were doing, perhaps a little more greenly, a little more intentionally, but still, mostly back to where they came from. that's the average.

so how do we affect the transducer? in ceremony. ceremony and ritual* work at recalibrating the frequency of the individual and the collective through accessing more of the being in transcendent (non-ordinary) states of consciousness. in this state, and through this mode, alterations in the fundamental organization of the being can occur. it is precisely the transcendent nature of ritual that has made it the medicine of choice all over the world for thousands of years, until the perversion of the dogmatic western mind outlawed it and killed people for it.

a good friend of mine wrote a poem called "the sacred function of words" in which there is a line about holding the wound in place through unconscious speech. something i've marveled at over these last few weeks is the way that my mind will inflict and re-inflict a wound ad infinitum. it blows me away! why does that glitch happen? how do i smooth the field so that the mind flows? how am i energetically corrupted that that can be such a powerful process, so relatively intractable? big questions, good questions, and the mental understanding is one aspect of the answer. the innerstanding resides in my attention to my instinct, to my own comprehensive intelligence and it's process and perspective. when i perceive through and move from my whole intelligence, my experience is completely different. there are subtleties and there is depth the likes of which rival the ocean for richness, complexity, awe-inspiring beauty, wonder.

existing in

the light of this intelligence

i am the aeon

the eternal child of creation born with all the wisdom of the ages.

i am original medicine

the joyous art work of the one

birthed into the earth to worship

to guide

to grow and learn

for the universe

for i am the universe

transcendent

brilliant

invisible

i am the scope and depth of consciousness

because i am simply and completely

fully

present

as the magic of my whole being

ritual, ceremony and exstatic processes and practices allow the self to fully open. they allow the whole self to be present in the same dimension. the full intelligent mechanism of a sensual (and by that i mean sensorily attuned, feeling and experiencing) being is an awesome body of wisdom. each of these senses is a different intelligence, and when they are activated, aligned and integrated, the being is a channel for pure source energy to easily flow through. we have somehow been fractured, because the source energy is not freely and easily flowing through us as individuals, or as a collective. everyone has it flowing through some channels and not others. most people yet do not have it flowing through fully. and the collective? well, we don't need to go into that. we all know. the people who do have it flowing are our exalted guides and wisdom beings. it's interesting, no? when someone is fully activated, they shine so bright it is astonishing, entrancing, inspiring, nourishing. people want to follow them and learn from them and become them. most people don't realize that they can become that themselves.

each one of us has that capacity. so how do we activate the reality?

that's my quest. to find out and to share it. and... i'm diving deeper

more soon...

primal healing

2009-06-21T13:04:00.000-07:00

solstice did not dawn with a radiant sun blessing, the sky merely brightened behind a heavy hanging of rain clouds that soaked and saturated the celebrants of this holy day, driving me deep under cover after a night of dancing and exploring the inner world in the embrace of silent desert winds.

i'm okay with that. the sun rose in my morning dreams, and the extra hours put pink exuberance where wan dedication would have been. praise weather.

my sunrise ceremonial plan wet and chilled, i dropped deep into contemplation when i finally rose from my cloud. the ceremonial life is my way, but the teachings of the wheel are not to be heard by my terrestrial ears - all this is learnt through the vast river of knowledge and experience in which i swim, the many gracious and well-worn mentors who bless my days with their beauty and wisdom. better that way - my understanding is an innerstanding, a synthesis of information and experience, a personally grown wisdom. i laugh as i oscillate between "i want a teacher!" and "i am the teacher." and "all wisdom is inherent in the divine hologram of incarnate experience." in the mayan (arguelles) i am lunar worldbridger, part of that definition being that i "polarize in order to equalize".

why, yes. yes i do. the pendulum is my horse.

anyway, spent half the day channeling my own understanding of the wheel, mapped and graphed, key-worded and archetypally codified, far from exhaustive (aaah, the infinite journey of archetype). then finally, almost confusingly, the bright sun burst through the dispersing clouds and the land re-issued that sweet and insistent invitation to her skin that had been pulsing in my inner hearing for the week.

yes, yes, i am coming... quick, quick, it is late to spread land between me and other monkeys. abiquiu, i come for your mojo.

abiquiu is northwest of here, mesa country and rolling hills. that sublime, masterful sculpture of ancient terra that once was ocean floor flushes and waves before the astonished spirits eyes in gently painted tones of powdery green, deep rusty red, rich brown and deep blackened brown, softest pre-dawn blue... gnarled tufts of juniper and pinon pine dot the gentle angles of the hills, a beautiful accent on the symphonic dance of demure colors. and always there plays a magical renaissance sky overhead, the creative studio of the elements radiant for the joy of being and the beholder. where better to purge the flotsam, purify the spirit, invoke the essence, honor creation? it is a breathtaking temple of natural grace.

a single fine white mesa with a special tilt to its top called me to the flame, graceful and sparkling, rising slightly above its earthen surroundings. a sky temple, carved of ivory. a mesa is a mountain with its top gently raised by a band above the body of the mound. i've climbed a lot of mesas in my earth journey, but never one like this - when i reached its base and began to scale the curve of the mound beneath the band, i embraced the strange phenomenon that it is crafted out of some kind of white, powdery sand. truly seeming as a deliberate sculpture, its form is that of the desert but its mass is porous, and it crumbles in the hands as one climbs. being the lizard that i am, i climbed anyway, caution not even be damned, caution wasn't even entertained. this is how i do.

along the mound, which is steep, there runs one long sensual ridge, up which scampering is a pure delight. at the latening hour, the bright sun shone directly into my eyes, causing sweat to stream down into them and tiring me quickly. it occurred to me as i climbed the ridge that the mountain was actually very steep and if i got to the top, getting down was going to be a bitch.

something about climbing, though. just go.

so i got to the band, and there was no readily visible place to climb it. i began to traverse the body of the mesa and it became apparent that there probably wasn't a good place to scale it because the band of a mesa is usually straight up or slightly curved to overhang, which is fine when the rock is solid. when the rock is crumbly and the mountain is steep, that's not fine. so, sun blazing in my eyes and the mountain offering me the challenge at the price of my skin, i continued to traverse, looking for the way off or up to the top. i found one potential portal of ascension where the band narrowed and there were only a few feet of scaling to pass to the next slope towards the top. i put one foot on a ledge of soft stone, pressed on it gently with my weight to see if it would hold, and decided that if i hopped from there to the handhold that i could see, i could scramble over the edge and be fine on the slope.

as i stepped, i felt the stone twitch beneath my foot and before i could actually grasp the handhold i was reaching for, it gave way beneath me. the sound of tumbling stone fell away below me as i gripped the mesa with my body, willing myself into place. that one stone that i had stepped on? that one rested against my now dented shin with a new red spot to mark my presence and my passage. it was a great deliberate movement of faith to lift my foot so it could fall, laughing at me, away down the slope. then a great, bemused silence surrounded me as the last tiny pebbles pitched and rolled away, and sudden signals of pain arrived from all the little scratches on my bare skin. blood offerings. no worries.

fuckin' hell, man. this loveland of mine is a sharp kiss.

laughing and giving thanks that i didn't fall down the side of the mesa over cacti and into the chasm beneath me, i opted not to be attached to the glory of the top and to instead float down into gentle communion with the grass on the plains and the much gentler rise of the brown mesa right beside me.

i think you have to fly to an ivory castle anyway, right? or go around the backside. HA! next time.

by then, of course, my clothes (my Ceremonial Solstice Whites) were sweaty wet and dusty, so i took them off to walk the plains naked. i was beside and below the gentle mountain that had so captured the heart of georgia o'keefe, the black mesa. its top is broad with a great sloping skirt of hills radiating out from it in all directions, and it does indeed, emanat an arresting pulse of graceful elegance. of this mountain she once said "perhaps, if i paint it enough, god will give it to me". i think god did, and it is she who sits there still, painting the sky with her ephemeral brilliance. it is only the desert that offers a sky blessing like this. great drifts of cloud piled upon each other in interdimensional layers with light playing through them, a game of hide-and-seek played by god and form. some edges pearlescent, some masses infused with an etheric light, some faces flat grey, rays of sun shining through openings in great shafts of blessing light, angels dancing in their yellow-golden glow, all woven on the vast blue fabric of infinity stretching behind.

so slowly, so slowly, climbing the graceful slope of the brown mesa to it's top to look out over the valley. the land, blessedly free from the slavery of the level, rises and falls in it's own rhythms, so feminine in its curves and swells. the lake laid there on the plain between rising forms of weather worn ancient mountains, a flat expanse of pearlescent blue laid into the fluctuating earth colors that seem to dance in the wind. those ancient mountains layered on each other stretching back to the horizon, softening in shades of blue as they peered out from behind each other as curious and elegant animals may. such perfection in this transient beauty. such love and healing, such being and wisdom.

each step a question and a prayer as i rest deeply into every breath, knowing that what i thought was truth is now underscored by an awareness so much more vast that there can be no assuming anything about anything, least of all about myself. i have heard the call, i have come as an answer, and a deeper stillness and presence than ever have i held is asked of me to know what the call is for, what the answering will mean for my being.

i felt my mind racing, chattering along about things that weren't there - stories, so many stories, all perfectly valid, all perfectly inconsequential. not here, not the moment. mind business. busy-ness.

so much more discipline to cultivate.

i laughed at myself a lot yesterday. learned a lot. grew in understanding.

and i walked. the sun shone intermittently as a game with the clouds, a chill but not cold wind blowing over the crest of the magical mountain, very little of the suns kiss to the skin, but much of its magic in the sky. a beautiful plateau lays across the plain from the mountain, and to its edge i walked, to a spot where i laid down and drank a brief sunkiss into my naked temple. purification. sensual saturation. the earth, the rain and sun come to me as lovers, soak the skin to madness, rapture. pure healing. no mind. the wind blows over me and i slip, deeply breathing the dampened earths saturated musk in through my cells, through my skin, through my loving creation. slip, relinquishing my body, a gift to the sky, through the veils into pure communion. trance.

drink deep the fleeting light. grow a garden of beauty within the temple in which all of creation may dance. i am eden.

i laid there long in trance, sinking into the sound of the birds, the wind, the silent open space of earth. then the breeze suddenly chilled at the same time that the light darkened, and i sat up to see where the storm was coming from. the storm, lit from within with a golden fire, was flowing over the mountain, consuming her. the streaks of rain flowed softly between her and i, a veil of life over a fertility dance. i had mere minutes before it came for me. i took my rain coat out of my pack and wrapped it around the pack to keep it and my boots dry, and stretched my naked vessel into the arc of the oncoming tempest. so cold the wind that flew against my skin, penetrating my fears and flushing my resistance. my earth cells contracted against the expansion of my transcendent being into that gift of fresh sky water, but for this had i come and into this would i gratefully go.

"naked in the storm" is this time. it has been my metaphor, and up 'till then had been a statement of suffering, of enduring. now was given the time to transform the tenor, embrace the storm through my ferocious devotion to loving grace, and to be liberated in this embrace. now was the time for "naked in the storm" to be carnal grace, original passion, primal healing. joy.

first softly the rain began to fall, pattering frigid against me, and the current of cold that rushed through me took my breath, began to draw the blood in from the edges of my form towards my heart. where the rain touched, my skin contracted. the spaces between kisses was warm and still expanded, so a wondrous undulation of temperature flowed and flowered through my skin. i stood still on the plateau as the storm enveloped me until a rhythm grew up through my feet into my body and moved me into dance with sky, earth, elements, self.

then ferociously the rain began to beat down in thunderous sheets. i ran, leapt, twirled, jumped, danced in its raging tide. i laughed insanely and innocently. i howled and called the animal kin in their own voices. screaming a fierce and guttural scream, i purged the poison that had been churned by the weeks of trial, endowing it to the storm who took it with honored grace and swept it away over the plains. then i sang, weaving the tale of becoming into the universe as the clouds moved across the sky, and in that way that only the earth can love you, a rainbow began to grow. as the storm rolled over me, and as i screamed and danced, the rainbow grew to arc perfectly across the sky, a whole crescent of spectral beauty, drawing me into its magical portal of transformation.

another of michie's gifts.

i screamed a name into that great arc of creation, and the call came back from across the plains. as i raised my voice, my prayers, my becoming into the golden storm now almost passed over me, the coyote clan raised their song in solidarity. i could hear in their tones that there were big beauties and little new babies, and they were singing with me, welcoming me to their hearth, witnessing my journey. then, as i lowered my arms back down towards the earth, the thunder rolled in closing, blessed my ceremony, and completed my circle.

dripping wet, naked and noticing that i was very cold, i went back to my bundle, unwrapped it from its protection (raincoat! what a miracle) and re-arrived in to the tangible world through the portal of my clothing. my hands had that thick, not-quite-functional feeling of freeze, so i held them in my armpits as i wandered around the base of the mesa back towards my little red time-machine.

the light was slowly vanishing from the land, the sky moving more steadily in its progression from wild golden fire to muted prussian blue. distantly the thunder of divine council rolled across the land in the contours of the storm, traveling to nourish and inspire the earth and its creatures. wet desert has a smell that is the beginning and end of the world. it is the most grateful, rapturous, joyous, sensual, blissful scent that could ever bless the senses. it rose around me every step i took towards the regular world, soaking into the olfactory sense of my being, into the energetic signature of my soul as a perfect romance, as a guide, a gift, a remembrance.

i am a desert child. she dances for my joy and i sing for her pleasure. we are kin, symbiotic and devoted to our love and its fulfillment.

this is the joy of place.

the truth of love.

the beauty of being.

this is what matters.

the essence

2009-06-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

the storm has passed, and the sea in which my boat gently rocks is now thick with churned flotsam, the treasury of my mind, beautiful and ugly. i do not discriminate in this moment, it is all information metabolizing into wisdom. if not for the tempest, i would not know the mysteries of the deep. i would not innerstand.

all it requires of me is presence, initiative, the steady hand of a clear mind to honor the gift of awareness.

grace help me if i chose to move forward too fast - surely i would plunged into the madness of lesson again. thank you, that's not necessary. i am fully attentive.

this degree of witnessing is deeper than any i have experienced previously. it calls me to truth in a new way, with new imperative, with new urgency. i have been stripped naked in the storm, battered by the weather to learn of my capacity, and of all the thorns on my rosebush. i have been gifted deeply valuable relationship with the mystery, savagery and beauty of my being. and there is yet more unfolding every moment.

only fulfilling the essence matters. ceremony is the way.

"wanderer, there is no path. you lay down your path by walking."

i know what that means now. i know why it means something to me.

as servant, lover and mentor, i move in truth.

the temple of the mountain

2009-06-15T18:02:00.000-07:00

the sky again hangs close, its promise of water cooling and heavy in the dance of grey and white, curled and coiled into and through each other. it was the bright sun that warmed me to waking after a cold night of not-quite-sleep had passed in the watchful embrace if the star filled sky. this sky, my eternal beloved, holds a perfect peaceful space for me unknown in human relation, witnesses and receives me, guides and chastises me, guards and exposes me in the continual dance of becoming we dance together. creation, my mentor, is the essence of truth i hold space for in human relations. and i am so blessed, i find it so often.

animal relations are yet more pure, bereft as they are of the artifice of the word, the politics of mind. the absence of speech is such a soothing gift in relating. and animals hold the knowledge of time very differently in the mind - their minds are not biased against healing, attached to trauma. what they experience, they learn from, but they allow to change with time and presence, being ever available to loving communion once the communion has been established. that's what they remember. love.

i am not yet this gracious. so from my beloved animal companions i learn.

i was walking across the barnyard of my great grandmothers farm fifteen years ago, when she was still alive and the farm was still a sanctuary in my world, when i first encountered the most blessed heart i've yet to know in this world. michie (whose name was blackie at that moment) was laying in the dirt, her tail languidly thumping the ground and that perfectly serene expression on her face, gazing into the hills with all of the wisdom of creation perfectly balanced in her being. everything about her spoke of peace, elegance, deep knowing. i was instantly in love, and asked my mom and grandma if she could come with me. she's been with me ever since. it is amazing what she's taught me, by the very nature of her being, over these years. she has travelled all over the country with me, lived in more houses that i can even remember, been a gauge for all of the relationships of my life that have passed through her knowing field (she knows when someone isn't a good fit for me, and when someone really is), nourished and nurtured me in my challenges, received all of the elation of my ascensions, been the cutest thing i've ever had the gift of cuddling, sat with me in ceremonies and rituals, healed me and my friends, gracefully withstood the annoying gracelessness and jealousy of our other cat, triumphed with miraculous equanimity over sicknesses that were supposed to kill her, and been the most magical and yummy blessing i could have ever asked for. when i went to australia for three weeks, she slept on my pillow the whole time, occasionally leaving the room to wander the house and see if i'd come home yet and she'd missed it, then went back to the pillow. when i lived with david, she would lay down between us when we were in a state of unbalance and offer her belly as the unifying field that would help us to remember what was really important. when i was sick, she would lay with me, rest her head near mine and do energy medicine on me, which always served to expedite my healing. we used to sit for long moments with our faces touching, sharing deep breaths and soft tides of loving wisdom. sometimes when she would be cleaning herself or eating something, afterwards she would look up and look around and the little pink tip of her tongue would be pressed out between her lips in her little black face, and i swear she knew it was cute and would do it when i needed to laugh or she wanted me to get my face out of whatever i was doing and give her the good loving.

totally amazing animal.

when i came back from california this last time, she was especially attentive and always looking for cuddles. being that she had always been very independent, that caught my attention. i first thought that maybe she just missed me, but then i started to feel that maybe she knew that her time was coming to closure and wanted to share as much love as possible before her journey over the threshold. i wouldn't quite admit that to my full awareness, however, because michie is my baby, and for her to leave this world was a concept too strange and unpleasant for me to imagine. life without michie? hasn't she always been here? won't she be here forever?

my mom came up and said that she'd become incontinent one day, and so after it happened twice, i took her to the vet. at that time, she was still the bright, beautiful michie-love that she'd always been. when i took her to the vet, the vet found a tumor in her bladder that was big enough to be the real deal, and we talked long and seriously about what that meant. i was already emotionally taxed, and that pitched me over. i was scared and so... saddened. i got on the computer and checked out everything i could find about animal cancer and possible treatments. the allopathic options were traumatizing, limitedly effective and extremely expensive. alternative treatments were for animals whose cancer had not progressed that far as to having a huge tumor already established in the body. but, health worship in hand, i got a plan about fasting, superfoods and reishi mushroom supplements. my mind was in total turmoil because everyone around me was saying she was going to die, die, die, and i was working to be clear that she may be able to move through it in the way that i'd seen her do before.

so with my plan in place, i had her fast for one day before beginning her on the supplements. that day that she fasted she was fine, bright and cuddly and beautiful. the next day i woke up and she was laid out, curled up in a box, her vitality low and her eyes just staring. i fed her that morning and she threw that food up, so i began to feed and water her with a syringe. she laid in my arms most of the day as i sang and prayed with her, passed the hawk feather over her, filled her with light, touched her with loving healing, just pouring myself into her to aid her process in whatever way i could. i had decided that if miraculous healing was going to take place, i was totally available on every level to support that, but it had to be her choice. i wasn't going to pump her full of prescription medicines if all they would do was lessen the symptoms and prolong the process.

she totally stopped drinking and eating, and then started to just throw up no matter what. her body began to shut down and her soul really started to leave. my mind was racing, grasping at possibilities, grasping at everything in an attempt to hold her life in the body in place while simultaneously working to be equanimous with the reality that she was totally done and that was a natural reality of time and physical being. i grieved and grasped and prayed and blessed and dropped into a transdimensional state that lasted for the last few days of her life. i sat with her in vigil through all the nights, holding my hand back from "ending her misery" by taking her to the vet for sleep. it's curious to me that me that we have the option to end an animals life if it is suffering unnecessarily, but we are tabooed against that same grace with humans. one more of the examples of how differently we value these modes of life.

it was my work, my honor and my place to hold space for her transition, as long as it took. the only other death i've directly experienced was my great-grandmother whose decline was so steady and long that it was no suprise when she died. she was also in her nineties and just tired. she would say she wanted to go be with god and be done working so hard in this life, and i wanted that for her. she was one of those women who took care of ungrateful people all her life, worked hard for everyone and everything and was the most purely loving being to embrace and be embraced by. michie, having come from grandma's farm, was an emissary for her spirit in my life. all of that being gone, the prospect of michie leaving had a spectacular significance of rending my last roots from the ground and casting me into the wind with no highstory to source for my physical life in this world. all of my childhood is gone, all of the eras of my life are gone, everything is gone from my physical experience. more often than not i feel like a spirit that only occasionally solidifies to experience this place. i do not feel fully incarnate in the world very often, and it is place and relationship that helps me to feel that incarnation. it is also a part of why i gather the mystical ephemera of my rituals and travels to save in glass jars around my altar, it is a part of why i have tattoos. these things root me in physical experience and time, give my body longevity and help to hold the fact that i have existed in place.

so to behold michie leaving her body over the course of days was an incredible journey. she was, as ever, completely graceful. she was in so much pain, yet would rest her head wearily on her paws and look steadily into my eyes where i laid next to her, emanating that pain but through it a love so vast and pure it still and shall always lesson me as to the way of perfect being. silence, stillness and grace.

oh, creation, it hurt so much. i couldn't believe it. i love so deeply the gift of that being in my reality, i so rest into her presence in the world as a nourishment and blessing, i so source her for the beautiful simplicity that i hold most dear in living this life. i cried and cried, mourning the loss of so much, the loss of everything that she has always been there for as well as her. i knew the day that she would truly go, and that morning i woke in dark morning to take her out into the grass and the sunrise, to be blessed and cleansed for her passing. she laid down in the grass before me, a small cry leaving her lips as she searched creation for freedom, and rested her head softly into her steadily decreasing breath. the sun rose over us and saturated her beautiful body with warmth and light, and she tenderly licked dew from the grass. we laid next to each other there until the morning dogs and everyone else began to come. i took her home and laid down with her, where we lay embracing each other for the rest of the day. abruptly she stood up and walked over to lay down under my altar, and then i realized that she wouldn't die while i was with her, she wanted to be alone. so i blessed her, stroked her fur that i have loved so deeply with it's last breaths still warming it, and walked out along the river path to stand in the river singing before i went to be with my friends for my best friend's last night in town.

i felt it when she left.

when i returned to my house, she was in the same place, completely still. she had laid down to rest on my ceremonial dress, and her claws were in it when i picked her up, so it lifted and then fell at my feet as i drew her to my chest. i put it on and held her, blessing and thanking, wailing and rocking silently. i shook the rattle over her form and prayed to, with and for her immortal spirit before wrapping her in a blanket and putting her in my bed where she had loved to lay with me. i was so exhausted, so we laid down in sleep together.

the next morning (was that just yesterday?) i woke up and began to clean the room, so that our final rituals would be in clear space, cleared of the energy of mourning and free for the transmission of energy and information that happens in life's movement from one form to another. we had good ceremony all day long, and i learned much. then in the evening, we went to the temple of the mountain for a ritual fire. we went as the sun was leaving this day to make day in other places to the meadow where the quartz sits in a stone circle, and the aspen groves surround a small stand of pines, two ridges flowing down into each other with the bright pure stream running in the crevasse. it is a holy place, so rich with juju and time's gifts of experience, and it has held me more than once to receive my prayers and to be my special place. there are piles of fallen aspens below the meadow, ready made silver firewood that cracks with a deeply satisfying sharp sound when one is breaking logs with their feet. i gathered a huge pile of wood as the light was disappearing, made the stone circle for the pyre, blessed it to contain the ritual, and as night came fully on and the stars emerged from behind the veil of daylight, the fire spirits came to assist me in the relinquishment of that beloved body to spirit and space. the fire burned long through the night, steadily transforming that mode of flesh and bone into ash. i had thought it would be more tears and difficulty, more releasing attachment, but the feeling of it was quite something else. in being present for the whole journey, through the pain of separation to the peace of completion, i honored her, our kinnexion, myself and all of creation. fifteen years ago i took responsibility for the life of another being, and at the end of that life, i took responsibility for her transition to the spirit world. i looked into the fire as that body disappeared, marveling at the transformative nature of that most miraculous element while singing songs to honor her, to bless her spirit, to assure our kinnectedness, to thank creation for our time together, to honor my grandmother, whose spirit rolls with me still, to express the deep and awesome gratitude i have for the blessing of her in my life. so many songs. so much wood for the fire, so much heat and flame. and when her body was finally completely transformed, i prayed four rounds of prayer with the last of the flames: one for me, one for my kin and friends, one for my world, and the last for celebration.

so i have completed that journey of ours, and in that completion, i do not feel bereaved. i feel complete. i feel that i have completely honored our journey, spirit, love and being. i have completely honored creation by holding the whole process in my own hands, and making the journey our journey. michie is the most beautiful spirit i have ever had the blessing of immersing into. she shall guide and teach me always. i feel her within me as i feel all of my animal guides, all of my spirit kin, all of my blessings.

there is a great peace in my spirit in this moment, for having come to closure in a cycle that may now blossom into the next phase of this life's being. it is a peace that i have earned through presence and right action, and i am grateful for it. i am grateful to michie for this final lesson that she has given to me.

so grateful...

bless

phoenix

2009-06-13T14:09:00.000-07:00

in my heart i draw together

all that has been rendered

with the graceful hands

of self-compassion

i honor my wounds

in the warrior's way

exploring my altered vessel

as a new territory

allowing the cutting of my feet

to strengthen the soles

as i continue to walk

learning

i am a stranger here

the ancestor, baby and bride

in my own land

in the land of my dreamtide

beckoned beyond the veil of has-been-known

into the sensual rhapsody

of yet-to-know

such colors never beheld by eyes such as these

flourish riotous

and cast me as innocent

where i had been weathered

born fresh through fire

that yet still burns

i revel in the sincerity

of my passions

in their severity

flames and freeze

in new time

i become

**************************************

etheric snow twists and flutters through the cool air of a confused season in flux. it is the fluff of the cottonwoods, our ancient grandmothers and fathers, that looses into the whirling air and gathers softly into corners, to then be soaked by these intermittent rains. in late june, the sky is heavy with the promise of water, the nights cool with the sharp chill of a summer not quite come, the vibrant flora of the mountains spills lusciously over every contour of the land and settlement. it "should" be hot, dry, bright days and warm nights, the river trickling (though this it still does, for she is endangered and never flows more than an inch over the ground), the black and red bugs crawling through every crevasse and the crows mating in the high branches of trees swaying in a hot wind. but no. this time not. and it puts me to mind of a line in a poem that i love}

"it's 3:23 in the morning

and i can't sleep

because my great-great-grandchildren ask me in dreams

'what did you do once you knew?

what did you do

when the animals all were dying?

did you fill the streets with protest when democracy was stolen?

surely you did something

when the seasons started failing?

what did you do

once you knew?'"

i ask myself that question often. what do i do, with my knowing?

i have worked to become the radiant divine essence that i lives within the crust of hard living that i have steadily melted over the last few years, since i stopped indulging it. i have worked hard at that healing, that becoming. these last weeks have been the opportunity to see how that work has progressed - where i have succeeded and what i have not worked with enough. i see the still bleeding eye of my original wound and i see the vast and breathtaking beauty of my essential truth, laying as a wolf and a jaguar with crowns touching on the event horizon where this body and this soul commune. i see the radical love with which i can finally embrace myself, and the brilliant light that shines through that love as a salve for this family of mine, this family of incarnate being. i see the wrath, hatred and envy that still live within me, and the grace with which i can regard them and still negotiate their presence in my totality. i see the tremendous brilliance of my being, the awesome scope of love and grace that is my self in this world. i see the innocence of my soul, golden as the day i arrived here, and the silent ancient wombon that i am beyond time and incarnation, and how they hold each other in tender stillness, energetically calibrating the frequencies of their nature to be a beautiful music. i see the beauty of being, i see my beauty in being, and i see the road laid long into the hills before me, full of love, beauty, magic and freedom. there is a soft diamond knowing within that exists transcendent of terrestrial entanglement, and it is this place in which i now rest, not yet freed from process, but yet resting in the nature of what is this moment, acknowledging that the experience is only that - the experience. the truth is yet greater, beyond words and bodies. they say the truth shall set you free, but it goes beyond that. freedom and truth are one.

i have delved deeply into the mystery of the dimensions, for i do not think that this world can be saved or salved through actions born of the mind. there is a great sickness here on our earth, something that is not born of us or from within us, that needs healing for all of us to be free. and it is not the mind that will heal it. we have been corralled, like slave animals, into an experience of living through the mind. but we are sensual beings, comprehensively intelligent and meant to live on the brilliance of sunlight and the love of earths breath. we are not meant to think, think, think, and analyze, analyze, analyze. we are meant to experience, be affected, affect and become through the entire sensory phenomenon of the body. we are a comprehensive intelligence utilizing our most treacherous aspect as our primary modality. the mind as it is used now is a dictator that runs amok with our spirits wisdom by being put into such a ludicrously improper position of power. it could be the ally that guided the collection of experience and the cultivation of wisdom into the ascension through the material plane into embodied communion. but there is not yet a system in place for that to be the way, for all of our systems are based in duality. this present moment of incarnation is the development of that system, that system of transcendence through unification and expansive consciousness. we are meant to integrate the divine knowing of source consciousness within the vessel of terrestrial experience. this little world of coffee and computers and jobs and rent and what-fucking-ever is not the way to realize this - it is a game for entertaining slaves out of their own potential of self and collective realization.

i have been playing that game, with half of my self in and half of my self out because i have yet to find the allies that would truly journey the change with me, and i am afraid of being alone. we are all in the system that we yearn away from, and my experience has yet to include communion on the path. my experience thus far is of separate creatures on the same path, or on paths very close together, but not traveling together. i have crafted my experience this way, so i know that i can craft it differently as my impulse shifts from self-cultivation to collective ascension. one necessarily preceded the other. the yearning in my heart is a genuine yearning for all of us to go together into the brilliance of being. we are not meant to suffer this world in the ways that we do, but for the experience to change, there must be enough of us in resonance and we must hold the invitation open for everyone to come. division is demise.

so when my great-great-grandchildren ask me in dreams, "what did you do when you knew?" i sit in prayer and breathe into them with all of the love that flows through me and say, "i am still searching for my way in and for my way out. and i am searching because we are one. i am searching because this wandering is a wisdom that is my way, and ceremony is the way that i live this wisdom". and this is true. ceremony is the way, because ceremony transcends the divisionism of this field, transcends the tyranny and arrogance of the mind, transcends the duality dimension and brings us into the truth of our resonant selves. would the dominating religions need to eradicate ceremony, ritual and exstasy if it were not the way to liberation? would the dominating structures need to crush the bodies and spirits of womyn if the salvation of the whole did not rest in the natural transdimensional grace and potency of our beings, and in our awesome power to steward new life into this realm? would the dominating structures need to cultivate men into emotionally castrated killing machines if the softness of their caring spirits were not an integral aspect of the peace of this world? would the dominating structures need to slaughter the animals of the earth if communion with them were not a means of expanding the consciousness of humanity? when the state is threatened, they outlaw gathering, because gathering in circles, singing, dancing and prayer, change the frequency of the field. these seemingly simple actions alter the resonant nature of space-time and cause the unravelling of diseased systems as truth essence flowers from the center of creation through the vessels of being. critical mass is important. without a critical mass of people, we are each one in the night, unwoven, and our songs, though potent, disseminate into the night without their fullest potential realized in relation.

so when my great-great-grandchildren ask me in dreams the question that i am always asking myself, i say "i searched for my people, and for a way to bring us out of the slavery of separation and into resonance with each other, because it was what i knew how to do. i sat in ceremony with myself and with anyone who would sit with me, because it was what i knew how to do. i held space and looked for elders, allies and wisdom teachers, internal and external, because it was what i knew how to do, and it was the way the path unfolded for me". but i don't yet know how to make it all bigger than the moment. i know how to look, and i know how to invite, and i know how to deal with the sticky slowness of the process of awakening when people come to ceremony with a watch on, wondering when they'll be done so that they can go back to their lives. i have yet to know how to coalesce all of this energy and information into a cohesive offering, into a cohesive field for the expression of a greater pulse. i have yet to know, but the knowing is coming. i have awaited an ally, or allies, like to the kindred in warriors tales of other times, and this has not come. it is an essential aspect of the sickness of this time that we isolate, fraction our time and busy ourselves with false idols. i have almost been in community more than once, but it falls away just as i am to take the step in, so for now my journey is the solitary path and i walk into the rising sun alone to realize that there is no alone in this world. for as soon as i sit to prayer, all of creation is there with me. and when i sit down singing, the sound draws the resonant heart to my side.

someday, perhaps, my song will be clear and i will sit in community with a cadre of resonant souls, all of us singing the ascension song together. perhaps someday soon. after all to which i cling has been released, and the true needless nudity of being flows through me as a brilliant river of pure love water. after all of my poison has been healed, and i can carry only love to the circle. after i have journeyed to the mountain and have carried down the wisdom intact.

perhaps someday soon.

for my great-great-grandchildren who ask me in dreams, "what did you do once you knew?".

and for the animal kin, whose wisdom guides me, holds me, and reminds me when i get lost.

may it serve...

expansion, discomfort and revelation, part 3

2009-06-07T15:34:00.000-07:00

these days, wild with wind and lightning, rain and thunder, have ravaged the spirits of myself and my kin in a way that is not just the working of our inner selves. it is the working of the cosmos through us, as the sun heaves and writhes in its fiery mass, planets spin in wild disregard for our little lives, stars fly and space bears dispassionate witness.

i thought i would tear my mind from my brain this week, railing as it did against my peace. such obsessive transgression waged against me, and such a shield that it planted between my consciousness and my clarity. i haven't felt that way since i was younger, much younger. perhaps i am again in the sky of grand experience, and this process of becoming my truth is an omni-dimensional expansion that includes within its scope the naked vulnerability of the tiniest child and the indomitable potency of the mightiest warrior. like to the universal model, of which each of us is holographic, in consciousness i sit in the event horizon from which all expands and into which all contracts.

it is a most phenomenal process that i behold flowering through me.

i am being called upon by my community to serve in the ritual and ceremonial capacity, something calling almost every day. i am being recognized by my contemporaries and my elders as the medicine woman that i have felt growing through me, and the harmonic that that recognition creates between my inner and outer realities is astounding. it is a balancing and a fluency that i have awaited for many moons. i am also growing in my ability to galvanize ritual experience in whatever context i am moving in, the energy of my being simply drawing my companions to the practice with me, so that we are existing in ritual space easily and consistently.

then there is the way that all of the work and gathering and seeding that i've done in these past few years has came to fruition on the... hmmm, how would i call it? the paradigmatic plane. something like that. this weekend, i gave a Pachamama Aliance "Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream" symposium to the Student Global Leadership Alliance. what do they call those? peak experiences, that's what. it was incredible. the SGLA is a program for teenagers and young adults designed to help them awaken more expediently into their passion and potential for leadership. this was a group of 15 - 22 year old kids from all over new mexico who just blew me away. they are so enthusiastic, so passionate, so wise and present and eager about their opportunities for affecting positive change in the world, it nourished my heart beyond measure to encounter them in a capacity of guidance. they beheld within me something intangibly inspiring, and the conversessions we had throughout the symposium were awesome, our mutual nourishment deep and dynamic. an amazing thing about these young people is that while they are fully aware of the state of our world, they are not hopeless or in bondage in the face of that awareness. they see what's happening, are eager to learn more, and are eager to involve and onvest themselves in turning the tide towards beauty. they have such fire for it. it was so enjoyable and so deeply nourishing for me to be able to engage them as an elder guide, for them to look to me with that mixture of familiarity (because i feel like them) and respect (because i also feel experienced) and openness to what wisdom i have garnered in my journey. it feels like deep service, the right kind of service to the physical plane. there was a simultaneous scope and depth in it that feels that i Have Done the Good Work (for the weekend). praise creation. after the symposium we made music together, fleshed out the conversessional seeds we had planted in the gathering, shared laughter, food and tobacco smoke, prayers and blessings. we immersed in each other as allies, and their absolute vitality continues to flow through me to this moment. one of those precious moments when i meet, again, what it's really all about.

a good friend of mine, in receiving the review of my psychic journey this week, offered me a perspective that i am exploring, that i find interesting. he said that whenever he is about to give a workshop (he does myriad different types of peace work), there is a burgeoning of all the ways that he creates self-violence, and all the ways that he creates violence in the world. he said when he realized what the nature of that gift was, he was very grateful. we talked for awhile about what it means to be a facilitator. when we take up the mantle of our own powers, we must fully settle that which we are to be teaching within ourselves. if it is peace, we must face our inner war, and the way we make war in the world, and put that into integrity. for how could we presume to guide others into a place that we have not fully journeyed and balanced within ourselves? the work is ongoing, of course. but to be a guide, there must be a level of mastery, because if there's not, you cannot possibly hold space for all that will arise for the people whose journeys you invite into your care.

it says in the Emerald Tablet, the original treatise on alchemy, that "that which is essential is not destroyed in a fire. it is purified". life is an alchemical journey. we arrive golden, become leaden, and liberate ourselves through trial and triumph back into gold. we are solar wisdom, and as we grow into our truths, we re-learn the miraculous brilliance that is the innate resonance of our incarnate selves. we are the communion of the eternal grace of creation and the organic dynamism of the terrestrial. there is no simple journey through living if one chooses to be fully involved. truly, regardless of the way one travels, the journey is as wild and unpredictable as any journey is - it is the nature of journeying.

so, simultaneously, while i am being invoked as medicine woman on every level, i have experienced being absolutely ravaged by trivial obsession. and i don't invoke this as a dismissal of the movements of my heart, but as a clarification of what the mind can do with circumstance. it can so warp and savage the peace of the self by working overtime to poison, through trauma memory, the purity of the new moment. i have met with my mind, the enemy this week, and had clearly illustrated the ways in which i can still be small and fearful, wrathful and spiteful. i have not gained clarity about what answer those awarenesses invite, but the conversession is open, so the guns are no longer firing. there is silence where there had been pandemonium, and in silence, peace may rise.

i now feel about my "dark side" (for lack of a less new exhausted term) that it is not something to destroy or deny - it is a potential ally whose power needs to be understood and integrated so that it can serve the work of the whole. i had thought that i should just be the light, and have no dark side, but, you know... it just doesn't work like that. and the whole idea is way too Doreen Virtue for me. i was young, what to say? anyway, i'm down with my dark side, and in this week i have learned that it still has a leverage over my transcendent consciousness that i wasn't aware of.

so here i am with the next phase of my deep work. how do i manage the expansion of my soul with the contraction of my little self? it was interesting to see, on saturday, my process unfolding. i woke up feeling like hell, my eyes burning from tears and weariness, wrathful and exhausted. but i had a mission, and it was the most important thing on my radar. so i went running. i went to the park and martially kicked the fuck out of my struggle. i yuked (a gift from rahmanen - the practice of unabashedly purging negative tension. wonderful thing, yuking. praise old wild, mystic, hippy sihks) loudly and ferociously, i laid in the grass and rained into the earth. i breathed and ohm-ed. and i still felt like hell. but i couldn't go to the symposium that way. i had to be in my center, and i only had an hour and a half to get there. so i took my corn mala (a gift from my departed neighbor, corn kernels from all the native corns strung together), got in the car, and plumbed the depths of my brain for a mantra that would feel good. i sing a lot of somber, minor key mantras and spirit songs that were not appropriate for drawing me out of the well of my challenges. rack, rack, rack... AH-HA! my friend sita sings "om mani padme hum" in the most jubilant, beautiful, uplifting and healing way i have ever heard, and to that mantra i humbly leapt in reverent joy. i sang and sang and sang. all the way to se'as house, picked her up, filled her in, and then we sang all the way to the east mountains (no easy journey for her these weeks, either). and when i got there, i felt better. i could show up. i could smile. and as the symposium progressed, and i sat in that room full of beautiful, activated, caring, passionate people, the earth within me shifted, and my fire turned from pain to purification, and in that purification was pure, satisfied joy. in service.

then the madrid gypsy fest after that, well... good music, good dancing, good beer, wild people, wild dust storm, rain and magical sunset. moon rise over the galisteo basin, golden yellow and silently massive. earth embrace, community embrace, kinship and reverent irreverence. all the good medicine, flowing freely from sky to earth, heart to heart, moon to sun. and that guy with the dreads, oh my goodness... trouble.

thank you, all creation, for so richly rewarding me for every moment that i show up for my struggles on this planet (and thank you for my struggles being so small). i love you, i love this home, i love this journey.

thank you, all kin, for the challenges and blessings that we bring to each other in this life. i would grow so much more slowly without them.

may it serve

rapturous excommunication

2009-06-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

these winds, white and raging, rip across the plains and tumble over the mountains excitedly, rolling great and terrifying storms in their currents. a bright light of morning will steadily give way to the encroaching darkness of afternoon whose breezes become sharp and wet, ferocious and sensual with the life promised within those gathering clouds. it seems these are the moments that artists dream of, where so many layers of light dance through so many layers of cloud, golden dawn and steely night mingling in a bachanalian weather dance in shamelessly entrancing hues. that blue! where did it come from? that golden pink! the color of the lips of the goddess! i stretch into the sky to suckle, lifted from gravity by sheer devotional madness. my senses are verily enraptured from my body and i am rendered socially unacceptable as i run naked in the storm through the grassy field behind my house or along the mountain path.

such taboos i destroy in my rapture! they are only taboo because my freedom to love the earth so voraciously is unabashed by the idea that i should be clothed and sit in the warm shelter of a picture window, watching the glory of creation unfold like a tv show for sensual retards. fuck that. i'm exstatic. if not, i am missing the point. you can't deny the sexual healing of a torrential storm. if you've never been there, go spread yourself open to the thunder - it changes everything.

the deities are rumbling over head, every sharp word a brilliant flash of lightning as they tensely sculpt the fate of this earthly moment, every gravitational exchange a glorious bass of thunder permeating my little being with all of the energy of the universe. resting into the orgasmically satiated body of the wet mother beneath me, i feel their explosive conversation in my hips, my lungs, my open mouth. drinking deep the brilliant waters of becoming, i know i am one of a million creatures in this raging river, wholly unique and utterly invisible. only i can be the cell that i am, and only the whole body can validate my existence.

while there is much to do to "save the world" this act of sensual communion with creation is of the utmost importance in a very simple way.

journey with me} creation is satisfied in communion with itself. so why delineate? because there is yet more rapture to experience in the phenomenon of relationship. a beautiful lilac bush spread two bundles of bloom from a single stem just as the legs of a luscious lover would spread for the tongue of the beloved. they were wet and fragrant, tender and tremendous purple in the grey wind of the rainstorm. so i buried my face between the blooms and suckled the water from within their beautiful contours. the mother laughed and swept wind across our kiss to move them around my face, soaking me in scent and water. the lilac kissed me back, and remembered me when next i passed her. her blooms, so short lived and so ravaged by these storms as they flow through, were short lived, and now they are gone, brown and shriveled and falling from the branched of the bush. a fleeting moment that creation arranged just for us to immerse in the radical eros of each other, of the whole moment. in that moment, we were the fruition of a well planned gifting of love to love. the brilliance of creation satisfied in experiencing itself.

this earth is as sensual a lover as one could ever hope to encounter, wild in her diversity of pleasures. this earth is a brilliantly crafted gift to the sensing body, a sensual masterpiece designed to entice, saturate and satiate every single aspect of every element of the physical incarnation. we have flowers of astonishing variety whose scents, textures, colors and tastes are designed to so enrapture and enrich us, it is certain that they are the clever contrivance of a beloved only interested in pleasing the beloved. we have foods whose tastes nourish, please and disgust us, and each of which create a different experience in the body by stimulating and interacting with different chemicals and processes within us. the whole planet (and no, i'm not talking about monkey settlements) is a phenomenal act of architectural brilliance, inviting exploration and discovery to enliven and expand the scope of being, for each hike, trek, walkabout and wander bring untold revelations to the psyche, provided one gets out of the head long enough to take it in.

all of creation is a gift for us to dive into naked and wild, and it is one of the most primal and perfect ways that we can honor the gift to do so. we must worship the earth to understand what we are fighting for if we choose to fight.

i'll never forget when i went to uluru, also know as ayers rock, in australia. it's in the middle of the outback, hell and gone from everywhere except for alice springs, which exists solely as a tourist transfer station for it. the rock is a single massive red monolith in the desert and was the place of female initiation rites for the aboriginal tribes that lived in the area before the regular story of white fuckery played out. i had waited years for the opportunity, spent something like a week getting there, and it was a pilgrimage for me for which i was wholly prepared with offerings and a dance and specific prayers. i walked around the base of the rock looking for my spot, walking slowly so i could drink in the miraculous resonance of her long and full journey as a sacred site on the planet. when i found my spot, i returned to nudity, planted a crystal in a grid in the sand, and danced a prayer with her for things that are not to be written. she flowed through the sand into my body, filled my with her wisdom and her light, graced and nourished me with her power and all of the rites of passage that she had nourished in her being. i fell, famished and elated, to the ground, after many hours of this worship. i had honored her, the women of the story, and myself by arriving fully into her embrace with reverent humility.

one thing that i noticed, as i was walking to and from my ritual, was that the people who had come from so far to this extremely holy place were not even looking at her. most of the people were doggedly walking the two mile track around the rock with their heads down, talking about mundane shit from wherever they had come from like they weren't even there. then, when they would look up, it would be with a camera between them and the rock as some kind of shield between them and the transformation inherent in a real communion with her. that fascinated (and, at the time, profoundly angered) me. one had to travel so far to be there. one had to want to be there, really want it, to go the distance to be there. so why go and not have the experience? why go to the naked clitoris of initiation and not drink it in?

theory} people are drawn to ancient sacred sites, to mountaintops and waterfalls and canyons and caves, because what is ancient and wise in them knows that the healing and nourishment available in these places is absolutely crucial to the wellness and the fulfillment of the being that they are underneath all of the life that has transpired over their truth. but because we are starved for ritual, ceremony and exstasy in this way of being that is working to strangle the life out of life, we don't know how to allow it in to affect us. it is dangerous, because subconsciously we know that to be affected by the sacred nature of the earth means a disconnection from the lie of living that we all live in, even when we are awakening. to be a rapturous lover of the natural world means that we will no longer be able to participate unquestioningly in the animal holocaust, the environmental holocaust, the spiritual holocaust of our times. we will have to be active participants in the liberation of life which is no easy or tiny task. it doesn't reside in changing light bulbs or buying a hybrid or any of the other ways that are consumer band-aids for the conscious complacent. it means conflict with "the way things are" and possible excommunication from the masses for being "a freak".

i'm a freak. praise everything. and i'm not fully awake yet.

before the death of a few years ago, i was a fighting-with-everyone-and-everything self-righteous vegan anarchist capoeirista who thought and expressed that everyone had their heads in their fucking asses and fuck you for being asleep, you lazy ignorant bastard. oh, yeah. it was intense. i would go off on any and everyone about any and everything from the new world order and how drinking coke was paying for the slaughter of south american villagers (which is true) to how eating meat was destroying the environment (also true) to how spiritual starvation was being perpetuated by public schools, churches and television (all true). the issue being that i was so angry and judgmental that my approach inspired defensive positions more than awakening, because my approach was an attack. i was just angry. in that anger, i couldn't share the volumes of very useful information that i had gathered with anyone, because i was so spiritually diseased by what i knew and completely lacking guidance about how to be other than angry.

i had to go live in concert with life and creation before i could do anything to encourage other people to do the same. and i had to realize how hard it is to wake up before i could realize that everyone, even if they seem to be a lazy bastard to me, is doing their best with their own tools to wake up in a situation that almost completely prohibits integral living. i had to have my own awakening through love before i could understand that you can't beat people awake, and that everyone only comes to it in their own time and in their own way. before i had the humiliating realization that just because i knew about didn't make me conscious. ooooh, that smarts. i'm so much better than everyone else!

i find now that i don't come forth with as much as i know about the dominant paradigm in the third dimension for a number of reasons. one is that i know i'm not quite equanimous enough to represent my position without fighting with someone if they won't take it up when i give them my information. i just know that, and i don't want to fight with anyone anymore. another is that i also recognize the limitations of my perspectives, because they are so fluid and impressionable within myself. another is that i recognize that i don't know what people have been through to be in the value systems that they are, and i should learn about that first so that i can approach something respectfully if i decide that i need to approach it at all.

but the most wonderful thing to learn is that my radiant being is what opens doors for transformational experience. if i live well, feel good and am radiant in love, people want to know what i'm doing to be there, and will come to me to learn. it is more of a direct service to be the way that i am and to be an invitation to any and everyone to find that same radiance within themselves. and in this way, i respect creation and everyones experience by being open to questions instead of aggressive with answers. if someone wants to wake up and they like the way that they feel i am awake, then they can come to me and i will offer everything of my experience for them to play with.

guatam buddha said to his disciples, "i can not bring you to enlightenment. i can tell you what i did that brought me to enlightenment. it may or may not work for you. you must try it, challenge it, modify it, to reach your own enlightenment. there is no one way". so while i really want to smack people around for the way we're all living on the earth, i remain humble because i am not yet perfected, and i do believe that everyone is doing their best. i have a lot to offer. but it is only what i have to offer and there is yet so much in the world to taste and love.

but i unreservedly offer this - go make love with the storm. lay into the body of the mother in naked rapture, spread open and shameless, to be ravaged and healed by creation. it begins an alchemical process in the event horizon between the universe and the body that utterly and beautifully transforms the incarnate consciousness. it brings us into resonance with this natural world so that we are one with creation instead of polarized against it, or alienated from it. that unity is our birthright. it is one of the reasons that we are here. don't bereave yourself of that.

en lakesh, may it serve.

expansion, discomfort and revelation, part 2

2009-06-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

i have had the most wonderful experience, these last few years, of having and being a neighbor. my favorite neighbor is a womon named jackie who has lived across the street from me for as long as i've been here. she's been here for 20 years, i've been here for two. when i first came to live in the house that has been my sanctuary, i looked over at her yard, full of veggies and flowers in a beautiful, santa fe style tiered garden and thought, "i wonder who lives there. i want to know". so when i first saw her out in the garden with her powerful arms, her brilliantly wide green eyes and her awesomely earthly presence, i went to engage her. from that engagement blossomed a wonderfully enriching and totally unique relationship for which i am eternally grateful. today it changes, as she has pulled a moving truck our of her driveway and is on her way to oregon with her daughter. as i was walking by the house today (when she was supposed to already be gone), i saw her moving the truck, and she called to me. she came so we could hold each other once more and give thanks for the blessing this communion has been for both of us. there was a beautiful stone in my pocket that i had carried for a few years and that she had seen before and loved. i love it too, but it called clearly in that moment to go with her and hold her in love for her journey and beyond, so i pressed it into her palm with all blessings before flowing back out into the river on my own journey. i am so proud of her. it is so huge for her to leave this hermits nest of hers and go out into the world to start new stories in new places. and she does so in service, so that her pregnant daughter has her support in the journey of inviting life into the third dimension. they go in honor of the indigenous family model, conjoined in support for one another. it is so very, very inspiring.

it brings me into contemplation of movement, change, loss and invitation. there is so much of all of this right now, as people graduate from various places and move into new eras of being, as people move, as people kinverge in love or separate in love, as things die and are born... there is so much that i've been thinking of as i am on the cusp of my own change, on the precipice of my own cliff, spreading my wings before flight through the canyon. where there was a lover and an engagement there is space that i have no drive to fill with another body. i am relishing the subtle and dynamic unfolding of the energies of loss and liberation as i relish the transparency of cactus-flower petals saturated with rain. it is their fleeting saturation that so enriches their color, and only stillness allows me to experience it. i can only suckle the water from their contours if i lower my lips to the bloom with utmost care and awareness, for there are thorns to stab me all around that luscious tenderness. and so soon, so soon, will it all change, and i do not want to miss the earth under my feet by only looking ahead and up because i think that's what i should do. now is the time to look down and in, to see all that is tiny and magical and changed by time and circumstance. it is time to learn from all that has been in these weeks and innerstand the ways that i have been affected and the new ways that i will arrive to reality because of those effects. precious moments, these. i could not have scripted them better.

as the storm of my emotions subsides and the stillness of the nourished earth resides in the present, i am able to be clear with what calls forth to be honored in this moment. i still yearn towards the magical valley of tree, mountain and water that i did when i had a lover to go to there as well. the land still calls me, and to that call i give due heed. i still revel in the miracle of synchronicity that continues to be my experience, and that reveling continues to push me towards a kind of deeply settled nomadism that will lead, i feel, towards a home that is actually mine to rest in, sometime in the future now. there is much to offer through this vessel of myself, and its gifts are requested in many places. my dear friend the musician offered me to tour with her for the summer as a guest. my colorado family invokes me for ceremony and art. my northern family invokes me for re-integration. there is much to learn, to do, to give and receive in these coming moons. and there are great and immediate changes looming overhead, the magnitude of which cannot be predicted by little human minds, because they are the type that shatter all limitations by being beyond the scope of imagination. curiously, i feel that an unrooted groundation is the way that i am meant to serve creation in these moments. interesting. i have allies everywhere i go, love and family everywhere i go, and infinite potential for more. i love towards the valley community, but have no attachment to immersion if now is not the time and work is not the way. perhaps because the akashic wisdom of my eternal self knows of a trajectory far more complex and unusual than the one that i think of casting for myself. that would seem appropriate given my story so far.

it's funny because i don't have this perspective on myself, but when i struggle and wonder, everyone who knows me says "you've always got it together, so relax and let your together come". i laugh and wonder at the stories i tell about myself.

part of this expansion is in the patience required to let the whole wave flow through me. we are, as a collective, very good at starting things, carrying them through and receiving the benefit of our dedication up to that point of investment. we are, collectively, very inept at completion and closure. in our little society working to become a culture we are very enamored with the positive arc of the journey, and very allergic to the negative arc of the journey (value neutral, this concept of pos/neg). we love to start things and feel the rush of inception (falling in love). we love to sink in and feel the rush of expansion (the beauty of deep immersion). we start to squirm and look outward in difficulty (turbulence and boredom after the high of the new has passed and you are just there with each other as you each are and no dopamine to make each other sparkly pretty). we really struggle when the shit-or-get-off-the-pot choice comes along where you have to decide if your invested or bored, then we usually totally dissociate from completion and closure, because we have no working models for that aspect of the journey - most of us don't even realize that it's there to attend to. people also resist the completion and closure aspect of an engagement because in our society, being done with something is usually imbued with all sorts of negative connotations, like abandonment or rejection. in business deals it's different, in projects it's different, but in relationships this plays out over and over again. people jump ship when the going gets rough because we are afraid of being hurt and not being able to heal, and we are afraid that attending to the end will be too hard for us to arrive to, or we just don't want to show up because by the time we admit that we're done, we've already been done for awhile and resent needing to give more energy to the process. or perhaps we are afraid that we will miss the next beginning by being present for the present end. so many different things to consider, yes? every situation is it's own reality.

but i grow. i make closure with my lover, bless him, and then sit with myself for as long as i need to to truly understand what's happening within me. i don't reach for the next body to "scratch my itch" or to "experience divine communion". now is not the time for that, and i would miss something really valuable if i did. i reach into myself and my work and my community to nourish what in me is wounded and needs support, and i rest into ceremony to light up the learning that i am gifted with in this journey. i celebrate what work i have done well, i celebrate the love that has continued to be free-flowing in the journey, i celebrate the way that i have triumphed over old demons in this process.

i celebrate that i am not a slave anymore. this is what i see more than everything else. i am not a slave anymore. i am not a slave to men, to attention, to sex, to fear. i am not a slave to my insecurities. i am not a slave to circumstance. i am not a slave to my wounded past.

that's fucking HUGE. that's the fruition of years of work. that's no minor thing for me, and the whole journey is beyond worth it to have that truth revealed. this whole journey is the completion stage of those years of work. the invitation to arrive to the challenge to all of the work that i've done. it is the saturn that says "how far did you go, really?". i have gone very, very far to be as deeply within as i am, and i cannot lose that center anymore.

i see a cycle in my life that is fascinating and beautiful. i pass through a period of external experience that affects me and fills me with information through challenge and nourishment. then i go into an internal phase where i reflect on all that has passed and work with myself to integrate, heal, empower and prepare for re-emergence. then i go to the external again in a series of new endeavors and engagements wherein the work that i had done is called up and reviewed through challenge and nourishment, and the next phase of the work is introduced through the same means. in this process, i am constantly forged by life and experience. as i grow in linear time i realize that all of my experience colludes to sculpt me in a cohesive vision that i can now begin to own as My Path. in this process i realize, as well, that there is no past and no future, there is only the expansive and contractive movement of omni-dimensional time proffering circumstance for personal and transpersonal development. the communion of the transcendent and the terrestrial.

i accept. and thank you, universe, for being present with me, for nurturing and supporting me in all if my challenges, and for being there so fully for me to worship and adore as i do.

so good...

may it serve

reveal{i}shine

2009-05-30T15:18:00.000-07:00

so now i rest into saturn's day with a week full of experience, internal and external, to explore, and my lover is no longer my lover.
there is a strange peace in the immediate dissolution of my trajectory. i sit in the space created, thinking with myself, "mm-hmm. i wonder...". and that is the best thing to do. it is one of these wonder}full moments of being able to rest in the desert and chart the course of reality anew.
i had a plan. now i have options. i had a lover. now i have my whole self (and suitors. the universe loves to keep it spicy). i had a plan. now i have whole new volumes of self-awareness to integrate. life continues to swirl and dance as does the plumage of the cottonwood in this evenings impending storms and their wind. the sweet scent of rain blows freely in every direction, all things kinetic in the brilliant electricity of the desert becoming fertile. it is a beauty profound, this loving eros between the earth and the sky. it moves my tears, my joy, my heart and body to rapture.

new realities to metabolize...

sexuality and relationship - indeed, reality - defy defnition. every kinnexion is a world and a reality unto itself, and every kinnexion invites a new dance with self and other. we all have the condition of attempting to classify for eternity our movements and modalities in the third dimension because it takes energy ( lots of it!) to constantly hold open if the field if that is an active learning curve for you. for some people it's not. for my former lover, that is a natural mode. he does not embrace situational definition. he does get ideas about himself that get fixed where he is still fluid, but he also seems to recognize that relatively soon and shift the concept to embrace the reality. it is one of the more fascinating things about him, and one of the more challenging things about him when one is attempting to cultivate intimacy with him. i've learned, in this past week of process around our polyamorous agreements, that i have had ideas in place about myself that do not match or serve the truth of my being. i took protocols from other endeavors and attempted to apply them to this one. of course, they didn't fit. i have been invited into a re-assessment of my truth through the portal of this struggle. it's been amazing. the thing that i am learning more than anything is that there is no fixed structure of reality. there is no codex that universally applies. there is only the fluctuation of being and the awesome opportunity that we have to hold the whole spectrum of reality in the vessel of the human experience.
all this week, i hurt. just aching. i would wake up crying, cry during the day, had to process it constantly with myself and whoever was holding space for me, the whole nine. and i didn't want to embrace the simplest and most complex of possible explanations for that - i had an IDEA in place, and i wanted to conform my emotional and spiritual reality into that idea, because i had already decided that that idea was the Right Way To Be. i had already made such a position about it that i felt like i had to own it and not be bothered by anything that my idea said should be okay. the only problem being that i was bothered. super fucking bothered. i hit a threshold after a week where i crossed from being hurt to being pissed off, and made the curious choice to call him from that space. it was unfortunate in the way that i couldn't own what my anger was, and i projected it onto him, trying to find some way that he was wrong. really, i was angry because i'd just been hurting for a week and had shit to show for it - he certainly wasn't here to hold me, and i wasn't being as fully present to my reality as i like to be because of that. i hate that. especially when it's because of a man. fuck all that. so i lashed out at him instead of realizing what was really going on, and he lashed back at me because he felt attacked. totally understandable. and equally interesting. it was fascinating to me to perceive how he responded to me in that moment - he escalated the conflict by throwing out shit that he'd suppressed as deflective ammunition. there were things that had happened that had bothered him, but he'd never addressed, that got thrown at me in that moment. so interesting! his whole thing is clear communication, and so is mine. we both failed our respective principles in that way, because of not acknowledging realities in our beings that didn't fit the ideas that we hold about how we show up in life.
i'm fascinated more than sad at this moment. i had a moment of absolute clarity toward the end of our conversation that there was enough that wasn't in alignment for me in that kinnexion that it was the most reasonable choice to let it go. so we did. there it goes. he made an interesting analogy about a kite in the wind, and that's what it felt like. that's what it still feels like. and while i have felt my sadness, i have no regret, because that feeling is wonderful. i didn't realize how bound i felt until i didn't feel bound anymore. and it's not because of him, it's because i was binding myself into a meme that wasn't genuine for me. my love for him is genuine, my desire for partnership with him was not genuine. that was a program that got tripped. and that really fascinates me, because that means there was a whole theater going on in my mind that isn't grounded in truth. that's what my real curiosity is - what's going on in my mind that isn't real, and why am i having a hard time seeing it? but now the theater is neutralized and i am sitting in fullness with myself working to dissolve the veils that hang between me and my truth. that's fucking awesome.
it's about my relationship with men, not with him. he's archetypal, and i have work to do. and when the right situation arises for interpersonal engagement to be the way for that work to continue, i will know. check, check - thank you, life, universe and self, for how i'm showing up for my own process. that is much more important to think about than engaging with a third dimensional creature at this point in my journey (though i am grateful for the one that showed up yesterday. yummy). i have more pertinent questions to work with than who's cuddling who.

how do i best continue to fulfill my essential truth in this life journey?

where am i going to do this work?

what does it look like?

who are my allies in this work?

what are the ways in which i engage in the retarding practice of linearalizing expansive reality for the sake of comfort?

how do i encourage that same retardation in the relationships that i begin?

what are the programs that i'm running and living that have no basis in my personal truth?

these and so much more...

i feel as if i am poised on the event horizon of creation, taut between the infinite and the tangible. i feel the whole birthing of creation sizzling in my veins, a brillinat star fire of freedom and form. i am born anew, again, through the forge of experience.

it never ceases to amaze me that i exist in this dimension with knowledge and relationship of all the other dimensions living in my being. how does that work? the veils are so thin, merely sensual play, ever available for pulling aside. they don't resist - a veil is inherently light. it's very nature invites it's movement, and the expansion of vision between worlds.

hallelujah!

may it serve....

monsoons

2009-05-27T17:51:00.000-07:00

wind and rain rip across the plain coming over the mountain. the storm, approaching all day, soaks the skin with memories of plenty, ever elusive in our arid home.

i watch from here in the shelter, fearing cold. but it is also the ravaging of healing that i fear, knowing that i must be naked and freeze to rest in comfort in the storm. i know that i can get there, but the getting there is hard, and i am so tired these days...

he who used to be a mentor to me would say, "everything that is worth having must be suffered for". i used to think that that was extreme and overzealous. but i know, now, what was meant by that. one cannot rest fully into divine communion without accessing it through pain and fear, because those are the places where it can truly be rendered from the soul. bliss is good, but bliss is easy. it's great to rest in god when you've got everything that you want. can you be there when you don't? can you be there when it's loud and dark and cold and scary? if you can be in it there, then that's where you live.

it is by walking on glass that one learns not to hurt from pain. that's liberation.

my feet are bare.

may it serve...

expansion, discomfort and revelation, part 1

2009-05-25T09:21:00.000-07:00

the sky breathes vast and blue after three days of rain, wind, cloud and cold. we traversed the dimensions, moved into the mists and became avalon in these days. i have facilitated ceremony for myself, my community, and my tribe this weekend, all the while shuddering beneath the weight of experience as it invites me into my edge and beyond. i am still shuddering beneath this weight, but i will not break, for i am in motion, carrying what is mine to hold with as much grace as i can.
i am becoming power where i had been strength.
i am becoming wisdom where i had been intelligence.
i am morgaine, heiress of the isle, priestess woven between worlds. i am naked, wild, lustful, and starved. i am feral, ferocious, tender, wounded, raging, glorious, and sorrowful. i am magical womon, thrashed in the waves of experience. i am grateful, suffering, growing.

i am.

the story so far...

when i was nineteen, i grew two inches. it was such a strange experience! i rode a bicycle every day then, so when my legs started to ache, i thought that it was just that one hill in brookline (the one that made me quit smoking cuz i almost puked trying to ride to the top) kicking my ass. but it kept on and spread from my lower legs into my thighs and hips, into my lower back, and i thought something was Wrong. then i realized, one day, putting on pants that had previously dragged in the dirt when i walked, that my legs were longer than they had been. that i had grown. i was really excited! i had been disgruntled at the idea of being 5'8", and had been working to stretch myself to at least 5'9" (you know the way, yeah? standing there with my eyes all squeezed shut, popping myself energetically through the top of my head) actually hoping for six feet, but we didn't get that far. this is the blueprint, and it's perfect.

but what i remember in this moment and for the sake of this thought line is the pain and confusion of growing, i remember the ache in my legs, and the feeling that maybe i wouldn't get through it, that something was damaged or in danger. and i remember the soothing calm that came after the process was complete and i could rest in the satisfaction of the transformation.

i'm in that process again, with my spirit.

i think a lot about the ways that our natural tendencies are manipulated in social programming to guide us into modes of existence that are constrictive, slavery-based, or useless for transcendent experience and peaceable communion in the third dimension. like the urge to eat sweet foods, or the urge to secure an area of territory for ourselves. the urge to be angry at trespass, or happy with praise. the urge to be embraced as special and unique, which becomes the urge to deeply bond in mating. all of these urges are natural elements of the human (and animal) being that are contorted into ideas like "there must be a dessert at the end of every meal", "i must procure an enormous space for only myself and my family and put barbed wire fences around the whole thing", "i must destroy those who have offended my honor" and so on. it is exceptionally difficult to program people around ideas or energies that are totally alien to them - it is relatively easy to contort the natural tendency into an unnatural expression.

the one that i'm wrestling with in this moment is the mating one.

i am polyamorous, and always have been. polyamory means, literally, "to love many". it is a way of relating that is commonly referred to as "having an open relationship" or something along those lines. there are so many ways to do it, i won't even attempt to summarize. i didn't have that meme to work with until recently, so i've only recently cultivated any sort of grace with the dynamic. and now i am engaged with a polyamorous lover, who is currently engaging in polyamorous experience with a mutual friend of ours.

my goodness, i feel that quite strongly, in quite a few ways. many of them are peaceable, and many of them are not.

so while i get to have my third dimensional experience of processing this with my lover and my friend, i also get the awesome opportunity to delve deeply into myself through the portal of this discomfort. my emotional response has been varied and dynamic. when he told me what was happening, i had a sinking, crestfallen feeling, tears and weariness, pain. he asked me how it was landing for me and i said in truth, "i don't know. it's so emotional, i don't know how it feels, or why it feels that way." the next day i felt such love for them both and for how i had been cared for and considered, that i expressed that and blessed their journey. the day after that i went into ceremony with myself, sound healing and deep prayers with my body and my world, and didn't feel anything about it through my mind. then yesterday i felt such heart ache that i cried and yearned to completely withdraw into myself. but i couldn't, as well, because i had a group ritual to help facilitate, and thank the grace of being for it. if i had spent the day feeling like i did when i woke up, i would have been suffering too much to even move through it in any usefull way, and would have been driven towards all sorts of extreme measures to secure the sanctity of my heart, most of which i probably would have had to unravel from a more balanced state of energy. hail, ritual. and now today i got a communication from her, and felt acid in my belly. felt retreat in my heart. i feel wounded. and loved. and more.

so what is it in me that is wounded? there is something that exists in me that receives the wound from this scenario, something that is not just triggered by programing. but i am not clear about what that is yet, and that's the driver of my curiosity. the essence of truth is difficult to distill from the information load, because what is programmed to be hurt is wrapped around what is actually hurt. what is it in me that is wounded? i don't feel betrayed or suprised about them. the human aspect of it all makes sense to me. i think it is that within me which does yearn towards the essential communion which is wounded. there is an urge in my being towards the communion that i can completely trust and rest in without guard. that is natural. and there is the way that that has been manipulated by social programming so that in a scenario like this, there must be some kind of betrayal, or some kind of wrong doing, or something poisonous. and that's not natural. that's not truth. but it is there with all of it's energy to offer its two cents to the process. and that kind of voice makes an eclipse of noise. it takes a lot of patience to sit with it until is loses its power and then be with the more subtle, more complex and more loving truth of what is.

which is that even if i don't like, i understand it, and no one did anything wrong. my hurt is my hurt, and only mine. the choice to be here or move out of it is mine to make, and all of this is an invitation to step beyond my comfort zone into the work of freeing love from the slavery of modern programming. and who knows, maybe that would free the whole world to love and care about everything enough to save us from species extinction. i'll go there for that. hell yeah.

and there's more. i think also that it touches into every way i have been disrespected, undervalued and tossed aside, all of those unhealed wounds that i don't even realize are still tender until something like this rises to scratch their surfaces again. the primal wounding of the opening heart. i've been through a lot, and i've been hurt a lot in my journey. all of that memory is there to tap when my heart aches, and all of it still cries the primal cry for healing. that, in itself, is an awesome thing to realize. i have that much more work to do inside than i understood. i am so glad to know.

i desire to be seen completely and revered for the magic that i am in this world. that's natural. but the contortion of that is the desire for the severity of it's expression - the idea that my special beauty would be all encompassing, and if it's not, then it's not being appreciated at all. and i know that that's unnatural, because i don't move in honor of that program at all. when i am experiencing from the inside out, i honor the individual beauty that is every being, and recognize that there is no such thing as replacing one being with another because we are all so wonderfully different. every kinnexion answers a different breath that flows through being. every kinnexion is its own experience. the difference is that when i'm having the experience, i'm getting what i want. i'm getting my loving attention. right now, i'm not. she's getting the loving attention, and i'm getting to sit in my wanting him and knowing that he's with her.

that sucks. that's the hurt. last week i just wanted to be held. and there were people here who wanted to hold me, but i didn't want to start stories with them. i wanted him. simply. purely. and when i finally got to kinnect with him, that was what we talked about. that he was with her. whee. i'm going somewhere else now.

one of the things that polyamory really challenges is the bridging between the transcendent and the terrestrial. in the transcendent, the divine essence in me sees the divine essence in another and moves towards communion. that, unto itself, is a purely driven beauty - it is the movement towards source which is one of the highest beauties of this worldly experience. the catch resides in the fact that we are all traumatized by the radical relational ineptitude that has been forced on us through social and cultural programming. as soon as two bodies merge, the linear story of each body is activated, and that story is almost always full of hope and fear, unhealed wounds, innocence and ignorance and tender beauty looking for a safe place to exist. we are conditioned to relate in awesomely unhealthy and completely counter-intuitive ways from the time that we first begin to be domesticated as children. so through relationship, where we are all looking to heal and be free and be full, we are usually traumatizing ourselves and each other and usually every step we make into intimate space threatens to take us into shadowy forests where we believe monsters to be. which is scary, regardless of how high and pure the spirit is. that terrestrial fear and the desire for safety that it surrounds make transcendent divine communion a very difficult thing to honor with grace. we get attached. we get hurt. we get whatever. we yearn for more. i have yet to see it be simple and flowing from inception to completion. obviously i'm willing to give it the sporting chance to be that way.

i often remember something i read years ago about an eskimo tribe who holds no bonds of responsibility between lovers. people love each other as they are moved to, and when a womon becomes pregnant, there is not one father, because she could have conceived through any one of her engagements. then when the child is born, it has not one mother, it is the child of the tribe, and is raised as the child of the tribe. everyone is responsible and available to that process. imagine growing into sexuality in a setting like that. how different would that be?

i think there is a balance to be held between absolute freedom in tantric expression and commitment to a deeper exploration between people. from where i'm sitting, that seems to be the way from where i am to what i feel is an honoring of the truth. i know what i want. i want a partner who is dedicated to me and to our journey, and for us both to be in our freedom in honor of that primary communion. i don't know if that can be the way with this being who is catalyzing this process of consideration for me. we'll see. but all of my experience with him is helping me to clarify what i do and don't want to experience and spend my energy on, through creating the conditions for me to look more deeply into myself for the sake of awareness and purification. so it is the good work for now, and i get to drop in ever more deeply with a good sistar and do the miraculous work of healing the wounds amongst womyn. for this, i am so grateful.

i just don't want to do it like this all the time.

may it serve...

extinction is not inevtiable

2009-05-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

my kin are dying. not only are they dying, they are being slaughtered for nothing. it is pure hatred.

why? what is it in the human mind that so shudders in the eyes of the wolf? what is it in the human heart that so hardens to the cry of the wild as it is cried through these disappearing lips? why the hatred? why the fear?

and how do we change it? what is the pathway to ensure their survival?

does anyone have any ideas? can we have an actual conversation about this?

i've asked the world outside myself, i've asked the world inside, and no answer comes other than be. be the change, be the way, be the truth. i've been in the monastery these years, and it's been the necessary thing, as i would have crushed my self or the world from where i was. now i am emerging into a world where the same things are still unfolding, chaos breeding chaos, hatred breeding hatred, love breeding love. i see this acceleration as an amplification and an expansion, omni-dimensional. so what arises as the destructive aspect is mirrored in the movement of creation. there is so much movement as this long-standing (thousands of years!) paradigm of dominion and division shudders itself to pieces in the emergence of it's balance in harmonic resonance, so much movement. sometimes this can be pain, but when we know it and see it for what it is, for the action of transformation, we can revel in the movement as well as guide what emerges from the shifting.

transitional times are of the highest potency. they are the moments wherein all bets are off, for there is no pattern in place. the interesting thing about transitional times is that because we have a tendency towards stability, we are naturally inclined to hold our breath when the ground is shifting beneath us. sometimes this is, of course, the very proper thing to do. but when we are seeking revolutionary change, the transitional moments of the bigger processes in which we are involved (like species extinction) are the perfect moments for minute, decisive action. if nobody's looking, change the fucking channel! then when everyone gets back in their center, they'll think that's how it was all along and just go with it, and we can be there to help the subcutaneous shift root with a little deft guidance.

so what do we do about this wolf situation? there are 52 lobos left in the wild.

think about that for a moment. 52. imagine if i said to you, "there are 52 elephants left in the wild". you'd flip, right? so rest into that for a moment and think about what it means that there are 52 southwestern wolves left in the wild. that means that by the end of this year, they could be extinct, because hunting season is on and people are murdering them. in their homes, with their children. for no fucking reason.

then let me ask you this: i know that wolves are my kin. who is your kin? what would you be willing to give to the animal spirits who guide and hold you so that their bodies continue to exist in this world? i am willing and ready to give my life for theirs, just as i am for my human kin. but i would honestly say that i am more ready to give it for the animals, because their cries are ignored, and their lives are considered by gunmen as either pests, numbers or games.

but i don't know what to do about this. i don't know how to make it different. it hasn't been the time for me to know before. rainier rilke wrote "live the question, and you will perhaps inadvertently live your way into the answer." so i am living the question, contemplating what i am willing to sacrifice to intervene on behalf of my animal kin. but this is not a rhetorical question. this is an invitation to my human kin who are awakened and caring to draw together to defend this beautiful home of ours from devastation. not conceptually, but actually this is an invitation to a conversation, to the conversation of how we can guide this change. i need support, i need to know that there are others who care, and that we can support each other in the awesome work of living that caring. and i have lots of support to give, now that i'm out of the monastery!

deepest love and brightest blessings

for the benefit of all creation!

blessed

2009-05-10T23:16:00.000-07:00

i am.

are.

the blessed children

of a mother love so vast

so profound,

the mind cannot hold it

only the whole being can know it

by melting into it.

i rise this day in the home of one wisdom mother who has entrusted her sanctuary, her animal ally, her whole reality, to my keeping while she journeys in order to nourish the continued presence of all of those things, including me. the bed is huge, warm and soft, and i think to myself all of the work and wonder that she poured into her reality so that this space could exist, and so that i could come and lay here to heal, to nourish, to appreciate and revel. rising from this luscious cloud i wrap my body in a robe of black silk across which white birds fly. then out to the open air, the enormous and brilliant blue sky, the gentle wind blowing across the hills and the sounds of the birds singing songs i've never heard before in the swaying boughs. bend my knees and my hands rest into the earth, dry, solid and scented beneath me. i breathe deep, swaying in my own senses, for this is the eminent mother, the skin upon which all kiss and touch rests, the ground from which all love or joy must leap for flight and to which it all returns. the guide. the wisdom. the eternity of grace. she is she who knows, and i go to her as a servant and a lover, worshiping her subtlety, her awesome brilliance, her ferocity and tenderness. this morning i learn again of the softness of my feet as i wander the field and flinch, gasping, over goat heads (little tear drop shaped seed pods with two spikes poking from them like horns that will pierce ANYthing) passing the threshold of my skin. it makes me laugh because she sits there still, her ascending presence that which pushes the thorn into my descending force, an elemental interlude between our relationship of gravity. elements at play.

by the nature of her being i learn what it actually means to be womyn, to be wild and free and soft and feral simultaneously. i learn about presence, i learn about service, i learn about wisdom, intelligence, kinnexion, freedom and bondage. all things i learn with this earth, and through the communion between her and the sky as it stretches around me. we have always this opportunity to dive more deeply into the contemplation of creation and delineation as we journey this third dimension , exploring the archetypes that time and experience bring up for us.

what is mother?

what is womyn?

what is the feminine?

it is a difficult knowledge and wisdom to cultivate for ones self, living as we do in a society that has so profoundly cheapened the female that our true nature as incarnate beings is a discovery for us. we are also living in the massive shifting of that energetic, wherein the nature and identity of womyn is just naturally in a state of questioning. bereft of our initiations, our rites of passage, our circles of ceremony, it is up to us to remember, through a catalyst or through ancestral resonancee, that we have the legacy of all the womyn who have ever passed through this world and the archetype of the divine feminine to rest into, draw strength from, and serve our world through. and this is not only our heritage to enjoy, it is our responsibility to carry forward through time. we are, now, in one of the most flexible and dynamic moments in the recorded story of the human experience on earth. we, as western womyn, are existing in a freedom that has not been experienced by womyn for thousands of years. even a hundred years ago our grandmothers were beaten and raped for their insistence on the right to vote - they were still wearing incapacitating skirts and collars up to their necks and not being allowed to work outside of the three professions of teacher, nurse, or librarian. and the miraculous institution of motherhood was still not recognized as valid work in the world (wether or not it is now is a matter for debate, and depends on the parties involved and the setting). we are living an extremely fresh liberation whose continuance rests on our expanding the field for it's growth. the mothers that birthed my generation exploded the glass ceiling in the awesome social revolution of the 60's, creating a context for me to be as i am - tattooed, gypsy, independent, outspoken, sexually liberated and actualized, fully IN the world and completely on my terms. if not for my mother and the women who have done that work, what would my experience be like in this time? then i travel just barely south of my reality into latin america and i see womyn living a totally different paradigm, and to interact with them is to have both of us gently staring in awe at the other - they see my freedom, and i see either their uncertainty as they shift their status in their cultures, or the fixed trajectory of their experience.

it's a strange thing, to notice that there is a distinct difference between culture and society (they have culture, we have society working to become culture) - cultures modalities are entrenched, societies modalities are maleable. we have a society because we are young in our incarnation as a country. we are the experimental, self-centered, rambunctious teenager of this world, working it all out at everyone else's expense, trying to get our shit figured out before we burn the fucking house down falling asleep with a joint in our hands. got a good heart, but a frazzled brain and an untried spirit. and yet, there is beauty in that place of boundlessness, lots of it. in that awesome experience of creating a country (with all the appropriate amendments about the people who were here before all of us came) womyn had the opportunity to stand up and say "we want something else. we want freedom. we want to be who we are. and that's what we're going to do". we had the opportunity to fight for ourselves, and since the field wasn't set, the RULES were not set, it wasn't such a huge fight (all things being relative), and we were able to create a space, to create the meme, for ourselves to move out of slavery and subjugation, which is work that continues to this day.

so i see womyn in these countries where their rolls are entrenched by their culture and while i marvel at the certainty that i see it brings, i recoil at the limitation. can any of us imagine being an indigenous womon, dressed in the same shirt and skirt as every other womon, making the same kind of art and cooking the same food and creating the same family paradigm and teaching your daughters and sons to hold that line in place ad infinitum? no travel, no education, no polyamory, no wild dancing all night, no... whatever. shorts. none of what we just live as a matter of course. no open, bombastic discussion about whatever comes to mind, probably no choosing your own lover, not choosing your own work, not getting years at a time to explore yourself or opportunities to radically shift course in mid-flight when you decide that dance is more appealing to you than graphic design so you're going to go do that instead and then all the support in your world for that transition. or whatever! no piles of books to learn from and wonder over. no education. can you imagine?

in these countries i find it interesting as well that the urban reality has created a crucible wherein those rolls are challenged, for the people go from the village to the city to wonder and wander the lanes of possibility, and sometimes they find a way out of that paradigm into what is not certain for them. they find their way into the body of transition and become the front lines that my mother was in my own country. and it is an even more radical act because of the nature of culture, and how it holds gender rolls in place.

imagine the life of a womon in the middle east. covered, silent, owned. what revolutionaries they are, the creatures who break from that bondage in search of freedom, liberty, passion, life. imagine the life of a womon in africa.

so let us not forget how miraculous and priviledged we are to be able to exist freely and on our own terms. how miraculous it is that even though the rest of the world (and parts of this country as well) has different ideas about the place and the way of womyn, the nature of our existence is tolerated because in this society there is a context for us to live this way. that is an awesome power and an awesome opportunity. i say that in full acknowledgement of the fact that it should be that way for anyone, regardless of the designation of their bodies, and in full awareness that it has NOT been that way for long - that's what i mean by miraculous. 2 generations ago in this country a womon like me may very well have been dragged into the woods and shot for being a feral, soul-corrupting witch (and even now, in parts of these states, that could happen). there are not a lot of places in the world where womyn can be who they are and do what they feel.

how can we best live our freedom so that all of our sistars benefit from it, and it grows exponentially through us for our daughters to live in and for our mothers and grandmothers to celebrate?

let's make that a reality.

don't forget.

don't go back to sleep.

she changes everything she touches and everything she touches changes...

in honor of the potent women in my life, and the ones who have given their everything that i may live my own life. may everything that i do serve this freedom.

observing

2009-05-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

mind me not

for i am but a bird on this bough

set here to sing my song

and learn

from the earth

and creation

of what more there is to sing

by being here, experiencing you,

i hold no part of your story in place

i am not here to reinforce your pattern

but to drink of its essence

which will then emerge from me as a new song

one more sound in a universal melody

and your story will go on into oblivion

as if there had never been a

"me"

"watching"

"you"

for in truth, there has not been

but our essences

by communing

will be re-woven

into the tapestry of which we are all one thread

to hold the context for what comes next

and the mythology of what has already been.

ceremony within

2009-04-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

last night was new moon in taurus. these times are rich with the beauty of creation, springtime, genesis. it is the time for dropping in deep to the vision of the world of beauty that we all carry within ourselves and bringing it forth into the world of form. it is the time of moving beyond the idea, the word, the vision, into the being. transformation begins in the core - there must be a shift in being for there to be a shift in doing. form follows essence.

so last night was a ceremonial night, and the winded hilltop of my wisdom mother's home once again embraced my naked immersion in the glory of creations manifold dance. we began by the fire, sipping sacred tea while invoking and praying, casting spells and drawing light to the focus of our journeys. the communion of prayer and consumption drove the medicine through my fasted veins hot and bright, and i lifted from my seat as words melted away in the churning tides of my body. then began a purging process, energetic and physical, so very, very physical. sound, movement, passion. pleasure and pain all coursed through me as the intelligence of my allies purified this body vessel in preparation for the communion of wisdom with the mother force. it was outrageous, so necessary, so wild and ferocious and joyous. raw experience.

then there was a great settling as a new animal ally landed more fully in my being. where i had needed to work to make a place for that energy previously, now it has rested in me in it's own comfort, calling me home, where i had been calling for it. it has made me it's bough and it's midnight, and there is a different feeling in my limbs for the presence of it saturating my veins. this wise energy drove me out to the night, to the arc of the hilltop and the fountain of the sky raining from a single brilliant star overhead in a shower of brilliant light jewels and wind-brushed clouds.

a stand of juniper trees gathered me into their cave, a grove in which to delve more deeply into the mother. there i danced wildly into my family, my matrilineage, the wmen in my life with whom i am inextricably connected and with whom i have so struggled to relate. the beauty of their native nature expressed itself to me and i experienced them as ingdigenous craftswomen, displaced from their homelands and carrying a lineage which is mine to carry beyond them. i realize that i have not been able to go fully away from them because i have not dove fully into them. i cannot leave their sides until i learn their arts, until i earn my own heritage. a deep nativity newly born in me that settles many years of searching, of coming and going. a certainty of family and place courses through me now that has only sporadically before.

and the earth held me, whispered into me, transformed me into the essence of my being because in this kinesis, i finally rested in what is, beyond and beneath my mind and it's grasping, in Truth. there is more, of course, as there always is, but that is all for the word. a wise african grandmother once told me, "you want something to happen? go make it happen. you got the power. you don't need to wait for no one.". ceremony is our right and it is a need of the spirit. we hold the native knowledge of the sacred in our cells and all that it waits for is our awakening to its presence. we don't need anyone to officiate for us, for we are each magi and mystics in our own right. go to ceremony, be in ritual with yourself. let yourself be more than the experience of your body and your mind in the third dimension. be transdimensional - it is your heritage.

bless

integration

2009-04-21T14:12:00.000-07:00

spring is breathing through the arroyos in swells of wind and dust that rest on the burgeoning tips of green life pushing out of the ends of tree limbs and shrubbery bushes. birds laugh and sing the prismatic song of life returning to the earths surface in brilliant lusty gasps, and humans dance the mating dance of spring, seeking to love eachother or to delve so deeply into projects the whole being is bathed in strobing life pulses. in these moments, each breath is an act of god, each movement of the hand a devotion to all that is beautiful in being. in these moments we draw up out of our immersion in the depths of potential with a set of colors and curves specifically ours determined to be birthed into the new receptivity of the world in which our souls are dancing the physical experience. we emerge into the moment with our offering, it's unfinished novelty the best of the beauty of it. we bring our new song to the fire and sing the spirits of our kindred to rapture with our loving.
soon to be mayday, imbolc, the fires of beltane burning in every heart, whether the traditions are known or wondered. as you emerge into spring, as we turn towards the light of summer with all of our hopes and dreams and visions for existence brandished before us as mighty love swords, what dream are you dancing awake? these are not standard moments that we move in now, these are moments full of life and full of meaning. where we are in this moment is where we will make our stand for the creation of the new reality of humanity and life on this planet. if you are in love, are you In Your Love? make your being in love an act of Being in Love. make it a principle instead of a situation. make it an offering instead of a meal. and if you are not in love, how could you be there?
i have learned something about love these last few linear years - the power of love is the power of the universe. it has nothing to do with interpersonal relationships (though in these we delve into the microcosmic diorama of the principle) and everything to do with transcendant truth. in real love there is no value system, because truth doesn't work with value systems. it is, by it's nature, transcendant - it moves beyond the third dimension. love and truth are the same. love and truth are clarity. value systems are for linear life and for the mind. they have a place and a function, but they are a manifestation of a universal principle, not the principle itself. they are out a few rings from the center - follow me?
what i mean by "love is transcendant truth" is this - the frequency of love is pure unto itself and either draws things into resonance with it or trenders them down into wht is that frequency within themselves so that they can grow in that light. it is alchemical. what we experience as interpersonal love with all of our grasping and pushing and fearing and needing is not love, but the fears of the mortal self that arise (about deprivation) once a being has touched the face of god. love is what created the engagment, and that essence is pure. when we move into the intelligence that love is beyond "me" and "you", we move into the actualization of our divine potential in the huam nexperience. we are, in part, here to merge the infinite and the finite through the vessel of the body, the vessel of consciousness. we can do this in transcendant love. when i stand in my center and love without my loving being contingent on creatures or circumstances, then i am true magi, true avatar, and my power is infinite. by being fully In Love, i am a pure emmisary of universal truth. and in this way, i may serve my third dimensional reality with all of the power of the universe moving through me.
so as we move into the crux of the shifting of humanities experience on earth, how is your spirit? are you living in your center? are you In Love?