Into the Cave

I grew up in California for the first 25 years of my life...many years spent just a half a block from a private beach. I dream of "Black's Beach" often and frequently the dream is characterized by huge waves coming toward me. Sometimes I am helpless in the water and drowning.

Winter was a time of duller colors, less warmth in the sun, but still, a temperate climate...so much so that I literally did not own socks for most of my childhood and adolescence, sandals were my only footwear.

Winter in Virginia means golds and browns and trees devoid of leaves...the river is a muddy brown and the temperatures range in the 30's to the high 50's. For a California girl, it's just plain cold and unpleasant. It is not a time that I enjoy being outside and for many years now, I've been affected by a disorder that has come to be known as "seasonal affective disorder" or SAD. Doesn't that seem blatantly obvious that when the sun doesn't shine as much and rain and snow are prevalent that people would be sad?

I become introspective in the winter, like a bear heading into the cave to curl up and rest; I journey into the symbolic cave in my mind and power down my energy to just "be". It is not a time of creativity for me, but a time for charging my battery and storing energy rather than exerting it. My greatest challenge is being in present time with the season. It's so natural to want to live in the future...visualzing the plans that have been made, anticipating a warmer and happier time. But it's important to experience this down and low time and that is what I am in the process of doing.

So perhaps I'll be silent here for some time. Perhaps I'll find lots to say. Perhaps I'll emerge in the spring from this cocoon, a brand new butterfly.

Namaste`,
Connie

Tears

Saturday I cried.
Christmas I didn't.
Monday sobbed for two hours.
Tuesday was dry.
It's Wednesday now.

Beautiful Women

The most beautiful woman in the world is the one who isn't afraid to be herself.

Living Out Loud

There is no doubt that living out loud carries with it a certain measure of humiliation. Perhaps that is the lesson in being one of those people who isn't afraid to put herself out there and experience fully the wonders of this life we've been given.

Today feels like the first day in months that I've had my spirit fully intact and back in my body. I've got a hold on my heart again, having let it go flying about, unprotected by this body that was entrusted to contain it. I am deeply relieved and feel like I've experienced some great inititaion into the second half of my current life.

Emile Zola said, "If you ask me what I came here to do, I will tell you. I came to live out loud".

And Connie says, "If you ask me the reason I came here, it is to live with an open heart.'

Blessings to you.

Connie

The lesson that just keeps giving.

When I am experiencing anything (new) intensely, it's a given that a
valuable lesson is being taught. I hope this is true for most...when
you find yourself immersed in whatever joy or trauma or thrill or
pleasure or adventure your soul has been seeking to throw you into, and
you can't think of anything else and you wonder if you're actually
going to survive this intensely felt experience, well, you can bet that
a teacher is walking right beside you.

For me, in these past four months, my teacher has been the man I sleep
beside every night, Christopher, my husband. He appeared as a teacher
16 years ago and his lesson is the one of love. Ten years ago, he
said, "you can't make me not love you". This fall he just kept saying,
"I love you, I love you, you are worthy of love". And even though my
heart had left my body and landed deep in tortured territory in
California, he kept loving, even in his pain. And he showed me through
his example that there is no situation in a marriage that throwing more
love at won't improve. Now I see that the only cure for heart ache
is more love. Heartache, not hate is the flip side of love. Hate
certainly isn't the flip side. Hate resides in the 3rd Chakra, right
there with your ego. But love...

For some of the broken, the heart was shut down so long ago, that it's
power is no longer accessible. Pain and humiliation and suffering got
dealt with in the manner of shutting down the center of love in the
human chest, and all the choices to be made in this life begin to be
made from lower chakras...perhaps first integrity and ego, in the
third, start making choices that ego thinks will make us feel better.
Then creativity in the 2nd, gets confused with producing income and
then sex gets confused for real connection on the heart level and sex
becomes the focus; the heart continues crying out to be unlocked and
acknowledged for it's incredible capacity to heal itself and others,
just by being OPEN!

Yes, open-heartedness can hurt. A lot. But no pain is worse than the
loss of the power of the heart. Love is the ultimate healer. Every
moment that love and heart ache are experienced, felt, glorified, is
the penultimate moment in this universe that not only CHANGES the
energy in a room, it magnifies itself and ripples out into the world to
create huge waves of love that are absorbed into the greater cosmic
energy of divine mystery.

So go out there and give your heart! Just give it away. You'll
survive the painful part. You'll learn how to stop hurting and start
loving. We are all broken. We are born naked with open hearts, and
may it be naked with mature and ancient hearts that we find ourselves
moving on from this current incarnation whose only purpose is to
experience love.

May Divine Mystery reach out and grab hold of your heart and may you
not be afraid.

For these lessons, I am truly grateful.

Connie

Wisdom of Black Hawk

ON MOTHER EARTH

"We must let our roots grow deep into Mother Earth. Look at that tree that reaches high, the old tree that has grown its roots deep. It stands tall and touches Tunkashila. But the tree that rushes its growth and makes a shallow base, what will become of it? The first big wind will push it over. And that's what your people have done. They don't root themselves in the earth first. They don't appreciate the earth for what it is. They don't believe it is a living thing. They must touch the earth. To touch the earth is to appreciate your mother, your true mother. For it is She who keeps me alive. It is the She who kept my mother alive."

– Black Hawk

What that Kundalini taught me:

I'm going to assume that this first raid on my body by the kundalini infused 88' wave I've been riding since my 47th birthday on September 20, IS NOT MY LAST, however this initial experience proved a valuable teacher in the art of managing the power of the fourth chakra.

One Google in early August and I got swept up in a wave of regression and nostalgia, romance, and wild speculation about the actual orientation of my sexuality. Let me tell you, I had a lot of fun. Integrity was the cost for which I have paid my measure.

I learned:

My past is steeped in love. I have known all my life, what love feels like.

Women do not become saner as they age. Wiser perhaps, but never actually sane.

The power of love is where magic lies. Even when the heart breaks, love is it's flip side. Love is this close.

The lovliest and safest pleasure I can acheive is in loving myself. And I do.


My most thankful praise and gratitude to each of you I encountered this late summer and fall.

Goodbye to the spirit most recently known as George Hanna. Twas an honor to sing to ya, sir.


namaste, love
connie