Dream Journal

Dreamt of Costco again. Shopping. A bag of soft wheat bread. I open the bag and take a slice to eat. Put the rest in the cart. I notice that there are new aisles with cold cases of fresh foods. Rows of fresh salads that are covered with huge leaves because you can't start shopping until 11am. People are lining up near the things they want. It's getting more and more crowded and competitive, I look down a spice aisle and decide I'm just not interested...in any of it. I take a tall cart stacked with Nestle Tolls House Morsels (those rich, dark and sweet treasures) and start manuevering my way out.

Dream Journal

Last night I dreamt of shopping at Costco in a wet bathing suit and one flip flop. The dog food we were there to buy cost $44.67 because there was a $20 shipping charge. I picked up a package of steaks and took a bite. Over in the east corner was a big sign that read SALMON.

This from the Medicine Cards (Jamie Sams & David Carson): Salmon: Wisdom/Inner Knowing

"Salmon is the sacred keeper of wisdom and inner knowing who, despite strong river currents, will always return to the place of it's creation. Its determination is driven by the wisdom of instinct and inner knowing, which yields a sense of purpose that cannot be thwarted by external forces. Coming full circle, Salmon medicine people finish what they begin, bringing life's events and cycles to closure.

Salmon medicine honors every encounter in life as a gathering of wisdom.

Behave in a manner that honors your path. The proper use of inner knowing comes when you flow with your authentic feelings, embracing all the experiences you encounter in life as learning lessons rather than hardships. Salmon teaches you to see every bend in the river as a new adventure, with a lesson you need to learn in order to grow. That knowledge becomes authentic wisdom through applying these truths to your life."

Last week in a meditation, I was asked to focus on a natural image and I chose the river behind my house. I was asked to BE that river and it being a tidal river, I described myself thus: "I am fluid and flow in and out, guided by the moon. In sunlight I glisten with sparkling jewels. I nurture and support myriad life forms, but since you cannot see to the bottom, the richness at my core is evident only when tide is low."


Haleleujah in a hard time!

The 5th Chakra

The fifth chakra encompasses the neck, the throat, the shoulders, and the mouth. It's the center of communication and the center of willpower. The lesson in the 5th Chakra is to surrender to Divine will. The fourth and fifth chakras, when balanced, work together in a beautiful way that allows the power of the heart center to listen to the power of Divine guidance.

I dreamt last night that a woman named Carol, a fellow parishoner at church, did surgery on my neck and vocal chords. This being a dream, I was watching the surgery and realized once she had cut me open and exposed my "voice", that she didn't know what to do next; that she wasn't trained in this type of surgery and had to leave me, exposed, and go research what to do next in the surgical process.

Swift Karma

For the record, Karma was swift and painful in this matter of broken hearts. I may not be out of the woods, but I'm strengthend and on a new path of discovering just what it is I truly seek in human relationships.

Return to the Goddess

For women, there is only one source of power: the Goddess who lives in each of us. There is nothing outside of ourselves, no source, other than the stregnth of the feminine to sustain and nurture life. We are the womb and the tomb, to us everything will return.

Endurance

Endurance is the lesson of the third chakra where I am experiencing this particular fall from grace. In my guts, I am paying the energetic price for having risked and lost my sense of integrity and honor. Not to mention the heartache...theirs, mine, ours. I feel so humiliated by my desire to "live out loud" and break the rules. For this has surely been nothing but an act of rebellion against the institution of marriage. Rebellion of an adolscent proud in her boldness. God forgive me.

Remorse. Regret. Shame. Humbled.

Remorse sets in now. Outrage at my own arrogance takes me over and shames me. My blatant and willful disregard for the heart and feelings of others astonishes me, given how much I've invested in my own self-made notion of self-awareness. Arrogance has been one of those characteristics that remain in the shadows....at least to me. Others see it all the time I'm sure.

A few years ago Christo shared a song he'd just heard with me, Norah Jones' , "You Humbled Me, Lord". I've been singing that song for two years now; calling out for a humbling that might help me better understand the nature of pride. This is one of those times that I'm deeply grateful to worship a God of Love and Forgiveness.

Tender Mercy

Connie –
 
However much we need to discover and rediscover for ourselves as a couple, I consider myself unusually lucky that in a life as fulfilling and accomplished as my own, such profound joy can still be found in sharing the night’s wonder beside a soul that joined mine seventeen years ago.   
 
I only hope as much for our son in his life.
 
Christo

The Flip Side of Healing

So, the confession.

The flip side of being a healer is finding myself causing harm. Harm is the incoherency of the act of healing.

I have spent the past two months in a soap opera. I hate opera. And I especially eschew soap opera. But I found myself cast in one of my own making...taking messages from the dreamtime...weaving them into waking time...spinning a web, I suppose.

Have you ever seen the writing spider? Those HUGE eight legged, hour glass shaped, black and white with a big yellow star kind of spiders, that reveal themselves in Virginia, round about August? According to the Lakota, she was given the medicine of keeping the alphabet, which allowed the stories of the tribes to be permanently recorded, which of course, changed everything and the tradition of story telling soon took on numerous and ultimately, inane forms of communication. She is the totem for the writer, hers is our medicine. But I digress.

MY actions and choices of the past two months have colluded with another to create tremendous and unspeakable heartache. For this I am deeply sorry. I have been blind, selfish, inconsiderate. Such is the language of Desire, I see now. I apologize. May I be forgiven. May Karma be swift and fair.

Kevin Hanna Quote

My wildly gifted, phenomenally talented sculptor, eccentric as a loon brother in law had this to say about passion:


"Until it becomes fanatic, passion isn't even interesting."

Right on my Brother!

Weighing in on Pitbulls: Angels in Disguise

I was at a low point at 7pm this evening, feeling overwhelmed by the affects of limerance and alcohol. If you don't know what limerance is, Google it...you might find it illuminating. In short, it's a "crush" condition that looks like mental illness.
Let me tell you, it's not a good mix for a girl whose gone on and off anti-depressants in the past 9 weeks and rides daily hormonal tsumani's as my middle aged body tries to figure out just what the hell is going on in here.

I was praying, begging on my knees, seeking relief from misery, and my dog Luke, the monster dog white German Shepherd with the big heart, starting going bullistic with barking as if there were a 747 landing in our front yard. I heard a police car horn WHOOP but didn't bother to look outside, because hell, it's dark. A few minutes later, Luke is at the front door, barking-no roaring-insanely. I look outside and there are two pitpulls on my front porch.

So what do I do? I go outside to greet them! This is genuinely my first instinct. I notice immediately that they have collars and tags, but inspite of what I see, my perceptive my mind jumps to wondering if they've been dumped in a "good" neighborhood. This prejudiced perception on my part is a cultural knee-jerk reaction to finding two pit pulls at my front door, and I'm embarrassed to even admit it, but there you are! I'm talking to the dogs in a happy voice and they respond by running at my heels and jumping up on me a little bit, "great", they think, "now we've found some fun!" Just a little twinge of fear seeps into my veins, but I keep moving and say, "You guys gotta go home! Where do you live?" Ok, in Virginia, that sounds like, "all y'all gotta go HOME!"

When I get to the street at the end of my driveway, the dogs hang a right and run straight into the headlights of two Norfolk Police cars. One is backing up toward me: I flag him and ask, "where are these dogs are from?"; as if he would have the answer! And it is somehow comforting to have "the Law" on board for what was turning into a very compelling situation. Next thing you know, there are three cop cars and one of the officers is a little reluctant to leave the safety of his vehicle cuz, "one of them growled at me when I put my hand out".

Another officer, who appears to be taking charge of the predicament, says he's called Animal Control and they won't come out. I decide that we need to get a hold of these dogs and read the pertinent information on the tags attached to their collars. By now the neighbors are at their windows and doors. I cajole with the happy voice the younger female of the two and grab her collar. She is so darned cute! Her head is tucked down, her back end is rotating like mad, and every inch of her is saying, "LOVE ME!!". The officer whose taken the initiative in the dynamic shines a flashlight on the i.d. tag, and tells me my eyes are better than his cuz he doesn't have his glasses on! I read off the number: 589-5382 (photographic memory). I read off the address: 105 Beverly Ave.

The dogs are only a couple of blocks from home, maybe a 1/4 mile. Officer with initiative says, "lets put 'em in the back of the car." Sweet thing jumps right in and is happy as any pit pull on a wayward adventure could possibly be. But now it's time to deal with the older male, who seems edgy, distrusting and full of fear; he's quaking at the new situation, causing my own fear to seep back into my veins. But hey, I've come this far, I'm not gonna give up now. So I put on the loving voice and clap my hands and get down to his level and low and behold, he comes to me and my hand is on his collar which is way too loose and gonna come off in my hand and we'll lose him if I'm not careful. With both hands on the very thin collar of a 70 lb. mass of muscle and bone, I tighten the buckle and lead him into the back of the police car. He jumps in and the cop shuts the door.


As I turn away to head back home, one of the neighbors on her front porch thanks me. I laugh and smile and say, "I'm the dog whisperer" and she says, "you'll have to advertise your service". I'm thinking, "what the hell is she talking about?", those dogs just saved my life!

Communication from my Beloved

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other,
doesn’t make any sense.




Connie my love,

This is what I came across last night, among much else within Rumi’s transforming wisdom.

Am I right that this is the field we’ve been seeking for some time now, but have found all the wrong words – or, wrongly, tried using words at all - in trying to express for each other? How many Virgos does it take to analyze a bulb’s light?

My soul longs to lie in that grass with yours. Perhaps beside; perhaps entwined. Again, just words.

I am moistened by our dew.


Christo