Escalator

Gosh darn it ya'll, I'm just gonna say it. My prayer last night was
that if it was time, God, go ahead and take me. I used Zanax for
depression yesterday and found myself going down a VERY STEEP
ESCALATOR ! Carole Szetela know the kind I mean, where the incline is
so unfathomable that you can't help but wonder at the MANPOWER it took
to gouge a hole that deep in the earth in order to hide how
exquisitely rapid your transit can go.

For those of you who experience depression from time to time,
may I take the liberty of advising you
against Xanax
when things get so bad it's like riding the down escalator into
hell.
Such a course is tantamount to crying out to the stars,
come! make me an existential zombie,
ya know, cuz
maybe that's where I want to take my blues
but better, really, to pick up a bass guitar
and find a groove within the space of SOUND,
that says,
Ok. God. maybe another day.

And you never know,
you may ascend the UP moving
staircase to the sound of a symphony
so sweet and true that when you
alight from the last step, what you
find are two gifted musicians,
bassist and violin
recognizing your buddha nature.
playing Vivaldi for you. Just for you
and just cuz you were wearing a rainbow
scarf.

OM shanthi and blessings on your
dark night of the soul.

in my vision I am driving home. I stop at Kathy Rose's house and dance through her garden of art. In her home, she can see me out the window, I am jumping from ledge to ledge in a delighted manner. She is in a priestess robe and at the end a reading. When she sees me I realize that I have crossed a boundary that was not appropriate. I apologize profusely...I feel like a scolded child. She is gracious about it and I take off the violet magician's cape that belongs to her. She invites me into her home and I wade through waist high water to get back to the road where I dropped the rainbow scarf. I return to her home, convinced I will continue on my journey but her husband offers me a margarita and I stay.

A shaman is a guest in her house and Kathy shows me his bead work. He is allowed to work with wool and stone only in a sacred place, on a reservation. I pick up one his talking sticks. It's mostly blue and wrapped in felt string with other colors. He places a turquoise feather fetish in my hand and I am entranced and channeling a spirit named Mishmash. I begin to feel very strongly that this talisman is truly meant for me. Another spirit is present now, a woman, and she asks me where I've traveled from Weed. The old woman I'm channeling responds, "I've come West from Weed", she asks "is that a good thing" and I say "oh yes, it's a beautiful time". The other spirit nods her head...I know I've passed a test. The shaman returns with a huge Elk antler that he passes around my neck several times. I feel stronger in my vision and sense a rattlesnake at the corner of the table. He lifts up the lid of the table, it's dark underneath but he sees the rattlesnake ( I close my eyes) and he takes it away. I become very agitated, excited and scared that I can conjure a rattlesnake.

For this vision I am very grateful. To my Shaman, I am most humbled. Om Shanti and Namaste`
Connie

Gutsy Love

We have not come here to take prisoners, but to surrender ever more deeply to freedom and joy. We have not come into this exquisite world to hold ourselves hostage from love. Run my dear, from anything that may not strengthen your precious budding wings. Run like hell my dear, from anyone likely to put a sharp knife into the sacred, tender vision of your beautiful heart. We have a duty to befriend those aspects of obedience that stand outside of our house and shout to our reason "O please, O please come out and play." For we have not come here to take prisoners or to confine our wondrous spirits, but to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom, and Light!~Hafiz (Hafez) 14th century Sufi Mystic Poet

1968-2009

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead and when she was small she lived in a magical place called Santa Cruz California where she learned one true thing about the nature of the universe.

She learned that anything could happen at any time. ANYTHING.

And when she was ten, her sister Kim and she hitched a ride to the Ben Franklin on Soquel Ave, just around the corner from the roller rink and a few blocks away from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. They bought cylindrical tubes of Czechoslavakian seed beads, filled with multi colored tiny bits of glass, for a tiny sum of coins held warm in a hand anticipating creation.

Onto fishing line those first beads made their way, transforming themselves into multiple strands of "love beads", talismans for a day trip to Haight-Ashbury in the beautiful city by the bay, San Francisco.

It was the summer of love and my awakened journey began.

And lo, these many 208 moons later we find ourselves living into the reality of a world where creativity rules the heart. A world where, packed with the universal truth that anyting CAN happen at anytime, and as such, we might as well focus on the postive, and assuming that all events hold Divine Intention, what becomes manifest is a world of color and light, streaming, from the open door of the loving heart.

And so it is.
Om Shanti

Bead Your Art Out

Connie, what are you doing?

Building a Mystery, that's what I'm doing. Lots of you want details about my venture in Duck, NC.

Chris and I closed on a condo yesterday, one block into the town limits of Duck, NC. I am sitting here right now, facing east and the magnificent waters of the entire Atlantic ocean. I'm on the top of a hill, the ocean in the distance, massive. The front door faces the Currituck Sound, where sunsets spill kool-aid color all over the bottom of the sky.

For three months last fall I dreamt of massive ocean waves and donuts. On Jan. 13, I woke up from yet another donut dream and said, "OK, God, what is with the DONUTS???" I asked and answered myself, "well, what is a donut if not an edible bead?" On the 14th of January, I procured for the Connie Hanna Jewels, (an S-Corp.) a lease on a Soundfront retail space at Osprey Landing :1190 Duck Road. And then I went to Hawaii and became a certified yoga instructor.

Since returning from the island of Hawaii, I have become passionate about INSPIRING others to CREATE in order to ILLUMINATE their personal "ART" center, which happens to live where the heart does! I have a plan to live into this passion by creating a Shrine to Beads at Bead Your Art Out in Osprey Landing. What is a shrine to beads you ask? It's a showroom and a classroom and a shrine all in the same 1000 square feet with a big bay window on the Sound. It is so full of light, oh. I wish you could see it!! But soon enough!

My plan is to open the doors to Bead Your Art Out on April 10th. I'll keep you posted!

Om Shanti,
Means Peace
Connie

Lighten Up

Who would you be if the Universe gave you this vehicle to drive?

holy crap 50 is fun

omg, 50 is so fun, Paige.  

don't expect me to bother on the capitalization of proper nouns here, ok?

my palms are glued to the space adjacent to the tracking touch pad of my little brushed aluminum macbook which is "THE LORD" of my world.  I worship here everyday, for hours at a time.  my macbook is my portal to the world, to the grid, and the deep dark mystery of outer space.  it is just so fecking cool to tap into all the universal wisdom available to each and every one of us.  even you, paige.  ':*}

Paige, you are cordially invited  to ALLOW divine source energy to move through you. one of the very clear messages of 2008 was for me to get out of the way and let the good stuff do it's thing.   cuz i'm doing it to share the wealth that universal knowledge imparts:  connect to Source and let it flow through YOU. STOP BLOCKING IT with, "ZOMG, I AM NOT WORTHY!!"   Source will go where it goes which is always to the light.  always paige, every single time.  i know you are Divine.  turn your head around about who you think you are and let the LIGHT define who you are.

 jeez, I'm getting all preachy here and i didn't mean to but there is a voice in me that wants to be shouting about what is possible if we will only take a year to WORK at changing our perception of reality.  My friend Sonja and I went to Kripalu intstitute last year, or, at least I , er, think it was last year....

We went cuz I wanted to finally meet Carolyn Myss and she was giving a seminar on her work with Saint Theresa, of the Carmelites.  Myss had been speaking to me through audio tapes I listened to for ten solid years.  Specifically, her work on Anatomy of the Spirit and Sacred Contracts proved tremendously valuable in speeding up my ability to process energy and information on this earth walk. 

So, I show up to Kripalu Institute to meet my guru and what I find is agitation, arrogance and unpreparedness.  To make a long story short, I presented Ms. Myss with one of her own "archetype cards".  I presented her with the Bully...my Divine Child marched up to her and said, "will you autograph this please?".  She eyeballed me like a crow, made some excuse about being in a hurry and then fumbled and naffed about finding a pen.  But paige, she signed that Bully card!  She chooses  to use that energy to protect herself and I admire her for that.  She knows that part of her personality employs the methods of the bully to serve the great work of the teacher and mystic.

Know thyself.  That is your mission.  Use the force Paige!  USE THE FORCE!

Thank you Sue Moore

As a Junior at Soquel High School in 1975, I was presented the gift of a teacher with a kind heart.  Her name was Sue Moore and she advised me in English independent study: we made an agreement that I would read one book per week and sit down and discuss it with her.  She inspired me to move beyond The Witch of Blackbird Pond in my literature choices.  Reading was a passion and I  reported to Sue on a weekly basis during the spring semester of 1975.  I was suffering some serious health issues with asthma during that year and she brought in a healer who diagnosed "stacked ribs".  

When I told my mom what the healer had said she was angry because she didn't understand what "stacked ribs" meant.  I don't think I did either, but I just wasn't able to communicate to my mom how comforting it was to have someone look at me and tell me why I was in so much pain.  Who knows what she meant by "stacked ribs", but in retrospect, it sounds like a chiropractic issue.  Chiropractic medicine, even in Santa Cruz, was a few years off from becoming part of the zeitgeist of new age healing.

A little internet research has unearthed her 1963 Eureka High School  photograph.  Sue is the lovely flower on the right, third row down.  Isn't she beautiful?  I see her kind heart shining through her lovely eyes.   Sue inspired me to seek a spiritual path.  It would be another 13 years before I found the path or it found me, but Sue instilled in me a desire to seek divinity and for this I am eternally grateful. 

Grateful, I am  to Sue, for sharing the B'ahai faith with me.  She was a teacher who gave me a template to live by...a piece of paper I still have:  black ink on goldenrod card stock, in a protective sleeve.  Thank you, Sue Moore.  Thank  you.  

As soon as I locate the piece of paper, I'll post what it says.

Om Shanti,

Connie

Dear Paige: Comfort Food

Recipe for Chocolate Blanc Mange, aka Chocolate pudding that Stands on it's Head!

1. Pour yourself a glass of wine. Or Tequila.
2. Find a pan in the completely disorganized cupboard cabinet. A pan
that will hold
at least six cups of fluid. (you won't need six cups of anything,
except perhaps wine or tequila).
3. Put 4 squares (remember 4-square from 4th grade and how ya wanted
to possess the
coolest trinket to throw for hop-scotch?) of semi-sweet Bakers
Chocolate in the pan you pulled
out of the disaster relief cupboard cabinet that has all the pots in
it. (Martha Stewart says that aluminium is the cause of Alzheimer's,
so if it's an aluminium pot you've chosen?: DRINK UP SHRINERS!)
4. Turn the heat on high. On the stove I mean, not with the DH. You
will instantly realize that if you keep the flame this high you will
have scorched chocolate forever embossed on the bottom of this pan,
which is going to give you Alzheimer's anyway, so have another sip of
wine/tequila and throw in a half a cup of milk to the chocolate, turn
the heat down to medium and start whisking it with a wire whisk. The
milk and the chocolate.
5. Beg the milk/chocolate not to curdle/scortch/burn/emboss while you
neglect it a second to find the cornstarch way in the back of the
pantry or cupboard. You may have to fight off the moths that have
bloomed out of that bag of flour you bought four months ago, but,
PERSERVERE, cuz this is comfort food and your family is not going to
care that you are sauced on wine/tequila when they taste what you have
created. 6. where were we?
7. In the pantry, looking for cornstarch. Go whisk the milk/chocolate
mixture cuz it's been more than a second or two by now, but do find
the cornstarch and put it in a PYREX 16 oz. measuring cup. Only 3
TABLESPOONS of it though, and add a 1/4 cup of milk [a two second
pour as they say in the BIZ] and stir it really fast with the fork
(You know, the one you turn the bacon with. ) you've left on the
counter since breakfast, so that milk and constarch BLEND, not lump.
8. GET BACK TO THE STOVE!
9. Whisk the the milk/choc. mixture another little while while it
slowly builds to a boil. You could hasten this by turning up the
heat, but, what the hell, there's all this wine/tequila to be drunk
and you've got time!
10. When the milk/choc. starts to boil, re-stir the cornstarch/milk
with the bacon/fork and whisk it into the now slowly/bubbling milk/
choc. which is in the pan you got from the Martha/Stewart nightmare
cabinet that DH never actually finished /sanding/staining/painting.
10. The pan! It's on the stove! WHISK what is in it!
11. Ok. calm down. Just turn the knob for FR down to low and slowly
whisk this velvety smooth, milk/choc/cornstarch melange that is
brewing in the Alzheimer's pot. Set the timer for 2.75 minutes and
breathe. Whisk slowly: this is a delightful dessert you are creating
for your family cuz you love them so much.
12. Refill wine/tequila glass.
13. BINGBONG...time's up.
14. Turn the stove off.
15.FOCUS
16. Find the toast crumb/peanut butter smeared butter and toss in 1
TBL. NO! Not into the wine/tequila. Into the pudding, dammit. How
can you have your pudding if you won't eat your meat?????
17. Take a breath. Find the vanilla. Eyeball a teaspoon of it and
throw it in the pot of pudding. WHISK, girl, WHISK! (Did you know
that Tequila, I mean Vanilla has ALCOHOL in it???)
18. ZOMG, you are done! NO, you are not! Find some cute little bowls
that match the number of eyes pleading with you to feed them. Divide
that number by half. This is how many bowls of pudding you need to
fill now. Fuck the dog, he's a dog, he doesn't get any! OK. Let him
lick the Alzheimer's pan once it's cooled off a bit and you've filled
the bowls with pudding.
19. Cover the little serving sized bowls with Martha Stewart Saran
Wrap/Handi Wrap. Do this only for the family members who despise
"skin" (oh, have another drink of wine/tequila) on their pudding. Put
the bowls in the fridge. Or outside on the sidewalk, this is ALASKA
by God!
20. Wait a while. Drink wine/tequila to taste.
21. Get the bowls in from the sidewalk and invert them onto little
saucers or the dog's dish if you insist on feeding him PEOPLE FOOD!
Hand out spoons to dip into these amazing mounds of chocolate pudding
you've made that can actually hold their shape when you turn them
upside down.
22. Send DH out into the snow for more wine/tequila.
Bon Apetite!!

xoxo
Connie

Michael Vick's Dogs

If I hadn't gone to the dentist for my check up yesterday, I wouldn't have seen this months issue of Sports Illustrated and I wouldn't have picked it up to find the article about the dogs that survived the ordeal perpetrated by a pro football star and Virginia native named Michael Vick.  I wouldn't have read the article, wouldn't have wept for the grace of it all, wouldn't have been grateful to the dog lovers out there who believed the dogs should be granted salvation.  92% of Michael Vick's dogs survived their ordeal and have been fostered or adopted.   My limited experience with pit bulls is that they are very sweet dogs and love affection and attention, just like any other dog.  Maybe more so! 

It's a good story. You can read it here if you like.  

There is also a blog devoted to the dogs and it's written by the dogs so that's pretty entertaining.  I agree with Gandhi: "the greatness of a nation and it's moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."  Leona Helmsley is one extreme, Michael Vick is the other end of the spectrum. In between there are millions of devoted animal lovers in America whose lives are daily enriched by the animals they share their homes with. 

For this I am truly grateful.

Connie

vocabulary

ART:  THE TRANSMUTATION OF IMAGINATION INTO PHYSICAL FORM.

LOVE:  MOLECULAR POWER  CAPABLE OF TRANSFORMING

STASIS  INTO REVOLUTION.  

(a. what makes the planet spin)

BHAKTI YOGI:  ONE WHO LIVES WITH AN OPEN HEART

OM SHANTI:  PEACE

NAMASTE`:  I HONOR THE DIVINE WITHIN YOU.

ALOHA:  WELCOME.  UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN.

For this I am most grateful,

Connie

Exciting

My god this is an exciting time to be alive!
A Mac user for ten years now, I have watched the technological boom of the internet in the past ten years accelerate our physical universe to such a degree  that I can't help but comment on the acceleration of my spiritual journey as well.

I stepped onto my spiritual path in 1989, a conception that took the form of a mysterious yearning and pull of desire from the Eastern door of the Spirit world. That door opened and something shifted in me. A collective unconscious woke up and beckoned me to explore the unseen world behind my eyes.

I felt called to explore further, the recesses of my mind for spirit tools that might illuminate the unseen forces of polarity...black and white, good and evil, love and fear. I sought to become familiar with a language that ponders and gives definition to the big words like God and Death and Love and Forgiveness and Altered States of Consciousness and Integration and Soul and Giftedness and Blessings.    I started pursuing a greater knowledge and a deeper understanding of what it would mean to makes choices based on spiritual integrity.  

What is spiritual integrity?  Spiritual integrity is the capacity to honor the higher Self, and live a code of conduct revealed by the power of Universal Knowledge.

My journey has brought me to the conclusion that each of us has the capacity to reach enlightenment through the pineal gland of the human brain.  How one gets to it is not relevant.  My own journey includes the ancient wisdom of the Yoga traditions and all the gifts of binding body and spirit inherent in the Yogic practice.

In 2008 I had the opportunity on a few occasions to break through the veil of the time/space continuum and for tiny seconds, to experience the luminous nature of some Cosmic Light where all answers to any question is to be found.   While in this state, I received this message:

"You have the capacity to infuse every cell of your being with love". 

For the sake of clarity, this message is tantamount to Divine instruction:  to live this life in love. 

Right, like that's a piece of cake!  

Difficult people are such amazing teachers arent' they?  I am so grateful to the difficult ones, the ones you try my last nerve or drag me kicking and screaming to emotional places I'd really rather not go. But they do. The difficult ones come along often  to remind me what it is to be human and flawed and unhappy or scared or unloved or whatever it is they are showing me, offering their pain up like a sacrifice, daring me to respond with love rather than venom, with civil concern rather than arrogance.  That's what spiritual integrity means to me:  to make the purpose of my life to treat others with love and when I fail do so, to notice, and make it right through metta prayer,  a prayer of loving kindness.

This is my prayer of loving kindness for you:

May you be well and happy. 

May you rejoice in the knowledge 

that you have the capacity to reach

enlightenment through the pineal

gland of your brain. 

May you infuse every cell of your

being with love.

Om Shanti,

Connie

Peace Prayer Team

Peace lives in your heart. Love is the greatest healer.
May you be well
May you know peace.
May your heart be opened to it's greatest capacity,
that your perfect love, flowing forth
be the medicine of healing for all living creatures.

Om Shanti,
Connie

Maple Bars

In my dream my destination is an amusement park on the left hand side of my drivers seat.  I'm looking for parking...a place to park the vehicle, get out and ENJOY the destination I've found.  The exit I think I want is backed up with traffic so I push on to make a U turn. I pass a trinket store called YUMI and at the next light where I can turn left is  a panel of baskets full of pastries and MAPLE BARS is before me.     I order one from a man who is unfamiliar with maple bars.  My fear is that when he pulls the basket down from the top right, they will be gone.  He finds them, takes down the basket: I will  get one, because there are three.  

The amusement park represents everything I love: fun, amusement, good times, color, light and lots of energy.  The maple bar represents the best thing I had ever tasted back in 5th or 6th grade.  The  message of the dream is so clear to me:  TURN LEFT!  Park the car.  Get out and HAVE FUN!!

Holidays

You have my permission, in fact, I'll write you a note if you need one:

If you have 15 things to do that you really MUST do in order to
"be ready" for Christmas, and you enjoy five of those things,
embrace the five and allow the other ten to simply fade from the landscape of expectation conceived at some moment in your past.

Be present for the present, which truly, is the gift of choice this
Holiday
Season.

In my Dream

In my dream I am at an elementary school where the Obama inauguration
is to be held. All seats are taken: the majority of chairs are filled
by children. I am there because I think perhaps I can get one of the
left over seats. I arrive and the hall is lined with others, mostly
children, waiting for seats as well. Michelle (Obama) starts calling
the names of those who will speak if the designated speakers aren't
there on time. Some of the names are children.

I realize there won't be a seat for me and I decide to leave and go
study at the library. I ask Michelle about getting back in and she
says I might as well stay....don't leave because getting back in will
be difficult.

I have notebooks and folders in my arms now and head to a building
that is a college with classrooms. I realize I'm behind in my
psychology work and head to the second floor. For some reason I don't
recall, I come back down one flight and then remember that where I
need to be is two flights up and I choose to use the stairs rather
than the elevator. When I get to the third floor I lock eyes with a
young and beautiful Indian man telling the story of how he earned his
thesis in childhood when he wrote his dissertation on Desai's theory
of color. He pointed to the papers in front of him, which looked like
musical composition. He mentioned how at the time, there was no real
scholarship in this area and his instructors would tell him anything
just because he wanted an answer. Like, the answer was blue even if
that wasn't true.

At this point I wake up and allow the message of the dream to
settle. Quickly I find myself visualizing the color healing light
apparatus I' ve been creating in my mind for a few years now. I see
the massage table in the back room of the little house. I see someone
in need of healing on that table. We've talked about the issue that
has brought them to me in the front room. They lie face up on the
table and I shine a combination of colored lights on the chakras
involved in their issue. I've placed headphones on their
ears....Eno's Ambient music for Airports is what they listen to. Once
I've laid on hands, I leave them to relax into the music while the
color does it's work.

For this dream and vision, I am deeply grateful!

Connie

Within a Drop of Water

A single drop of water
Imagines herself Tsunami
Gathering intent
She lays waste to all that is.

She's Gone

For a person who feels a close affinity and connection to the spirit world, to Divine source energy, to the ever expanding universe, it has been a surprise to me to experience the extent to which Lucy is just GONE. Perhaps I romantically fantacized that her spirit would linger, that I would feel her essence still but from the moment the weight of her head dropped into my hand, she was and is completely gone.
I miss her softness, but celebrate her freedom. I miss her kisses on my face, but celebrate her freedom. I miss curling her into my body in bed, but I embrace once again my beloved Christopher whose embrace I once again curl into now that there isn't that little white fur baby between us in bed.
All things are viewed as a gift in my world of color and light, and for the gift of Lucy I am deeply grateful.

I count myself fortunate that in 50 years, Lucy's euthanasia was the first I've experienced. I have said goodby to a pet or two in my time, but never as decisive as Lucy's death was; I had to decide to end her life and if it felt rather a heavy weight to make that choice for an animal, I'm deeply grateful for the healing light of grace and beauty and compassionate veteranarians to ease the decision making and comfort the action of her dying.

I hope at my own death to close my eyes in this world and wake up in another where the mericful assistance to end suffering is as logical, compassionate and holy choice.

Om Shanti,
Om, Peace
Connie

In the Deep