Creating a Miracle Day

This morning I chose to ask the universe for a miracle. I asked myself, "what kind of day do I want to create?" I answered myself, "something miraculous in the form of exactly what I need". So far, I have had many visitors today.

One of them is a young woman of 24 with an incredible amount of grace and light and Divine energy. She remembers her dreams! She is one of the most powerful dreamers I have ever met. The quality of the guidance that she receives is miraculous! There she is dressed entirely in black in an Antarctic landscape, her soul guide swathed in white.

There she is climbing a cliff to escape a tidal wave, with her spirit guide a few levels above her, guiding and supporting her path. She chooses not to go into the city, but allows the wave to take her and behold, she can breathe underwater!

There she in a forest clearing, a meadow effused with light, with a litter of kittens, naked with her husband, and the spirit guide comes out of the forest as a wolf man, his tongue lolling as he laughs, beckoning her to join in the joke.

Dreams are, in my opinion, the richest form of guidance we are capable of receiving. We are somehow hardwired to receive guidance from the unseen world in a way that does not include logic, or reason or a need for evidence. Every dream is a release from the world of time and linear thought; a glimpse into the way the mind of the Gods work. How amazing that we are invited into that realm each time we close our eyes. For me, who finds so much wonder and joy in the waking world, dreams are like the Gods saying, "hey, you think THAT'S cool? WATCH THIS!".

Wouldn't it be a great experiment to try to live your life the way you do your sleep? By passively entering into it, inviting it even, to take you to places and images you've never dreamed possible. Wouldn't it be great if the next time you wake up, you decide to wake up into a dream where you passively allow Divine guidance to take you where the Gods want you to go? Think about it! When was the last time you fell asleep wondering what you'd be dreaming in two months or two years from now? Do you worry in your dreams? Do you make plans in your dreams? I know I don't! Live a day like a dream; make it a day off from work. Assume every thing you think and see and experience on that day is a part of a dream sending you all the messages and guidance you need to live the perfect day, where all things are in time with Divine Right Purpose.

Dream your day! ENJOY!

Namaste`,
Connie

Carl Sagan Toked

After verifying the credibility of this piece, I am happy to share with you this epiphany. So nice to know I'm not...


"Scientist Carl Sagan smoked pot. "He believed the drug enhanced his creativity and insights," wrote Keay Davidson in the *San Francisco Examiner,* quoting Sagan's biographer Lester Grinspoon. "If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around us which we barely sense," Sagan said, "or that we can become one with the universe, I may disbelieve; but when I'm high I know about this disbelief. And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say 'Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!'"

Forward and Past

I am so fortunate to have gone to a northern California summer camp in the 1960's and 70's called Camp Beaverbrook; I don't know why people laugh when I say that, but I was able to return to that hallowed ground last weekend and re-connect with a youthful, empowered part of my self that I am most grateful to integrate into my adult life.

I was at camp from the age of 8 to 15, for three weeks a summer. They were the happiest days of my childhood and the time I looked forward to all year long. No parents, no chores, expect K.P. and keeping your bunk clean...great friends to be made every year and others to reawaken with. Once puberty hit, camp became about who you'd sit next to at campfire , or who might ask you to dance on Saturday night. I felt my first love at camp, and my first heartache when I never heard from him again after camp!

Last August I Googled my camp and lo and behold, found a Yahoo group site with a 160 members! At the time I joined, the site had been up for two and something years and there were 4000 posts of memories and pranks and stupid camp song lyrics. And photographs! Since that time, I have been looking forward to the weekend now past, when a few dozen of us came together on the same land and had a camp out. Great food and drink, silly camp songs and campfire skits, walking through the hills to the old riflery range...a few intrepid spirits even went for a creek walk!

Of course things have changed there, Beaverbrook closed in 1985 and became a RV campground a few years ago. Things look different, but the sensory aspects of scent and sound and sight are still evocative of a halcyon period 35 years past. I've dreamed of camp for as many years and am so happy and grateful to have made that dream come true. Who ever said you cant' go home again didn't have a Beaverbrook, a place of the child where my spiritual roots are dug into ground as sacred to me as any I've ever walked.


Namaste`,
Connie

Love

There is no greater power on Earth than LOVE. It lives in your 4th chakra which includes your heart, your lungs, your breasts...don't ever stop loving. Stop thinking. Put your mind in your heart.

Don't ever be afraid to open your heart one more time. If it breaks, it's only cracked open further and bigger to give more love. Forgive those who have hurt you. Remember those you have loved you. I walk on this earth, knowing that I am loved and that I am a whole being as a result. Blessed be. Glory be to God.

Goddess

I dreamt last night that I sat at a table with a man and a woman: soul guides. They instructed me that now was the time to decide what my next artistic creation was going to be. I told them I had been thinking about creating goddess wands...stick with beads and fetishes to help empower women in the type of Goddess that they most relate to...i.e., Goddes of Love, of Home, of Healing. The guides eyes lit up and they said, "this is what you must do".

I am blown away by the level of Divine Guidance I receive.

For this I am very grateful.

Namaste`
Connie

Words of Wisdom

Words of Wisdom from Sri Swami Satchidananda.

“Clean Up Your Karma”

“When you encounter your karma, you have to go through it. But remember, it’s not there to bring you suffering. The pain that you go through when purging out the karma is wanted, because without that pain you cannot clean up your karma. So, if we know that the suffering is for our benefit, we will welcome it; we will happily undergo it--we won’t deny it. Pain is not given to you by somebody else. What we sow, we reap: we are the cause for our pain or for our happiness. So if pain comes, accept it. Say, ‘It is going to wash off my karma. It’s going to scrub away my karma.’

God bless you. Om Shanthi, Shanthi, Shanthi.”

Spiritual Madness and Redemption

It was into the shadows that I descended back in February when I set out to find what part of myself needed healing. I had been pulling the Black Panther card from Jamie Sam's and David Carson's Medicine Card deck for at least a year. The black panther was part of the Caddo tribe culture in the bayous of Louisiana, with her medicine of facing our fears and dark behaviors. "Darkness is the place for seeking and finding answers, for accepting healings, and for accessing the hidden light in truth.

She was a silent night stalker, waiting patiently for an initiate to seek out her protection for ventures into the darker recesses of the psyche and personality. She was the courageous totem/guide who took me into the depths of a spiritual madness that characterized a passionate foray into the realm of sexual obsession and she is the totem/guide who brought me back out again. Granted, I was temporarily broken and battered by the painful end of that particular adventure, but ultimately, I am DEEPLY GRATEFUL for the lessons I learned, the profound healing of old and buried wounds, and especially for the protection of grace in the form of Black Panther Medicine.

Namaste`

Phoenix

Like a phoenix rises from the ashes, I'm at least conscious enough to know that I am in the process of healing. I see myself amid the ashes at this point, but gaining headway everyday with a good measure of peace and calm.

I began the Bhagavad Gita on Sunday evening and have found great comfort there. I have created a new mantra for myself that keeps me focused on God, which is the essential point of the Gita.

All that I need dwells in me.
All that I am dwells in my heart.
All in my heart dwells in God.
I honor my Godly self.

The Gita also teaches that to do our work without attachment to reward is the way to keep ones focus on God. I do my work because it is what I do, not for gain or ego or reward. This is a novel concept to our western minds, but it's a goal I'd like to attain.

I've been saying for years now that my purpose in life is to learn the lessons of the human form, regardless of how many life times that takes. The ultimate goal however, is to be set free from the birth-life-death cycle and be absorbed into the "God" consciousness that is infinite Divine energy in the universe. If I'd found the Bhagavad Gita before now, I would have known that my theology is Hindu.

WHO KNEW, HINDU?

For this I am deeply grateful.

Connie

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

Rumi: The Book of Love

If you have not yet acquired a copy of Rumi's Book of Love, I urge you to do so now. This is the pinnacle:
From: "Where You Love From"

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes
this art.

Religion

"Religion is a way of walking, not a way of talking". Dean William R. Inge

I find this quote a profound statement and agree with it wholeheartedly. It seems to me that those among us who feel compelled to "evangelize" their religious beliefs and invest tremendous amounts of energy into converting the unconvinced (or the merely content) is a folly of grand proportions and I can't help but wonder about the basic insecurity in one's faith if one needs the validation of others in order to feel safe and secure and "right" in that faith.

As a neo-pagan, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Taoist, I believe that my greatest gift to the world of faith is to simply walk in the ways of love and compassion and pray for balance and harmony, for myself, for others, for the world. I don't believe in sin, I find it a silly and immature notion. I do believe in Karma, but I don't believe it sneaks up on us and whacks us over the head for something we did or didn't do in a previous incarnation. For me, the most important thing in the ways of faith and religion is to keep things as clear and clean as possible. It's important to finish each day and be done with it. It's important to forgive myself, and others, fallibility and humanity. I'm quite fond of John Lennon's "Instant Karma":

"...Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Eve’ryone you meet
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When you'’re eve’rywhere
Come and get your share"


Why on earth am I here? For the same reason I've been "here" over and over: I'm a healer, and according the the Buddhists, what I am is what I will be and what I will be is what I have always been: a healer and at 47 years old I'm beginning to understand just what gift I have been given; an ability to see the pain and hurt and disease in others and with that ability, a desire to do something about it, through acts of love and prayer and song. I am so deeply grateful for the people who come my way, and for the gift of being a force of healing for myself, and for others.

For this I am truly, deeply grateful.

Connie

Intuition

"Intuition is the treasure of a woman's psyche. It is like a divining instrument and like a crystal through which one can see with uncanny interior vision. It is like a wise old woman who is with you always, who tells you exactly what the matter is, tells you exactly whether you need to go left or right. It is a form of The One Who Knows, old La Que Sabe`, the Wild Woman."

****
" Ask within for her advice
She is the Mother of the Ages
Nothing surprises her.
She has seen it all."

Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Women Who Run with the Wolves

I do not have permission to use this quote. If I have offended, I apologize. It seems to me the information is important enough to be desseminated in whatever means seem appropriately intentioned.

For this I am grateful,
Connie

Sit down write

Live. Love. Life.
Sit. Down. Write.

What I accomplished this week

There is no Time

Time No Longer Exists.
Whatever moments are stolen
and spent in your presence
prove only to reveal greater
mystery
In matters of heart and soul
body and mind and passion
and ultimately,
a peace that permeates
every cell of my being.

For this I am deeply grateful.

Connie

Falling in Love with Rumi

I have long endeavored to seek out the poetry of Rumi and haven't until this weekend laid my hands or mind on his writings. I purchased Rumi The Book of Love just the other day and have fallen completely in love with his art. The love he writes of is the love of God, but it all rings fairly true on this more temporal and painfully human plane.

Where You Love From

Look inside and find where a person
loves from. That's the reality
not what they say.

Hypocrites
give attention to form, the right
and wrong ways of professing belief.
Grow instead in universal light.


When that revealed itself, God gave it
a thousand different names, the least
of those sweet-breathing names being,
the one who is not in need of anyone.

~~~~~~

You've so distracted me,
your absence fans my love.
Don't ask how.

Then you come near.
"Do not...," I say, and
"Do not...," you answer.

Don't ask why
this delights me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Drumsound rises on the air,
its throb, my heart.

A voice inside the beat says,
"I know you're tired,
but come, this is the way."

~~~~~~~~

Are you jealous of the ocean's generosity?
Why would you refuse to give
this love to anyone?

Fish don't hold the sacred liquid in cups!
They swim the huge fluid freedom.

What I Believe

philosophy...I really like the teaching of the Theosophy Society...they have taken the basic truths of many spiritual and psychological teachings and made it all make sense! Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz was a member and the articles that dissect and analyze that story are truly illuminating. I am a great fan of Carl G. Jung archetypes and collective unconscious. As much as I am able, I try to interpret life experiences on the symbolic, rather than literal level. I believe we are here for one reason: to learn how to unblock illusion into the true reality that our souls are hard wired to experience love. Period. I believe that love is the most powerful magic wand on the planet. I believe it is possible to love freely, fully and without attachment. The journey of the soul is a solitary walk back to God, and although we are all capable of being channels of Divine energy and light, if we have blocked off different areas of the body (chakras), then that energy can't flow and we get stuck and can't move out of suffering. So our soul work is to heal our wounds and open our hearts to one another and allow that energy created when two souls merge to move out into the universe and fly around creating more healing.

Jumping off Cliffs

One of the gifts of grace and faith is the courage to take risks. I have been jumping off a series of perilous cliffs in the past several months, and although I've experienced some bumpy landings and even a crash or two, I am whole, I continue to heal and my heart continues to break further open, releasing and receiving more love.

I can't explain why I was born into grace, I just was. There are very often sign posts right at the edge of the spiritual precipice I find myself on the edge of. Some are silly signs, and I can't even believe I've found my way to this particular ledge, but there I am, too lazy to turn back and so I jump and the flight begins.

My parachute is faith in the abiding power of love and it is strong indeed. I have carried and held more than one fellow traveler who leapt with me over the edge. I have been carried and protected when my chute didn't open. For these gifts I am truly grateful.

Namaste`,

Connie

Tree of Life

My beloved

This from my beloved, in a day of troubling times:

"My soul reaches out to you in the deepest love."

Holding the 4th Chakra

I haven't written about Chakra's in awhile, but that doesn't mean I don't experience my life through them everyday. I am currently pondering the lesson of how to hold others in my heart rather than give my heart away. It's just so difficult to not come unhinged when walking around with your love center outside of your body. So, how do I learn the practice of letting others in and flowing love out, without my guts lurching because I can't keep my love in my body? I've have habitually given it away! This is a huge test for me and I don't know who the teacher is, but I'm ready for him/her if you're out there. I have faith that the answer will be revealed to me in due course. And then I can go about being a more effective healer because I'll be keeping that power in my body. That's my hope anyway.

Healing with an Open Heart

I continue to grow as a healer. I have been called to minister to the dying by singing to them. It is a deeply profound experience each time I do it. I recorded my first experience with George several posts ago. The second time I sang to a woman named Martha who died within ten minutes of my singing. I had sung, then left the room as her hospice worker checked on her. When I returned she was gone. Let me tell you that it was a profound affirmation that I had found a new calling. I sang to Ann on Sunday. She died yesterday. I sang to Shippie yesterday, and I hope she lingers on this earth longer, so I can spend more time with her beautiful spirit and loving presence. I don't mean to make it seem like it's about me, it is not, but I do seem to have the essence to bring a peace and calm into a room and embrace death with open arms.

I have grown in my own ability to love, to open my heart and to risk having it broken, over and over, if necessary, because an open heart is a vulnerable thing, and I continue to survive heartbreak and then always, I'm rewarded with some amazing new treasure, once my tears have dried, that elevates my spirit to a new level. I have learned that we must approach the wounded in what ever language they are fluent in, and then allow the love to flow out of us into them. I have learned that love is NOT give and take, it is only give: and give, and give. I take comfort in the knowledge that when love received makes it way back, it will undoubtedly be transmuted and tranformed into something more beautiful than anything we could recognize as originating from self, because in fact, it didn't originate from you or me at all, for we are only channels; the conduits of grace God chooses to broadcast the message through. For this I am ETERNALLY grateful!

Romantic Nihilism?

I met the most fascinating young man this week. We got into a philisophical conversation and I'm just speechless over his self-definition as a romantic nihilist. I've thought about it a lot and am still at the "isn't that an oxy-moron"? phase. What are love and a life with no meaning doing in the same definition? I DON'T GET IT! But then again, what second sight shows me is a heart with scars, a brilliant mind with a penchant for philisophical wanderings and desire to make sense of a chaotic world, where none of the institutions held dear in our society hold any real value for morality or ethics or anything to beleive in. I also see an artist who, if he were actively creating, would find meaning and purpose to his life.

Romantic: "inclined toward or suggestive of the feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love".

Nihilism: "the rejection of all moral and religious principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless."

What is even more intriguing to me, is the life journey that leads to an embrace of a philosophy that says, "there's nothing here that's important, this whole thing is meaningless". What led the "gen next" generation to an apathetic response to this gift we call life? How much effort does it take to be cynical? Any more effort than it does to live a passionate and self-directed hopeful life? Romantic Nihilism is rocking my world, I'm telling you.

And this is my question: if you found out on the last day of your life that everything you said, did and thought had tremendous meaning, how would you spend the last day of your life??

May all be honored in their quest for meaning in this life.

Connie

Response to Singing to the Dying

The following is excerpted from a longer message received today from a neighbor and friend. His daughter drown last June. She was 22 and a young mother.

"Reading your essay on singing for the dying has got me thinking. It got me thinking what I wouldn't give to sing to my daughter when she left this world. I would give everything I have and everything I will have to have been able to sing her to heaven.

Instead of singing though ... what I got to do is take her out for a scrumptious meatball sub the day before she died and have lunch with her and listen to her excitedly tell me about her new job. And listen to her protests when I slipped her some cash because as a young married couple I knew they needed the money.

I got a huge big hug when I dropped her off and I got to poke her in the sides and make her jump one last time like I always did for some strange reason whenever she hugged me hard. I got to hear her tell me that she loved me and would call me later as we she walked away.

No I didn't get to sing in her ear and hold her hand as she left this world but I guess we all have to take what we can get and for that I am ever grateful."

Who would you like to be singing to as they die, inviting them to gently let go to the sound of music? Call them, write to them, rollover and tell them you love them.

Namaste`,
Connie

There are No Words, Only Love

To my Beloved: there are no words, only love that leaves me speechless.

Happy Valentines Day

Namate`
Connie

The Disappearing Walls

When I was pre-school age, I had my first mystical experience. My sister Kim and I shared a bedroom in a huge Victorian house on Plum St. in Santa Cruz. It wasn't a place we lived in for long, but for a couple of years we did move around alot, apartments I mostly remember, one in Mtn. View even, where my innocence was stolen at a tragically tender age. I remember the sash tearing on my red velvet and chiffon dress with the embroidered cherries on the bodice. I LOVED that dress. I identified with that dress and when it was no longer whole, I began to forget a lot. Memory is such an illusive friend.

So, in the Victorian house one night, I woke up to a house with no walls. I could see through the entire first floor, into each room, and they all seem empty and dark. I have been trying to make sense of this apparition for over 40 years. Today, I got it. I was given the ability to see what isn't there, the sight to see beyond the walls that people build up around themselves. I see through to the heart of people, that's what the vision has been teaching me all these years. And that's probably why I tend to scare folks with my intensity. I don't mean to, it's simply a result of my type of sight. Kind of like a blood type: Open Sight.

The really strange thing was that the next morning, when I woke? The chest of drawers that stood between Kim and my bed was turned so that the back was facing my bed, the front facing hers, thus obscuring my view of her. And that is probably a pretty decent metaphor for the journey Kim and I have been on. I've never understood her and have only just begun to see through to her heart, which, like mine, was broken at a very early age when our father left us. I'm grateful for the opportunity to reconnect with and share love with my only sister.

Baby in a Buffalo Stampede

I had my first spiritual/philosophical crisis at about age five, in the grocery store dairy aisle. I remember stopping dead in my tracks and thinking, "how can it possibly be that we are born, we live, and then we die? That can't be all there is to this life thing." I don't remember sharing that question with anyone, and perhaps if I had, someone might have gotten a clue that I was not an average kid. But that isn't how my childhood went. I didn't know anyone who asked deep spiritual questions, and certainly didn't have access to people with ANSWERS to deep philosophical questions and thus became lulled into a spiritual apathy that took me years to wake up from.

My sister and I spent many a weekend afternoon in front of the television. We had the first color t.v. on our block in the early 60's but old movies weren't filmed in color so I have memories of watching black and white westerns on sunny afternoons in Santa Cruz, again, lulled into an apathetic, passive approach to a day off in a beautiful coastal town, just a half a block from the beach; there you could find Kim and I, splayed out on the sofa watching T.V.

I have a very specific memory of a snippet of film, several frames long: an infant native indian baby on the ground in the midst of a buffalo stampede. This memory is so vivid, so profound, that it has taken on archetypal meaning for me, wildly symbolic of the state of grace that we are all born into. I know nothing else about the movie, no plot, no time frame, nothing. But the image of a swaddled baby in the dusty center of a buffalo stampede, wailing and squalling has stayed in my conscious mind all these years. I've always wondered how to find out the name of the film, in order to find out the overall context of this deeply profound spiritual memory from my childhood.

What happened to the baby? I don't recall from the film, but I've always assumed she miraculously survived.

What it is to see.

I have begun to ponder the concept that sight is a construct that can only be described as innately personal. Color-blindness, for instance, how is a man with color-blindness ever going to understand what it is for me, to see vast numbers of colors, some of which may look entirely different to me than to any other individual? My eyes are brown, does that mean that I see shades of brown that green eyed people don't see? Wouldn't it be cool if I could see the world out of your eyes for a day? Wouldn't that tell me everything I need to know about you?

In the world behind my eyes, all colors are visible and when I close my eyes, and focus on my third eye I get a dot of purple, that shifts to green and back to purple. What do you get when you close your eyes?

Caroline Myss quote

"If I could place one jewel of inspiration in your soul, it is to tell you that every thing you do, say, think, feel, and all of your actions - are channels for grace in this world. You are a channel for and of grace. I wish people could experience the truth of that statement for just one second. Treasure your life and the gift of life on this planet. We are all we have..."

Personal Theology

I received a copy of Caroline Myss' January Salon newsletter this morning. (myss.com) Her subject is Soul Stamina and she lays it out very clearly that the key to that illusive door is congruency...when your personal theology and your actions are in alignment, then your soul is in a state of congruency and impenetrable to negative forces. This makes a whole lot of sense to me for I surely have learned the vulnerable side of incongruency. She suggests getting down to the business of writing down and defining ones own personal theology. This is where I'm beginning:

Anything is possible at any moment and that includes the seen and unseen, the ordinary and the extraordinary, the imagined and the "real". I believe the forces of good and evil exist in this universe; I put my faith in my personal knowledge that GOOD will always win over evil. I believe that suffering is an integral part of the evolution of the soul. I believe that our souls do not die when our bodies do, but can be reborn over and over until a level of enlightenment is reached at which point it becomes absorbed into a great energy field of wisdom, perhaps something that could be called "GOD". On this planet, at this time, I believe that love is the most powerful force on earth for healing. I believe in karma, simply: that what comes around goes around and the more I can keep that balanced in my conscious life, the happier I will be. I believe that we live as we die and we die as we live and everything else is learning and loving. I believe that historically there have been many, many wise teachers and prophets and that each and every one of us is capable of being channels of DIVINE light and energy and wisdom.

For this I am truly grateful,
Connie

Singing to the Dying

I have been reticent to blog the following experience because it seems so sacred and intimate. But I feel compelled to log in on what have been two profoundly powerful experiences that I've had while singing to the dying. I'll start with the first.

The first was my father-in-law, George. I began singing to him nightly four nights before he died, for about a half hour. The final night of his life was the night I was hosting a dinner party at a local restaurant, to honor the women who have meant so much to me and been so important in my past year. Before the party, however, I went to sing to George. He and Helen live two doors down from us during the winter and I am so grateful for the proximity to George in his final days. He was struggling gravely with the final stages of emphysema and having suffered with asthmu as a child, I knew all too well the terror from not being able to get enough oxygen into your body, even when you have oxygen tubes snaking up your nose .

That Sunday evening he was wide eyed with panic. Helen and I tried to change his pajama top and he could muster no strength to assist us in any way. Every breath was taking more energy than pure oxygen could provide and replenish. Helen left the room and I told George that it was o.k. to let go. That letting go was going to be a tremendous relief, like taking off a tight shoe after a long walk. I told him that everyone he ever loved and everyone who ever loved him was waiting for him. And then I started to sing. George has always loved music and it brought him great comfort these last eight years to listen to James Galway and those beloved Irish tunes and ballads. I sang him "When They Ring the Golden Bells". I sang him "The King of May", both songs that Natalie Merchant has recorded. I just sang along with my ipod...and George immediately started to calm down, to breathe a little easier and to my stunned surprise: to start humming along! It was a deeply moving moment. Not long after, I said my goodbyes and tried to muster some levity and mirth for the dinner party I needed to now go be "on" for.

We got a call about 9am the following morning that George was gone.

Caged Dragonfly

(image found at herondance.org)




I dreamt of a dragonfly in a cage, it's wings pressed up against the screened sides. A honeybee buzzed around the cage while a siamese cat watched. In Lakota spirituality, the teachings see dragonfly as Illusion, so to have the dragonfly caged represents my mind being trapped by the boundaries I have created for it. It's pressing against the sides of the cage, perhaps trying to break free. The honey bee buzzing around represents the freedom that's possible when one works for the greater good of the whole and I see the bee as a helper, giving me energy to break out of the cage. The Siamese cat represents the Tibetan buddhist mind, just observing, not threatening any of it. At least I hope so. I didn't get the sense that it was waitng for me to escape so it could eat me.

Finding the Beloved

I had a dream last night that revealed the face of the beloved to me. It was a fleeting glimpse but I recognized the face, which is one not of this world, or at least I haven't met it yet. I felt an incredible sense of longing, while at the same time a revelatory knowledge that something deep was being revealed, something we wait for all our lives.

There is a beloved in each and every one of us and it is our true selves, naked in our true nature of all that is pure and divine and crystalline within our cell tissue. Perhaps our minds just need to put a face on it so that we can appreciate it's nature as human as well as Divine.

My experiences of the past fall are the antithesis of embracing the beloved. There are people we meet who call out our highest nature and there are those who speak to our baser needs and desires, and in my case, brought out the very worst in me. So, it is the work now, to look and learn from these qualities that must be experienced on the spiritual path to enlightenment. Desire, deception, selfishness, superficiality, arrogance and grasping at the material. "The very worst in me", means those facets of my personality that I reject as un-lovable and unacceptable, but aren't I rejecting the shadow side of my "light" nature in that process of rejection?

I've spent 3/4 of my years asleep and unconscious. I operated from desire, deception, selfishness, a shallow understanding of humanity, arrogance and grasping at the material. All the time longing for God or the Beloved. I thought in my awakening that I would be free of all that, but my friend, let me tell you that I was dead wrong. It's easy to forgive myself my errors while unconscious, but having awakened, the falls from grace are so much more humiliating and that tells me that this lesson has been about pride and it's place in my life.

Always, there is more to contemplate.

May you be well and happy,
Connie

Return of the Goddesses

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Newly elected President of Monrovia. Africa's first woman to be elected a head of state.
Michelle Bachelet, Chilean President Elect

There are those who believe that all the feminine Goddess energy needed to heal this Earth home and it's humanity is now manifested and incarnate on the planet. It is time for the male leaders of this world to recognize that their ways don't work anymore. That their ways have led us all to a dead end of death that begets death and greater destruction. It is time to embrace the female ability to create, carry and birth new life. The time is not coming. The time is now.

From "The Feminine Face of God"
Patricia Hopkins and Sherry Rochester

"You will be teachers for each other. You will come together in circles and speak your truth to each other. The time has come for women to accept their spiritual responsibility for our planet."
"Will you help us?" I ask the assembled patriarchs.
"We are your brothers," they answer, and with that the entire room is flooded with an energy of indescribable kindness. I feel their love without any question. They say then, "We have initiated you and we give you our wholehearted blessings. But we no longer know the way. Our ways do not work anymore. You women must find a new way."

What we are is what we will be

What we are is what we will be? What we will be is what we do now. This Buddhist concept referring to reincarnation has me contemplating just what "I" am. Two years ago I was called to be a healer in the Episcopal church. By that I mean one who is trained to "lay on hands".

This idea freaks a lot of people out. The image most often conjured up reveals a televangelists holding the afflicted forehead and shouting that the affliction be gone. Certainly, this image makes for great entertainment and I reckon that some actual healing has taken place in those settings, but it's not what I mean at all when I talk about being a healer.

A very gifted and holy woman named Dr. Ann Brower taught the sessions that brought me to the laying on of hands. I have worked with my hands all my life, counting money in banks in my early twenties, creating beautiful embroidery in my early teens, "design and creation of fabulous glass bead jewelry" for the past 16 years. I have looked at my hands for a great portion of my working life and I know that they are capable and loving hands. When Ann Brower appeared in my life, she was speaking at the church I then attended on the need for bringing the healing rite to all Episcopal churches. She was soon to have surgery on her knee and we did a group healing. I put my hands on her knee as we prayed. She told me afterward that I had a gift.

I didn't see her again for about four years, but when she entered my parish life two years ago, she called several of us to take her training and bring the healing rite to St. Paul's. So we did. And once a month or so, I stand at the rail during communion and lay my hands on the heads of those who come and I pray for their healing. But I don't pray for them, I pray with them, and I too am healed in the process. Prayer is such an act of healing. It isn't miracles we look for or seek, though such phenomena is perfectly normal and welcome in the realm of holy work, but more it is acceptance of our brokenness, our pain, our suffering and our ultimate redemption into grace that creates a loving act of healing.

A fellow parishioner sent me a message yesterday, saying that his service as Chalist is the most important work that he does, perhaps in the whole of his life. Offering this sacred cup in ritual practice on a regular basis is also an act of healing and it is astonishing how the ego simply disappears in the face of such a gorgeous offering. To hold a silver chalice to the lips of another, as they drink, in communion with every other Christian accepting the sacrament in that moment. It is kind of leaves you speechless.

Long Life Goddess

This blows my mind, but I just learned that the Dali Lama's childhood "feminine" name is Long Life Goddess. Of course, a spiritual master such as this blessed man would embody all that is right and good in both the masculine and feminine aspects.

For this I am truly grateful.
Connie

Our Living Buddha of Compassion

From The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying:
By Soygal Rinpoche



"What you are is what you have been, what you will be is what you DO now."

Farewell Martha

Farewell to the entity most recently known as Martha Jones. Thank you Martha, for the honor of singing you over to the other side. Rest in peace now, until we meet again.

Namaste`
Connie

Dreaming of the Blessed Mother

Let me start by saying that I am not a recovering Catholic. I have never been Catholic and don't plan to convert. However, I do have a great respect for the Catholic relationship to the mother of the Christian God. I like to refer to her as the Christian Fertiltiy Goddess Image, and I have been wearing her likeness (with wings!) in the form of a medal around my neck for sometime now. I could debate the whole Virgin/Whore dynamic, but what's the point? The Mother Mary icon of Christianity is a goddess image in my book and that's enough for me.

I dreamt of her last night. I was inhabiting a little beach cottage in Santa Cruz, trying to make an appointment to see a counselor about all this crying I've been doing. I left to go to an appointment, but came back for something. There at the south end of the beach was a portrait of Mary, floating on air. Guess what? Her eyes followed me wherever I went!

I think I'm going to be ok.

For this I am grateful,
Connie

The Wisdom of Albert Hoffman

There is a lovely article in the New York Times this morning on Albert Hoffman, the father of LSD, who turns 100 this week. He discovered the compound in 1938.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/international/europe/07hoffman.html

I was twenty when I took my first and only half hit of acid. I was terrified that I would lose my mind, but intrepid in spirit, I dropped the little tab
anyway, amidst the safety of seasoned LSD taking friends. We got in the car and drove to the beach, about 2pm. I recall a sense of tremendous well being. It was spring time and the beach was SeaCliff in Aptos, Ca. For me, the trip was all about color and developing a greater appreciation for the colors of the natural world, and it is the chemically enhanced quality of the color that I shall never forget. And my eyes learned a new way of seeing the natural world and my life has been greatly enriched by that experience.

Albert Hoffman says:

"It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature. Outside is pure energy and colorless substance. All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings."

More Tears

This crying thing is getting out of hand. Inexplicable tears for more than a day or two seems a little extreme, doesn't it? I was praying for my friend Lisa today, empathizing with the depth of her sorrow, having been separated by death from the physical bodies of her husband. Her daughter. Her brother. Her 20 year old son. And not all at once, but protracted, over ten years or more. More loss piled upon more loss. How does she go on living? How does the heart survive?

I've been thinking that my heart is breaking but I realized today that my heart is not breaking and I am experiencing no loss per se`. I'm not greiving anything! What I'm experiencing is the new fear that comes with having opened my heart further to love more deeply. It's terrifying, really. It's feels about as safe as walking in a desert windstorm with your heart outside your chest, unprotected from being swept from your hands.

I cry because it's a sensual, physiological reaction to my fear of the unknown and the startling realization of the level of courage I need to gather to become this thing that I have been called to. I recall my own suffering with illness in childhood and the hundreds if not thousands of times I was "bitten" by the sharpness of yet another needle, administering hope to my poor mother than I wouldn't die from asthmu. I have no recollection of ever thinking I might actually die from not being able to breathe. How is that for magical thinking? Maybe that is where my faith was born.

If you are so inclined, say a healing prayer now for Lisa and Calvin and Paul and Heather and Trevor. That they may be united in spirit.

Namaste,
Connie

Dreaming of the Eagle

I experienced the most lucid and profound vision this morning, between 6 & 7am. I introduced myself to a priest and the small man beside him. When I shook the small man's hand, he pressed a feather quill into my palm. I said, "wait, do that again, give me time". He pressed the feather into my palm again. I closed my eyes and like a camera lens, a white eagle came into focus, the appeture zooming until the focus was only on the talons. I said, "JESUS CHRIST". I opened my eyes. I bowed to the shaman. I said, "Thank you, Namaste`". (Namaste`: to bow to Buddha spirit)

He just looked at me knowingly and smiled a beatiful smile.

The priest next to him said, "I wish I got visions like that". I said, "you have to live with an open heart", and he said, "oh,that is very hard work". I can't help but wonder, if the priest hadn't been standing with the small man, would I have recognized him as a shaman?

Yes, I think the feather was the giveaway. In Lakota Native Spirituality, Eagle represents Great Spirit. And VISION. Eagle as God. White Eagle as Christ energy, according to the teachings of White Eagle.

The six principals of the White Eagle Lodge:

1. God the eternal spirit is both mother and father.

2. The Child/Son - the Cosmic Christ - is also the light which shines in the human heart. By design, this divine inheritance unites us in one spirit, a family which embraces all life, visible and invisible, including the realm of angels.

3. Serve the unified family in daily service. Remember that we are all connected.

4. Awareness of the invisible world, bridges separation and death and reveals the unity of life.

5. That life is governed by five cosmic laws: Reincarnation; Cause and Effect; Opportunity; Correspondences; and Compensation (Equilibrium and Balance).

6. The ultimate goal of mankind is that the inner light should become so strong and radiant that even the cells of the physical body are transmuted into finer substances that can overcome mortality.

Basic Principals found:http://www.whiteagle.ca/lodge/lodge_introduction.htm

I edited a little. And I will tell you that if I were asked to create a template for
my theology, White Eagle taught it years ago. Thank you White Eagle, for the vision.

For this I am truly grateful.

Connie

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