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