Just under 3 minutes and worth the time…
Queen of the Sun…
Just under 3 minutes and worth the time…
Just under 3 minutes and worth the time…
“True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that False Self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality…and through this death a rebirth, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer.” —R. D. Laing
I’ve had more than my say in one post, so . . .
Or two? So many I know and cherish are living on the fine line between loss and hope, smiling, laughing and crying as they refuse a few demons scrambling to take even just an ounce of what’s precious. They refuse and sometimes precious things are taken anyway. They, and me. We can say we have limiting beliefs and if only we could believe bigger, deeper, broader then these demons would flee. I disagree. That concept is true on a few levels but if we can fling the curtains open wide and see clearly that there’s more to it than what we believe, some might actually grow outside their bigger playpen posing as arrival.
Life isn’t made of only butterflies floating around or only crocs waiting to grab and growl.
Not only that but butterflies float, are fleeting and seasonal. And crocs walk. They beat the streets posing in big suits and grins, waiting, beckoning, seducing. Hey, the percentage of interest is well worth the pay off now, right? Hey, no. And that butterfly moment with the uber sweet woman is gone and you can’t guarantee the next flicker of color will come along any time soon. But you can turn your face to the sun and laugh or weep if that’s where your heart is…
The common denominator in all of these realities is whoever is present, right? You, Ruth. You, Casey. You, Bam. You, Dan. You… It’s YOUR fault. Well, as one of those listed would say, Hell the F*&! no, it isn’t. It can take decades to realize the person you trusted was, in fact, a croc on the prowl and it may not be obvious to most folks even after the fact. Even when you’re missing a few limbs. People often see only what they want to see. Heaven help us if they’re standing on the edge watching you scramble with a fiend as they mutter under their breath… “she’s not a victim. She knew better.” (Really? How do you know that? What are you projecting?)
Doesn’t anybody else realize that this is an ancient agenda? Accusation posing as great enlightenment saying “You have the power.” Yeah? Hey, guess what? There is tremendously beautiful power in healthy dependence and reliable relating. How many folks get that? Actually, few. What then? There are some realllly obvious easy, no-brainer personal growth moments that can lend truth to the idea that we are our own worst enemies. You keep doing the same thing and getting the same injury, you either have no motivation to make it different, or like the drama but also like to pretend you hate it, or you’re too brilliant to see the simplicity of the solution or so into each moment that you can’t be objective enough to pull back and assess or are simply quite dumb. So, you wake up one day and see the pattern and change it and your life flourishes. Does that then mean everyone on the planet has the same need? Or everyone else is just as dumbo asleep as you were? No offense but it’s an offensive and much-repeated assumption. “Hey y’all! Stop bein’ stupid! You’ve got the POWER!” Duh. Really?
See, I sit here with an illness I can’t, for all my power, oust. Just when I think I have it figured out, it morphs into a different monster. Ah yea, I know. I have a limiting belief about my health. You know what? I have a huge belief in the preciousness of life and love and that alone keeps me trying to find a solution in spite of the unpredictable change in the game plans. I realize I might sound like a whiner (depending on the “ears”) on 1/5/2012 but I’m not. I’m angry. I feel this year is going to be hugely better than last year. But it’s starting with some much-needed pissy woman on the snarl.
Do I blame anyone for where I am? No. Not even me. Some lives begin in a whirlwind and are fortunate not to be smashed into bits by the 3rd decade. In fact, we can say that of many lives out there but we’d rather talk about how it’s all in your head as we take that pound of flesh in our greed for rightness. Ah yes, and as much as I have an inclination towards it, reincarnation takes that pound-go-round too with the whole “you chose it before you entered this life” mantra. The brilliance in that is only so far. See, if you choose something in order to learn and grow more towards that which you already fully are then, um, what’s the point? And if you chose it and then drank from the river of forgetting, what damn good is it doing you to remember? A lesson is purely learned when we dive in, period. This “hey I chose it” is another version of “God causes all things to work together for good for those that love him and…” More conditional unconditional dumbness. I know of lives who believed thus and things didn’t work together for good. Not in ways the human flesh can appreciate while living out the pounds of blood and bones pulsing what we have right NOW … LIFE.
As much as I need to lose some pounds right now, I’m not losing another ounce to the wave of dumbness posing expertise as it looks at life through a crack in the curtain. The cost of some huge and beautiful changes can sometimes eclipse the gain, folks. For years and sometimes, forever. Why is that? Because nature is brutal, as well as gentle, seasonal, random, ordered. And we are in it, of it, rolling with the tide and making the most of it as we remember to turn our faces to the sun.
Happy crocs and butterflies, y’all! May we all realize that the innocent can be seen as guilty if you wear the right shades. Emphasis: RIGHT. May we all realize that the guilty started out without any power and now feel entitled to take it. And some of them started out with so much they’ve no idea how precious it all is. May we all realize that life. is. a. mystery. Nobody. gots. THE. answers. And good people, positive, hard-working people with huge belief in good things happening to them personally STILL. GET. KICKED. to the ground. Why? Are you kidding me? Because. Period. All done. Ain’t. Always. A. Why. We. Can. Make. Peace. With.
But we can smile into the sun…shake off the energy of loss and hold to how it’s taught us of the wonder… Besides, what if we’re here for one reason? One. One repeatedly. But ONE. And like the butterfly, fleeting, beautiful, brilliant, drinking up earth through the feet. ONE. Purpose….
LOVE. Love in the moment as we look up at the next person. Love in the moment we can comfort another human being. Love in the moment before the baby you just birthed takes his last breath. Brutal but. Love. Gentle. But. Love. All true at once. And more than we can fathom. Just. Love. If we look for the happy lil reason for it all after it’s all said and done we’ll miss the moment we can love and as soon as we define why something happened, we diminish the million and one other possible whys and wherefores and we actually think we can put a price tag on immeasurable value. Tell you what, if you like a pound of flesh, go ahead. But not here. I’ll lose mine by sheer melt. All other takers, be gone!
(Thanks for riding the ruth-wave… believe it or not, I’m believing bigger this year and more specifically than this post might suggest. I’m just wow. Yeah. Amazed.)
Check out the song that helped me hurl this particular post…
Phil Rockstroh, rockin’ the truth . . .
“Both fundamentalist religious types and reductionist materialist true believers both are anthropocentric in their concept of divinity–both insist the language of the cosmos speak the language of man–whether it be religious dogma or scientific lexicon. The closer one comes to approaching the sublime…the more deeply the recognition arrives that it communicates (impersonally) by way of symbolic speech–the thoughts of the heart–visions, dreams, poetic insights. To insist that the cosmos speak our language is to ghettoize the soul of the world…The act imprisons one in a concretized belief system. Notice how fond both atheists and fundies are of the words “only” and “just.” While religious types eye the distant heavens–believing life on earth is merely a dismal slog through mortal sin–only the pathetic acts of fallen man, reductionist insist our dreams, visions, imaginings are only fantasies–just metaphysical piffle. Both, in short, have an abundance of hubris squatting in the place their heart should occupy. This makes them very testy…a trait of folks who live in cramped quarters of concretized belief. My suggestion: Open a window…
eavesdrop
on the cosmos as it is creating verse.” Phil Rockstroh
Found here: http://on.fb.me/vYdTiB
Emphasis and breakdown of final words are mine.
nothing compares.
no purchase, no gifting,
nothing permeates, sates so fully
as these daily
hourly
moments eternal filling soul with color,
with every reason to breathe,
to be given in love,
to receive every ounce this life bestows.
to the seer goes the spoils,
to the one who tastes a richness nothing can destroy…
This was originally posted with this image: http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwgk2pFJFX1r4t9h1o1_500.jpg
then it struck me that before I had a tumblr acccount i had never considered using an image even with the source credited without permission. we quote people all over the place without getting in touch with them and… yeah. this one i’m going to be more careful with! but wah! i love the pic!!!
It’s a mood. It will pass. But this quote expounds on what is valid of this passing mood…
“In the Western world it is second nature for us to assume that all creative action requires the incentive of inadequacy and discontent. It seems obvious that if we felt fulfilled at each instant and no longer regarded time as a path of pursuit, we should just sit down in the sun, pull large Mexican hats over our eyes, and put bottles of tequila at our elbows. Even if this were true it might not be so great a disaster as we imagine, for there is no doubt that our extreme busyness is as much nervous fidgets as industry, and that a certain amount of ordinary laziness would lend our culture the pleasant mellowness which it singularly lacks. However, it does not seem to occur to us that action goaded by a sense of inadequacy will be creative only in a limited sense. It will express the emptiness from which it springs rather than fullness, hunger rather than strength.” Alan Watts – Nature, Man and Woman
And this, my friends, is why when my back starts screaming after days of driving around wondering how it is so many people can find the holiday frenzy inspiring when it’s cram jammed with little time to breathe or be human (ok, i’m mothering 3 kids with no partner and that DOES have some affect), lifting furniture, moving mountains (ok, that was in my dream), dishing out comfort to the brokenhearted, hounding shops for everything from white lights (not the surreal spiritual kind! just the Christmas kind!) to gifts to that special cream for teenage skin to stressing over the missing black belt for the pants for the son who’s playing in the concert that is meant to bring seasonal cheer to…it’s TIME TO LIE DOWN. Lunch break is back break or my back will break.
There. is. too. much. on. most. of. the. plates. out. there. and we are not fat with satisfaction for it either! And don’t get me started on how this season is a tightrope walk between year markers and philosophies. For many it’s all about Jesus. For some it’s just offensive. For me it’s all about how great it is that this holiday provides space and time (precious little!) to pause with my family, to recognize where we are, how sweet life is, and yes, how pretty the tree is (ignore sustainability and how the tree yeah, nevermind). But the materialism collides with “sweet family time” and I find myself growling. Loudly. Especially if my back is not happy. And I don’t have that Mexican hat!
Where’s the authentic creativity in a season that, by all it has become culturally in the U.S., asks more than even one family can manage and therefore leaps from the platform of inadequacy straight into the fire of “holiday cheer?” I realize there are exceptions living it out right now with no complaints. But yeah. Guess what? The word is EXCEPTION. And I’m complaining!
So, bah! (insert stomping sounds here. que the music. tomorrow my more balanced perspective will win.)
Worth the visual/audio time…
Key element of personal growth… “successfully functioning in society with diverse values, traditions and lifestyles…’requires us to have a relationship to our own reactions rather than be captive of them’…’to resist our tendencies to make right or true that which is merely familiar and wrong or false that which is only strange’…” (partial quote of Robert Kegan, developmental psychologist).
Such is the work and play of self-awareness with a view to a more thoughtful loving practice… “a relationship to our own reactions” means, to my mind, developing a thorough capacity to examine our reactions, theorize as to their influences and motivations and discern how much of our integrity is compromised by any contributing factors. How are “these reactions” symptoms of a deep need for discovery of personal truths and visionary self-guided purpose in resonance with whatever manifestation of Divine guidance we choose to rely on OR choose NOT to rely on? How are “these reactions” a manifestation of a refusal to make choices? How are “these reactions” a manifestation of a deep resistance to _____? It’s not necessarily about finding the right counselor as it is about being willing to ask the tougher questions (but great counseling is so vital!).
And on it goes. But we do land. We do conclude and act on those conclusions and then check back in with “our own reactions.” This is “a relationship to our own reactions.” We are not on auto-pilot doling out ripples on the pond blithely unaware…
“Our problem is not that we are born in sin. Our problem is we do not yet know how to achieve being fully human. The function of the Christ is not to rescue the sinners but to empower you and to call you to be more deeply and fully human than you’ve ever realized there was the potential within you to be. Maybe salvation needs to be conveyed in terms of enhancing your humanity rather than rescuing you from it.” John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop
“We must be under no illusion that all soul mates are meant to last a lifetime. Some are only meant to last a moment. That brief soul gaze with a ‘stranger’ at the grocery store that reminded you of your own essence was just right. That unexpected weekend encounter that set your spirit to soar is perfect. That great love that walked away after cracking your heart open was just what the soul doctor ordered. Whatever you need to smooth the rough diamond of the soul. No matter how long they last, profound connections paint pictures of possibility in the sky, expanding our lens for all eternity.” – Jeff Brown