Letters to the Universe

THE CASHMERE SWEATER

That classy cashmere sweater fits you like a glove.
It’s kitten soft wool clings nicely to your figure, those mother of pearl buttons sparkling like flashing lights.
As you slowly button it up, something happens when you reach the third button.

Button one feels like a summer swim in thick and caressing water, lifting you up just like your father did when you ran to meet him at the door.
Button two’s a summer peach, juice gushing out of its skin to meet your tongue.
Button three is like the rabbit itself, sitting fat across your chest, its tiny heart racing with the knowledge the coyotes will prevail in the end.
But button four begins to close in, claiming your body for its own, separating your arms from your shoulders, your shoulders from your back and neck, and most of all your breasts from everything else, giving them to the vulgar boys and posting them on display.

By button five, the air begins to feel thin and used up as the cashmere sweater tightens rudely against your modesty.
A panic stirs fitfully in your chest as your unspoken protests are drowned with the litter of feral kittens found in the barn, tied blankly in a gunny sack and tossed into the pond, with all the other unanswered questions.
Your hands tremble as they reach for the last button under the command of his eyes, demanding always more.

Suddenly, your grandmother steps into your visage wearing her plain clothes, plain face, and gentle bright eyes.
Beside her is a grown you, or maybe a daughter yet to come, with uncomprehendingly curious eyes.
Their eyes hold yours for a long moment where birth meets death and death meets life.

Beseechingly, you look to her lips for all the women ever looked upon by men.
But they are silent and you realize the only way out of the furnace of his gaze is through the fire of your truth.
But you have no wood to burn, nor shavings of cedar, nor even a match.
All you have is this rabbit soft flesh prone to bleed from its depths.
So you give the only thing you have with as much heat as your outrage can muster.

On this one winters night, the wind howling in the treetops, the rain pelting the windowpanes, the candle flame sweeps sideways making room for your eyes to return his devouring glance.
Your hands unearth themselves and suddenly push firmly against his chest.
In a flash of lightning, you push his bulk off you, grab your robe and race to the overstuffed chair, falling in as deeply as this world will allow.

His kayak follows in the wake of your white water rapids and asks confused and indignant, “what is going on?”
Your lips move slowly like a fishing net groping the depths of the darkness, feeling for a way to explain a lifetime of this body needing a safe harbor.
In the end you just say, “I’m not in the mood.”
As he storms back into the bedroom, his frustrated head shakes back and forth,
Confirmed once again with the irrational moodiness of a woman.

This dream wasn’t lucid, but it was important and intense.

I’ve been dealing with the question of whether I have a core belief that I am not lovable. I have been noticing in life that I reach out for people to give me reassurance that I am lovable. Yesterday, I made the conscious decision to not do that, and it hurt. I then had a dream that magnified this pain.

All night, I dreamed different scenarios of the people I love the most rejecting me and ignoring me. I dreamed that they did not care about me. I dreamed I was in a play, and wasn’t given any lines. I was aware of all the people I could go to to get love, and that when I approached them I was shot down. That hurt so so much. I woke up feeling completely depressed.

I think this is my psyche trying to resist from moving away from this pattern. Its showing me, this is how much pain you will feel if your worst fears come true. I suppose if I already felt that pain so much in my dream, it is less risky in life because it couldn’t get any worse than that dream. I want to continue to look at myself reaching for approval, and make the decisions to not. But then, how do I deal with this hurt? Who am I then? I have believed I am a certain way for so long and its worked for me…so where does this leave me now? Who am I in the world?

There was beauty in 2011 and lots of love. But there was also hardship and I was very caught up in it. So much so that I could not see the glory around me. However ugly, I need to honor and accept that.

Acknowledging Some Hardship from 2011

Although the leaves are fierce and red

They should be beautiful

I clench my fists and crumble them away

Winter, come quick, these leaves are screaming memories of yesterday.

Where do I live? My body keeps its ground, but my mind is caught in a sticky web of the shadowy past and false tomorrows. My eyes droop and I’m tired of this world. All has gone gray and life is far away.

Where did it go? Touching gods and secrets. Now all I touch are concrete walls. I built them. I am eight years old again. Ugly, stupid and afraid. I thought that girl was hidden away. How’d she get out? I can’t pretend.

Learn Learn Learn!

Haiku

My spirit is free

I am my own protector

In this I am whole

Winter Solstice and Intention

I am reborn

Winter sweeps its death finger on the golden earth

I am reborn

Shadows, you’re welcome now

Attention. I have intention. It is coming. Let it come. I fear nothing

The bottom drops out. Fine.

I am reborn.

Mother, give me my witch back! I’ll take it.

Lover, give me my knight back!

Its mine. I am the hero of my story. The warrior. I’m going in…open and aware.

I let my stars burn out, but now I’ll take them all back and glow in my white light.

The bells of glory and truth are ringing! They bring joy and movement!

Yes to life. Yes to every part. I see you, walls. I see. And as I do, you melt.

Here’s to the truth, acceptance, and a new start to this hero journey.

RENEWAL

The tide draws up the beach and clears off the table setting

With wine glasses, napkins, platters laden with their fare,

Plates and those in attendance– all gone.

Echoes scatter in the lengthening shadows

As I strain to remember the meal.

“We laughed, didn’t we?”

“I can’t quite remember,

But something happened.”

All those somethings falling as grains of sand,

Tossed silently around and becoming the long night after…

Spirit manages beaches full of sand; I suppose.

I merely stand here feeling the warm rays of the sun and the sand between my toes.

Like a child I wiggle my feet deeper into the sand and

May remember the way sand feels between my toes,

Because my toes remember, not my mind.

A new crescent moon flits for moments in the dusky sky,

Like a butterfly saying “look up here, look at me, I’m up here.”

No longer look back at what was but look ahead and let your interest follow.

“Much is coming.  I know because I am the moon.

My eyes are very large and I can see great things from up here.”

So it is the next follows the last and I manage to sleep in between.  When I sleep,

I wonder and sometimes in the day between thoughts I also wonder.

Wondering is like listening to the wind and trying to follow it back to distant shores and even distant times.

Wondering is a game we played as children

When we had long hours and very few real thoughts to attend to.

Life has become a noisy metropolis of thoughts.

Wonder prefers the quiet.

Between the two is a vast expanse of choice,

So vast a person could get lost

And never be seen again.

Life is like that, full of folds and wrinkles

That so many people tumble into and

Never come back out from.

Spirit must manage folds and wrinkles too,

I suppose…

Boom!! I’ve fallen off a corner of life, and…after free falling for some time have awakened to??? Where am I; what planet is this? Have I ever been here before? Even before asking I know I haven’t, never. Because this place and time have never happened before, clearly. How could that be, in the midst of such infinite that a moment and place wouldn’t have already happened? Especially since this place has always been, and of course, this now is always exactly now. But, but, but, I haven’t been here before. I guess I’ve been other elsewheres and places. But those are all gone for me now, unless… unless I could get back there. But that was a different moment. Can I fall back into a former moment? I, don’t, think, so, unless I go totally crazy because what would happen to the me that is always evolving into my next moments and places in time? Is there any place in time I would like to return to? Hmmm!? I don’t think so because I have this amazing moment and place to be right now, here. Am I really living this moment? Hmmm!?What is really living like? Now, I like that question— so full of possibilities. I feel excited because I sense a current of aliveness and possibilities. The deeper into the current I sense, the greater and more infinite is the place I sense. It’s like: the more I can fall out of my mind, my thoughts, my stories the more I can connect with all else (or just all- no else). No “me and not me.” Ahhh! This is good. I get trapped in my mind sometimes and its a gerbil wheel of mimicked movement that goes in circles, till I tire and fall asleep. Learning to recognize the difference sooner between the gerbil wheel of the mind and real life. That’s a worthy companion…

Love to you fellow humans wandering this landscape between pseudo living/ storytime and really breathing the infinite current of life in…

Dripping lucid time, worried, but wandering no further.
Feel the light of the Love Pool, dreaming fast as we walk,

Under the Lake.

And whisper poems of romance and feather mischief.
Darkness unfolds and spirit engulfs. Wind through your hair caresses.
Forever.
My one, sleeping far away and sitting beside me,

Under the Lake.

Feel me flounder, hear me wallow.   I am forgotten, but for you.
Dreams together save me from the hallways of loneliness.
I watch for you as I forget that I too can journey,
To find your watching place and embrace,

Under the Lake.

Life separates us, but it is not living.
As we step apart to hold a stone of ambiguity to our hearts,
And feel still the ripples of the water, as our love beats in time,

Under the Lake.

This month I have been working a job that has been very challenging, bringing up fears buried in me from my past and causing me to look at myself from a new perspective.

Also, I developed plantar fascititis (a painful condition in the feet) last September at Burning Man. I had danced and danced and walked on the playa with shoes with no support, unknowingly damaging the fascia in my feet.

With both the emotional and physical strains of this new job and my constant foot pain, I asked a very special woman to give me a session in cranial sacral therapy a few nights ago. It was a magical experience, and I believe that energy has been moving ever since the treatment. In fact, I feel like both the difficulties of the past few weeks and the energy work led to an intense insight I had last night, laying in bed.

I felt ready to pass into dreamland, when suddenly I received a picture that hit me hard and jolted me awake. I feel like this picture came from a higher source of knowing, maybe from within and maybe from the source of the universe. Maybe both. I saw an image of the night sky, filled with stars. The stars were all connecting. With this image came a deep knowing. The knowing was vast and full of insight, wordless. The words came later. I was seeing my world from After Burning Man until now. I was clearly seeing where I am now, and where I am stuck.

Stuck: For the past ten months I have been completely obsessed with the time After Burning Man and all things associated with that time. I am always wanting to go back there, to that time when I was very in the flow and easily connecting with everyone. That time was so blissful and I was so full of energy and passion. I am always wondering how to get back to that state. I have been holding on to even people from that time, giving those people power over me. It is because I love that memory of me, for I was my most true and connected self at that time.

I was in the flow. But what I see now is that I was in the flow but also completely ungrounded. A physical manifestation of this is that my foot injury is still with me, and that injury came from that ungrounded time. I see now that that time was a gift: a gift that just appeared to me. I did not have to work for it, it just appeared. It showed me my most true self, it showed me what I could be. But it was ungrounded. At that time, all of my walls and fears fell away. It was amazing. But what I see now is that I was bypassing all work on myself. Now, my walls and fears have returned, because those patterns are deeply ingrained in me. I saw images of my past last night, from childhood to college: all of the times I was not my highest self, the times I was hurt, disappointed, and making decisions that I regret. Those feelings are coming up again and again in my life, and now I see what my journey is. My path is to face those walls and fears and learn from them. I cannot bypass the work and just live as a blissful spirit. I must fulfill both spirit AND human side. Therefore, this time (though it feels hard and full of work) is even more amazing than the ungrounded bliss after Burning man. That gift showed me my potential. It showed me that I can be fully in the flow. But now is the time to do the work! So next time, when I arrive in the flow, I will arrive with my feet on the ground, with intention, conscious of all of my fears and walls, and consciously moving through those imprints and patterns.

In this place, I don’t need to think–I just get to listen! I absorb and give out never-ending energy…we share it!

The fast was so difficult at times. So dark and heavy at times! I saw my greatest weaknesses magnified. They grabbed me and pulled me under water. Now, I look at them and nod my head. Aha! When I see them from this side, in their magnitude, I begin to understand them. Before, they were just vague feelings of unease… and I was teetering in and out of them. Now I see them:fears that create walls that create a resistance and a dropping of potential energy exchange. A draining. No, I don’t need that! To me, the opposite of fear is trust. I thought of trust and judgement before, but now I am feeling inside the power of both of those. I must trust myself that I KNOW. Because I do! I have seen it before. It never disappeared, I was blocking it all along. If I ever forget, I must trust in my power to call it back in.

And thank you Kairos. It seems as though you can see my strength, even when I feel at my very weakest.

I am standing in a forest watching fireflies.  Each one is a separate note on my consciousness, awakening, coaxing, caressing.  Slowly she brings me to “now” and then she smiles, as if to say “look how beautiful we are together.”  We are! The forest and I, we are magic in fact.  I remember now.

Moonlight Sonata reminds me of being twelve, playing on the piano in my old house. I carry it with me, that music, and I know new feasts will come from my fingers and my voice.

Time feels so precious in this moment. It feels like a whispering strand of mist that stretches from sky to earth. I am watching this strand, and I am surrounded by warm, textured space. And I am made of pieces of stars, fragments of light. The essence of truth, the essence of God is in every thing. Trees, a glass of water, friends… Kairos’ eyes are the most beautiful access point to this essence. My soul is home in him.

This much is clear, I will walk my own path to the divine. The tools and ways of others excite me. They do not really work. They make me tired. My way is unique– a flower slowly unfolding. There is no other way. It is not easy! I do not want to be discouraged. I am on a treasure hunt. I’m discovering a new land! As I walk through the trees and plants, I suddenly feel deja vu. I know this place. This place is home. It is mine.

I wish to tear down every wall between us, until there is nothing but our stark, raw, true, bright, soft love. That is where we belong.