Mother Moon Supermoon
Mother Moon is drifting high Silent in the starry sky Feel the shadow of her eye Moon is on the rise. — Mother Moon chant* The full moon tonight is called a supermoon. Evidently, there will be two of them in this first month of our very new year. It’s heartening because it feels like the heralding of a turn for the better. 2017 has been tough for a lot of us and we could use some relief from the chaos and destructiveness of our world. Mother Moon’s power is subtle yet strong. It’s beautiful. She lights the night sky like a giant lamp, pulls on the oceans to create tides, and calls to us to awaken to ourselves. She influences the healthy growth of plants according to many gardeners. I have a personal relationship with the moon. I love her and look to her to help me through difficult times. She reassures me and reminds me that everything will be alright and to stay present with the way things are. She sits up there in the heavens looking beautiful and wise, and sometimes that’s enough. Many of my interactions with her have been spontaneous and surprising. They are always uplifting and empowering. There was the day I was feeling sorry for myself and feeling like no one understood where I was coming from no matter how much I explained myself. I strolled along feeling a little sad and lonely. It was morning in the wilderness a number of years ago, and the moon was on her way to setting in the day bright sky. It can be a little startling to see the moon in daylight, and I hadn’t realized she was there. I just happened to glance upwards. Moon shrugged her lunar shoulders and communicated gently and matter of factly. “I’m the only moon,” she said, “and it’s okay.” Oh. My God. Thank you, I responded, breathlessly. Thank you so much. So obviously right on. I certainly wouldn’t dream of wanting the moon to be different from the way she is. I adore her uniqueness, so perhaps I could appreciate my own as well. No reason to feel bad because you’re the only one like you. In other words, it’s okay to be just me and not necessarily understood by anyone else. My loneliness and sadness faded. Mother Moon’s message to me that morning was visceral. It bypassed my mind and went straight to my heart. It instilled the kind of knowing that resides in the tissues of the body and floats along in a sea of humility. It feels so true and right that all you can do is relax into the truth of it. There’s nothing intellectual about it and so it requires hardly any thinking. It is experienced as a gift. Tonight we will be treated to a full moon, a supermoon. May you be graced by the power and promise of Mother Moon. I wish you good tidings and a Happy New Year full of love and peace. *an arrangement of my Mother Moon chant was recorded by Sound Circle and can be purchased here....
Read MoreNot A Matter of Belief
Spirituality is not a matter of belief. It is a matter of experience. It’s experience that lights the way, guided by intuition and the forces of the universe. A compelling urge carries us along and points us in one direction or another. It’s not about what we think, although thoughts play a role in the delivery of information. If anything, belief seems to get in the way of spirituality. Belief creates disbelief, which can block receptivity, which is the key to full experience. Staying open to my experience allows my perceptions to form around what is actually happening rather than what I believe could or should be happening. It gives me the freedom to directly encounter the mysteries of life. It allows me to not know and not understand, which is ultimately liberating because it lets me simply be with whatever is happening. Staying open creates opportunities for profound humility to enter the picture. This is turn fosters the ability to continue to open to what might want to be revealed. Truth feeds on more truth, just as peace creates more peace. Joy shows up, too, and though it is merely a byproduct of the process, it pervades the field and seductively creates more openness. This morning is a perfect example. I started out in an utterly foul mood, having had my sleep repeatedly interrupted by my old cat. Yet, I lit the candles, sat down in my chair, and was taken over immediately by openness, connectivity, and a flow of information. Yes, I’m making myself available, but that’s the extent of any doing on my part. And, even the making myself available part doesn’t feel like me doing anything, but rather like life experiencing itself. It really does feel like life experiencing itself. The practices have established themselves. There’s a flow and I’m in it. The craziness with the cat is in it, too, it’s just not the most pleasurable part. Being disruptive, annoying, exasperating, frustrating, and infuriating doesn’t make it any less a part of the flow. Staying open to the flow of experience makes life far more interesting and enjoyable. Staying open reduces suffering to more appropriate proportions. It allows for more accurate perspectives and possibilities for healing. It creates peace even in the midst of chaos. What we call spirituality is actually the complex flow of life through all levels of reality. Whatever names and labels we put on it are attempts to capture the uncapturable. There’s nothing wrong with all the words and concepts, but it’s important to remember that that’s what they are. The deep knowing that comes from experiencing different levels is a felt sense you can feel in your bones and also in your heart, the center of your chest. Breathe into the center of the chest, relax, and let reality reveal itself. It’s unlikely you’ll be...
Read MoreSadness Has Its Place
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.” — Martin Luther King, Jr. I read Leonard Pitts Jr. this morning, which I do whenever the Daily Camera reprints his column. I’m usually inspired by his beautifully crafted essays, and this one was no exception. But… it is incredibly and powerfully sad. Synchronistically, what he wrote matched my mood, particularly the feeling of overwhelm about how much not good stuff is happening in this country. How really is it that the white cop who shot the black man in the back eight times was not convicted? I find daunting the prospect of having to be more activist than I’m prepared to be. Are we really going to have Trump for president? People are writing to the electors who are set to meet in a week to decide our fate as a nation. Can I do it? Do I have the stamina to write all those letters? Is signing all the petitions I’m signing doing any good? Can I find the strength to be active and effective while burdened by a pervasive fog of sadness about the world situation? I don’t know. I really don’t. Part of me wants to escape and stay hidden in the hillsides of my beautiful Boulder. However, the old but still young activist in me wants to get going and do the right thing, start moving mountains like we did in the sixties. Get loud and proud and relentless. Channel righteousness into social change. Stand for good. Etc. etc. and like that. I have to honor the sadness first. That’s the only way I’ll be able to do anything. I’ve learned over this longish lifetime that emotions rule. I ignore them at my peril. They are the electrical signals that eventually show me the correct action to take, and the correct timing. If I’m deeply sad, which I am, I need to inquire within, ask myself what is going on and listen carefully to the answers I’m getting from inside. If I’m tired like Pitts, and I definitely am, I need to face into that and look for ways to contribute that don’t endanger my own wellbeing. I need to remind myself that it’s okay to be tired. It’s okay to be sad. I do have every confidence that we will get through this dark period. Why? Because I have lived through numerous dark periods before, and because no matter what’s happening, life keeps going. I’m learning to accept what I have been taught, namely that whatever happens happens. Understanding this deceptively simple phrase includes knowing that I can’t know most of what’s going on most of the time, and that being too attached to what I think is going on is always unhelpful. I need to cultivate discernment. I’m not going to find my way in these strange times by being judgmental. Love is the basis for the deep disappointment and sadness I feel, just like the quotation from MLK says. I thank Leonard Pitts for putting it at the top of his column. When I sit with my sad feelings, breathe and wait, maybe sing and write, what always shows up is the deep love I feel for the world and for people, the earth and all living beings. I look to that love to show me the...
Read MoreMoving Forward Into the New (and Trusting)
The longer I live, the more I learn the beauty of each being’s way of navigating life’s changes and the spiritual openings that come to magnify and deepen each life. How are you doing with the choices and changes life is bringing to you? Isn’t it amazing how caught up we are in the continuous movement of the Forces? For many of us here in Colorado, it’s been all about the Great Flood of 2013. We’re still recovering from the powerful waters that moved through our area in the form of the thousand year rains and the 100 year flood. For a while it was hard to think about anything else. But life reasserts itself and moves on regardless of shocking events and traumas. It doesn’t allow us to stay any one place very long, but rather, commands us to continue on, receive healing, and apply the lessons we are learning from our experience. Life asks us to trust even when we feel like everything is going wrong. I wrote a guest blog post about this recently. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here. The essay is also on my counseling website here. The underlying theme of my book, Life Choices, is the importance of exploring and understanding how life on Earth really works. Choices made by women and men about sex and pregnancy are part of that, but the overarching teaching of abortion and its related issues is the way life is in relationship with itself through birth, death, and everything in between, and how individual conscious awareness comes into being through experience. I can’t think of anything more important than learning how to trust. It’s almost impossible to navigate the twists and turns of our lives if we don’t. Trust often grows from surviving challenging experiences. Our experiences are tailor made to allow us to become more conscious and aware on all levels. As we open to what our experiences have to teach us we become more trusting. I’m speaking of deep trust here, the kind of trust we have in the changing of the seasons and the rising of the sun. Moving forward into the new, I have created a workshop called Trust the Sacred-Trust Yourself. It will debut on Saturday, December 7 in Boulder at Holo Being, LLC as a HoloLive! production. You can find more information here. You can sign up here. I am excited about this new form because it brings together the teachings that I share with private clients and out on the land during the annual vision quest trip. Learning to trust the way of things gives us a key to connection with ourselves, with each other, with earth, with sky, and with the divine. ...
Read MoreKeep Women in the Center of Pregnancy, and Life
To build a society based on human need, with love of all beings as its guiding principle, the reproductive needs of women have to be included in the center of the foundation. The feminine aspects of life, heretofore treated as peripheral, marginal, or unimportant, must be given their rightful status as central to the human condition. —Life Choices KEEP WOMEN IN THE CENTER OF PREGNANCY, AND LIFE In a gorgeous commencement speech in 2010, Meryl Streep pointed Barnard College graduates towards their destiny and responsibility to carry the torch for gender equality and understand it as a human issue rather than only a women’s issue. It’s an important distinction. Understanding gender equality as a human issue rather than as a women’s issue opens the way to correcting misperceptions and confusions about the specific issues that form the content of women’s lives. Reproductive choice is one of these, of course, and abortion the most controversial. Imagine what it would be like if we didn’t think of reproduction as a “woman’s issue,” and instead took responsibility as a society for the health and wellbeing of all. The only way to do this of course is to give women a central role in determining ways to provide for the health and wellbeing of all. We’re on our way to getting there, but we have a long way to go. Women are only partially empowered and only in some parts of the world. The gains we have made are still precarious and in need of continuous vigilance and care. Male referencing is rampant in our culture. Meryl speaks about it from her experience as a female actor. She explains her sense that men are unable to empathize with female characters. She says that most straight men can’t experience themselves through a female character the way most women are able to experience themselves and empathize with a male character. She attributes this to the way we are raised in this culture where a hero is assumed to be of the male gender and men and all things male are made to be superior to women and all things female. A few weeks ago, I gave a talk to a local community group. I asked each of the listeners to do their best to keep the woman in the center of the pregnancy experience as I was talking about abortion. This became controversial almost instantly. Someone asserted that she could not do that because for her it’s always about two people, the man as well as the woman. Another person asked, “But what about the child?” First, about the man. Ideally, it’s good for both the woman and the man involved to be on the same page with regard to a pregnancy. However, this is often not the case or not possible for myriad reasons, and the woman is left alone with the pregnancy and the decision. I go into more depth about this in my book. If you wonder about “the child,” the best thing to do is to ask the woman. She is the best authority on the meaning and place of pregnancy in her life. Don’t allow yourself to separate her from her pregnancy in your mind just because she’s considering or has had an abortion. She is not the enemy of “the child.” Far from it. She is the one, the only one, who knows all the intricacies of her current situation as well as the subtleties of relationship, both...
Read MoreWriting for My Life
I’ve decided to be kinder to myself when I feel sad I’ve decided to be grateful for all I ever had… This morning I woke up in a foul mood. It wasn’t unfamiliar, nor was it strange. It was all too common, and it demanded my attention. I stepped out of bed and into an abyss of negativity. Oh no, not this, my poor mind sighed. Here we go again. Time to sit down with pen and paper and transfer the inner waves into words. I didn’t want to sacrifice the day to feeling bad. Okay, yes, here we go. Light candles in front of photos, one of my beloved David, the other of the great guru Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi. Curl into the cushioned armchair that readily holds me at times like this. Big breath in; drop into full body presence, the relaxation necessary to allow information to rise and release into cognition. Hands come together in prayer pose; involuntarily, thank God. I am so in need of spiritual spontaneity when I feel this way. Letters begin to form on the page, gliding into place from the movement of thought and feeling. Apparently, an old pattern of nastyness towards the self has emerged from its den to make an appearance. It’s the one where I characterize myself as inferior to anyone who has accomplished something good creatively. Other writers, singers, creators of any kind. All are better than me. Their success is my failure. I will never be as good as they are, never enough, no matter what I do or how I am. Instant recognition. This is gnarly and unattractive to say the least, dangerous at worst. A blueprint for creative inertia. Mild alarm that it has shown up again, and along with that, more clarity that it is vital to sit with it. I let myself record every small-minded thought or idea that comes. I write and write. Finally, I’m done with the mean-spiritedness. No more nasty words or embarrassing revelations. I’ve purged it all onto the page. I’m feeling calmer and kinder towards myself. A sweetness makes its appearance. I breathe it in, eyes closed, tilting my face towards the ceiling and through it to the sky. Everything seems gentler. I can be with all that arises, and let all be as it is, at least for now. If you’ve not used personal writing to support you during difficult periods, I highly recommend it. Whether you are facing something frightening or trying to understand something about your life, writing provides a powerful entry into the truth of being. It puts you in the moment, which allows the next moment to unfold with more ease. It can make a huge difference in your life. The quote at the top is from the song Kinder by Copper...
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