Particles, Waves, Tide, The Ocean, Baby!

I've always had a mad jealous streak quite at odds with my theories of spirituality.  I felt like I had been dealt a raw hand by the Big Dude or whatever.  This feeling that I had been cheated allowed me to covet what others had and also to cut corners myself.  I figured since no one seemed to have my back, as the saying goes, I had to do whatever it took for me to survive.

Fast forward many years.  Last week, I faced my jealousy head on.  I was visiting my best friend for several days.  She has a perfect home, the perfect modern family, a successful marriage, and abundance in every aspect of her life.  Grandchildren!  Grown children who are happy and successful and who come to her for cozy conversation.  A job she loves.  No major health issues even though we're about the same age.  Need I go on?

So, there I was ensconced in that picture-perfect home for a few days.  I felt loved, protected, and richly engaged by her spirituality and intelligence.  It came time for me to leave and I was sitting in her picture-perfect family room surrounded by at least a hundred pictures ranging from grandchildren to grandparents.  I felt like an outsider and a big, fat LOSER.  As I sat there quietly, things began to rearrange themselves in my awareness.  Suddenly I saw her as another soul in the universe.  I remembered her origins. I saw her striving to go beyond her family.  I saw the little girl who had to grow up fast and didn't get a chance to play.

I stopped comparing my life to her life and realized I was obsessed with the trappings of life.  The bottom line is the same for both of us--to wake up to the God or whatever that is manifest in our very own selves.  That's it.  That's all.  When I am jealous and lonely, I am like a drop of water in the ocean.  I'm only thinking about that drop.  Once I realize I am part of the ocean, I'm amazed.  My friend is a drop of water and so am I.  It takes many drops of water to build an ocean.  All of us moving in divine harmony make up the tide and waves.  Wow! Roxie

God by Any Other Name

I started this blog as a spiritual quest.  I wanted to explore or figure out or invent or find a god that I could relate to.  Over time, I've drifted far afield, as I suspect we questing souls tend to do.  I read something yesterday that said:  "Reflect on the fact that we may not understand God."  Duh.  You'd think I would have known that, right?  I didn't.  I have assumed all along that my intellect could apprehend or know god.

We may not understand God.  This is stated as a FACT.  It became obvious immediately: I don't understand God; I cannot understand God.  It's way beyond my comprehension.  You'd think that might be depressing; actually, it's a relief.  I can quit trying to figure god out and just let go and assume that it's beyond me (intellectually).  Going one step further, the ego rejects the very notion that there is something out there that it can't control or manage.  So, inside of us, both the intellect and the ego are struggling to hang on to the idea that they are in charge.  They're not. Huh!

At the same time, I do believe that (if there is a God, says my egolect) that we CAN know God although not in those ways of knowing.  How then?  In time-honored fashion, we must still the ego, quiet the intellect, and seek God in silence, in rhythm, in art, in nature, in our bodies when we are aware of them.  God lives in everything (if there is a God, says my egolect).  Why do we work SO HARD to not believe it?

Come to think of it, why bother deciding at all.  Belief and unbelief are a continuum and we're on it somewhere whether we want to be or not.  Let it go.  Be silent.  Turn off the TV, silence the smart phone and put it away, turn off the computer.  Walk in rhythm with the heart beat and the movement of waves on the shore.  Breathe in the same rhythms.  God is beyond intellectual knowing.  Fact.  God is love and rhythmic motion in the universe.  Join when you can.  Roxie

Into the Woods

I've been away for awhile.  I went "into the woods" of soul work.  It was dark there, moldy, and full of strange sounding creatures.  When I'm stumbling through the woods, too often I'm looking at my feet--watching for roots and brambles, rocks and bogs.  I'm worried where to put my feet.

If I stop to look up, what I see is a "green cathedral."  The enormous trees arch upward to form a ceiling; the densely packed forest shuts out less necessary parts of the world.  I am uplifted by the power of silence and the lift of the enormous branches.  I hear squirrels jabbering away, birds coming to roost, the wind so far above as to be almost beyond reach.

I grew up on the edge of such a woods.  I spent as much time as possible there.  As a pre-schooler, I got up in the morning, snuck out the back door, and whistled for my neighbor friend.  Her return whistle was a sign that we should meet up in our special place.  I'd head to the woods and she'd be there.  We'd spend hours riding our imaginary horses, slaying imaginary foes, sweeping our imaginary capes in front of imaginary hordes.  Later, as a teen, I snuck out with a book and climbed a favorite tree to read for hours.

Today, I live at the edge of a different forest.  The ancient trees still speak to me in the wind high above.  Out my window, some trees are a brilliant orange while others remain green or have chosen to be a bright yellow this year.  It's a feast.

Alas, in the last month or so, I've not been partaking of the feast.  I've been afraid of falling, consumed with watching my feet and where they're stepping.  This is the sacred shit of soul work.  Putting one careful foot in front of the other not noticing the call of the Universe in the perfect architecture of the trees, the astonishing palette of colors, the orchestration of sound and silence.  Not noticing my body, at home in this divine arena.  Obsessed with safety and self-protection.

Where is the little girl who jumped out of bed to meet her soul-mate and roam the woods fearless and unfettered?  She's here.  She lives in this sixtysomething body with arthritis limitations, balance issues, and worries.  She's the reason we went into the woods.  She's the one who will find a way out of it if she must.  She's also the one who makes us look up at the Spirit moving in the high branches.  She's the one who loves the woods wanting to stay and play until goblins or glory snatch us away. Roxie

Child of the Universe

What the heck does is mean to be spiritual?  Does it mean to have some kind of faith in another realm?  Does it mean to be sensitive to or aware of forces that seem to be irrational?  Maybe it simply means to exist.  I am; therefore, I am also in spirit.  What the heck am I talking about?

I don't know.  My life seems to be a constant wavering between something like faith and something like judgement. The judging part of us, ego, intellect, can't really comprehend the irrational.  Intellect thinks it would be nice if there WERE a good, loving god or a good, loving flow of life. That's as far as it can really go.  The capacity to make a judgement based on information and reason stops at the end of physical reality.  Immense intellects like Einstein's have come close to understanding and explaining the magnitude and simplicity of creation.  They liken this to understanding the mind of God.  I find that comforting. My intellect is comforted that there is some kind of bridge in great minds from this reality to other ones.

On the other hand, the faith part of us is willing to believe without the intellect's input.  It leaps across the divide between physical reality and spiritual reality.  The closest I can come to that is occasionally letting grace seep into my awareness so that suddenly I am residing in an alternate reality.  It's kind of like time slows way down and I see and hear with an acuity that is not part of my normal life.  I look into my dog's eyes and I see a soul.  I step out the door and I hear the wind in tall trees or see mist rising off a river.  I am present.  I am IN life.  The question of faith or judgement ceases to exist.  There is only this moment when my body seems to merge with the universe.

Some part of me knows that's where it is.  That's enlightenment.  That's grace.  That's salvation.  Whatever.  When I'm consciously part of it all, the ego/mind/judging part of me disappears. It's irrelevant.  I know with certainty, in those moments, that I'm a child of the universe.  I'm home.  Roxie

Treyvon

Ouch.  What's a spiritual response to this seeming injustice?  I say injustice because in the end, an armed man admits to having shot an unarmed teen-ager.  I say injustice because a person with money and resources brought a better defense than the state could bring an offense.  It brings me to the Biblical question:  "Who is my neighbor?"  To me, that's the essence of the spiritual dilemma.

Treyvon is  my neighbor and (although I wouldn't want him living down the street from me!) George is my neighbor too.  A black teen-ager on the streets of a gated, wealthy community should not be at risk just because of his existence.  A weird dude with a gun who has designated himself the "neighborhood watch" guy should have retreated from stalking the teen when the police requested that he stand down. Again, I ask myself a Biblical question:  Who is the lost sheep here?

I don't know the answer.  Both Treyvon and George are children of the universe.  In the end, I know I'm powerless over this act and this outcome.  That doesn't mean that I can't feel that something went terribly wrong not just in that neighborhood but also in the courtroom.  So, I'm just giving a shout-out for Treyvon.  R.I.P.  Roxie

Sacred Shit: Just Another Name for Compost

After 9/11, it seems that many spiritual leaders issued a statement that re-affirmed the foundational principle of The Course in Miracles that there are only two responses to life:  love and fear.  They believe that you can't hold both states of mind simultaneously and suggested that 9/11 was a failure of love.  Other spiritual and psychological writers critiqued this point of view and I find myself agreeing with that critique.

It sounds so good and clean and simple to say:  Choose love or fear, people!  I don't think such either/or approaches really fit the human condition.  As my last posting indicated, I think evolving humans move away from black/white, either/or, love/fear thinking and move towards some middle ground.  Our task is to be vessels containing both the sacred and the shitty.  This holding of both or multiple impulses at the same time results in unimaginable unfoldings.  Compost fuels roses and weeds, aloe and poison ivy.  We might WISH that our human condition produced only roses and other "good" things, but it doesn't.

It produces fucked up humans as well as enlightened ones.  The grace of it all is in knowing that the enlightened ones are no greater than the fucked up ones in the eyes of the universe or the God.  Love, in other words, is not more valuable than fear.  Each is needed and each needs the other.

This topic is really personal for me.  I have faced so much fear in my life and haven't always had great amounts of love.  This is true for many of us.  In fact, it's a rare person who in the dark of night would say that they have more than enough love. The human condition is pretty dysfunctional.  It is full of corruption, wars, despicable acts by one human towards another, exploitation of the weak for the good of the strong.  But, hey, this is what we have, our sacred shit.

The miraculous thing is how LITTLE love it takes to leaven all the fearful, painful ingredients of life.  That one teacher who recognized your value!  That one man who saw the good in you!  That grandmother or aunt or music teacher or coach.  Those few who knew you as worthy and beautiful and strong--those few turn flour into bread, arid soil into fertile land.

With this awareness in hand, we can KNOW that our own tiniest gift to another is valuable.  Our smile, our helping hand, our NOTICING of another are things we ALL can bring to life.  In this way, we are miracles.  We are grace.    Namaste, Roxie

P.S.  One way that I can notice and give to others is by listening and sharing intuitive responses.  Please email me at anneclarice1@gmail.com for a complimentary coaching session.  

Meet in the Middle

There's a line from a country song that goes something like this:  "You come from your way; I'll come from mine.  We'll meet in the middle at that old Georgia pine."  Meeting in the middle is sometimes a spiritual challenge.  Some days we taste the bliss and serenity of oneness with all of creation.  Some days we spiral away into isolation and loneliness.  While there is spirituality in all of these experiences, finding some balance between extremes is a useful spiritual goal.

Let's look at those extremes.  Bliss.  For me, that happens in a heartbeat when everything slows down and I am present in the moment as if time has stopped.  It happened once when I was saying good-bye to a friend while standing in the doorway of my home.  It was late evening and raining.  I became conscious of the mist, of the cool air, of the sky behind my friend's head, of the street lights shimmering, of the vast darkness beyond.  It also happens sometimes when I'm sitting in my yard after a long day.  In my case, I'm noticing, these moments of bliss occur most frequently in the evening. Maybe there's a "certain slant of light" (Dickinson) coming horizontally through the darkening trees.  Maybe the complete silence suddenly filled with evening birdsong brings it.  Anyhow, that's one end of the spectrum.

At the other extreme is isolation and desolation.  Many of us experience these more than we experience bliss; certainly, that's true for me.  First, let's distinguish between loneliness and isolation (C. Moustakas).  Loneliness is a healthy, creative time of fermentation.  It's being alone with our selves and being content with that.  Isolation is the feeling that we are separated from the human community and the creation, cast aside perhaps, and it comes with fear, shame, and sometimes despair.  So the other extreme of bliss is isolation, not loneliness.

While both extremes bring opportunities for spirituality and while we are still connected with the God, Big Dude, or Universal Good; in the isolation phase, we aren't aware of our connection.  It's there but we don't experience it.

If the divine is present in ALL experience, then why seek the middle as part of our spiritual practice?  There's  an ego-hit that comes with the extremes.  We are self-conscious in an extreme way that can be as addictive as a drug.  The "high" of bliss and the "low" of desolation can become ends in themselves.  We begin searching for bliss, craving it, are disappointed and feel like failures if we can't score it.  Likewise, we become comfortable with isolation and desolation.  They expect nothing of us.  We don't have to DO anything about them.  Poor us.  We're so alone,  ahhhhhhh.  There's a sedation in that state that we find ourselves attached to, preferring it over the slings and arrows of everyday life.

So, we seek the middle.  We seek to live the everyday life.  At first, this may seem incredibly hard or incredibly boring.  Do it anyway.  We ARE in the middle between our spiritual and physical natures.  We live in the sacred and the shitty all the time.  It's the nature of our human condition.  To cling to one side of our experience more than the other may seem safe or wonderful, but it's not whole.  It's not you experiencing the nature of your current life.  It's rejecting the gift of being spiritual beings in a PHYSICAL world.

Wise friends have told me, bring a little of one side with you when you're in the other as a way to start moving into the middle.  When feeling bliss, consciously remember the desolation of another day and bless it.  When feeling desolation, visualize the serenity of those blissful moments.

Meet me in the middle, baby!  Roxie