True Beeauty

"You're so independent," he says,
when I tell him that I've experienced new clarity
after sitting with a few images of my own unattractive reflection this weekend.

The thing about BEEAUTY is that it comes from within ~ 
how much authentic joy and innocent relating One is actively cultivating can bee measured, not just in how One looks but 
in what One says and how One does.
I'll admit, when I am not physically dancing, it is hard for me to sow these imperative
life qualities.  Yet, I trust it all - there is  a reason why I have intentionally put myself here.

"My extreme independence has just been the opposite of co-dependence, though," I say to him in response.   "I'm working on INTERDEPENDENCE these days."

So, I borrow a sistar's currently unused vehicle to drop another sistar off at the train station.  In the act, she generously offers me the use of her furnished, beach-side apartment while she spends the next few months studying in northern California.  And, after many month's reprieve, my online stalker is back with a vengeance.  Hitting my email inbox up with a slew of hysterical rants, she tells me to "Eat your own shit, bitch!" - among other things - as a response, perhaps, to my last few blogposts. 

While taking this all in at E Street, a local cutie I met here a few years back, eyes me from across the cafe and wanders up.  "Hey, how ya doing?" he asks.  And, this time, instead of my usual, cryptic "I AM" response, I quickly reflect on it all and say, "I'm great!"  (Even in the midst of the loss of rhythm, the upheaval of transition, the gain of weight, the discomfort of change, and the acceptance of responsibility for the deep whole that I have put myself in and what I must do - "I am great!")

MESSY

"I read a blog post the other day," he said.  "It said,
"Date a woman who reads.  Better yet, date a woman who writes."  
We're charting new terrain here and it's strange beecause it is so damn unfamiliar. 
I told him that he should post to his Facebook wall that he has a 'problem.' 
"HELP!  My partner does not blame me for anything or project any negative emotions onto me.  
Help me!  I have no drama in my life!  What should I do?"  

It's unusual this living without the high and low of a passionate soap opera.  Gone is the codependency.  Here is the ease and grace of a natural flow.  And, what remains is the quiet, simple truth that anything I am seeking or looking for can not and never will bee located outside of myself.  Yet, sometimes, even that I want to deny and refuse.  The other day I grabbed him by the shirt collar, threatening, "I need you to make me whole!"  In response, we just laugh and laugh and laugh - like we do - in between and during all of our love making and life chasing.  There's nothing else to do.

The little girl, who spent years flailing her fists, gnashing her teeth and pushing others away, is now just a humorous archetype.  An inner compassionate mother and an inner protective father are now gently leading the way.  They enjoy her shit show when it comes up. "Oh, there you are," I hear them say inside of me as they patiently listen to her - how she hates everyone and wants to bee left alone.  Today, they know what's best for her highest good as they keep safely guiding her into the arms of a LOVE that doesn't hurt; LOVE that is trustworthy and reliable.  (Her own.)

Nonetheless, there is a messiness here.  It is discovered not in how we are treating each other but, rather, in the cleaning up of the huge mess left over from our past choices; willful and rebellious decisions that were made by our once orphaned inner child.  And it is painful to recognize how we have each not valued our own selves.  It hurts to experience the consequences of our actions.  Yet, we've given up the false illusion that we have to do it independently, and on our own.  Instead, we're re~discovering joy by rolling our fist sleeves up, standing side by side and digging in to the muck.  Together, we're celebrating INTERDEPENCE as we kiss and we hug and then dive right back in to the POOP.

We Love POOP!

One summer, many moons ago, I was working at Idyllwild's Desert Sun Science Center, sharing the magic of space with impressionable young people while simultaneously deepening my own intimate connection with the northern hemisphere night sky.  Privileged to enjoy a summer season bursting with fun, our weeks were filled with comedic skits performed in an open-air theater, team games competed on a grass field, and water works for reviving our wilting bodies from the daily heat.  Sitting together in a cement amphitheater, I noticed that the kids really liked playing a hand-motion game that was all about guns and shooting each other.  "Hmmm," I thought, "what alternative can we create that is just as amusing, yet steers our children's minds away from violence?"  I asked this question and put my dancing body together with my then co-worker, Ben Smythe.  Together, we came up with a simple solution.  "Eat My Poop!" it was called.

It was the exact same game that the kids were already fond of playing except instead of two people facing each other with imaginary weaponry, that had to bee loaded, shot, then reloaded, producing a killing and a dying, or blocking the pretend bullets with an "X" shape formed by the crossing of one's two arms in front of their chest, we transformed two of the simple hand motions.  The first action looked like lifting a spoon, or fork, into one's mouth (hence, eating), and the second motion included bending each arm at the elbow, raising each of them to your side, squinching up your face, and pretending like you are pooping.  It was the same idea - in order to poop, you have to eat first; you can't poop without eating first; and you definitely don't want to bee eating while someone else is pooping!  That's just gross!!!  When "Eat My Poop" is played masterfully, the game looks like a dance between two totally absurd human beeings.  The whole thing beecomes a comic farce!  Best yet, its playful innocence was subliminally teaching children a peaceful value while reinforcing new cultural values and mores.  

SOLUTIONS ARE EASY WHEN WE ARE AWARE OF THE PROBLEM 
AND WILLING TO ADMIT TO HOW OUR CURRENT ACTIONS DO NOT SERVE US!!   

My writing is an indicator of a sharp, critical mind.  I offer my words free of charge beecause I want us all to embody and employ a creative, critical thinking that questions what is accepted as 'normal' and 'reality.'  Like the above demonstrates, however, my real-time human actions and responses to the world around me are steeped in TRUE LOVE and in offering, offering, offering a PEACEFUL, HARMONIOUS VISION TO LIFE.  Here's to Chasing Life, My Friends, and to a VITALITY that can not be bought nor sold, that is not found outside of us, and that is always here, now for celebrating ~ we just have to remember how to love poop as equally as we love money!

Love of Money

"I am absolutely convinced that all the wealth in the world cannot move humanity forward, 

even in the hands of the most devoted worker.  

The example of great and pure individuals is the only thing that can lead us to noble thoughts and deeds.  Money only appeals to selfishness and irresistibility invites abuse.  Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus or Ghandi armed with the money bags of Carnegie?"  --Albert Einstein

"When money threatens to beecome a mono-value in our lives, we are suffering a pathology of Spirit.  It takes a thousand forms and it is difficult to root out.   As industrialized people, we are subjected to a relentless pounding by the advertising "industry."  We are encouraged to bee greedy by every medium available to that industry.  To succeed in the accumulation of wealth, we are told is to "succeed" as people.  However, if our "success" is achieved at the cost of the poor and the helpless, at the cost of other species, and even, at the cost of life itself, then just how successful can we feel?  Remember, if anyone dies or agonizes anywhere, we all feel it.

Every living being participates in the same life/psyche - biosphere - in which we all participate.  We feel the starving children.  It is that niggling guilt that some of us feel around which we build the justifications of the false self.  We feel the death of animals, the slow degradation of life, and we feel estranged and uneasy in the natural world.  When we build defenses around excessive lifestyles, we not only block out the cries of the dying children, but must, in order to do so, block out the cries and laughter of our own children.  Thus, our families begin to die.  Perhaps this is the root cause for our failed institution of marriage.  [I, personally, disagree with LaChance here - the institution of marriage has failed because it was rooted in money, ownership and the accumulation of material possessions, aka 'dowries' - not love.]  We are one family - all humans, all of life, like it or not.  The starvation of a child anywhere has happened to me.

We are told from childhood that we have the right to get ahead, to have all we want as long as we are willing to work for it.  Then the life-long advertising blitz tells us over and over again exactly what it is we're to want.  "What I really want is life.  What I really want is life for all people and all living beings."  It is then that the "divine goodness," which is my life, will bee fulfilled.  Deep down I want to bee generous and serve all of life, but what I find myself desiring is a new sports car.  While my deepest wish is to see everyone with what they need, I find myself working for trinkets and slaving for baubles.  In order to beecome a "successful consumer," I must train to bee a successful exploiter.  True success is success for the whole.  So, where has the LOVE of money dominated MY [YOUR] Value System?"  (from Albert LaChance's Cultural Addiction)

"Really enlightened people do not charge to spread the light."  

--Kevin

ABSURD

"Addiction!  There is no other way to accurately describe America's energy habit."  

--Jeremy Rifkin

Strolling along these Encinitas city streets, where spiritual materialism reeks like a noxious perfume, I discover the ABSURD.  Walking into Whole Foods during my twenty minute break off from a spiritual retail job where the nick-knacks and mementos hold absolutely no sway over this Body Mind Heart Soul Spirit, I purchase a box of Organic Chocolate Chip Cookies.  "This is my yoga," I say to my invisible friend, as I sashay out the sliding glass doors.  "You lifta the cookie to your lips.  You bite-a the cookie.  Hmmmm... taste-a the cookie.  Enoy-a the cookie."  I call this the Cookie Monster Asana. 

Sinking into the absurdity of all of this - of a world dangerously teetering on the brink of collapse due to an addiction to consumption by a culture hell bent on chasing death - is a wonderful antidote that I had, up until now, not even considered as a path for exploration.  "You take-a your toe, and you place-a it in his ear-a.  Now, you turn-a over and do a handstand-a."  I call this the Tantra of the Absurd. 

And, we've gotta laugh about it as well as cry our eyes out over it.  We have to acknowledge that we have a serious problem here, my friends, and buying crystals is not going to solve it!  It is time we leave the crystals where they beelong, and instead lift our lilting voices to say that what we value most is already right here, right now.  There is no need for more.  There is nothing to do.  And, no one to beecome.  THIS IS IT!  Thich Nhat Hahn has been declaring it for decades.  Are you ready to embody your words by standing by this truth with your actions? 

Imagine that?  
You don't have to prove that you're worthy.
YOU JUST ARE
SIMPLY BY BEE-ING.

"We have been destroying the planet, believing all the while that a ruined planet doesn't mean a ruined human.  The advertising agency has served as the denial mechanism here, always promising that the next product, the next "fix," will do the trick.

We watch the Earth sicken and die.  Yet we know that we are the Earth, we are the soils, we are the water, we are the air.  We see our children die of maladies directly related to poisoned water, soil, air and we deny.  The medical establishment serves our denial here - it keeps promising a cure.  We avoid the question: "How will a species born of a healthy planet find a cure for itself within the context of a poisoned one?"  We deny and we deny and deny.  We consume in order to forget.  But, as we consume, we eat the poisons of our prior consumption.  When we drink, we drink the poisons of our chemical waste dumps.  When we breathe, we breathe the exhaust from our last dream car.  Yet, because we need to consume more and more to dull the pain of our degraded existence, we are forced to drink our own death, eat our own death, and breathe our own death.  Worse, we must deny while we watch our children eat, breathe and drink their death."  

--from Albert LaChance's Cultural Addiction: The GreenSpirit Guide to Recovery

a value that can not bee defined

I am not this body, not this mind.
I am this planet,
and that mirror reflection,
staring you back in the face.

I am not an identity,
not some character comprised for your momentary debate.
I am not a consumer, designed solely to buy my way to a
spiritual materialism.

I don't need your coaching nor your pointing out my imperfections.
I am perfectly imperfect and content to simply bee.

I don't need to prove my worth.  I don't need to assert a value.
My beeing is enough.  My presence is my greatest gift.

I am not a dancer, nor anything that can bee defined.
I am a breath, deep and guttural, emerging from the night.
I am all that I am and I am nothing, a deeply flawed paradox,
I blow through your life.

I am sentient and I am a whisper.  I am not here for your consumption,
as an energy for you to suck.  I am all that has ever been and I am all that will ever bee.
I am here, now
and I am gone tomorrow.

I am LOVE and I am JOY.
I am timeless and I am ancient.
I am not a product, nor a brand for you to pitch.

I am more than all the gobs of money that your little mind seeks.
I am expansive and ethereal,
I AM.

I am not an object, nor some subject for your reality series.
I AM.  I am creative life force, I am infinite and potent. 

I cannot bee stopped by bombs and guns, by the toys that your reptilian brain concocts
as it chases death and suicide.  I am the plants and the air.  I am the ocean and a breeze.
I am wet and I am wanting.  I am tired and I am poor. 
I am soft and wilting, I am sad and I am grieving.

I am lost and I am found.
I am rich and I am proud.
I cry and I shout,
I AM I AM I AM.

meaning making

Another full moon and an autumn equinox
now past,
how do you mark the passage?
For there is no time, only space
and rhythm and motion,
repetition and sunchronicity,
playing itself out
over and over again.
How do you find the meaning?
For there is only space,
no time.
And the river flows down,
carrying us on,
where we will end up only God knows.
Meanwhile, Goddess whispers in our ears
sweet tunes and timeless lyrics
of a LOVE
that has no beginning and no end.
Only this.
Day after day,
moment by moment,
fall, winter, spring, summer,
the seasons change,
our bodies wither,
the Earth sags, the sun splinters,
our wooden ways softened,
as a  true power is reclaimed.
Still, it all moves on, rushing forward,
expanding outward, bending and rounding,
until it all just meets itself again.
Consciousness staring you right back in the face.
There is no time.
Only space.

(the power of) SHAKTI

"Woman is the creator of the universe,
the universe is her form;
woman is the foundation of the world,
she is the true form of the body.
Whatever form she takes,
whether the form of a man or a woman,
is the superior form.
In woman is the form of all things,
of all that lives and moves in the world.
There is no jewel rarer than woman,
no condition superior to that of a woman.
There is not, nor has been, nor will bee
any destiny equal to that of a woman;
there is no kingdom, no wealth,
to bee compared with a woman;
there is not, nor has been, nor will bee
any place like unto a woman.
There is no prayer to equal a woman.
There is not, nor has been, nor will bee
any yoga to compare with a woman,
no mystical formula, no asceticism
to match a woman.
There are not, nor have been, nor will bee
any riches more valuable than woman."

----Saktisangama Tantra
(found in Ajit Mookerjee's Kali: The Feminine Force)

I AM KALI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Change ~ the only constant we can count on

Ready to fly once more.
I prepare myself to taxi down a runway,
and I am filled with immense gratitude for this nest.

It's been a quiet respite, a space filled with books that feed my Soul
and an abode where sweet sistar D. and I could deepen into our few years
old connection.  She has been potent medicine - a divine reflection sharing her wisdom
as well as yummy and healthy cooking creations, derived from her Egyptian background.

I joined her in prayer on a number of occasions, awkwardly wrapping my thick hair in a hijab
after ablution at the bathroom sink, and then bowing, kneeling and touching my forehead to a mosque-decorated rug as she chanted and offered our bodies, minds, hearts, souls and spirits in service.  Peace bee unto all of us.
As-salam alaykum
السلام عليكم

And, the distant ringing of an early morning prayer bell beckons.
Turkey and Persia, I hear you calling.
Ancient Goddesses of Catal-Huyuk and the sing-song rhythm of Shams & Rumi
are calling me back.
With each lift off here in San Diego, I feel closer to traveling further afield again
and meeting you there.

What transpired here, however, has been profound.
This morning, I dreamt that I stood before you, my true lover and perfect mirror,
as I wrapped a live, wriggling Uraeus around my head.  Then, a string of numbers unfolded
before my eyes like a technological grid and I knew it was a message that I was meant to remember.
However, I was too consumed with wanting to share with you, my dearest LOVE, this part of my dream.  Alas, I remain but a novice at my lucid dreaming skills.

"The butterfly of change 
has once again spoken
so here I sit,
so there I sat,
so here I am,
so there I am gone."

The Forty Rules of LOVE

"I began to compile a list that was not written down in any book, only inscribed in my Soul. 
This personal list I call "The Basic Principles of the Itinerant Mystics of Islam." 
To me these were as universal, dependable, and invariable as the laws of nature. 
Together they constituted The Forty Rules of the Religion of LOVE,
which could be attained through LOVE and LOVE only. 
And those rules said:

The Path to the Truth is a labor of the heart, not of the head.  Make your heart your primary guide!  Not your mind.  Meet, challenge, and ultimately prevail over your nafs with your heart.  Knowing your ego will lead you to the knowledge of God.

You can study God through everything and everyone in the Universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue, or church.  But if you are still in need of knowing exactly where His abode is, there is only one place to look for Him: in the heart of a true lover.

Most of the problems of the world stem from linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstandings.  Don't ever take words at face value.  When you step into the zone of love, language as we know it becomes obsolete.  That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence.

Loneliness and solitude are two different things.  When you are lonely, it is easy to delude yourself into believing that you are on the right path.  Solitude is better for us, as it means being alone without feeling lonely.  But eventually it is best to find a person, the person who will be your mirror.  Remember, only in another person's heart can you truly see yourself and the presence of God within you.

Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neigborhood of despair!  Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you.  Be thankful!  It is easy to be thankful when all is well.  A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for what he has been denied.

Patience does not mean to passively endure.  It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process.  What does patience mean?  It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn.  Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome.  The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full. 

East, west, south or north makes little difference.  No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey a journey within.  If you travel within, you'll travel the whole wide world and beyond.

The midwife knows that when there is no pain, the way for the baby cannot be opened and the mother cannot give birth.  Likewise, for a new Self to be born, hardship is necessary.  Just as clay needs to go through intense heat to become strong, LOVE can only be perfected in pain.

The quest for LOVE changes us.  There is no seeker among those who search for LOVE who has not matured along the way.  The moment you start looking for LOVE, you start to change within and without.

THERE ARE MORE FAKE GURUS AND FALSE TEACHERS IN THIS WORLD THAN THE NUMBER OF STARS IN THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE.  DON'T CONFUSE POWER-DRIVEN, SELF-CENTERED PEOPLE WITH TRUE MENTORS.  A GENUINE SPIRITUAL MASTER WILL NOT DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION TO HIMSELF OR HERSELF AND WILL NOT EXPECT ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE OR UTTER ADMIRATION FROM YOU, BUT INSTEAD WILL HELP YOU TO APPRECIATE AND ADMIRE YOUR INNER SELF.  TRUE MENTORS ARE AS TRANSPARENT AS GLASS.  THEY LET THE LIGHT OF GOD PASS THROUGH THEM.

Try not to resist the changes that come your way.  Instead let life live through you.  And do not worry that your life is turning upside down.  How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?

God is busy with the completion of your work, both outwardly and inwardly.  He is fully occupied with you.  Every human being is a work in progress that is slowly but inexorably moving toward perfection.  We are each an unfinished work of art both waiting and striving to be completed.  God deals with each of us separately because humanity is a fine art of skilled penmanship where every single dot is equally important for the whole picture.

IT IS EASY TO LOVE A PERFECT GOD, UNBLEMISHED AND INFALLIBLE  THAT HE IS.  WHAT IS FAR MORE DIFFICULT IS TO LOVE FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS WITH ALL THEIR IMPERFECTIONS AND DEFECTS.  REMEMBER, ONE CAN ONLY KNOW WHAT ONE IS CAPABLE OF LOVING.  THERE IS NO WISDOM WITHOUT LOVE.  UNLESS WE LEARN TO LOVE GOD'S CREATION, WE CAN NEITHER TRULY LOVE NOR TRULY KNOW GOD.

REAL FILTH IS THE ONE INSIDE.  THE REST SIMPLY WASHES OFF.  THERE IS ONLY ONE TYPE OF DIRT THAT CANNOT BE CLEANSED WITH PURE WATERS, AND THAT IS THE STAIN OF HATRED AND BIGOTRY CONTAMINATING THE SOUL.  YOU CAN PURIFY YOUR BODY THROUGH ABSTINENCE AND FASTING, BUT ONLY LOVE WILL PURIFY YOUR HEART.

THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS CONTAINED WITHIN A SINGLE HUMAN BEEING - YOU.  EVERYTHING THAT YOU SEE AROUND, INCLUDING THE THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT BE FOND OF AND EVEN THE PEOPLE WHO DESPISE OR ABHOR, IS PRESENT WITHIN YOU IN VARYING DEGREES.  THEREFORE, DO NOT LOOK FOR SHEITAN OUTSIDE OF YOURSELF.  THE DEVIL IS NOT AN EXTRAORDINARY FORCE THAT ATTACKS FROM WITHOUT.  IT IS AN ORDINARY VOICE WITHIN.  IF YOU GET TO KNOW YOURSELF FULLY, FACING WITH HONESTY AND HARDNESS BOTH YOUR DARK AND BRIGHT SIDES, YOU WILL ARRIVE AT A SUPREME FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS.  WHEN A PERSON KNOWS HERSELF OR HIMSELF, SHE OR HE KNOWS GOD."

from Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of LOVE: A Novel of Rumi

to bee continued...

p.s. THANK YOU, B.L., 
for beeing a true lover and the best mirror! 

World Tour of LOVE

It began in January.
This world tour that has swung around the County of San Diego
making stops in Oceanside, Spring Valley, Carlsbad, North Park, South Park,
Pacific Beach, City Heights, Golden Hill, Cardiff, Sherman Heights, Leucadia,
Encinitas and more.
Because  
This Is My World.
And it's not that I haven't traveled outside of this locale, or
to other countries.  I have, and I will again.
Perhaps, it's simply that thinking globally is situated in acting locally.

It's been a wild ride filled with bumps and bruises,
jolts and jarring, consistent "wake up's" and boatloads of laughter.
There's been rhythm lost, resistance surrendered to,
and power re-claimed.
There's also been death and dying, so that I may bee reborn and live.
And, LIVING IN LOVE NOW
IS ALL THERE IS.

It's all there is.

As an autumn equinox sweeps its way in,
and the summer of LOVE recedes in the background, 
the mystery remains.
What is to come?
Where will the journey lead to next?

I've set my intentions, I'm listening to my heart.
I am continually releasing expectations for how it should,
or will look. 

I'm holding your hand and gazing deep into your eyes.
Sinking deeper into TRUSTING that it is all unfolding
exactly as it is divinely meant to.

Where LOVE leads,
I shall follow.

(Join me.)



 

LIBERATION: Friday the 13th

I simply always forget
and take for granted
that this sweet liberty
that I dance around within
isn't shared by all.

Now, I am not speaking of your neon-lit, grocery store aisle lane
nor am I referring to a quick sound bite about a nationalistic pride.
Rather, I am talking about the freedom to bee me - to let my feminine form
expand and contract, without guilt or shame; to enjoy every tasty morsel of food,
no matter its calorie count or grams of fat; to run and twirl, to exclaim and fart;
to sink into another's arms and rejoice in healing touch.

I am typing of a liberation that can not bee given nor ever taken away.
It's mine to claim - just like the air I breathe and this heart that beats.
It's a raucous celebration that, even in the midst of life's powerful ups and downs,
reveres this Yoni, and swings these hips.  It's a reclamation to allow my own fluids
a release - without holding back and without holding in.
It's a rememberance that, like our great Pacific Ocean, and that waxing and waning Moon,
we too ebb and surge, flow and still.

It's power so natural, so second-thought, I have to

stop

and pause
 
before another mirror.

Jarringly knocked out of my regular reverie as I listen to the horror of others:
how they'd rather stay covered up;
how she doesn't have a relationship with her own life-giving breasts;
how he is so exhausted from chasing after ideals that just aren't human. 
How she hates her body, her Self. 
How he doesn't beelieve, deep down, that he is lovable. 
How hurt and freightened,
scared and grief-stricken, we all are.

And I re-member
what I came here for.

On Playing Hard to Get, Rape Culture and War

Strolling along a pristine southern California shoreline, my brown skin and voluptuous curves lovingly draped in an orange and white, polka-dot bikini, a friend walked along beside me.  Offering an earful of what she had been gleaning from Sherry Arkov’s book, “Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl – A Woman’s Guide to Holding Her Own in Relationships,” she is now passionately determined to employ Arkov’s suggestions in order to land herself the long-term commitment she has been looking for. 

“I am over it, Cara,” she emphatically stated, as I noticed the gaze of the surfers we walked by following the line of her narrow, Brazilian bum.  “My way hasn’t been working.  I lovingly offer myself, and within a few, short months he bails - like clockwork.  So, I am not going to give the next guy sex – not after the first date, or the second date, or even the third."  "If you really want a relationship, then you should try it too,” she encouraged.  Meanwhile, I felt waves of resistance unfurl and crash within my gut.   

“Men are warriors,” she said, mirroring sentiments I have been writing and speaking upon for years now.  “They need to chase and hunt,” she went on, as I observed in the reflection of her Aviator sunglasses surfers running headlong into the break, their boards held aloft.  “If it’s too easy of a catch for them, then they quickly lose interest.  If we make it a game - of playing cat and mouse, hide and seek and hard to get - then we will win in this match of love.”  Exhaling heavily on a deep breath, I felt my internal body temperature rising with every point she iterated.  “What do you think?” she sweetly asked.

“That’s just not the world I am actively co-creating,” I replied.  “The new consciousness is based in LOVE.  Things are not withheld as an attempt to manipulate an outcome.  Rather, all that is wanted and desired is lovingly offered in the full trust that it will bee returned.  Perhaps just not from the reflection we are hoping - and this is where letting go of expectations comes in.”  She listened politely to my plea, but I understood that my passion was falling on deaf ears.  Without books on the New York Times best-seller list, guest spots on Oprah, an abundance of material resources and money in the bank, my hard-earned wisdom, accrued through a lifetime of experience, travels and education, is valued as null and void.

Soon after, I noticed that another soul sister had posted to her Facebook feed a blogpost from feminist.com that addressed this same topic.  Apparently, our collective consciousness had been pierced.  This piece’s angle was that, when we as women play “hard to get,” we are sending mixed signals - of “no” means “yes” – that unfortunately only serve to subliminally reinforce rape culture.  In further reflection, I realized that it is time for this gravely mistaken notion of ‘woman as object to bee hunted and then paraded as trophy’ to bee laid to rest and transformed into a life-affirming story in which fertility – of body, mind, heart, soul and spirit - is heralded as the standard of feminine beauty; a full return to our natural Nubian state.

However, the responsibility for this shift lay not on the shoulders of our men but, rather, in the cellular re-patterning of us women.  It is up to us to transmute all that has come before into a peaceful, harmonious whole by listening to our hearts, unlearning all of the cultural conditioning that coaxes us into believing that who we are – with our graying hair, cellulite thighs, protruding bellies, sagging breasts, voluptuous curves and wrinkling skin – is anything less than perfection.  It is up to us to re-claim our power and to demonstrate with our actions that beeyond this mere flesh and bones are vibrant Souls capable of giving birth to new life, new languages, new forms, new structures – a new way of beeing in a sweet and loving world. 

It is up to us, women, to grab hands as sisters – no longer pithy competitors scratching for the scraps of a poor, economic worth based on our exterior – and to declare that all of the clothes and the shoes, the jewels and the mansions, the attention and the money, are merely empty shells without a just and sustainable present that takes into account the future of the next seven generations on our shared home, planet Earth.  We are the future and the time is now.  Join US!

That's what I want

  
"You have to die to live," says Rumi and Shams, says Osho and the many mystics and great philosophers who have come before.
HAVE YOU DIED YET?
Meaning, have you released and let go of your sense of self, of who your little mind thinks you are?
Shaving my head, stripping my feminine body of this glorious mane of dark, thick curls, was certainly a death that I relived, many times over.  Immediately, the ramifications of my actions were clear for the world simply no longer responded to me as it once did.  From an object to bee desired to a freak, others no longer knew how to react.  And, me?  How did I engage?  How does my lens of life shift when I surrender to the knowing that I am not this body, I am not this mind?  TRY IT ~ you will bee delighted with the results.

Last night, you arrive as the evening we had planned crumbles into the ether.  The discomfort I have been sitting in engulfs me.  My resistance rises, I want to flee, to deny you and pout alone like a little child, isolating herself in her bedroom.  Today, however, I am a wise woman and this adult knows the taste of regret only all too well.  These days, she chooses to move through all of it while leaning in. 

Still, my belly churns as the butterfly swarms.  My appetite gone, my voice silent.  You allow me my space - you press not for more or try to change anything.  Eventually, I come around, showing my discomfort by hiding in your bed, sharing what words I can that try to compassionately communicate where I am.  There is no projection or blame from me and from you I only see, feel, sense and experience a deep compassion and unconditional LOVE.  It is this reflection that melts me, again and again.  Your sweet vulnerability balanced with a rooted masculinity based in fatherhood always gets the best of me. 

I whine that I don't know where my story is or where it is going now.  Your eyes sparkle as you hold my gaze.  This is all a comical, Cosmic dance as you allow me to twirl and spin in my foolishness.  "Bring your Kali," you challenge.  "I want your anger and your violence," your masculine essence begs.  "I don't want that," I cry.  Eventually, my stupor begins to clear and I come to understand that there is this deep well of grief located within me.  I've spent my entire adult life running from it, smoking it away into only the illusion of lightness.  It's simply felt too great a chasm for my courage to cross.  Only, this time, you won't let me back down.  There is no other way - but across.   

You keep your agreement to our boundaries as I relax into my knowing - THIS IS IT!  The TRUE LOVE story I've spent a lifetime dreaming of. 

September 11th

It’s been a dozen years since we were up on that Swiss mountainside and a fellow Village Camps employee walked into our backcountry cabin to share with us that America – New York City, to be exact – had been ‘attacked.’  “What?” our group of international teenagers and adults all exclaimed.  “Why?”  Collectively, we felt confused and frightened.  I had hoped to spend many years abroad but this news, along with the fear mongering that followed it, brought my wandering feet home.  The Austrian couple, whom I had met while backpacking in New Zealand and then spent a few pristine weeks living in the Austrian countryside with, questioned my decision.  “There are family weddings and births to attend to,” I told them, as my familial loyalty always gets the best of me.

Upon touching home, after fourteen months abroad, my feet traversed that city that never sleeps.  Walking city block after cement block, below towering skyscrapers, my aunt and myself were determined to see the devastation up close.  I needed to draw my own conclusions and gain my own clarity.  However, there was little left to view at the World Trade Center – only a wooden fence surrounding its deep scar with a rectangular hole cutout for eye-balling its harrowing remains.  I felt no clearer - only more confusion as I strolled past street vendor after street vendor, hawking 9/11 memorabilia.  Trauma made consumption; tragedy turned commodity.  None of it seemed right.

I returned to California to ring in the passing of another Gregorian calendar with my immediate family, as we snowboarded and skied, rested and partied, in Lake Tahoe.  As I had intuited, my brother and his new girlfriend had just announced that she was pregnant with my parent’s first grandchild.  Life goes on, it always does.  Soon, I was whisked away to my next gig – working at Astrocamp in the mountains just above Palm Springs where I spent the year living communally with a group of twenty-plus, like-minded peers. 
 
Life in Idyllwild was ideal.  I climbed rocks and mountains, grew intimately acquainted with a southern California night sky, taught young people that “all that matters in this life are the stories you create” because “the Universe is made up of stories,” danced my ass off during our regular theme-parties and was introduced to the magic prose of Rumi by the now well-known, non-duality philosopher and you tube mystic, Ben Smythe.  Yet, something was missing – perhaps, it was the diverse culture that only a city represents or, maybe, it was the graduate school degree that I was hell-bent on achieving.  Whatever it was, I again returned home – only this time to San Diego.


Aware that I was emotionally stunted, I committed myself to the mirror that only intimate relationships offer, as I bobbed and weaved from job to job, house to house and neighborhood to neighborhood.  Two long-term, live-in relationships later and I felt disheartened by what I had found.  The reflections that came back were moody and judgmental, finger pointing and blaming, shaming and guilt-ridden, escapist and afraid.  Although I understood all of this behavior to be past, current and/or inverse images of me and I recognized that the only way out of these shadow-sides of myself was through them, this wisdom certainly didn’t - and doesn’t - make for an easy ride.   

However, I began to cultivate respite, as well as a fuller sense of on-going contentment, when I remembered how to listen to my heart.  This body beats for dance; this Soul breathes for music; this Spirit thrives for community.  Still, it took years for me to un-learn the heavy conditioning of my mind; a nefarious voice that easily tricks me into believing that I don’t need any of it - not the hugs or the inquiries into my well-beeing, not the shaking my shit out and the letting go, not the feeding my human desire to bee heard and seen - and that, instead, a television and a house filled with gadgets and technology could easily fill my needs.  “As If….”


Over the course of all this time, I have continually entertained notions that I would leave San Diego – that there is something better somewhere else.  And, every time, I simply come back to the old adage that “no matter where you go, there you are.”  So, instead, even as my local actions have consistently expanded and contracted, I have chosen to dig my feet in and root deeper.  

Twelve years after the fall of the Twin Towers and I wouldn’t say that I am any clearer or wiser or closer to the truth about this life and the nature of evolution.  However, what I have experienced has been an awakening of sorts – an unfolding of my own personal mythology in which all is connected to everything else and what happens to this planet, as well as to all other living creatures on its surface, happens to me.  My commitment to my family remains, only now my family is no longer only those with whom I merely share immediate blood relations.  My family is the air I breathe, the water I drink, the birds that soar, the fish that swim, the serpents that glide and the food I eat.  My family is you and my Soul is free.  For all this I would die willingly. 

no time, only space

The day is better when it beegins with you.
Instead, I pull myself from bed and lumber through
a morning of lost rhythm.  It's an unusual place with
no chickens to feed and without any birds singing.  Rather, the steady
buzz of a busy freeway beckons.  Like all good things, it is only
temporary though.  A brief respite before whatever is to come next,
whatever is to come.  
Ransacking the bookshelf, my fingertips scrolling across spines,
my hunger blazing.  Always seeking, I am a bee~ing in perpetual motion.
Finally, last night, I noticed that all the books here speak to me on a
profound level.  Authors that have often been recommended; sages who have touched
my Soul; others that I've either already been flipping through elsewhere or wanting to
sink into.  Oh P, the depth that dances between us is found in the sparkle of our eyes!
It is found in the sparkle of our eyes.
It took me a few weeks, yet I found what I came here for. 
My spiritual teacher hidden amongst the colorful pageantry.
We have yet to meet, and perhaps never will, but Mr. Coelho your work
is a dose of light shot straight into my center. 
Shot straight into my center.
"The Witch of Portobello," you called her, as I voraciously read
about wandering gypsies ~ because the Earth is
our home ~ and how it is only through breaking rhythm that we sink deeper into
who we are and where our paths are to lead. 
WHO WE ARE  & WHERE OUR PATHS LEAD.

"There is no time; there is only space."

MEDICINE WOMAN

I left my snake amulet at the store the other day.
When I returned home later that evening, I recalled immediately where I had left it.
I thought about calling Soulscape the following day to bee sure I would get it back, but then I realized that I can just let it go.  Isn't this how it works, after all?  When you no longer need something, you no longer have it.  So, JUST LET GO.

After typing this, I remembered that my dreams this morning were also peppered with my running about, showing off my rattlesnake bite scar to all who would look at it while proudly proclaiming that it is my organic tattoo from the Universe.  I AM A MEDICINE WOMAN even if my own mother, a nurse of 50+ years, guffaws at this notion. 

Surrounded once again by books and talismans, I browse titles and bookshelves, freely pulling from them when the impetus hits.  In a used book on 'true power,' I flipped it open to the only page where the previous reader had underlined a few passages about how reclaiming one's power means saying "NO."  Another title reads, "If It Hurts, It Isn't LOVE."  (Meaning in the act.)

Here at the Cardiff pad that a sweet soul sister and I have been gifted while its inhabitants are closing out their summer travels, I do the same.  Over this now past weekend, I voraciously consumed Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi.  It is a novel within a novel and the love story of Ella and Aziz, as well as Rumi & Shams.  Aziz's manuscript, Sweet Blasphemy, of which Ella is writing a literary report is the honest telling of how love isn't simply all light.  True love is discovered in the darkness of hell no's (we won't take your money or your injustice) and deep compassion (for all sentient beeings).  It is the exquisite awareness that God doesn't judge. 

Under the hands of Shafak's protagonist, Aziz, a divine tapestry unfolds - Rumi's heart must bee broken wide open in order for a poetic LOVE that lasts, now eight-hundred plus years, to unveil itself.  Yet, breaking open is painful and filled with sorrow and grief.  There is just no other way.  This is paradox at its finest. 

And, I remember how you have been the Shams to my Rumi, in many ways.  Yet, in this lifetime, this LOVE hurts, so I say "No" and let it go.  Still, I always carry you with me, my dearest Vampire.  Yesterday, a cutie spent good time in the store, eyeing me from where he sat with his nose beehind a book.  When he finally approached the register, I inquired as to what he was reading.  He suggested I read Jean Haner's Hidden Symmetry.  I did as I discover there what I have always intuitively known.  Not shockingly, your intuition is validated within its pages as well.  And all I can do is laugh.

Taking Our Power Back

After an evening spent moving through the shit
that is both of ours, a lifetime of collecting and storing crap,
as well as avoiding the messes we've each made,
I wandered out and onto these Encinitas city streets.
What's different this time is that I've surrendered to fully accepting
another who fully accepts me.  Together, we dig in and do the work.

Under a tropical sky, a light mist beegins to fall
as a brillaint rainbow sits perched over head.
The Universe always responds.
It always responds.

My trusted feet carry me home.
Along the way, I reflect on our night together
and how you painted me red with my own menstrual blood.
An initiation rite of a High Priest and Priestess
during the dark of a New Moon.
We are Re~Claiming our Power.

And it isn't about money or fame.
It's not about fitting an ideal or embodying perfection.
In fact, it is quite the opposite as you remind me
when I return to find you bawling your eyes out.

"Show me your body," I say, as you stand whimpering in a towel.
Without pause, you open it.  "You're beeautiful!" I declare, as you collapse into my arms.
"I've never shown anyone my body," you share.  "I always hide, it in guilt and shame."
"You are gorgeous," I reply, caressing your cheek, holding your shoulders, looking deep into your eyes.  "Your weakness, and softness.  Your imperfections and vulnerabilities.  All of you -
absolutely perfect."
 
And we're sick and we're tired of trying so damn hard to fit somebody else's ill-conceived molds.
We're exhausted and spent from chasing after ideals 
that just aren't human.
We're done.

We're broke and we're broken
and we're okay with that.

We have taken our power back.

Pulling a Flat-Liner

___________________________________________________________________________________


I was bound to let this space fall away
into a virtual, life-less landscape,
that of a dull and somber world wide web.

"Let it all die," was my thinking,
"so that life may bee reborn anew."

My heart beat slowed, my mind reeling.
What is this unconscious story that I keep playing out? 
Near to flat lining, my Spirit wilted, my Soul sinking,
I begged the Universe for HELP.

Knees in the grass, forehead to Earth, I pleaded,
"Please, Dear God."

Then, that wise, quiet voice from the dark pits of my psyche emerged.
"Beelieve," it demanded.
                       "TRUST," I heard.
_____________________SURRENDER.----------------

So, we meet up as you blast right on through one of my tightly-held onto, fabricated lies.
"You are wanted," you say.  I look away and blink back decades of tears.
Was this what that man meant, during last year's Blue Moon, when he advised me to go back, into my mother's womb, in order to rewrite the erroneous tale I internalized then?

"I AM WANTED.
(I AM NEEDED.)"

Slowly, that flat line begins to rise _____________--------------------------------
just like that almighty Phoenix.

Surrendering into the sweet embrace of Love,
I open wider, my petals unfolding, soft and nourishing.
My compassion expands beeyond
even that which I once beelieved I was capable of.
Love does this to us.
In the process, I strengthen my boundaries and clarify my, "NO's."
If it's not LOVE then I don't want it.

And I am confident in my abilities because the mirror image that is most intimately reflected is profound. 
It's deep and nurturing; it is accepting and unconditional.

In the end, "THIS"
(meaning: my Body, Heart, Mind, Soul & Spirit)
"IS ALL I HAVE."

It's the greatest achievement of my entire life. 

"AND I AM POWER~FULL."