Adventures In Life

The Quest for Authenticity

2011-12-19T19:14:00.007-06:00

Black/White Heart 2011

One day several years ago, I opened a door and said to the Universe, “Hey, I’m ready to find whatever it is I’m seeking. I know it’s there, just show me how…” That simple request started my life in a new direction that has become an amazingly rich adventure. Once I made that commitment, everything that might have kept me from moving my life forward came up and was in my face; and yet everything I needed to support me on my path also arose… teachers, friends, healers, opportunities, etc.

I’ve learned that this is how it works: once we make the commitment to “seek,” everything that is in our way comes forth for clearing so we can move beyond it. And, everything we need to support us on the journey also comes forth. There’s no turning back; we have no choice but to keep going. Well, that’s not exactly true. We always have choice. The thing is, if we stop, it’s like standing in the middle of the fires of change. And if we go back, we return to a life of self-denial and lies, only they feel bigger now because we know what we want. And that truth continues to eat away at us. In the silent spaces of our minds, we cry out and die a little bit more each day, not knowing how to get from where we are to where we want to go. All our energy gets used up in denying the truth as we do our best to pretend we’re happy, which isn’t a complete lie yet it’s also not the whole truth. For if it were, we wouldn’t be seeking in the first place.

We open that door because there’s a part of us that knows the truth. There’s a part of us that wants so desperately to remember who we are. There’s a call inside our hearts that says, “Hey, wake up! Remember!” We open that door – we make that commitment – because there’s a part of us that does remember, and the rest of us seeks the beauty, power and peace that is held in that part. We recognize that there’s more to our selves and our lives than we’ve been aware of, told or shown. And so we become seekers of the truth, like archeologists exploring the hidden world and history of our inner being, so we can gain a clearer understanding of the material remains in our outer lives.

As we align ourselves, our intention and our energy with this path, things begin to move and shift. We arrive at new levels of awareness, and dormant parts of ourselves begin to stir and awaken. It’s like taking a flashlight to the dark corners of a room we’ve lived in for years, but never fully explored. Suddenly, the light shines on things we had no idea were there, and we see them for the first time, and everything we thought we knew about that room and our life in it changes.

This is where the magic begins! Once we have a more clear perspective on our place in the world, we can navigate beyond the obstacles that keep us bound. We can dismantle the parts of our lives that aren't serving us and bring in new parts that do. And we can reclaim our personal power to inspire and fuel our future vision. I call this the spiritual quest for authenticity.
As the Fall season comes to a close, I realize that I have made this quest. The emptiness and disillusionment I felt years ago in my life as I began my quest have long since vanished. I have stepped firmly into my authenticity and I express my truth in the world as best as I can every day.

The approaching Winter Solstice marks our movement out of the longest, coldest and darkest nights of the year and into growing days. This seasonal shift is not only about the returning of the daylight but it is also about reconnecting with our own inner light - our essence. This year as I enjoy the colorful Christmas lights all around me, I celebrate that I am doing my best to express my own bright light - my authenticity - in the world. Living from my authenticity is a gift that I cherish and don't take lightly. It's a "Merry Christmas to me!"

May your own bright light shine out into the world, a gift for all to receive.

[Adapted from the book The Six Sacred Gifts: A little book of wisdom for fellow seekers, which will be released in March 2012 as a part of Spirit Paths™: The Quest for Authenticity, a 6-month Circle I am co-facilitating with Gerry Starnes. This Circle is designed to support seekers along their spiritual journey and into a new place of authentic being in the world. It is an intensive and experiential journey of contemporary shamanic wisdom for living authentically. For more details, go to http://www.shamanicpassages.com/SpiritPaths/.]

A Shaman's Death

2011-11-22T11:30:00.000-06:00

This year, I have the pleasure of "dying" twice: once last weekend as an ending to a shamanic intensive I've been involved with for most of 2011, and the other in December with a year-long circle I've been holding since January - my AWAKEN Circle.

I had no agenda for last weekend's death, other than to be shown whatever was for me to see. The experience was quite surreal on several fronts. What I will share is that for the first time in my "dying" experiences, I was actually buried in the damp soil of the Earth - head to toe, all but my shrouded face covered over with dirt. It was a strangely wonderful experience.

I loved digging my own grave; it was a tremendously sacred act. And I loved having someone so special to me cover me over with dirt; it was also a sacred act. The feeling of it cannot be put to words. I wished I would have the same pleasure upon my actual death...

I was buried between two huge old oak trees for some period of time. I could hear the wind blowing through the leaves above me as I laid in the dirt, dead. I could also hear flies checking me out, and the whisper of birds flying past and chirping their songs around me, creating moments of total peace and serenity. In contrast, every so often a battery of intense gunfire rang out nearby...as if taunting me with the reality of my death.

The soil was moist and rich and dark in color. I imagined while digging my grave that I would get damp and cold in there. But what happened was that I felt cozy and warm instead, completely held by the love of the Earth. Twice while buried, a wave of a damp coldness passed through me to the bone, but they were only waves, lasting only for what felt like moments...and then the warmth returned.

At some point my awareness shifted into what I can only describe as a pureness of being. My senses heightened - specifically vibratory sensations. Everything became as a vibration - a wave of energy moving through my body as I laid in the dirt. There was no thought; only presence and vibration. My body opened until I felt fully expanded into all things... as one vibration of being...a vibration of Love in its purest form.

This was a different experience from my past deaths in which I felt an acute letting go of the physical - a sort of separation of my energy body from my physical one and from all things physical. Not so this time. This time, I felt a merging with - an expansion into - all things physical or vibratory. I had an acute sense of connectedness with rather than separation from the physical, even in death. It was beautiful.

I do not hold anything around the meaning of this experience; I only cherish how it felt. At some point, I arose from the dirt as if on cue from some higher source of wisdom - fully alive, fully awake, fully vibratory, having dropped into an even deeper connection with something beyond the physical. Life and death, death and life: two sides of the same face. I am both of them; both of them are me.

And so this journey continues: Adventures in Love - my personal exploration into the power of the vibration of Love.

The Clock Stopped!!

2011-11-19T13:42:00.001-06:00

Wow - I just realized that my A Year To Love countdown clock STOPPED!! My year-long commitment to writing A Year To Love ended on November 3rd without even a hiccup from me. Over two weeks have passed since my deadline slipped by. As I revisit the blog I posted on Nov. 1st, I see that the energy shifted...

I have completed my A Year To Love adventure and am still harvesting it's fruits. I know not what the next incarnation of this blog will be, if there is one. Much has shifted in my Being since beginning this journey last year. I have loved this heart-focused adventure! I will muse more about its lessons later...

Today I head off to die a Shaman's death somewhere in the dirt outside of Austin. I will use this death as a transition from what was - what has been, to what will be - what is yet to manifest.

I have no idea. Perhaps Death will reveal ...

Balancing Fullness & Spaciousness

2011-11-18T12:13:00.001-06:00

We have rounded the corner into full-on Fall. Our days continue to shorten as the nights grow. We've put our Halloween costumes and decorations away. The weather continues to cool as the fiery Sun softens its touch upon the Earth. We're stacking up the firewood and getting our pants, jackets and blankets out. We are moving into the home stretch toward Winter Solstice.

November bends its energy to Thanksgiving as a signpost of what our year's harvest has been. I've heard talk of how this year feels a bit lean compared to years past. Yet we each have something to celebrate, whether the movement has been framed by having more or less of something in our lives. Neither is better or worse; both frames hold whatever is aligned to the highest good, regardless of how we might define it with our minds.

Flow works in both directions. Sometimes the flow is in and sometimes it is out, just as with each breath - Prana and Apana - filling and emptying. Filling up brings fullness from what's been; emptying out brings spaciousness for what's next. However the flow has moved through your life, recognize that it is a gift. Fullness and spaciousness are on equal terms when it comes to the energies of life; they both serve. You must experience each to know the other; you must empty out the old to make space for filling up with the new...

This year, throw away your mental measuring stick and take the opportunity to celebrate and honor all that life offered you. This year, hold gratitude in equal measure for what left as well as for what came or may come into your life. Recognize that true abundance is in the way you experience life with your heart, not in how you measure it with your head.

May your Thanksgiving celebration be one filled with gratitude for all of life's wondrous opportunities of filling and emptying.

Falling Into Fall

2011-11-01T19:58:00.001-05:00

I woke up this morning to a chilly 40-something degrees! Winter has begun to tease us this week in Texas, with cold nights and cool days. The night time sky holds that crisp, clear, extra-vibrant quality that is Fall's blessing; the Moon and Stars seem to shine extra brightly this time of year. We are nearly halfway to our Winter Solstice or Yule, when the light of day begins to grow again following the longer periods of darkness brought by Fall. Yule signals the transition from longer nights to longer days, but we can't celebrate the growing light just yet! For we are still easing our way deep into the darkest part of the Fall season.

This is the time of year to complete the last of your Summer harvesting, drawing in and tidying up anything left undone. This period of Mid-Fall opens a gateway to the cycle of endings or death, yet this is not to be feared. Rather, death creates the space for new crops to be planted and new life to emerge. This is the death of Summer, yet it brings life to Fall, a time of reflection, gratitude and a deepening into the Self.

Many traditions believe that there is a thinning of the veils between the realms of reality from October 30th to November 2nd, allowing us to connect with the dead more easily. As we make our way past Halloween, traditionally known as Samhain, we take time to honor the passing of all things, including our Summer crops. They have been harvested and what remains is mulched back into the soils to nourish them for a future harvest. We can use this energetic metaphor to clear, transform and nourish our inner Being during this transitional time.

Samhain was turned into All Saint's Day by the Roman Catholic leaders, yet it is based in ancient traditions that are about honoring our ancestral lineage and remembering our place in the progression of life. It brings an opportunity to honor many things: the birth-life-death cycle of all things; the death of our crops that provide our bounty and that provide the nourishment for next year's crops; our ancestors and beloveds who have died, whose wisdom we carry forward; and the births and deaths that we experience every day as we make our way through life. It is a time of deep, internal reflection on the past year, and a time to honor the part of our Humanity that is inescapable: Death.

The costuming and mask-wearing of our modern-day Halloween began as a way of warding off or tricking away The Angel of Death as It passed over our homes during the thinning of the veils. "Trick or Treat?" was a question to the Angel of Death: "Must I do a trick or give a treat to avoid your cold touch?" Samhain offers an opportunity to recognize that The Angel of Death is a gift-giver of transformation, hope and new life. The spaciousness created by her touch allows us to stay present, to honor all we experience in our lives, and to clean out the parts of us that have run their course so we can move forward into even greater places of Being. Without the spaciousness that "death" brings, we might crumble under the heaviness of all the old baggage we tend to collect and carry.

Each year for Samhain I create a Dia de los Muertos altar at my home to honor my ancestors and beloveds who have died. This is an ancient tradition out of Mexico (and across cultures) that culminates in beautiful celebrations and ceremonies between November 1st and 2nd. In the Mexican tradition, items are placed on home altars and grave sites to entice the dead to visit during the thinning of the veils. Favorite foods and beverages are cooked, offered and consumed; specific flowers and candles are used along with incense; stories, dancing and special prayers are shared; there is laughter and tears... It is a two-day, all-out celebration of their beloved dead. And it is a beautiful way to honor all that their beloveds brought into the world.

I look forward to creating my Dia de los Muertos altar each year and have had some powerful healing experiences with it. This year I added my beloved dog Maia to my altar. Her bowl, collar, bandanna and favorite treat - a dried pig snout - are on the altar, along with a picture of her looking fully content on her bed, snuggled up with two new toys. Each time I pass the altar, I feel held, loved and connected to all things in a deeper, more intimate way, and my heart is filled with gratitude for all of my ancestors and beloveds. This ritual provides a rich and personal experience for Samhain that anchors me to the birth-life-death cycle of all things in a more intimate way.

Come Thanksgiving, we take time with family and friends to celebrate and share our Fall harvest by more fully enjoying the bounty of our crops. Many people begin their holiday gift shopping soon. Gift wrapping in preparation for Yule is another way of "wrapping up" Fall's loose ends with boxes and bows, and acknowledging our bounty. This is the time of year to recognize that there is enough abundance for everyone to enjoy through the shortest, darkest and coldest days of Fall.

As the seasonal wheel continues to turn and the days continue to shorten into a cold darkness, we descend even more deeply into our psyches. We can use this time to contemplate our journey and drop more fully into our Beings to rest, refill and prepare for the returning of the light. This inward turning is a necessary part of our forward movement. Aligning ourselves with the natural rhythm of Fall allows us to rest and prepare for the heightened activity that Winter Solstice heralds as Spring approaches and the light of day begins to grow again. Once we cross Winter Solstice in late December, we begin gearing ourselves up for a worthy Spring planting. Without the period of harvesting and honoring what was, as well as the restful contemplation that late Fall offers, we might feel unprepared for this important planting season.

Make time between now and Yule (December 22nd) to acknowledge the road you have traveled this year, paved by all those who walked it before you, and cleared even more by your own footsteps for all those who will walk it after you. Bring presence to the now while holding your past and future with respect and curiosity. Honor the balance of the dark and the light, of life and death, recognizing that they are but two necessary sides of the same face. Descend out of the busyness of Summer and into the depths of Fall to enjoy your harvest with gratitude and love in your heart.

Today, I celebrate the legacy and lineage that went before me; I honor my current place in the line; and I make time to deepen into what my next steps might be so that come Spring, I am ready to dig into restored soils and plant new seeds for the future. What a ride :)

A Bucket Full of Hope

2011-10-25T14:59:00.000-05:00

I spent the last weekend volunteering at a local hospice event for adults who had lost a beloved - a parent, a spouse, a child or grandchild, a sibling... This was the parent camp. Some of their children were at a nearby location having the kids camp. Two camps, one common purpose, and lots and lots of healing.

What touched me most deeply was watching the transformation of these adults from closed, sad, pained strangers to open, laughing, relaxed friends who were willing to give life another chance. Yes, they had all experienced heart-breaking loss in their lives, yet here they were - courageously allowing themselves to share, connect and grieve together - some of them for the first time.

My role was to help them settle in and put their bags down (yes, they stayed the night in bunk rooms), to offer support to anyone who wanted it, to hold space for them as they moved through their activities, and to share with them during the meetings.

There are so many unanswered questions to this journey, and so many unresolved feelings that arise for those walking it. The hardest parts were the "What if..." and "If I had only..." and "If I just hadn't...." things that arose. Such regrets create deep pain in the Human heart, and yet, we can never know how or when death will happen; we only know that for all of us, it will.

I watched these beautiful parents reach out to each other in understanding and compassion. I saw them openly witness each others anguish. I cried as they held each other through their distress. And I laughed as they hugged each other goodbye with gratitude and love.

There are no words for what I felt when I left them on Sunday. I believe that this was one of the most touching life experiences I've ever had. I can't wait for next year's camp!

[My deepest gratitude to Hope Hospice, a non-profit organization based in New Braunfels, TX, for the opportunity to be a part of such a beautiful and loving experience: 1-800-499-7501. For more information and support through loss and grief, contact your local hospice services, or check out my "Ask Dr. Z" article series on how to support yourself and children through a death by clicking here.]

Navigating Changing Times

2011-10-19T15:10:00.001-05:00

I hear so many people say - and I've said it myself - how quickly time moves today. We can hardly grasp that the end of 2011 is just around the corner, or that night has shifted back into light, marking another day's passing. It's not death we fear, if we fear anything at all. It's the feeling of free-falling into the dawning of a new age of Humanity - one of true peace, consciousness and Oneness - that feels unsettling at times.

It seems these days that all around me, people I know and love are experiencing big changes in their lives...including me. We are people who have spent years - if not decades - creating sacred ways to be of service to the Highest Source within ourselves and others. We are warriors of the Divine, of Spirit, of Love and Peace, of the Human heart. We imagine and believe in the creative beauty these things hold and so we set our intent on finding ways to support their expression in our world.

These days, I actively and consciously work at the spiritual principle of non-attachment. I believe that it is our attachment to things - to outcomes, ideas, identities, stories, being right, etc. - that causes our suffering. Why? Because things are constantly changing; that is their nature. Change is all of our nature because the whole of the Universe is made of energy, and energy is not static; it is dynamic by nature.

What this means is that when we attach to something - when we want or expect it to stay the same or to be a certain way - we set ourselves up for disappointment and perhaps suffering because it will ultimately change. Change is constant, whether we choose to see it as such or not. We change with each breath, and on a cellular level, we change in each moment. Change might take a millisecond or a century, but everything always changes.

How do we navigate these changing times? How do we keep up with what's happening in our lives and in our world, especially when they seem to be happening faster? The answer as I see it is really very simple, requiring only a shift in perception and awareness:

Recognize that there is no separation: this is what we know. It has taken some brilliant quantum physicists to prove this today, yet they are proving it. We are all energy, and ultimately, energy has no separation, no definition, no borders or boundaries. It is one entity, one Being, one movement to a sacred rhythm, one expression of the creative force of "life" within the endless space of existence.

When we look into the eyes of another, we see ourselves. When we gaze upon the vastness of the ocean, we gaze upon the vastness within ourselves. When we rest into the soils of the Earth, we rest into the soils of our own Being. When we raise our heads to peer into the brilliance of the Sun, Moon, Stars and sky, we peer into the brilliance of ourselves. When we scale the heights of the grandest mountains and delve into the darkness of the deepest caverns, we scale and delve into the heights and depths within ourselves. When we stand in awe of the powers of nature, we stand in awe of the powers within our own Being. When we search the whole of the Universe, we search the whole of ourselves.

As you move through your life, interacting with all that it holds, know that the whole of what you encounter is you. When you recognize yourself as the whole of the Universe and the whole of the Universe as yourself, then choosing how to navigate these rapidly changing times becomes easy: Do it with Non-Attachment, Compassion, Equanimity, Joy and Love because that's what life commands - yours, mine and everything elses.

Let your own heart be your guide - not out of fear, guilt, shame or obligation, but from your deepest knowing of the Oneness of all things. One powerful spiritual teacher taught it most clearly when he said "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That's a mighty powerful guiding principle to live your life by...

You Can't Cheat Death

2011-09-25T12:19:00.002-05:00

Maia's ashes.

When death visits, her touch is swift, unquestionable, unyielding and unavoidable. Even if there's a process to go through before we take our final breaths, there is no escaping the power of death's ultimate touch. One touch - however gentle, however harsh - and death happens...

The body goes cold and lifeless when its soul leaves. Stephen Levine describes death as "the shaking loose of the body." It's the mysterious soul that animates the body, gives it life and vibrancy. Without the soul, the body is as an empty vase from which all the flowers have been plucked and the water poured out.

But it's not necessarily death itself that is unsettling or even disturbing. It's all the fallout that comes after death. And I'm clear that aside from my emotional state of grief around losing my beloved companion Maia, my mind is the instigator of any suffering over it that I'm experiencing.

I hit the wall of anger yesterday. After feeling fairly numb for two weeks, yesterday I got mad. I awoke from an early morning dream about Maia. She'd been resurrected from death by a dear friend who brought her to me with joy in his heart. Maia came trotting over to me, bright-eyed and tail-wagging.

I was stunned! I squatted down to hug and love on her, happy to feel her touch again yet deeply aware that something was wrong: This is wrong; she's not supposed to be here. I'll have to go through all of this again; I don't want to go through this again! There was an interesting mix of emotions at her return: I was so happy to see her yet so confused by it too; it wasn't meant to be and some part of me knew that.

In the dream, it was moments before Maia coughed a couple of times (just as she'd done in this reality), took her few last breaths and died...again. You can't cheat death.

Now I have to do this all over again! The thought of restarting my grief was annoying and made me mad. The anger I felt was not at my dear friend for resurrecting my beloved dog; it was at myself for all the things I felt guilty for in relation to my dog: for forgetting to salt her food that morning; for thinking I should wait a few hours to give her a treat with salt on it instead of giving it to her immediately; for banning her from my home office space as I worked all day; for the way she laid herself against the outside of my office door, waiting sweetly, silently, patiently for me to come out; for not doing more research on her condition and how we were handling it; for not letting her eat whatever she wanted; for being gone with busyness so much of the time and leaving her behind at home... These things tear at my heart now.

And I know I cannot change them. To suffer over them is pointless, really, in the biggest sense of things. And yet I suffer; I'm not yet able to hold all of my human experiences within the biggest container possible. I'm allowing myself that; it's part of my growing and grieving process - the untangling of all my human emotions around our relationship and her death: Could I have done more? Should I have done more? Why didn't I (fill in the blank)? I wish I hadn't (fill in the blank)...

If I could rewind our time together, what would I do differently? I ask myself this question over and over again, and yet the answer is always the same: Nothing. It wouldn't matter; you can't cheat death.

If I could bring my beloved back, would I? I ask myself this question, too, and the answer is always the same: No, I wouldn't; you can't cheat death.

At some point in our relationships, we say goodbye. This is inevitable. Death touches all things ultimately. Bringing back the dead doesn't change death; it just delays it. You can't cheat death. Death happens how and when it happens because it does. We can't change it, avoid it or control it. We can't even really completely understand it but we don't have to. All we need to know is that death happens.

And as we hold this reality close in our hearts, life deepens into something more precious than anything else. Love takes the lead. We open... and in our opening, death becomes our ally rather than our enemy. How? How is death our ally? Death (of something) is the only way to clear space for what's next. Without death, our lives and our Beings would be bursting open with old stuff that is no longer serving us to the fullest. And that's what I believe we all grow toward: our fullest be-ing. This is the greatest expression of the divine moving through us that we can offer: our fullest be-ing, which to me means living from a deep sense of love...

Death brings the ultimate transformation. Ultimately, it is the gateway to return to pure essence. Not every single death we experience (death of people, pets, ideas, dreams, thoughts, etc.) offers a return to our pure essence; I believe this is reserved for our physical death. But every death offers us the opportunity to take a tiny step toward connecting even more deeply with our pure essence... the vibration of Love.

We can fear death, hate death or love death but ultimately, we have death. Can I embrace even death with love in my heart? I'm still learning that yes I can, but I must honor my humanity and allow myself to grieve the letting go of my beloveds, too. It's a fine balance between being Human and being an expression of the Divine. By honoring my very human feelings - my grief - I clear the way for love to re-enter my wounded heart and refill it with light. The other option is to close, which doesn't appeal to me. In opening, I step even closer to what I believe is all of our divine essence - that of pure love.

So I grieve, and heal, and grow, and open in the face of death, which is ultimately all about love...

Sacred Spaciousness

2011-09-20T18:52:00.000-05:00

It's been a week since my sweet dog Maia died. I'm doing my best to carry on in her absence. There is a noticeable void in my world without her, an emptiness that can't be filled with just anything. The spaciousness that her death created feels sacred to me, like a holding tank of all the love and memories we shared. I don't want to fill it with anything else right now; I just want to feel the beauty of it.

I'm aware that her sudden death was just another one of her loving gifts to me. It's as if she said "It's time for me to go. It is not my intent or my purpose to burden you with slowly declining health, incontinence or neediness. It was my job to support you through some rough times, help you heal your heart and get you to the place where you could shine again. I've done that; my job with you is complete. And so I can go now so that you can go now too. My presence in your life was not about draining your energy; it was about helping you shine. So shine on..."

I sometimes wonder about some of the things she heard me talking about: "We can get her some doggy diapers and I can just take them off when she goes outside. It'll just mean that I won't sleep as much and she'll take more of my time and energy. I'll check on what other things we can do to deal with it. I'll feed her the vegetarian food she likes and give her the more expensive meat in between meals for a snack so it won't cost as much. She loves that meat! I'll make time to walk her every day. No, I don't want another dog; I love Maia but she has pushed me to my limits; I'm full-up..."

Sometimes I feel bad about these things. Did she take them to heart? Did she knowingly and lovingly spare me all the added stress by dying so suddenly? Was she ready to go or was she serving me yet again through even her death? I wonder...

I may never know for certain, yet I do feel that her death was a necessary part of what's next in my life. It's as if I couldn't take my next step forward and deal with her in the ways I wanted to. It would have created too much stress for us both. Wherever my life path is taking me, she couldn't go with me; that much feels clear.

I miss her every day and every night. I know the missing will soften, yet it's with me strongly now. I hear her noises all the time; I feel her presence. I mistakenly believe - just for a second - that she'll be in all her usual spots at the house as I move about it. I yearn for the touch of her soft fur and cold nose, and the way she pawed at me for attention. Oh what I'd give to feel that paw brushing against my leg now!

I miss looking into her eyes. It sounds like a lover, I know, but it's true! Her eyes were incredibly expressive with a depth and a sweetness to them that held sensitivity, compassion and raging love. They were forgiving, accepting, willing and allowing... What an incredible teacher she was; everything I strive to be as a person in this world was held and reflected in her eyes. She was a gift and a teacher. And I am truly blessed to have held such a gift and known such a teacher.

I've realized that she is the first death to me that was such an intimate part of my life. My grief around her death is more profound than it has been for other beloveds in my life who have died. But I've learned that my reaction to death has little to do with how long I've known someone or even how much I've loved them; it has to do with the nature of my relationship to them. The nature of my relationship to my dog Maia was deep, honest and unconditional. She was a big part of my daily life, and held a large part of my attention and energy. The void left in her absence is unmistakable. She is the first death I've experienced of this nature. I guess I can consider myself fortunate for that...

As I make my way through my grief at her death, I find myself feeling quiet, emotional, vulnerable and maybe even a bit empty outside of my typical busyness. I enjoy what I do but I enjoy the quiet of night even more now than before, so I can sit in the spaciousness of her love and memories, and honor the amazing beauty of the gift and the teacher she was to me, the extent of which are just barely beginning to sink in...

May my life become a more clear reflection of all the beauty she brought into it.

The Sacredness of Each Breath

2011-09-11T14:17:00.000-05:00

I had more than a year to love; I had almost 10. I knew one day I would say "Goodbye" to my sweet companion; I just didn't know it would be today. But then, we often don't have the privilege of knowing when we're having our last moments with our loved ones.

My dog Maia died suddenly about an hour and a half ago. I heard her coughing on her bed, went immediately to her side and knew she was dying. Helplessness. I could do nothing but talk to her and hold her in love while she took her last breaths.

I wonder when she knew she was dying? I wonder if she knew I was there, and if she wondered why I didn't make it better like I usually can. I wonder if she slipped easily and freely into expansiveness, despite the panic and tears in my voice: "Maia? Maia? What's happening? What's happening... Oh Maia, it's ok Baby, it's ok..." I wonder if she was just as surprised as I was, or if she was ready.

Can we ever be ready for Death?

This morning my Sweetie and I took Maia for a walk with our friend and her two Great Danes, Maia's best buddies. They had fun and I even commented on how good she looked, running about with her eyes bright, ears perked and tail high - sure signs of happiness. She looked good and felt stable and healthy.

What happened? My mind churns over this pointless question, wanting to know an answer. Blood clot; I bet she threw a blood clot. But it doesn't matter what it was. The real dilemma is grasping the notion that something can go from such joyful vibrancy to death in a matter of hours or even seconds. One minute, she's resting comfortably on her bed; the next minute, she's gasping for breath... and in a matter of seconds, cold, lifeless, empty, vacant, dead...

At least she was comfortable and content when she died. At least I was with her. At least she didn't suffer... I try to comfort myself with these thoughts, but they don't really matter. My heart is still heavy. Lady Death leaves a hole in the heart no matter how graciously She passes.

Ironically, in two days I'm hosting a Circle Call about dealing with the body after we die. And I just spent over an hour trying to get my dog's body dealt with on a Sunday when no one wants to deal. We finally connected with a vet who has a heart and agreed to meet us at his clinic to freeze the body for pick up and cremation next week. What an Angel. After many calls to unyielding souls, this man opened his heart to humanity and took responsibility... and I don't even use his clinic! This man gave me a sense of hope for humanity; thank God for such Beings...

So here I sit, heavy-hearted, shocked, grief-stricken and empty. I'm grateful to my Sweetie and our dear friend Christine who came immediately at our call, and is helping deal with the body as well as my heart.

Ironically, today is the 10th anniversary of 9-11. We were having friends over to honor what we'd carried forward from the 9-11 experience 10 years ago, to share loving community in its shadow and to recognize that each moment is truly precious and fragile, no matter how stable it may feel.

Today, I deepen into a new level of gratitude for life... all life, and the love that flows through it every day. May we hold this precious gift in grace, recognizing that each breath is truly sacred.

My Sister Milissa

2011-08-27T16:19:00.000-05:00

A week ago I learned that one of my sisters died - not one of the five that I grew up with, but a spiritual sister that I've gotten to share some deeply authentic moments with. She was only in her mid-30s, and although struggling with a specific health issue, the news was a saddening surprise.

I picture her smiling face in my mind. Her courage and steadiness were enviable, and through her struggles, she always shone brightly around me. Never once did she complain about her pain or discomfort in my presence; nor did she act a victim to it. She simply showed up as fully as she could wherever she went - no stories, no drama, no manipulation or games; she simply showed up.

Thank you Milissa, for your courage, authenticity and beautiful spirit. May you fly as high as high is.

A Renewal of spirit

2011-08-16T15:21:00.001-05:00

Light Heart: 2011

This past month I did something I've never done before: I reached out to my community for financial support. I hadn't intended to, but an opportunity arose that I felt compelled to act on. It was one of those opportunities that may only arise once in a lifetime. Rather than risk missing it, I chose - not just to step out of my comfort zone but to step into my vision of community - and ask for help.

To understand how difficult this was for me, I'll share that not too many years ago I nearly killed myself during an illness because I "did not want to bother anyone." I was too dizzy and weak to do anything but crawl on my hands and knees to get to the toilet, and food was out of the question. My head felt as though it might burst with pain and pressure. I was severely dehydrated.

When help showed up at my house one late night out of worry and fear for my welfare a week later, I was so out of my head with fever and illness that I got startled; and out of my fear, I got angry and yelled at them to leave. They did, but came back the next day and took me to a doctor.

After weeks of tests, no one could identify what was wrong with me. Two rounds of antibiotics later, I began to improve so they let me stay home rather than sending me to a hospital. My Mom came to stay with me to help with my recovery, after my sister called and told her that something was wrong because I wasn't making any sense on the phone. It was a very humbling experience and one that I learned a great deal from.

Months later as I returned to myself, I realized how traumatic that experience felt to me; I'd just been too out of my head to notice it. If my friends had not stopped by, I might have died right there in my own home, for no good reason other than my own internal obstacles. I promised myself I would not do anything like that again to myself, and that I would heal whatever it was in me that kept me from asking for help even in such desperate circumstances.

Humble Woman: Paris 2004

And so, here is the result of that healing journey. This month I stepped beyond old stories and wounding, beyond embarrassment and shame, beyond fear and excuses, choosing instead to step into a vision of community that I hold - one that is supportive, loving, intimate and authentic - in which we are all held as family. And it's been absolutely beautiful.

Not only has my community shown up to offer financial support, but they have done so with complete joy and gratitude in their hearts. They hold the vision for my expansion just as brightly as I do. They honor my journey just as deeply as I do. They are as happy as I am about this opportunity. The blessings of joy and fullness on this adventure continue to show up in my email and snail mail boxes. And every one of them is sent with pure love and a "Thank you!" to me for the opportunity to help...

My heart is bursting!! This is the kind of community I want to live in. This is the vision of community that I hold. And through this simple, heartfelt request, I've gotten to feel it and watch it in action. And it is SO humbling and wonderful. It has renewed my spirit in the community of Humankind.

And my friends, this is what it's all about: boundary-free, heart-felt love, love love just because you can...

PS: The request was for blessings and/or financial help for Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training so I can take advantage of a scholarship I was awarded and get officially certified. I think after 12 years of practicing and 4 years of teaching, it's time :) With all the loving support from my community, the rather large investment fairly quickly went from impossible to affordable. Thank You Community from the bottom of my heart!

Mid-Summer Magic

2011-07-25T17:10:00.001-05:00

Summer Sunflowers 2011

It is Mid-Summer of 2011 and for once, I'm taking it easy. I'm still doing the things that must be done, yet I am doing them with more presence, ease and a slower pace overall. I'm taking time to play in the sun and water, to nourish and refill myself.

Summer is the perfect time to shake up your habits and routines as you take time to step out of the ordinary and into the playfulness of the season. Take stock of your Being and make space to nourish yourself to more vibrancy. This is a powerful act of divine service!

Mid-Summer is a great time to notice what areas of your life are asking for more attention. Seasonally, this part of the cycle is for nurturing and nourishing what has already been planted. Now is the time to put energy behind what you are growing in your life, and to make changes to your crop that will bring the richest Fall harvest. Take steps now to reap more later!

One way to do this is by reviewing the five aspects of your Being to check how balanced and vibrant they feel: your body, thoughts, feelings, connection to Divine and your energy. These five aspects make up who you are and impact your interactions with the world. When one area is too weak or too strong, the others must compensate for it, which compromises your overall state of Being. Keeping them singly vibrant and collectively balanced means you experience life with more presence, energy and vitality. Now is the perfect time to take stock and begin making changes to support your fullest Being!

Here is a road map of 10 steps to get you going:

1. Begin by exploring which area of your Being is asking for a bit more nurturing:

Physical - Body, Strength, Health, Wellness
Mental - Thoughts, Words, Self-Talk
Emotional - Heart, Feelings, Mood, Relationships To Self/Others
Spiritual - Sense of Wholeness, Passion, Inspiration, Compassion, Joy
Energetic - Stamina, Vibrancy, Vitality, Life-Force

2. Once you choose an area, write down 5 actions you might take that would serve you more than what you are currently doing in that area. Choose actions that are easy to do, observe and track. Be honest and keep your choices realistic - things that you can do and are willing to do. Pick some that feel easy and at least one that feels like more of a challenge.

3. Then, pick one of the easier actions and commit to doing it. See if you can break it down into smaller steps. If not, it's probably small enough.

4. Pick your starting date and time.

5. Choose how often you will do it each day or week.

6. Decide how you will measure your success. Set your initial goal within easy reach. Then, build on it as you successfully move forward.

7. Begin when your starting date and time arrives. Do your action for a day or a week and track how it goes. Notice what arises that supports you in doing it or stops you from doing it. This is valuable information! Use what you learn to keep moving forward around obstacles rather than giving up. Each bit of information can help you refine your plan so it's doable. Everything you learn is fuel for making changes that will lead to your success. Some of what arises may be a surprise because you are challenging your usual habits and beliefs. Notice these places of discomfort and make a conscious choice to carry on. Open to finding out something new and different by challenging the status quo of your life!

8. If you find that you picked something too challenging at first, scale it down or revisit your list and pick something different. Bring self-compassion to the places where you don't meet your goal and do some problem-solving around them: How might you find a gentle way beyond them? If you try to force yourself to do something you really don't want to do, that you're not ready for, or that's too big or challenging, you will lose motivation fast and wind up giving up, feeling hopeless or like a failure. This will only serve to keep you stuck where you are rather than moving you forward. And the intent of making changes in your life is to move yourself forward. So approach both your successes and challenges with openness, love and compassion. Be your own greatest fan and cheerleader!

9. Watch what your mind tells you about it. Your Inner Judge (and we all have one!) may try to sabotage your initiative. Don't let it! Bring compassion and love to yourself rather than judgement. You will move farther faster with encouragement and support; you may not move at all if you listen to your Inner Judge. Question everything your inner judge spews at you. Most of it will not hold up under rigorous questioning. Trust me when I say that everything your Inner Judge says is a distortion of what's true, if it's not a flat-out lie! (For more information about that, check out don Miguel Ruiz's books: The Voice of Knowledge, The Four Agreements or The Fifth Agreement.) To soften your inner judge and reclaim your personal power, simply say to it, "Possibly, and I'm choosing this anyway..."

10. Celebrate every success you make each day and simply note the places where you were challenged. If you eat 5 cookies rather than 10, celebrate it! If you drink 1 soda instead of 8, celebrate it! If you do 5 minutes of exercise rather than none, celebrate it! For inspiration, keep your eye on your intent and imagine your success! The body doesn't know the difference between what's imagined and what's not, so imagine how it will feel when you succeed! Imagine yourself celebrating! Let your body use that feeling as an anchor for your success.

Red Hot Tulips, Holland 2004

It feels good to achieve a goal and it feels even better to notice the difference it makes in your life. You'll feel stronger, more vibrant and proud of yourself for taking direct action to return to a place of balance and higher integrity within your Being. When you feel more alive, not only do other people notice but so does The Universe, and things begin to change to support you in your new way of being - a way that values you as a unique, divine person. This kind of self love is a gift to yourself worth giving. You can do it, and now is the perfect time to start!

Me and My Ego

2011-07-17T11:31:00.000-05:00

Me and my ego are friends now. We weren't always friends but over the past several years, I've made it my mission to befriend my ego as much as possible. I spend much of my time watching it closely through reflection from others and through my own self-witnessing. For a time, it was a part of me that I resisted and tried to rid myself of, mistakenly believing that I could. In some circles, people speak about the ego as a kind of a Human curse to overcome or even "kill" from the Being. The ego is blamed for some not-so-pleasant aspects of being Human...

Yet, as a Human Being created by a Divine Source, I believe there must be a reason for the ego aspect of who I am. I could make all kinds of guesses as to what those reasons may be, but all that really matters in the end is that I accept it as a part of me. In all my resistance to my ego, I discovered that as long as I'm a Human Being, I'm part ego. If I were not a Human Being, I might not have ego; and certainly once this body dies, I will no longer be bound to the ego that lives within its makeup. But for now, I am an ego-linked Human Being. And so the old saying Keep your friends close and your enemies closer is my guide around my ego these days. Not that it's my enemy, but that it is a difficult part of myself to witness since my humanity is so entangled with it.

I don't enjoy being in servitude to my ego - blindly allowing it to dictate my choices and behaviors. To shift this dynamic, I accept that it is a part of who I am, and as with my other "dark sides," I seek to find its gifts. One of those gifts is its knack for independence and uniqueness. My ego is what separates me from everyone and everything else here. It is the part of me that identifies with "I am" and allows me to honor my individuality as I interact with the world. Granted, the ego's version of "I am" is always attached to something, so it is always "I am this" or "I am that." Eckhart Tolle points out that this is because our egos live in a constant sense of lack that leads them to seek to have or be something all the time. And yet, there is no one on the whole planet exactly like me, and my ego not only knows this, but celebrates it! I am a unique contribution to and expression of the Divine. The question is: Who is this "I am," really?

And herein lies the paradox of being Human: "I am" is a false separation because I believe that at my core, I am pure essence and united with all else. The quantum sciences are showing this to be true - that every part of this life is nothing more than energy at its core. And with that energy comes mass, awareness and consciousness. When we take away our physical aspects and drop down deep into the root of be-ing, we find only energy, mass, awareness and the possibility of consciousness. This means that at the quantum level, we live in a energetic soup without a sense of separation yet with pure awareness and possibly even consciousness. Wow - try and wrap your mind around that one!

Yet for now, with my pure essence housed in this physical, sacred vessel, there is ego present. I can do my best to be aware of my ego; to stop over-identifying with it or allowing it to rule my choices and behaviors; to connect more deeply with my pure essence beyond ego, and to live my life from that place more than from my ego. Yet in the end, until I die and shed this body, I have an intimate relationship with my ego, even if I can't identify exactly what my ego is.

I believe that ego and mind are infinitely linked. Language is what links me to my ego; thoughts are the energy that feeds the ego. With language and thoughts come stories and judgements, desires and resistances, attractions and repulsions... dualities. Dualities are a construct of the mind and its language. The dualistic language and stories that my mind creates generate emotions in my body, and if I believe those stories (if I attach meaning to them), I fall into drama and suffering...That is why some - myself included - often refer to it as "Ego Mind" or "Parasite Mind." Eckhart Tolle calls it "the Pain Body." The constructs, stories and attachments of the ego are a mental part of Human be-ing linked to our suffering.

The "non-ego" part of who I am is the part of me that strives to live beyond the mind with its constructs, stories and attachments and in what some call Unity Consciousness - no separation. Non-ego be-ing is based more in the essence of who I am - my purity of be-ing beyond the mind. It's that divine or loving witness part of my Being that is timeless, changeless, deathless and, according to certain Buddhist traditions, primordially pure.The non-ego part of me is the part that is considered my true nature - the part of me that remains after the body dies. Some people call this our "Original Face." This part of be-ing is not limited by a sense of separation, but instead is connected to the whole of the infinite energetic field out of which it is believed we are all born.

In my forthcoming book about our mystical journeys, I describe it this way: "Energy is the common factor in all things. When we distill life down to its roots, it is all energy and space. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, a Tibetan Bon Buddhist master, explains that 'everything begins with primordial space, the Great Mother from which all things arise, in which all things exist, and into which all things dissolve.' He goes on to say that within this infinite primordial space, energy moves. This energy, also called lung, prana, chi or qui, is pure, boundless and pervasive. No one knows what causes this movement or flow of energy to arise; it simply does. Inseparably bound with this energy is what Rinpoche describes as a 'primordial awareness, pure and without identity.' Energy and awareness exist together, resting neutrally within the infinite space of the Mystery until 'there is movement' and something arises out of the Void - something is born and an energetic pattern emerges."

To unite with this part of my Being or what I call my essential self - the pure essence of who I am - I must detach from my identification with the mind and its antics, and instead, identify with this essential self, even though I cannot completely separate the two while I'm living this Human life. This is my greatest challenge: To reach toward a place of living in non-ego, I must go about the practice of "un-egoing" myself!

Non-ego be-ing has little to do with the mind and everything to do with the heart. Non-ego be-ing is about shifting my awareness away from identification with my thoughts and feelings, and into identification with my pure essence - that primordially pure part of my Being that is my Original Face. How? How do I do this? Well, this is the journey, isn't it? Life is - if we choose it to be - a process of un-egoing ourselves. The task as I've come to see it is not about purging my ego from my Being, but about befriending my ego within my Being. As a friend, the ego informs me of where my work is to move beyond my fears and into a greater sense of wholeness and love. It shows me where the obstacles to identifying with my Original Face are, so I can do practices to overcome them. Each time I find, heal and release one of those obstacles, I get clearer and clearer in my relationship to my Original Face.

Un-egoing myself means that as a friend, my ego becomes my ally rather than my enemy. I undo it's hidden hold of my thoughts, choices and behaviors, and step into a collaborative and supportive relationship with it instead of a power struggle. By undoing it's hold on me, I un-ego myself, giving my personal power back to my essential self rather than mistakenly giving it to my ego. Eventually, I might reach a time when I am living completely in non-ego. That's the dream though I'm not convinced it can be the reality 100% while I am a Human Being.

My latest challenge at un-egoing myself led me once again down the road to don Miguel Ruiz's four agreements, particularly don't make assumptions and don't take things personally. Yes, these old friends of mine resurfaced in a big way! I recently witnessed myself taking things personally from friends, colleagues and my sweetie, so I brought my attention fully to each experience to see what I could discover. And right there in full view I caught my mind taking their statements and making them about me, filling in gaps with assumptions and stories, wanting to be right, and then judging and criticizing myself for what it created. Oh, my ego is a stinky little devil...

Now, it's true that a creative and active mind can easily jump into assumptions about what these folks really meant by what they said - dissecting and adding to the words between the words that were spoken and making inferences about their true meaning about me. And an even slier mind can use spiritual lingo and concepts to prove its point. And still, these are only assumptions, inferences and stories. In the end, it doesn't matter what their meaning was. All that matters is that I am clear about my own dream and how I choose to live it. I have no control over the perceptions, preferences, needs, desires or repulsions of others. I only have choice around how I hold my own and how I respond to theirs.

And so I move steadily onward in my journey to un-ego myself along this endless road to liberation. I've learned to keep a close eye on this sly friend, and to appreciate the ego's company for what it offers me: clarity and endless opportunity to clean my Being even more deeply than before.

Love heals

2011-07-13T11:41:00.000-05:00

I believe that love heals our hearts and that if we can just breathe ourselves open and find the courage to shift the emotional gap within our Being from anger, hurt or fear to love, everything changes. Anger, hurt and fear create closure, separation and suffering. Love offers spaciousness, unity-consciousness and healing.

Marianne Williamson speaks about this shift as "inviting the possibility of a miracle" into a difficult situation. I love this perspective because if we can just open to the possibility of something different and wonderful happening, we've created a gateway - a space - into which Spirit can enter. And when Spirit is invited into a situation, healing happens.

Our hearts are delicate creatures but our Egos are even more sensitive! By "Ego" I mean the part of us that identifies itself with the stories of our lives about who we are. We all have them - stories about who we are based on our experiences - and we believe them. The experiences we have in life turn into stories that become our personal "mental filters" or eye glasses for how we see the world. Through the lens of these filters or glasses, we only see or attend to the things that support the stories we believe about ourselves, and we tend to negate or overlook the things that contradict these stories.

Different spiritual perspectives and teachings say that there are three main filters we generate from the stories of our lives growing up: Victim, Persecutor and Rescuer. Once we find the particular filter that we believe fits us the best, we turn the fodder of our lives into a casting mold for it. You may be able to recognize which one you identify with the most by reviewing the noteworthy events in your life and seeing which filter you were looking through at the time.

Once we identify our main filter we can consciously widen our perceptions and perspective to include information beyond its borders, beyond the boundary of this (filtered) identity lens. This widening of our view is what allows a shift to happen within the scope of our reality because by widening our view, we begin to see things that we hadn't considered before. We begin to question the stories of our minds, and our faith and identity in those stories begin to crumble. As these old identity structures crumble, we create the spaciousness to start anew, from a new point of reference, maybe even one of love if we choose it.

Ultimately we can all identify with each of those filters. The question is: What choices will you make today to change your filter from Victim/Persecutor/Rescuer to Love? Just try it for one day, and see what happens!

The Heart of the Matter

2011-06-23T13:39:00.002-05:00

Warm Heart 2008

Our hearts are so strong and yet so fragile around love.

We can open or close them. We can expose or protect them. We can risk or guard them. Yet most often we forget about them until something happens that either cracks them open or slams them closed. What is it about the heart that is so significant? So magnificent?

The heart is our gateway to our essence - the part of us that is boundless, infinite and unafraid. Through opening the heart fully we find completeness - a sense of purity, wholeness and unity with something much greater than our mentally-constructed selves. Beyond the realm of our projections, beyond the realm of our minds we find... mystery.

I call it "mystery" because we can't define it with our minds. It's a spaciousness that defies what the mind can grasp. It's not based in the past or the future. It rests in the expansiveness of the present moment which is infinite. It is only our minds that define the present moment as "finite time" in a limiting way when beyond our mental projections, there is no time, only presence.

Beyond the mind we find freedom. In the Toltec tradition, they describe the antics of our mind as "dreaming," or a mental projection, a concept or interpretation of our experiences that is not the experiences themselves. Thinking about our experiences is not the same as having them; thinking about them is a reflection of the experience, not the experience itself. Yet all too often we believe that our thoughts about our experiences are the truth when actually, they are only mental reflections of the truth.

Distortion & Reflection 1: Chicago 2008

This is what leads us to an over-identification with our minds. We believe that what the mind tells us is the truth, yet we forget that it is merely a reflection of the truth, which leaves room for personal projection and distortion. When we believe our minds, our thoughts, projections and distortions stimulate all kinds of drama and suffering in our lives, especially around matters of the heart.

Consider that having an emotion is a movement of energy through the body. The mind will enter and label the energy as something specific (e.g., pain, fear, sadness, anger, rage, joy...) and then judge whether the experience is OK or not - safe or not. When we attach labels of the mind to our experiences, we are left with stories about what's happening to us and at the deepest places within our being, our mind is assessing whether or not it's a threat to our survival so it can dictate what action to take next: fight, flight or freeze. It is also signaling the body to prepare for that action: our hormones, muscles, adrenalin, breath, etc. immediately respond to the signals of the mind.

Distortion & Reflection: Chicago 2008

The tricky part is that our physical bodies are geared to respond to the mind's signals, whether or not the mind's signals are accurate, relevant or true in the present moment. Remember that the mind is never operating in the present moment. It pulls up information from the past or projects information into the future based on the past, but it is never directly engaged with our present moment experiences.

Why? Because the mind does not directly experience anything. It gets information second-hand through our sensory and energy bodies and then interprets that information based on past experiences or future projections; but it does not directly experience anything. The mind's job is to interpret or reflect to the rest of the body what it believes is happening based on input from our sensory and energy bodies - what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch and perceive (energetically). The mind says "I recognize this sensation; it means blahblahblah and this is what we need to do next!"

Here's the problem: What the mind believes (based on history) may not apply in the present moment or the future, so it's signals limit our ability to act from the infinite field of possibilities that are available to us in each moment. This is important! By freeing ourselves from over-identifying with and believing in our mind's projections and stories about what it thinks is happening or going to happen, we open ourselves to the infinite and can move beyond old obstacles in our lives.

Over-identifying with the mind and turning our experiences into concepts and stories puts limitations on the vastness of what we truly are: the pure essence of mass, energy and consciousness. Many traditional spiritual practices are designed to create spaciousness between our mind and our pure essence so that we can become more of a witness to our mind's games rather than be driven by them. Meditative practices are a beautiful way to begin shifting away from over-identification with the mind and to build a trusting relationship with our pure essence.

Pathway to Mystery: Paris 2004

Connecting with and trusting in our pure essence is a pathway through the heart rather than the mind. When we build a stronger relationship with our pure essence, our hearts open and take rest into something much greater than what our minds can comprehend - something boundless, infinite and beyond the mind's reflections - the mystery of Being.

This is what makes our hearts both strong and fragile: in opening them to the mystery, we may feel vulnerable yet through this act we become stronger in our connection to our pure, infinite essence. It takes strength and courage to allow our hearts to open beyond the limitations and fears of the mind. And yet through that strength and courage - through opening ourselves to the mystery - we may experience what I can only describe as "pure love" (which is only a limited description and reflection of what is really an indescribable experience of what I feel to be pure love)...

Tree Teachers

2011-06-12T14:58:00.001-05:00

There's something magical about the coolness of the morning when the sun is just beginning to rise and the birds are singing wildly into the air from all directions. It's mid-June in Central Texas; summer will officially begin in two weeks and we are in extreme drought conditions, which makes the coolness of the mornings these days extra special. When I checked our thermometer Friday afternoon, it read 108º! I doubt that's what the weather guy will say but that's what our meter read.

As I sat quietly with the world waking up around me, my attention was drawn to the large Sycamore trees in our backyard. I noticed some of their leaves turning colors and every once in a while, one of them would let go, gracefully finding it's way to the ground. Sycamore trees naturally shed their outer bark toward the top limbs yet the lower areas are also shedding right now, an unusual happening. It is clear they are stressed from lack of water and high heat.

For just a moment I felt bad for them and then it dawned on me: "The trees don't have a story about what's happening; they are simply doing what's needed to survive: dropping leaves to surrender anything requiring excess energy, and shedding bark to take in more nutrients however they can. They aren't afraid or questioning what's happening. They live as fully today as they ever have. Whether they'll die tomorrow is not relevant; they are focused on surviving and living fully in this moment. They are simply be-ing... or tree-ing."

What a great teacher they are for me. During these times of rapid movement and change, they gently remind me not to be afraid, question or make up a story about what's happening; not to worry about an unknown future. All I have to do is live fully in each moment, present and trusting the process to lead me to the next step, whatever that may be. Maybe it will be more life; maybe it will be death. It doesn't matter; it's all part of the natural cycle and rhythm of things. Neither is better or worse; just different.

So today I'm focusing my energy on be-ing... or people-ing, or Cecilia-ing...

Fickle Truth

2011-06-06T11:58:00.000-05:00

I watched an amazing documentary last week called Fall From Grace about a well-known preacher man in Topeka, Kansas. He has a church but his family are the only ones who attend. From what I can tell, they believe they preach the word of God straight out of the Bible, and that God elected them to point out the sinning nature of our corrupt American society so that we can all have an opportunity to be saved.

They believe that their message - filled with hate, fear and threats - is affirmed and supported by God Himself because it's written right there in the pages of the Bible in black and white. Apparently the God they believe in condemns, punishes, judges, name-calls, shames, blames, threatens and even kills in the name of righteous indignation, and gives them permission to do the same. (As far as I know, they haven't directly killed anyone yet they strongly and openly support the death of those they condemn.)

This family - under the strong will and loud, demanding voice of their dad - view themselves as devout Christians following the Word and call of God. They believe it is their duty to preach God's truth to the people of this Nation, and apparently they are the only ones who really know what God's truth is, as written in the Bible and interpreted by their dad... as if God Himself hand-selected dear old dad for this hate-filled mission. In their view, the rest of us Americans - including other devout Christians and religious scholars - are blindly missing God's point and they are the only ones who get it...

So I wonder: What is God's Truth and how do we know it? And for that matter, with so many different Words of God out there, who has the right One? Who's interpretation is THE correct one?

I was raised Catholic with a Christian foundation. I no longer practice Catholicism because I found it lacking. But through the Catholic tradition, I learned about ceremony, ritual and faith. I learned about Jesus and "God" and love. I still don't understand the many contradictions I recognize in the way Catholicism is generally taught and practiced yet I respect those who find peace there, just as I respect other teachings and traditions that folks believe in. Who am I to suppose that my beliefs are the only correct ones in the world or that my God is the only and right God?

I recognize that there are people in the world who feel with all their hearts that the beliefs they've spent a lifetime living by are the right ones. Yet which belief system, which tradition in the world is really "the right one?" Can there be only one right one? And how would we know it; how would we distinguish it from the others? They all have ancient texts and teachings that have been passed down through generations of change and translation. And with so many different cultures out there, why would there be only one way to honor and align with our Divine Source? If we believe that there is one supreme God and that we are all born of this God, is it true that all roads really do lead to this One God?

Today I describe myself as a deeply spiritual Being but not religious. I am just as passionate about my beliefs as others are about theirs. I have my own relationship with God - that Divine Source of all things - and I honor it by living a life filled with as much love as possible. This doesn't mean that I always succeed but it means that I do my best to let love lead my thoughts, beliefs and actions.

Today my beliefs rest in the notion of an All-Loving, All-Knowing (Omniscient), All-Powerful (Omnipotent) and Infinite (Omnipresent) God. To me, condemnation, separation, punishment, judgement, slander, shame, blame, hate, fear and threats are not a part of such a God. The way I understand it, we are created in God's likeness and image, not the other way around. To impose the limitations of humanity on an All-Loving, Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent Being is merely human error-thinking based in limited ego-mind.

Thinking about God is different from feeling into God. For when we think about God, all we find is the limited perspective and fears of our own human ego-mind; yet when we feel into God, we find the perfection of pure love that resides in an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, infinite presence.

My wish for today is that every Human Being feel their heart filled with the Grace of God as pure, divine love.

The Angel Speaks

2011-05-22T00:01:00.005-05:00

Pere-Lachaise Cemetery outside of Paris, France.
Photo copyright 2004, Cecilia Zuniga

On my way home from a shamanic death ritual in Austin tonight, the car in front of me hit a deer. And just like that, the deer's life ended. It broke my heart. I spent the rest of my drive home praying for and sending blessings to the deer (and the driver).

I thought how cruel it is that we drive these cars that can end a life in an instant. And yet I can't say that it was a cruel act by the Angel of Death; She is simply sharing her gift of completion.

I also thought of a friend of mine who recently died in much the same way - hit by a cement truck while driving down the road and killed in an instant. I bet neither Being knew as they made their way onward that each moment was leading to their very last here. I doubt they were thinking things like "Gee, I'm going to die today" or "This is the last time I'll see this place" or "I will never be here again."

Most of us don't think about such things as we live our lives. In recent years though, I have begun to think such things. I've learned through the ritual deaths I've participated in that any moment could be my last, and as Stephen Levine says, "almost no one knows the day on which the last year begins." Or the morning on which our last day begins...

Even though I don't know when my last year here starts (or started), I can live each day with an awareness that any moment of my life might be my last: my last breath, my last kiss, my last meal, my last visit, my last words, my last dance... When held in that light, every instant of life becomes precious.

That is the gift of the Angel of Death: a deep awareness that every moment is precious. What better reason is there for living it all in love... right now?

An Angel Walks Among Us

2011-05-21T17:54:00.002-05:00

I woke up yesterday morning with death on my mind. In my spiritual circle Thursday night, we talked about an upcoming shamanic death ritual we are doing today. I will die... again. I think this will be my 6th or 7th time to die a ritual death. Some of these rituals have lasted a few hours, others a day, and others a year. In fact, the seed of this blog was born out of a year-long "Death Walk" I participated in from November 2009 to November 2010. This year, I am facilitating a year-long journey for others (my Awaken Circle) because the experience had such a profound impact on me.

We've all heard sayings such as "Death walks beside you" and "Death is always standing behind your left shoulder" or "Death is just over your shoulder" and "Death is always knocking on your door." Have you ever paused to really feel into what that means? Most of us, because of our social training to fear or resist death, don't give death much attention. But there's a tremendous opportunity here...

In many ancient spiritual teachings, death is held as an important adviser. In the Toltec tradition of the Eagle Knight lineage, we refer to it as The Angel of Death yet s/he goes by many names across cultures (e.g., Kali, Ganesha, Hunhau, Uacmitun Ahau, Kisin, Mictlantecuhtli, Hades, Hecate, Pluto, Hel, Ereshkigal, Cerridwen, Arawn, Skatha, Yen-Wang-Yeh, Ani-lbo, Anubis). You can find mythological or spiritual references to the keeper or guardian of death or the Underworld in just about every culture in the world.

My view of the Angel of Death is that she greets us with the gift of freedom from whatever binds our hearts. She bears the completion of one cycle and yet the beginning of something new. Without this completion, we would remain buried beneath the weight of our own hearts; we would never have the spaciousness to invite healing, change or growth into our lives.

The Angel of Death walks with clear steps and a keen eye. As She approaches, things change. She sees the obstacles to the blossoming of unconditional love in our hearts and does what's necessary to remove them. The gift of Her touch brings acute presence: suddenly nothing matters but the truth. She wields destruction for the sake of construction. It may mean a physical death yet it may also mean a symbolic death.

There's something healing and opening that emerges through the eyes of death. If you've ever sat with the dying, you know that the only thing of importance to them is the clarity of their own heart. I've heard stories about people blurting out their heaviest heart-burdens in the moments of their last breath, revealing family secrets that had been hidden for generations.

This is the gift of the Angel of Death; she offers the soul an invitation to surrender it's burdens and open into the wellspring of freedom born of a clear and unobstructed heart. From this view, nothing matters in life or death except that truth - the truth of a heart broken open. And in the spaciousness of such a heart, only love exists.

For all the human struggles I participate in, for all my searching and clearing and healing around love, there is always more deepening and opening to do. As I approach another opportunity to surrender what obstructs my heart - to hand it willingly over to the Angel of Death so that I can open more deeply into love - I find myself feeling calm and at peace inside. And so I prepare for yet another death of who I am to something new and (hopefully) more purely aligned with my spiritual intentions.

"Today is a good day to die for all the things of my life are present." I've written of this Native American saying before. This is the state I want to be in when I die, when my body takes its last gasp of air and then releases it with a sigh of surrender. And in that sigh I want to feel the full freedom that comes with a completely clear and open heart, one without obscurations in which everything - all the baggage of my life - has been cleaned up and brought into a present state of love.

Sunrise at Rockport, TX.
Photo copyright 2006: Cecilia Zuniga

So today I do my best to attend to and clean up any areas of heaviness in my life. I heal what needs to be healed, speak what needs to be spoken, request what needs to be requested and I forgive what needs to be forgiven. I choose love and connection over being right and separate. It's not an easy way to live; it takes all the courage and willingness I can muster. It means risking relationships and identities and habits. It means letting go of the old and familiar for the new and unfamiliar. It means taking a radically honest look at myself and claiming responsibility for who I've been, who I am and who I want to become. Sometimes I'm not ready to stand in the blurry and oftentimes painful and muddy lines of personal truth, to risk what I know for the unknown. Yet it is as authentic a life as I can manage right now.

Some days, such as during the past two weeks, I question what's happening. When another layer of mud surfaces from the depths of my being for healing and clearing, I question my integrity. Questioning is a natural part of this journey. It helps me discern what is mine to clean up and what is someone else's. Yet it must be done with radical honesty and heart-centered action. Otherwise, it serves little. This process of questioning helps me return to a clear sense of my own integrity so that I can clean up what needs cleaning, take responsibility for what is mine, and honor my truth in the moment, despite the feelings or reactions of others.

Through this process I've learned that what is true for me requires no defense or explanation; it is simply my truth, whether others understand it or agree with it or not. Expressing my truth does not require understanding or agreement from others or that they change their behavior based on how I experience a situation. And this is true for them as well: I don't have to understand or agree with their views or change my behavior to acknowledge what feels true for them. The best I can do for each of us is listen deeply, honor the feelings that arise, keep my heart open, allow spaciousness for what's next and keep love present through any disagreements.


Limestone heart. Photo copyright 2007: Cecilia Zuniga

I've learned over the past several years of exploring dying and death more intimately that there is a pre-death process that supports me in preparing for the transition from old to new: whatever obstacles are currently blocking the open flow of love in my heart will be flung into my full vision! Something always happens to enable me to see clearly where my own blocks to love are and where the next step in my healing work rests so that I can go about the business of doing it.

At the time of my own point of rememberance - that moment in death when I suddenly reconnect with my true, pure nature beyond the physical limitations of this body - I want to melt easily and gently into freedom. And so tonight I die knowing that I've done my best to keep learning about and opening to love in all of its expressions; knowing that I am, step by step, killing off love's obstacles and gently growing a deeply faithful, trusting and open heart.

As Stephen Levine so beautifully reflects in his book A Year To Live, I consciously cultivate a heart that cannot be distracted even by death. This is my chosen mission this year as I make my way through Adventures Of A Year To Love.

Don't Take It Personally

2011-05-18T00:08:00.002-05:00

We are such ego-driven creatures. We take so many things personally when really, nothing is about us except our own experiences. This is one of the main teachings in don Miguel Ruiz's beautiful spiritual book The Four Agreements: don't take anything personally. The reason for this is that every Human Being on this planet perceives the world in their own unique way, through their own unique filters, based on their own unique perceptions, experiences, agreements and beliefs.

don Miguel Ruiz calls the agreements and beliefs we hold in our unconscious mind our personal Book of Law. This Book of Law is what our brain uses to dictate our behavior based on past experiences. It contains all the rules we have learned to live by - those that we created ourselves and those that were passed down to us through the adults in our lives. It says things like "To be loved I must be good" and "To be safe I must not have fun" and "If I do the wrong thing I will be punished" and "Other people's perceptions of me matter."

These rules are things we learn as children and then carry forward into our adulthood. They rest in the unconscious part of our Being and we live by them whether they continue to apply or not as we grow up. Since we are unaware of them, we can't know if they still apply or feel true for us as adults unless something brings them to our attention. And the truth is, unless they are brought to our attention by some kind of event, we don't care if they apply or not because we don't even know they exist! But they are our unconscious Book of Law and we follow our Book!

Usually it is when something happens that makes us question some part of our lives that we begin to look at the things in our Book of Law and decide if we still believe them, agree with them, and want to keep living by them or not. This is no easy task. Questioning the things we've lived by since we were a youngster takes courage. The things in our Book have been the foundation of our life. To question them means questioning our fundamental beliefs and agreements about life in general and how to survive it. This touches into a deep, primal part of our Being.

When we take someone else personally, it's because some part of us believes them or fears that they may be right about us. We fear that others will discover just how awful of a person we really are and will abandon us. We fear we won't be loved or that we are too broken to be saved. We fear the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves that we try to hide from the world will be revealed... and then, we will die a lonely death. This may sound extreme, yet it is surprising what hides beneath our brave and strong and righteous masks when we dig down really, really deep.

I first began to explore my personal Book of Law following a difficult and painful breakup several years ago. The ending of that relationship brought what was left of my crumbling life down. It seems that for me, my life had to disintegrate before my eyes for me to take a closer and deeper look at what I had created of it. And when I looked, I was shocked to discover that the life I'd worked so hard and followed all the rules to create had simply fallen apart around me, leaving me with nothing but my own wounded heart.

I was even more shocked to discover that the old life I'd created hadn't really felt the way I'd intended it to, even with check marks by all the right rules in my Book of Law. I'd played by the rules my whole life - graduated from high school, worked hard, gone to college and graduate school, gotten a Ph.D. and started a career. I invested my energy into a professional job and my heart into an intimate relationship with a person I loved deeply. I built my life around my career and my partner.

One day I woke up in a cloud of heaviness. I dreaded going to work; my job was a nightmare. I dreaded going home; my partnership was a vacuum. Neither was inspiring or fulfilling despite my greatest efforts. In those days I described myself as the walking dead. I knew there must be more to life but I didn't know how to get it.

When it all came crumbling down in unexpected and dramatic ways, I was forced to take a radically honest look at my life and what I had created of it. The bottom line: I had not honored myself in my own life. I had listened to and done all the things that others thought I should do, the ways they thought I should do them, and had slowly but surely abandoned myself to the approval and love of others.

I learned a huge lesson about love from that: Loving others from a place of emptiness is not really love; it's need. And when we believe we are so empty within ourselves that we need the love of another to feel full and whole, we become willing to surrender ourselves to get their love. And when we surrender ourselves for love, eventually we lose ourselves to it - like a drug addict seeking out their next fix.

Today I believe (and it is just that - my belief) that we are all whole and divine Beings; we just forget who we are. We get wounded in life and we forget our true, loving and joyous natures. We forget that as children of a Divine Source, however you label that Source - as God, Great Spirit, Allah, Buddha, Creator, etc. - we are divine and whole and beautiful just as we are. We don't need anything from anyone else to be whole; we are already whole. We just have to remember that we are whole.

I like to say that we are all perfectly imperfect. And like drops of water in a divine ocean, we cannot separate ourselves from our divinity. We may forget our divinity, yet we cannot separate ourselves from it any more than we can separate the blood of our ancestors out of our bodies. We can turn our minds away from it and believe that we are somehow separate from the Divine and less than whole just as we are, but that is what spiritual mentor Marianne Williamson calls "error thinking." Forgetting who we are is not a condition; it's a mental mistake.

This past week I've been focusing on the old "don't take it personally" teaching. Today I send gratitude and love out to those who questioned my choices over the years because it gave me the space to deepen my connection to and trust in something bigger than me. Today I have faith in and trust that things unfold and evolve in a perfect way for the highest healing and good of all Beings, even those events that are scary, painful or uncomfortable to our human be-ing.

Today, this belief is in my Book of Law. It doesn't mean that it's true for everyone or even that it will be true for me forever; it only means that it's true for me today because I choose to believe it. No one has to agree with me for it to be true for me; it is true for me because I believe it to be true.

And as it's true for me, I find both Grace and Love interwoven in the dramas of my silly little life.

Heart Matters Hurt

2011-05-16T01:04:00.001-05:00

Over the weekend I got an email from one of the women whose story I shared on this blog (Heart Matters). She is hurt and offended that I used her nightmare for a story on this blog. She is also upset that I shared it without her permission and without having spoken to her directly about her situation. She feels my writing about it insinuates to the reader that I was directly involved. She believes it was unprofessional of me and that I used her pain as a lesson to promote (my) business.

It's true: I did not tell her I wrote the blog. And I chose not to get involved in her situation. I heard much about it from mutual and close people in our lives who are upset by it and asked me to get involved. Since I wasn't asked by her, I chose not to get directly involved, and I stand behind that choice. To this day, I have not spoken to this woman about her situation. She is well supported and my feeling is that I have nothing to offer into it but perhaps more confusion from hearing what one more person thinks about it. What she does is entirely up to her. She will make her decisions based on the beat of her own heart and nothing I believe or say will change that.

This doesn't mean that I have not been impacted by her situation or that I did not have my own responses to it... one of which was to share what arose for me on this blog because that's what this blog is about. Adventures Of A Year To Love is about my experiences around love in life: what it means, how we hold it, ways we break it or build it, how we create separation from it or build bridges to it, what blocks us from it, etc. And this blog is filled with my observations based on things I have both experienced and witnessed in the world related to love.

This woman's story touched me deeply and I felt inspired to share it, to put my questions out there, to give my perspective on an unfolding situation related to love, one that many people I know have dealt with, including me: that of feeling betrayed by those you trust and love the most.

For me, feeling betrayed put to question the ability to trust in my own heart. When I felt betrayed by my (now ex) lover several years ago, after questioning their behavior, I began to question my own even more deeply, and to wonder whether I could trust in my own instincts about love. To question the guidance of my own heart was far more scary to me than wondering about theirs. It meant that I could not trust myself much less them. And if I couldn't trust myself, than who could I trust?

That question led me into years of intense spiritual work to heal the parts of myself that kept me from trusting my own inner guidance, my intuition. Today I listen to and trust in my inner guidance, even when the direction it leads me is not perfectly clear or comfortable. I trust in my deep connection to our Source - to Spirit or God or the Divine, whatever you choose to call it; and I believe that Source is always present in my life because I welcome it here in every moment. And I trust that the callings of my heart are a reflection of the movement of that Source through me. And so I trust...I trust myself because I have faith in and deeply trust the Divine Source that moves through me.

When I wrote the blog about this woman's story, I wrote it because in a moment of quiet, I felt inspired to write it, not because I planned to write it. That's how this blog works; it's born out of a spontaneous arising of something within my being. Despite what some people may believe, it's not a planned out promotional tool for my business; that has never been its intent (although I recognize that some folks use blogs specifically for that; and that by their nature, blogs afford a certain degree of visibility online).

Adventures Of A Year To Love is a personal accounting of my experiences and observations on love in this life. It was born out of a blog I started in 2009 to record a year-long journey exploring life and death in a deep and intimate way (Adventures Of A Year To Live). At the end of that year, I found myself naturally shifting focus from a year to live to a year to love. For me, this blog is an organic movement of energy through me...period. I don't blog in a scheduled fashion or with a specific purpose in mind; I blog when I feel inspired to blog, and I blog about whatever I feel inspired to blog about, in this case, related to love.

And so I wonder: In writing Heart Matters spontaneously, anonymously and without permission, did I unintentionally add to this woman's sense of betrayal? Her email suggests so, and for that I am sorry. Her heart does not need any more hurt than it is already feeling. Yet I will continue to write about whatever inspires me around the subject of love because that is what I feel called to do and that is what I choose to do.

Look out my friends... You may recognize yourself in one of my blogs some day!

Lessons from Geese

2011-05-09T10:59:00.001-05:00

My parents live in a secured subdivision that has a small man-made lake in it. Some Mexican Whistler ducks, mallards, turtles, a Great Blue Heron and other critters have taken up residence around the lake but the most inspiring residents are a mated pair of Egyptian Geese. They hang out on a tiny circular island with an oak tree in the middle maybe 30 feet off the shore.

The female Goose is sitting on eggs. She's been sitting for literally two weeks without hardly a move (say my parents). Her mate hangs out on a wooden bridge nearby, perched on the handrail watching closely and scaring off any possible predators. This Momma is very dedicated! She lays so low in the grass that you can hardly see her head and only when she stretches her neck out. Otherwise, she's hunkered down doing her best to be the invisible protective Mother over her precious eggs.

They only have a few babies a season and oftentimes the babies drown, are eaten by big fish, or are snatched up by predatory birds. Yet every season this couple goes through the whole process again (sometimes twice a season), fussing over each other, their eggs and then their hatchlings until they are big enough to survive on their own.

Each one in the pair takes their job very seriously and shows their mate the highest of respect. They honor the role that each of them has; they support each other whole-heartedly; they mate for life and they don't let distractions pull them away from all they love.

We humans might learn a thing or two from them...

What About Love?

2011-05-08T20:19:00.003-05:00

OK - I gotta say that I'm really beginning to wonder what's happening to love in this world of ours!

Today I've been entrenched in a situation with a dear woman who was threatened by her lover of many, many years. Apparently, his behavior shifted a couple of years back following a traumatic incident he was involved in having something to do with drug deals and he's become abusive and threatening to her since then. She's been covering it up so people wouldn't know. You know - the usual of lying about the bruises and other "injuries," staying home a lot and pretending everything was A-OK...

This has been going on for a couple of years? That's a long time! We called the cops so she could file a statement and get a restraining order. Her first report to us was that this guy had threatened her but as she talked with the Deputy Sheriff, the truth emerged. Not only had he verbally threatened her but he'd "slapped" both sides of her face and pulled her hair. Then she admitted that he'd been physically abusive before and had threatened her many times.

As time went on, I noticed bruises emerging around her eyes: "That's not a slap unless he had some mighty big rings on his fingers!" The Deputy Sheriff took a closer look, changed his report and wanted to take pictures of the marks. When he asked her why she was filing now, her response was "I'm scared." When I heard her say that, I knew this was serious. This is a brave woman who is no pushover and doesn't scare easily if at all under most circumstances. Apparently, she's been trying to get him out of her house and life but every time she tries, he threatens her and has hit her several times before; she is afraid for her pets too.

Until today she felt that doing nothing was better and safer than doing something. Why today? Maybe because of the bruises on her face; maybe because of how he threatened her; maybe she's just had enough; maybe she heard something different in his tone or felt something she hadn't felt from him before... Who knows? I'm just glad that she decided to stop hiding and take a stand to reclaim her life from this deeply wounded and dangerous man.

The guy managed to grab a set of her house and car keys when he left so we called a locksmith to change all the locks on the house doors and re-coded her electric garage door opener so he couldn't get in. We moved all of his stuff into her garage and then we began to problem-solve the next move for her protection. She said, "He will be back. I know it; he has nowhere else to go and all his stuff is here. And he'll be pissed off!" That's what we're dealing with - a pissed-off, drug-involved, abusive man who has nowhere else to go.

The Deputy Sheriff suggested she not stay at her home alone, if at all. He was headed downtown to file an Emergency Protective Order on her behalf (EPO in cop lingo). The guy is on the police radar already for other things so our hope is that he'll be picked up before morning and arrested. Clearly, he is dangerous yet despite this, she didn't want to go and leave her pets and house alone. This woman argued that she could call 911 if the guy showed up, but we all discouraged that. "Sure - you can call 911 but a lot can happen in the time it takes them to get here." The cop confirmed that depending on what else was happening, it might take them a while to arrive. We talked her into staying elsewhere, at least for one night.

How does this happen? How do two people go from deeply loving each other to deeply hurting each other? It seems that every time I turn around these days I hear of another couple I know that's divorcing, of relationships ending, of betrayals, of lies and affairs and deeply hurt hearts.

Are we humans so scared and wounded around love that all we can do is hurt or be hurt?

Heart Matters

2011-05-08T10:56:00.001-05:00

For the past few weeks there's been a drama happening in a dear family I know. One of the women discovered that her husband had "cheated" on her. First I will say that when someone leaves "evidence" in a vulnerable place, maybe it's true that some part of them wanted it to be found, perhaps to end the sneaking, guilt, fear and discomfort that goes with being out of your own integrity and living a lie every day. Perhaps as a catalyst for something to change that was well past its time. Perhaps as a chicken's way out of admittance. Who can really say, but somehow, some way, these types of secrets always surface.

Once when I was going through a similar situation of feeling deeply betrayed by a partner, someone said to me "Well, isn't it better to know the truth?" My answer was "Yes" although I would have preferred that the truth had always been exposed rather than it slipping through a crack in the foundation to knock me off my feet after months of what felt like secrecy and lies by omission. When you have a heart agreement with someone, to find out that they disregarded it is deeply wounding. Everything you might initially feel toward them winds up being used against yourself: the disappointment, loathing, doubt, judgement, anger, hurt, blame, etc. It's a tangled up emotional mess.

As the story of this particular situation continues to unfold, more and more drama arises. Details are being uncovered that shine a bright light on the lies that have been told; emotions are blazing; gossip is stirring... This beautiful family has been flung head-first into an ocean of confusion, anger, hurt and fear. They are all in what I call high reaction.

There's a question of whether a lie detector test should be used on the husband. "Really? Why?" I asked. Their answer: Because she wants to know how many other lies there have been.

Huh. I had a lot of questions about this choice. What difference would a lie detector test make (especially with all the false readings they give)? She already knows he is capable of lying (we all are) and that he has lied to her on several occasions now. What will the lie detector test add? Does she want an exact count of the number of times he's lied? Does she want to know how recently he lied? Does she want to know just how big of a liar he is? Does she want to know just how false her idea of their marriage is? Does she want to be right? Is she looking for some kind of validation or justification?

But my biggest question is: Should we really trust the technology of a lie detector test above the truth of a human heart?

To me, the only question to ask now is "How willing is she to risk trusting him again?" Maybe that's what she's trying to decide based on just how big of a liar she finds him to be...

Then the conversation turned to the concept of love. The husband says he still loves his wife and that the "other" doesn't mean anything. Really? Then why did he do it (and more than once)? Why did he lie about it? Why didn't he speak to his wife about their marriage before things reached the point of betrayal? None of us can really answer these questions with any certainty. While it may be true that the human heart is a dynamic and mysterious part of our Being whose trappings we can't always predict, things like honesty, openness and integrity are things we choose. As it is possible to be swept up in the emotion or energy of a moment, isn't it just as possible not to be?

How much choice do we really have in love? And is love nothing more than what we make it?

Good Dancin' & Glowing Wrist Bands

2011-05-04T11:26:00.002-05:00

This past Saturday my Sweetie and I went out dancing with a group of friends. When we walked through the door of this particular bar, they passed out glowing wrist bands but we didn't get one. They were for singles only. I thought that was an interesting concept - to glowingly identify all the "singles."

Why would they do that? I wondered what the incentive was for this: So singles could find each other more easily? So there wouldn't be any question about availability? So no one would tread where they best not? To avoid any fights or bar brawls? To make girl/boy friend shopping easier?

And I wondered: What ever happened to dialogue and getting to know someone? What's wrong with talking to a married or coupled person? What's wrong with flirting with them? Dancing with them? Enjoying them? Is this not allowed? Did the glowing wrist bands signal "I'm open for business" or "Hands off?"

As I watched my friends dance with each other and strangers in the bar, I got this weird sense of isolation. Was it true that people avoided me because I wasn't wearing a glowing wrist band? I tried to see the wrists of all the gliding two-steppers on the dance floor but it was hard to catch a glimpse as they passed. And there was my Sweetie - wrist-bandless and taking turns dancing with everyone. I have to admit that for just a second, I felt the green-eyed monster that night, but it wasn't about my Sweetie having so much fun; it was about me feeling a little bit left out. I'm still recovering from an injury in March and I wasn't feeling all that great so was taking things slow. Not so for everyone else; they were beer-drinkin', two-steppin' fools!

It's a good thing to shake up your comfort zone once in a while. I got to see my Sweetie as a well-sought-after commodity that night - a fabulous dancer and partner that other people would snatch up in a split second if the opportunity was there. I deepened into my appreciation, gratitude and love for the trust and partnership we share as I watched all the energy swirling around that bar and dance floor to the beat of an old country song.

About halfway through the night I heard one of our friends say "We need to find me a girlfriend." And immediately everyone's eyes began to scan the room for the perfect girl. As I sat on my bar stool sipping a Boilermaker, the rest of our crowd were pointing and discussing the different women they spotted wearing glowing wrist bands: "No, not her; how 'bout HER?" Was it really that simple? Are girlfriends nothing more than good dancing or a glowing wrist band?

Later that night I considered what those glowing wrist bands really meant: nothing. It comes down to people's own integrity. If you want to sleep with a single and they want to sleep with you, it's gonna happen whether they are wearing a glowing wrist band or not. Being in a couple isn't a guarantee; it's an agreement, and that agreement is only as good as the two people who make it.

Today I am deeply grateful that the person I've made that agreement with is a person of integrity that I can rest into.

Just Who's Driving?

2011-04-12T09:34:00.000-05:00

Ever have one of those times when you wonder "Just who's driving?"

I had one of those the other night. I was driving home from a gathering in Austin and found myself obsessed about getting some fast food french fries. It's true that maybe a few times a year I eat french fries at a restaurant but I never eat fast food. I have to be pretty desperate before grabbing anything at the drive through... It does happen but only in the rarest of odd moments of starvation and crankiness.

So the fact that I suddenly had to have french fries was curious to me. I decided to get them. Well, the truth is that I'm not sure what happened but I found myself at a Wendy's drive through ordering not a small but a large order of fries. Hmmmm. At that point, I can say that I decided to get them; I chose to drive to the window, pay, grab my fries and go, even though I debated screeching out of there in disgust.

I admit that I ate the whole lot of them and I enjoyed them too - every single one. A part of me felt incredibly nurtured and nourished by those greasy, salty fries. She relaxed all the way home. She groaned over their crispy hotness. She smiled. She felt relieved and satisfied...

"Who is that??" I wondered what part of me was so fulfilled by those icky french fries. I realized that I do my best to eat healthy, even if it means not eating at all. What happens next is that a part of me feels neglected when I don't eat enough, and it is she who wants nurturing then... not with healthy food but with comfort food.

Here's what I learned about myself that night: When I feed myself consciously, I eat regularly and healthy. When I put busyness over food, I skip the eating, get cranky and tired, and then crave comfort food. It triggers feelings of vulnerability and a lack of love. It may seem odd to say "love" but it's true: Nourishing the body with healthy food is an act of self-love.

And since my tummy is grumbling loudly as I write this, I'm going to sign off now and give myself some self-love... fresh fruit, nuts and granola for breakfast!

Surprise!!

2011-03-26T19:50:00.000-05:00

Today I woke up early to see my sweetie off to a Saturday gig... I mean, early: 5 a.m.! That might not seem early to you, but it's early to my body, which is generally not ready to be up until there is a hint of sunrise outside.

Sometimes when I arise that early, I feel cranky and not quite awake. But today, I woke up feeling happy and full. I saw my sweetie off and went back to bed to meditate and dream. I love dreaming just before sunrise because the content is rich and creative for me.

Maybe two hours or so later, I made my way into my meditation space. That's when I saw it: a beautiful surprise set up by my sweet Sweetie sometime outside of my awareness, which is a tricky thing to do because I spend the majority of my time in my office where my meditation space is, and I'm in and out of that space all day long until I go to sleep, generally.

But there it was - my Anniversary surprise: a vibrant yellow Marigold; a beautiful and sentimental card; a certificate acknowledging the day we met at a car wash; a red "Love" candle; a Chinese 6 Coin Hanger for abundance; and several of my favorite chocolates!

My heart burst open at the sight of all the love that was sneaked into my day...Oh - what a feeling it was! I cannot describe how such a simple yet deeply thought out gift touched me to the point of tears.

My sweetie got me; my sweetie got me really good with that surprise. My mind was not in the space of "anniversary" because we debated and ultimately agreed that our official anniversary would be what we both considered our first date: November 9th.

But we met on March 26th at a car wash. Yep, I was waiting for my car (which conveniently got "lost" in the back some place) and there we found ourselves sitting on a bench outside engrossed in conversation for an hour. My sweetie's car came out before mine even though I'd been there for some time before...

That's when I discovered that my car was "lost." When I asked about it, the college student girl with the drying towels in her hand said, "Oh - that blue Mazda back there is yours?? We were wondering who it belonged to!" Um, yes, that blue Mazda is mine. For some reason I'll never know, my Mazda wasn't driven up to the front like the rest of the cars. It had been sitting out back for over an hour, and I had been sitting at that car wash for two hours by that time, thoroughly enjoying the visit with my new sexy and sweet friend. I'm not sure who they thought that Mazda belonged to but it was parked out back, clean, dry and ready to go.

That "delay" gave me and my sweetie plenty of time to decide we kinda liked each other, and to make a date to reconnect in a month or so after I returned from some travels I had coming up. I like to believe that it was divine intervention so we could meet, but that's just the romantic in me...

So when I discovered this beautiful gift this morning, I was completely surprised. "Anniversary" was nowhere in my brain. Until I read the card, I had no idea what the surprise was for; and even then, I was a bit confused: "Anniversary? But we decided that was in November!" It was the perfect art of surprise.

I was reminded that love is simply that: a random expression that reaches out and unconditionally touches the heart of another, just to love. How blessed I feel to be the recipient....

I love love!!

A Pain-Filled Lesson

2011-03-15T11:27:00.000-05:00

It's been an interesting couple of days following an injury on Saturday. I'm deepening into the spiritual teachings I've been practicing for a few years now around opening to pain, particularly those of Stephen Levine: "...resistance turns pain into suffering; soften and explore the constant state of change within the sensations; watch the unfolding of sensation as a process; when we begin to respond to discomfort instead of reacting to it, an enormous change occurs. We begin to experience it not as just 'our' pain but as 'the' pain. And it becomes accessible to a level of compassion perhaps previously unknown; (and we begin to experience) the personal in its universal aspect."

The practice I'm focused on now through the Awaken series on conscious living is to reprogram the body's response to pain, including and especially the reaction of the mind to pain. Most of us grow up learning to avoid pain. It starts very young when we hurt ourselves. If you watch small children fall on a playground, they generally show a short-lived reaction to pain until or unless the adults around them react. Then it becomes a big drama! But if they are not critically hurt and the adults either don't notice or respond calmly, kids express their pain with some startled sounds and then get up within seconds and keep playing.

Usually what happens in our growing up years is we get message after message from adults to avoid pain, that pain means something is wrong, and that pain is something to be scared about. These adults are well-intended; it's their job to care for and protect us. They are responsible for our welfare and survival. Yet what we carry into adulthood from these experiences is a belief that pain is bad.

Believing that pain is bad as adults, we avoid and resist pain, which means we close our energy body around it. But what if we could stay open through pain? What if we could simply experience it as fully as we allow ourselves to experience other sensations in life? What if pain was not something bad to be avoided, but just an intense sensation instead? How might that change our experiences of it?

That is my practice. It's a practice in moving beyond the mind to open the energy body no matter what the sensations. In the realm of dying and death (as we are exploring in the Awaken series), it is a way to reprogram the body and mind to respond openly to pain rather than closing around it, so that as we die we can experience peace no matter what. When we master this, a level of separation develops between us and 'the pain' that offers spaciousness to find joy and peace despite the sensations that may be running through the body. Since none of us know what our dying or death experiences will be, this is a great practice to master! Ultimately, it allows us to create and hold a container of bliss through the transitions of the body.

I got to practice this yesterday. I can describe how much pain I was in by saying it was tremendous! I (carefully) taught two yoga classes and interacted with people all day who had little idea what my body was experiencing (though the shiner around my left eye gave them an indication that something was different). My goal was to open my energy body so large that the pain would simply be a tiny part of my day's experiences, and to create enough space around the pain that I could bring in and hold joy.

I succeeded, mostly. I was aware of my pain yet not ruled by it; I acknowledged it instead of resisting or ignoring it; and I consciously opened beyond it to bring in joy. The pain was there and so was everything else; it didn't dominate my experiences. I shed some tears last night over the pain that felt linked to old body memory and energy that was ready to be released; it felt good to release it. In the end, I experienced a day filled with healing, joy and love instead of just pain.

Today I remember what it feels like to be in chronic pain. I remember experiencing chronic pain for two years following a serious car wreck in my thirties. Back then, I fell into a deep depression. Pain was the focus of my life as I took steps to find healing for my body. Although not the most pleasant part of my history, the experience led to a dramatic life change that I consider an awakening for me.

Today, my body aches from my neck down to my hips and I still have a pretty nice shiner beneath my left eye. I know what to do for my body when it's healing, so I'm doing those things. And yet I notice myself leaning into the comfort of knowing that this pain is temporary. I wonder: "How might this experience be different for me if this were not a temporary condition?" I cannot answer that question, yet I do contemplate it.

Sometimes accepting what is gives us the opportunity to experience it without any temporal boundaries, since we can't know when or how what is in the present moment will change. But things in the present moment are always changing; that's the nature of energy and everything here is rooted in energy. I find comfort in that. When I attune myself to the subtleties of the pain in my body today, I notice the shifting sensations. The pain is not a static experience; it is a dynamic one in my body. As I deepen into that awareness, my body relaxes and opens, my breath softens and slows, and I find spaciousness within my being to expand around the pain and beyond it.

I could choose to view this experience as nothing more than a painful, unfortunate accident. My choice instead is to view it as a brilliant opportunity to reprogram my body and mind's experience of and response to pain. It is an opportunity to move toward mastery of opening big enough that I can find the spaciousness within my being to experience inner peace and joy no matter what... even tremendous pain and (ultimately) in the face of whatever my own dying and death may bring. Tonight I teach two classes, and I will teach them filled with joy, love and pain.

Every experience we have in life is an opportunity to grow and open. Today I am reminded of what a gift that is and my heart is full and happy despite the pain. I think that is pretty amazing...

The Garden of Life

2011-03-01T11:08:00.000-06:00

I've always wanted to be a gardener, mostly because I love the beauty and energy of the plants with their varied colors, shapes, textures and vibrations. On a deeper level, I realize it's because I like nourishing things into creation. Whether it's a pastry, a book or a plant doesn't matter. There's something fulfilling about starting with a few separate ingredients and mixing them together into a whole new thing that has its own purpose, design, flavor and energy. There's something magical about the alchemy of this mixing process and how it generates a new expression of being that wasn't there in the separate ingredients.

I've never had a garden of my own before. When I was a child, my parents grew strawberries, bell and chili peppers, green beans and tomatoes in a small flower bed but I've never had a whole space dedicated to a garden. It feels good to have one now, with fencing high enough to keep the local deer out. Yesterday I planted some onions, potatoes and a tomato plant in my garden. It may not look like much, but it is fabulous to me!

Each step of the way toward creating this garden has been exciting: from getting the fencing up, to gathering the dirt, to starting a compost pile, to creating a dedicated compost pile, to building the beds, to adding the worms, to mixing in fortified soil to our dirt... and finally to planting a few things.

I don't really know how to garden. I only know that I love playing in the dirt and nourishing things into bloom and fullness. I love seeing a bud grow and open into a beautiful flower. I love seeing a tiny sprout evolve into a vibrant plant. I love watching a blossom turn into a piece of fruit. I love lifting a plant from the soil and finding food down there. It's like magic!

Gardens are great metaphors for life. We nourish what we want to grow; we give it our attention and our love. Sometimes things happen and we watch what we've given our nourishment, attention and love to die before it reaches its full expression. We can't stop it or change it; it just dies. And sometimes we get to witness the full movement of what we nourish all the way to it's complete expression, it's last breath, and then it dies.

Either way - whether a thing is here only a moment or a lifetime - we get to experience its unique beauty and expression. It is sacred life force energy moving through space and time in a way we can't control. But we can give it our nourishment, attention and love if we choose to. And we can open to the full experience of it - whatever it is - if we choose to.

This year, I want to; I choose to. Each day offers me another opportunity to build and create the garden of my life.

What will it be? What will I plant? How big and full will it get? What will die young and what will reach its complete expression? What will I nourish, give my attention to, and share my love with? What will I notice and what will I miss? How will I honor this garden of my life?

"Can I love all that is in my life ~ all that comes and goes ~ wholly and unconditionally, just like the plants in my garden?"

Imagine...

2011-02-12T11:32:00.000-06:00

https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/12e1aba720d8708a

IMAGINE...

That's all we have to do: IMAGINE.

A knowing of divine truth.

A heart of One.

A life of presence.

A world of peace.

A Being of love.

GNH: Yes!

2011-02-06T09:42:00.000-06:00

There's a small country in southern Asia named Bhutan. Recently, the 50-something-year old leader "passed the leadership torch" to his 26-year old son, Jigme Singye Wangchuck. The son is well educated and brings a fresh perspective to the politics of Bhutan. His desire is for Bhutan to be a notable player in world politics without compromising it's culture. In his view, this means strengthening Bhutan economically and keeping up with technological advancements without sacrificing the country's heritage.

In his wisdom, Jigme Singye Wangchuck did something brilliant: he borrowed the USA's concept of Gross National Product as a leading principle for Bhutan by changing it into Gross National Happiness. He defines Gross National Happiness as "inner contentment for all people living in Bhutan" and offers four pillars of what it means:

1. Good Governance
2. Balanced Economic Development (high standard of living for all, free education, etc...)
3. Environmental Preservation and Sustainability
4. Preserving and Promoting Culture (maintaining a national identity that distinguishes them from other countries)

Wangchuck says things like:

"Imagery leads to thoughts, thoughts lead to actions and actions create our world" (referring to imagery from the USA on televisions and the internet, which were only recently allowed into Bhutan) and

"Human progress does not equal economic growth" and

"Happiness does not come from 'more'" and

"Economic growth at any cost is not acceptable."

He believes that happiness is achieved by taking the middle path, balancing the needs of man with the powerful spirits of nature.

So, he is allowing technological advancements in Bhutan, yet in balance with their cultural traditions which are founded in Tantric Buddhism and the principles of peace, an end to suffering, wisdom and joy. Both pieces - technological/economic expansion and traditional cultural ideals are promoted and maintained; growth with integrity and balance; authentic happiness... Sounds like a great way to live from a place of love to me...

I might have to live there...

Snow Magic

2011-02-06T09:36:00.002-06:00

My sweetie's snowbeing.

Wow - it snowed this morning in Texas!
(Friday, February 4, 2011)

There's something about sparkly, white snow that brings a twinkle to my eyes and fills my heart with joy...

Maybe it's the purity of the snow when it's fresh. Maybe it's the magical way it sparkles in the sun. Maybe it's the miracle of falling water turning into elegant crystals that drift lazily from the sky to blanket the land. Maybe it's the fun memories I have of playing in it. Maybe it's just that it so rarely happens here...

Snow on our bamboo.

I can almost hear the plants sighing in the cold, yet with a gentleness that's connected to the beauty of it all. How could they feel anything but bliss at the newness and freshness of snow?

Our sweet rosemary plant is reaching up tall to the warm sunshine beginning to drizzle down as the morning progresses, as if to say "Hey - it's cold down here! Shine on, my friend!"

Rosemary in an old wheelbarrow.

The winter ground takes on a whole new look when it's blanketed with white snow: brown leaves from our trees and the wooden garden edging in our front yard look like a work of art when covered with snow.

Garden edging.

St. Francis greets the brave birds that are flitting about looking for food around our feeders...

St. Francis statue in front bird sanctuary.

...but they won't have any luck with water! This is our bird bath, frozen and covered with a light blanket of snow.

The unique bird bath my sweetie found at a weird Austin store.

Even our water hose looks pretty in the snow!

Today, this fresh, white snow became an opening into more love. And it reminds me that everything is an opening into more love... The line from my spiritual teacher's song resurfaces:

"Choose as love what is..."

Touched By Grace

2011-01-31T22:00:00.001-06:00

On Saturday, I met a beautiful angel. I didn't catch her name because in looking at her, to name her seemed inappropriate for such an ethereal Being. To "name" her seemed somehow dishonoring of her magnificence.

I met her in a store. She was in the arms of her Nanny, a very loving woman who was enjoying this bright Being as much as the rest of us were. This angel looked at me with her clear blue eyes and in them I saw looking back at me... well, I saw me, in a way that I never have before: the undiluted, essential me. I could tell it was me because I felt it to the heart of my Being.

I looked back at her, feeling a subtle urge to bow my recognition, respect and gratitude to her. The more I looked at her, the more I felt something; the more I felt something, the harder it was to identify. Then it came to me: purity. This angel was the purest, most bright light I've ever encountered in this physical world. She was as close to Divine Source energy as I've ever gotten, and in her eyes, the truth was radiating out. My encounter with her touched me deeply, even if only for a few moments through her eyes. (She looked a lot like this picture, although this is not her.)

It was pure, unadulterated love that she radiated and that touched me so deeply. There was nothing whatsoever attached to her gaze; just pure and simple light and love radiating out - joyful and present. It was the kind of love that I aspire to achieve this year through my A Year To Love journey. Can I? Will I ever reach that place of innocence to the point of holding only light, love and joyful presence?

Ahhhhh. My teachers come in interesting packages these days and I am grateful to all of them :)

Life's Poetry

2011-01-22T11:17:00.001-06:00

Life fills me with breath. My body expands... and then empties, collapsing. One beautiful breath. One spectacular moment. This is it; this is it... the only moment that counts. "Take it!" screams my heart.

And so I do.

"How? How do I take this moment and use it fully?" ... My mind wants to reason it's way through the moments of my life, yet I'm learning to soften my mind and enter my heart for direction instead. My heart has a guidance system of its own, but its system is not based on reason. Nope; it's based on something entirely different, something that can't be explained because it must be felt instead.

Inspiration; joy; love; compassion; equanimity: these are concepts, yes; and yet they reflect the vibrational fuel of a heart opened.

My heart yearns to be opened... more and more and more... to life, to each breath, to each moment as the blossoming of something grand and beautiful, even if perceived by the mind as painful or ugly to witness.

How does this work? How does one move beyond the mind's labels to witness what is with neutrality and beyond that, with inspiration, joy, love, compassion and equanimity?

My experiment of A Year To Love continues...

A Fullness of Being

2011-01-14T10:44:00.001-06:00

Lives are ending all around me and I am drawn into a quiet space. The cold of winter beckons me to slow down, be still and deepen into my being like the Bear. Take pause; listen to the softness of each breath and feel the richness of rest. These are contemplative days, each moment arising as a bright gift to be cherished and never neglected. The things of my life are beautiful and one day I will leave them, sadly yet filled with awe at the freedom of surrender to the next movement of energy outside of this physical place.

I don't know where the dead go; I only know that they go somewhere. I have glimpsed it. I remember it as if it happened yesterday. For the dead, it is miraculous; for the living, it is mysterious.

The recent death of a friend has flung me to a new level of connection with death. I can't say what's different this time than previous times my beloveds have died. I can only say that something is. Perhaps it's me.

Suddenly, every tiny bit of my life is magnified as a magical encounter never to be repeated. How special that is. How lucky I am. How grateful is my heart to behold each bit as sacred, with love. Today I am full.

Death Visits

2011-01-07T00:39:00.000-06:00

Tonight I learned of a friend's sudden death yesterday in a car accident. This was not someone I knew intimately, but someone I consider a beautiful friend. She was one of those people I met and I knew right away there was something special - something a bit different - about her. I didn't have to know what it was; it just was.

When I reflect on this special friend, her face appears clearly in my mind's eye and her energy appears fully in my field. My heart smiles for knowing her. She was a bright light in this world, someone who brought a smile to those around her. Tonight I noticed that she is still bringing smiles to those she knew. Her wisdom, grace and humor resonate here even in her physical absence.

Yes, there is grief. It's the grief of knowing I will not be able to physically touch her again - hug her in greeting, say "Hey, good to see you!" and hear her "Hey! You too." back, look in her eyes, laugh and hear her laugh... all those ways we connect with people. And it's grief for those who had intimate relationships with her who will miss her in their own lives now. She's left a tangible hole she once filled.

It brings to the forefront once again for me just how important our relationship with death is.

Any moment could be our last, or the last of a loved one. This is not to be slighted; it is a part of our reality.

And as that moment arrives, have you said what you want to the people in your life? Have you cleaned up any heaviness in your heart? Have you planned for your service, your belongings and your body? Have you resolved your fear around dying and death? Can you die in this moment with ease in your Being? Are you ready?

The Native Americans have a saying: "Today is a good day to die for all the things of my life are present." I'm beginning to understand just how powerful this saying is. For me, "present" doesn't just mean "here." It also means that I've truly brought presence to all the pieces of my life: I hold them with love and honor, respecting them as a gift in every moment; I am current in my relationships with myself and with life; I am in my integrity; I am living with presence: all the things of my life are present. Then, any day is a good day to die.

As I prepare for my tele-conference series about conscious living through conscious dying, I am given a new opportunity to deepen into my relationship with death and to remember with more intensity why I embarked on this A Year To Love journey... which is to hold every moment of my life as a precious and temporary gift...

Sacred Intent for the New Year

2011-01-04T19:25:00.000-06:00

We're four days into the new year and folks are all about new year's resolutions. Personally, I turned in my resolutions years ago for intentions. My dictionary says that resolution is "boldness and firmness of purpose" while intention is "an aim or purpose." Call it semantics if you want, but it feels like a softer, gentler, more focused way to hold my energy for the year.

When we set intentions, we are putting things into motion on an energetic level. This is why it is so important to hold intentions in a sacred way. They are powerful acts of creation. When we set an intent, we are, in fact, creating a movement of energy in the infinite field of energy that we live in. We are asking for something new and specific to arise, and we are saying no to what no longer serves us. This is a sacred act not to be taken lightly. In taking such things lightly, we risk creating chaos in our lives.

This is a great time to take stock of our past resolutions or intentions, to choose again what we want to carry forward and what we want to let go of, and then to consciously cut from what we're leaving behind. Consciously cutting from what we no longer want in life is as important as choosing what we want. It frees up the energy we had invested in the old thing to feed the new thing we want today.

We are allowed to change our minds and change our direction; things change all the time. To ignore the changes means we are not present with what is. We can drag all the old stuff forward if we want, but all it does is weigh us down, slow our movement and add confusion to our journey. Now is the perfect time to review our old intentions and revise them, updating them to the newest version of who we are.

The funny thing about intentions is that they are a two-part process: we have them, we hold them with 100% commitment and yet we surrender them at the same time. Well, we don't really surrender them; we surrender how we think they should look. Usually when we set an intent, our mind butts in and tells us how it should look when the intent is met - how we will know we've succeeded. But the reality is that our mind doesn't see past our nose, so the picture it gives us is very limited and limiting. The mind wants us to believe that what we want is impossible or unobtainable for whatever reasons it conjures up. If we let it, it can stop us in our tracks...

That's why it's important to let go of the image the mind creates as the measure of whether or not we've been successful in our intentions. It's about releasing attachment to the outcome and opening up to the infinite possibilities. The feeling state of what we want to achieve seeds the Universe with what we are asking for; it's the vibration that the Universe responds to. So we let go of the how ("How will this happen? How will this look? How is this possible?") and focus our energy on the what. What is it that we want to feel when we meet our intent?

This is a great year to open up to the infinite possibilities surrounding our intents and invite the Universe to be creative in supporting their expression in our lives. We must open the eyes of our hearts to see the possibilities most clearly. They may not look at all like our mind imagines them, but that doesn't mean they didn't show up. If we limit our view to that of our mind and to what it thinks things are supposed to look like or how they're supposed to happen, we might easily miss what it is when it actually shows up!

I am reminded of how powerful it is to celebrate each intent and hold gratitude for each step we make toward it. Even the ones we let go of and cut from are important markers along our journey. What we don't choose is just as significant as what we do choose. Each choice is an expression of our being; each thing we accept or reject is a reflection of who we are in this moment. Take nothing for granted.

It's easy to fall into the trap of judging ourselves for not meeting our new year intentions. Be aware of this trap! Instead of judging yourself this year, take time to reflect on and decide if each intent you set is really what you want, and then celebrate your freedom to choose anew as you move your life forward.

Happy New Year, my friends. May you be inspired by the infinite possibilities of life.

Choose Love

2011-01-03T22:04:00.002-06:00

I started off this year doing something I've never done before: Instead of sleeping through or partying in the new year, I went to a gentle yoga class from 10 p.m. to midnight and then with this beautiful group of people, chanted in 2011 with "Om." At midnight, we shared a very full "Happy New Year!" and then popped open some champagne to toast the movement, the newness, the brightness and the divine. Wow - it was inspiring...

This year already seems to have some themes. The ones that I've noticed already are:

a beautiful blending of old and new
lots of movement - energetic and otherwise
lots of openings - opportunities to step into new things
lots of doorways or gateways - choices to brighten our lives
divine support - the shifts are happening easier and faster

I've heard the word "easy" more times in the past few days than I can count. And I've heard story after story from folks about how some need they had was quickly and easily met in an unexpected way, or how their long-time dream - whatever it was - suddenly became a reality. I take these stories as a really good sign for 2011!

I feel the Source energy vibrating more quickly now as if it is poised to respond to people's choices with excitement and love. And I sense that it's not the Source energy that has shifted; it's us who have and are shifting. Possibilities and opportunities have always been here, and it has been up to us to see them, open to them and choose them for ourselves.

Choice is our nature and our gift. Every movement of our energy is a choice - our thoughts, feelings and actions. Whatever we choose is perfect. Yet I've learned to choose in each moment with awareness that it is a choice - my choice - and that all choices have physical and vibrational consequences.

I cannot control the choices of others, yet I can control the choices of myself. Despite what anyone around me chooses, I can always choose for myself. It's just that simple.

I am reminded once again of a line from a song one of my spiritual teachers felt inspired to write recently: "Choose as love what is." I can make a conscious choice to be inspired and driven to action by love rather than something else, just because I can; it's my choice. What do you choose?

Value LIFE

2010-12-18T18:04:00.001-06:00

"Value LIFE above profit." That's what I came to after watching the movie Food, Inc. I've hesitated to see it, fearing that it would leave me feeling uncomfortable in my skin... which it did. I cried during most of it. I later realized that the tears came because I personalize the content; I do not feel any separation between me and any of the animals, people, land, etc. in the film: what is done to them is done to me... And it is painful to endure.

Yet, what the movie exposes feels so important for every single one of us to integrate - really integrate - into our Beings. If we don't and we continue to rest into a state of complacent denial, we're allowing a complete compromise of integrity to overtake this nation and beyond - a compromise that comes down to utter disrespect, irresponsibility and what can be considered criminal activity by those in power.

Their power is supported primarily by money: they hold the coffers for the rest of us, controlling how much to keep or share, dictating what behavior is allowed (to get your share), and not only withholding from but blatantly policing and punishing those who might disagree with the system they've so slyly yet mightily set into place. Where is the justice in that? Where is the democracy, the freedom that this nation is supposed to uphold?

I simply don't see any. We live beneath a smokescreen so thick that we can't see the truth, and that's just the way those in power like it to be. It's a complete hijacking of our personal freedom in my view - undeniable, reprehensible and the epitome of criminal.

Seeing this in a movie is one thing; taking personal action is another. There are many places in my life where I take personal action in support of what I believe in. The food I buy is one of those places. But even that only goes so far when those controlling the system have the power to create whatever they want without our agreement or knowledge.

If we all stopped long enough to take an intimate look at the truth of what's being created here, we might shudder in disgust, but we might also be moved by inspiration to make changes. It's time, folks. It's time for all of us to take a radically honest look at ourselves, our behavior and our creations so that we can bring some integrity - by the dictionary's definition, "moral uprightness, honesty, wholeness, soundness" - back into LIFE as we experience it here on this Planet. Right now, we are not doing so; we are not there...not even close.

A Year To Love?? My heart opens in deep gratitude to all those standing in integrity, and opens in invitation to all those who don't.

There's Gum Under My Shoe!

2010-12-08T11:39:00.000-06:00

The nice thing about sticky obstacles is that once you discover them, they become your ally. I've spent the past week with strong intent and actions to get clear around what these "new" obstacles are so I can clear them. I can't clear what I can't see!

My experience is that when I get right down to it, I cannot see them because they are hidden by one thing: my fear. My fear might be wrapped in all kinds of different-looking packages, but when I get right down to it, it's still fear. Fear leads to things like bolstering, comparing, judging, doubting, hiding, blaming, and sabotaging of myself and others. Yet, it's all really just about me.

Fortunately, I have a fabulous group of friends who - like me - all travel along their journeys with strong intent for freedom from such obstacles. So I figured I'd ask them what they see. I'm aware that I (we all) have shadow parts of myself that I simply cannot see - sticky obstacles - the gum under my shoes. I've learned now how useful it is to call in extra eyes when I'm feeling something that I cannot see or clear on my own.

For me to ask my friends, though, I had to first open my heart to what might come back to me, to hold their reflections as information rather than fuel for what the Toltecs call my Parasite. The Toltecs say we all have one - that voice in our heads that feeds us lies about ourselves; that awakens either the Judge or the Victim part of ourselves and stirs them up; that takes us away from the truth of who we really are - expressions of the Divine - and puts us into a place of fear.

What I want, what my intent is for this Adventures Of A Year To Love, is to move more closely toward living a life of joyful, open and loving presence - like little children. The Toltecs say that state is our true nature once we get past our Parasite... and that's the state I'm going for: a return to presence, innocence, openness, freedom, joy and love.

Coming face-to-face with all the gum under my shoes is just the first sticky step!

"Uh-Oh..."

2010-12-03T14:30:00.000-06:00

There's a well-known spiritual teaching that basically says "When you set an intent, every obstacle that might keep you from reaching it shows up to be cleared..." Although I'm very aware of this teaching within the context of my spiritual journey, I admit that I didn't consider it when I stepped onto this year-long commitment to walk through A Year To Love. Somehow I was holding this piece of my journey as separate from the rest.

It took less than a week for the obstacles to begin showing up here, and now I'm waiting for the other half of this teaching to appear as well, which says "...and so do all the supports you need to move past them."

It is December 3rd and I am a month into this journey. I have spent this first month acutely aware of coming face to face with some unpleasant obstacles that I thought were long gone from my being. Yet here they are, poking their little heads about to see what's going on and apparently, making a ruckus so I'll be sure to notice them... as if the discomfort I feel in their wake is not obvious enough...

"Do you REALLY want to live from a place of unconditional love? Well, then clean this little icky obstacle up, Honey."

EVERYTHING that will keep me from truly living A Year To Love is presenting itself for healing and clearing. Suddenly this adventure feels really, really BIG!

Honoring a Promise

2010-11-23T08:26:00.000-06:00

Many of you read about Priscilla, the beautiful Garden Spider that set up her home outside my office window late last summer. She created two egg sacs that hung beneath the soffit just above her web a few months before she died. Priscilla and I formed a sweet relationship during the months she hung out there watching over her babies. Her vibrancy, stamina, determination and especially the love she clearly showed for her babies touched my heart deeply.

When she died, I promised her I would make sure that her babies stayed safe until they emerged from their protective sacs. Just one problem: late Summer rains created flooding in our yard with a gully-washer that swept around the base of the same wall Priscilla had made her home. Deterioration of the bottom of the wall means that we must replace it and deal with drainage issues in the yard around it. Otherwise, we'll get water in the house each time we have a hard rain.

I panicked when I heard this because of Priscilla's babies. I knew they would either be knocked down to their deaths or have to be moved. I searched online for a way to move them but found nothing....So, my own brain began to work it out. I had to find a way to move them to a secure location before the wall was scheduled to be repaired.

I decided that I would use a thin piece of cardboard (of which I have many stashed in my "art supply center") with a piece of fabric glued to it, hoping the webbing would adhere to the fabric. I would (easily) slide the fabric-covered cardboard along the top of the webbing to "grab" the egg sacs (which of course would be dangling freely and happily beneath it), carefully transport them to their new location, and attach the cardboard to the soffit with nails, where the sacs would safely hang until the babies emerged.

Sounds great in theory, but I had no idea if it would work. There was only one way to find out...

The egg sacs in their original location

On Sunday, I got my sweetie (whom I'd already convinced of the importance of this) to help me with the "egg sac relocation." Step by step I proceeded with my plan: cardboard (Check!), fabric (Check!), fabric glued to cardboard (Check!), folded duck tape on back of cardboard to stick it up and hold it in place at the new location while tacking it (my smart sweetie's idea - Check!), hammer and nails (Check!)... Now all we need are the egg sacs...

...cardboard slipped above webbing under soffit to easily grab the egg sacs (with my sweeties hands underneath to catch them, just in case)...(Check??) "Wow, it's really sticky and dense. It's not really moving; it won't let go on it's own. I'll have to pull it down. It's YELLOW! It's so beautiful. It feels weird. OK, here I go....!"

So, I manually detached the webbing from the soffit, doing my best not to disturb the egg sacs as I dismantled their support system: "It's not sticking to the fabric. I'll have to wrap it around somehow so it will stay and they will keep hanging...Whoops! Sorry little babies! They just went sideways for a second; hang on! Oh, it's OK little babies; you're moving to a new home. Just hang in there!"

That's pretty much how it went for the 5 or so minutes it took to detach them while keeping them hanging freely in the beautiful and protective golden webbing Momma Priscilla had created for them. Oh, how I hated to pull that down! "I'm sorry little ones! Bear with me; this will just take a second! Almost there.... GOT IT!"

I was so happy to have them freely hanging below the fabric-cardboard bus of theirs, completely intact although a bit jumbled within the now-defunct golden webbing around them. My sweetie and I carefully carried them to their new location around the corner, set the cardboard in place and tacked it up. Then I worked to carefully rearrange their golden webbing so that it looked more as it did before I moved them, and so they were hanging down rather than sideways...

The egg sacs in their new location

Then, we took a bit of man-made webbing from Halloween and I did my best to recreate the kind of protective "shield" Momma Priscilla had set over them from the soffit above to the wall below. I stretched it as thinly as I could to imitate her skillfully laid shielding. Hers was far more artistic and graceful than mine. I have a new-found respect for these amazing creatures and the webs they weave.

Notice how visible my "webbing" is compared to Momma Priscilla's original webbing. I stretched it quite a bit to get it thin, although you can't really tell that in the picture. I may remove it once they are born. Somehow, these little egg sacs look much more vulnerable hanging here than they did where Momma Priscilla had set up house. Maybe that was part of why she put them where she did? Next time (if there is a next time), I'll pick a more camouflaged bus!

DONE! The beautiful egg sacs are now hanging just outside our back door where we can monitor them closely and send them lots of love until their birthdays... Looking at pictures of the babies online, I suspect we might regret this decision later...but hey, it works for now! (Shhhh! Don't tell my sweetie.)

Baby Garden Spiders

At the end of it all, we felt rather pleased and proud of what we'd managed to do. We have no idea if it worked or not; we won't know until the Spring when it will be time for these tiny creatures to emerge from their egg sacs. What we can say is that we did our best and that we wait with excitement and anticipation for the big Springtime "due date" (whenever that is).

I'd say that was a pretty good adventure on this A Year To Love journey...

"Que Sera Sera" (What will be will be.)

2010-11-19T07:26:00.000-06:00

Damn. What part of me thinks that it knows better than someone else
what's best for them? It's their life and it's their journey. I used to have a mantra that I would say to myself when I first started working to break this habit. It was: "It's perfect for them." I used this mantra as a reminder to myself that whatever was happening and however it felt to me, I could trust that it was perfect for whoever it was about.

Just because someone doesn't do what I believe would support their forward movement the most, doesn't mean that I am right! What looks like "stuckness" to me might be just what the person needs to heal something inside of themselves. How do I know that it's not perfectly aligned for them? Who am I to question their journey or their choices?

Who am I to question what is?

One of my spiritual teachers at the Toltec Center was inspired to write a beautiful song while on retreat recently. The chorus line to the song is:

"Choose as love what is." (Raven Smith)

I think this is my new mantra for Adventures Of A Year To Love...

You Don't Need A Shirt To Have A Button

2010-11-18T08:35:00.000-06:00

You know, I'm not perfect; no one is. As I like to say, "We are all perfectly imperfect!" But I do my best to put the highest vibration I can into the world. So I have a bit of heaviness in my heart today as I reflect on places during the past few days where I didn't meet up to my own expectation.

There were a couple of places where I took someone's reactions personally. The old button of "No matter what I do or how hard I try, it's not good enough..." got pushed and I went into my own reactions of feeling frustrated or even angry, small and unworthy. Right beneath that button is "... and something bad is going to happen." Then I feel hopeless and victimized. This is a very old emotional "knot" for me and I've worked hard to unweave the threads that keep it in place. Yet if there's one thing that can knock me off balance, that's the one. When this button gets pushed, I might as well be about 5 years old - a small, vulnerable child.

I "watched" myself slip into this pattern yet could not stop the emotions that arose, so I went fully into them. This is a trick I learned through my spiritual studies with the Austin Toltec Center. There's an emotional healing practice of going fully into the experience of emotions that arise rather then pushing against them or pushing them away. This allows the energy behind them to move through the body rather than being stored or getting stuck in the body.

This doesn't mean "go emote all over someone!" It means find some private space to release the emotional energy that arose in me. My emotions arise, exist and dissolve away again within me, not outside of me. They don't belong to anyone else; they belong to me. I am having the reaction; it's happening inside of me and has nothing to do with anyone else really, but that's an entirely different blog... It does have to do with my emotional wounding: my reactions show me where I still have healing and clean up to do within my own being.

When I stepped fully into my reaction, I found myself wanting to isolate myself. That's what I used to do as a child when I felt threatened; I'd go hide in a closet or up in a tree, away from everyone. Now, rather than hiding, I "take space" to feel into what's going on inside of me and figure out what's mine and what's the other person's responsibility. This time, once I connected with the button that got pushed, I was able to do something specific to release the emotional energy from my body (another trick from the Austin Toltec Center), shift out of the reaction and gently get on with my life.

Sometimes that process takes me a few minutes; sometimes several hours. This one, because it's such a deep-seated button for me, took several hours but by the next day, I was feeling more like myself again. The gift is that each time it happens I unweave a bit more of the knot that keeps this button in place, and each time the reaction gets smaller and the shifting gets easier. And now, sometimes I have no reaction at all.

I'm realizing on a much deeper level that walking through this A Year To Love means that I am learning to love myself more fully; then, I can truly love everyone else more fully too...

Love and Ego

2010-11-15T16:58:00.003-06:00

So, this is my year to really, really pull love into my being as the foundation of my interactions with the world around me. I'm keeping a close eye on it, as they say. I'm opening my awareness to all the places in my life where my heart closes and I separate myself from love.

In her book A Return To Love, Marianne Williamson says "Any situation that pushes our buttons is a situation where we don't yet have the capacity to be unconditionally loving." Hmmmm - that's powerful food for thought! In the past week, I found two places where I shut myself down to love:

The first was around a phone call I received from an ex of mine. Having no active relationship with this person today, I had a reaction to the call that was inviting me to an art opening in which they had four new pieces. My ego got angry and said "What - I don't hear from you EVER and now you just call to invite me to see your new art? No 'Hey, how are you? What'cha been up to? etc...' Just 'Come see my new art!'"

Oh boy, did my ego want to run away with that one! I heard a resounding "F--- you!" in my head, and it surprised me. How strange it felt to hear my mind scream this out about someone that I love, because the truth is that I do love this person, despite years of separation and limited communication. When I explored what was beneath the "F--- you!" I found that the truth is I miss this person; I miss sharing life with them, connecting about what's going on in our lives, and there's a part of me that still grieves the loss of that closeness and my "importance" in their life. This is not about anger or hatred; it's love... It may not look like love on the surface expression of it, but it is love.

So my question became: "What keeps me from responding from my deeper truth of love rather than the surface reactions of anger, blame, resentment or whatever else?" The truth is, it's only my ego and my ego's attachment to things other than love that keep me from being able to open to love in all of its expressions. And the reality is that this ex who called to invite me to the art opening was inspired by love - love of the art pieces, of the inspiration to create them, of the show itself, and of me. It wasn't their closure, but mine that kept me from responding from a place of love in that situation.

The second place I shut myself down to love was with my partner during an interaction we had this weekend. When I was called on to listen, I jumped in and took the first opportunity to "speak my mind" instead. I didn't allow the space they needed to feel complete before I launched into my own perspective... which, when I'm radically honest with myself, was about some unconscious part of me that felt right and wanted to make my point so that my partner "would understand; would get it; would agree with me; blah blah blah...."

Whew - that was hard to admit to myself and even harder to admit to my partner! But I did: I told myself first and then told them that it was not my intent to shut them down, that I would explore this more deeply within myself, work to be more aware of it, and that I loved them. In essence, I opened to love and was able to reconnect to myself from a place of self-love and acceptance, and then express myself from that place of honesty, which allowed me to reconnect to them. My closure was actually to myself because I felt guilty and ashamed for shutting them down (however unintentionally it was done...). It was only after shutting down to myself that I shut down to them. What a beautiful mirror for me to learn and grow from!

Today I sit on the other side of these discoveries, determined to shift the dynamics that led to them. And that is the beauty of this journey: endless opportunities to open my heart to love even more!

The Opening

2010-11-09T11:08:00.007-06:00

Ever have one of those days where everything just goes your way? The traffic lights turn green as you approach them; you see someone you've been meaning to call; you find the perfect parking spot; someone gifts you with something you've been wanting...? It's easy to hold love in my heart on those days.

But what about those other days when nothing seems to go your way? You're running late; the traffic lights go red as you approach; people are driving slow all around you; you miss important phone calls; you can't find a parking spot; you want something you can't afford...? What about on those days?

Can I still hold love in my heart?

I'm finding myself practicing opening to everything around me - especially to the things that feel uncomfortable. I've done this type of practice before, but this time it feels different, deeper, more real.

To have a life here is a gift. To feel the things I can sense here is a gift: the warmth of the sun on my skin; the cool breeze; the beautiful sound of wind chimes; the touch of a friend; the wetness of a sip of water; the tickle of blowing hair; the gentle crunch of the grass beneath my feet; the weight of a blanket in bed...

These are all things I get to experience here, just because I am here. They are just a part of being here. Opening to these sensations is a joy; it brings tears to my eyes...

In balance with that are things like accidentally bending a fingernail back; stepping barefoot on a sharp sticker bur; the death of someone or something I love; burning my wrist on the oven; stubbing my toe; a distressing phone call; having a migraine; getting a paper cut... These are also incredible sensations, just not what the mind would label as pleasant ones. They can also bring tears to my eyes...

Can I open to them too?

This is what I'm playing with more deeply: opening to all experiences and sensations... with love in my heart. Is it possible? Is it worth it? I believe that it is. It reminds me that everything is just a form of energy moving, some gently and some intensely... yet it is all just energy moving and expressing itself. I don't have to control or define any of it; I simply have to carry myself through it. I can do that in an open way or a closed way; I am choosing open this year.

This adventure is about deepening into the experience of carrying myself through life with an open heart to every bit of it...not only opening to what is, but loving what is. I don't know if I can, but this is the year to try!

This Side of Life

2010-11-03T16:55:00.000-05:00

It's funny: On Monday, I was dead; and today - just two days later - I am fully alive...

This side of life feels good; in fact, it feels better than ever! I got some valuable information in my 24-hour death that I will revisit later. For now, I'm enjoying the experience of being alive... again, and still.

The only life that I allowed into my day of death was the act of creating our Dia de los Muertos altar in another room of the house. This is something I've done for years and look forward to each year. I debated putting my own picture on it this year, but in the end decided not to. What a powerful experience it was to be walking in shadow and creating an altar to honor those who have crossed before me... It was as though just for that day, the veil had lifted and the light and the shadow had somehow reversed themselves, leaving me in the shadows and all of our beloved dead in the light...

I've learned through this and previous death experiences that every moment in life counts. It doesn't matter what's happening in that moment; it only matters that it is a moment... a moment of life, of living, and of loving. The other thing I've learned is that it really is up to me how each moment feels. Into each moment, I can offer a vibration that opens and lightens or I can offer a vibration that closes and darkens... Hell, I figure if I have a choice, I'll go for the open, light vibe whenever possible!

This year promises to be an interesting one, as every time I tell people what I've been doing that led to my death, I hear myself say "For the last year - since November of 2009 - I've been a part of A Year To Love group..." instead of "a year to live" group. Yet, isn't that what it's all about in the end: not just living, but loving...? And so my Adventures Of A Year To Live have come to an end and died right along with me. Yet just as all death is a transformation and I have been reborn, this adventure too, has transformed and is reborn. Welcome to: Adventures Of A Year To Love...

Birth Knocks

2010-11-02T00:13:00.000-05:00

I am reborn!

I am shaking off the heaviness of 24 hours of death as I step back into the fullness of life...

My breath deepens. My body moves. My mind stirs...

Slowly, I'm off for a cleansing shower and some food...

The rest of the story will come later.

Death Knocks

2010-11-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

And now I am dead...

Final Hours: Part 2

2010-10-31T23:58:00.002-05:00

2 HOURS: Just finished snacking on some of my favorite foods in the world: soft brie cheese and water crackers with more red wine... After all, I'm dying tomorrow!! My sweetie had them all beautifully plated for me when I got out of the tub...

Two hours left to live... What to do?? My sweetie has gone to sleep so that eyelids can stay open at work tomorrow. My own eyelids are getting quite heavy now too. I find myself contemplating how to spend these final hours again: Ceremony? Writing letters? Making video messages? Blogging? Meditating?

We saw the movie Hereafter. It wasn't quite what I thought it might be, but it was interesting nonetheless. Much of what they peeked into around the whole death thing was aligned with my personal experience. And oh yeah, I almost forgot I was going to share that story about my last dance with death...the head-on collision.

One drizzly, overcast afternoon nearly 12 years ago (in fact, almost to the day: November 6, 1998) while driving on a two-way road from an elementary campus back to the central office of the school district I was working for at the time, I was involved in a high-speed, high-impact head-on collision. Turns out that a high school up the road had just let out after having a big football pep rally. The 16-year-old kid who hit me was driving home with his girlfriend next to him in the front seat and his little sister in the back seat of his pick up truck - an F150. He came up over a big hill going about 70 miles an hour, all jazzed up and having no way to see until it was too late that traffic was backed up to the top of that hill from a light at the bottom.

Between his young experience, the slick wet road, the line of cars and his speed, he couldn't stop. In that split-second moment of choice, he felt he had nowhere to go but into my oncoming lane...so he did. Yours truly was first in line and WHAM! I looked him straight in the eyes as our vehicles collided, nose to nose. My little Toyota Corolla was no match for his pickup; it was an older model with no air bags (they weren't required in its day). I was only traveling at about 35 or 40 mph yet I learned later that the "speed of impact" is determined by adding our two speeds together, which was at least 105 mph...

It took several seconds (I guess) for my car to stop spinning. When it did, I heard a voice in my head as clear as anyone's say "Get out of the car. Get out of the car. Get out of the car..." over and over and over again. I listened to that guidance, peeled my face off the steering wheel, unbuckled my seat belt (which saved my life, by the way) and tried to open my door. It wouldn't open. "Get out of the car. Get out of the car. Get out of the car..." it kept saying. So I started to bump my left shoulder against the car door as hard as I could muster, holding my right hand on my nose to stop the bleeding.

Finally - and I have no idea how long it took - I got the door to open and slowly shimmied myself between my seat and the car metal at my chest. I stepped out of the car, looking around on the ground for some grass to go stand in because I wanted to get off the road. I figured if I was in grass, I would be off the road. I found some grass so I stood in it, cradling my hands under my nose as it bled.

At some point, a bunch of folks came running over to me in a panic and made me lay down, putting something soft under my head and covering my body with a jacket of some sort because it was damp and cold outside. I remember someone asking me if there was anyone else in the car with me, and when I said "No" they seemed hugely relieved. I noticed that someone was holding an umbrella over my head to keep the rain off because I could see it hovering over me just before my eyes closed.

I never saw the faces of these people; I could only hear and feel them. There was lots of voices and yelling and crashing and panic but I had no idea what was happening. It felt like chaos and I was nervous about being so close to the road with the cars crashing nearby around us. I do remember hearing someone yell "Someone stop those cars from coming over that hill!" And I thought to myself "Yes; good idea. Please do..."

Some lady standing near me asked if there was someone she could call for me. So I told her my purse and wallet were in my car with contact information, and I managed to give her my partner's name and cell phone number, but struggled to give her my parent's phone number before losing the inner connection between my brain and my mouth that allowed me to do so. I fought to stay conscious and form my mouth into each number I was thinking in my brain, loudly enough for this woman to hear me. But my mouth and my vocal chords were no longer in sync with my brain, and it took several tries for me to manage to whisper the final few numbers of my parent's phone number to her before losing the link completely...

I remember having great difficulty breathing because my chest hurt so bad every time I tried to inhale. I breathed quickly and shallowly to keep the air moving into my body but I felt like I was going to suffocate to death. As I laid there struggling to breathe, I thought to myself "This could be it. I could be dying. Huh - so this is what it feels like. My sweetie and Mom are going to be so sad." And I felt totally calm and at peace with the idea...

And here's where things got interesting. For what felt like a very long time, I was present in two places at one time: part of me was lying on the ground beneath that umbrella in the rain with people encircling me, and another part of me was hovering above that scene, looking down on myself and the crowd. I felt a strange and wonderful urge to go towards something that I could see and feel before me - a sort of energetic portal, I could say. The feeling from that place was overwhelmingly beautiful and all I knew was that I wanted to go there. It looked clear and white and bright with light. I kept trying to go there and thinking that I wanted to go there, but every time I tried, I heard a gentle, loving voice in my head say "It's not time. Go back. It's not your time. You must go back. No. It's not time. You must go back. Go back. No. It's not time..."

I don't know how long that went on. But what I do know is that I felt no fear or pain in that space in between; just pure love and bliss. The only time I felt any discomfort, pain or even fear was when someone would rouse me and I would blip back fully into my physical body for a moment. I remember wanting them to stop doing that but I was unable to tell them that; I remember wanting them to leave me alone so I could die, so I could go there, wherever there was.

Next thing I know, I'm being roused by some guy who's telling me to open my eyes. He's talking loudly to me and telling me I'm going to be OK in between sentence-by-sentence relays about my condition into what I imagine is a hand-held radio link to the hospital. He tells me I'm being loaded onto an ambulance and taken to a hospital in San Antonio. I can feel my body being loaded onto a gurney and lifted up into the ambulance. I hear a young man's voice say "What's her name?... Good luck Cecilia" as I'm being taken away. Later I realized that was the boy who hit me...

I was very lucky. I escaped with fractures, a broken nose and lots of cuts, scratches, bruises and swelling, but by the grace of the Divine, alive. I had lots of deep tissue damage and would deal with neck, spine and knee issues for years after that but I was alive; I was breathing. I heard later that I had been 2 inches away from being decapitated, the metal on my hood had been so far pushed up into the car from the impact. The first thing the cop said to me when he called at the hospital a few days later was "Little lady, it sure is good to hear your voice after seeing your car" to which I replied "It's good to be talking to you, Sir..."

I'd danced with death one more time and survived it. This time, I'd gotten some juicy information about "the other side." It was a long time before I really sat with all that happened that day, and it was years before I shared my experience of "dying" with anyone.

And now it's time for me to dance with death again, this time, by choice! So off I go...

Final Hours: Part 1

2010-10-31T21:48:00.001-05:00

3 HOURS: I just got out of a lovely hot bath that my sweetie set up for me complete with candles, a glass of my favorite red wine (Menage a Trois), some yummy body scrub, bubbles and the book I'm currently reading (The Dancing Wu Li Masters). Mmmmmmm, what a treat! I used to read in the tub all the time but haven't done so in a very, very long time. And actually, I only read a page or so from the book just before I got out...

I was so enticed by the hot water and the bubbles when I got into the tub that I forgot all about the book. Instead, I enjoyed rolling the water and bubbles over my body with my hands and splashing around on my back, watching the way the candle light danced on it all. Then I rolled over onto my belly and something unexpected happened: I began to weep. I wept from somewhere deep down in my belly for several minutes. I don't know why and it wasn't important at the time; I just wept.

[NOTE: How appropriate: I'm hearing spurts of group-blood-curdling screams in the air as I type this... having to do with a nearby Halloween "haunted house" I suspect.]

As I reflect on it now, I felt full of love in that moment as I wept. I felt full of all the love that went into creating that bath for me; I felt full of all the love that has been a part of my life these 46 years; I felt full of all the love I'm leaving behind in the world...

As I glanced around our tiny bathroom, I saw signs of my life everywhere: the shower curtain I painted; a piece of art I painted and one that I bought; my robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door; my towel; the red toilet seat cover and rug I bought.... signs of my life; signs that I was (am) here. "How long will it take for all those little signs to disappear?"

Zero Days and Counting...

2010-10-31T15:16:00.000-05:00

OK - so this is my last official day of life as I know it... My count of "Days Ahead" has dropped from 365 to 0 and tomorrow I die... Wow.

Tomorrow I die. Yesterday I lived; today I live; and tomorrow I die... just like that. It can happen any time but it's happening for me tomorrow.

So many questions cycling in my mind about what I want to do today: Nothing? Sit outside? Take a walk? Nap? Celebrate? Do ceremony? Video messages? Write letters? See a movie?" I realized that even on the edge of death, there's a part of me that still wants to do it or get it right. I don't know; can you die wrong?

My good girl says: "Well, of course you should write letters or make video messages to loved ones! Of course you should meditate and do ceremony! Of course you should be sad and grieving the end of your life, saying good bye to everything you love! Of course you should make this an extra special experience! After all, you're dying tomorrow..."

And my adventurous self says: "Just go out and have the best and most fun day ever!! After all, you're dying tomorrow..."

And my tired rational self says: "Well, you had a full and busy week last week and a big party last night. You only got 5 hours of sleep. Stay home and rest today. After all, you're dying tomorrow..."

And my pleaser says: "Spend time with your sweetie. She said she wanted time with you today. After all, you're dying tomorrow..."

And my spiritual self says: "Feel into what you really want to do and just do it! After all, you're dying tomorrow..."

And my human self says: "You're hungry. Eat! After all, you're dying tomorrow..."

So, I'm eating. My friend Arielle brought over a delicious macaroni and cheese dish to the Halloween costume party last night, so I'm eating some... yum!! And then, my sweetie and I are going to see the movie "Hereafter."

And after that? Hmmm.... I'll know when I get there I guess.

Death-Defying Part 3

2010-10-30T11:07:00.001-05:00

Seems like things were quiet in my life for a while from elementary school until I was much older in graduate school. One summer while riding my bike to campus to study for preliminary exams, I was hit broad-side by a pick-up truck. I remember watching it happen as if watching a movie in slow motion: "There's a truck; he's turning. Does he see me? He doesn't see me! I can't go anywhere and I can't stop because there are cars behind me and next to me. Whistle; yell; do something to get his attention: HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY!!!! Where's he looking? He's not looking! He's going to hit me. HE'S GOING TO HIT ME! Get ready!"

I literally pushed myself away from the truck bumper with my hand as it hit me, launching me several feet into the air. I panicked because I wasn't wearing a helmet: "Keep your head up; keep your head up; keep your head up!" raced through my mind as I floated through the air. I knew what happened to brain injured folks; I worked with them as part of my training. I hit the pavement hard and rolled a few feet more.

When I came to stillness and regained some awareness, I heard a hissing sound and wondered what it was. I opened my eyes to see my bottle of sparkling water standing straight up in the middle of the street spewing water into the sunlight and air like a beautiful fountain. All the snacks from my basket were scattered about the road along with my books and papers, and people were rushing around here and there collecting things. A few of them came to see if I was OK - other students on their way to campus. One was yelling at the truck driver angrily. There wasn't much I could do but lay there for a minute.

A cop showed up and took charge, getting all the details from the bystanders about what happened. All I could do for a while was sit there and smile, filled with gratitude that my head was intact! It took me a bit of time to speak; nothing else mattered to me in that moment...

When the data was gathered and the street had cleared, the cop said I could go home. There was just one problem: I couldn't walk. My ankle was so banged up that I couldn't stand on it. Just like in the movie "An Officer and A Gentleman," the cop took it upon himself not only to pick me up, put me in his cop car and drive me to the campus health clinic, but then he picked me up again and carried me into the clinic in his arms like a gentleman, saying that it just wasn't right for me to have to hop my way inside. He sat me in a waiting room chair and told the woman at the counter what had happened and to get me some help. Then he smiled at me, wished me well and left... my hero.

I escaped that time with a badly sprained ankle (yay - crutches for weeks), sore wrist, lots of scrapes, scratches, cuts and big huge colorful bruises all over my body, and most importantly - my head intact. Boy was I happy!

Several years after that, I was involved in a head-on collision that I was lucky to survive... but I'll save that one for another blog. What's important to me right now is noticing that I've already defied death at least five times in my life. I wonder how many more chances I get??

Death-Defying: Part 2

2010-10-30T11:06:00.001-05:00

The Angel of Death has been gracious with me. Before I even finished elementary school, I had several brushes with death. You read about the first two in the last blog, both about choking. This time, it has to do with drowning.

Once during elementary school, I nearly drowned at the Texas coast while playing out in the deep water with my sisters and some cousins. We were all floating around out there clinging onto two big inner tubes when suddenly a huge - and I mean huge - wave arose in the distance. My oldest sister who was "in charge" because she was the oldest in our group, started to panic and screamed to all of us "Hold on tight! Just hold on to the tube; don't let it go! Hold on as tight as you can!" I nervously glanced over at my other sisters and cousins nearby on their tube and I wondered if it would be the last time any of us were alive.

Watching that wave grow as it moved over the water toward us, I wrapped my arms as far around that tube as I could get them and clung to it for my life, praying for all of us. I watched the wave get bigger and bigger like a brick wall rising out of the ocean as it approached. I was amazed with awe at its size. It was the biggest wave I'd ever seen and certainly bigger than any I'd imagined, and I was scared.

I could hear the fear in my sister's voice as well, which made me even more afraid. She was the bravest person I knew. She was the one of us who walked outside in the worst of rain, thunder and lightening storms, loving every minute of it and totally unafraid. She told us all to take a big breath of air and hold it just before the wave hit us. I wasn't sure why, but I did as she said. I have no idea how many times she screamed "Hold on tight! Don't let go!" to us all before the wave crashed down on us, but it crashed so hard that it flung us all over the place.

The next thing I knew, I was rolling around in the water, totally lost as to what direction was up and what direction was down, but happy to be alive... at least for that moment. I remember realizing that I was going to need more air soon, but didn't know which way to go to get it. Even with my eyes open, all I could see was stirred up sand. It occurred to me that I might drown right there and then, and that I was not safe yet. I wondered why we'd done such a stupid thing as that - going out way beyond where any of us could reach for safety. And then I thought of my sisters and cousins, wondering if they'd survived the wave too or if I was just the lucky one.

Suddenly I felt my foot hit the bottom of the ocean and I launched myself up like a rocket towards the surface of the water. Oh boy, was I happy to get my head up out of that water! I made my way back to the shore, coughing and spewing, swimming until I could feel my feet on the sand. I decided in that moment that I was done with the ocean for the day. It felt too big and strong for me, and I had a new respect for it's power.

When I looked around as I walked ashore, I could see my sisters and cousins all strewn about along the beach like shipwreck victims, trying to get their bearings as to where the heck they were. I was happy to spot my anxious mother on the shore near our umbrella - my anchor to life. She'd nervously watched the whole thing and was counting us kids like a wild wolf counting her pups as we surfaced. Ultimately, we all made it back to "base camp" in one soggy piece. She wrapped each of us in a warm, dry towel and fed us tuna sandwiches. After that, we all called it a day.

Also in elementary school, I failed to shut the car door properly when my mom picked us up from school one afternoon, and it flew open down the road nearly flinging me to the pavement. My only saving grace that time was my sister who sat next to me in the back seat; she grabbed my clothing and kept me from falling out of the car until my mom could pull over.

Funny thing was that as I hung out of the car suspended over the pavement as it went by, dangling between my sister's grip and my own hand pressed against the open door, I clutched onto my school books with my free hand, worried that they would fall to the pavement below me and get ruined. I don't know how long I hung there before the car stopped so I could shut the door, but it felt like a mighty long time.

So you see, by the time I was in the 5th grade, I had already danced with death at least 4 times. It's a miracle that I made it to high school and through college, which turned out to be relatively quiet phases for me. Now graduate school and beyond was a different story. Read the next blog to find out why...

Death-Defying Part 1

2010-10-30T10:25:00.004-05:00

Today I find myself with one day left to live. Tomorrow, I'll have 0 days left to live, and on Monday, I will die. It's a strange thing to know you are dying. It seems there are still so many things that I want to experience. Yet, when you're dying, there's nothing to really do except surrender to what is.

I contemplate what I will say to those I know and love on my final day tomorrow before I die. My plan is to make a video message to them tomorrow, and to simply allow whatever arises to be expressed. Even thinking about it brings up emotion in my being.

It's not like this is the first time I've "nearly died." I've had many brushes with death in this lifetime, starting when I was just an infant. My mother shares the story of me choking on a small piece of meat she'd chewed up a bit and given to me when I was around a year or two old... like a mama bird feeding her young. My eyes rolled back in my head and I turned blue. Somehow she managed to get that piece of meat out of my throat before it totally took me out. That was my first dance with death.

My second dance happened when I was around six to eight years old. One afternoon I asked my mom if I could have some sugar cubes from the jar she stored in our kitchen pantry. I wanted them for a snack; she kept them for guests who wanted sugar with their coffee or tea. She said no (as any responsible parent would). But I was stubborn and intent, and I LOVED sugar cubes; I thought they were the smartest invention ever!

So I sneakily and quietly opened that jar in the pantry for a small handful of the treats. I hid five of them in my palm as I walked back to my room, closed the door behind me and then sat in front of the big picture window by my bed and ate them... which would have been fine except that I didn't just eat them. I tossed them up into the air like I'd seen my older sister do with popcorn and caught them in my mouth one by one. This was a fun game! The first four went right into my mouth and landed on my tongue where I let them slowly dissolve... yum! The fifth one rolled right down my throat and got lodged there... Yep, choking again!

It didn't take me long to figure out that that sugar cube was not going anywhere without some help. Once I realized that I couldn't breath, I ran out of my room clutching my throat and making a very interesting sound as I tried to express to my mom and one of my older sisters what was happening. My mother stood up in a panic, not understanding; it was my sister who figured out that I was choking on something. They flipped me over and hung me upside down, one of them holding my ankles shaking me up and down while the other one beat on my back; I'm not sure who did what.

Eventually (and I have no idea how long it took) that silly little sugar cube came rolling out of my throat and onto the carpet below me, covered with blood. Well, that's all it took for me to snatch up that sugar cube and "tuck tail and run" in complete and utter shame about what I'd done. I don't recall my sister or mother saying a word; they just let me go hide in my closet, which was my way of coping when I felt uncomfortable.

I don't know how long I stayed in that closet but it felt like a very long time because I missed supper and it was dark outside before I finally eased my way out as quietly as I could and slinked into my bed for the night. I guess they figured the shame I felt for so actively disobeying my mother was enough of a punishment, so they let me be.

From my Spanish Catholic-raised young mind, I thought that God had punished me for sneakily going against my mother by making me choke, and I wondered why he waited until the last of my five sugar cubes to do so. It certainly made for a more dramatic experience. I must admit that I felt somewhat lucky and extremely grateful for it because there wasn't any evidence of the other four that I'd already eaten. "Maybe they'll just believe that I'm not that bad of a kid since they only saw one..."

I had a couple more brushes with death before I escaped elementary school. You can read about them in Part 2...

FIVE...!!

2010-10-26T15:17:00.034-05:00

Five days left before my death... Oh boy, is my mind racing. Part of me wants to panic, feeling rushed to complete lots of projects and ideas ("Have I forgotten anything??"). Part of me wants to rest, feeling peaceful and full from all the things I've experienced here ("Wow. What a ride!"). And part of me wants to have a huge party with all the people who have been a part of it in celebration of a life begun in innocence, lived to my best ability, and now surrendered...for better or worse ("Thank you all. I love you all. Celebrate my transformation!").

I remember participating in a specific death ceremony not too many years ago at a sacred site down in Mexico with a couple of my spiritual teachers. Part of the ceremony meant gathering up a "double" of all parts of your self and your life, and offering it to The Angel of Death in gratitude. I remember being hesitant to do so, thinking to myself "I wouldn't wish this mess on anyone! I have nothing positive to offer. Do I really want to give this to the Angel of Death? It doesn't feel like an offering; it feels like a burden..."

Recalling that now makes me chuckle. My life today feels so different; I've come to appreciate every stinking bit of it...the good, the bad and the ugly, as I like to say. I've achieved many of the things I hoped to: survived high school, went to college, got my Ph.D., had a career, published a book, created an intimate circle of friends and seekers, and felt a full spectrum of things along the way.

Now I can say I'm living my dream - doing things that I love in service to the Divine - teaching Kundalini Yoga, counseling and spiritual life coaching, writing, and offering workshops to heal, open and inspire the heart. I am blessed to share a sacred partnership with a beautiful human being that supports, loves, accepts and expands me. I live in authenticity and feel good about who I am, continually seeking opportunities to get bigger in service. I love where I live and I love my pets. In fact, there is nothing about my life today that I am unhappy with; it is all potential to expand. Today, I happily offer the fullness of my life up to the Angel of Death with tremendous gratitude. I believe I've found heaven in my heart.

And I have aspirations and visions for more in my being - something even bigger than what I've already created. I feel it around the corner yet I don't quite know what's there yet... Oh Angel of Death, be merciful. May the transition be filled with light and grace, opening gateways to the vast and infinite beyond; and may I simply step up...

Countdown

2010-10-22T08:25:00.000-05:00

There are so many thoughts and sensations moving through my body these days as I approach the end of my "A Year To Live" adventure. Changing the death countdown from 10 to 9 today felt a bit like hitting the big red button for a shuttle lift-off. I could hear my own voice in my head saying with passion and maybe even excitement and a bit of anxiety: "Ten! Nine!..."

Last night I returned to my favorite labyrinth to walk it beneath the big bright moon. The sky was virtually clear all day and night until about 5 minutes before I walked when a thin cloud bank moved over it. It was interesting to see and feel the difference in the energy of this walk compared to the last. The last moon was bright and vibrant with energy and the contrast between the light and shadows was stark. This time, the moon was veiled and the light-shadow contrast was barely noticeable. The energy and the light was gentle and soft.

I felt my body relating to that shift. As I approach the end of this year, my own energy feels more gentle and soft. There is an urge to slow down, rest into what's here, and stop all the business so I can drop more deeply into connection with it all. It's an interesting contrast between the ending and a beginning. I feel the ending of this year approaching; I also feel the possibility of birth, newness and freshness on the other side of it. There's a sense of spaciousness hovering just beyond the surrender...

Yesterday a client struggled with whether or not her presence in life was helping or hurting the world; she questioned her own purpose for being here. I heard myself say: "There's no greater purpose or service to the Divine than raising our own vibration." This is a truth that I have come to hold. We spend so much time in our lives questioning our choices, our reasons for being here, our purpose. The answer is in the process of questioning...

What I believe is that we don't have to do anything special to make our journey here meaningful or purposeful; all we have to do is question. The questioning guides us to raise our own vibration. That is living a purposeful life.

Every day my question is: "How I can be of service today?" The rest of my day is spent paying attention to that - to what arises within that frame. It's a very simple question with no specific answer. And it unfolds in powerful and mysterious ways.

As I approach this death, I'm still asking that question every day: "How can I be of service today?" Maybe I already have...just by the asking.

Priscilla & The Way

2010-10-20T12:13:00.005-05:00

Meet "Priscilla." Priscilla is a beautiful garden spider that set up house on the back of my office wall outside. She has been there (to my noticing) for about a month. When I first saw her, she was big and vibrant, sitting in the center of a large, intricate web design. When I introduced myself to her, she shared that her name was "Priscilla," adding quite clearly that she was in no way prissy.

Beneath the roof above her was a large round egg sack. A few days later, a second egg sack appeared. I figure she must be pretty stout to create not one but two egg sacks... Priscilla stayed just below the sacks for weeks, diligently rebuilding her web whenever it got damaged. Then about a week ago she relocated herself around the corner of the building, leaving her egg sacks well sheltered and protected.

This week, I watched her slowly fade. Her body went from full and vibrant to shriveled, dull, and dark. Knowing that she was dying, I spoke to her daily, reassuring her that her egg sacks were healthy and safe, and that I would make sure they survived until birth.

Yesterday when I visited Priscilla, she looked and felt very weak in her web. An hour later, she abandoned her web for a single thread which she hoisted herself up onto. She clung there, weakly, for maybe half an hour until she dropped to the ground, nearly lifeless. I took the liberty of picking her up, showing her the safe, healthy egg sacks one last time, and placing her among flowers and greenery in my garden beneath my office window for her final rest.

Priscilla reminded me of the beauty and power of The Way. All things arise from the infinite field of energy, exist for a period of time, and then dissolve away again, having left something behind for those remaining. Although we grieve the surrendering, it is a gift and an integral part of the cycle of all things. Without the shedding of what's served it's purpose and expired, there would be no space or nourishment for the new to arise.

I am reminded of my own tiny deaths each day - the parts of me that I surrender for new parts to be born. From Priscilla's death will come hundreds of baby spiders! I am watching anxiously and excitedly for them to appear from their healthy egg sacks, and am wondering with as much excitement about what will arise in my own life from my upcoming death.

For in just 11 days, another cycle of my life will unfold: I will die and be reborn, free of what no longer serves my highest good and my ability to be of service to the Divine. This is the end of a conscious year of living and life - the end of my A Year To Live adventure. What is beyond it, I don't know. That's the mystery of the other side: we don't know until we're there.

If you want to take a peek to the other side, consider joining me for a fun and full Dia de los Muertos workshop (http://www.myinnerscapes.com/workshops/) on November 29th, perfectly timed when the veils are thinnest. Learn about the special energy of Day of the Dead, glimpse into the other realm through a psychic medium, make objects for your own altar, and leave with a fun goodies bag to get you in the spirit.

Death is not our enemy but our ally. Celebrate The Way!

Dragons and Faeries and Wizards, oh my!

2010-10-18T15:17:00.000-05:00

Well, I was mistaken: I only thought last weekend was my final trip to the Texas Renaissance Festival (fondly known as "TRF") in this year to live, when in fact, I went again this past Sunday... and yes, had an absolute ball being a faery in what can best be described as the land of magical fantasy.

You see, each weekend has a theme: last weekend (opening weekend) was Octoberfest so I dressed up like a gypsy; and this weekend was "1001 Dreams" so I dressed up like an Earth Faery and walked among the Wizards, elves, dragons, and Ents (check your Lord of the Rings history if you don't know what an Ent is...).

I even got to throw an axe at a target which I hit but not the bullseye. For some reason, this particular game inspires me more than any of the others... except that I had to take off my wings so as not to chop them up with the axe! I felt good for having stuck most of my axes firmly in the wooden wall while the big muscular dudes around me were only bouncing them off to the ground in dismay...

The Renaissance Festival gives everyone the chance to play like a kid on Halloween and be whoever you choose for a day. It's kinda like the whole Las Vegas thing: "What happens at TRF stays at TRF." For me, it's a chance to wear a fantasy skin and be among hundreds of other folks wearing different skins too - taking on a "new" persona from head to toe - and loving every minute of it.

At TRF, you get a taste of magical life at its best and most fun. But it's not all about the magic. You also get to see what it is that keeps you from opening up fully to life itself. If you can't open up in fantasy land then chances are good that you can't open up in life either. It's a great place to see what the internal obstacles are that keep you closed up to living life to the fullest and most vibrant degree. And why not? We're only here once in this particular human form.

Hey - time's a ticking. The TRF goes on every weekend through November 28th out near Plantersville, TX. What are you waiting for? Go have some fun!

This is my life... for 20 more days

2010-10-11T16:05:00.000-05:00

Wow - just 20 days left! Suddenly a part of me panics at the thought..."OK. You have 20 days left. What are you going to do with them? 20 days isn't very long..."

Of course the truth is that although I have 20 days left to live in this A Year To Live experiment, I may really only have a few minutes or hours.... The Angel of Death can tap on our shoulder at any moment of any day. That is the truth. So why am I worrying about 20 days?

There's a part of me that would have loved to go to Italy, France, Holland, Spain and all those other places before I died. And there's the part of me that has been completely full and happy just being right here, living my life and loving the people and things that are a part of it.

This weekend I went to the Texas Renaissance Fest with my sweetie and a couple of friends. I walked into the fest dressed in jeans and a t-shirt but walked out dressed in a gypsy outfit complete with a jingle-jangly belt around my waist. Oh boy, did we have a blast! We danced and laughed and flirted and ate strange food and got henna tattoos and saw all kinds of great things happening around us. It occurred to me while we were there that it would be my last fest in this year to live, and who knows... maybe ever. So I played hard and felt free.

This is my life: filled with service work that I love; a sacred partnership that fills me with such sweetness; friendships that are true, intimate and playful; and a heart filled with joy at all of it. I look at my life and it makes me happy to see what I've created. It didn't always feel this great, but it does now...

If the Angel of Death tapped on my shoulder right now, I would leave this life feeling full and happy in my heart. So don't be too sad to see me go; celebrate the gifts that life offers in every moment and claim them in their fullest expression for yourself.

26 Days and Counting

2010-10-05T14:37:00.004-05:00

Wow - not much time left. I contemplate how to spend it during these fabulously beautiful fall days beneath clear, sunny, cool, breezy skies and crisp, clear, breezy nights. I realize that I am happy with my life these days. It is so full of goodness and love. I love my partner; I love my teaching; I love my writing; I love my counseling and coaching; I love my home and my pets; I love my friends and colleagues; I love my family...and most of all, I love myself; I love who I've become. Yes, my life is full and rich with goodness and love.

How does one prepare to say "Good bye" to all of this goodness? Should I write a letter? Make a video? Or spend my time connecting with people directly instead? Do I tell people? Will they understand? What do I say as I look at them with overwhelm at their beauty and the beauty of everything around me - so filled with appreciation, gratitude and joy for it all?

Life is such a gift. We don't give it nearly the amount of acknowledgment it deserves. And this Earth! We have no idea how fortunate we are to have such a magnificent place to live and grow and experience here.

What keeps us from truly being here? Why do any of us spend our lives beneath a thick fog of anything other than sheer joy, freedom, love and intimacy? Why are we so scared? What are we so scared of?

Why do we separate ourselves from all the rest when we are born of the same Source, when we are all family in the end? What makes us so closed that we can't bring ourselves to simply love? Is it really as simple as loving ourselves? Of recognizing our own divinity? Of releasing all the fears and trappings of our error thinking?

To think of ourselves as anything less than divine, and anything less than whole, and anything less than connected to all other things is to deny our origins in the Highest Power (God, Allah, Creator, Great Spirit, Buddha, etc...) from which we have all emerged. Quantum Mechanics is proving this today; we can no longer deny that we are all born of the same Source, however we view it, define it or describe it. There is only one Source of life in the end.

So why do any of us - why do I - spend any time at all feeling somehow less than something when all that I am is a unique expression of that Life Source?

Moon Walk

2010-09-25T02:52:00.047-05:00

Thursday night I walked my favorite labyrinth under the full moon. I've been visiting this particular labyrinth for maybe 12 years. The stones it is made up of are white and they glow in the moonlight, giving a magical feel to the place and space, especially on a clear full moon night.

As I enter my last month to live on this "A Year To Live" adventure, things are becoming extra poignant. Walking around the labyrinth between the darkened shadows cast by oak trees and the clear white light cast by Grandmother Moon, I experienced in a very concrete way how light exists within shadows and shadows exist within light. There is no separation; the two exist among each other in a beautiful balance of light and dark. Without both, who would really know either one?

I think my experience with this balance was in answer to an intent I sent out to Grandmother Moon before walking the labyrinth: "I ask for your support in releasing any and all attachment or resistance I have to the suffering of myself or anyone and anything else." While dancing among the light and the shadows cast by the trees and the moon, I realized - I felt - that it is all a perfect balance of energies and that both are necessary; both are a part of life and living. Without both, there would be no wholeness or balance.

Following the path to the center, there were moments when my shadow was cast directly in front of me - just like a person - a body double. I connected with this shadowy body double of me and held her as the residue of me that will remain in this physical plane after I'm dead. There she was, a mere shadow of what used to be me; a footprint; a reflection of my energy; neutral space where I once was; someone's fading memories. "How long will she remain?" I wondered, "How long will I be remembered and in what ways?"

I got to thinking about who I am, really. "Am I me or is that shadow the real me? Who is the me that people will remember? Who do I want them to remember and why? What am I leaving behind in my wake?" In one generation or less, any memory of me can be completely erased, my life here dissolved. Every adventure, every experience, every breath completely erased - my existence here forgotten, irrelevant history...

What I realized is that this journey is not about bringing all the things in my life to completion before I die - all the relationships, projects, paper work, teachings, etc. It is about bringing ME to completion before I die. "How much of what keeps me separate from love and divinity can I surrender and release before I die? Because what's left is the real me."

Yes: How much?

A Song For The Dying

2010-09-09T08:43:00.000-05:00

These days I'm not sure what's related to what. Am I feeling physically tired and fatigued because of some nutritional or hormonal issue? Or because I'm busier with writing, teaching, and presenting? Or because I'm not sleeping very well? Or because my neck has been giving me grief so I haven't been able to exercise regularly? Or because of the energetic shifts that are happening Universally and within my being? Or because I'm coming close to my death date?

52 DAYS is a very short time that I have left in this experience. I'm contemplating the details of my death and how I want to approach it. Do I want to have a big celebration or a quiet, intimate exit? How important is it that I finalize all the details of how to handle my body? Who do I want to contact and in what way before I die? How do I really want to spend this last 52 days?

Of all the questions flowing through, the one arising the most is What is my death chant? Somehow this one piece feels most important to my process. I feel that it would be comforting to have one rehearsed and intimately familiar when I die. There is something beautiful about the vibration of sound in and out of the body...

Levine describes the healing/death chant as "a familiar path into the unfamiliar - a sacred path." He writes: "A death chant can act as a refuge from the storm, or an open window to the sun. Whatever the chant is it will bring us closer to grace, our original nature, the Kingdom of Heaven that is within."

For all of those that I have death-walked, I've sung to them for hours as they transitioned. It is a beautiful thing to watch the spirit of a being rest into the sounds of a song. I don't know if there will be anyone by my side singing to me when I die, but I can be; I can sing to myself!

Aside from all the formal details of what will happen to me and my stuff, the death chant feels most significant as a bridge between this physical life and the ethereal one that I'll be shifting into. This is the piece to focus on; this is the way forward. The rest feels like looking back, which I've spent lots of time doing already, cleaning up and preparing things.

Yes - my death chant is calling...

The Inconvenience of Death

2010-08-28T15:43:00.000-05:00

My friend and I were talking last night about this A Year To Live experience that we've both been a part of since last November. "It's so funny. I'm finding myself saying to myself 'I don't have time for death!' I have too much to do!" she shared. "I know. Isn't it crazy how death feels like an inconvenience?" I said.

But the reality is that we never know when death will arrive for us, and we won't always have the opportunity to clean up everything in our lives that we would like to before we die. That's the nice thing about this year to live experience: It's giving me the opportunity to at least look at all those places in my life that are messy and start to clean them up. Maybe if I do this as a regular practice, by the time I really die, my heart will be lighter and my life will be in an easier place for those dealing with what's left behind...

My friend and I also talked about all the things we're not able to do before November 1st that we once thought we'd want to do before we die - travel to new places, do certain things, have certain experiences... And we realized that neither of us care about those things anymore. Yep, it might have been nice, but what matters the most to each of us is what we are doing right now - today - in this moment.

How present are we in what we're doing? How fully are we participating in each moment of our lives? How willing are we to be with what is rather than contemplating what we wish was or what we're not going to be able to do? How open are we to what is, even if it's something uncomfortable?

Because what we realize is that whatever it is, it's our life! This is our life! For however much time we have in it, isn't it more valuable to live it openly and fully than to close around it, resist or push away what is?

Sounds of Silence - Part 2

2010-08-23T11:17:00.000-05:00

Wow - what an experience silence was! It did not unroll as I intended. In fact, I broke my silence completely on Friday... Yep - just one day after I started it. I'm still unraveling everything that arose for me during that time, but here's what I got so far:

I am angry... Yep - angry. Part of me has risen up in protest to all the things that are asked of me every day. It says "I don't ask for much from people, and all I asked for was one day of silence - just one!"And even that was not possible.

People pulled at me all day long, asking for things - things that required words. One friend even asked "Are you really not talking or just...." Just what? Pretending to be in silence? What kind of a question is that? Would I have been wearing a sign around my neck that said "I am in Silence" if I weren't really in silence?

So I talked. I talked just about whenever someone asked me to. This is not being in silence. There were moments when I tried to communicate with gestures; it just got too complicated. It was just easier to talk. And believe me - I know it's not because what I have to say is so important.

I found it interesting to watch how things unfolded in my silence, and how it felt to have the people around me getting frustrated and uneasy with me not talking. I felt them pulling at me for this or that; that's the best way I can describe it. They wanted me to do and be who I always was, not this silent person with nothing to offer. A couple of friends asked in frustration or confusion "Didn't you get the email?" because I was offline all day. I felt like they needed something from me that they weren't getting in my silence, and this made both of us uncomfortable.

This is valuable information for me! I get to look at what I thought would happen if I maintained silence despite their pulling. And I get to look at all the ways I work to keep things steady and stable around me... to feel comfortable myself I imagine... to live up to some kind of identity I have. So I ask myself now: "Who would I be without that identity?" That's a question worth exploring.

I really got to see how uncomfortable folks are with silence and even with the idea of silence. When I'd show them my sign, most people would whisper "Oh!" and tip-toe away as if they had to be silent around me too. It was hilarious! Two friends canceled a dinner meeting with me and my sweetie because they wanted to "talk and catch up," and felt uncomfortable with me in silence. Why? I can still listen and laugh and participate... just without my own words. So what? What's the big deal about that? I sensed their judgement around my choice and could practically hear them joking about it even though I never saw them that day. It felt disrespectful; that's all I know.

So overall, I'd say that the part of my experience that was around being silent failed for the most part. But the experience itself was a huge success. I learned so many things about my self and my life that I hadn't quite seen in the way I did that day. Now I am determined to go into silence again, but this time for real, some time before I die in November. I don't know for how long, but I know I will revisit this practice; only this time, I will not break it for the comfort or convenience of myself or anyone else. This time, I will move beyond the discomfort to see what's there.