25 May 2010

Matters of the Heart

My Dad had a heart procedure last Friday. It was a hasty decision yet one that was postponed from last year. He was ready; it was time. I considered the possibilities of what could happen; my Dad is approaching 78 years of age. I spoke to him on the phone an hour before the procedure and could feel his anxiety. Pushing past years of tension between us, I felt him respond with love, gratitude, and even forgiveness to my phone call.

I found myself feeling grateful to the Angel of Death for all She has taught me in recent years...grateful and confident that when I die, I will surrender with openness and gratitude, peaceful in my heart that I am leaving a fairly clean path behind me. I recalled all the healing I've done in relation to the Angel of Death and to my Dad, and I fell into a place of complete allowing around his procedure. "I feel clean with him" I thought, "I've finally reached the place where I can be open and loving with him no matter where he is with me." I reflected on our past few visits and witnessed this to be true. That was a great feeling!

My Dad's not big on apologies and is, of course, always right, which makes me always wrong in his view (unless I agree with him). Yet I could almost hear an apology from him when I called; I could feel the "I'm sorry..." in his heart, sensing an awareness that he may not get a chance to change anything he might be regretting, and a desire to reach out and connect somehow in what may be his "final hour." Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but it is what I felt. He was present, gentle, open, and as loving as he could be on that call.

The beauty of the experience for me was the opportunity to notice that what's in my heart for him any more is gratitude - gratitude for all the things I've learned through him - that through him, I've deepened my experience of love, compassion, openness, forgiveness, and personal power.

And I noticed that I love him dearly... not from a place of attachment, but from a place of Divinity. What a beautiful thing to feel.

06 May 2010

Flourish

In the wave of Spring energy and the growing light of day from Beltane, I make space to step outside and enjoy the gorgeous weather. On Sunday - Beltane - I participated in a day-long workshop for women about honoring and feeding energy to the things in our lives that we are birthing. Spring and in particular, Beltane are all about birth, fertility, the Earth, abundance, planting and blossoming, sexuality, and the balance between the energies of the Earth/Feminine and the Sky/Masculine within our beings, in alignment with the balanced need for both female and male energies in creating life in general.

In preparing for the very sacred day to begin, we were invited to find a word or a phrase that held the energy of what we were wanting to grow in our lives. Instantly, the word that arose in my mind was "Flourish." What a perfect word for my day, considering that I am smack-dab in the middle of "growing" several things: my books, my yoga classes, my workshop offerings, and my personal support/life coaching practice.

Over the course of the day, we entered into deep relationship with each the Elements to find support around our intent. Every time I met one of the Elements, I asked "What can you offer around my intent to flourish?" and without pause, each shared a beautiful gift. By the end of the day, I had some wonderful wisdom to rest into and contemplate around my intent.

In the shadow of having a mere 178 days left to live, I sit with my intentions and my life dreams for these remaining days. And I find myself asking: "Is THIS what I REALLY want to be doing, or W'OULD do if I really only had 6 more months to live?? And then another powerful question arose: "WHY CHANGE ANYTHING?" In that statement lies the key to this whole adventure: This is the opportunity to move toward death - or more precisely, to move through life - with consciousness rather than pretending that I have all the time in the world to do whatever... This is the opportunity to create the best dream of life that I can! "Is that what I'm doing? Am I succeeding?" Most of me says, "YES!" and yet, an additional question arises: "How can I reach a place of feeling completely complete with what IS - no matter what stage of evolution it's in - when I die?? 

 As I write that, I ask myself: "What needs to happen for me to feel complete with the things I'm creating right now? What IS 'complete' and what does that mean, really? And is THAT the goal here - to feel 'complete?' Or what IS the goal - MY goal - before I die??"

Hmmmmmm.