Honoring a Promise

 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.)

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

 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

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

 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

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

 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

And now I am dead...