Me and My Ego

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.

Don't Take It Personally

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.

The Garden of Life

 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?"

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...

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!

FIVE...!!

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...

The Gifts of Life & Death

I traveled to Houston last weekend to celebrate my Dad's 78th birthday. While I was there, I found myself sitting back and watching everyone - my parents, sisters, brother-in-laws, nieces and nephews, friends, dogs - sharing and laughing together. I was filled with so much love for everyone there.

And I realized that I've spent so much time during this year to live focused on cleaning up my own life in preparation to die that I'd nearly overlooked the fact that I'm also letting go of everyone else's lives. My nieces and nephews are all in high school and college now; exciting things are happening in their lives! My sisters are close to being "empty nesters" and embarking on new realms in their own lives, too. My parents are aging and in need of unconditional love and compassionate care. I will not be here to experience these beautiful phases and stages of any of their lives...

I found myself feeling an interesting mix of a heart full of joyous love and deep, intimate grief for the letting go of it all. I realized that as I am surrendering the details of my own life to death, so I am surrendering the details of theirs, too.

This morning I sat with the remembering of a car accident I was involved in nearly 12 years ago. It occurred to me that at that time as I was faced with the possibility of dying, I was fully ready and willing to go. My life was filled with struggle and distress; I used to call myself "the walking dead." Plus, the feeling of following the pull to the other side was so glorious that there was not one bit of hesitation; I would have let my entire life go for the beauty of the pull I felt "over there." In the end, it was simply not time for me to go...

Yet today as I am faced with the same death, I am filled with an emotional mix of love and grief. I love my entire life now; there is not one single part of it that I don't like or enjoy. And so I grieve the letting go of it all - every crazy bit of it....

 That's not to say that my life does not have any struggle or distress in it today. It simply means that I have found a new level of relationship with life and myself as a part of it. And this new relationship is one of  curiosity, discovery, experimentation, opening, love, acceptance, celebration and joy. I am a drop in an ocean of divine life. And as that drop I enjoy every bit of experience that I get to have here; and as a part of the ocean, I enjoy every bit of the sense of unity that I feel here within the wholeness and fullness of living.

I have 78 days left to live. There are so many places I have not seen, so many things I have not done, so many people I have not finished with - finished enjoying and loving. I guess that's just a part of dying: my life may not be all wrapped up in a nice, neat package when I die. It may just be the crazy mix that it is. And I will have to leave it all anyway...

Release. Surrender. Open... Can my relationship with death be the same as my relationship with life - one of  curiosity, discovery, experimentation, opening, love, acceptance, celebration and joy? I wonder...

Altared States

 This morning I took the time to do some spiritual practices that I used to do daily, but have fallen out of the habit: 9 Breaths of Purification, Tsa Lung, Seed Syllables, Grand Circuit Breathing... It felt SO good! While doing the Grand Circuit Breathing, I reached that place of simple awareness, meaning that I dropped out of my physical being and slipped into a state of awareness that was beyond what I usually experience.

My mind popped forward and wanted to question it since it didn't take me long to get there. But this wasn't about my mind; it was about my energy and awareness, so I invited my mind to move to the background and be quiet... which it was willing to do for short periods of time. Each time it re-arose and wanted to be "scientific" and "inquisitive" and "blahblahblah-ing," I simply and lovingly sent it back to its space of silent observation; and I reassured it that I would take time to ponder the points it was stirring about later.

Now is the "later" I promised my mind, so here are my ponderings: That place I reached can best be described as emptiness and fullness at the same time. That's how it feels to me when I'm there - like I'm empty of everything and full of everything at the same time. There's no longing or desire or attachment to anything; there's just complete resting into what is. And what is feels like all and nothing at once. It's a sense of wholeness that is hard to put to words.

That sense of wholeness is what I had trouble connecting to in the experience I wrote about last week. I reminded myself that what I'm doing during this year to live - or at least part of what I'm doing - is preparing myself to die. What does that mean, exactly?

For me, there are at least three parts to this process:
1. Cleaning up my personal relationships - saying what I need to say to people so that I feel right and clear with them - so that there's no baggage there to leave behind.

2. Getting my life in order so that there's not a big mess for anyone to have to deal with when I die. My will and all my medical wishes are updated and in order. I've selected folks for specific jobs and they have agreed and signed off on the necessary legal papers for it. My partner and closest friends know my wishes and preferences surrounding what to do with my body and how to celebrate my transformation. And I've written a letter to my family and to those carrying out my wishes just to clarify what they are and to reassure everyone that these are indeed my wishes. Just to be certain, I had them notorized.

3. Most importantly, it means getting myself ready for the transformation. This year-long journey is founded in Stephen Levine's book A Year To Live. He does a beautiful job of giving practices to prepare the energy body for its departure out of the physical body, so that when the physical body dies (or stops functioning, completes its cycle...falls away), the energetic one can easily release into whatever is next. A big part of it seems to be getting the mind's  acceptance and cooperation around its powerlessness in this process. My belief is that when we die, the mind no longer functions as we know it in the physical sense, but our transcendent awareness does...or maybe that's my hope!

The state I reached today gives me hope that upon my physical death, I will surely be freed into the state of energy and awareness that so many enlightened beings speak of; that death of the physical will truly be birth of the Spirit; that release of the mind's fear is the pathway to true freedom; and that I will continue to exist yet not from ego, but from a purity of Energy, Awareness, and Love.

Fawn Wisdom

I've learned that I really, really love watching the baby fawns grow up this season. They are playful and present, aware and willing, brave and respectful. Who would have thought that such tiny little spotted beings could hold so much wisdom??

They hide in our bamboo forest when it rains, generally not showing themselves until it drops to a very soft drizzle or stops altogether. Their hair gets frizzy after a rain, just like mine!

They grow up pretty fast. I'm watching how they adapt to the noise and activity around them. For the newborns: at first they are curious and open; then, lots of glances to the adults for cues; then, uncertainty and caution that ultimately shifts into a scamper for the safety of their Momma's underbelly or the cover of brush.

 

 As they get a bit older, maybe 2 weeks, they hang with the uncertainty a bit longer and generally wait for the adults to make a move before they follow. Yet when they do follow, it's with complete dedication and vigor. Once they are about a month old, they are right in there with all the adults; no hesitation, just trusting their own signals.

They have nothing to fear in life; they simply indulge in it fully, moment by moment, in whatever manner is called for, unattached to stories about what things might mean. I am learning to embrace myself in a whole new way through these babies.

They touch me with their delicacy and gentleness. They entertain me with their playfulness and innocence. They teach me with their grace and wisdom. They surprise me with their courage and strength. They move me with their spirit and precision.

It's amazing to witness how complete they are at each phase of their development. They have everything they need inside; they just have to access it and then follow it. They are born beautiful, powerful, wise, and whole, reminding me that I was, too; I just have to remember...that I am.