Winter, Spring & Murmuration {ps Smoothie Recipe included}

Eventhough I have been loving up wintertime, I went to Florida for a few days to visit a dear friend who recently relocated. I travel once in a blue moon so it was wild to step off the New England landscape.

Here are some moments of that adventure. 

 

When I returned, I celebrated my birthday.  I spent some of my morning in the greenhouse, taking in the sunshine and saying good morning to the plants coming to life.  This space reminds me of my friend Simone and her joy for propagating green life.  A handful of years ago she sent this video around to some friends and it always brings such tender goodness to my heart. Here it is.

Spring is now days away and so much energy is in the air.  I certainly feel the vitality bubbling up all over the place.  We are going to have a sweet Equinox celebration here, thanks to a lovely friend who reminded me of my seasonal ceremony intention.

Birthday Smoothie

(two servings)

1 cup almonds

2 cups water

1/4 avocado

1 cup frozen strawberries

1 teaspoon bee pollen (optional)

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 tablespoon spirulina (optional)

1 tablespoon raw cacao powder (optional)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 walnuts (optional)

1 tablespoon flax seed (optional)

Self love

Step One: Blend up almonds and water.

If you desire, strain almond milk in a nut bag or cheesecloth

{*You can also soak the nuts overnight in the fridge to receive more of the enzymatic activity.  Strain out the water and throw those swollen delicious almonds in the blender}

Step Two: Blend up almond milk with everything else!

Step Three: Drink up this scrumptious smoothie 

Our Love as Everything

Hours before sunrise, we are shoveling and plowing
Bountiful Snow ~ waist high, thick, white
Everywhere.

The sun now showing, we recall it is another day of Love.
Today, Love meaning Space.

Space for the intense surge of devotion's pulsation,

rippling in waves and thunder and paradisal song. 

Space for mind's residing momentarily distinct,
and patient hearts waiting for remembrance of there,  
being no separation.

Space for sweetness & laughter and play.
Space for unknown karma.  The light and the darkest karma ~ so deeply personal, we can never explain entirely why in flashes our fires ignite~

This space we speak of is generous
It gratifies instantly
offering limitless potential to hold loves power.
How marvelous! to hold loves power!

& if love's energy is overwhelming ~ we extend.

Space for seeing our love as Everything.

Living Life from the Great Inside

I have been studying a lot over the years.  Bundles of glorious information on the vast capacity of being, as well as botanical medicine.  In the process I often devalue my innate knowing.  There is a place for knowledge passed down and shared, and a place for asking within for direction.  

Since the beginning we have asked for guidance.  When we have been at a loss, thrown, overwhelmed, we have asked Spirit, Goddess, God to show us the way.  We have laid our heads down and asked our dream world to offer us wisdom.  Nothing has changed.  This path of inner wisdom is eternally ours.

Since the beginning we have asked our plant world for guidance.  We have asked what is needed to bring back wholeness to ourselves or someone in our nation.  We have communicated from our soul to that same soul within the plant kingdom.  The deep inner to the deep inner.  Plants communicate through chemicals, light wavelenths and contact - putting out and receiving information from their environment.  From what we understand, they emit sounds waves through audio acoustic emissions.  And there is a world of plant communication, the mystical, the unknown that we cannot conceptualize. Yet our intuition recognizes that the universe of greenery works in subtle and powerful ways.  Many believe that when we step into the woods with a yearning for medicine, our clear intentions communicated can change a plants chemical compounds to make the perfect remedy requested.  I do trust this is possible, as plants shift their chemical make up for survival all of the time.

I am remembering this relationship.  The days when I am bewildered by my life decisions, bewildered by an imbalance in my system, I am remembering to ask the Great One to show me the way.  I am holding both the books of knowledge at hand as equally important as this inner world of knowing ~ connected across all beings:  land, human, animal, flora, bacterial and so on.

We often know what we need more than we allow ourselves to believe.

Now let us remember.
Let us step back in tuit
Asking spirit to guide the way.
Let us live life from the inside
Where the root and heart reside.

I Love Myself, Therefore...

I have been really loving up positive affirmations.  Louise Hay is the inspiration.  Her book, You can Heal Your Life.  With every page I feel loved.  

I Love Myself, Therefore...has been so good when I start to tell myself I should be doing something other than what feels right.

Like, I Love Myself, Therefore I can go to yoga today and take care of everything else later on.  I Love Myself, Therefore I can wear my long underwear everywhere, even for meetings with strangers, because it feels right on for me and I am cozy.  I Love Myself, Therefore I will stop what I'm busy doing and drink a glass of water or make a nutritious meal. 

Snowy December Greenhouse

The other one I'm into these days is:

I deserve to be.... (fill in)
& I accept it now.  

I have been saying that I deserve to be in healthy and loving relationships and that I accept it now.  I can't say enough goods things about how it is transforming my relationships.  When I start to fall into my old patterns of thinking, old patterns of creating unnecessary drama or tension in my life, I come back to this simple affirmation.  And then I'm back to feeling alive and heartful and feeling so grateful to be a part of it all.  Her book covers all the genres in one's life if this doesn't resonate with you.

Crystallization & Glass Greenhouse Windows

My bedside reading has been poetry from the mystic teacher Kabir.  Born during the fourteenth or fifteenth century in India.  He often wrote on all beings having the capacity to find their own salvation and finding liberation solely through our own immediate experience.  It is within us, someone else does not hold the key to ourselves.

I read this bit the other night on forgetting our inner lover, our truth.  Getting wrapped up and entrapped by a delusional reality ~ by taking on the views of our childhood, our environment, our culture, as our truth.  Even when living is fantastic, this delusional reality lends itself to a subtle or not so subtle tinge of ickiness.  Some tinge of something not being right.  Even when we have the most radiant and blissful of days, there is something in the gut that whispers, "You are not radiant and blissful.  You must worry."  This only small part of the poem is a glimpse of that:

I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such rush?  

We sense that there is some sort of spirit that loves birds and animals and ants -- 

perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you in your mother's womb.  

Is it logical you would be walking around entirely orphaned now?

The truth is you turned away yourself, and decided to go into the dark alone.  

Now you are tangled up in others, and have forgotten what you once knew,

and that's why everything you do has some weird failure in it.

                                                                                                                     Kabir

Bunny, in all of his Playful Goodness

Joyful Winter Solstice to You!
May the darkest day of the year
help us see what we are ready now to let go of.
What we no longer need to carry from long ago.
What is not even ours to bear.

And May we welcome the New Light
with deep, unwavering self-love that is always there, complete, no matter how far we stray.

Taking A Break

Our last 2013 crew member departed today!  To me that marks the end of the season and the beginning of the new year.  I am very grateful to everything that was offered this year.  Everyone's energy and flexibility and basic presence.  What a year it has been.

2 months ago I put a pile of books on the table and suggested as part of our mindfulness classes, that we read one complete book ~ rather than just parts of books, which is what we had been doing to get through a lot of material and points of view.  We ended up reading Eckhart Tolle.  

Here is a nice reminder from Tolle's "A New Earth" of the value of stillness when all you want to do is create, or move, or do anything other than take a pause.

It has been said: "Stillness is the language God speaks, and everything else is a bad translation." Stillness is really another word for space.  Becoming conscious of stillness whenever we encounter it in our lives will connect us with the formless and timeless dimension within ourselves, that which beyond thought, beyond ego.  It may be the stillness that pervades the world of nature, or the stillness in your room in the early hours of the morning, or the silent gaps in between sounds.  Stillness has no form--that is why through thinking we cannot become aware of it.  Thought is form.  Being aware of stillness means to be still.  To be still is to be conscious without thought.  You are never more essentially, more deeply yourself than when you are still.  When you are still, you are who you were before you temporarily assumed this physical and mental form called a person.  You are also who you will be when the form dissolves.  When you are still, you are who you are beyond your temporal existence: consciousness -- unconditioned, formless, eternal.  (255-6)     

Montauk NY

You are So Good.

My beloved child, break your heart no longer.

Each time you judge yourself, you break your own heart;

you stop feeding on the love which is the wellspring of your vitality.

The time has come. Your time to live, to celebrate.

And to see the goodness that you are.

You, my child, are Divine. You are pure. You are sublimely free.

You are God in disguise and you’re always perfectly safe.

Do not fight the dark, just turn on the light.

Let go and Breathe in to Goodness that you are.

~Swami Kripalu

We've Got Ourselves a Blue Full Moon in Aquarius!

The full moon felt particularly strong to me this week.  I knew it was the full moon, before I actually took the time to look -- as I felt a wild animal prancing within my core body.  The first night I sensed the lunacy, I fell asleep at 8:30pm, by far the earliest I have been to sleep since I can recall.  I woke up at 2:30am, certain that it was day as the moon's light was reflecting the sun through my home.  

Yesterday evening a conglomerate of our farm family sat on stones on a gurgle of a stream.  Sitting on stone, on water, under the moon.  A few feet away, the stream enters the Hudson.  We looked out into the river and meditated on the full moon.  So sweet.  

Today's dahlia harvest seems lunar-like and an appropriate symbol for the occasion.

Ode to ceremony, i harvested a nice bundle of sticky white sage.  

Here is a link Mystic Mamma on the Blue Moon in Aquarius: here

Although hundreds or thousands of explanations are given,

There is only one thing to be understood -

Know the one thing that liberates everything -

Awareness itself, your true nature.

 ~Dudjom Rinpoche

                                                                                          

                                                                                    

I'm building a co-dependent relationship with me and swimming.

What a big last many days it has been.  It began with some hoopla and a lot of fear and questions.  I was getting so carried away with questions I could not answer.  I realized that I have enough questions on my own that need answering - to see these external circumstance clearly.  My view has turned into not looking outward, but keeping it simple.  Starting with what I know.  Me.

When I look inward, I realize that I've had this big fear of being self-absorbed and taking care of my own needs.  Like it is an unnecessarily lavish thing to do.  In a moment, something shifted, and I'm finally starting to viscerally experience it's ridiculousness.  Experience is so much more powerful than thoughts. And talking about my experience has brought so many relationships, new and old, to the forefront and I realize that when I am in need of some support, presence, sisterhood, love, and honesty - it is here.

When I am clear with my intentions, it is more than phenomenal as to what the world puts into your hands.  It is that fearlessness and open heartedness once again.

A deep thank you.

Questions.
How to hear through the clutter of habit.
How to hear our own hearts and needs.

This is where I am.

I am taking many paths to understand these answers.  From sitting in the morning, feeling...feeling...into my heart.  As my friend Lucky says, allowing my brain to rest in my heart,  honoring myself and what I feel within me 100%.

I'm choosing my path, making my own decisions on how I use my time and owning it.  Even during the rich farm day, drinking good tonics and taking breaks.  What! I can take breaks and be as productive.  And taking care of my body.  I have been making joyful smoothies for breakfast and dinner and then eating a large nutritive meal at lunch and this is feeling so right on for my physical and spirit being really.  And swimming! Swimming as often as I can.  I am a mermaid at heart and need to be submerged in water to remain alive.  And beyond this, I am talking with lots of wonderful people and hearing their wisdom and insight.  Feeling the elation that comes from connection.

I am really trying to break through.
To break through to truth.
It's at my soil covered fingertips
and yet some things need to shift to reach through.

In time.
Patience.
The path is the journey.



Here is my current favorite drink:
Parsley Blueberry Kale Shake

2 cups almond milk (I soaked almonds in water, but any 'ol chemical free milk will do)
4 kale leaves (remove spine)
7 parsley stalks (remove spine)
1 cup frozen blueberries
3 dates
powders of choice.  (i've been using health force powders, the maca one and the green sage protein)
Blend it on up.

I've been finding them more delicious once cooled down, leaving them in the refrigerator for an hour. 


In-joy.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, An Hour of Good Listening.

 http://www.goodlifeproject.com/sakyong-mipham-rinpoche/

We are Delusional, Sometimes.

Sitting quietly

doing nothing

Spring comes

and the grass grow 

by itself*

{*zen saying}

Part I:


A darlin' x soul sister friend and I went to a day retreat with Anam Thubten the other Sunday.  A main topic was that the majority of our experience is delusional.  Being delusional in this case is believing our thoughts, believing our own perceptions as reality.

The notion is that as we develop and age, we create thoughts in our mind and those thoughts once repeated, become our reality.

Our thoughts become truths.
It is no longer just a passing cloud that dissipates, allowing the next experience to arise and show itself.

This is so major because most of us are over-run by our thoughts.  All day long we have a handful of repetitive thoughts and our thoughts and attachment to these thoughts allow us to have an identity.  They give us some "thing" to stand on.  Yet our thoughts are often just assumptions put together, creating beliefs that we decide at some point are true, are real.

So each morning we wake up and immediately grasp onto these beliefs.  I am ....  They think.... This world is ....  My job is....  I am right or wrong because ....  They are wrong or right because .... Success means ....  The perfect ... means ....  Beauty is .... Ugly is.... and so on.

I'm tired.
It's tiring to hold on to so much.
It's limiting.
And it's a fun game to point out minute by minute delusions!

So lately when I feel crumminess.  Any closing down in my heart or tightness in my physical body.  If I am conscious enough in that moment I playfully identify where the delusion lies.

So for instance.  Today I was feeling guilty about being a bit abrupt in response to a question.  And I started to percolate on the guilt and on excuses as to why I was so abrupt: "Well I don't have the time to answer that question""Gosh, I'm such a jerk.  Why couldn't I just be more patient." "They probably don't like me right now."  These are certainly responses I have had many times before.  And where am I getting with this?

So.  Pausing.  I see my delusions.  I see that I am trying to create reality about why this happened and the issue etc.  And in this instance I walked directly to the person and was straight up with them.  "I want to be more patient.  Ask me that question anytime"  And instead of getting carried away thinking about how they now responded to this situation.  That's it.  Let it go.  And continue to practice coming to the present and living.  Coming to the present and responding from this place.  Not responding from the mind's delusions.  The "mental disorders."

And when I walk through the garden, my mind can be so fixed as to what is orderly, what is unacceptable under my terms of a good garden and so those delusions are under examination.  I'm working on seeing what is in need of attention, prioritizing them and just going from there.  Instead of adding layers of thoughts/worry/comparison.  I simply begin.

The main things is that our thoughts don't have to be counteracted with thoughts.  Our thoughts can be befriended by simply existing.  Sounds so simple but it is a life journey!  We must not forget this, as it is so easy to be difficult on ourselves about our transformation.

Each day
Each breath
An opportunity to exist, to listen, to love ourselves and all those around us.
And none of these opportunities necessitate words (to form thoughts and judgement.)
Free opportunities.

Let's be here now.


And now.

And say we forget for days...for months...for years.
It's never too late.


Now.
now.


Simply
Lovingly
Exist.


Part II: 



And Anam also continued to emphasize something we hear all of the time:
"Everything is within your consciousness."
As both samsara and nirvana come from our thoughts.
Happiness and unhappiness come from our thoughts.

Yet to know this with our heart is much different than understanding this mentally.

What is the path to freedom?
What am I doing on this planet?
What is my path- in regards to relationship, professional, family...?

This is all within.
The process of meditation is to look within ourselves and to see why we suffer.  And from that we grow compassionate.  We grow sensitive.    We grow wise.  We grow fearless.
And when we look inside we ask ourselves directly the answers to our questions.  And this particular self, is the true self, free from mental delusion.

(And one might be saying, well I'm not free yet of my delusion, but we all have moments of freedom if we can step into the present.)




Life is messy and beautiful and so on.

time to let it all in.

May this be of benefit.  

True Self

Tomorrow I am so grateful to have a day to practice and to listen to Anam Thubten.   I am going with a dear friend so that is quite special as well.  I opened up one of Anam Thubten writings today and came to this page.


... in the end we have to integrate spiritual practice with everyday life where awareness and mindfulness bless our activities and interactions in each and every moment.  When we live with awareness, our delusions and suffering begin to wither away.

Actually in the beginning we may have to struggle.  If we are getting on the path of nonattachment in a serious way for the first time, there will be some struggle.  There will be moments when we notice that we have failed time after time.  Sometimes we feel that we have failed so much on this path of nonattachment that we think we should give up completely.  Actually failing is absolutely fine because we have already completely and utterly failed.  Why are we afraid of failing agin?  We have failed so completely that we have lost the sense of who we are.  We have lost our unity with our true nature.  We have lost the realization of who we are and that is the greatest failure there is.  Nothing else is really a tragedy or a real serious failure in comparison with the failure of losing our unity with out true nature.  This has already happened to all of us from the very beginning and that is why it is impossible to really fail again.  Any subsequent failure is just an idea.  "Oh, I am losing my job.  I failed.  I didn't pass my test.  I failed again.  My relationship is falling apart.  I failed again.  My meditation is filled with turbulence.  I failed.  I wasn't able to live the life that I fantasized.  I am not able to live according to my ideal standards.  I failed."  

These are all concepts.

The true failure is that we have lost our unity with our true nature.  Beyond that there is no failure.  Everything else is simply a perception, an idea....

The fundamental premise of all mystical teachings is that there is a divine nature in all of us.  In Buddhism we call this Buddha Nature.  When we no longer identify with external conditions we are in the realm of equanimity.  We are one with our true nature, which is completely indestructible, perfect and sublime as it is, forever....  In the same way our true essence is indestructible.  It can never be injured by anything.  In every moment we are absolutely perfect because our true nature is indestructible. Our true nature can not be conditioned by anything.  

Our true essence is perfectly sublime and divine.  It is the highest thing in this universe.  It is the most sacred entity.  The true nature that we all share is more sacred than anything else.  So if we are able to simply identify with our true nature, our pure consciousness, then all of our suffering is gone.  That's liberation.  That's it.  There is nothing more than that.  That's it.  Once we identify with our pure consciousness, that's enlightenment.  That's liberation.  That's moksha.  There nothing more than that.  Then fulfillment is always there without needing anything from the outside.  



To freedom!
Let's do this.

June Morning Thoughts.

The plant kingdom is springing in the four directions.  For all the life that rests below the soil and the few hands that tend to it -- there is a constant desire to remain in movement both in thought and in body.  As winter turns into this spring, and this plant life awakens there is a sense of relief, knowing that the family is alright.  And then the plant family grows.  Extended relatives show up and it's a lot to hold together.  The momentum of the growing season pulls one in and it is time to surrender, (or struggle.)

There is this saying, "keep up, and you will be kept up." I think this is how this relationship works.  As we tug on a one weed, right under the surface we are gently awakening another weed seed.  And often all we can do is keep up.

At the end of a full day in the fertile air -- we have to let go -- to step away and tend to other families in our life that need to be kept up.  The family of meals, the family of dishes, the family of cleanliness, the family of friendship and love.

--

Each morning as I awaken, I must do everything in my power to march myself up the stairs to go sit on the cushion.  Sometimes I must talk aloud about the process.  And then I sit and it is the same feeling.  Keep up and you will be kept up.  Each morning, through each session of meditation.

Afterwards, when I walk into the fields and gardens it is with a mind a bit more spacious.  And then coming from this place, I can surrender to the plant kingdoms power and complexity.  Oftentimes I wonder if a mind can be trained completely within the garden.  With our feet rooted on the ground and our hands in touch with the many textures of the sun.  Well with my karma, I find, if I do not make it up to sit regularly the life of the garden consumes me and I can not hold my mind in any sort of vastness.

--

The keeping up in this sense, both in the garden and in meditation must be tied to a sense of joy.  A sense of meaning.  Not a mindless keeping up, like chasing after a bone over and over again.  There is a need to revisit why to keep up at all.  A greater view to hold, so our heart and mind are not numbed by the pace, by the repetitiveness, by the drive to continue.  So that our hearts and minds are enlivened and enriched and so that this overflows into all sentient and non-sentient beings.



May our efforts and energy be of benefit.

Warming up a Cold Heart

Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca)

Often times it seems that the answer to challenging times is continuing to open the heart.  No matter what, open the heart.  And when one thinks they know anything,  to open up from there with curiosity.  Even when the heart is tender and in pain to feel that and then to keep coming back to the next fresh moment that we are so fortunate to have and to see how that feels. 

(How does the heart feel now?)

But this is easier said then done.  I have habits of freezing up and setting a nice cold barrier between myself and what I am avoiding.  For me to open up my heart feels like for one, my power is being diminished because I feel some form of strength-independence-self-reliance in my cold self.  Two, I do not feel like myself.  This cold self I have fed for a good part of my life time.  We are quite familiar with one another.  Who would I be without her?  Three, this isolation creates space.  It allows me to become internal and to get things done, to check off my to-do list. 

But the other side of being closed off is that my body is tight.  My mood is shallow and unhappy because I am not feeling.  I am checked out.  It is difficult to avoid one aspect of life and then to open up to everything else.  It seems often an all or nothing deal.  Cold or open.  

Althaea officinalis

And so it is a constant practice to shift this response.  

As a dear friend talked about today: our darkness is not something that needs to be removed.  The further we push it away the more power we give it.  So I want to acknowledge that this habit has helped me persevere in difficult times and hopefully I will use it more sparingly as time continues.  

Here is to: moving towards basking in a raw heart, setting boundaries for my personal goals open heartedly, and becoming very good friends with an ever changing and free energetic body mind heart.

Someone sent this Tricycle article to me today which inspired this post.

No Gain by Barry Magid  

Relationships won't solve our problems, but they can help us grow

MY TEACHER Charlotte Joko Beck pretty much sums up her attitude toward relationships when she says, “Relationships don’t work.” Rather than talk about everything we normally think that we gain from relationships, like love, companionship, security, and family life, she looks at relationships from the perspective of no gain. She focuses on all the ways relationships go awry when people enter into them with particular sorts of gaining ideas and expect relationships to function as an antidote to their problems. Antidotes are all versions of “If only...” If only she were more understanding; if only he were more interested in sex; if only she would stop drinking. For Joko, that kind of thinking about relationships means always externalizing the problem, always assuming that the one thing that’s going to change your life is outside yourself and in the other person. If only the other person would get his or her act together, then my life would go the way I want it to.

Joko tries to bring people back to their own fears and insecurities. These problems are ours to practice with, and we can’t ask anyone else, including a teacher, to do that work for us. To be in a real relationship, a loving relationship, is simply to be willing to respond and be there for the other person without always calculating what we are going to get out of it.

Many people come to me and say, “I’ve been in lots of relationships where I give and give and give.” But for them it wasn’t enlightenment; it was masochism! What they are missing from Joko’s original account is a description of what relationships are actually for—what the good part is. In addition to being aware of the pitfalls that Joko warns us about, we should also look at all the ways in which relationships provide the enabling conditions for our growth and development. That’s particularly obvious with children. We would all agree that children need a certain kind of care and love in order to grow and develop. Nobody would say to a five-year-old, “What do you need Mommy for? Deal with your fear on your own!” The thing is that most of us are still struggling with remnants of that child’s neediness and fear in the midst of a seemingly adult life. Relationships aren’t just crutches that allow us to avoid those fears; they also provide conditions that enable us to develop our capacities so we can handle them in a more mature way.

It’s not just a parent-child relationship or a relationship with a partner that does that. The relationship of a student with a teacher, between members of a sangha, between friends, and among community members—all help us to develop in ways we couldn’t on our own. Some aspects of ourselves don’t develop except under the right circumstances.

Aristotle stressed the importance of community and friendship as necessary ingredients for character development and happiness. He is the real origin of the idea that “it takes a village” to raise a child. However, you don’t find much in Aristotle about the necessity of romantic love in order to develop. His emphasis was on friendship.

Aristotle said that in order for people to become virtuous, we need role models—others who have developed their capacities for courage, self-control, wisdom, and justice. We may emphasize different sets of virtues or ideas about what makes a proper role model, but Buddhism also asserts that, as we are all connected and interdependent, none of us can do it all on our own.

Acknowledging this dependency is the first step of real emotional work within relationships. Our ambivalence about our own needs and dependency gets stirred up in all kinds of relationships. We cannot escape our feelings and needs and desires if we are going to be in relationships with others. To be in relationships is to feel our vulnerability in relation to other people who are unpredictable, and in circumstances that are intrinsically uncontrollable and unreliable.

We bump up against the fact of change and impermanence as soon as we acknowledge our feelings or needs for others. Basically, we all tend to go in one of two directions as a strategy for coping with that vulnerability. We either go in the direction of control or of autonomy. If we go for control, we may be saying: “If only I can get the other person or my friends or family to treat me the way I want, then I’ll be able to feel safe and secure. If only I had a guarantee that they’ll give me what I need, then I wouldn’t have to face uncertainty.” With this strategy, we get invested in the control and manipulation of others and in trying to use people as antidotes to our own anxiety.

With the strategy (or curative fantasy) of autonomy, we go in the opposite direction and try to imagine that we don’t need anyone. But that strategy inevitably entails repression or dissociation, a denial of feeling. We may imagine that through spiritual practice we will get to a place where we won’t feel need, sexuality, anger, or dependency. Then, we imagine, we won’t be so tied into the vicissitudes of relationships. We try to squelch our feelings in order not to be vulnerable anymore, and we rationalize that dissociation under the lofty and spiritual-sounding word “detachment,” which ends up carrying a great deal of unacknowledged emotional baggage alongside its original, simpler meaning as the acceptance of impermanence.

We have to get to know and be honest about our particular strategies for dealing with vulnerability, and learn to use our practice to allow ourselves to experience more of that vulnerability rather than less of it. To open yourself up to need, longing, dependency, and reliance on others means opening yourself to the truth that none of us can do this on our own. We really do need each other, just as we need parents and teachers. We need all those people in our lives who make us feel so uncertain. Our practice is not about finally getting to a place where we are going to escape all that but about creating a container that allows us to be more and more human, to feel more and more.

If we let ourselves feel more and more, paradoxically, we get less controlling and less reactive. As long as we think we shouldn’t feel something, as long as we are afraid of feeling vulnerable, our defenses will kick in to try to get life under control, to manipulate ourselves or other people. But instead of either controlling or sequestering our feelings, we can learn to both contain and feel them fully. That containment allows us to feel vulnerable or hurt without immediately erupting into anger; it allows us to feel neediness without clinging to the other person. We acknowledge our dependency.

We learn to keep our relationships and support systems in good repair because we admit to ourselves how much we need them. We take care of others for our own sake as well as theirs. We begin to see that all our relationships are part of a broad spectrum of interconnectedness, and we respect not only the most intimate or most longed-for of our relationships but also all the relationships we have—from the most personal to the most public—which together are always defining who we are and what we need in order to become fully ourselves.

Relationships work to open us up to ourselves. But first we have to admit how much we don’t want that to happen, because that means opening ourselves to vulnerability. Only then will we begin the true practice of letting ourselves experience all those feelings of vulnerability that we first came to practice to escape.


From Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide, © Barry Magid 2008. Reprinted with permission of Wisdom Publications, wisdompubs.org
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I am feeling your love and seeing you everywhere.

Je t'aime pour toujours, libre de temps et d'espace.

Je vais vous tenir tendrement dans mon cœur.

My grandmother is my heart.

My Love and I argued about nothing.  It was so about nothing that it infuriated me and I erupted.  My grandmother has been in the hospital in a serious condition and so the space I hold since has been tender and anxious.  My grandmother is my lineage.  I understand her and when I am with her I know I come from her heart and her life blood.  I know why I am touched so strongly by this world.  I know why the earth kingdom is my most precious treasure and why it has always been.  My grandmother is fire and beauty.  Skin of our powerful Sun and heart of Space, vast and ever present.  Last when I was with her I would just hold her hand throughout our hours and hours of meals.  Her hand, so warm and strong, with painted nails, always.  I have actually never seen her not in color and to me she is Color, the living of life tangibly and intangibly.

So this is where my night, 24 hours ago, began.  My uncle sending updates about my grandmother and me holding them in my heart, feeling my love for my grandmother so deeply and sorrowfully and appreciatively.  Back to my eruption.  I have been anxious since yesterday and am anxious now below everything.  Life is precious as my grandmother is reminding me and has told me many times.  I don't want to waste my life on nothing arguments.  I want to be love.  I want to be completely offering love all of the time.  I am serious, all of the time.  I am going to do this and it is beginning now.  This is my work and not the work of another soul.

Presently, I am putting attention to my mind's workings.  Even for the little things that others do, that I seemingly do not find fanciful, I find understanding in their actions.  I am seeing myself in what others do.  It's worth the energy and I already see so much more empathy for others.  It feels good and I feel good.  What a relief!

I wrote this last week and now a week has passed and my grandmother has gone from the doctors thinking she had one more day to live, to her possibly living a complete life.  She is a strong woman.  After she came through the tunnel of darkness and came back out to the light, the doctors! even said she has the nature of body and mind of someone 20 years her youth and were startled by her rebound.  I am inspired and smiling, even if they say this to everyone! I'll take it.

May my grandmother continue to be stronger than she was before her physical system weakened and may all beings in need of better health and more breath be in peace and in love.  

To the preciousness of life.  

Right Here is Where it is At.

I have been contemplating what to write for my botanic medicine course.  I had wanted to focus on ceremony as I would like to be able to offer my friends, family, clients a source for ceremony.  We do not have much sacred ceremony in our culture, minus in religion, but often times many of us do not connect with these rituals.  Ceremony allows time to experience a process and to experience our sacred world.  To take time to do something carefully from beginning to end.  In that time we are able to consciously experience where our attention lies.  We are a part of the subject being explored.  And often in ceremony we participate with others and in that our need for connection is satiated.  Through ceremony we create tradition so that a community can form and feel supported by the seasonal expression annunciated.  These ideas have attracted me to the study of ceremony.

So I have begun researching, in particular herbs used globally for ceremony, specifically in the areas of birth and death.  Yet it has not felt right. I have not felt invested in the topic and I have only begun.  My traditional chinese medicine teacher has been extremely generous with his time, allowing me to blabber my brainstorms to him.  After many ramblings, I looked outside and realized I need to understand my home.  That is the person I am.  I like to have my hands touching leaves and branches, drawing images of what I am seeing and learning through this physical study, and then through text and historical reference.  My work (life) is tied into land.  I have wanted to step out of this ordinary connection and to open my mind to more cultures, but perhaps I am not ready.  Perhaps I need to see the magic in the ordinary before looking further out.  And so, I am going to study the land of my home:  good 'ol New England.  I'm not sure how wide my boundaries will go, if it will be all of New England, but I want to start with what I actually see and feel.  I want to draw my specimens, and create a book on my home medicine. And within this context, I hope to find ceremonial herbs as well.  

We have the capacity to fly anywhere in the world.
There is value in being worldly.
Often the moment I feel as though I can not do something, I want to do that something.
I have never been in one place as long as I have been here these past few years
and it has allowed me to feel deserving and needing of flying anywhere

Yet the richness of my present scape is extraordinary.  
How fortunate and grateful I am.  
The truly present world is always fresh and always shocking.
Thank you world. 
And I look forward to seeing you.


May all beings see this universe and all the moments and details that surprisingly exist






Whether you care to communicate with it or not, the magical strength and wisdom of reality are always there....By relaxing the mind, you can reconnect with that primordial, original ground, which is completely pure and simple. Out of that, through the medium of your perceptions, you can discover magic, drala. You actually can connect your own intrinsic wisdom with a sense of greater wisdom or vision beyond you.

You might think that something extraordinary will happen to you when you discover magic. Something extra-ordinary does happen. You simply find yourself in the realm of utter reality, complete and thorough reality.    

-CTR

Being Slow

I have a wound I am healing with right now and it requires much attention and care.  I am being with each movement as it lives.  As I open the door I put my carrying items down and open the door.  I am gathering back these items, reconnecting with them and moving through the doorway, slow-ly.  I am inhaling and experiencing it like friendly conversation because I am sl-ow.   What good good friends my breaths are.  For now I am so fortunate to be able to count on them.  

I was sitting eating dumplings, slowly, one and then dipping and then chewing and placing the fork and plate down.  Then picking everything up and starting again.  I was cross legged on the couch staring at our family's dog as he was blindly staring at me eating (he is blind).  I was chewing, breathing, chewing and staring.  I was resting in who I am and at the same time feeling no different than our dog in a way.  When I felt our interconnection I was giggling and sitting still, giggling.  

In slowness there is a scrumptious ability to communicate directly without honey-coating, as the slowness softens the edge and widens time to speak through the heart both inward and outward.  I have been working with my personality trait of being a "people pleaser".  I often push myself in little ways assuming my actions are making somebody else more pleased with me.  (How self conscious I am!)  I am recognizing when I am moving towards acting for this reason and when I act genuinely.  I spent all evening with a dear friend and we practiced experiencing how refreshing and pleasing it was to receive such direct heart.  We could say exactly what we wanted to say, nothing attached to our words, no expectations or assumptions and it was accessible because it was heartful.  Communication and simply being in this space is energizing and effortless.  The effort stems from remaining mindful as to where the words arise out of and then joyfully let { } be/flow.  Whether the joy is expressed through a sense of toughness or joy is expressed through aromatic rose petalled words is not what matters.  

What matters is truly being.  

Simply be what you are, be the master of the situation.  If you will just "be", then life flows around and through you.  This will lead you into working and communicating with someone, which ofcourse demands tremendous warmth and openness.  If you can afford to be what you are, then you do not need the "insurance policy" of trying to be a good person, a pious person, a compassionate person.

 Cutting through Spiritual Materialism, CTR.

Slow Fact, Cattle Style:  Did you know that a cow raised on good pasture chews about 30,000 bites
That is many chews of rhythm and presence.  

Ekajati

This is a timely moment to reflect on Ekajati.  For those unfamiliar with the deities and dharmapalas of buddhism, they are not separate solid beings that we look at or reflect on.  These manifestations are our projection.  Projections as to what is possible and how deep and bountiful the mind is.   When we call Ekajati, we call a part of ourselves and in turn we are awakening what already exists in us.

In my first conscious meeting with Ekajati, I connected with her emanation of power, primordial insight*, one-pointed vision, fearsomeness, her physical manifestation and her basic radicalness for the benefit of all beings.  These aspects of my mind and heart immediately caught fire.   

Ekajati is a dharmapali, a wrathful deity, a mahakali, a protector of the truth, of the dzogchen tantras.**  

Ekajati is dark blue in color.  She has one turquoise lock of hair, one eye with primordial awareness, one fang cutting through obstacles and one breast feeding the milk of practitioners.  Her clothing is of tiger skin wrapped around her waist representing her fearlessness towards realization.  She decorates herself with bone and a skull crown.  These ornaments of the charnel ground symbolize that negativities and emotions are both liberated and destroyed, then worn.  She carries a bleeding heart in her right hand representing confused practitioners that have strayed.  One hundred iron wolves spring from her left as her attendants and she is equipped to direct the complacent and the irreverent.  Often times Ekajati is depicted surrounded by flames, representing the indestructible energy of compassion and wisdom, this energy expressed through intense anger, but anger that does not contain hatred.  It is certain, true and cutting.

Ekajati outwardly is wrathful, like all dharmapli, but the root is of compassion, compassion that cuts through and stomps on ego.  Enabling practitioners to see clearly, and to not be obscured by both inner and outer hindrances.  

May all beings be free from suffering

May all beings kindly share heart with fire and truth

And May all beings be liberated

* awareness and intellect without reference point, without beginning or end.
**the highest level of realization in the Nyingma buddhist tradition