I used to always claim Halloween as my favorite holiday. It is a holiday with no pressure to celebrate it or not. There is no obligation to visit family, buy gifts, send cards or cook food. Yes, there is a deeper meaning to it than trick or treating and dressing in costume, but mostly it just about having fun. No one seems to really mind that it's deeper meaning of honoring the dead has gotten lost in all the hoopla of costumes and candy. Most people don't know why it is celebrated and most don't really care. I don't think I care either.
It's just fun. Dressing up in a costume and playing a different character is a chance to escape from the normal, everyday routine. I love fall. The moon in October is usually spectacular. The weather is usually perfect. What better time to celebrate than before the "real" holidays come, the cold sets in and the year is over?
I used to look forward to Halloween every year and would love to dress up, decorate my house and hand out candy to kids. Many milestones in my life have passed on October 31st. I sort of considered it my special day. The last 2 years, my heart just hasn't been in it, though. Today seems like it will make 3 years I have not celebrated my special day or even really enjoyed it. No trick or treaters will come here where I live, no party to go to, no pumpkin to carve. Today I realized I have been living alone, really alone, the last 3 years and when no one is around to share things with, it makes things dull. Halloween has become just another day for me. Nothing special has happened on Halloween for me the last few years. I guess it's no longer my special day. I think from now on, it will pass me without much notice. Seems just another opportunity to detach. I suppose it's goodbye, Halloween.
In the wee hours of the morning Hurricane Sandy shut down New York and DC. Pictures of subway stations flooded, waterfalls at Ground Zero and the Statue of Liberty standing strong as the ocean waves tried to engulf her are images so bizarre that my mind does not know where to file them. The majestic, pirate ship that used to sail the waters of the Mantanzas River in St. Augustine, Florida (my hometown) ever since I can remember was taken by the sea along with it's Captain and one of it's crew. A hurricane in New England on October's full moon, could it be more spooky? I'm sure creative writers, imaginative producers and hungry movie studios have their juices flowing, and it won't be long for the onslaught of disaster movies to infiltrate our lives. Even after the storm has died, the relief has come and the cities reconstructed, we will capitalize on it's terror and glory of many, many years to come.
I experienced my own storm yesterday and tried my damnedest not to sink. I am still here, so I assume I was successful. Damn moon! She was quite a temperamental bitch this month. If we ever begin to feel we are in control, Nature has a way of letting us know differently. In the aftermath of the storm, I am humble, quiet and feel quite raw. Vulnerability is not something I enjoy, but here I am exposed.
I really don't know anything and feel somewhat helpless in my plight. I don't have much faith in words and stories and processes. I feel a lot of what is said and done in the name of spirituality is no more than a spiritual facade being placed over a holy mess and if that's the case, I prefer my holy mess. I saw this picture of a sign from the "The Church of the Latter-Day Dude" posted today on Facebook.... "Dance. Grow Things. Try Not to be a Dick" (or in my case, bitch). I feel if I could just focus on these three things, that would be enough .
It is dusk, and I sit almost frozen starring out the window, wrapped in a blanket feeling the first real chill of the season and watching the darkness come. The wind howls as it swirls the the fallen, dead leaves up into to air, as if laughing at their helplessness. Just a few hours earlier in this day I breathed in the light of the sun and it's promise of the new day while drinking in the beauty of the colors of Fall. This evening, with darkness upon me, the colors have faded, and I only see the lifeless, dry leaves as the trees start their cycle of death and rebirth. The thought of winter sends a chill through my bones.
I am determined to sit here looking out this window until the last glimpse of light has disappeared. I want to witness this day leave, and see the night come. I want it to be over. I want to know I survived it. I am in a dark mood. I am praying for a sound sleep and to wake up again to the promise a new day brings. I pray this time it will not lie to me.
Until every last bit of light is engulfed by the night, I will watch the fury of this wind rip through the branches of the tree tops causing them to bend and sway in most extreme ways. Regardless of my heaviness, the moon will rise in it's full glory tonight hopefully cleansing us of the wickedness that seems to have taken over the day. I am hopeful the moon will not fail me, as I feel the sun has today.
I want to be left alone to my thoughts tonight, no matter how dark they are. I am not afraid. I want no sympathy, apathy or help in anyway. I want to unplug, unplug from life right now. There is nothing I can give to life from this space, as it has sucked the light out of me today and left me here in this darkness. I want to stare this suffering right in the eye, so I can see it's true nature. Whatever cruel and wicked game I have unintentionally been playing, I want to end. I want to learn how to truly surrender to Truth, or I want to learn how to truly stand and fight for it. This middle path is not for me.
I don't know what I was expecting to happen as I watched the darkness swallow the light. I suppose, I just wanted to see with my own eyes how it happens. Why is Nature so cruel at times? Why are people so cruel at times? Why does light leave and darkness come?
Do you know the wholeness of your life? Often, I am only experiencing, viewing or understanding the fragments of my life, like a collection of vignettes in a movie lacking a connecting thread, a storyboard lacking a theme, words lacking sentences. Writing somehow helps me to connect the dots. I just sit with a concept and then spew out what comes to me. Through my spewing out, I am able to view my thoughts more clearly. In my efforts to communicate my thoughts, a certain clarity about them is realized.
Our life not only consists of our thoughts, our concepts and our experiences, but those thoughts, concepts and experiences of those we interact with, as well as collectively the cosmic thoughts, cosmic concepts and cosmic experiences. We forget that life is with us and without us. It is above us and below us. It is in us and around us. Our mind can only grasp one, very small, microcosm of it at a time. To understand the wholeness of our life, it is as if we must download the mind, like defragmenting the main frame. What is left after defragmentation is the integrity of the minds knowledge, not it's fragments, not what it thinks it knows, but what it actually understands.
Writing to me has become this defragmenting process. The wholeness of my life is not in the stories themselves but my relationship to these stories, who am I in these stories and how the vignette of my life fits into the big picture. For me to see what is inside, I must often spit it out first.
I breathe in the 50 year old, uncertain and weary woman after a long day of too many decisions and too many emotions that are forever too many, too much and too often. I imagined the second half of my life being easier than the first. This has not in anyway proven to be true. I am grateful for the wisdom of my years but mourn the the loss of my innocence. I am not yet convinced it has been a fair trade.
It seems the older I get the more there is at stake, as I do not have the benefit of time to reconstruct my life when it is destructed. In recent years there has been more destruction than construction. At times I am full of fire and passion, and other times I am just weary. I fear growing old and loosing passion altogether. The enthusiasm of my youth has faded. I need more inspiration than what I used to need, and my present life situation is just not providing it. I know this too shall pass, but my impatience has got the best of me today and my intolerance of mediocrity is peaking beyond my normal, acceptable level.
I breathe out a rose petal lined path to a claw-foot bathtub, surrounded by candlelight and the scent of jasmine filling the room. I imagine myself submerged in soothing hot water, while soft bubbles caress my skin, as the sound of a breathy saxophone, the snare of a soft drum and the raspy voice of blues singer serenade me into a more sensual world. And the icing on the cake is a loving partner pouring me a deep, rich, aged Cabernet and then joining me.
I have no words of insight tonight, no spiritual discourse, no words of wisdom. I am full of longing, longing to be peaceful, to be fulfilled, to be loved. I am still quite a creature, and I am unashamed.
We point. We aim. We shoot, and we often miss the mark. We are so quick to condemn ourselves and others for breaking promises, for failing to follow through and for not meeting our expectations or even our own intentions. The difference between what we intend to do and what we actually end up doing is often a far distance.
On only the fourth day of my 30-day writing challenge I goofed off. I just forgot to write. It just slipped my mind. This is how life is. This why the world we imagine is not the world we live in. If we lived deliberately, masterfully and truthfully 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we might start living the life we imagine. However, we don't live deliberately, masterfully and truthfully. We often live contrary to what we believe and what we say, but it's okay. It's all okay. We are conscious, and we are breathing.
As long as we are conscious and breathing it's going to be okay. We are a work in progress. Self-mastery and truthfulness are challenging disciplines, but make the journey easier. They help us to miss the mark less. Until we have mastered them, we repeat the process until we hit the target. This process teaches us humility, a lessen that will help us bridge the gap between our intentions and our actions. Often when our intentions collide with the tides of the world, our intentions change in midstream. This makes life interesting; however, require letting go and humility that are often rough waters to swim through. Loving each other and ourselves is really hard when we keep breaking promises, when we keep failing to follow through, when we don't meet expectations, when the life we imagined is something entirely different than the life we are living. But we must. Above all we must love each other and our ourselves more and more and more.
When we start living deliberately, when our intentions merge with our actions, when we walk our talk, we will meet Truth. Until then, we keep pointing, aiming and shooting. We keep loving ourselves in spite of ourselves. We keep growing. We grow into Truth.
Stand in your own place and shine there. From that place of purity, in that place of clarity, know who you are. Feel your purity shining through your heart center, breaking through the facade of your own image. Feel the tangled vines of your memories releasing their grip and falling to the ground. You have always been the same. The essence of you has been watching the drama of of life unfold but has remained untouched, unharmed and undisturbed, as pure as it ever was. No one is responsible for your purity, your glory, your goodness, not even you, and it will never leave you. That is you, and there is nothing you can do that will ever change who you are. No matter what experiences you have, no matter who you are in relationship with, if you are standing in your own place, you are with God... Because it's all God, so shine on.
On the other side of hell lies paradise. From very early on we've been told there was something wrong with us, something not right in the world. We were taught to believe that our world needed fixing, that we needed fixing. We learned that if things weren't perfect, it was our fault, as our natural state is that of perfection. Try as we might we've never found that perfection we so desperately sought, so we went to battle with our suffering, to battle with ourselves. We believed suffering did not exist in a perfect world.
A perfect world does not exist either. In all our efforts to cultivate perfection, all we've managed to do is struggle against what is really happening, only prolonging our suffering about what might happen or what happened before. The foundation of our struggle is rooted in our feeling of being wrong compiled with the guilt and shame of being imperfect. Perfection does exist but only the Divine realm. The core of our being is divinely perfect. The rest of us is a holy mess. The force that runs the world is Divine order. All else is chaos.
Instead of splitting ourselves into a lower self that has a higher self it must emulate, we should just befriend our lower self. Our divine Self doesn't need any help. Our "bad side," our "lower self," our imperfect humanness needs our attention, our support, our love. If we push away the parts that hurt, we will never heal and never be whole. Until we are able to plunge through the ugliness at the surface, we will never find the jewels down below.
We tend to panic when suffering knocks at the door. We lock the doors, draw the drapes and batten down the hatches. Suffering doesn't need an unlocked door, an open window or clear passageway. Suffering is found where hope and fear are battling it out. If we have the hope something will happen, rest assured we also have the fear it won't. Hope and fear won't go away anymore than suffering will, but when we begin to accept them as part of our human imperfection in an imperfect world, our divine perfection embraces them, loves them, absorbs them. Hence, no battle, no fixing, no panic.. just acceptance, just love, just celebration. And on the other side of hell lies paradise.
After almost 20 years of being a free-lance Massage Therapist I took a job at a corporate spa last November out of need. I almost made it a year. I made 1/3 of what I would've made on my own, which was sometimes painful. I moved to Greenville last October on a whim. In my younger years it seemed all I needed to do was plant myself somewhere and the clients would come. I suppose this was no different except for my impatience for it's fruition and the lessening of my charms with age has made the harvest less fruitful.
I am most pleased to announce today was my last day. I am gainfully, happily unemployed. In all the things I am ending, completing and tying up, I must admit this one I am most delighted to say goodbye to. The employer was a nice person. The job was not horrible, and I made a decent wage. However, it was just not for me. Business is just business and unfortunately is often soulless. Corporations are for making money not for serving humanity. I went to my job not because I wanted to serve my clients but because I wanted to make the money. I am not kidding myself, nor complaining. A corporation is a good place for that attitude so for my intent, it served it's purpose. If you are expecting something more fulfilling from that scenario, you will be disappointed.
Spending most of my adult life being self-employed, I fortunately had escaped most of the dramas others spend most of their lives caught up in. It doesn't seem to matter what the organization is, if there is group of people working together there must be some structure. Having structure is not the problem and it most necessary to doing anything. It is when the foundation of the structure is diseased with greed, which in most cases describes the foundation of a corporate structure.
From this diseased foundation forms all the rules and business practices. Employees are simply to follow the rules and business practices of the diseased foundation. The only free-thinkers allowed in a corporation are the people at the top who formed it. Other than those few, free-thinking is not encouraged. Being an obedient cow in the heard is what is rewarded. The squeaky wheel gets replaced, not greased.
Anyway, I learned a lot being an employee. First, I learned that I can do it if I have to. Regardless of the drama that goes on in the name of greed, I still found that when I closed the door to my massage room and put my hands on that person, it was just me and them. There were no liaisons, enemies and cliques. There was no selling, no upgrading, no us and no them. It was just two people coming together, sharing the same place at the same time. No matter where that is happening that, dear friends, is the only thing happening.
One cannot be a writer if one does not write. While scanning the blogs of friends who also blog, I saw a friend of mine who took a 30 day challenge to blog everyday. Since it appears I need some discipline to write more, I think I too will take on this 30 day Challenge. Beginning today and through November 20th I will blog everyday. This will be quite a challenge, as I will be moving again right in the middle of this challenge.
I am not really sure where this move will end up taking me, which is exciting as well as a little unsettling. My first stop will be Florida to leave some belongings, my car and my dog. The next stop is India. I will be in India for 6 months this time. I am certain I have gone mad. Once again I am paring down my stuff, sorting, packing and storing. This is becoming a yearly ordeal. This time I plan to lighten my load down to only a 1/4 of what I have now. I am finally surrendering to my inner-gypsy and letting go more and more. The stuff has become so burdensome that it no longer brings me joy. Out it goes!
I am getting so used to leaving homes, friends, clients, students and jobs that part doesn't bother me much. It seems I have become more accepting of the impermanence of life. I am finding it more and more difficult to make long range plans, because I just never know. I never know what will come my way, how I will feel and what I will want. I am really more of realist than I am flighty even though I realize this sounds more flighty than realist. The realist in me recognizes the transitory nature of things. The practical part me sees no reason for holding onto what is simply passing by and everything is simply passing by.
All thoughts, feelings, desires and experiences are fleeting. We want to grasp hold of them, but they seem to slip right through our fingers regardless how tight our grip. The hardest things for me to let go of are my things that have sentimental value. I am realizing that my sweet memories are held in my heart not in my things. This make this letting go process much easier.
People are much harder to let go of. I tend to make lifelong friendships. Those who are dear to me always stay close to heart. I am very loyal in that sense. I have had the same best friend since I was 13. My ex-husband is still considered my family. My first true love was was a man who taught me how to love someone and I still love in this way... truly, madly and deeply. I think if you love someone, there's no reason you should ever stop.
Interestingly, what I often miss about a place is the Nature of it. When I left Florida, I mourned for the ocean. In Greenville, I have fallen in love with this mountain I live on and woods I hike in. There is something magical here on this mountain, in these woods, and I will miss it. I will miss the sound of the creek running, the smell of sweet grass and the sunlight peaking over the tops of the towering trees. I do get attached to these sacred places on this planet we live, but how I love discovering new ones. How blessed we are to be surrounding by such beauty. It's a big, beautiful world out there, and I will soon be off to explore another magical piece of it.
