Let It Come Through

The message "Don't let the fire go out!" woke me from my sleep into the mysterious light of the full moon. Watching the clouds blowing past casting shadows, I sat with fear.

This eclipse has had an unusual effect on me, a bit of fear mixed with elation, intensity, movement and calm. Upon waking, I felt my soul reaching out to me through a memory. The force of contact woke me. The power unsettled the part of me that has grown comfortable with my sacred responsibility to raise my son, attached to the simplicity I've very intentionally created.

But, for three nights my nervous system has been overly sensitive. The night of the eclipse, my inner-ear opened with a dull thump followed by a high-pitched tone that cut through my cluttered mind in a way that typically happen when I enter highly charged sacred sites. It reminded me of the drums I began hearing during my first trip to Lake Atitlan. Those drums continued to beat in my head for years, at times, pushing me to an edge of sanity, overwhelmed with fear.

One would think that with all I encountered in the fifteen years since, that the channel between my soul and body would be deeply carved, smoothed from prayer, life, practice and presence. It is not. It remains a mysterious passage, and when direct soul contact happens, the force is so strong and palpable it still overwhelms me. Much like falling in love, merging with myself blasts away all of the illusory identities to make room for something new.

Seven years ago, my teacher motioned me to help a young Mayan priestess who was asked to carry a lit candle from a sacred ceremonial fire at one sacred site, to another sacred site. A hundred medicine men and women from all of the Americas-Abya Yala were boarding the boat that would ferry us across Lake Atitlan to Patziapa, where our ceremony would continue. This ceremony and conference was honoring the "Spirit of the Water". I was among the delegates who traveled from the North, yet were closely linked with the Maya delegation via my teacher Mayan Spiritual Guide OmeAkaEhekatl Erick Gonzalez.

The young girl held the candle on a plate with a small, glass pillar protecting it. I arrived with a piece of hand woven cloth that I had either been carrying without purpose, or that my teacher handed to me when he instructed me to help her keep the candle lit. During that time, my connection to my teacher was rich with fluidity, my hands and body an extension of his. My understanding of where he stopped and I started was nebulous. However, none of that seemed to matter, then. It was ecstasy to serve. And, in that service, I rejoiced.

The young Mayan priestess had another Mayan helper to one side of her. It became clear that the only way this was going to work is if I stood guard on the other side. Neither of the girls received me with a toothy smile and casual receptivity, but they opened to include me in this effort, sincere and present, taking note I had a cloth and was intent on following through with my instructions. Carefully, as the wind picked up I held the cloth as protection, the three of us walking together down the pier to board the boat.

The task we performed struck a chord in others as they opened a path for us on the crowded boat and cleared three seats where we could care for this flickering light in the increasingly strong winds. It was as if the hope of the world was flickering among our hands, the wind a natural phenomena that would destroy that hope without our persevering attention. The possibility that despite my color of skin and the atrocities that have occurred between our nations, we could all care for this lit ceremonial candle coursed through my veins. The sacred responsibility entrusted to me felt weightless in those moments of ceremony, and so heavy before and after.

As we exited the boat and made our way into the roundhouse, the young Mayan priestess continued the final steps of her journey alone. Still flickering, she placed the candle on the altar, our task complete.

I returned to sit near my teacher knowing that one day this memory would return.

(Mayan Spiritual Guide OmeAkaEhekatl Erick Gonzalez can be reached via http://www.spiritjaguar.com/)

Showing Up

(Artwork by Sasha Fantom and photographs of Sunsets as Reflected through Shattered Mirrors by Bing Wright)

Typically, when I hear the words 'show up', no matter how caring the intonation, it stimulates two trains of thought: 1.) I better get busy doing that 'big thing' I came here to do, or 2.) I better get super spiritual and be what I came here to be.

Both trains are heavily loaded with striving, and an assumption that simply being me just isn't enough. It can literally take me days, weeks or months to realize that I hopped on one of these trains, with some form of compulsion powering it like a steam engine, before I hop off.

However, there are those days and weeks where I am not striving, yet something is actually happening. I showed up. I showed up here and there, and it made a difference. Sometimes it looks like speaking up. Or, making my son laugh instead of get tight. More often than not, I find it's when I stopped myself from saying that thing I always say instead of feeling deeply engaged in the truth of the moment.

For most of my life, I wanted to be famous but I didn't know it.

At age four after my father was incarcerated for the first time, I ended up on the front page of the local newspaper. I knew he would see the photo and know that I was alright. Despite the places my father would get horribly off track, his love was palpable and undeniable, something my mother nurtured and reinforced. I knew it meant the world to him to see me on the paper and know that I was ok. By the time I turned seven, I lived in another state. I remember thinking "I am really going to have to do something 'big', now, for him to know that I am ok."

I am not sure if I ever expressed interest in seeing my father when I was young. However, I very much wanted him to know that I was alright and my mom was doing a good job. Unconsciously, 'doing something big' drove my existence until age 30 when I met my father face-to-face for the first time in the safety of a Colorado Correctional facility. Being present with each other in our grown bodies was the beginning of our 'showing up'. From that moment on, I could call him and he call me. When he got out of prison, I had to confront fear, and trust myself to handle being in relationship to what society calls a convict, but a daughter calls a Dad. I showed up without my mother's protection or guidance, but with her love.

I grew myself up.
I made a choice, a choice that broke unspoken agreements that had been in place between my mother and I for decades.

Eighteen month's ago my father died, just ten years after I met him for the first time. We were never super intimate, talking over the telephone every day in the way he did with his baby sister and step-mother. However, we did what we needed to do with each other. As his only child, I showed up as he was dying and held his hand. We cried a lot. We didn't speak much. But, we were present. I could have tobacco and incenses burned with his body and play the kind of music he loved at his funeral service. He would have died just fine without those things or me being present. But, it wouldn't have been the same. I'll never forget that it was a bit after midnight on the night I actually said "Good Bye," without an "I'll see you tomorrow" that he actually died.

It was shocking to me. We didn't talk every day while he was alive. I didn't turn to him when I needed things. He didn't call me when he was down. But, my "Good Bye" was different than his sister's "Good Bye." Or, his Stepmom's "Good Bye." Or, my aunts "Good Bye." Or his little brothers "Good Bye." My presence in that moment mattered.

Our presence matters. It matters to our sons and daughters. It matters to our teachers and students. It matters to our neighbors, lovers, spouses, plants, trees, birds and air.

The break-thru for me in this story is that I wasn't too busy doing big things to show up for this one man's rite of passage. I wasn't too scared to tell my mother that being with my father as he died mattered more to me than interrupting the plans we made for her to celebrate my sons birthday with us in Vermont. Instead of creating my life as if one didn't already exist, I realized without doing anything at all I already play a big role just being myself. Sometimes the simple things take the longest to learn.

As I was cleaning out my father's apartment, I found something he had written about his death. Without our having much contact over the course of our lives, he clearly scripted out how he wanted to die and that his daughter would be present for the planning and decisions at his death. From his perspective, that was just who his daughter is. But, from mine, it was the seed of who I was becoming.

I learned so much about myself and my father as he was passing. All of it remains sacred to me like a deep treasure buried in my heart. I met people I would have never met, and heard stories I would have never heard. Some stories broke my heart many times over. My Dad's friends, some that were bikers and ex-cons, went out of their way to contribute to his passing, dismantling decades of stereotypes within me through their care and sincerity.

And, my mom, she showed up, too. Instead of flying to Vermont, she flew to Colorado. Our connection was clunky and edgy, far from smooth and easy in the way we are accustomed. Yet, grace and love was present, down deep, showing us that clunky and edgy was not happening to tear us apart but to bring us together in a new way.

Together, we sloughed off decades of unspoken agreements which time had come to an end. I felt the fragility and vulnerability that exists between us. I fed my faith. I trusted our capacity to grow beyond past limitations. It's one thing to show up inside of the pictures others project onto the world, and another to track with present streams of possibility that break out of them.

I sat down at this computer to write about astrology. However, this story is what was present, another chance for me to trust that simply being me is enough.

Casting Off the Old, Revealing the New

(The first photograph is taken by a drone of the largest cave in the world, the second is artwork by Tomasz Alen Kopera)

I am feeling a relief one hour after this New Moon/Solar Eclipse. Yet, it isn't the totality of my experience. As the sun enters Aries later today, marking the start of Spring and for some the start of the Solar Year, I am not artificially expecting myself to enter everything new as if nothing has occurred before. I am starting Spring in the dark magic of the soil, connected to all of the ancient layers and watery realms that live beneath it.

And, I am feeling the new. It's just that after all I've been through-- and we've been through astrologically speaking since June of 2009, through 2012 and until Today-- the way the new shows up for me is not in the form of a child-like wonder. I can't ignore that we've all just been initiated into a new 2,150 year cycle. The depth of spiritual experiences, growing maturity and access to truth has utterly shaped my existence, and in some small way the whole.

Waking up to the new is not necessarily free of a past. or stories. or experiences. or lessons. For me, it is simply rich with an ever deepening presence and awareness of how they are working, the love that is growing from them, the training they offer my consciousness and a deeper connection to the primal experience of being a co-creator of this multidimensional plural-verse. Waking up to the new is embracing that my key task in this life is to fully inhabit my vessel and root into the earth while respecting that it is possible for you to do the same without our differences tearing our hearts apart in illusion.

I am not experiencing this as a time of innocence. However, my only hope is that I stay connected to my innocence while I come into the budding wisdom that lives inside of me. Discrimination, confrontation, integration and reflection must be woven with that innocence so that I can come down from the vision of how the world can be and directly experience it; from there, choose what I really want with thought and action.

This New Moon is in the last degree of Pisces, and the most multidimensional frequency. For the most part, it is beyond human realms of understanding. To talk about it, means we're missing it altogether, but it doesn't really matter because we're already inside of it. This is an example of the stories of separation we're casting off-- the idea that some are getting it and some aren't, and those that 'have it' must help those that don't, or scurry around protecting their 'havingness' as if some external source has the power to take it away.

As we cast off the corpse of the dying world, it is much like being with someone as they are dying and transitioning to the new. It can be filled with an enriched duality. It doesn't invite, but demands us to be with life on its terms, rather than our own. It pushes us like the contractions of a mother's womb loving us into the new, united with the forces of nature. And, while a clear mind is a treasure in these moments, fear, projections and illusions can be heightened in the process of letting go and shaking off the old, dead skin. Sometimes what one being cannot see for themselves the community around them must. Presence serves. The small acts of caring become the evolutionary fuel for the new.

The final Pluto Square Uranus event of seven that took place Monday March 16 is far more powerful and rare than a new moon, solar eclipse and first day of Spring. My experience of these seven squares, is that they work like this:

All the shit I thought I had already dealt with and composted comes flooding into the space in the form of projections, conflict, frustration and repetitive feelings and reactions. It intensifies. And, even if I am tracking closely with it, watching the process as it unfolds, I get hooked. It sucks. I know better, but my ability to show up- present and awake- is still strengthening like a muscle or movement that my body knows how to do but I am struggling to do it in this circumstance.

During the first few squares, I found myself repeating "I can't do this" to myself a lot, wanting to change everything on the outside so that I could be at peace on the inside. However, by the fifth square last April, I began to feel more at ease, reminding myself that this was a 70/30 game, with 70% of the work needing to be done on the inside-- like owning my projections and their subsequent distortions- and about 30% making external shifts-- like getting Mark to do his own laundry and split kitchen duties with me 50/50.

The gift I find following the squares is that life is ultimately so much easier and so much more fluid than the weeks, sometimes months surrounding the square. I find that I am not insane and stuck. I am not being punished for some past life where I really screwed up. My family is not here to crush me and oppress me as a woman. My obsession with vaccines passes and the truth that I discovered through that obsession remains.

And, the fresh -- and-- deep energy of this New Moon/Solar Eclipse and the start of Spring is WELCOMED. As it all comes up, there's nothing better than a fresh breeze to move it through.

Untwisting The Twist

(artwork by Deborah Koff-Chapin)

In the darkness before dawn, letting go feels quite easy. Yet, after the sun rises, even my thought-forms seem real, like a dish to be washed or the sweet sap in a maple. I am not my thoughts. But, the one that yanked me from my sleep to this clicking keyboard went like this:

The one in me that has experienced trauma clings to power but craves love. I have spent almost two decades talking about how much I love, love, rarely noticing my unconscious preoccupation with power.

A decade ago, I stripped myself of everything to serve a spiritual calling. I offered up my marriage, my possessions, my social status, even my metaphorical baby at the time, a nonprofit organization cultivating seeds of consciousness and feminine structures to midwife a new civilization. I moved on the edge of truth like a dancer, surrendering to higher service with fearless innocence and selfless freedom. The feeling was one of life or death; nourish your spirit through this stripping or start to die slowly, knowing you saw the entrance to the path but walked by thinking you'd return 'one day'.

During these years, I cultivated a strong, lasting relationship to faith, love and devotion. I also fed my unconscious relationship to power. Just how deep this lust for power penetrated my being has just recently been revealed to me with my father's passing. The experience I had at his death and through the many dreams that followed demanded me to claim myself as a sovereign being and inhabit any and all vacancies that unconsciously make space for destructive forces. The simple truth that arrived: it's time to meet the most vulnerable, powerless, broken parts of myself in order to untwist the twists of abuse, alcoholism, rape, ignorance and murder, even if I must release all that I believe to be true in the process.

I often marvel at my ability to be a contortionist, trying to fit into some version of myself that has yet to come true, or never will be true rather than resting in the perfection of who I am. Now, as I enter my 40's the untwisting of my contortions appears to be less dramatic. This time, it seems I just need to let the love in deep, and, be grateful for every choice I've made to cultivate it. And, to forgive myself for the harm I've done trying to deny, escape or numb my pain in order to survive, or protect my pride.

As I evolve, the question to ask myself is not only: How does this choice grow my love?
But, how does this choice offer love to the parts of me that need it most?

This feels like the ultimate in responsibility and fulfillment.

Just Write.

In an interview my husband did with Ray Bradbury decades ago, Mark asked him: "What advice do you have for someone who wants to be a writer?"
Ray Bradbury's answer: "Write. If you want to be a writer, write every day."

I have always loved writing. But, first, I wanted to be a pilot like my step-dad. Then, I took a career test in High School. It determined I'd make a better clown, priest or therapist. I studied Journalism, and I've never stopped writing.

This year, I turn 42. I am not so interested in being 'something'. Yet, I still love to play with form, identity, words and perspective. And, I love to write. When I meditate, the words flood in. Rather than being at odds with this. I am going to meditate for less time, and write more.

I haven't posted to this blog in almost five years! I thought I was going to be ashamed of what I had written. I wasn't. And, this is something that 'i' can truly celebrate. It's hard to see clearly or love intimately from on top of a mountain; especially a mountain of shame.