exhaling…

what does a “spiritual” experience look like? … would i know it if i had it?  … do i even have to call it spiritual, or does the word itself get in my way with all its expectations and baggage from my past? … there has been a kind of electric energy of pure ecstasy that makes me feel like i am at the very edge of my existence…that if i were to let myself “go” i might just explode out of the boundaries of my skin…

i have seen sunsets so beautiful i felt i could expand into them and merge with the sun … i have experienced relaxation so deep my breath has expelled from my body with so much force that with the exhale i felt myself turned inside out and swirling in the air around me … i have experienced a depth of love i could hardly stand it … so much so it was accompanied by a primal sort of compulsion to devour it … i have known moments of a quiet inner void as subtle as a whisper…experienced in total silence …

…maybe it is merely the words that i still stumble over…does it matter what words i use?…my truth is my truth as i know it…and your truth is yours as you know it…

“Guruji used to say ‘Leave the man alone and he will find God in his own way.’ - Irina Tweedie

just open…

i seem to have discovered a love for the flavor of grand marnier…it still only takes about two sips of alcohol to have my head swimming and my knees buckling…those two sips do some mighty burning on their way down my throat…and curiously the coughing and sputtering and choking i do doesn’t seem to put me off too much…i still try to coordinate how to swallow the golden fire without such a scene…but the flavor really is delightful…so i do keep trying…

just open…

i’ve been having a lot of really wonderful Jesus discussions over the last couple of weeks…it’s hard to know how to summarize it all really…but for a girl with Catholic roots and a long stay in the evangelical holy-rolling Protestant flavor…i am finding with more and more distance from religion i grow closer and closer to a Jesus i never knew or understood…to ask the unaskable and not need an answer but to find simple delight in allowing myself freedom to ask without fear (that often IS the answer)…you mean i can really wonder THAT about Jesus…he won’t mind?…only a slight twinge here and there of the hellfire threat..but not at all disturbing…

just open…

there is a rediscovering of the mysticism i feel for sacred objects…holding rosaries my grandmother once held brings her love and devotion back to me…holding her spirit and her heart and all that she believed right there in my hands…it seems a person does not need a body to be present…i’ve beaded some rosaries too…not even very traditional ones…but rosaries that are a creation from my own heart with orientations and meanings i have no explanation for and don’t need…i don’t question…giving in to the mystical places inside of myself with no expectations of what i might or might not experience or find…and i am wearing them too…something the nuns would have scolded me for…

just open…

i once was all about chasing the experience…too blind to understand experiences are everywhere all the time and have nothing to do with my preconceived ideas…too deaf to understand an experience doesn’t have to mean anything other than just what it is…

just open…

…to acceptance…experience…creativity…healing…forgiveness..truth…and most of all…love

in gratitude for blogging friendships…

happy new year

xo

(p.s. a twilight zone marathon on sci fi channel…ahhh…bliss)

…and when the rains abated…to keep the sacred moments entrusted in your care safely locked away…never to breech that trust or do anything to remind her of them again.

the flights the other day combined with tiredness and a spike in pain left me feeling somewhat out of sorts for a couple of days…i sat on the sofa and steeped in the magical show playing outside…and disconnected…and reconnected…

turned to beading…and beading…and beading…three necklaces and two bracelets later i awoke from the trance…what bliss to be lost in my own world somewhere deep inside of myself…no thought of time or obligation or contemplation of anything…wearing soft sweatpants…cuddled up in myself…sitting in the quiet…secretly (and even selfishly) wishing i could always just let my days unfold and follow wherever the gypsy may lead…

yesterday may not have in reality come very close but there was an airplane full of people who definitely had some doubts…the fear was heavy and very palpable…whether it was expressed in those who shrieked out at the violent turbulence…or the man sitting next to me who couldn’t stop chattering about this and that…the unspoken truth everyone was thinking about was whether or not this flight was going to end the way we always assume it will when we get on a plane…

i’ve taken a lot of flights over a lifetime and i have never experienced anything like this before…very high winds were causing delays and the airlines were frequently announcing how planes were being kept in circling patterns because of the trouble with landing…with a layover from the first harrowing flight to the next, it was not an easy decision for me to get on that second flight…

so, what happens when you start to have doubts about your own survival…i think it depends…when you are ill, the death march is usually fairly long (unless it is something sudden and catastrophic)…giving you a lot of time to approach and consider…and usually by the time you draw closer you are pretty weary, and even at times, ready…but when confronted with the possibility of dying when engaged in something pretty routine such as driving a car or taking a flight…when your thoughts are elsewhere and usually turned to the future…getting to this or that appointment…this or that destination…to suddenly be confronted with there being no future to get to is pretty startling…you suddenly realize what being in the moment really means…the lady who was so frantic over her delayed flight because she is due at a funeral…or the man who has a meeting he has to attend…or the mother bringing her children to visit their grandparents…all present and accounted for inside their own fear…the basic fear for survival…the complete loss of control to do anything about your situation…plans all suddenly set aside…reacting in the moment…hearts speeding up…palms sweating…stomachs lurching…sometimes shrieking as fear bubbles up and requires a release valve…gripping of arm rests…incessant chattering…no more plans…only now…

the tension in that plane grew as the turbulence only got worse on descent…anxiety mounted as we got closer to the ground and the rolling and shaking and plunging grew more violent…i think the trouble with being in the presence of that much concentrated fear in one enclosed space is it becomes life-like…it has an energy that feeds…from one person to the next…like a vampire going from one throat to the next and back again…

at some point my own anxiety became overshadowed by physical sickness…i have trouble with motion sickness under the best of circumstances…these were not the best of circumstances…my head was spinning and my stomach was extremely upset…the constant chatter by the man next to me started to sound distorted…like he was some sort of carnival act…on and on he went with a nervous smile…i caught something about how glad he was that his wife wasn’t on this flight…glad she was safe at home…glad she didn’t have to feel the fear because she hates flying so much anyway…could he please be quiet…doesn’t he know i’m trying to keep my head from spinning off and my stomach down where it’s supposed to be?…oddly i became concerned about how it would look if i had to throw up right there in my seat…how typical of me…to be concerned about appearances…more chattering in my ear…

the wheels finally hit the runway…loud cheers and a lot of clapping…the flight attendant laughed and announced…”welcome to las vegas”….a lot of relieved laughter throughout the cabin…the mixture of leftover fear hung in the air as it slowly dissipated to relief…thoughts and conversations returned to the future…”where are you headed next?” …”i hope my luggage made it on this flight”…cell phones turned on…plans made…re-establishment of connection…anything to feel a part of normal life again and forget the last hour or so… “now” had passed by…on to the next destination…

just seeing a snapshot of a pomegranate on a blog brought memories flooding back…as if it is yesterday…all those years ago…my friend’s mother comes back to life in my memory…i can see her face…her smile…her hair…her fingernails…the shoes she wore…how she walked…how she laughed…what their house looked like and smelled like…the dog…the turtle whose face used to turn red as he would plow his way through the strawberries growing in the garden…the tree house…the endless time we spent at one house or the other after school…

a picture of a pomegranate…i’m a little girl again…

a song starts playing in the store where i am shopping…i can feel the aching in my heart starting…the tightness in my throat…the tears welling up in my eyes…the pain is fresh again…how unexpected…how complex…so dimensional i’m not even sure i understand or recognize it fully now…a mixture of regret… loss…sadness…remorse…missing the days that i believed would last a lifetime…

a song playing in a store…i’m a grieving heart again…

the smell of anise seeds, vanilla, sugar, flour, eggs and oil cooking in the pizzelle iron as it screams loudly like a steam locomotive…the aching in my hands from squeezing the handles…the timing must be just right to open the lid…not too brown…not too light…the old machine gives no indication of when it is done…it is purely based on experience…my grandmother is in the room with me, guiding my every decision…a pinch of this…a little bit…not too much…the texture is just right now…

love…and memories of christmas baking fill the kitchen…

a single pizzelle cooking in my kitchen…i’m a grand-daughter, and an apprentice under a master again…

in the silent hour past midnight i now sit in the stillness and wonder will today be a memory tomorrow…or will it perhaps occupy a place somewhere deeper than tomorrow can reach yet…to be suddenly brought into awareness one day years from now while strolling in a park and holding a leaf in my hand…

i realize now that names i choose have personal significance i don’t often understand initially…

sometimes the tide is high…sometimes the tide is low…is there serenity to be discovered in both? i think so…

when i was a little girl i was told that when caught in a rip current the best thing to do was relax…keep your head above water and let the current carry you…when the force of the current began to subside, then start swimming parallel to the shore until you were out of the current…only then begin swimming toward shore…

it is the panic…the resistance…that is deadly…

acceptance…

there is happiness…there is sadness…there is disappointment…there is victory…there is loneliness…there is fulfillment…there is isolation…there is inclusion…there is generosity…there is selfishness…there is hurt…there is hope…there is grief…there is healing…there is light…there is darkness…there is kindness…there is meanness…there is beauty…there is ugliness…there is serenity…there is turmoil…there is understanding…there is confusion…there is awareness…there is unawareness…there is guilt…there is forgiveness…there is love…there is indifference…there is strength…there is weakness…there is oneness…there is separation…there is heaven…there is hell…

it’s all in there…

the tide flows in…the tide flows out…

resistance is…futile

acceptance is…serenity

and then there’s guilt and shame…the rip currents i continually insist on swimming against…they enjoy dunking my head under the water over and over…but i haven’t drowned yet…

is boredom a lack of internal resources?…

over the weekend i read a story of a little girl who had been severely neglected and abused for the first seven years of her life…mostly confined to a dark, filthy, infested closet and kept in a diaper, it was evident she had very little human contact, couldn’t speak, and was dangerously malnourished…without enough stimulation during her most important forming years it remains to be seen how much function she will ever be able to develop…one look into her vacant little eyes makes you feel both sad and deeply disturbed…an extreme case of deprivation…and an extreme example of physical survival…this little girl was drawing on resources inside of herself we can’t really imagine or even begin to understand, resources that at some very basic level served her survival…

i overheard someone say he is dying of boredom…boredom can have this effect…to be so unpleasant as to feel inescapable…a feeling of a lack of anything internally to draw on when external circumstances are presenting nothing of note or interest to the sufferer..

beyond the question of how this little girl survived the lack of care, stimulation, and love…how did she survive the boredom? …if you never knew anything else, would you know to be bored? if you never knew a life outside the little dark cell that imprisoned you how would you know that anything other than what you are experiencing is possible?

some say suffering is the desire for things to be different than they are…

what if you didn’t even understand things could be different than they are?

i wonder if this little girl’s brain had any way of making up images or stories for her…what would those seven years have been like…just a void of blackness with no thought or imagination? what about fear? would you know to be afraid?…where does thought and imagination come from? is it solely dependent on what we experience through our senses? in her case, she was obviously being given enough nourishment to survive physically, so was this brief contact enough to create any sort of thought process…a snippet of sound here, a glimpse of light there…a word or two perhaps…the experience of eating (though when rescued she could not eat solid food and had to be fed with a bottle)…would the brain grab onto these rare momentary snippets and try to piece them together into thought? what about memory…would it even exist as one black, silent moment fades into the next over and over again…would you ever have any understanding of something like love if you had never been shown?

i suppose one could speculate on some of this from a physiological perspective and an understanding of the brain…but for the most part it seems the secrets locked up in this little girl may be hers alone for the rest of her life…

have you ever dreamed you were anything other than human?…i was thinking earlier today i have never to my recollection ever dreamed of myself in any other way than as a human being…what would it be like to dream of yourself as a bird, or a butterfly, or a dolphin…since you don’t have any experience in this life and body of having been any of these animals, what would the interpretation of the mind be in your dream of yourself as something other than yourself…how would you know you were dreaming of yourself as a butterfly?…is a butterfly aware it is a butterfly?…i suppose on some level animals must be aware of what they are, distinct from one another…because they know who to mate with and who to run away from…i wonder how far their sense of self goes beyond instinct…

what about other things…have you ever dreamed of yourself as anything other than a conscious being?…like a flower or a tree or anything else?…i would imagine this would be even rarer than dreaming of yourself as an animal since animals at least have some form of consciousness we can somewhat relate to…but i wonder why this is true…we dream of all sorts of lands and times and scenarios and doing things we have never done before and knowing people we have never met before…but my experience of myself in my dreams is fairly consistent…there may be some variations in my appearance (if i even see myself at all and am not just merely present there), but essentially i am always the same me with the same perceptions of me…

this afternoon i was sitting in my chair working and i dozed off for what couldn’t have been more than a minute or so…in that briefest of moments i had a dream…the dream had quite a bit to it actually, a whole scene of me on vacation on some exotic beach and one of those frilly drinks with an umbrella in it…when i woke up i wondered how it was possible to have gone on a whole vacation and had a Mai Tai with a pink umbrella in the span of a minute…even more amazing was how it was possible to dream at all with just the briefest snooze in a chair…

tonight i am feeling content, grateful, and overjoyed to be discovering new frontiers of creativity and words and new perspectives on old habits…and to be dreaming…both the awake kind…and the asleep kind…if there is even a difference…