Roots

While planting flowers in the garden today there were so many roots from bushes that were dug out years ago; thick roots that ran deeply into the soil and spread out in quite a wide radius. It started me thinking about the patterns of separation we start building the moment we enter a life on earth. Patterns of separation are results of the thoughts and beliefs one holds that they are separate from the whole, separate from God. They are thoughts such as “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not smart enough”; anything that makes one believe that they are anything other than Divine. When those patterns of separation are formed, they grow deep and latch on like roots. And even though the patterns may have been eliminated years ago at the surface, there may still be old dead roots that need to be removed. I find that meditation helps this. It helps hoe the ground, remove the old roots and weeds, and plants and fertilizes new vibrant life in the soil. Time for some inner gardening… or as I like to call it, God-ening. Aum Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.

God through the peephole

There is a peephole on the door of my apartment. What is it there for? To see who’s knocking at my door, of course. Well, I’ve only been here for a month so I haven’t had many visitors yet. So my peephole has taken on a whole different purpose lately; to try and catch a glimpse of my neighbor. I’m not really sure why, but I’ve developed a sort of obsession about the person living next door. I guess I’m just curious about the people that surround me. In my building, there is one long hallway with smaller hallway shoot-offs along one side. These smaller hallways have two opposing doors. The one on the right is my apartment; the one on the left is hers. So, when I look out the peephole in my door, I have a direct view of hers. I hear her come and go; sometimes in a phone conversation, sometimes with visitors and sometimes she just slips away in her apartment and I don’t hear another sound.

I’ve developed this game, a sort of secret spy, private-eye am I. I hear her leave with flip-flops on a 50 degree day. So, naturally she must just be running down to switch the laundry around or check the mail because who in their right mind would wear flip-flops on a day like this unless they were coming right back? Right? I must be right. Lo and behold, she returns a few minutes later with fabric softener in hand and I catch a small glimpse. Yes! I was right! How smart am I? Anyhow, it’s gotten ridiculous lately; I hear movement outside my door and I try to make it to the peephole before the door to her apartment shuts. I hardly ever seem to make it, which is probably why the obsession continues.

Ok, you get the picture. So, I had this realization today. In my spiritual classes and group meditations, we’ve been talking a lot about the priority of focus. In order to reach self-realization, the focus should be first on God, second on God in self, and third on God in other. God-self-other. So my realization was that I had been putting “other ”first. And that if I had that same obsession and curiosity about God, I would probably be free! Free from my patterns of separation and live in accordance with Divine Love, Wholeness and Oneness with all of creation. This obsession that many of us develop throughout our lifetime is usually what keeps us from being free. Unfortunately, the languaging of society tends to teach us that image and identity are the most important things. And, really, image or identity doesn’t exist without a comparison to other. We are “other” obsessed.

So, with this in mind, I am changing my focus. What if my third-eye is the peephole to my self-realization? If I even caught so much of a glimpse of God through my third-eye peephole, then life as I “know” it would be changed forever! So here I sit in my apartment adorned with pictures and figurines of the likes of Ganesha, Buddha, Kwan Yin, Jesus, Amma, Radha and Krishna, Saraswati, Lakshmi...you would think I'd be reminded every second of the day as to where my focus should be; not to mention all the unseen beings that are just waiting to support me in my awakening. I’m sure that someday I’ll actually just knock on my neighbor’s door, introduce myself and end the obsession. But, for the moment, God is knocking. I think it’s time I catch a glimpse through the peephole.

O.blog.ation

I just realized I haven’t posted anything in about 9 months! I’ve had so much change over the last year that it just didn’t seem to fit in the schedule for me. But, now that I’m finally feeling more settled, I’ll try to fulfill my o*blog*ation and be more communicative. Having a blog is tough! always having to come up with some witty entry. I’ll admit to you now that I’m good at coming up with the titles and concepts, but actually filling it with content that’s fit to read and somewhat entertaining is not always easy. But, alas, I’ll do my best. If I just get myself out of the way and let it flow, it usually turns out much better. In any case, it always feels good when the task is accomplished. Some of the entries will probably be completions of half written blogs over the last 9 months, so don’t be surprised if I’m talking about summer and it’s still winter. It’s great to be connected again. Nice to “see” you all again.

True Love's Chance

Well I'm still going through piles of stuff but I'm happy to report that they are dwindling and becoming more organized. I was looking through an old notebook and ran across a poem I wrote more than a decade ago. I kind of like it. It's simple yet whimsical. I hadn't even thought about it until just now. As soon as the words spilled off the pen and on to the page, it was closed and shelved and forgotten. And now that the binder has been cracked, it is free to live again.

Rivers, sonnets, poems and sands
Seashelled walls in foreign lands
Footprints, roses, song and dance
Take a bow for true love's chance

Synchronicity – not just a great song by the Police

Yesterday I was going through all the boxes of stuff that I’ve accumulated over the years. I will be moving soon and wanted to simplify. Being confined to, pretty much, one room, the accumulation was starting to affect my mood. Since a continual motto for me is “out with the old, in with the new”, I decided to get on with the purging process. I started pulling things from boxes and making piles; recycle, garbage, garage sale, e-bay, keep, give away, etc. I soon found myself so lost amidst my mountain range of life-time possessions that I had to triangulate my location (luckily my GPS was amidst the piles ;-). I located myself somewhere between Mount Kilimanjunko, Mount Never-rest and K2muchstuff. This is where I ran across a book that was given to me by a friend many months ago. The title is “Simple Abundance; A Daybook of Comfort and Joy” by Sarah Ban Breathnach. This book has a short entry for every day of the year meant to be read to help your “daily life” be “an expression of your authentic self.” I figured that since I wasn’t moving anywhere soon, and since my brain could really use a simply abundant break from the chaotic mess, I decided to open the page to the May 18th entry and see what wisdom Ms. Breathnach had to impart on me. Mind you, I had never even opened the book until that moment, so imagine my surprise and delight to not only find the attached satin ribbon book mark was already marking the May 18th page (weird) but also in reading the following entry:


May 18

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Out of clutter, find simplicity. --Albert Einstein

After a morning spent sifting and sorting through the beautiful, the useful, and the useless, I glanced around our living room floor. It resembled and archaeological dig with small stacks of artifacts all separated according to their domestic categories. I wondered what a late-twentieth-century anthropologist considering the juxtaposition of junk and precious mementos (such as my daughter’s last pacifier) would tell the world about the woman whose life was now reduced to a series of neat and pleasing bundles.

Soon it became time to return everything to where it belonged. This, believe it or not, was a source of great contentment. As I wandered through the rooms of the house I began to search for the common thread in the lives of the world’s great spiritual teachers and traditions: Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, The Hebrew prophets, The Moslem Sufis, The Catholic saints, The Hindu rishis, The Shakers, The Quakers, The Amish. None of them had junk drawers. That’s because all embraced simplicity. Spirituality, simplicity, and serenity seem to be a sacred trinity; three divine qualities of the orderly soul. Henry David Thoreau believed “our life is frittered away by detail.” I disagree. I think our lives are frittered away by lack of focus. But how can we focus our attention on what’s truly important when we’re half-crazed because we can never find anything? However, Thoreau’s remedy for the frittering frets still works today: “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”

This week, consider that with a little bit of courage and creativity you can find the breathing space you crave. You may think you’re only clearing clutter from a junk drawer or juggling commitments to find a few hours to get your house in order. But your soul knows better.


Thank you for the synchronistic reminder Sarah. I’m glad I ran across your book. I can’t wait to bump into it again. This time it won’t be buried under a mountain of stuff.

Saved By a Jehovah's Witness!

As I was doing my nanny duty of feeding the toddler today, there was a knock on the door. I answered and there stood a lovely woman with a bible in her hand. She asked me what I thought about the “Kingdom of Heaven”. I told her that the Kingdom of Heaven is right here, right now. It is all of us. She went on to ask if I attend a church and I told her I go to Christ Community Church in Spring Lake then paused for reaction…for those of you who don’t know, Christ Community (C3) is a progressive Christian church which embraces all faiths, beliefs, sexual orientations and…gasp!...”encourages independent thinking” (murmurs among the crowd). It is a place where I’ve sung Hindu bhajans and Buddhist chants during service with great reception. And, although I don’t consider myself to be a Christian, it is the place where I’ve felt the most connected with the philosophies and the people here in west Michigan. Now, as I was telling this woman which church I attend, there was that familiar egoic voice just chomping at the bit waiting for the response. I so wanted her to start asking me about the bible and trying to impose her views on me just so the ego could have its chance to tell her my very progressive views. That voice that I’ve tried hard to do away with somehow finds a way to rear its ugly head every now and then. Generally, I’ve done pretty well with keeping it in-check, but today, it made an appearance. Not a grand appearance, but an appearance none-the-less. The well-intentioned lady asked if I say the “Lord’s prayer” and I answered “nope, not since I was catholic”. She looked a little confused. Then she started talking about the meaning of the word “kingdom”…”a land with a king. It’s really kind of like a government with a ruler” she said then pulled pamphlets out of her bag and asked if I wanted them. I said that they “weren’t my sort of thing but I’ll leave them on the counter in case the family wanted to read them.” (huh?) She left in, I’m sure, a confused state and I went back to the business of feeding the child. But, for some reason I was feeling unsettled this time. The ego didn’t feel that usual sense of satisfaction. There was nothing overly harsh said on my part. It was just the way the ego was talking with the intention of getting a reaction that left me with that feeling of unsettledness. What surfaced next, I wasn’t prepared for. What surfaced was me, the Divinely True me, the I am. That part down deep inside decided to come up closer to the surface and shut the ego up before it had the chance to revel in its small victory. Instead, I felt completely defeated myself. I don’t want to be that person. Isn’t that being exactly the thing that I was against? Isn’t that, in a way, imposing my views on others? Isn’t that being judgmental? I completely believe that we all have our own truths and every single one of them is real and true. Being a Jehovah’s Witness is exactly where that woman is supposed to be at this point of her journey. It’s what works best for her in this moment. Shouldn’t I love her instead, and cheer her on for the journey ahead? There was a time when being a catholic worked best for me. But we grow and progress. And today, I did a little bit more of that. But there I was with my feelings of shame and guilt realizing that, once and for all, I didn’t want to let that ego-voice rule the roost. All of a sudden, everything seemed so much clearer. I felt so much love for that woman who came along and gave me that experience of Divine Love and connection and acceptance. I’ve forgotten lately how that felt. It’s time to re-awaken that part of myself and move forward.

Now, there are many who say that one of the ways the Divine feminine (Mother God) shows her love is by sending flowers…and do you know what? 5 minutes after that lady left the front door, there was another knock. A lady delivering flowers! And she happened to be the mother of a friend of mine! Ahhhhh Divine timing.

Thank you Mother. Jai Ma!

Lynx

He was a loveable little kitten with a grey/brown tiger-striped fur. He’d been at the animal shelter for 3 months in the same cage with his brother and sister. They’d all managed to escape the usual fate of upper respiratory disease that takes many cats in the shelter. He was strong from the get-go. We named him Lynx because he had little tufts of fur sticking out from the tops of his ears. We took him home with us to be a brother to the other kitten, Leo, we had just rescued from there a month earlier. They were best friends right away. When we got home we let him out of the cage and Leo ran to him immediately. They sniffed each other and, after mutual approval, started to play. It was meant to be. They grew together, both very loving and affectionate cats. It was the perfect situation I’ve always wanted as a cat owner; two cats who loved each other, played together, cleaned each other’s ears and took care of one another, and kept each other company when their people were away. Lynx loved to go outside! We would let him out for a few hours a day, except during winter when we’d open the door, he’d sniff the air and realize that it was way too cold to have fun and would turn around and trot back into the house away from the frozen tundra. He showed us his hopefulness and optimism when he would ask to go out 5 minutes later thinking that the weather would be completely different than the time before. But the rest of the year, he would enjoy the outdoors. He enjoyed life on earth for 3 turns of the seasons. During spring, summer and fall, he would spend as much time as he was allowed outdoors, making sure to come in well before nightfall. He enjoyed all the things cats do; chasing birds and mice, gentle breezes blowing across his fur, sitting contentedly on the porch, basking in the sun or hiding under his favorite pine tree across the street for shade when it got to be too warm. How could I have kept this sense of freedom from him when he loved it so? If he would have stayed indoors all the time, he wouldn’t have been as happy, but may have lived longer. Is it better to have lived a short happy and free life than to exist in monotonous mediocrity for longer? Would it have been selfish of me to keep him in just because I wanted him around forever? Would he have left us anyway because it was just his time to go? We will never know. But I do know this. Quality of life is so much more important than quantity.

He was one of the most loving and affectionate cats I’ve ever encountered in the world! And he was a very good listener. He would actually stop what he was doing when told “no”. I’ve never known a cat to do that (besides his brother Leo). He was a survivor; from the early months in the pound to getting bailed out from 2 “arrests” by animal control, to being shot with a bee bee gun... (obviously there was a neighbor that wasn’t quite as appreciative of him ;-( He definitely used up all of his nine-lives. But he was happy. Today, he was hit by a car and reached his inevitable expiration. He has transcended to the next level of existence. Heaven sure is lucky.

Goodbye my little Lynx. Mom, your brother Leo and I will carry on without you. You will be terribly, terribly missed…but always, always loved.