Crossroads Dispatches

When's the Last Time You Tried to Pay the Rent with Love?

I'm reposting an oldie but goodie today that evokes Independence, at least in my mind. It was originally written on June 28, 2005--nearly seven years ago today.

I'm back in San Jose, CA at least for the moment, where this was once written. Barefoot Coffee Roasters is no longer as edgy and independent as it once was, and there's no longer a chalkboard in their bathroom. The Beatles reference, "All you need is love," turned out to be prophetic (you'd have to read several posts to follow the connections). And how the rest of the story unfolded will wait for a future post.

Jun 28, 2005

When's the Last Time You Tried to Pay the Rent with Love?

There is only one success - to be able to spend the rest of your life in your own way. - Christopher Morley

Two weeks ago I'm sitting at a stool writing my bio at Barefoot Coffee Roasters (a fantastic organic coffeehouse in Santa Clara, CA). I'm supposed to come up with a witty list of bullet points per request to sum up my education, work and adventures. I get up to go to the bathroom mainly to stretch from the hours spent in front of the laptop. I'd been staring at the screen stumped as to how to succinctly articulate that rollercoaster adventure that spanned the years 2001-2004.

The bottom half of the bathroom wall is entirely wrapped in chalkboard. And there's a plastic tub with colored chalk to tempt our expressive side. Someone else has written in baby blue:

All You Need is Love -  John Lennon

A dissenter responds in pink pastel:

Yes, thank you. We've all heard the song. When's the last time you tried to pay the rent with love?

That my friends pretty much sums up the core question in my life today. I use it as an open-ended question to dwelve into rather than an abrupt and cynical that's-just-the-way-it-is-folks statement.

I know, I know I said I'd come clean with my story. That's not entirely possible in the attention-deficit blogosphere. Only a sneak peek fits here. It doesn't help that I'm not entirely motivated to speak about the past. The beauty and freedom of blogging is writing about the here and now in the here and now.

Yet I thought you should know that although this here blog is often listed in the business blog category, I personally know almost nothing about conventional quote success unquote. I've only been a millionaire on paper. Heck, haven't we all been millionaires on paper, in our imaginations? If you resonate with Chris Morley's definition, well, then perhaps I can be more helpful.

Think of me as a fellow patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier, could give some advice. - C.S. Lewis

In many ways, my story isn't unique. I've met so many folks that have gone through a near-bankruptcy, the dot-com crash, business betrayal, and divorce. It matters little if it was all in a span of a year or three or ten.

From there, each of us goes down our own pathway. I think what's important is not so much the turning points themselves, but the aftermath. How we learn, digest, integrate, rebuild in that in-between time to use the lessons and wake-up calls fruitfully. Along with my father's death at seventeen and more recently witnessing the tsunami, the avalanche of events circa 2001-2002 have been among the turning points of my life.

In hindsight I was fortunate enough to have so much go so wrong in short order that I couldn't pretend that I knew anything about anything. The Buddha has said: Forgo everything you have thought significant until now. (Uh, easier said than done.) I was stripped of everything I thought significant and I was stripped of being a know-it-all. I was hungry for answers, and this time simply stark questions remained. That in itself was a remarkable turning point: Evelyn didn't know.

Ask and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to them that knock it shall be opened. - Jesus, The Sermon on the Mount

(Note: that I can even quote Jesus in public forgodsakes shows the great strides I've made. This would have been unthinkable - what would they think!? - just two years ago.)

Let's switch to another story... Don Listwin was No. 2 at Cisco when he left to become CEO of Openwave in September 2000. (Talk about bad timing. Uh, strike that, it did allow Listwin to cash out all his Cisco stock options.)

Yet the Internet bubble had already begun to burst, and [Don] Listwin says  the four years he spent as CEO turned out to be the hardest of his life. "I had to lay off half my 2,500 employees. I got divorced. And my mom died." Listwin says....

He was at the hospital, near Vancouver, where his mom had died less than an hour earlier. His father and sister had just arrived, and the mourning process had begun in earnest. Just as a nurse came into the room and asked if the family would like to donate Grace Listwin's corneas, Listwin's mobile phone rang. It was Openwave's CFO, reporting in that they had missed their numbers for the quarter. "Thanks for telling me, but at the moment that's just going to have to take a back seat." - "When the Dream Changes", Paul B. Carroll, Worthwhile Magazine, July/August 2005

I'd been the first employee of a golden-boy-founded Internet start-up. That same September 2000 that Listwin joined Openwave we tried to get a second round of funding. I can only picture the men gathered around the board room as our iconic venture capitalist yelled and stomped when he uncovered that said golden boy, now chairman of the board, was merely working part-time. Everything quickly unraveled.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. - Steve Jobs

Listwin walked away from Openwave and now devotes his life to fighting cancer at his non-profit. (Listwin's mission is focused on the crux of the cancer problem because "money is being made from treatment, not from detection.") I only use Listwin as a counterpoint to myself. It really doesn't matter: you can be a multi-millionaire in a velvet-lined prison cell of your own making or you can be a nomadic gypsy tossed from port to port, freedom and security is totally independent of your bank account.

Money isn't evil. It is nothing. - Anonymous

As catchwords that pull me forward, authenticity, purpose and integrity were the drivers that fueled my personal quest. These catchwords guided me quite well for the last few years. They fueled my curiousity. The funny thing was I practically ended up right where I'd started, or at least it looks that way externally.

 

We shall not cease from exploration 
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time.- T.S. Eliot

I watched many of my compatriots (especially women) leave behind technology and business to heal the world and escape to be 'more authentic': from joining non-profit ventures to becoming Reiki masters to listening deeply as a personal coach. It would require a book-length post to chronicle my journey - so I'll cut to the chase. I got to the point where I realized I didn't need to go anywhere to be myself. I didn't need to go anywhere to heal. Trust me, there's a whole lot of healing needed right here within business.

The old catchphrases have lost their mystery. Ever since the tsunami, I have new catchphrases: open-heartedness, selflessness, and grace. These catchwords are proverbial carrots at the end of the stick - pretty distant but compelling. Yet, they are on the very same authenticity continuum that I embarked in 2002.

Ultimately authenticity is interwined with fearlessness. You can read Steve Job's 2005 Stanford commencement speech. It's remarkably inspiring. Four days later, one can easily be back to reading the weekly status report and glumly punching the clock. I know this. Verywell. Your fear, your doubt, your resistance, your homeostatis andyour obstacles aren't specifically addressed in Job's speech, are they?

Inspiration doesn't pay the bills. We dismiss millionaires like Jobs and Listwin. Yeah, right, what do they know about fear and failure, we mumble. Fine, then (although they're ultimately flesh and bones - andspirit - too).

I grew up in an immigrant family, so 'Do what you love and the money will follow' was hardly my parent's life-long advice. To top it off, they were so overprotective and fearful of outsiders that riding my bicycle around the block, going over to a friend's home, having a boyfriend, and certainly the school trip to D.C. were strictly forbidden.

In a parallel universe I would have been an English lit and philosophy major, but even a journalism degree was too risky. In my first semester as a copy editor of the university paper, I quickly saw that seniors were having a tough time securing ill-paying reporting jobs. Needless to say, I graduated with a BSEE. (Actually, I love the art of computers too, but in my heart of hearts it's not my first love.)

Recently, at a journalism conference an Indian-Japanese comedian is introduced thusly,  "Like all good Indians and all good Japanese, he became an engineer."  This is so true it hurts like a Dilbert cartoon. His humorous quips as Andy Groves' demo boy eventually paved the way to his new career. The Indian journalists foremost question to him: "What did your parents say?" I'm scratching the surface, but this is the firm foundation I then laid my own heap of fears upon.

"So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time," is plain as day in Jobs' pep talk. He continues:

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. - Steve Jobs

In 2002-2003, I bounced around the Bay Area sleeping on friend's couches (no floors, so I am one up on Jobs ;-)) and there were days I could barely afford peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner. After one consulting engagement in Europe (after a long dry spell, and expenses were only reimbursed later), I wandered alone through Italian cobblestone streets teeming with cafes and shops hoping I could find something to eat with the change in my pocket. It amounted to less than a euro. Although I went hungry that one day, I gorged myself on the morning flight back to the U.S. on business class.

But as I've said before, the summer of 2002 was priceless. All the money I'd hoarded during my lucrative engineering days had never granted me a lasting sense of peace and joy and freedom. With nowhere further to fall, I gleaned what intuition actually was and followed it; I experienced the expansiveness of impersonal unconditional love - a love that emanates from the universe; and I was experimented with what freedom without strings attached might look like. It was that indescribable love that I trusted. It was an imperfect often halting trust, but it got me by. In an about face to the controlled will and rationality that had shaped my life, I simply trusted that it would (ok, how's might even) all work out OK.

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. - Steve Jobs

What motivates me now? You will think me absurd for saying this in the same breath as the word business - and perhaps you've already surmised it: Yup, I am definitely hinting about enlightenment as the endpoint on the authenticity continuum.

We could regard enlightenment as the complete experience of fearlessness. – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Shambhala Sun, March 2005

Enlightenment: that's my carrot catchword these days. Althoughenlightenment feels nebulous. It's more concrete when I translate it and contemplate opening my heart and living in grace.

As I write, I feel more absurd. The concept sounds absurd. Enlightenment? Hello, it's 2005. I work for a living. And I am attempting enlightenment in the most (or one of the most) materialistic regions in the most materialistic country while employed in a materialisitic profession. What gall!

According to Buddhist teachings, the buddha-nature is present in every living being, and the natural state of one's mind, when it's not misconstrued by the power of negative thoughts, is perfection. - Matthieu Ricard

They say Matthieu Ricard, the son of a French intellectual, "gave up a promising career as a scientist to study Tibetan Buddhism." Uh, what exactly is this promise behind a promising career, anyway? Does it have any relations in the family of happiness?

At a 2003 conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin who oversaw the experiments there, described his follow-up studies. Davidson, who had spent time in Asia studying meditation when he was younger, flashed a PowerPoint slide of a bell curve rising like a red mountain out of a flat landscape. It was a graph, he explained, charting 150 people's normal brain states. For the great majority, that state was a mix of left prefrontal cortex (positive emotion) and right prefrontal cortex (negative emotion) activity. But there was one tiny "data point" at the chart's far edge, a solitary pilgrim walking away from the looming red peak of statistical normalcy. That point was Matthieu Ricard,scanned during his compassion meditation. His reading was entirely off the curve in the area of positive emotion -- the most extreme result ever recorded. - "Scanning the Monk",Marc Ian Barasch, Utne Reader, March/April 2005

For extreme results of happiness and compassion, I'd go back immediately and wipe the tad-less-than-positive absurd from my vocabulary.

The eighty-four adepts, or mahasiddhas, who lived in India in the second to twelfth centuries found it necessary do spiritual practice in conjunction with their worldly activities. For instance, King Indrabhuti ruled a large kingdom and was surrounded by great luxury. Yet he received mahamudra [Buddhist] instructions, practiced them while ruling his Kingdom, and achieved the supreme accomplishment of mahamudra - enlightenment in one lifetime. Other mahasiddhas were cobblers, arrow makers, sweepers, and even practitioners of such humble occupations as grinding sesame seeds...There was for them no contradiction between the work that they had to do and the practice of mahamudra; no conflict came up between Dharma [application of Buddha's teaching] practice and worldly activities. - Essentials of Mahamudra: Looking Directly at the Mind, by Khenchen Thranga Rinpoche

What motivates me? Today, Mother Theresa's words spur me too: "Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person." And I continue to ask myself: When's the last time you tried to pay the rent with love?

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and that which is done in love is well done. - Vincent van Gogh

Now ask yourself: When's the last time you tried to paid the rent with love?

ART CREDITS: "Palestinian children stand to form Pablo Picasso’s [lithograph] Dove of Peace as part of a project by British aerial artist John Quigley." via Ryan Donato. 

....you start out into the dark. Then, strange little help-mates come along - Joseph Campbell

“I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances." - Brian Tracy

Platitudes are so easy to bandy about: Take more chances! Be bolder! Do what's never been done before! Exclamation points galore.

Can be a wee bit harder to act on, be, and embody.

If I were trying to, let's say, start a dry-cleaning business I believe I'd have many more allies. Yet try to do something you're not too sure anyone's done before (and definitely not that crystal-clear and known to yourself, either), and as far as I've seen allies are far and few between. Truth be told, I get more flak than support. So I tend to keep mum. Yet I'm not sure staying tight-lipped and isolated is the best remedy for creative folks, either.

So let's consider each other allies for a moment.

And you can consider this blog to be your friend. You'll have to participate to get the full benefit of alliance. (I'm not a mind-reader. So by participate, we can begin by use of your blog with links here to add your two cents--I'll find the clews, use the comments below, or subscribe to Encanto... I see Skype group calls in the future. Private email doesn't benefit others in our circle; so that's last resort.)

So here we begin... First, it can't hurt to devour some more Campbell, because Campbell is an ally too.

"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's." - Joseph Campbell

I owe a huge thank you to a few screenwriting books for re-reminding me of Campbell--although I'll be upfront and say that most script-writing tomes don't address the power of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey in terms our own journey. (I have two characters in a 'story' I'm writing in the film biz, so it's been  part of my research). Wildly enough, screenwriting books keep dropping in my lap--for instance, a publicist just sent along "Riding the Alligator: Strategies for a career in screenplay writing" (still reading, so neutral so far). All these screenwriting how-to's praise Campbell--a lot.

So when I stumbled into the philosophy section of the bookstore a week or so ago, I decided to skim An Open Life, an edited conversation based on a series of interviews conducted between 1975 and 1985 with Joseph Campbell and Michael Toms as I wanted to get back to the source, rather than reading 2nd and 3rd-hand interpretations (it's been six years since I read Campbell).

The beauty of the book, An Open Life, is it is written decades after his ground-breaking The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and so he's had the benefit of time to reflect and re-consider what he's researched and shared.

After an evening of reading a few other books on myth and mystery at the bookstore, as I headed with my mother back towards her car in the parking lot, and the vanity license plate, GUIDED winked from the first stall. (Really, I don't make this stuff up.)

I think that's the crux of what Campbell is trying to say about following the clues in this passage, and that once you do heed the Herald you'll feel GUIDED one step at a time into the Unknown:

Campbell: [Answering interviewer's question on the Eastern guru-disciple model, Campbell says that it's not necessarily culturally appropriate in the West and gives a Holy Grail example, paraphrasing from La Queste del Saint Graal.] "They were seated at King Arthur's roundtable when The Grail appeared "carried by angelic miracle, covered, however by a cloth. Everyone was in rapture and then it withdrew. Arthur's nephew Gawain stood up and said, "I propose a vow. I propose that we should all go in pursuit of this Grail to behold it unveiled."
. . .
"They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the forest that he had chosen where there was no path and where it was darkest." Now, if there's a way or path, it's someone else's way; and the guru has a path for you. He knows where you are on it. He knows where he is on it, namely, way ahead. And all you can do is get to be as great as he is. This is a continuation of the dependency of childhood; maturity consists in outgrowing that and becoming your own authority for your life. And this quest for the unknown seems so romantic to Oriental people. What is unknown is the fulfillment of your own unique life, the likes of which has never existed on the earth. And you are the only one who can do it. People can give you clues how to fall down and how to stand up; but when to fall and when to stand, and when you are falling and when you are standing up, this only you can know."

Interviewer Michael Toms paraphrases elements of the Hero and the Call, and mentions there's a chapter in Hero with a Thousand Faces entitled "Refusal of the Call", "you talk about how we often follow society, and with the Call the reverse is what's more appropriate."

Campbell [Wee snippet, much longer reply including that it is certainly possible to live a noble life "in the village compound", as well, if no Call comes]. On the other hand, if the Call is whispering: "But if a person has had the sense of the Call--the feeling that there's an adventure for him--and if he doesn't follow that, but remains in the society because it's safe and secure, then life dries up.... If you have the guts to follow the risk, however, life opens, opens, opens up all along the line...  And just like in Dickens' novel, little accidental meetings and so forth turn out to be main features in the plot, so in your life. And what seems to have been mistakes at the time, turn out to be directive crises. And then he asks: "Who wrote this novel?".... The secure way is really the insecure way and the way in which the richness of the quest accumulates is the right way."

Interviewer, Michael Toms: "Joseph, in that same chapter on the Call, you wrote: "The myths and folk tales of the whole world make clear that the refusal [of the Call] is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one's own interest." And then you go on to talk about how we get fixed in our own security and our own ideals and are reluctant to see them change."

Campbell: "There's a kind of regular morphology and inevitable sequence of experiences if you start out to follow your adventure. I don't care whether it's in economics, in art, or just in play. There's the sense of the potential that opens out before you. And you have no idea how to achieve it; you start out into the dark. Then, strange little help-mates come along, frequently represented by little fairy spirits or the little gnomes, who just give you clues, and these open out. Then there is the sense of danger you always run into--really deep peril--because no one has gone this way before. And the winds blow, and you're in a forest of darkness very often and terror strikes you."

Interviewer: "So often we see those dark places as huge problems rather than as opportunities. What does mythology have to say about that?"

Campbell: "Well, mythology tells us that where you stumble, there your treasure is.... where it seems most challenging lies the greatest invitation to find deeper and greater powers in ourselves.

Toynbee speaks of challenge and response, and every culture and individual runs into these challenges. If the power to respond fails, then that's the end. But where the power to respond succeeds, there comes a new amplification of life and consciousness.

When I wrote about the Call forty years ago [published 1949], I was writing out of what I had read. Now that I've lived it, I know it's correct. And that's how it turned out. I mean, it's valid. These mythic clues work."

[Later interviewer Toms asks about the irrationality of following this sort of Call:] Campbell: "This is irrational. That's the point. All compassion, all sympathy, is irrational. Love is irrational. The rational is always stressing I--thou opposites. The mind is in the world of separateness and angular structures. It's a world put together in a way to be calculated. Compassion, love--these jump mathematics."

p.s. The cited chapter "The Refusal of the Call" starts off using King Minos, who built the labyrinth in an attempt to contain his shadow--here the Ego refusing to surrender, as an example of refusing the call, which was projected as a monster, the Minotaur. It's an example of Carl Jung's statement, "When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate." Your demons, and monsters, refusals and aversions, become writ large, projected on-screen 'out there':

"The divinity itself became his terror; for, obviously, if one is oneself one's god, then God himself, the will of God, the power that would destroy one's egocentric system, becomes a monster." - Campbell

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears / I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Another writer on a philosophy Wiki aptly interpreted this chapter further, and shares: "An unanswered call makes the would-be hero a victim now needing to be saved by a hero. This is an interesting psychological point made by Campbell. Our need to be saved and desire and victimization are actually the result of our own failure to answer the calls presented to us, a failure to recognize the Herald in our midst. But we express this as victimization, or the need to be saved. What a tangled web we weave when we refuse the call. [My note: could explain over-emphasis on Messianic/Savior and Superhero plotlines, rather than on self-mastery.] King Minos is given as an example: whatever house he builds will be a house of death, always creating new problems to be solved by a hero."

ART CREDITS: Parsifal, by Willy Pogany ~1912 via The Art of Narrative; 1895 painting by Edwin Austin Abbey shows the Arthurian knight Sir Galahad via National Geographic; Theseus by Edward Burne Jones of the hero, Theseus, following Adriane's clews (the unfurling thread of inspiration in form of little clues and cues) to root out the Minotaur, and find his way back via the very beguiling website on Hellenic literature-from article "Theseus and the Minotaur are One."

"I would never live a better day." - Hendri Coetzee

Every serious accident I've ever had has involved water.

This isn't about "accidents", nor white-water kayaking (a sport I once partook in), nor rivers. This is about the downstream current of life. This is about death. This is about getting to the point where one fully trusts that gravitational pull in the black hole of your belly. This is about how I never surrendered to the divine, to that black hole, last year. Maybe once. Okay, maybe twice. Piss poor for an explorer, really.

I watered down every single idea I had last year to make it palatable to investors or voters (think Pepsi Refresh or Kickstarter) or potential clients. When the whole point in the first place was the first descent--an expedition that had never been attempted before, not pursuing the safe and sure. This is about how the real danger is resisting where the flow takes you. This is about being gutsy.

At least that's what I thought this post would be about.

I still don't know why, yet this story about Hendri Coetzee captured me when I read it on December 25, 2010. I figured I'd write a post soon after about adventure, risk, life, death. I haven't been able to do it justice.

I give up. It's just going to be a small tribute from what Hendri himself and a friend wrote of his life.

What comes next in the weeks and months ahead shall be infused with some of his spirit and joie de vivre.

Hendri Coetzee was kayaking in Africa with a few other world-class river runners on a private expedition. "He led the first source-to-sea exploration of the Nile River in 2004 and opened up many waterways for kayak travel throughout Africa." - MSNBC, 12/21/10

"It is hard to know the difference between irrational fear and instinct, but fortunate is he who can. Often there is no clear right or wrong option, only the safest one. And if safe was all I wanted, I would have stayed home in Jinja. Too often when trying something no one has ever done, there are only 3 likely outcome: Success, quitting, or serious injury and beyond." - Hendri Coetzee's last post on instinct and "feeling" one's way

I believed it'd be all icing on the cake after near death on December 26, 2004--and all my days ever more would feel like an "extra" extension. Yet it is easy to take life for granted and to settle into other people's rhythms even for someone that writes a post titled, If Not on the Day I Die, Then Not Today."

"The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly." - Erasmus

I originally read of Hendri's life, and his death on the Vagabonding blog. The entire post is worthwhile, and this excerpt of his friend's first meeting with Henri touched me:

"From the moment I met him, nearly ten years ago, I was awed by Hendri’s incredible physical courage coupled with his profound quest for truth and meaning in life. At the time I was working in a remote safari camp on the Tanzanian coast, living in a hut, with nothing but raw nature for a hundred miles in any direction. Hendri rolled up off the beach and introduced himself. He was sunburned and loaded down with survival gear—yet inconspicuous and nonchalant, as if on a leisurely Sunday stroll through the mall. He had trekked that wild stretch all the way from Kenya, braving every manner of life-risking obstacle (particularly the many hippo-, croc-, and shark-rich delta fordings) by himself. After I uncorked my nicest bottle of wine, we stayed up way past our bedtimes debating what was the most important invention in the past two thousand years (he suggested it was the rudder, I said printing press). In the morning we exchanged contact information, and just as nattily as he’d arrived he was on his way

As time bore on, that trope—a man taking on the wild African coast by himself—which blessed me at 22 years of age, proved a catalyst for change in my relationship with the world.
- "In Defense of Adventure: Some thoughts on the death of Hendri Coetzee", Vagabonding blog, Jonathan Yevin

One of the parts I loved about Peter Pan (I only read it for the first time in 2009) was a scene where Peter believes he may really die as tidal water rises around him. The boy huddles on a small knoll. Suddenly, the avid and daring adventurer in him brightens up at the prospect of a new adventure--he's never died before, he realizes.

Henri tries to answer that quintessential (and exasperating) question asked of every explorer, Why? about his expedition. (Explaining kills art, is my typical reply.)

Beautifully expressed:

"In a world filled with interpretations; truth exist in only in nature. There you cannot even lie to yourself. She does not tolerate bullshit. You come before Her with respect, fully present and ready to give a 100%, anything less and She will have your head.

Ultimately going on a journey that puts your life at risk is not a decision made by the mind. Reason does not support it. When Edmund Hillary was asked why he climbed mountains, he said “Because it is there.” I wonder if he knew he was talking about the need not the mountain.

My current view on the matter is that the issue of motivation is indeed beyond words or even petty needs. When we surrender to the unknown, faced with the magnitude of the powers that lies ahead, it forces the realization of how insignificant this body is compared to the forces that lie in our path. Someone recently pointed out to me that our greatest moments are the ones where we lose ourselves. Moments when we become not only more, but become everything.I have breathed in life in its purest form a few second here and there and all I want is more of it.

These moment by themselves are inadequate, they offer only brief respite. Grabbing onto them can be as destructive as any addiction. Their value lies in the glimpses they provide of what is possible. I have come to hope that perhaps the intensity and clarity of these experiences can be used for more than cheap thrills. There is more to this world than what we perceive and perhaps one day I can slip through the gap these experience briefly provide, to live permanently in that place of Boundlessness, also know as Happiness. Not the superficial ‘satisfaction of needs’ happiness, but the real thing. The happiness of Being one with the moment, no matter how it presents itself. Ultimate freedom." - "Because it is there," The Great White Explorer blog, by Hendri Coetze

Thank you, Hendri.

p.s. Crocodile symbol via BellaOnline.com: "[Although the crocodile signifies hidden danger, it can be transmuted into an ally.] If you can identify the emotions or situation that is lurking under the surface of your conscious mind, you can use that powerful energy as protection rather than experiencing it as a hidden danger. You can harness the energy and use it as a source of inspiration and creativity."

p.p.s. The blog headline is the very last sentence of the last post Henri wrote.

Bonus: Supposedly, my horoscope for 2011:

"The Strait of Gibraltar is the narrow passage between Europe and Africa where the Mediterranean Sea joins the Atlantic Ocean. According to legend, in ancient times the Latin phrase "ne plus ultra" was inscribed in the rock overlooking this gateway. It meant "not further beyond," and served as a warning to sailors not to venture out to the wild waters past the strait. Eventually, that cautionary advice became irrelevant, of course. With a sturdy vessel, skilled crew, good preparation, and expert knowledge based on the experience of others, venturing out past the "ne plus ultra" point wasn't dangerous. I hope you'll take that as your cue in 2011, Gemini. - freewillastrology.com for January 5th, 2011

At this point, I don't even care if venturing past the "ne plus ultra" signage is dangerous or not. The safe choice will surely kill me.

art credits: Scout of the Rusisi River, photo by Henri Coetzee from his The Great White Explorer blog; The Fool, from the Phoenix Tarot deck; 1810 postcard of the Rock of Gilbraltar issued by L.J. Stagnetto from Wikipedia

the harbinger of joy in every and any circumstance

Winter is the season to turn inward. When fields lie fallow. Respite. Refuge. Rejuvenation.

As the clock on the year winds down, we may mull over the past year.

Except today I don't want to mull over 2010.

I want to take a pencil upside down, smudge the eraser across the page, scatter it to the four winds, wipe it away from history: an error.

Yesterday, hearing Pamela Wilson is like a balm, "You can relax. You really cannot mess up the unfolding. You cannot put it back together--Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall."

This morning I wake up and it's still 2010 and it still exists in history. (I'm not always this cranky, should this post be your first stopover, by the way....)

In an undeniable funk, I go for a long walk today, the longer the better although it's in the mid-40s and a howling wind cuts through the open ranges between the cookie-cutter homes which when you can find them bunched together in cul-de-sacs act as welcome wind barriers like being sheltered in a slot canyon. (I know that doesn't sound cold, yet in Las Vegas it's a precipitous drop from the balmy temperatures.)

I'm walking mindlessly rehashing wounds and rerunning stories of overt resistance chippering away in my brain. (Yes, another form of sly resistance itself.) I'm oblivious to the sun and the sky. But any zombie can walk this route. There are only so many rearrangements of roads and desire lines through the desolate fields around my Mom's condo, and I've criss-crossed them all these two months.

"Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind is bearing me across the sky." - Ojibwa saying

In short, I am not paying any attention to the world. I'm still fussing with the pencil eraser.

Suddenly tiny iridescent wings capture the corner of my eye. There silent, sitting, a glittering green hummingbird with a rosy neck.

Odd. There are no bright flowers. Make that there are no flowers and no color besides muted brown, sage, bark, chalk. No bird feeders in sight. The miniature bird's about to fly away when it spots me spotting it. Immediately, I calm down and am totally present. It relaxes too, and decides to perch on the leafless tree limb for another minute. I smile inside--and out. We turn to leave. Lift off and flicker away.

I knew it was a symbol, a message:

"The Hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards. This is a reminder that the past can't be changed but the past can teach lessons. The Hummingbird comes when it seems that what needs to be done is impossible. It teaches how to find joy in any circumstance." - Hummingbird totem via Crystal-Cure.com

That's worth reading again, sipping like nectar, and stapling to the history book on 2010: "The Hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards. This is a reminder that the past can't be changed but the past can teach lessons. The Hummingbird comes when it seems that what needs to be done is impossible. It teaches how to find joy in any circumstance." 

I don't know about you. But that message couldn't be more precisely perfect and tailor-made for 2010 and 2011.

The species I saw is broad-tailed hummingbird. Its summer range includes Great Basin states like Nevada. December 30th is hardly summer, although I did spot him nearby the intersection of Sunny Days and Starry Nights (no joke). So, why isn't he sipping hibiscus in Guadalajara or Quetzaltenago by now?

A few weeks ago thinking towards 2011, I selected blithe as my themeword. Its etymology includes the Old Saxon "bright (said of the sky)," and a connection to the Anglo-Saxon "to shine" sharing its roots with words bliss, and bless, too.

HAIL to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert—
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. - beginning of To a Skylark, Percy Bysshe Shelley

May be time to jam with the language of birds.

I watched this beautiful video yesterday where Pamela Wilson tells a story about resting in our natural Presence, deep listening itself, music, life's invitation, and "all of a sudden a little bird...":

 

begins you,
small, superlative being,
you are a miracle,
and you blaze - from Ode to a Hummingbird, Pablo Neruda

Bonus: A short, blithesome (==irreverently wholly) hummingbird-infused story of Pamela Wilson's "teacher", Robert Adams here.

Excerpt: "The sweet, natural happiness that I experienced in his presence was so very thick and blatant. All the ideas I had picked up about what it is to be in the presence of Truth were permanently cracked. The mind just couldn’t get around the chasm between what it thought holiness was supposed to be like and what it had actually met that day with Robert Adams. In its attempt to cross that chasm, it had fallen into it, giving rise to an absolutely undeniable experience of joyfulness and peace."

art credits: Broad-tailed Hummingbird photo by Inga Brennan via Birdzilla.com; Hummingbird, by Fred Tomaselli

blithe oracles

"All this hurrying
soon will be over.
Only when we tarry
do we touch the holy." - Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

In the end, I was thoroughly racing to arrive in New Orleans, quite ungallantly. A thoroughbred on steroids. Pulling all-nighters packing and cramming as if for a very important date with a college exam. According to "the" schedule, I left too late. Finally pulled out of the stable exactly 4:44 a.m. on January 10, 2008 (oh, and a 1-1-1 stargate unbeknownst to me at the time).

Racing feels so much the old ways and old highways and byways and old days.

I made it as far as a desert border town straddling the two states of Kali and Zones before the rear axle gave way on the car.

""In this card," Crowley points out, "is the one link between the archetypal and formative worlds. The Abyss she traverses is, quite literally, the desert of the soul, and like the desert camel, she is the only vehicle capable of crossing that terrible wasteland." - The High Priestess card section, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot

And thus was I stopped dead in my tracks for two days entire in a town named after a word dripping in meanings "of a lighthearted and carefree nature." {Blithe: Etymology: Old English bliþe "joyous, kind," from P.Gmc. *blithiz "gentle, kind" (cf. O.S. bliði "bright, happy," O.N. bliðr "mild, gentle," O.H.G. blidi "gay, friendly," Goth. bleiþs "kind, friendly, merciful").}

They say that oracles are layered in riddles and difficult, obscure, hidden, mysterious meanings. That may have been so perhaps in ancient eras. Now oracles are more like a feeling - talk of light/dark, or negative/positive doesn't register here. Either I sense heaviness, weighted down, or that which is enlightening my load, bouyant and free. Like a child's innocent exuberant fresh voice:

The Oracle of the Gods is the Child-Voice of
Love in thine own Soul! hear thou it!

Heed not the Siren-Voice of Sense, or the
Phantom-Voice of Reason: rest in Simplicity,
and listen to the Silence. - Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth

Art credits Young Oracle in Repose by Yuni

p.s. A twitter friend writes of my tweets lately:   @eve11 Sounds like you're living out Joni's "Hejira" record, NOLA style.

Yes. The album itself's a journey truly and metaphorically and horizontally and vertically, and "prominent imagery including highways, small towns and snow. 

[Joni] Mitchell said of the album: "the whole 'Hejira' album was really inspired... I wrote the album while traveling cross-country by myself and there is this restless feeling throughout it... The sweet loneliness of solitary travel.""

This feels like a self-mastery year, 2008, to me? Does it to you?

we are creators, not re-actors

"We are to experience without limitation." - Rysa

A friend commented as I was coming out of the hole of the last two months, "Like a short dark night of the soul?"

"Nope, that's different. That period shall be forevermore be known as my "Rage Against the Machine" time."

Last Saturday I glanced at an old photograph in the coffeetable book Sunshine, Fruit and Flowers: Santa Clara County, CA. Two girls are playing near a house amongst acres of French prunes and apricots. Mabel and Evelyn Tantau's orchards are no longer here on the land I live that they onced lived on - literally, our backyard was theirs decades ago. (Ours, theirs, who does Terra belong to when you are all of It?)

Walking to the Campbell Farmer's Market the following day, I felt my gut lurch and twist witnessing mile after mile after mile (it's a hike) of asphalt and concrete dedicated and enshrined for cars rather than laughing children, citrus fruit, and magnolia blossoms.

"I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty." - John F. Kennedy

You'd need a bit more background to understand that it's not this particular thing I'm about to relate. It is merely the last straw that broke the camel's back.

About 1/4 mile from the farmer's market, I realized that in a lightning flash that I'd left my wallet in the Google bag, it's not in this O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference canvas bag suitable for large heirloom tomatoes and loaves of olive bread.

Then and there I collapsed on the black asphalt driveway across from the Goodwill, flanked by banks, gas stations, dollar stores and other strip-mall paraphernelia. I realized we'd have to eat Safeway grocery market "food" for most of the week now. (Once you become sensitive to life you sense there is precious little prana in storebought longhauled and often packaged preserved food.)

I wailed about how much I hated this place. Who in their right mind would design this? The Gespato? Sprawling concrete boxes and tar black parking lots. Alright, a little shrubbery won't obscure the signage - but please no trees and flowers blocking the logos and banners.

This was the story of my life the last two months - looping reactive refrains against the cruelty and ugliness of the apparent world. Lying there horizontal I think is the first time I asked for help in two months. Real help.

On the way back home I walked into B&N and asked my higher self to bring me something of truth, of sustenance. Eventually you get tired of wailing against what's not working, seeing so clearly what is wrong (yet over and past) and you're ready to walk away from the burning palace - which is all you've ever known even if it's vitally flawed - to rebirth. You're set to skip to the golden age without looking back over your shoulder at the falling structures of the rusted age.

I opened a "random" book to this page and my eyes fell on this sentence:

"Findhorn's influence in teaching people how to live in harmony and love with each other aand the planet has grown from that small caravan to encirce the earth."

No, I'm not about to move to the Scottish outback. The message was clear to me: Create, don't react. I'm totally wasting time, draining energy wailing and ranting against the status quo. The Findhorn community echoes in many ways my own dreams. I invited a song of possibility and infinity, and so it sung.

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." - Alan Kay

I'd forgotten this is the ninth month of a ninth year (2+0+0+7 = 9 in numerology) signalling completion of the old, the end of chapters of our lives. Sometimes as much as we are tired of where we're at - at least it's familiar.

A counterintuitive and tricky move, but one way to resist endings, the changing of seasons is to rail against it and tell everyone in shouting distance you can't wait until the next season starts... Yet that dynamic keeps the waning season alive and going energetically. Leaves simply drop from trees in autumn.

Comfort food isn't the most exotic, juiciest for us, but it has it's qualities. It's comfortable. I've never met a person afraid of death. They're afraid of the unknown, though. Life is the great unknown.

It was at this turning point that I found Greg Bradden's work on coherent creation in a participatory universe, and then Rysa5's YouTube videos.

And I felt the power surging again. (We are entrained in powerlessness.) The creative power of the life force. Today, I pulled the Lust tarot card - lust for life, in nutshell - for first time since mid-May.

"We are part of everything that we see... We are empowered to participate... It's not about control, it's not about manipulation." - Gregg Braden

The end result is I care not for prevailing systems. Those pre-veiling systems are built on a foundation of conflict and competition and limitation. I have clearly seen the world that is being birthed. We are its co-designers. Its firmament is one of love and creativity and beauty and abundance. Anticipate melodic changes, harmonic anarchy.

we are not re-actors

at the mercy of replaying script

looping the same movie over and over
only tweaked with cast changes

we are pro-actors
proactive

pros (don't believe them that say otherwise)
active
act-eve
eve

even-ing - evening, balancing

the eve. the evening of the fifth night approaches.

The white lunar wizard year (July 26-October 24, 2007) has begun in full force. Welcome it to fruition, wizards:

"To wield true power one must become the simple fool seeking to become a wizard. The power of shaping space comes from emptying the space in which you ordinarily dwell, that is, debunking your heavy-laden consciousness of all its pet beliefs and becoming like an empty vessel, joyous and receptive. You are joyous because you are free to receive from the spiritually nourishing power of the higher dimensions. Then, whatever thought arises will have the power to shape the space in which it arises." - Second Creation magazine, Planet Art Network

UPDATE:

"Be who you have become rather than push against those who have not yet come to where you are." - Rysa

Damn, Rsya said in twitter-sized blurt what I was trying to drive at. The direction that the stars, the magnet pull, the currents of the earth, and all the divine sparks and cells within our body and being are flowing are so quite radically different from what's considered "mainstream" I'm astounded barely anyone else is sensing it. To flow in this main stream, you're actually counter to THE so-called mainstream. Still, the overall magical intention for this blog is inspirational and light-full in nature, although I'll always be true to the emotional body too (and not suppress it):

"One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul." - Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Bonus: I say, "We are to hear art (inspiration). We are here to create art (imagination)":

"I would like to write the Law of Time:

T(E) = ART

The Law of Time is expressed in this way. It is very simple, like E=MC². Energy (E) factored by time (T) equals Art. That is why you have never seen an ugly sunset. This is why birds fly in patterns, even scorpions do a beautiful dance. All of the universe is actually a work of art and in the days before the triumph of materialistic science it was common to say that God is the supreme architect. After the rise of materialistic science they say God was a clock maker. Big difference." - 28 Meditations on the Laws of Time (Mayan inspired), Planetary Art Network

ART credits Eve by Marius Alexander Troy; Magic Garden: Nordpark in Duisburg by Peter Bochynek

fire the grid, making love to your beast as every footfall is your own

I awoke at precisely 4:11 a.m this morning from a nightmare.

All I remember now hours later was there was a beast in it. And I was none too sure the beast was my ally. Though knowing all too well of Jungian shadow work, I'm pretty sure the Beast represents beloved, though shoved away into a deep dark corner, aspects of my own self.

Being an outlier in the New Age community (I'm a skeptic; while I'm open to new information, ultimately rely on my own direct experience and knowing which places me at odds with said 'community' much of time), I'd heard of the Fire The Grid global meditation scheduled for 11:11 a.m. Greenwich time, July 17, 2007.

Which would be exactly 4:11 a.m. Pacific time for me.

I had vacillated whether I was going to participate or not. My own gut instincts told me that this particular channeller's message wasn't resonating for me; although the personal story of her son's recovery from a near-fatal accident emphatically did. That story rang truer than many things I've read in ages.

The rest of the site, I picked up sensations of fear and worry from the material which I don't share about the fate of the planet. The visions I have sensed of the future are so startingly palpably real and beatific they're so much harder to swallow (you ought not because I say so; inquire for yourself) than scenes and memes of doomsday and annihilation we're accustomed to.

Also I didn't sense that anything of significance galactically was happening on July 17th. (July 8th, however, was a different story.)

As the weeks went by, the Fire the Grid meme spread like wildfire. (Someone was doing their marketing homework.) The more websites that referenced Fire The Grid, and the more email I got from newsletters I'm subscribed to and from well-intentioned individuals endorsing the global meditation, the more and more I began to doubt my own (conflicting) instinct.

Who am I to know for myself, eh? Memes know better, right? Memes are gospel, silly. (Have you ever noticed meme screams me, me?)

So last night I was still vacillating whether I would participate at 4:11 a.m. Although weeks earlier I'd been certain I was not. My own personal decision. I wasn't going to tell anyone else whether they ought to or not.

Finally, around midnight, I decided that I was not going to do it, although, this nagging doubt accompanied me to my slumber. As usual, I prayed to my higher self to show me what I didn't know I didn't know as I lay down.

In the move to San Francisco, I ended up giving a lot of philosophy, spiritual and business books away. I realized I am never going to crack many of them open. I want to rely more and more on my own innate instincts, intelligence, power and love to guide.

I'm not sure when we became a self-help society, but the signs are everywhere that this is so. It's intricately tied up with celebrity and expert worship too. Constantly continuously giving our own power away.

There's a part of me feels like maybe the best thing I can do is close the curtain on this blog and simply remind you that you have access to everything you ever need to know

...in the moment you need to know it. Trust your holy self.

That said, there are reasons to share. There are reasons to read. Sometimes it's all a game we're playing in a house of mirrors.

Once I sent the beginning of a poem I was writing to a friend. This is how it started, and then I got snagged not knowing what was next:

if said angel wandered the earth
she gallavanting mistletoe in a sphere of lapis

There was a little more in the email about nebulas and nurseries where stars are born, and he writes back (and this is someone that has had more than his fair share of beastly experiences):

I've found the worst turns to the best because contrast is all really see

live it be humble enough to see it and then tell it in your own words........

glory be to the one ones who know that every footfall is their own

Those words sum up the motivation I have to continue to write - and share. Tell it in your own words: poetry - not gospel.

And so when another friend texting with me this morning says: i love my nightmares... Wonder what it b like 2 make love 2 ur beast?

I understood. And I understood why I rolled over in the crisp covers, and simply went back to sleep at 4:11 a.m.

Bonus: One of the most sane responses to the Fire The Grid meditation I'd read. Stumbled upon at midnight last night when I just meant to read more David Wilcock. Snippet below:

"[W]e feel the key is not in group meditations, but rather in an ongoing practice. The Law of One philosophy only ever gave two techniques that create an ‘exponential increase’ in your spiritual growth in a short time:

1. Seek the love in this moment.
2. Reflect on issues from your past that inform this moment.

Each additional seeking of love in the moment creates an exponential increase. Each additional issue from your past you can bring up and examine for its relevance to this moment creates an exponential increase. 

The world is healed by our own diligent effort in healing ourselves, day by day, consistently. - "Should I Meditate on July 17th?", David Wilcock, Divine Cosmos blog

images Fallen Angel, by Olivia de Berardinis (hmmm, embracing our fallen angel self is making love to the beast, perhaps); Girl Before a Mirror, by Pablo Picasso

joy is my Compass (appreciation the key)

we came whirling
out of nothingness
scattering stars
like dust

the stars made a circle
and in the middle
we dance

- Rumi

I once used to try to figure out what "God" wanted for me, as if there were any conflict between Wills.

How I could be of better service to the world, and make a difference? as if that would yield a different movement  of action than holding, What makes my heart sing?

"Used to" goes as way far back as 8 a.m. this morning.

"Should I move to the Mission for the summer (in San Francisco)?" I ask the Tarot. It took me a while again to recall that the Tarot is not to tell you what you should do. (Pulling the Oppression card helps jog my memory.)

I am the mistress of my destiny.

I choose.

I know in my heart of hearts. Or, as one of my teachers, says: Allow yourself to know what you know.

The only good the Tarot is for is to confirm that I am not deceiving my own self and selling my vision short. The Tarot never shoulds.

I was in the Mission the other day checking the general scene, and then inside one particular six-bedroom arthouse with an available sublet this summer. Before the meeting, I ate at Cafe Gratitude for the first time.

"What are you grateful for?" is emblazoned on the cafe's T-shirts.

Grateful for? I don't understand. Why pinpoint? Grateful in. Grateful in this Life whatever she brings is how I was feeling right then.

That Tuesday as I board the bus on my way to the Mission and to Cafe Gratitude and to the arthouse, I text a friend, "Pulled 6 Wands today" [Victory]. "Riding in glory?" he asks.

"Mayb. Simpr. Blessed."

Blessed for no particular reason.

If I looked at the externals of my situation that moment, there could be found plenty not to be grateful for. That goes for the whole week plus since I've returned to San Jose from my nine-week adventure in New Orleans. Everything clicked for me in New Orleans. I just so much as thought something, and voila! presto! Life waltzed with me there.

"I'm late! I'm late for a very important date!" buzzed the White Rabbit to Alice as he furiously scrambled about. I feel like Alice in Wonderland myself - mystified. Most people in Silicon Valley are so busy chasing Life, they don't have the inclination to give it or those about them the time of day.

A friend from Nola consoles via SMS: "Leaving here is similar to dying a small death.it takes awhile to get used to living in the other world (regular time usa)." "Reg time?" "Reg time ppl forget to stp to smell the roses"

Much of the time since I've been back, I've been thrown for a loop and energetically disturbed. A few days ago I'd texted same friend in New Orleans:

me: strong field here in the valley [Silicon Valley] of lack...and $ as soln to everything...hoard $ as way to shore up security...brings up my old conditioning & doubt

friend in nola: I find old condi good ref pt

me: yeh odd to c myself revert 2 old ways...which is held in much regard here! living by the grace of god is not

"Where has your desire for comfort and security cost you your aliveness?" - I Am Grateful: Recipes and Lifestyle of Cafe Gratitude

When I order the "I Am Elated" enchilada special stuffed with a tangy pepita sunflower seed pate from the chalk blackboard - maybe it's the festive orange lettering - but the price isn't indicated, and in that moment it doesn't make a difference in what I desire. Lately, I'd envisioned expanding the pop-up  nomadic tea-house into the evening hours, yet I don't want to serve alcohol. "Live" (raw) drinks though could be the ticket. Curious, I order the raw cacao smoothie, "I Am Luscious."

It's quite acceptable these days to spill your sex life over into your blog life. I've even heard of a guy polling his readers as to whether he ought to break up with his girlfriend or not.

The greater taboo (and a friend said it'd be more interesting since yawn! we've become unshockably nonchalant with all the DIY porn out there) is to bare your financial life online.

So, when I got the bill for the meal at Cafe Gratitude, I had to gulp.

"Nice touch," I think to myself. "Part of the lesson in abundance is also wrapped up in the bill." I am not referring to the Abounding River game card they attach with a wooden clothespin.

At that moment, I checked in my reactions: Anxiety, check. Imagining a future on the street, check. The Witness part of me follows the visceral energy moving and rising up through my gut and my heart and up, up away. Simple awareness transmutes everything, releases.

Whoa, don't let the dreadlocked "don't worry be happy" vibe fool you... this ain't for the cavorting across the country Volkswagon bus crowd: Check plus tip will amount to a $24.00 lunch. And that amounts to half of all my liquid funds to date - and my rent is overdue. (And it's $16.00 - rounded up - roundtrip from SF to SJ on public transportation.) (p.s. I own no credit cards, no car, no TV, etc by choice.)

I can't do gratefulness as a practice. Or appreciation as a practice. It feels too contrived. I'm catapulted back to my mom telling me to eat my peas and carrots and I must finish the whole plate because "those kids are starving in Ethopia."

"Well then," I remember muttering, "ship them these peas and carrots. I don't want them."

But I do know that even when I am completely so-called broke, I can typically magically unearth something tucked (way way in the back) in the pantry. It doesn't cost me a cent to go to my closet and don something vibrant. So I wear a festive azure gypsy skirt and pink pearls while I simmer the bean soup. Ain't nothing stopping me from eating it out of the best china in the cupboard either.

All the while I am consciously aware of a strong pull like the moon exerts on the tides, an overwhelming temptation, to feel sorry for myself and mope around in grey flannel pajamas and eat out of the same pot I heated the soup in and indulge misery.

Yet I don't.

Funny thing, the blessedness never went anywhere the whole doubting time. It is the sun beneath my fog.

"It is an act of spiritual mastery to choose a life that is joyful, even in the midst of great difficulty." - The Hathors via Tom Kenyon, "A Path Through These Turbulent Times", Sept. 8, 2005 (hmmm, a week after Katrina)

Bonus:  Joy is security. "Spiritual preparation means to prepare for the possibility of your death through a recommitment to your life—to living and choosing what is essential for ever-increasing experiences of appreciation and joy. It sounds odd, but following your deepest sense of joy will lead you to be in the places where you will most likely survive, should the Earth go into a period of purification." - The Hathors via Tom Kenyon, "A Message for the Life Sustainers", Jan 2, 2005 (not coincidentally written after the tsunami)

And: "It is an extraordinary opportunity to experience hyperdimensional physics in action, for as the superconductive fields increase on the earth in their various forms, you can ride these states of energy into higher and more exquisite states of consciousness. They are, in some very real ways, like doorways into the higher dimensions of earth. They are an invitation to leave your attachment to surface awareness, literally and figuratively, and to enter into the extraordinary mystery and the exquisite birth of a new earth.

At the moment of your own physical birth into this life, you did not know what was happening—only that a great pressure was upon you and a movement you could not stop. This is, in many ways, a similar event for the earth herself. There are new worlds emerging in the midst of the world that is right before your eyes.

The reason you are here is upon you." - The Hathors (via Tom Kenyon), "Managing Subtle Energy During Earth Changes," Feb 3, 2007

p.s. Loofa asked me to share my own dreams/visions more (in addition to encouraging you to follow your own star). Been inclined myself to share that. Hint: It's about "Abundance 2.0." Check out the Tarot card on Abundance too: Exuberance. Friendship. Community.

images Alphonse Mucha's Dance; Ilene Meyer's Ten Note Whirl (don't they look like Fools dancing? In the Universe card, "We dance with the joy of life. And again we are the Innocent" (another name for the Fool is the Innocent); Ilene Meyer's The Magi (it takes a Magi to live willfully in joy - despite our conditioned patterns denying joy)

darkest before Dawn & sun rise

"This happiness comes in stages, through successive runs through the "Dark Night of the Soul" and if you haven't been through one recently, then you're probably not paying enough attention." - David Wilcock

Today's Tarot card for moi: Happiness (Nine of Cups). This card also signifies a wish-fulfulling day. (But aren't they all now?)

After several day's run of initiatory "rite of passage" cards like Aeon, Moon, Death, I'm back to normal. Yet in a brand new way.

I noted some 'discomfort' with the 'shadowy' themes here of late. (Mostly in terms of un-subscribers; although balanced by many more new subscribers.)

If I had any point to make, I suppose it's that old ways of being are collapsing collectively.

We are entering times of convivial, intimate, warm friendships and luscious bouquets and feasts.

To insist on scraping for crumbs in a lonely cellar just won't do on this planet for creators like us.

So this past Friday, when I tried to think practically instead of passionately  -rising to the highest ideals of humanity/divinity, fierce grace swooped in to save me.

"You fall from grace," a Nola friend explains last night, "when you try to go back to how you used to be and operate." I had told him my Aeon story; he revealed that my prison-of-my-own-making story made sense because he had privately read a single Tarot card this weekend on me and gotten Tower.

"When the Querent gets this card, they can expect to be shaken up, to be blinded by a shocking revelation. It sometimes takes that to see a truth that one refuses to see. Or to bring down beliefs that are so well constructed. What's most important to remember is that the tearing down of this structure, however painful, makes room for something new to be built." - Meaning of the Tower Tarot, Aelectic Tarot site

Of late I never need worry about losing keys, or mundane matters much anymore. They are a given, and I focus on the bigger picture. On small things, I might casually think, "Oh, I'd like to go to that book release party uptown," and within hours someone offers me a ride without my asking (I don't drive anymore). 

"Oh, I'd like to see that poetry panel at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival" and voila! my playwriting teacher offers me a couple of free tickets as she's working the festival.

And so it is when we are living in, and by grace.

My mantra: THE ANSWER TO HOW IS YES.

So I knew the key dilemma to be an oddity, and something to pay attention to. I initially reacted to my subtle slide back into feasibility by escaping/ignoring: "I'll just grab something to eat now."

It can be dangerous to ignore early (and gentler) warning signs. You resist your fullness at your own peril. She wouldn't have me turn back, retreat on The journey and now disown my highest visions and highest good for everyone any longer.

Locked within my Tower, after about 36 hours I realized all I had to do was align myself back up with my deepest heart's desire, the beatific vision for my self, my circle of friends, my community, my city, my nation, my planet, my cosmos, my All... and the doors were  wide open again. Smooth again. Yet in a brand new way.

I also got the Sun this a.m. My friend last night told me he'd like to design a Tarot deck where all 72 cards are the Sun.

& I smile..."As the song goes, "Here comes the Sun...." and absolutely everything is going to be all right." Too beautiful not to share this sunlight which is bursting forth:

"The Fool wakes at dawn from his long, restless night to find that the wild river has, at last, come to an end, quietly floating him into a serene pool. There is a walled garden around this pond dominated by roses, lilies and splendid, nodding sunflowers. Stepping ashore, he watches the Sun rise overhead, bright and golden. The day is clear. A child's laughter attracts his attention and he sees a little boy ride a small white pony into the garden.

"Come!" says the little boy, leaping off the horse and running up to him. "Come see!" And the child proceeds to take the Fool's hand and enthusiastically point out all manner of things, the busy insects in the grass, the seeds and petals on the sunflowers, the way the light sparkles on the pond. He asks questions of the Fool, simple but profound ones, like "Why is the sky blue?" He sings songs, and plays games with the Fool.

At one point the Fool stops, blinking up at the Sun so large and golden overhead, and he finds himself smiling, wider and brighter than he has in a very long time. Since he started on this spiritual journey, he has been tested and tried, confused and scared, dismayed and amazed. But this is the first time that he has been simply and purely happy. His mind feels illuminated, his soul light and bright as a sunbeam. Like the great Sun itself, this child with his simple questions, games and songs, has helped the Fool see the world and himself anew, to wonder at and appreciate both. "Who are you?" the Fool asks the child at last. The child smiles at this and seems to shine. And then he grows brighter and brighter until he turns into pure sunlight. "I'm You," the boy's voice says throughout the garden, "The new you." And as the words fill the Fool with warmth and energy, he comes to realize that this garden, the sun above, the child, all exist within him. He has just met his own inner light." - Meaning of the Sun Tarot, Aelectic Tarot site

images Orpheus, by John Macallan Swan (via Encyclopaedia Orphica) - Orpheus worshipped Apollo, the Sun-God exclusively, and the founding of the ancient Greek Mysteries are  attributed to this legendary musician; Sunflower Sun, by Helen Aldous; sunflower doorway via AncientWorlds.net

Bonus: Edited  portions of transcript from IM chat with a friend that may explain why I'm using Tarot these days:

me: what little i know about tarot, is it is derived from Quabbalah and it is supposed to 'help' guide us to our soul purpose/direction/essence, which sometimes we are still oblivious "consciously"

friend: oh, say more!

again, i'm only tangentially familiar

me: well, it's like we invite our soul or highest self to speak via the cards, and the cards are very archtypal and symbolic of the soul's journey

friend: that makes sense to me.

me: it doesn't always tell what you think you want to hear

anyhow, it isn't about career, love, etc as much though many use it for that, as much as helping to stay on our unique path, and transmute the soul from basest metals to gold, so to speak, so connection to "alchemy" -- that symbolism is heavy in Tarot

friend: yes! and what a reminder. for me it seems a path back into oneself... the cards are just sort of a reflection or mirror of what's in one's soul already.

me: right, but not always on conscious level

it also shows me my real state of mind at present - where your head is - if you just pull for mood/day

i guess in a way it depicts the hero's journey from Fool to Universe/World

the World card is still a fool, but wiser, having come back to where the journey started but whole now

i am thinking about that UNIVERSE card lately, i think it may signal completion of a major journey tho, then we see another summit (metaphorically)

handed to us on a Silver platter

"The new reality says “What do you want or expect?” and then it gives it to us on a silver platter." - Karen Bishop

I have noticed lately that desire is a magnetic force, and we like electomagnetic beings.

I crossed another threshold this weekend. It's a longer story, and not necessary to share all of it. I was experimenting with my first Tarot deck purchase (I got the Thoth deck, FYI). Initially with the first few questions I was getting confirmation of what I already sensed and knew.

So far so good. Then I asked a really open-ended question, like, "What is the focal point and purpose of my upcoming return to S.F.?" 

UNIVERSE, the card I flipped in the fan before me read.

"In readings, it is a very positive sign that you are in a position to realize your heart's desire. What that is for you depends on the situation, but it will always feel great. Remember, though, that Card 21 is a symbol of active contribution and service. To hold the World in our hands, we must give of ourselves to it. That is the source of true happiness.[1]

The World represents an ending to a cycle of life, a pause in life before the next big cycle beginning with the fool. The figure is at once male and female, above and below, suspended between the heavens and the earth. It is completeness." - The Universe/The World card in Tarot via Wikipedia

Enthused, I then wanted to do a Tarot check on a few specifics of my plans on my return to the Bay Area next week. I had given it a little thought. I'd kicked around pictures of what the next few months might hold, including a move from the burbs of San Jose to an artists' collective in the urban heart of San Francisco. (I'm still envisioning a base in Nola too, but that's later.)

I'd like to refrain from specifics here, but suffice it to say the "plan" in my head was based on a quite logically feasible and modest modifications and slight tweaks in a positive forward-moving direction to my current situation on a number of levels of my life within the Bay Area (seamlessly weaving into a whole aspects like work, place, love, friendship, art, etc. etc).

Okay, so I'm holding my rough sketch in my head, I shuffle and pull the card:

CRUELTY.

What?!

Hmmm, okay, I didn't sit with the card too long, yet long enough to make a tweak to the plan. I shuffle, pull again:

OPPRESSION.

Whoa.

I decide to give the Tarot a break and grab something to eat.

Hmmm, I can't locate the keys to the house I'm staying at. (In New Orleans, it is common to have grilled latticework outer doors that lock from the inside.)

No biggie. The keys also are trapped inside the house. "Simply a matter of time to turn up," I think to myself. I anticipate a one to fifteen minute search since the house is rather sparse -- it's actually on the market for sale.

I witnessed myself tracing steps. Okay, I came inside the house that afternoon from the downpour. I retrace the steps to the backyard where I fed the dogs. I retrace the steps a sixth time, seventh, eighth. I lose track.

I dump my purse out, scour it for the keys. I use my hands like rolling pins feeling for the contour of keys that might have slipped into some hidden liner of my purse or wallet. Didn't I go to the bathroom too? Check there maybe twenty times. I start to go through all my stuff, every inch of it in a logical search pattern. I try to meditate on the location.

I witness my growing frustration, a growing sense of futility and hopelessness and the feeling of being trapped and yet knowing I hold the keys within this house.

The day grows darker into night that first evening.

Something eerily feels symbolic and mythic, and I turn to the Tarot again. What is the purpose of this keys issue?

AEON.

"The old ways have died, and the new age has begun. With this new age comes the redefining of personality. It represents the final, decisive step in regard to the old, and the first, positive step with respect to the new. This card will often bedrawn during a crisis situation when a crossroads has been reached. It counsels careful analysis of reality, and dares the challenge of looking at the situation in new ways." - via Tryskelion on The Tarot

I sense that at this moment if someone gave me advice like, "Well, why don't you pray, or something," I'd want to throttle them. Finally, in exhaustion, and because it's past 11 p.m. I put my Tom Kenyon CD on and lay down to go to sleep.

Tomorrow is another day, after all.

When the CD gets to the end of #9, my favorite song, In the Company of Angels, I have a faint wish to hear it again.

And so it plays again. And again.

I drift off to sleep with In the Company of Angels looping into the night. All night over & over & over &. (Sunday it plays like "normal" again. In other words, after song #9, it goes to #10.)

A new day, but I still can't find the keys Saturday morning. I ask about the purpose of this idiotic and stupid keys situation. This is absurd. My life has been so easy and graceful for the most part lately.

I don't get it. I cry uncle. Please, what is going on?

AEON, the card I pull reads.

Fine, fine. Okay. Well, at least my Soul is consistent!

By Sunday morning I got the message, more than 36 hours later something shifts.

Maybe at some point I remember my Nola spiritual teacher and energy worker, Judith Linden's words from this past Wednesday's group teleconference call, "You stand at the crossroads of infinite possibilities and infinite probabilities. You are first and foremost an inter-dimensional being."

Maybe at some point reading The Right Use of Will for much of the weekend sunk in. (No where to go. Might as well read in between my analytic search for the keys.)

Maybe at some point my own Soul fluttered, Why why why are you thinking so small? Is that truly your dream, or tell me, is that what you believe to be "possible" and hence you've accustomed yourself to subsume your Heart's desire in favor of "Well, at least it's quite possible."

And that's when everything shifted. The proverbial lightbulb went off. My plan was not juicy enough for me. It was oh so practical though.

"I love those who yearn for the impossible." - Goethe

Finally, a sketch of a universe full of beauty and easeful living eclipsed me and eclipsed my practical plan.

Minutes later when I was no longer seeking, just dressing myself, I find the keys lying on a pair of trousers.

Follow your myth = Follow your bliss = Follow your myth = Follow your myth etc is the cycle.

"The new reality says “What do you want or expect?” and then it gives it to us on a silver platter," I read Karen's words this morning. "How do we “go there?” you might wonder..."

"Look at the highest version of everything, look at the best scenario, look at what is already here for you that you are so very grateful for, and focus on these things as much as possible. Get “on a roll” with all the miracles and you will begin to experience only those! Appreciate, appreciate, appreciate, and you will have more and more to appreciate. The higher realms are most certainly here in front of us, and we need only connect to them by seeing them, accepting them, and focusing our attention there instead of in any old world lower vibrating reality." - Karen Bishop, What's Up on Planet Earth?

Bonus: "In the beginning, when Spirits first entered the Earth, it was in a land called Pan, no one had to earn a living; everything sprang forth without effort. Every need was met by simply desiring it to be met, and the form in which it was met often surprised and delighted the Spirits there. For example, a Spirit only needed to say, "I am hungry," and something delicious to eat would appear, oftentimes in a form that had never been seen before. If a Spirit wished to bathe, a pool at just its favorite temperature would appear having all the things about it that this Spirit particularly liked. If a group of Spirits wished to swim, the pool would have everything everyone wanted.

In the beginning, all the Spirits could change forms and though some had more mastery at  this than others, all could do it. It was not unusual at that time for a Spirit to do acrobatics on the way to the a pool with arms and legs, and then, upon diving into the water, transform legs into a fishtail if swimming was more fun in that form. If later, there was a desire to fly, wings would appear...

Long ago in Pan, the air smelled of flowers, and the Earth was soft with mosses, grasses and sandy beaches. The rocks were gemstones and the waters were liquid light that sparkled and danced. The weather and even the seasons changed in reflection of the moods of the Spirits. The harmony manifested as music. Even the wind in the trees and the waves on the shore gave rhythm to the melodies. The monkeys and cats and all the birds sang and danced with the fairy folk. The fish and mermaids even sang in the seas. Everything glowed with colored light during the golden day and also during the soft blue night. Desire manifested reality so easily that a Loving Spirit could extend a hand toward a tree and that tree would flower immediately. Reality changed magically, affected by every Spirit's feelings of how it should be.

I have to speak lyrically here because Pan was so magical, musical and free." - Ceanne DeRohan, Right Use of Will: Healing and Evolving the Emotional Body