Hella Holy Matrimony

On moonday morning, Giordano, Serena and I drove into the Italian-er-than-Thou little town down the hill from our home, to submit our paperwork, in hopes of being awarded a date for marriage.  Legions of butterflies messed about inside me for myriad reasons. Reading bureaucratically persuaded websites is *not* my forte, so I wondered if we had all the documents required. One thing they HAD clarified at the US Consulate in Rome, when we visited a couple weeks ago (to obtain my sworn statement of single status), was that we must marry before my visa expires.  Which happens at the end of this month. Zoiks!

 

Our pilgrimage to the Wizard of Holy Matrimony required Giordano to miss a morning of work.  These days he is in hot and heavy preparation for a massive olive harvest. His head is nowhere above water in the way of tasks he must accomplish.  Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered someone with so many dangling, disperate obligations. My mom at the end of her life, perhaps…

 

But the point is, the unwieldy pile of my Husband-To-Be’s searing tasks sure brings out some brassy notes in the man.  He already tends toward the anxious shades of the rainbow. As I drove our little white Fiat, “Penis Ray-Ray” along the twisty, one way streets into the center of the village, he spit aggressive, critical directions at me.   I don’t have much tolerance for this facet of him. As an empath, I too quickly get inflamed and agitated, and perfectly awesome moments are spoiled by excessive heat and unkindness.

 

We parked down a hill from the “Common”, and I held Serena’s hand as she made her way up the steep, cobblestone road.  Apparently we were not fast enough for Giordano and in his broken five year old fashion, he let us know (nagging, crabby mumbling, slicing insults).  In my world, we had plenty of time, as it wasn’t even nine o’clock (when the office opened). I was jazzed that Serena wanted to walk alone, as she often prefers, like a lazy, cumbrous Pygmy Queen, to be carried.

 

I have a lot to say still, so I’m gonna pick up the pace.  But what you must know, is that by the time we arrived in the stale-cigarette-scented foyer outside the matrimonial office, Giordano and I were not on speaking terms.  When the disarmingly kind and casual italian lady opened her pearly gate for us, we were like two repelled magnets. I wouldn’t even look at him.

 

We shelled out our paperwork and I was half surprised, half relieved, half mortified to discover that we had all we needed, and would be able to secure a wedding day.  Whoa. We asked for October 28th. Two days before my visa expires. According to my astrologically savvy friend Anitra, that is the smoothest, most palatable day available to us, given our restricted timeline.  They were reticent to work on a Sunday. But a hundred euros and a relaxed sphincter later, they agreed.

 

We stepped back out onto the street transformed.  

 

That sentence gets to be its own paragraph, because it definitely stands alone.  I am not quite sure of the “behind the scenes” energetics of the matter…. But it was a palpable shift to have a wedding date and time.  Thankfully, we were both softened. We stepped into an adjacent bar, and Giordano ordered us cappuccinos. I can’t get right with the culture of drinking such heavenliness standing up, in less that three seconds.  I savored spoonfuls of thick, decadent foam, while Giordano teased me for taking my time.

 

And for my next splendid, death-defying act, ladies and gentlemen, I shall bare my messy insides for you all to gawk at and secretly relate to.  

 

I never imagined that getting married would be strewn with such a wild swizzle of unruly emotions.  Repulsion, excitement, love, powerlessness, curiosity, fear, turn-on…

 

From my insider’s view, I can clearly see how much collective meaning “We” place on marriage.  It means “forever”. It means “so in love”. “Happily ever after”. “The One”.

 

It means none of that for me.  It’s more like, I am just doing what needs to be done to move forward on my cryptic Path through the billowing fields of Enlightenment.  I have been groping to come to terms with it all.

 

Would I marry Giordano if I was financially free?  Probably not. I am marrying him as a single mom who needs help, and he is the flawed Angel that God sent me.  I feel a primal fear in telling it so straight. But as a writer, slicing straight into unflattering truths is the verdant river valley of good writing.  

 

And honestly, no matter how flawed my Angel is, my bottom line is that he supports me in showing up on the page and singing out the unfiltered mess of my Existence.  Which is what I live for. And I guess that’s the heart of the matter for me. My soon-to-be-Husband understands and supports my dharma. Even if it means that he occasionally gets chewed up and spit out on the page.  He may act like a wounded little boy too often. But holding space for me to be my fullest expression as a writer, even at his occasional “expense”, is a powerful stand to take.

 

The density of my Life Material these days often feels unbearable.  Okaaay, that was dramatic. I have it great, in so many ways. But as a woman who aspires to sovereignty and full-throttle empowerment, this is a very confronting life to be living.  I struggle to find a powerful place to stand. I feel small in so many ways these days. Living in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language… Having few friends to commune with.  Marrying a man who I am constantly having to teach and train and tolerate.

 

I can never say that last bit without following it up by how loving he is.  Giordano is so genuinely invested in my (and Serena’s) happiness, delight and wellbeing.  For example, he went way the fuck out of his way yesterday to ask his Baby Mama if we could stay in her rental apartment in Assisi next weekend, so that I could partake in a yoga festival happening right across the street.  While he sweats and bleeds and cries, picking thousands of olives to press into oil…

 

I guess the moral of this story is that on the INside, it occurs like all I can do is surrender to my Path.  I have written recently about my perceived lack of choice in the matter of my life. Like I’m just stepping into what splays open before me, with as much dignity, joy and willingness as I can muster.  Squeeze as much Trust out of my nearly-empty toothpaste tube as humanly possible.

 

Trusting that all this is right.  Trusting that this is all Grace. Trusting that this is exactly what I need to evolve.  Trusting that these are the perfect conditions for me to blossom open AS LOVE and embody the Master that I AM.  Living in said trust is a tall order, as my life is NOT unfolding as I imagined it would. Not that I ever fully imagined my unfolding… But life as I know it has bled way outside the lines of Collective Conditioning.  It’s not the stuff that “Happily Ever After” is made of.

 

Thankfully, I AM the stuff that Happily Ever After is made of… If only I allow myself to relax into this unassailable ISness.  I suppose this is the hidden cheese, wrapped in the bitter pill of my life. Haha!

I never dreamed it would be like this….

Today I’m wading thigh deep in feelings and questions that I’d rather not share.  I feel vulnerable and out of control, and I’d rather not make waves. I don’t want to be misunderstood or condemned.  But isn’t this tender place where writing actually comes Alive? Maybe. Or maybe I should just roll out my yoga mat, and keep with the private process of silent digestion…

 

Nah.  That feels like hiding.  My inner life is pressing on me from the inside.  The pressure is begging for creative release. But just know that my words are PROCESS.  Not Ultimacy.

 

I’ve been sitting in the YES to marrying Giordano for a few days straight.  I’m still learning how to operate as a highly emotional being in this world.  The best way seems to be to roll through waves of feeling across time, without reacting.  Just being curious and observing. Then, after the wave has made what feels to be a complete arc, I am “qualified” to make a choice, or take an action.  (The antithesis of my knee jerk facebook campaign to get the fuck out of Italy a moon ago.)

 

I’ve ridden this most recent maverick marriage wave across a few days.  I’ve sat with the panoply splash of opinions and perspectives of friends.  And God, let me tell you… this is damn challenging- the work of receiving perceptions, projections, advice of those whom I love and trust… while maintaining a clear connection and knowing of my inner voice/Self.

 

Despite my dumbfounded mind, I feel a sustained YES inside to “tying the knot” with Giordano.  Haha it really might BE a knot. Two lives (plus children and innocent bystanders) all hopelessly kinked up…  

 

Listening to Matt Kahn’s latest youtube video last week, was a turning point for me.  It was called “The Apathy of Options”. The essence was that our notion of myriad choices is actually a function of capitalism and consumer consciousness.  When we are “in the flow”, aligned with Truth, purely relaxed into the moment, the illusion of choices dissolves, and what remains is Destiny’s continuously opening Way.  

 

I can see this being a very controversial perspective.  Choice is such a popular notion amongst the transformational circles I have run with for my entire adult life.  “I choose chocolate because I choose chocolate. Bitches!”

 

Does this possibility of simply riding Destiny’s pre-paved roller coaster track ruffle your feathers???  Good.

 

When I look backwards at the Life that has lived me, it has always been this way-  I have lived a miraculous epic that I could never have imagined or invoked of my own paltry volition.  Something waaaay more immense has called the shots, moved the pieces, conducted the superlative orchestra of Existence.  

 

Moving to Italy and marrying Giordano is no exception.

 

The part that I am struggling to come to terms with, is that I never imagined getting married would be like this.  I thought I’d be “so in love”… Certain that I was with the “man of my dreams”.

 

But as a writer and an ultra-sensitive “experiencer”, I kinda like that it’s not this way.  I come to the table with wildly mixed emotions. A hopeless collision of thoughts. It was epiphanic when I realized that this echoing choir of inner voices and resistances are all trying to save me from future pain and hardship.

 

And yet the track of Destiny continues to smirk as she lures me forward.  In the name of spiritual evolution. In the name of undeniably intimate with my true nature.  In the name of a damn good story.

 

This might sound lame to you, but it’s real for me.  And please don’t thrust your “enlightened council” upon me.  My hopper is already brimming with input. I’m just giving up my raw self for you.  Here goes:

 

I don’t feel like I have any other REAL options right now.  And this comes as a relief. More empowered than victimized.  I’ve relished imagining I could fly back “hOMe”, to California, and get on with my life.  But the truth is that I have no life there. That life is but a flattened flipbook of memories now…. Conflagrated in the mystical act of BEing Alive.

 

What would I do in the Bay Area?  Couch surf (with my almost three year old) for a month at best?  Get a nanny job? Or become a checker at an over-priced health food store and put Serena into preschool full time, so that I could almost afford to pay an exorbitant amount of rent… meanwhile squeezing my creative dreams like juiceless limes, praying for a few tangy drops to splash forth, first thing in the morning or last thing at night?  Continue to grind myself down in hope-stained disappointment that my relentlessly beloved baby daddy is still not available to be the Partner, family and support that I ache for? Wishing that my friends were not so busy in their own survival-based hussle, so that they could be there for me in mine???

 

No thanks.

 

So I’m here with my irritating but entirely devoted Italian Man.  Swimming in a wild, enlivening swirl of mixed feelings. And despite this chaotic and reticent inner climate, the God in me is shining a Green Light.  Italy has claimed me as Her own. The dramatic, psychedelically persuaded, Maxfield Parish clouded, thunder-sprayed skies have seduced me. The pale, crumbly earth drinks my bare feet, as She pours forth her bounty in the name of blessed sustenance.

 

In this shadow-strewn, blessed iteration of my life, I have the support necessary to write a book.  Serena has a dad who truly loves her as his own. Once married, we can apply for government assistance because we have a child.  And this will pay for Serena’s preschool. Ananda preschool. She is so ripe for this developmental leap. Friends, creativity, expansion.

 

During my recent, knee-jerk, fear stained, dramatic upheaval, my friend Joan illuminated in me, a proclivity for living in “fantasy land”.  Well… I feel pretty damn sober now. My priorities are: creating stability for my girl, who is EVERYTHING to me, and writing a fucking awesome book.   When given a life that is richer and more riveting than the best fiction… writing it down is really the only option.

 

And of course, through all of this, I yearn to learn something real and enduring about the nature of love.  

 

The Epic Battle of Selves

As many of you are aware, the relationship with my Italian Amore blew up again.  On moonday morning, Serena and I left his house in a calmly tremulous frenzy, taking refuge in the miraculous beneficence of Ananda Assisi.  There was so much beauty and magic in surrendering into the hands of God in this way. People rallied to help us find sanctuary.

 

My Cosmic Dad found us the cheapest ticket home, which was $1250!  He fronted the money, explicitly stating that he needed it back ASAP.  I wrote a vulnerable post on facebook, sharing my situation and asking friends to help us with financial contributions, as I was at the end of my modest “nest egg”.   I was floored by the money and love that poured in! And also blinking in amazement at how profoundly worthy I felt/feel, considering the mess I made, letting go of EVERYTHING (save my trusty old Subaru, “Venus Ray”) and flying brazenly into the intensely emotional arms of a twin flame with whom I already had a wildly questionable track record.  

 

And now for the dripping, tender meat of this story.

 

Yesterday morning, I was moved to get an early start, so we hitchhiked the short ride (lonnng walk) to the top of the twisty hill where Ananda is nestled.  To be outside, in the River of Life.

 

We easily got a ride from the first car that drove by~ a friendly older italian woman with blond hair and a sturdy frame swooped us up in her ancient red coop.  I delighted in the loving strain of our attempt to communicate, despite the language barrier. By the time she dropped us off at the entrance to Ananda, my heart was wide and beaming.  

 

As we ascended the path, we nearly collided with my wild-eyed Italian Amore.  OMG. I felt like a deer in the headlights. All my vigilance centers flashed red alert.  Desperately, I groped inside for discernment of what to do…

 

In the end, I hugged him.  Good lord. I FEEL this man.  Even amidst all the singing alarm bells chiming inside, mostly I felt relief to be joined again in embrace.  His eyes were swollen, red and moist from two days of crying. After the extended hug, I tried to keep my guard up as he began to persuade me to come back, forgive all, start fresh.  

 

I was solid in my NO, as well as my stance of love.  “I’m not open to discuss this,” I stated, “all you must know is that I am leaving, I forgive you and I love you.”  This felt right and clear to me.

 

We loitered together awkwardly in the parking lot for some time…. Not sure what to do with this “Holy Moment”.  And then his MOM drove by (on her way to work)! I hadn’t met her yet. She saw us from a distance and pulled over!  Freaking out on the inside, I hung back as he approached her car. But Desire pulled me to greet her, unsure of how Serena and I would be received.  

 

She embraced us.  Strong. I let her in.  And she me. She was a small woman with a wiry build.  Strong from a life of hard work (on many levels). She smelled mildly of cigarettes.  I saw that she had the same hands as her son and I took them both and held them close in ecstatic comparison.  She gushed over Serena and commented on how much she resembled Italian Amore’s own six year old son. They have very similar almond shaped brown eyes and deep-toned skin.  Strange…

 

Then, Italian  Amore met our mutual friend for breakfast.  I felt relieved that he was getting support.  Their communion was porous, and we all ended up being together.  She encouraged him to drive us to the airport on Saturday. He was stretched between desire and fear of more profuse “bleeding”.  I told him to sleep on it.

 

He invited me to come on Friday, to the meditation and breathing program put on by the spiritual healer he connected with mere hours after I gave him the boot from my Nevada City nest.  She has been energetically holding him since then. And me too, to some degree. I really want to meet her. She is such a pure ray of Source Energy. I felt the power and perfection in this closure.  

 

We parted ways.

 

But my body was aflame with unbearable desire all day.  I could only thing of making love with him. I ached to reach out.  I strained to have restraint. I prayed hard to God.

 

Around five pm, it began to rain as Serena and I made our way toward the little Ananda market, under a large purple umbrella, in search of food for dinner.  As I labored along with thirty pound Serena in my left arm, umbrella and purse on the right, he texted me, inviting us for dinner. Ahhhhh. The fierce inner tug o’war began.  I said no. Seconds later, the woman I am staying with texed, reporting that the market is closed for a holy day… Some major “Madonna”-related thing.

 

Well there was my answer.  He picked us up on the side of the road, and we drove straight to his father’s garden, where we tread the soft, rain-moistened, giving earth, foraging for everything delicious and good.  

 

The kittens were wandering about and Serena immersed in their fluffy, enchanted world as we gathered armloads of dinner.  At this point, I felt so confused by the twist of love and desire and choices… the front surface of my body was a gnarled mess.  I layed on the earth and begged Her to help me release fear and come hOMe to my Highest Knowing. I could feel Her against me, alive and willing.

 

I prepared homegrown millet and green beans sauteed in fresh olive oil and garlic.  I asked him to prepare a simple salad, but he kept getting derailed by his all-consuming pleas to get me to stay.  I felt so mixed up. I had been so sure that we needed to go. I enrolled my entire community in my situation, and they showered us in money love and prayers.  

 

But the pull of our magnetism is sooooo strong.  And Italy is so dazzling… We shared so many tender, unborn dreams….

 

Get this, people– BOTH of his parents called during the short time we were at his house, asking him how he was, and telling him NOT TO LOSE ME.  That I was the best he’d ever had, and don’t fuck it up. Whoa.

 

We let Serena watch an episode of Elmo’s World, while we went in the bedroom and made quick and exquisite love.  I came. He didn’t. By then it was getting dark. “Bath time” had come and gone. Though he wished we’d stay the night, he drove us home.  I was sure I needed to digest.

 

I sought my hella wise friend Joy’s council.  I chose her because of her impartial stance and vast, sober, embodied intelligence.  To my dismay, it became clear that still my innermost truth is to return to California.  I felt grief for this. And fear of my Amore’s impending CRUSH against his own internal craggy scapes.  

 

Now thursday is dawning.  I am sitting with the intense internal pressure of love and fear swirling aggressively inside me.  

 

God help him be at peace with my choice.  And choose to stay open to love. We had planned for him to take Serena to the playground this morning….  Lord knows what will happen when I tell him I am really going.

 

Oh the sands in the hourglass that are the Days of my Life……..

 

UPDATE:  I told him I am leaving.  He came over. Desperately trying to persuade me to change my ticket for a later date, and go to California together in the winter after he’s harvested his olives, made oil and gathered money.  OMG. I know that if we are to heal and thrive together, we NEED the support of a conscious, evolutionarily focused community. We can’t navigate our shadows together alone.

 

I don’t know what to do.  

 

The End.

 

Haha yeah right.  

Scorpion Medicine and the Life of my Dreams

Late friday night, I was shocked awake by a hot, electric sting on my inner right forearm.  It took my brain a minute to land back in the reality of my bed… but when I did, I realized something must have bit me.  I flicked on red-bulbed bedside lamp and was horrified to discover a small black scorpion on my pink pillowcase!  For real.  Gingerly, I picked up my pillow and carried it to the bathroom sink, flicked the fierce little creature into the sink and ran the water until I was sure he was well on his way back to the Underworld.  Crawling into bed again was terrifying, because I was sure that it must be teeming with feisty scorpions, whose sole aim was to take greedy bites out of me.  But I was exhausted, so I braved the warm, cozy scorpion pit.  I texted Ed, because I was rattled and needed immediate support.  I also googled scorpion stings, and discovered, to my relief that there are more than fifteen hundred varieties of scorpions, and only twenty five of them are lethal.  Somehow I knew that this little guy was more machismo than anything else.  It took a while, but I fell back asleep and live happily ever after.

In the morning, it occurred to me that he might have been a humble Divine Messenger, so I googled “scorpion medicine”.  Yes, he came with the message of death and rebirth; letting go of what is no longer serving.  Just before I had fallen asleep, my heart was flooded with pain, and I had texted Ed, “You know you have caused a lot of pain”… referring to myself and his wife.  He made no reply, and I drifted into slumber with those words reverberating in the underworld of my consciousness.  Then I had been shocked awake by a sharp pain in my arm.

Realizing his sacred, selfless intent, I flooded with guilt that I had drowned him.  He was only trying to get my attention, and confirm that indeed it was time to release all hope of happily ever after with Ed.

Well… that’s not quite accurate.  I believe that Ed and I CAN live happily ever after… but not as husband and wife, Lady and Lord of Graceland.  I PRAY that we can sustain our love and friendship…FOR SERENA.  We will always be her parents.  Deep down, I wanted an “Always Connection” with Ed, because the love we share is powerful and I never wanted to let it go.  I pray from the depths of my soul that we may redefine happily ever after, in a way that suits the needs of the highest evolution of each of our souls.

But I’m sick of being smashed to pieces by disappointment.  It’s been nearly four years of such obliterating sport.  Now, a new calling is dawning in the deep, dark, Unmanifest within me.  I am called to my Dharma.  My sacred work in the World.  And I must liberate the energy that has been tied up in the exhausting cycle of hope, longing and devastation.  It’s weird.  We have tried to “break through” more times than I have fingers and toes… but there has been this invisible forcefield that has kept us together.  I guess God flipped the switch on this electric fence, because suddenly it is… almost easy.  I say “almost”, just because I am still navigating that outrageously delicious grief cycle:  anger and bargaining and blah blah blah.  I sure know how to have a blast down here on Earth.

It’s ridiculous being a spiritually inclined person (to state it mildly), spilling with a wealth of wise and practical teachings… and yet…in some scorching moments, NONE OF THEM can lift me above the very remedial human slop of clutching my delusions.  There is something gorgeous and refreshing about this.  There is no escape hatch.  I must brave the thorny, emotional underbrush and be humbled by the Journey that is mine to make.

This is so profound, that I will start a new paragraph, just to reiterate.  This paragraph stands as a monument erected for the profundity of the sacred necessity to submit to one’s Life.  It’s like when you’re out for a fabulous swim in the ocean… just frolicking like a carefree and even slightly cocky mermaid, and suddenly a huge wave pummels your azz, and all you can do is submit to the undertow, relax, and wait for it to deliver you to the surface again, according to its own, unified, mystic rhythm.

And therein lies the haunting and mystic face of death.

The ocean could easily take one’s Life (She DID swallow our Beloved Brian Baker…)  Now I must forfeit the Life that the little me has been clutching.  Trust me, I have held on as long as I possibly could (and I have the battle scars to prove it).  This is the essence of spiritual awakening.  But it is one thing to “know it”… and another thing to live it.  Knowing is not enough.  I want to be ground to holy fairy dust, that I may rise victorious rarefied, realized Light, and truly be of Service to this World.  Of course there are other agendas that want to have a say… so I must not be glittery dust yet.  Sigh.  But I AM getting there!  People, hear me when I testify that I am working so damn hard to figure out how to navigate this Life with Divine Intelligence.  Toiling to discover when it’s right to surrender, and when to bleed and sweat and fight.

It’s such a ridiculous journey… knowing deep down that God’s Plan for my Life is fashioned from a pattern of infinitely intelligent LOVE… and that MY plan is only crafted from scrappy impressions of my past… God’s imagination is Unlimited and Wild and Ultimately Benevolent (yes, even and *especially* when, to the ego, it “hurts”).  Mine is endearingly crippled.

I type these words with an aching heart, tears burning my eyes and gingerly streaming down my cheeks.  My guiding light, Matt Kahn said that someone once asked him, “It seems like you feel good all the time”, to which he replied, “I feel LIFE all the time.”  He said he has come to a sincere place Inside where no emotion is better or worse than another.  It is all God.  As a result of this sincere, awakened surrender, he no longer experiences highs and lows.  He is a pure stream of healing Divine Love.  So… Let me practice this wholehearted willingness to live as profound openness.  God, if you want to caress your own Body of Infinity through me as this deep pool of sorrow, I offer myself completely.  I boldly declare that there is ONLY LOVE, masquerading as every feeling and form and nuance of Life.  And so I offer myself completely to be played by your Holy Music… whether I like it or not.  I trust you God.  And I offer myself to the Life you are Destined to Live through me.  I am sure it will just keep getting more amazing and miraculous.

I used to want an “easy Life”.  Not anymore.  I want transformative Life that serves and inspires ALL HEARTS, and lifts the consciousness of the World.

The Ultimate Alchemy

Do you reckon that lead was loafing around one day and suddenly got a bug up his butt to make something more of himself?  Do you think he daydreamed obsessively about a noble and unknowable Destiny that lived in the secret blueprints of his elemental DNA?  And all at once, he had a divine lightning impulse to leap into an inferno, seal off all the exits, and die an excruciating and slow death?

I doubt it.

I am lead.  Except I DO have a bug up  my butt to Become a golden embodiment of the pristine glory of Heaven.  And even though I thirst for this compelling Destiny from the depths of my soul, I’m not feeling entirely gracious and patient in this stuffy, hot, sealed container.  I keep trying to bust the lid off… I keep trying to control the thermostat.  But when did lead ever become gold, behaving like that???  There’s a lot I don’t know.  But I DO know the answer to that question:  NEVER.

Oh, and actually, I know one more thing… I *will* become Go(l)d.  We all will.  And we all already are, but we mostly try to pretend otherwise.  What a frivolous game.  But I wouldn’t be able to sit here on my couch, sipping delicious tea and typing these confounded, exploratory and poetically persuaded words if the Game wasn’t ON.  Sure, Life is hard work… but it’s worth it.  It’s a pretty “neat” set-up.  (As an aficionado of words, with a reverence for their nuanced potent capacity for sculpting reality, I got off on saying “neat”… because it’s so ordinary.  But sometimes the best option is the worn-in, comfy jeans… “intentionally casual”…)

There I go again, spiraling out into those far-out rings of vast conceptuality.  Don’t just SIT there!… Reel me IN!!!  Make yourself useful over there!!!  ;-p

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”

I often joke about being “Hemingway simple”… but I’ve never even read him.  That’s his first line from The Old Man and the Sea…  Okay, now it’s my turn.

Lately it is clear to me that Life is in charge, and yet, again and again, I watch my small self step into the ring and try to wrastle It to the dusty ground.  I never win.  I just end up angry and sad and hopelessly tangled in elective torture.

Athena!  That was NOT Hemingway simple.  Yeah, well, guess what?  I’m NOT Earnest Hemingway.  I’m Athena Grace LMNOP.  And I’m trying so hard to be my best.  Hey!  In the reflection of my computer screen, I can see the dawning day out my kitchen window… hummingbirds zoom and buzz around the feeder, and then whizz off into the bright sky.  See?  This is the frivolous stuff that makes Life so heart-wrenchingly worth it.  Hummingbirds and glitter glue and breastfeeding.  Hemingway probably didn’t care much about such sacred frivolities.  And then he shot himself…

Anyway, my Relationship with Ed seems to be a masterfully threaded garland of perpetual disappointments lately.  I mean it’s sort of always been that way.  But it’s like God turned up the thermostat in the last few months.  I stand up, I get smacked down.  I stand up, I get smacked down.  It’s a broken record.  Except I can’t help but suspect that it is a very intelligently, intentionally broken record.  Akin to our beloved friend Lead… all this fierce and decimating heat… is making something so fabulous out of me.  But I HATE IT!!!!!!  Hahahaha, it feels so frickin good to tell it like it is.  THIS, my Friends, is precisely why the Buddha said that Life is suffering.  Trust me, you can get as new-age spiritual bypassy and far-out as you wanna… but at some point, you’re gonna land with a humbling thud, right back in the center of your unwieldy and intelligently merciless body, heart and Life.  And it will hurt.  And you will love anyway.  (At least that’s MY hypothesis…)

I watch my darling little ego struggle to maintain a *false* sense of control as she is pummeled and scorched and hopelessly deranged.  I try to “break through” with Ed… as I have done a hundred and eight times before.  As if that will permit me to “win” the Game.  I’m not saying that we should stay together…. I honestly have no clue what “should” happen.  What I do know, is that we care for each other deeply… we are eternally in Service to one anothers’ hearts… and most Hemingway simple, we have a child together, which will keep us practically bound for the rest of our lives.

I’m NOT politically inclined.  AT ALL.  But I’m no dummy.  Even with my head snuggled over here in this glittering, silky sand, I realize the World As We Know It is coming undone.  It fascinates me to witness collective consciousness, and how these universal energies and themes express and unravel so uniquely and creatively through each of our personal stories… We are ALL lead.  Go(l)d is beckoning us from Inside.  The heat is ON.  We need not fear, or try to be in control.  Love.  Love will show us the Way.  Love IS the Way.

I’ve always had this crippling tendency to want to BE THERE, without taking the (arduous) steps to get there.  No matter what the IT happens to be.  Lately it has been manifesting as impatience and a compelling itch to judge myself for not acting like the Master that I know I am Destined to become.  I want to be like Matt Kahn.  So fully given in Service of the Love that abides in all hearts… which is actually ONE HEART.  But instead I am riveted my little life, my futile battle in Relationship… And the endlessly gnawing question of how to become “Successful”… which to me looks like manifesting a career where I positively impact droves of hearts and make buttloads of money doing so.

Dear God… all these things I imagine to matter… that really don’t matter much at all.  Help me to be free, God.  Oh wait… YOU ARE.  THAT’S what this obliterating alchemy is all about.  And I have this idea like, if only I behaved like XYZ, it wouldn’t hurt so much.  But maybe there is no way to avoid pain.  Maybe pain is essential and holy.  Maybe I am doing it all PERFECT.

Maybe we ALL are.

And then she relaxed her body of sublimely sculpted stardust.  And then Infinity breathed her breath so slow and deep.  And Success gently danced down upon her like the first sparkling snowflakes of winter, cooly kissing an enchanted forest.

I might be clumsy more often then I want to… but my essential truth is that all of my efforts and my fierce will to LOVE is for US.  I’m certain that the Light will emerge victorious.  Success is Love.  Love is Life.  Life is breaking us down… And this is the BEST news EVER.

Keep the Faith, my Friends.   Go(l)d is ours Destiny… and an exquisite, bright dawn is whispering her ecstatic light in every heart.  I promise.

Someday VS. Now- A Bloody “Dual”

Committing words to this glowing slab of emptiness feels torturous as when I was nine and my mom would make me to clean my [atrociously messy] room.  But it’s been so long… and if I don’t give myself the opportunity to open up pour out the golden-chained codes of my Existence, they will tarnish and atrophy in the dungeons of my self-negating Silence.  So I push myself out from behind the curtain, shy and blinking in the bright spotlight.  I reach In.

Maybe the resistance is because my life feels so Saturnian these days.  Tethered.  Stable. Predictable, even.  As it should with a seven and a half month alive baby.  But the hallowed “secret” of being a writer with a poet’s heart (different than being a straight-up “poet”… because I don’t love to write “poetry” these days.  I like to LIVE poetry, and then write long-winded prose about it!!!  Haha, that’s hilarious….) is that when you take the time and care to give ANYTHING your full attention, its Divinity gently blooms.  And actually, this phenomena makes writing as essential as breathing… because it is no longer tolerable for the  Divinity of the World to remain clenched and trembling, as we all desperately limp toward our own illusory finish line.

My personal illusory finish line and I have been in quite a bloody tussle of late.  God, it’s so hard to relax into the implicit enoughness of this chapter of my Holy Existence.  Dissatisfaction is a smelly disease.  But the world who shimmers and taunts my drooling inner vision is masterfully seductive.  And I bet in actuality, it is just a benign and even “friendly” preview of coming attractions.  If only I would just relax and be the poster child of patience and satiation….

In this parallel dimension of my life, I am a Teacher and a Leader and a Writer, whose audience is broad.  I am THRIVING financially for the Gifts she offers.  I am boldly assured as Babe Ruth…. I step up to the plate; a gloriously empty conduit of the Universe, point to the exact address of Oblivion, where I intend to SMACK that small, hard ball.  I am a seamless ballerina, dancing to, with, AS the orchestra of Infinity.

SEE???  This is why I write!  Because just when I thought my existence was all tumbleweeds and endless, sandy cracks…. I take flight on invisible wings, and fill the sky with humming, neon shades of grace-full, booty-shakin grooves that would give Michael Jackson a run for his money.  (Yeah right, Athena…. MJ is Untouchable!…)(Well… so am I in my own right… Which is what I was saying, before I wandered off into the enchanted land of flashy, vivid metaphors.  I was saying that I keep getting seduced by a dazzling mirage of my Becoming, and it makes this slice of life pie that I’m currently breathing and bleeding and sweating and loving in seem insufficient.  And I know that’s bogus.

The frustrating thing is I can’t quite see how to get from “here” to “there”… other than to LOVE HERE.  To fully inhabit here.  To give my Holy ALL to here.  And while that’s actually more than enough…. it’s still cryptic to a slobbering, desperate ego.  I want to trust God with every fiber of my being.  Once and for all.  Wouldn’t that be so cool?  To be entirely relaxed and peaceful… Forever…?!  Now THAT’S a glamorous aspiration.

Someday I will be Great.  I am already Great.  Now on with the softly whispering song of my Real Life….

I finally hung my two hummingbird feeders yesterday.  Ed made me a gallon of magical, red elixir to feed them, and he put hooks in the overhang outside my kitchen window… months ago.  So it was a monumental occasion to finally get them up.  When the first hummingbird arrived, my life became more complete, and Heaven on Earth burst from her incognito confines, like an unopened can of bubbly beverage, shaken and released in sudden wet explosion.

A tiny frog has taken up residence in the corner of my toilet room…. which has a door that leads to my teensy, caterpillar-ransacked garden/tragically concrete “patio”.  I oft leave this door cracked in the name of sunlight and fresh air… and darling Mrs. Froggie seems to love this safe, cool, bug-laden corner of my hOMe.  I just peed, and noticed that she climbed the wall, and is now snuggled in the angular crevice, two feet above the floor!!!  I love her.  I really love her.

According to the Medicine Cards, frog represents the water element, and cleansing.  Replenishing.  Frog is the bringer of rain.  Yes, it’s true that my life feels dried out… doing the same things every day.  Frog is a reminder to take time for one’s self…. to replenish.  But how on earth do I do that, when I am single-handedly caring for a Tiny Goddess?  I can count the hours I’ve had help with Serena so that I could give to myself on one hand… (and still have two fingers left over!!)  I guess these quiet morning hours count for something.  I guess diving into my heart and filtering it through my mystical mind is worth at least a million Graceland-Bucks…. AND I am open to more.  More help.  More support.  AND I am so happy to spend my life caring for such a Radiant Goddess.  Serena becomes brighter by the second.  Everything captures her attention and seduces her fierce curiosity.

In other news, I went to the dentist a week and a half ago and they told me that I had TWELVE cavities, and a tooth that needs extraction.  As you can imagine, this news wrecked me.  So I gave up sugar and grains, and am consuming nutrient dense foods to heal my teeth.  We are suckas to believe in the legend that teeth can not heal.  They are just like bones.  We just need to support our bodies’ capacity to heal via diet.  I *never* thought I could give up sugar.  But faced with the reality of losing my teeth, the choice was suddenly a no-brainer.  Pretty awesome.  As an added bonus, I am beginning to feel like pure Light.  Sugar tastes good… But being an embodied superheroine tastes even better.  As does grass-fed butter, which is one of the primary recommended foods to consume for healing teeth!!!!!

I’m proud of myself.

And the last thing I’ll share, is that I finally washed Serena’s cloth diapers for the first time in a week and a half.  I WAS washing them every two-three days… but she’s mostly potty trained now!  At seven and a half months.  OmMyGod, you should see her sitting on her little pink potty.  She looks so tiny and precious… it would destroy you.  It destroys me every time.  She loves to look at books as she perches there.  Little cardboard books with pictures of animals in them.  Seeing puppies and polar “boozles”, she squeaks with refined delight and smiles the smile that I’m sure God smiled to create the World.  Pure, electric effulgence.

Not long before Serena landed in my womb, I declared on Facebook that I aspired to be a “HouseWife”.  Many of the Housewives out there chortled at my dream, informing me that it was grueling, unglamorous work, for which you rarely get acknowledged.  I didn’t care.  It called me forth.  Now, here I am, inhabiting this profoundly mundane, though somehow alluring vocation from the Inside.  And it’s true.  It’s really not glamorous.  But it is rudimentarily satisfying… simmering bone broth on the stove for twenty-four hours, sweeping and vacuuming the incessantly dirty floors, scrubbing the toilet with baking soda, vinegar and essential oils, devotionally making baby food from scratch, and being married to washing dishes.

I guess it’s inevitable that that which calls me forth will dawn in it’s perfectly divine time.  This is the nature Life.  This is the Play of God.

And this is the Queen of Graceland pouring love on your exquisite heart….

Talk to you soon Beloved.

Subtle, Soft-Spoken, Unfurling Enlightenment

It’s five thirteen am.  My body feels stiff as the tin-woods-woman.  My lips burn like they aspire to be chapped.  I want to say something profound, and this desire is corralling my my mind and crippling my fingertips.  So instead I’ll just breathe and keep letting go into the river of words and worlds ripe to pour upon the page.

I just thought of my deceased beloved, Dan, and how deeply he believed in my writing and my heart.  I will dedicate this blog to him.  I will reveal myself without judgement, as I imagine his devastatingly gentle face flooding the sky and beaming upon me.  I’d sure give my right nut to know what his soul is up to these days.  If I had a right nut… but I’m not ready to give away my ovaries… because I still have hope for one more child.

I’m house and pet sitting for my land-people for two weeks, which basically means that I am suddenly SO abundant that I have TWO HOUSES, two dogs, two cats, three angel fish, a massive trampoline and an even heftier pile of chores.  Yes, and of course a luminous baby…

While I was out walking the dogs yesterday afternoon, I was thinkin’ on spiritual attainment, and how it’s not what I ever imagined it to be.  It is so ordinary.  I mean, I honestly feel pretty secure and relaxed in the all-pervading presence of God… but it’s not wildly “exciting” in the way of flashing lights, rushes of luscious ecstasy, or mystic visions.  I often refer to the whole “chop wood and carry water” saying, because it is so true.  Or Jack Kornfield’s book, “After Ecstasy, The Laundry”.  This IS “It”, folks.  This is Heaven.  This is Nirvana.  There is no “finish line” to anticipate… where bells sound and balloons and confetti rain upon your wide-splayed crown chakra.   Or perhaps there will be… but who really cares? Self Realization is an ever-expanding spiral of blessed, breathing presence.

I marvel at witnessing Serena blossom day by day, like an exquisite lotus.  It’s strange.  Flowers are so remarkable… because they come and go in such a brief burst of the Miraculous… every stage of their holy becoming is sovereign in its majesty (yes, even the poetic, wilting decline).  We are like that too.  Life seems long… and in a way it IS.  But from some other cosmic vantage point… like maybe smiling Dan in the sky, it is just as heart-shatteringly fleeting as an ecstatic bloom.  The rose was always a rose… And WE are always Divine.  Even when we act like dummies because we are in pain.

The feeling while I was walking was this subtle whisper of perceiving the World new… like even though it seems to appear as it has always been… I saw a hint of freshness sparkling in everything.  And I knew that my consciousness is secretly unfurling in the way of Realization.  But it is so quiet and gentle… and just enough.  Not too much, like a kamikaze kundalini krisis (had to go all Ks!…)  It’s a garland of increasing mOMents of blessed knowing of the perfection of Life.  And trust me, these lucid mOMents are so precious… in contrast to the mOMents where I am climbing my own walls, wishing things were different.  Wishing that Ed and I were together, living as one happy family.  I believe that the lucid, free moments will continue to increase until they are one wide open vista of relaxed presence. And even then, my divinity will continue to reveal and express in ever-new and glorious ways!

But THIS moment is rad.  Lola the cat just snuggled into my lap.  My tea cup is half… full?  Empty?  You decide!  But it still has tea in it!!!  The morning is so quiet and it still belongs to ME.  MINE.  And then I breathe so deep, and all this incognito miraculous ness expands into itself, like the serpent eating it’s tail.

If this isn’t enlightenment… My name isn’t Rumplestiltskin!!!!

It’s been amazing with Ed.  Our Relationship is such a powerful gauge of the integration of this said Realization.  Over time, I have seen that the more I open my heart, and let Love lead the Way, the more HE manifests in my reality as his highest Self.  This is such an exciting game!… witnessing some guy you once perceived as so… ordinary… become a buddha, become a God. (In all his glorious ordinariness!!)  I witness his wings shyly spread and consume the sky.  I have brushed chapped elbows with giving up on him a thousand times over.  But for some Mysteriously persuaded reason, I have not been able to.  Now he’s unfolded his divinity in astonishing dimensions, and this is just the beginning.  After all, God’s domain is Infinity.

I want to testify in favor of choosing a Man who is not “transformed” or “spiritual”.  In the Bay Area, there is such a buzz around these labels.  It’s quite a phenomenal culture for a spiritual ego… with all these holier than Thou ways to assess others’ “qualifications”… But the danger of such sport, is that 88% of the time, you’re not getting The Real Thing.  You’re just getting an ego structure that has tethered itself to a set of self-righteous ideas and protocols.  They have the script down, and can easily feed you (and themselves) a heaping dose of masterful, sparkling, hollow spiritual bullshit.

Eeeeek!  I just realized that I’m treading water out in the middle of the dangerously vast and deep “Lake Conceptual”.  Would I dare to wrap the Baby Jesus in that semi-soft, blanket statement??  Probably not.  But I will say this~  I often appreciate that Ed does not have any scripts of a “Transformed Spiritual Man”.  Often, when our conversations go off-roading through treacherous terrain, he goes Silent.  Because he doesn’t have a script to cling to and hide behind.  And because (to my recurring dismay, he isn’t as quick as… ahem… “some”, at articulating his innermost feelings.  Instead he draws deeply into himself, seeming to disappear for a time.  But when he pops back out into shared reality, he has something genuine and meaningful to say.  Sometimes I find his shares disappointingly simple… but I’ve come to recognize that there is mastery in his simplicity.

As our love matures and refines, I see his essence clarifying like a rare jewel.  Again and again, I must surrender to the imperfection of our circumstances, choosing to invest ALL OF MY FAITH in God’s perfectly unfurling Plan.  This morning, this breath… I return to profound, all-pervading Rightness.  In this mOMent, I fully trust that I am exactly where I need to be, by the Grace of God.  I trust that all of my deepest dreams are blossoming through me in their sublimely perfect Time.  I am willing to relax my body and let Life unravel me and shower me with Grace.

Amen.

Humility Dawns in Athena Graceland

I don’t feel very inspired to write… but what if I never feel inspired again, and my whole life zooms by and anonymously folds back into the earth and smears across the star-strewn sky, and my utterly profound and meaningful existence is devoured by the perpetually ravenous wolves of forgetfulness?….

This lonely little blog is like a log cabin nestled deep in the woods.  Mostly it just lives it’s own secret, self sufficient life… but every once in a while, a straggling adventurer notices the smoking chimney, the succulent scent of boozle chip cookies baking in the oven, (I call Serena “Boozle”… but it’s become akin to how the Smurfs use the word “smurf” as a verb, a noun, an adjective…. I truly amuse myself!  But even funnier, is how my Ma used to be like, “What do you mean, ‘you’re about to take a boozle??”… She just didn’t get it.  And then one day, she nonchalantly used the word in a perfectly slanted and appropriately inappropriate context… and I felt tickled and proud.  This is how all language evolves, right?… Somebody makes random sounds as though they know what the F they’re talking about… and the flock just goes along with it as though it were the Word of Boozle Almighty 😉

Where was I?  We were wandering through the “woulds”, seduced by the deep caramel scent of boozle chip cookies… Okay, I declare myself officially inspired!!  Now… what is essential for you to know about this modest little Divine Existence over here??

I have been hard at work, digesting expectations and hopes and disappointments of what I thought my life was supposed to be… and gradually and authentically landing in the soft, sacred center of what my life actually IS.  NO!  I refuse to say “It is what it is”!!!  That’s one of the official, most worn out Ananda cliché phrases.  I find it amusing and curious how little cultures and deep grooves of collective habit form amongst groups of people… Maybe my life “is what it is”…  and maybe IT’S NOT!!!  But honestly, it probably isn’t what it isn’t… so where does that leave me???

It leaves me here on my disturbingly ugly, but mostly comfortable, BROWN (bleck), well-worn Ikea couch, in the shy light of early morning, bathed in passive stillness, reflecting on my life… and realizing that I mostly loooove the pants off it.  In fact, yesterday I was suddenly bursting with gratitude, in a similar fashion to the ache that over-takes my boobs sometimes, when they get too full of milk and need to be relieved by a tiny, moist, hungry boozle mouth… Yes, I get almost painfully bursting with invisible goodness, except it doesn’t hurt.  It feels… like my heart is the sun, and it is intimately contacting every pore and cell of Creation with it’s warm, bright Life.

“On paper”, my life is so plain and simple… and dare I say, imperfect!  I would never have dreamed that I would be experiencing this caliber of joy, delight and fulfillment as a result of being a single mama, nestled mostly anonymously in the woods, bobbing in a sea of endless chores and duties… But what it really is, is that I’ve worked SO FREAKING HARD in the pursuit of Truth… I’ve cried, sweated, bled and broken a bazillion times over.  And now… suddenly my spiritual practice is an unbroken and grace-full continuum of love-inspired BEing.  Do I meditate?  Yes… in everything I do.  Do I say mantra?  Yes… in every loving word that I am blessed to speak.  Haha, that makes me sound too perfect.  I’m a totally fallible human, just like you!  But Love is dawning in my heart, and shedding her gentle, fresh, innocent light on everything.  Even the hard moments, and the jagged feelings.  Because I know that my only job here is to give my ALL in the name of LOVE.

That’s it.

Serena has been a huge catalyst.  Because she is pure joy.  She wakes up in the morning, sees me, and her face LIGHTS UP.  And all day long she just Buddhas it up.  Pure, awakened, engaged, peaceful, seamless, authentic being.  She’s such a happy, trusting, deep, curious, passionate person (kinda like her mom…).  Being with her ignites my heart in rainbow flames.

On Wednesdays I make soup in my “Shakti Pot” and deliver it to people in the community.  This week was my biggest order ever~ thirty three servings!!!  I had three pots going on the stove.  I worked from about 8am until every jar was delivered, at around 5:40pm (17:40, as Ed would say).  Of course I took as many Boozle breaks as necessary to make sure the Tiny Goddess was fed, rested and happy.  But still… I was jammin’.  I made an african peanut veggie lentil stew with coconut milk.  That seems to be the unanimous favie.  People dig their sweet, decadent creamy.  It’s primal.  Like breast milk.  Everyone loooooved it.  And at the end of the day, I felt so freakin satisfied.  I put my tired, tragically patient Boozle to bedsie, and devotionally cleaned up my kitchen area, which by the way, looks out on trees and sky and setting sun.  I guess the feeling in my body was Alignment… like I am pouring myself into something that is… “right”… somehow.  It just feels right.

The rightness surprises me, because I always thought I’d be “someone”… someday.  A well-known writer, a leader, a teacher… And here I am, a “Soup Maker”.  Ha!!!  It’s so funny.  It could only be God’s favorite joke!  But what I am truly, experientially realizing, is that it’s not WHAT you do, it’s HOW you do it.  I give EVERYTHING to my “Shakti Pot”.  And I give everything to my Life. (And I believe that “Life” is actually a synonym for “God”, but that’s an entire blog unto itself…)  I do my best to love whatever arises… to bring great energy into my heart, so that it infuses my soup, my life and the world.  And people feel it.  And I know that my love makes a difference.  (As does yours, I hope you know!…)

From this place of dawning humility, I realize that if it is my Destiny to be a well known writer, a leader, a teacher…. it won’t be because I need to “prove myself”.  Because this chapter is teaching me that my love is truly, deeply enough.  Come what may…

It’s just like Rumi says, “Let the beauty you love be what you do”… That just means, let your inner beauty ooze out like honeyed perfume and infuse everything you encounter.  It means let your life be a continuum of profound and simple intimacy with ALL.  Be willing to love and to lose and to LIVE.

This is Grace.

And this is Athena Grace, signing off and wishing you the blessing of a gently blooming heart…

❤

PS– Here is the *perfect* example of how utterly fallible I can be– I wrote the first half of this blog yesterday.  Then Serena woke up, and I was sucked into the powerful machine of motherlife.  Last night, Ed called me and we spoke briefly.  Then he had to go, because he just had a few minutes in the car, before he got home and had to go be that other guy in that other life… I felt dismissed, secondary… My heart broke.  Which then caused his to break.  We both went to sleep bleeding.  I woke up sore… but I still chose to keep on with the continuum of this piece of writing, despite the thorn lodged in my heart.  Writing it has once again pointed me due north.  My job is to LOVE the one who feels dismissed and secondary.  To love the pain until it is obliterated in the light that I AM.  You see, I fall!!!  But I pick my heart up like a baby bird, fallen from her nest, and cradle it with so much care and kindness, and it all always works out.

The Evolution of My Desire

I have been marveling lately at how dramatically my dreams are morphing.  Two entries ago, I was pining for a hOMe, and motherhood and the ideal partnership… And today, I am remarkably content with the current ISness of my existence.  I am back at Ananda Village, living with my Ma, teaching yoga here, facilitating a women’s video circle, and continuing to ROCK my inner world as I shed hereditary darkness and allow the light to pour through.  Layers of delusion keep sloughing off, and I realize that I am becoming lighter and happier by the second.

At the epicenter of this transformation, is the remembrance that I am alive for humanity.  And for LOVE…  When I imagined that I was alive to satisfy my ego, I felt mostly fucked in the ass by my very existence.  Like it was never enough.  I was perpetually empty.  But now purifying my heart and opening myself to be a Source of Love is the place that I return throughout my day.  And it just makes sense.  Am I proclaiming to be all holier than Thou, like I’m some damn Master?  No!  Because the REAL activism is loving myself for who and how I am now, today… The one who aspires from the depths of her being.  The one who sometimes *seems* to fall short.  The one who keeps going.  The one who boldly declares her love to the world… perhaps imperfectly… but also with courage and boldness.

Yeah!  I’m here to wrap those stifling spiritual ISMs and dogmas and nutritionally void protocols in a dingy though grand olde flag, and send them down the wild, swollen river, once and for all.  If you’re still using spirituality to find fault in yourself as you ARE, to imagine a grand chasm between yourself and God, I’m here to tell you that is a dead paradigm!  It’s time to live what you know in your heart, to own that God is not a big, stern man who lives beyond the sky… but the miraculous Allness, experiencing itself as YOU and me and everyone and everything right NOW.  And this is whole, complete and perfect, and is a cause to love like there ain’t no tomorrow!!!!

So what do I desire, from this place of radical completeness?  My biggest desire at this time, is to completely embody the light of spirit.  To obliterate shame and conditioning and the inherited wounds of my ancestors… and let the light of the Infinite Blaze through every cell and pore and fiber of my magnificent Heavenly Body!!!  It seems like the dominant paradigm has been a body and spirit split… like we’ve collectively been through so much shit.  So much pain and suffering, that we’ve imagined the body to be an unsafe hOMe, wrought with land mines of stored trauma, preferring instead to live in the intrepid sprawling landscapes of the mind, where we can fabricate fever dreams of our own “safety” without having to feel through the sensations that we once upon a time, associated with unbearable pain and terror.

I want to inhabit my body as I have never inhabited it before.  I want to inhabit my sexuality free from shame, as nothing short of a glorious portal straight into the heart of Heaven.  This is not an indulgent want, but an essential reclaiming of the truth of who I AM.  I know that being a living embodiment of pure truth and light is the epicenter of all other dreams and desires that sing through me.  If my desires are a multi tiered fountain, this radical return of infinite spirit into my body is the WATER.  It will naturally pour forth and nourish all the slumbering seeds of my destiny with ease and grace.  No more inner wars and parental punishment to manipulate myself into PRODUCING content that will desperately imbue my life and my very being with a false sense of worth that will temporarily convince me I am “okay”, in the face of the constant low-level dread that I’m NOT.  Ever.

Love will make this so.  Every day, every breath, I return to love.  I fill my own heart with the grace of the infinite.  I breathe all the way to the bottom of my belly, into my yoni, and feeeeel all there is to feel.  I allow myself to relax.  To soften.  And from this place of unrelenting care, attention, and embodied surrender,  I will continue to shed and reveal and attract the perfect people and situations and opportunities to facilitate this profound resurrection of the radiant light of my spirit into the sacred temple of my body.  (Which naturally will blaze out into the world and raise YOU up in the light of embodied Truth…)

Seek ye first the Queendom of Heaven….

Stalked By Destiny

When you read these words, you won’t know that I stared into space for an unusually steep stack of eternities, before I felt compelled to commit words to the page. You’ll just sip them quick, like a tepid, all-too-drinkable latte from the Starbucks drive-thru. But the reality, is that I am siting here (Pizzaiolo), mulling over the shards of my life, like a twelve-dimensional puzzle, trying to fit them together into a sensible portrait of burgeoning reality. Yeah, I’m like smoothing my consciousness with a fine-toothed comb, teasing out the moments and images, longings and thoughts that glow the brightest in here…. Because perhaps my psyche is a treasure map, seducing my awareness to ever greater heights of Ultimacy.

And now, for the effulgent flash of our beloved cliche symbol, the lightbulb (aka: a moment of clarity). What it boils down to, is that I’m coming to a place inside, where I am longing to create something deeply satisfying, and wildly impactful in the world (in addition to my dear little Alexandria Shri…). I want to use all my God-given gifts and talents to light up the world. The alternative is hella bogus. Life without passionate, creative risk is like crawling across a parched desert with no kombucha or raw milk (okay, or even WATER) to drink, and no sexy, fierce, wise, compassionate, unruly playmates to sweeten up otherwise generic moments.

Okay, sometimes I nail the metaphors… but that time I didn’t. You must mine for the FEELING beneath the words. My writing stems from liquidy depths of raw feeling. The immediacy of these energies guide me like a trail of breadcrumbs to the CANDY HOUSE.

Now, more than ever before, I am stalking my destiny. There was a lunar eclipse last night. And we’re approaching a “grand cross”. Supposedly all this current astrological intensity is serving as a raucous seduction into deeper attunement to our soul’s path and purpose.

Last July, I let go of my apartment and my job and the constricting, razor blade-laced comfort of a life that was becoming too small for me… I followed the oh-so-gentle whisper of my heart to the Momshram, where I stayed for six weeks, and imbibed my fourth yoga teacher training. Entirely apropos for year of the snake, this kicked off a hard core skin-shedding. Or maybe I was in a straight up cocoon… because I really became a puddle of tender nothing. And since then, I have been ambling with mostly patient, mostly blind faith down the path of my heart. My priority has been spiritual nourishment… which you’d think would be rather joyful. But it’s actually been sorta dark and unsettling. Like all the bright colors of my soul have been cut with sludgy, grey paint.

I’m getting tired of drifting on wily tides. I want to unzip my chest and let the colors of my heart run and bleed and stain the undisciplined, dreaming minds of the hopeless. Today I am inclined to believe that the God I adore can be tasted in the delicate sweetness of beauty and pleasure and delight.

Just before seven this morning, I was riding BART to the enchanted lagoon (Temescal Pool), and I scanned the train to see who the “people in my neighborhood” were… Friends, it was fucking tragic. Without exception, they all looked eleven-twelfths dead!! I even have the stealthily snapped photo to prove it. My hypothesis is that these people were all heading to jobs they despise, living juiceless, autopilot lives, because they have been asleep so long, they forgot they had another option. And yes, I inhabit my own pathetic version of that. And it’s pissing me off. I’M ATHENA GRACE!!!! I was NOT born to partake in this trending strain of self-imposed bondage!!!

I want to unearth Heaven Within, and spread it around like a hopelessly contagious virus!!! I want flowers to bloom where I have walked and frowns to melt into undeniable evidence of all-pervading ecstasy!

Now I’m staring at the page again… Because like, honestly… where do you go from there?

I’m hopping a train to the Momshram this afternoon. Up until this morning, I was resisting going. I felt attached to all this concrete and noise. Just kidding. More like my Man, the creative, conscious, exuberent vibe of my Bay Brea peeps, sweating out my demons (and perhaps a few token angels) in bikram yoga, and gliding like a mermaid through liquid, aqua love at dawn. But today I say yes. I’m ready to re-enter the Sacred Forest. Hug my PRECIOUS mother, and sing the meal blessing song with her before we feast on delicious, rainbow colored salads, designed by yours truly (you gotta wonder where the silly phrase, “yours truly” came from… and moreover, you gotta wonder about the goofballs who keep it alive…), unleash my wild heart on the endearing, half-awake masses who show up for my sadhanas!!… Breathe in the love of the trees and perch next to Ma and sing my heart out at sunday service!

Gosh… That all sounds pretty God. Where do I sign up? Oh wait, this is MY LIFE. Sweet! What was it I was clawing for at the beginning of this blog? Purpose. Meaning. Sacred engagement. Focus. Service. Sigh. Trust the path, Mrs. Grace. You might imagine you are stalking your destiny…

But actually, your destiny is stalking YOU.

Om. Peace. Amen.