angelbirdflies

"The moment you see how important it is to love yourself you will stop making others suffer." -Buddha Perhaps we can stop treating ourselves like the enemy.  Perhaps we can stop focusing on the problems we see, because, let's face it, everyone has them and they tend to sprout new heads the moment we slay them.   Perhaps we can simply examine how we approach ourselves and learn to do it with some space, some kindness and YES love.

On the trail when I see a sign like this, I don't stand in dismay, staring at it, wondering what I might have done to warrant its closure.  Did I walk too vigorously?  Did I stray from the trail?  Was I too frequent or unusual with my foot traffic?  Ridiculous.  No.  I just find an alternate route and keep walking.  I trust the closure for it's own sake.  I look for emerging wildflowers.  I befriend the trail, as is.  It's time to apply the same logic to my life.  When a relationship ends.  When a shift happens.  When a trail closes.  I don't need to examine myself to the nth degree.  I can just see it for what it is.  Trail closed.  And walk on.

When I was nineteen I forced myself to sleep alone in the woods, far from civilization, once a month for a few years (weather permitting).  Then, one early morning, as I lay there wrestling with my fear it dawned on me... "I'm afraid of being alone."  It was that simple.  I got up, packed my bag and never slept alone in the woods again.  Twenty two years later, after several relationships and heart break, as I lay in bed wrestling with the dark I realized, "I'm afraid of being alone".  I can't just pack up my sleeping bag this time.  But the same compassion finally overtook me and I turned with loving kindness to the woman and said simply, "I know".  

Therefore, steal, or still, the echo, so that you don’t allow an event, however unpleasant or momentous, to claim any more time than it took for it to occur... What your foes do derives its significance or consequence from the way you react.  Therefore, rush through or past them as though they were yellow and not red lights.  Don’t linger on them mentally or verbally; don’t pride yourself on forgiving or forgetting them — worse come to worse, do the forgetting first.  This way you’ll spare your brain cells a lot of useless agitation; this way, perhaps, you may even save those pigheads from themselves, since the prospect of being forgotten is shorter than that of being forgiven.  So flip the channel: you can’t put this network out of circulation, but at least you can reduce its ratings. Now, this solution is not likely to please angels, but, then again, it’s bound to hurt demons, and for the moment that’s all that really matters. -Joseph Brodsky I re...

How do we love ourselves when we are at our most unloveable? How do we open our hearts with compassion to our own ardent stupidity and love ourselves anyway? And not turn toward some unsuspecting OTHER in the hope that they will alleviate the pain associated with coming face to face with our own shadow?  Or hide from it with our distraction of choice, meditation, exercise, do gooding or the host of others employed by humans across time?  In that fierce darkness, when all of our external brilliance has forsaken us and we stand naked, bald and exposed before the condemning mirror of other, can we in that bleak moment offer up a spacious presence for life as it is, right now.  Shaking and uncertain, I stand on that precipice expanding my heart large enough to hold me, unloved or unloveable, exactly as I am right now.

I am not interested in enlightenment, if it means detachment from the emotional body, the earth plane, the challenges of being human.  I am interested in enrealment, because it means that my most spiritual moments are inclusive, arising right in the heart of all that is human: joy and sorrow, shopping list and unity consciousness, fresh mangoes and stale bread. Enrealment is about living in all aspects of reality simultaneously rather than only those realms that feel the most comfortable.  We are not just the light, or the mind, or the emptiness, or perpetual positivity. We are the everything. It's ALL God, even the dust that falls off my awakening heart.  - Jeff Brown

"Sure.  I'll make small talk. Chit chat. Discuss the ins and outs of a "typical" day. Pass the time lightly. Say tiny things. I'm happy to tread surfaces with a smile, and will. Sometimes. Yet- when I look at you, I know there are layers. Dimensions. Collections of ancient wisdom. Roads. Stories on stories on stories. Core needs. Humanness. This is where I light up. This is where I thrive. You can't be caged in a pool for long. Not when you're someone who wants oceans."     -V. Erickson I visited with my beautiful, big brother today.  A video chat.  Twenty minutes of freedom from his solitary confines.  In my eyes he was beauty. No less than a rare flower blooming in a parched and barren field.  He shared a recent glimpse of hard earned wisdom... "Sis, we are all infants. No matter our age.  We all share the same basic human needs. An infant will die without human touch.  We all need to be loved." Of course we all ...

Commuting to work this morning, surrounded by other cars and drivers intent on destinations to I know not where, I began to contemplate the unknown and unknowable nature of life.  Our big human brains spend a great deal of time and energy buffering against the present and imagining some measure of control.  We indulge elaborate contortions of self aggrandizement in an attempt to prop up our sense of the known.  We worry about the future, plan for it and rush headlong toward it.  We carry a satchel of memories and stories and nonsense, heavy laden, on bent backs weary from use. The one moment we seem intent on ignoring is this one.  Why?  Could it be that this moment is inviting us, exactly as it is, to a robust kind of vulnerability?  A not knowing?  I have begun to believe that the greatest growth opportunity is found in a thorough examination of our relationship with the unknown. I have five dear friends presently wrestling with cancer. ...

My mentor once told me, "You can never make an authentic YES before you can make an authentic NO."  That is true in all manner of things, across experience and emotional continents.  It has been the hardest word I have ever learned to say.  As it crosses my lips, my heart caves with a longing to please and love.  It tries to find a way toward "yes", bending and bending and nearly breaking before a whisper of "no" rises to the surface.  With each failed YES, I have been hardest on my self, demanding that I love more, judge less, evolve faster, become more mindful, more conscious, more forgiving, stronger, healthier, less needful...you name it. The times have changed. I can no longer contort myself into strange pretzels of consent in order to avoid a simple and strong NO. "No" pisses people off. So what? The reality is that  people aren't all that dissimilar from toddlers and "No" also makes all of us feel a sense of safety ...

No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves. ~Amelia Earhart

Do you think the flower delights in my attention as I bend, love struck toward her beauty?  Does she feel the splendor of my love and turn toward it like sunshine?  I doubt it.  Flowers bloom because it is their nature to bloom.  Their beauty, seen or unseen, acknowledged or unacknowledged, is the natural expression of flower.  And yet, as human beings, we are blind to our sublimity, desperately seeking the light of other… bending toward the hope of their appreciation, love, attention, affirmation or whatever hot-sought object or ideal occupies the nexus of our desire.  Could it be that our beauty is as inseparable from what we are as the flower is to the bud?  Is it possible that in our seeking to be loved we have relinquished the simple knowing that it doesn't matter.  That what we already are has the power to stop someone in their tracks and cause them to bend, in wild wonder toward our own brilliance? Perhaps the act of seeking is a constant...

When I experience the flocking patterns of birds and fish, I am overcome by a reverent quiet and humility.   There is no leader, no overall control, no bickering or obvious negotiations; instead the flock's movements reflect trust and a collective response to the moment-by-moment navigation's of individual birds as they interact with: neighbors, wind patterns, predators and more. There is trust in the flock and the physics of flight.  Research illustrates that these "flocking waves" respond to movement initiations from birds that bank into the flock, rather than away from it. Turning away toward isolation makes the individual more vulnerable, this rule also helps prevent indecision and permits the flock to respond rapidly to threat.  An obvious overlap exists between flocking behavior and Vygotsky's social constructivist theory, often called social constructivism. For Vygotsky, culture provides the child with cognitive tools necessary for development and a...

I awoke at 4 am this morning.  I lay in bed for a while, tossing and turning before submitting to wakefulness and rising from bed, donning warm winter clothes,and heading for the mountain.  I arrived long before the sunrise and began my trek up the lumbering hillside in the cold stillness of predawn.  With each step the careworn busyness of my mind quieted and soon I was aware of the breeze, the chill and the subdued colors of winter.  As I climbed, I saw dozens of deer scattered across the hillside foraging food with graceful diligence.  I noticed this trio nearby and heard a still small voice beckoning me toward them.  They stared at me as I approached, eyes gentle and deep, they didn't move to run, instead they watched me.  I cried in gratitude as is often the case.  It is humbling and beautiful to experience an intimate hello whispered across species.  It was a quiet and refreshing way to begin the day.

The True Love by David Whyte There’s a faith in loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand held out to you this way. I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness and what we feel we are worthy of in this world. Years ago in the Hebrides I remember an old man who would walk every morning on the gray stones to the shore of baying seals, who would press his hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind and say his prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the waters. And I think of the story of the storm and the people waking and seeing the distant, yet familiar figure, far across the water calling to them. And how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking and that calling and that moment when we have to say yes! Except it will not come so grandly, so biblically, but more subtly, and intimately in the face of the one you know you have to ...

I can not remember another time when I have felt the metaphor of winter more strongly.  It feels as if the newness, vitality and hope of my life, has thickened like congealed sap in my veins.  I stare out through the bleak mental landscape of mind, making room for the cold and barren experience knowing (or at least hoping) that, whether I am aware of it or not, new life is already pregnant within the scene, growing stronger with each passing storm.

How  Did the rose Ever open its heart And give to this world All its Beauty? It felt the encouragement of light Against its Being. Otherwise We all remain Too Frightened.

I have been drinking in the poetry of Hafiz, seasoned with tears and elation, for days.  Rumi and Hafiz are my longtime bedfellows, they whisper in my ear coaxing my soul from its half sleep, caressing my skin with their breath, reminding me of a longing that only ripens over time. THIS ONE IS MINE by Hafiz Someone put  You on a slab block And the unreal bought You. Now I keep coming to your owner Saying, "This one is mine." You often overhear us talking And this can make your heart leap With excitement. Don't worry, I will not let sadness Possess you. I will gladly borrow all the gold I need To get you Back.

When The words stop And you can endure the silence That reveals your heart's  Pain Of emptiness Or that great wrenching-sweet longing. That is the time to try and listen To what the Beloved's Eyes Most want To Say.

Intimacy. Belonging. Closeness. Connection. Familiarity. I have been wrestling with intimacy like Jacob in the dark, demanding its true name.  In a social landscape devoid of depth encounters, true intimacy, real belonging, sustained connection and authentic familiarity, we are made to feel weak because we long for intimacy, we ache to know and be known.  In our Western deification of independence, self reliance and autonomy we have perhaps carved a deep hole in our psyches.  A hole that is felt as an indescribable emptiness and longing. I have judged myself for so many years because I could not overcome my desire to unite, to connect.  I have deemed it weak and flawed.  I have exercised independence, bravado and a will power that astonishes even me at times.  Still, I long to unite. With man? Yes, absolutely.  And with all life too, human, bird, deer, tree, stream, grass, ice, stars, bum, friend.  Why do we relegate this desire to the h...

Sometimes I feel like one of those toys relegated to the Island of Misfit Toys.  Not much to do with that.  Except sink into the deeper realization that it doesn't f*#*king matter.