The Goddess Within

It's been a week of reflecting -- a week of peeling away the layers to reveal old memories.  This hasn't felt like a "year", it's been tremendously longer than that.  The days appear to go by faster the older you get, and yet, when you look at the end of the year and see the 12 months behind you, it doesn't feel so fast after all.  At least not to me, not this year, not in a year where I was cradling the pain and needing to step outside of the shadow to see the actual light.  It was brighter than I remembered, and while my eyes didn't burn from the impact, tears still fell... in a year of building so many relationships, and needing to say goodbye to others, how is it that at the end of the year I feel as though I am always meant to face the final dark alone?  It's the Cave.  It calls to me, even now, even as the words flow (at a fragmented pace), that retreating to the Cave is what I would normally be doing this time of year.  I go within, retreat, a

I am dancing the dance that isn't unfamiliar to me, but the steps are ones that are being taken so gracefully, it's as though I am, indeed, the ballerina to the Shaman's song... the darkness rises, but its an ally, one that has been hidden deep into the shadows, waiting for me to peel away those mucky layers, and now, as though the test (of this level) has been achieved, I am... swimming.  The bridge is up, the water is clear, and I am swimming in the ocean of mysteries... I laugh to think where the road takes you, where you, yourself, journey on that road, and how it returns home, in its multi-layers, it's home again... much like Chad's song, the lyrics that have been swimming in my own mind: "The person I was could go by another name He's a stranger to me now Amazing the difference a few years will make You don't realize you've lost yourself until you turn around I keep coming back here to this place Where it's lonely and cold here with

"Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth." - Pema Chodron Sometime last year I was in a book store in need of a book.  Nothing in particular, but just in "need" of something, which usually leads me to the Buddhism section when I'm unsure of what I want but feeling as though I "need" something.  That day I picked up Pema Chodron's "When Things Fall Apart", and it wasn't until a couple of days ago that I finally started reading it.  "Heart Advice For Difficult Times" it says on the front cover -- this purchase happened before any of the deaths that would come in the year -- and sat on my bookshelf, collecting dust, but patiently waiting until I recognized the need to pick it up and read it.  It has become, mostly, nighttime reading before falling asleep.  It goes against my general principle of reading anything too "heavy" before sleeping, yet I felt something significant about carrying these wor

Whether it can be described as a suicide note or letter or final words, the semantics don't much matter... another person in my life has crossed the veils, and somehow when I think that my heart has accepted too much of the tender moments of loss, it continues to reveal itself, as life's mysteries tend to do.  So the Wheel spins, as it always does, and we, those that are left behind, pick up the pieces and find a way to move on... or, we don't. I don't know where to begin.  I don't know how one moment I could go from this pure joy and love in my heart to the next feeling as though it has stopped beating, feeling as though time didn't even bother to stand still, it just broke.  It broke in this solid moment where there was no going back or going forward, you were merely in this moment of pure, unfiltered pain... and yet, the pain was numbing.  I didn't feel the pain the way I thought I would, in such a similar circumstance being revisited.  Instead, I was j

I haven't quite processed through the reality that DoveStar will be closing its doors... in precisely a week, actually.  A place that has been "home" to so many will cease to exist on this physical plane, ready to have its own death and rebirth, yet those, that are left behind (like any other death), to both celebrate and mourn, are cradling the memories, perhaps in excess, so as not to let go, fully, or to forget.  I know that's pretty much what I am doing as well. I remember, clear as any other memory, of walking through the door in search of learning Reiki.  It was there that the infamous words "I only want to learn Reiki, that's it " that emerged from my mouth to be met with laughter by the director who said "yeah, you're going to be a lifer"... though deep down I had known, to some degree, that was true.  A lifer I would be, in its process of both good and happy memories to the challenging and deeply difficult ones. I walked in rea

While in most areas of my life I feel like things are moving precisely where I want them to be, even more so, in other areas I am slightly amused at how things don't necessarily remain the same, but just stand still, like being frozen in time.  It's not circumstances around us that make it that way, but simply a choice, somewhere in the atmosphere, to remain still.  It's not a stillness of stagnation per se, though in one area I am labeling it as such, but rather a stillness of curiosity.  I'm curious where the road is, yet I'm not properly packed or prepared for it, but just waiting for it to come to me, like those walkway escalators, bizarre, but humorous. I was emailing my spiritual mother tonight, thinking about art, thinking about painting the body once more with spiritual ink to mark the next passage in my life.  It had me look back for a moment, not deeply stuck in a time machine, but this smile of where time goes.  The days spent doing laundry and washing

"I throw my cards on your table" -- the inner committee is doing all of that, taking the collective cards of movement, of stagnation, of production, and throwing them, eagerly and tenderly, but mindfully, on the table... they tell me it's time to look at them, not even to put them in order, but to look at them and decide which 10 cards will I carry with me for the darker half of the year.  I'm not meant to carry the entire deck -- the deck has grown over the years, a spiritual pack rat unable to let go to sentimentality, it is looking at each of them, despite the mental exhaustion of how long it may take, and sorting.  It's a mix of cards, varied in form and meaning from the deeply contemplative aspect to the fun, child-like innocence of purity.  This is the first time at this time of year that I'm not actually thinking of "balance".  How strange.  It's as though I came to the core of equal breath, and now, having breathed it and tasted (or rat

I have been playing this song in my head for the past three weeks.  Unable to actually listen to it until today, it has both haunted and healed me, but today it breaks me, into tiny pieces, spread all over the floor, waiting (hoping) to be crumpled upon, so I don't really have to feel, so I don't have to actually think, so my breath doesn't have to be mine.  Every lyric, every word, every tremor of speech... it may not be about the same person, but it is of the same theme... "Goodnight, Goodbye"... all I can see now, burned into my brain and the back of my eyes, is my grandmother, laying on her bed, gone.  She crossed the veils yesterday morning... her pain is gone, her spirit free... It has felt like months since the diagnosis... yet, it hasn't even been a month.  I knew it would be fast, but "knowing" and actually internalizing the true realization are two completely different emotions.  I was naive to think that I knew better, that I knew diff

My grandmother is in the hospital.  It's pancreatic cancer.  It seems silly to say that we don't know how "bad" it is, but we don't know, yet, how "bad" it is.  It appears to be "bad".  Bad.  A three-letter word we give so much immense power to.  A little fucking word that is so large, so dangerous, so scary.  I'm not sure how I'm feeling about this.  I'm feeling disconnected, confused, out-of-body, out of the moment... my grandmother is the only grandparent I have ever known, the only living grandparent I have, but our relationship in my lifetime has been, well, "challenging" seems like a more polite way to put it, but suffice to say that I was never her favorite.  I reminded her too much of my father -- a compliment to me, an insult to her.  She adores my brother, the first-born and her godson, he was her everything.  When my mother became pregnant with me, there was some drama surrounding the family dynamic at that ti

I'm still riding the wave of Beltane, which is one of my two favorite Sabbats (the other being, what naturally seems to be most Witches favorite, Samhain).  I think, if I reflect for a moment on years past, that every week before Beltane I am in sort of a rush and haze of mental energy.  So much to do, feeling pulled in different directions, then it ceases and relaxes at Beltane, as it did this time.  Clarity, such clarity that birthed from the collective vibration of lovers energy... it's beginning, a different essence of beginnings than even Ostara brings, but a beginning that feels almost innocently open... it's delicious and new, flirty and seductive, raw, even... this time of year brings a connected dance... like a web... My web has been cleared of too many threads and they have easily and simply fallen away.  No emotions attached to them, just time for their release, understanding that not all webs last forever, each web spins anew, as it should.  New, renewed, birt

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" -- Mary Oliver I read this quote this morning that really captivated me.  In the sequence of emotional memory and energetic breakthroughs, today this quote wrapped itself around me like a warm blanket.  It's comforting, asked in a non-threatening or scary way.  I'm not scared by this, per se, but I am intrigued, and, if I am to admit honestly, a bit perplexed (with a hint of scared)... what will I do with this one wild and precious life? My inner dialogue has been fast-paced and working overtime.  It's making up for the lack of disciplined journaling that I am used to, or even the sporadic touches of online blogging.  I think there has been a little fear in committing thought to paper, this essence of a semi-permanent nature to hold outside of myself.  But the journaling is a life-line.  I can't be without it.  It is the sacred vessel that holds my inner being.  There is some at

Staring at a blank page is equivalent to an artist staring at a blank canvas: it can be thrilling at times, but mostly, from my perspective, it can be terrifying.  The spinning wheels in your mind become blank, despite all of the inner dialogue that generally creeps in... you're having this conversation with yourself, inside of yourself, immune to the outer world around you, whether it's momentary or not, it ceases to exist for that moment in time (non time), and you're in it... you're in the dark. Darkness has so many relative associations, I won't begin to bore anyone with where it comes from, the distinctions between "good" and "bad", functional and dysfunction, wanted or unwanted... it's just darkness.  If we start from there, from some sort of uniquely neutral void, it is nothing: no-thing.  Grasping that piece is rather strange in some ways.  I see it hanging in a gallery, almost self-indulgent at times, humorous mostly, like the outc

I'm extremely captivated by that line tonight.  A wonderful Cyndi Lauper song, it brings back some of the best and worst times of my inner world.  Music has that amazing capability to not only be a time traveling device, but a present moment mechanism that makes you leave the world behind for the duration of that song and sit centered in whatever the memory brings.  I've been in a "shuffle" of time travel this week, bringing back mostly fun and intoxicating memories of a time that feels so alien, in wonderful ways, but the occasional reminder of old pains surfaces, telling new (remembered) tales of when, and the image on the other side of the mirror is brilliant -- she is neither past, present, nor future, she simply is.  What power to simply BE . This has been an incredible month of doing and being.  Each month this year has been an amazing transformation through time.  It's like a fine tightrope of linear awareness -- extremely fine threads, right in the cente