The Goddess Within

"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 wash...

"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...