There comes a time.... that time is NOW

There comes a time in your life when you finally get it ...


When in the midst of all your fears and insanity, you stop dead in your

tracks and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out "Enough!"

Enough fighting and crying or struggling to hold on. And like a child

quieting down after a blind tantrum, your sobs begin to subside, you

shudder once or twice, you blink back your tears and though a mantle of

wet lashes, you begin to look at the world through new eyes. This is

your awakening.



You realize that it's time to stop hoping and waiting for

something to change or for happiness and security to come galloping over

the next horizon. You come to terms with the fact that none of them are

Prince Charming or Cinderella and neither are you and that in the real

world, there aren't always a fairytale endings (or beginnings for that

matter) and that any guarantee of "happily ever after" must begin with

you and in the process, a sense of serenity is born of acceptance.



You awaken to the fact that you are not perfect and that not

everyone will always love you, appreciate or approve of who you or what

you are ... and that's OK. (They are entitled to their own views and

opinions.) And you learn the importance of loving and championing

yourself and in the process, a sense of newfound confidence is born of

self-approval.



You stop bitching and blaming other people for the things they

did to you (or didn't do for you) and you learn that the only thing you

can really count on is the unexpected. You learn that people don't

always say what they mean or mean what they say and that not everyone

will always be there for you and that it's not always about you. So you

learn to stand on your own and to take care of yourself and in the

process, a sense of safety and security is born of self-reliance.



You stop judging and pointing fingers and you begin to accept

people as they are and to overlook their shortcomings and human

frailties and in the process, a sense of peace and contentment is born

of forgiveness. You realize that much of the way you view yourself and

the world around you is a result of all the messages and opinions that

have been ingrained into your psyche. And you begin to sift through all

the crap you've been fed about how you should behave, how you should

look and how much you should weigh and what you should wear and where

you should shop and what kind of car you should drive and how and where

you should live and what you should do for a living, with whom you

should sleep, who you should marry and what you should expect of a

marriage, or the importance of having and raising children.



You learn to open up to new worlds and different points of

views. And you begin reassessing and redefining who you are; what you

really stand for. You learn the difference between wanting and needing

and you begin to discard the doctrines and values you've outgrown, or

should never have been taught to begin with and, in the process, you

learn to go with your instincts. You learn that it is truly in giving

that we receive. And that there is power and glory in creating and

contributing and you stop maneuvering through life merely as a

"consumer" looking for your next fix. You learn that principles such as

honesty and integrity are not the outdated ideals of a by-gone era but

the mortar that holds together the foundation upon which you must build

a life. You learn that you don't know everything and it's not your job

to save the world and that you can't teach a pig to sing. You learn to

distinguish between guilt and responsibility and the importance of

setting boundaries and learning to say "NO". You learn that the only

cross to bear is the one you choose to carry and that martyrs get burned

at the stake.



Then you learn about love. Romantic love and familial love.

How to love, how much to give in love, when to stop giving and when to

walk away. You learn not to project your needs or your feelings onto a

relationship. You learn that you will not be more beautiful, more

intelligent, more lovable or important because of the man or woman on

your arm or the child that bears your name. You learn to look at

relationships as they really are and not as you would have them to be.

You stop trying to control people, situations and outcomes. You learn

that just as people grow and change, so it is with love ... and you

learn that you don't have the right to demand love on your terms just to

make you happy. And you learn that alone does not mean lonely. And you

look in the mirror and come to terms with the fact that you will never

be a perfect size with an ideal waist and you stop trying to compete

with the image inside your head and agonizing over how you "stack up."



You learn that your body really is your temple. And you begin

to care for it and treat it with respect. You begin eating a balanced

diet, drinking more water and taking more time to exercise. You learn

that fatigue diminishes the spirit and can create doubt and fear. So

you take more time to rest. And just as food fuels the body, laughter

fuels our soul. So you take more time to laugh and to play.



You learn that for the most part, in life, you get what you believe you

deserve...and that much of life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You

learn that anything worth achieving is worth working for and that

wishing for something to happen is different than working toward making

it happen.



More importantly you learn that in order to achieve success, you need

direction, discipline and perseverance. You also learn that no one can

do it all alone and that it's OK to ask for help.



You learn that the only fear that you must truly fear is the great

robber baron of all time ... FEAR itself. You learn to step right into

and through your fears because you know that whatever happens, you can

handle it and to give in to fear is to give away the right to live life

on your terms. And you learn to fight for your life and not to squander

it living under a cloud of impending doom. You learn that life isn't

always fair, you don't always get what you think you deserve and that

sometimes bad things happen to unsuspecting good people. On these

occasions, you learn not to personalize things. You learn that the

Universe isn't always punishing you or failing to answer your prayers.

It is just life happening.



And you learn to deal with evil in its most primal state - the ego. You

learn that negative feelings such as anger, envy and resentment must be

understood and redirected or they will suffocate the life out of you and

poison the universe that surrounds you. You learn to admit when you are

wrong and to build ridges instead of walls.



You learn to be thankful and to take comfort in many of the simple

things we take for granted, things that millions of people upon the face

of this earth can only dream about ... a full refrigerator, clean

running water, a comfy bed, a long hot shower.



Slowly, you begin to take responsibility for yourself by yourself ad you

to make yourself a promise to never betray yourself and to never ever

settle for less than your heart's desire. And you hang a wind chime

outside your window so you can listen to the wind. And you make a point

to keep smiling, to keep trusting and to stay open to every wonderful

possibility. Finally, with courage in your heart and with Spirit by

your side, you take a stand, you take a deep breath and you begin to

design the life you want to live as best as you can.



blessed be

I WILL NOT REJECT THE GIFT

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. Carl Gustav Jung





Many who know me remember that I was raised Roman Catholic, and at one time in my life even seriously considered becoming a Benedictine Nun.... time, circumstances, truth and the hand of the Universe led me along a different path and yet I still remember my Christian teachings and the pagan foundations on which they were built. It is because of these teachings and my deep abiding belief in the Natural Order and the power of God and goddess that I understand where I am at this point in my life.

I have lost the love of my life primarily to addiction and the subsequent problems that follow those; heart disease and cancer. I have lost much of my body to cancer and continue to wage a war with chemicals that are creating new problems, meditation, and faith. I have lost the love of my beloved daughter and son... and the companionship, laughter, and light of a precious little one. A deep part of me has entered that painful yet illuminating pathway that was referred to in my Catholic days as the Dark Night of the Soul... Sounds scary doesn't it? In some ways... oh yes.

However in my pagan beliefs, which honor the path of Nature and spirit, this is also a learning and healing process that is meant to guide me.

The Dark Night of the Soul is a lonely painful process in which consciousness is clouded by uncertainty to unravel the entanglements of ego within the self. As the pain and suffering within me and the world are faced and embraced, eventually the heart-beat of love is freed to express its many rhythms of service to others, to the Universe, and finally to self which allows all to become one and the same. However, I also know that I can only enter the dark corridors of this purification of consciousness if I accept the courage that comes from Spirit. Courage sustains my mind and body on this journey through the deepest agony, suffering and pain that the Universe has ever sent me.

The Dark Night of the Soul is entering a plane of unknowing, through which profound illumination in consciousness may emerge if I do not close myself off or fear. By entering and accepting the intense pain and emptiness that accompany this state, liberation, enlightenment, and participation in Mystical Consciousness replace the ego's distorted clouded perceptions with clear flowing light. The anguish and suffering within the self and the world can be transformed to profound understanding and joy. This is also the basis for a great deal of Buddhist belief.

The dark night of the soul is an avenue for reintegration first through disintegration. Western conditioning and socialization has created a false perception within us all that we are an absolute independent self. During the dark night of the soul we mourn as this notion of self is mourned. Through a painful de-conditioning, we begin to understand that reconnection to our true Self is not a singular process but a reconnection to everyone including our self and God. False notions of a separate self are being burned up by the fires of the mind. We begin to recognize that the feeling of abandonment by God, common to the experience of the dark night, is really abandoning the false sense of self and others we have developed. A realization unfolds that service to Self, others and God are all the same. An understanding emerges that you are an ever-changing relative self within One Self and other selves in the continuum of consciousness.

This de-conditioning is not easy and is a lonely and desolate place of suffering. Presently, I feel that I am caught between two worlds, the perceived painful world where I and other people helplessly suffer, and the enlightened world where unlimited higher consciousness and Divine Love reigns. Truthfully, I admit that my ego knows nothing of "let go, let God," and during the process of the cancers and family difficulties, it jolts and jabs the thoughts and emotions continuously with its daggers as it tries to cut and separate. The process is painfully stressful to the body and agonizing to the mind as the ego interferes and keeps me perceiving a hopeless never-ending battle between these worlds. I feel my whole ego system is in the process of being shattered as I slowly recognizes that the ego's many strategies are from the ways of the world, not the love of Spirit. All the discordant noises, disharmonious rhythms, repertoire of illusions, cacophony of prejudices, preconceptions, conditionings, socializations, false images of self, friends, family, and others are being called to task by the higher consciousness. I feel my ow own voice is unsupported by the Universe and simultaneously unheard in the wilderness of the people and politics. This mist of unknowing is antithetical to my ego that desperately fights and wants to remain part of me as the dark night I have enetered seeks mystical consciousness and enlightenment.

All duality perpetrated by the ego is being dissolved and disintegrated during this most painful emptying process. Out of this lonely internal battle deep within, I am beginning to find remnants of the wisdom of living purely for virtue's sake, free of the previous distortion that everything I do must be perfect and must be totally for others or at least rewarded. Hopefully, the feelings of alienation and rejection by the world will eventually subside and I will no longer be between two worlds, but start to come home; a true spirit of the Universe.

A lucid illumination begins that all compassion and service are for the Spirit, my relative self, Spirt, and every one. It is through this state of real being, that I hope to more fully realize that I can be in the world, not of the world. As cancer and loss pervade, I can be in the suffering, not of suffering.

There are many reasons that a dark night of the soul experience presents itself. Each of the reasons is ultimately a matter between your Spirit and what you came into this existence to learn. The dark night may occur to salvage the remainder of your life when living has become full of disharmonious habits and you are no longer living consciously or virtuously. The dark night may be an offering by your spirit to meet the challenge of purification and regeneration of your being before the end of your life. (This is where I feel I now am.) But, whatever the reason, within such a conversion process, a person must muster every ounce of their conscious energy to accept this deeply painful transmuting of ego energy back to meaning, purpose and service as they are one and the same. Some of you, like me, may have to endure several periods of the dark night of the soul throughout life. Others may be guided by their Spirit to stay in this state for intense work the remainder of their life before they die. (Again, this is where I believe I am now.)

Sadly, many reject the gift of the dark night repeatedly throughout their life as they follow their ego's perception that Spirituality should bring instant gratification and should feel good. True transformation is a painful process and takes time. In the New Testament of the Bible, when St. Paul was blinded and knocked off his horse, at least a decade passed before he began his service. It is time consuming to face and embrace all suffering, but it leads to understanding with the mind and viscerally with the body.

In a psychological sense the dark night of the soul may be understood as a dissonance between the ego and higher consciousness that have reached critical mass. The ego does not wish full spectrum higher consciousness to illuminate its illusions, denials and projections as it maintains an entangled web of violence towards the self and the self of others.

Intellectually, I have the insight that the ego never was my true Self, but this provides no emotional relief from the feelings of emptiness during this ongoing process. This state is like living in a cloistered convent surrounded by spiritual sightedness with no comforting insight within as to what is happening to one's self. (One of the reasons Monsignor Gulnderich once said I would not be allowed to enter the convent) The Self has never fully emerged independent of the ego and the ego provocatively generates terror and fear in this state of uncertainty. How tired I am of being afraid. Of walking on egg shells around everyone. It is time I began living life as my own truth.

New constellations of thoughts are beginning to be comprehended and integrated, while simultaneously old perceptions and discordant emotions are also being dissolved and transmuted to harmonious ones. My mind is in a composition phase for its understandings of a new EPIC poem with full un-impeded heart-felt beat in its walk with Spirit, and I know that my mind will soon stabilize and equalize to have healthier biorhythms within my broken body again.

One of my heroes in this life has been Mother Theresa. Mother Theresa was in a dark night of the soul the later half of her life up to her death. She even argued with the Pope!!!

She realized throughout her life that the poverty of disconnecting from one's Spirit was more destitute than the most intense poverty and suffering she could view physically in the world. She knew the heart of Spirituality with her consciousness and that the ego attempts to bribe us by offering its illusion that the process of enlightenment and salvation "feels so good."

Many today, through the lens of ego perception, would like us to fantasize that Mother Theresa was in a state of spiritual ecstasy, high on God that made her immune to placing her self in situations among those living in agonizing poverty and suffering. There were no spiritual endorphins that lifted Mother Theresa away from compassionately feeling the suffering of those she was serving. She was not held up by any spiritual opiated state. Her mystical consciousness was arrived at by entering poverty of Spirit within herself, seeing it in others in the world and through her consciously continuing service to the destitute and dying. She knew the many expressions of Dark Night of the Soul, within herself and in those she served in the world. She exemplifies what has been called the consciousness of the mystics. The last three phrases from her commentary, Do It Anyway, radiate the chosen determination and reverberations of her mystical consciousness:

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway!

People really need help but may attack you if you help them. Help people anyway!

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you've got anyway!

You cannot become a part of the Universe with ego. Ego has nothing to do with learning to love yourself or others. Higher consciousness is entered freely for its own sake and its illumination emerges by facing and embracing any darkness within self. Herein is the fundamental lesson that loving the Divine, Self and Others unconditionally, are one and the same. To enter higher mystical consciousness we experience directly all the pain and suffering within and without. This consciousness reflects and reminds us of the poverty of Spirit that remains collectively among all human beings. This is not material poverty, but the poverty of loosing touch with meaning and purpose, knowing true Self within and with others, and real service to each other.

I believe that love is the only way in which we see God. Love itself is the understanding. St. John of the Cross in his Dark Night of the Soul, said that he felt closer to God during his passing through the dark night. I understand that all too well now.

We each can know the deepest joy by embracing the greatest sadness consciously with love. We can send light and love to others and let it go... knowing they will receive it in some fashion even through time, distance, and space.

The dark night of the soul is offered as a gift of illumination to every single person.

I will walk this journey set before me... with so many wonderful people both here and gone one before, lighting candles for me along the way so I do not stumble.

Blessed be.

EPIPHANIES AND ANNIVERIES OF THE HEART

Today, I wait to watch the new sun that rises for me. Watch with me and see that everything speaks to us of passion, everything is alive, everything has spirit and it invites us all to simply -- cherish it.




Years ago, I read a marvelous poem, actually an elegy, written by Thomas Grey titled "Elegy in a Country Courtyard". The poet wrote this particular piece as he wandered through a graveyard back in 1750 at twilight -- very much how as a teenager, I would wander Mount Albion and contemplate on the meaning of life, the toil of those who had achieved and of those who did not. I would think, and still do, of the mockery of ambition, the struggle of both the rich and the impoverished to be happy, and the eventual realization that no matter what our circumstances in life, we all finally rest in some fashion "upon the sweet lap of earth". Gray felt that this was not much as simple joys are forever gone, destiny is obscured;



"For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn

Or busy housewife ply her evening care...

the paths of glory lead but to the grave."



However, in my walks through that cemetery, and recently among cemeteries here in Mesa, Apache Junction, Bryce Utah, and the Oak River Creek where I scattered my beloved Doug's ashes... I do not feel that sense of despair. I used to take rubbings of old tombstones (kind of want to do that again in my 50s now) and in some ways came to know and love the people long ago laid to rest beneath them. It was there that I often sat and wrote prose or poetry, singing a song of praise for every day that we have remaining... writing an elegy for every day that slipped through my life unnoticed and unappreciated. Thanking the Universe for giving me eyes that can truly see and a heart that can truly feel.



How many of my readers are aware of their own poet/songwriter inside? Far too often in this surreal techno world we move through our days in a fog or a frenzy -- until we are startled into consciousness by an unforeseen threat to something we hold dear and have been taking for granted for far too long.



I call these opalescent moments "simple epiphanies" because they jar me into a profound awareness of how much we have, and how much we have escaped, and how much there is to be grateful for. My beautiful granddaughter, Jessica, asked me (close to our last wonderful weekend spent together) why I did not seem to be bothered by things. I smiled and told her that it was not that I was not bothered, as I often was, but that I was able to know what was most important to me now... and that is love, and peace and following my own path. I call that GRACE.



Through the mystical alchemy of Grace and daily gratitude, what might have become an elegy to my life is transformed into appreciation, joy, and exultation. My own recovery or that of a loved on who has been seriously ill,the reconciliation after a painful breach between mother and children, the realization of how very lucky we are if we are doing work we love or, in this current economic climate, if we are working at all, the rejoicing that surrounds us at a long awaited rite of passage, the enormous satisfaction that comes after completing an overwhelming task and, one of the most important to me today, is the serenity that awaits us after a struggle has been abandoned.



The loss of my beloved Doug, Cancer, the anger of children, the absence of a beloved grandchild, the love of Tom and the support of friends are my epiphanies and they teach me to cherish everything. Everything speaks to our souls, with great passion, if we are still enough to listen and willing to hear.



Jane Seymour once wrote "You have to count on living every single day in a way you believe will make you feel good about your life so that if it were over tomorrow, you'd be content."



Amen Ms Seymour. Amen.



Although I do have regrets, I know, even more deeply today, that I have given all the very best I had and that I have lived my life in a way in which I am proud. Am I perfect? Hell no. Will I make mistakes in the time God still gives to me? You betcha...



But I will write a song of thanksgiving for every day that remains....