Reclamation
 
Torn once from Source, from womb and then innocence
Fragmented from natural states of grace
Blinded by what is directly seen and felt
Enamored with only that which we can see and taste
 
Moment by moment, eluding the infinite present
The big seeker is born looking forward and out
The divine seeking the divine through a ‘you’ and a ‘me’
Amnesia fills our collective mind with doubt
 
The unborn sound of the universe resonates in your cells
If you are quiet, still, silent and sincere
You can hear a vibration of vibrancy, elevated and clear
The cells themselves a creation of the ecstatic Illuminator
 
Now viewing all life, ALL LIFE, as a matrix of it self
Life in action as the divine informing freely
It is not out there, never has nor could be
But, in field and form as the most primary frequency
 
The primary frequency is not one that I choose
It is that which I AM, that is awakened to now
Upon realization there is nothing, nothing, and nothing to fear
Everything as a lingering memory can be lifted with a vow
 
To rearticulate the body and free the mind
To feel and to sense, to surrender as the word
Claim and Know the Divine that you are
In the upper room, fly free with a heart deeply stirred
 
It is not just to the earth and the sky that we bow
Not just to the god out there, somewhere
But to humbly sense that the infinite One is here
Claiming all of existence into its care

 Be Still
We are becoming ever more interconnected even as we physically isolate, reaching across the globe to counsel with one another! Via the web so many beautifully providing and participating as peace and stability, online, visually live, amidst what we are witnessing as unthinkable uncertainty. The connection between each heart an energetic web of intense care, whether we know each other or not, see each other or not, or agree with each other or not. And above and beyond that is the background of connection and the expansion of Awareness creating bigger patterns through which groups contribute as a higher aspect of Self.

This is an intense period of refinement in the consciousness that you each abide in. Consciousness does not exist in your body, your body exists within your vast Awareness. The changes being experienced are not just the logistics of child care and shopping, although that is true on one basic level. We are upleveling and expanding while the physical dimension reassembles to reflection this collective agreement. We did not agree to a pandemic, but consciousness expanding has agreed that we cannot continue as we have. Simply not. Please consider that there is a mass agreement here that confirms a shift so radical that we all need a moment, if you will, a time out to reconsider our perspective, if you haven’t already. The effect will cost lives and this feels like such an immense tragedy and loss whether we are the one who needs help, or the one providing it.  If this global pause is to mean something other than rearranging schedules and meals, let it be for one thing only.

The full acknowledgement of the fundamental, pervasive presence of the divine in all and as all. We are that. The denial of such is also the tragedy. Joseph Campbell named it years ago as the denial of the kinds of ritual and ceremony that acknowledge presence, peace and unity among all. Not just your tribe, your family, your community – there is no such thing any more. We are one community now reaching each other, touching each other’s lives not just for support through this global time out, but also to allow what needs to happen, happen.

As it has always been: as within, so without, as above, so below. The interconnectedness of what you are and the world at large informs science, the new mysticism, religion and you. We ask you to make a choice to surrender your divisive, individualistic claims and see each other, feel each other, and acknowledge each other as you have always wanted. As the natural interconnected glue of unity that is felt when attuning to God and Nature reveals that we are that.

You are a multidimensional intelligence, you are the physical universe and the physical universe is you. You are the ocean and the wave, the cloud and the sky, the movie screen and the movie, and the canvas and the art, continually expanding and evolving. We are recognizing the ocean, sky, screen and canvas as integral to expansion through the refinement of stillness and space. Be still and know. BE still and know. Be STILL and know. Be still and KNOW.

 Within the realm of uncertainty lies always a bit of certainty, and within the realm of certainty, always a bit of uncertainty. The upper realms of universal orchestration are exuberant with the possibilities for change and reconsideration. When we exist looking at our lives in only one way, we eliminate a 99 percent possibility for something else to exist and flourish. Surrender to the synchronicities that abound in this time – I know you see this everywhere as whole systems, charged with trauma and fear, fall apart. And watch as others naturally emerge through creativity and intuition and love. Could this be simply an exciting time as we hold our whole creation from the purview of the upper room? Could we trust the natural intelligence of the universe as we do our bodies to heal? Could we lay down our weapons of vigilance and rest as comrades?

If you but close your eyes and listen you can hear the whisper of angel wings big as the sky wrapping around your soul. Each word they utter would be of reassurance and the deep wisdom of knowing that things must fall apart as they are. But not you; you do not fall apart, you actually come together anew.

Lift the world up to your newness as you put aside distractions and feel your opportunities. These are not the opportunities of big business and ego, but the invitation to experience yourself as precious. Life. Is. Precious. You are life, you do not have a life. When this knowing is deeply touched then simply being is a grand affair. It is nothing to escape, but to finally relax in to with full surrender and reverence. May this bring you to the uplifting of that which you have tried desperately to control so that you may rest as peace amid this timely unfolding.

 Bow as the One
As the deep, inner work of unwinding the often inherited and cultural contractions of fear and shame release, there emerges a valuable realization. Release and realize: Negativity cannot be cut out like a cancer or ignored as nonexistent. If we pretend that shame is not present, or we make it about another, then just that, and those we deem shameful, must too be negligently discarded.

As so many deeply know, when shame in all its shades has been touched, it can only be included from and lifted to the view of love, humility and tenderness. Indeed, as the all-inclusive radiance of the highest Self, shame is seen as innocently generated from God knows where or when or by whom. Naming, blaming and shaming no longer matter and no longer work for they are the strategies of children.

Cutting out the negative to side with the positive only increases polarity within the human and global systems and that is the crux of the issue here: Us and them, you and me, all contribute to this deathly polarizing of human consciousness. This upper view is not one of contempt, smug and superior, it is necessary for our salvation. The evolution out of the matrix of fear is a death to the survival orientation of the ego to reclamation of and as divine presence. It is no longer a strategic, spiritual bypassing luxury to curb your mouth, grab your crystals and shoo the negative away. Every single time someone or something is In fear, this is only, and always, a call to love. Lift them up! See them anew! Deeply listen, from your own source of being, what is being asked for and regenerate your sense of Self as bigger than anything you have ever imagined in the meantime. If that happens, you will stop seeing with your two eyes and start perceiving with the one.

Out of darkness emerges light; the light of your presence, the light of your being. Not because you don’t include the less light, but because you see even that as the LIGHT; divine presence lifting the whole creation to its rightful place without cringing in fear or disgust. Omit no one and nothing. If you must, and with every chance you have - cease, choose, align and remember – we are all of the same divine substance. Stop, choose, align and surrender – all of manifestation exists as a unique expression deserving of your new eyes. Bow to the light within all – or do not bow at all.

 In the divine stillness of Being rises that familiar longing for life to live
Firmly held in crystals of amnesia, forming an opaque sheen of fear
Who shall I speak to, this life queries while enfolded in the One,
for everyone knows, everyone feels, everyone remembers
making life suddenly and incredibly clear.
A message on a piece of paper, dating a time and cause instead of:
A last thought, a last touch, a last feeling and inspiration
Before slipping through the doors of death and into the arms of Love
All no longer matters save for the infinite ripples in tow
For there Is a soaring tranquility that promises possibilities of which
Seldom few know, or feels, nor remembers here below.
And those who do walk with no footprints
Talk with no appearance to claim your idolatry or care
For they walk as angels might walk
Shimmering between veils of light and air.
We are angels, we are, in bodies that crave paradise
Fear is that call to cling to what is already ours
What we are, who we are and how we serve in our own way
Here and beyond, eternal and blessed, as, as, as, LIFE.

 Diving into the stuff we call shit… that stuff that immediately propels the mind to grab a belief and make a practice out of goodness, mercy, righteousness, healing and purity.
Diving in reveals that I am entwined with every single moment of apparent impurity, inseparable in the duality of life. The resonance of each moment living in the cells, informing, reforming, and revealing you in me. So now I can no longer say that I made it out, I conquered, I saved or even eloquently sang, smiled or danced my way out of this shit. Aversion aside, stepping into the individual and collective cesspool of unclaimed memories, may they rise as a miraculous source of vitality:

Energetic awakening in the cold of an empty church; dragging you out of an opium den; sleeping on couches with nowhere to go; shuddering beneath the frequency and volume of your voice; shrinking under your neglect; practicing to feel good; making you feel good.. all contrived opportunities to avoid that which we push away, rerouting into a quest for some sort of dreamed up, ridiculous world of perfection.

Sinking now, I am forever entwined with you, that moment of betrayal, rape, neglect and shame. Diving into that which is forbidden and held deep within the body bubbles forth, unplugged and complete: scum, instead of waiting for you to rise to the surface, I bow to you so that I may capture the frozen essence of me, and you, and release my frigid separation as vitality; the ultimate forgiveness. Every moment an opportunity, that dream, and all those secretly revealing images in the day and in the night. See how I made you out to be the bad guy, and yet you live in me, a synthesis of a moment between us both, perpetrator and victim, victim and perpetrator, no longer hiding in the epigenetics of history.

No more an “I” that is wiser for it, made it out, survived, or gets it. ‘She’ has fallen apart at the seams and dissolved in the miracle of all that has been pushed away as unbearable. Even the collective shame of this and that is captured in an image begging for viewing that we, for forever and a day, have agreed not to see - come hell or high water. To fear, look up, rise above, be secretly better than through money or beauty or status - when what is called for is what was always needed. The healing is in hearing the muffled voice that screams: See me; feel me; do not resist me any longer for you are ready for it all, from the most tragic to the most blissful. There is no more shit, for even the deepest aversion is loved in the tender dimension of true freedom. Freedom is not getting away from it or you but including every locked-up morsel of energy within those forgotten moments.

Dropping out of the dream and into the embodiment of realization absolutely includes meeting that which has been neglected by way of constantly naming things as good or bad, terrible or perfect, this or that. And, and. There is no other way out for our complete and utter ingestion of an either/or default state that keeps re-fulfilling itself, moment by moment in strands of judgement, prejudice, distraction and dissociation. And there is a virus, and nature is recuperating. And we are physically separate, and we are more connected than ever. And, and. Always, and, and. All ways. This is not a concept, this is a way of Being that frees our pent-up, rigid naturalness. So many of us, unbeknownst to even our self, is just that, a rigid system trying to be natural with rigid ideas about food, and beliefs about how to move your body and everything else imaginable under the sun!
The answer, as always, is not out there. The answer emerges as a truth when we include the very thing we run from. Otherwise we sanctify that which must never be forgotten at the sacrifice of true health and evolution and it is passed on, yet again, for the next generation to solve.

 Thakla
The grief of grief fills your body like buoyant molecules moving in slow motion through oil, touching every cell, informing every movement and every, single moment.
Grief is the forbidden feeling that now hides as heart palpitations and dizziness, the body preserving that unexplainable horror into an ongoing reality. Now she will never forget.
On particular days, at specific times, grief rises to the surface, coaxed by anniversaries and company.  She barely makes an appearance and then dives down into the body to dance in the innocent space of body, mind, and soul. But, the biology of grief and the distraction of pain is very accurate and precise. For this you have learned exactly what to do.

Today might be different. Today we might hold a bigger vision of this event by holding one hand up cupping grief and the other hand up cupping the ways in which his memory is preserved; two  sides of one coin, both sides of a slip of paper.

I remember spending a summer in Greece many years ago, in a small fishing village in the Peloponnese islands. I remember that so many older women were dressed in black, their dresses covering their arms and legs. I asked my travel friend, why? Why the black and why so many? He said all their husbands had died and their tradition was to theretofore dress in black, preserving the memory and making the public statement – I am a widow.  How many years ago did they die, I asked. Ah, at least thirty years for many of them!

Thirty years of wardrobe destiny - wearing black, preserving the memory of man.
You don’t wear black when a child dies. Do we even have a name for that?  According to Uri Granta, there is an Arabic word ‘thakla’ that refers to a bereaved mother. Perfect. And in the Tiwa Indian language the vowel sound ‘a’ means to wash and purify the mental and emotional body. Thakla has two a’s; an opportunity for double purification.  Perhaps we will chant this word together, you and I.

I will see you at 11:00 a.m. today. Today we will hold the dance of embodied grief and jump off a cliff together.  Remember that when we jump, the good news is that there is no ground to fall on. We are free to relax back and down into that dimensionless, emptiness that is vaster than even your grief, my friend. Vaster than even the collective grief of all the Mothers who have lost a child.

In the vastness of emptiness everything is held, but it is tempting to forget and ally with one possibility of so many.  Let us try again. Relaxing into emptiness is like being held by God, in the arms of the most loving Mother imaginable. She will take your grief and relieve your suffering as emptiness is bigger than all the suffering Mothers we know about and more.

This formless emptiness is allowing, true, and has no judgement about what your mind creates. None the less, if we hold this coin with skillful means, something else can happen!
The slightest sense of joy might emerge at the smallest of things or just because joy still exists beyond the observable push and pull of remembering. I am not asking you to jump up and down with a false joy, or even avoid grief, however I am pointing toward a deeper and wider possibility. You have already traveled so deep and wide with sorrow- it is honorable. And yet, perhaps today is the day that we will discover a fork in that river.  From the river of tears and endless fears to the river of empty joy providing a larger scenery with a vaster view; body relaxing, cells opening, heart renewed. And if none of this happens, I am still here empty of your agenda, ready for your ride, honored to experience thakla, and grateful to be by your side, over and over again.

 From My Back Yard
 
Not too long ago, there was a period of time during which I simply and utterly could not relate to the ever present cultural urgency of doing and having that had permeated my life.  The pace of the sky and the air and of all the beautiful nature around me where I live matched the speed of my inner dimension of breathing and peace and awareness.  Sitting on the back porch doing nothing was really okay! I did not feel the need to prove or defend anything; just naturally existing in a feeling of harmony.

There were bills to pay and they were, as work happened and it does, all within an original matrix of time and space that demands nothing.  Life loves to live and living became a suspended moment of breath, feeling, sensing and opening all 32.7 trillion cells in my body to an intimate now. Being literally at peace with doing nothing oddly fulfilled a deep desire that I had transforming a million moments of waiting to an eternal space of being.

After some months of resting I began to notice a rising of several impulses. First, that within that space of being I sensed something missing and second, I simultaneously sensed something wanting or longing. It was not urgent, but it was a deep and profound yearning to act from this space. With care, of course, came first. Not my care, but the care of life loving itself into existence. Then came this recognition of dedicating the merit of the practices I take refuge in daily to others; all others, every single one. I know I did not invent this, yet the rising of it naturally as life and love itself seemed obvious.

Do I have to save children in India? Dolphins in Hawaii? Women in Western Europe? I thought so for a very long time. But, in the matrix of being, the connection between all living beings seems an intimate and obvious realization. I could close my eyes and feel the ripples of prayers from cloistered practitioners affecting the big mind of me and you. Doesn’t the love that I feel reach the whales and the birds too?  Where is my sphere of influence anyway? Is it here in my community or within a larger whole? Both?

Since there is no striving to influence, but the yearning to become from a place of being, then the action rises in every moment, no matter what. This becoming feels like passion and curiosity infinitely entwined guaranteeing, as it were, a warm glow in my heart. One project dissolves and another evolves and the knowing that what needs to express will, no matter.

“Wisdom is knowing I am nothing,
Love is knowing I am everything,
and between the two my life moves.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj
 
The moment to moment expression of life is at this intersection of love and wisdom, everything and nothing. I am empty and I am full; I am feminine and masculine; I am, we are, an individualized expression of love and That within which this movement occurs. Here, there is no doubt, no seeking, and no fear. Yet, this ‘everything’ has a spectrum from the beauty to the beast and the beingness that I Am is available for both.  Herein lies the movement to create harmony and health and beauty and connection! Here, here, in here, is born the movement  to reach out indiscriminately and unattached, from my back yard.

Through and from the Mother we come
And through and from the vast Mother we ultimately go
At unknown times, in unknown ways
There is no escaping the entry and exit plan on this plane
Both are here
Just like her, we favor certain places in unexplicable ways
Lapsing into disillusion and then caring as much as we can
Not knowing what to do, trying to keep up
Numbing from what? 
We know not what
A generation gap?
A million new reasons to be hyper vigilant?
There are too many unknown and hidden agendas
Volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes and earth quakes
For god’s sake
Pay attention before it’s too late
For she too has an exit plan
The date of which we know not when
Like you and me, all of us, children
Of earth and mother, sun and father
One very surprising opportunity after another
 
Perhaps in one lifetime we will unclaim our status
Understanding, finally, the big and small of it all
Forgetting the stories that lead to unrest
Committing again to what’s best
In peace we release
In peace we die
In peace we are born
In peace we wage the toughness of war and surrender
Doing my best to love Her
And it is not enough…
Yet, rest as that which knows connection
Surrender as that which pulls dark to light
Know that which I am is also of you
And therefore witness the beauty of all life

A message from Care and Connection:
Dearest divine human, I invite you to sit still and feel the ripples of my essence through your cells and bones and all the space within the full, whole form of your body. To feel me as an enlivened state and not an action.  For I know deeply, that if you did not, or could not, activate my frequency in to an action, you would instead be blessed by a direct experience of my warm, cascading touch.  The knowing of a care and connection, so deep, so profound, that you might rest in the realization of Oneness.

Care. I Care. I am caring. I so quickly move from a noun to a verb, reaching to possess life, living and each other, capturing it in to a moment of assumed purpose. I care for you, I reach to you in care, as care, to secure a definitive response to know that I matter. Right? This oft clumsy reach of caring to possess or abandon another serves only in the human game of trauma and lack, fostering spiritual bypassing and gratitude for only the really shiny moments.  For, as the verb of activated care and connection, haven’t we felt, over and over, the heart wrenching effect of withdrawing that care from each other? As if we could?! Now, the moving up and out with care, misunderstood by the history of the personality, becomes upset if not given and not received.

But I, care and connection, as a silent, mystical state permeate the heart of man and humanity serving as an extension of belonging and of becoming. I am ever present, here, there and everywhere. Care, without an action, ripples to and from the over soul, informing every human mind and body without a single word. Care connects us all.

I, care and connection, as the state that I am requires nothing as I defy death, wifi, your rejection and hugs!  When physical presence is absent, be it a transition of life or forced abstinence of contact, I still exist to inform, and reform your cellular being into a realized state.  You, dear human, so familiar with action, movement and results. If only you took a moment to feel me, you would know that I, primarily and firstly, am a state within natural BEINGness.  I require nothing to exist as I was here before you arrived and so will remain long, long after you are gone.  You exist within me, and I within you as an  energetic synthesis beyond measure.