Last night I watched Jenny Phillips on TED. She talks about a prison in Alabama where the inmates practise meditation. What struck me was how she described the facility – “a gladiator world where you have to watch your back, be strong, hide your emotions, and be ready to fight.” It struck me because, while this might be a place where the ‘gladiator-mentality’ is magnified and evident, I realize it’s one that permeates and separates us all. Until it doesn’t. Until the walls crumble and the armor and shields are transformed into the ecstasy of re-connection.

PURSE-SON-ANALITY

THE SPACE OF CREATION…

I’ve been here before. In this place. Where things are seemingly without root or anchor. Where the unknown is Great. And once again, I remind myself that, what I think should be, or needs to be, is, more than likely, far less than what the Universe has in mind. Though, that said, what I have in mind feels pretty amazing…it’s just I don’t know how I’ll get there.

And so I say goodbye to the part of me that thinks being in love means living together, and if we’re not living together, surely it means we’re breaking up. Because how can love be the core?

And I say goodbye to the part of me that hasn’t been able imagine my name on the screen of a movie theater. Single Credit. With a vision, an unstoppable rush of heart moving momentum, in pictures and words and music. No way.

I say goodbye to that which has believed dreams I thought I should have were truly mine. For how can I go out on a limb for my heart’s own desire? To create, voice, live and point a way where the only guarantee is that it must surely be the way because nothing else feels as good. Surely I risk too much.

And with all these goodbyes…I say Hello.

Less than a month ago, I woke up one morning and was struck by the notion I was moving. Struck because, until that moment in time, I had no conscious realization that it was even on the radar.

And even though it made no logical sense – I mean, I’ve spent the last two and a half years stripping and building and thinking this place was The One – and all of a sudden up comes this moving thing and with it is the feeling that it is a dream I didn’t even know I had, a dream that is right here, ready to happen, coming up under my wings had having me soar through territory I had not even dared imagine.

So in all the ways that I have been possessed, filled with the rocket fuel of desire, I’ve also been noticing how there’s a part of me that’s been ‘off’. I’ve had awarenesses of thoughts and behavior that I’ve watched come and go, all with an underlying insistence to be heard and understood, to be right, to be in control, until all these moments have now become a thundering detonation.

Yeah.

Detonation.

It wants to blow everything up in my face. It wants to take this happiness and have it laid out in bits and pieces around me like body parts on the battlefield, cold and bloody and unforgivable. I know this piece, I’ve experienced it before. I’ve felt it in my mother the times she would be caught up in a fury at my father, grab me by the hand and, with all the seeming purpose in the world, storm out of the house to the car and, for all her determination to drive away, we would sit there in a seemingly helpless immobility, pulled between the will to leave and the knowledge that to do so would mean living the story that was the last story that, deep down, she really wanted to live. And then she would storm back in the house again and find the enclosed and boxed-in place where she could shut the doors – to her room, her heart – shut the doors that kept everything out and insisted on the kind of isolation that made my mother wonder if it weren’t better just to end it all. Be done. The same detonation that was alive in my mother, alive in me. It’s just it hasn’t been around for a really long time.

In the wake of the flurry of putting the house on the market and envisioning what might be, it seems that for as high as I would go, for as expanded as I would become, there is an equal depth and contraction. In the moments of partial lucidity that are nonetheless caught up in this feeling that it is all over before it is even begun, I’ve been looking at what’s at play, how everything seems to be tied into this exalted decision to move and all that it carries with it. Because, in my mind, this move is buying into certain things, things that are tied to the calling of my heart, things that I want so much that the idea of them not being woven into this new and expanded future is enough to undo me. Things about who I am as a writer, a teacher and film maker, things about the how my creations are coming into the world and, most importantly, things about who I am with my partner, who she is with me – who we are together.

Most importantly because, on some level I feel like I can handle the rest. I can assuage the fears that wonder if Stella Sky isn’t what I think she is, and notice those that insist there is an infinite number of people who can say the things that I might say, and say them so much better. But Rachel…well, how to navigate the fact that it feels like I’ve just upped the stakes and have no idea if I have the winning hand. Because this vision, this impulse, she is a part of it. Not a by-the-by part, but a real, quintessential, living and breathing one.

I’m invested, when surely invested is the last, most dangerous thing to be. Because when I’m invested, I care. And when I care, I can get hurt. This unexpected, free-wheeling, high-flying investment of mine is banking on certain fundamentals. Most importantly, it is banking on Rachel continuing to love me. Not just love me, it is banking on her wanting to live with me because I now know I do, most definitely, want to live with her.

And you see, what we’ve come to realize these last few months of living under the same roof, Rachel and I, is that things aren’t always rosy. Yes, there’s the practical inconveniences of sharing every single iota of space. And the edges of what it is for two strong women who have created and lived in autonomy in their own homes for years prior to have to find the middle-ground, these practicalities adding fuel to the fire of that which is essentially already being introduced to the raging flames of alchemy – i.e. – how to Be In Love. Because we’re not used to it. Not really. And I say we and really mean I, and yet there is the we part of it, that which is the bigger We of current humankind. The not being used to it meaning that this state of Being, the one of Being Love, is thwarted with all the patterns that have been dancing around and through the lineage of experience for an Age of Time.

I’ve lived on many an edge. Around money, survival and letting most everything go – edges that have buffed and beaten and polished the rough places – and just when the story books would argue that this is the happily-ever-after, just when I’m in relationship and have gotten over the fact that it’s with a woman (and whatever else might get in the way), and have fallen, really fallen, I find myself on this new one. This edge.

And so in one breath I can say this dark side of the soul thwarts and undermines. It what’s the point? and insists on full-blown detonation. It pushes and pushes away until, finally, one day, the very worst fear of Rachel actually being away comes true. And then it confirms, See? For all the ways she has told you she loved you, for all the ways she has wanted to love you, didn’t you know this would happen? Didn’t you know you can only open so much, give so much, allow so much? Keep her…keep love…keep the stirrings and awakenings of yourself at arms length, keep them under control.

And in the next I can say I am aware that, beneath this seemingly unshakeable insistence is a feeling of desolation…of despair, and it is the despair of my heart. The heart in me that knows how things are and can be, around partnership, around everything, around letting the walls down and letting Love. It is a grieving and desperation that begs for it not to be as it has been so many times before. With this feeling being my compass – the one that indicates the direction of my soul, I am aware of the opportunity for change. Change the decisions around the impulse to shut down and instead commit to doing the opposite.

And perhaps, just perhaps, this dark side of the soul, my soul, this part of me that I know I have shunned and chastised and let hold the reins, the part that, for whatever litany of convincing and justified reasons does not trust love, might actually be the potent reminder I need to head in precisely the opposite direction. And it’s not about taking up the reins and wondering how in the hell I’m gonna do it, steering the way and watching for the pitfalls and playing the games intended to keep Rachel guessing and doing the things that will surely make sure she loves me even more, it’s not about trying to figure it all out,  really it’s about letting go. And all the while, perhaps, just perhaps, this part of me that storms and stomps and wonders how we, she and I will survive, is asking, longing to for me to cast caution to the winds of faith and, heart pounding, head spinning, let go of the reins and open into the warmth of the Light.

Hatred, gossip, violence, judgment, despair, when I look into them, feel into them, experience them, they all stem from the one thing – fear. Fear of not having enough, fear of not being enough, fear that makes us want to be better than someone else because then maybe someone will notice, fear that makes us want to be worse than someone else because then maybe someone will pay attention, fear that someone else is right which will make us wrong, fear that there isn’t enough to go around, fear that we will be left out in the cold, fear that we’re not loved because, how can we be when there is all this fear?

What I’ve been noticing is how much sway fear can hold. Once it has a story to come alive in, that story can be gripping and tenacious, stories that insist and insist this is how it is and there is no other way. And it really doesn’t matter what the story is, if one dissipates, when fear is the go-to place, another will come to replace it, and whatever the means, whatever the so-called seemingly good reasoning behind whatever insistence is at hand, whether it’s that this country is bad and that person no good, or that we’ve got to fight to get what we want and then hold onto it tight, whatever the specifics the result is just the same, … all this fear making us, us, and them, them and clouding and cutting the connection that is our hearts. Because the truth is, when we are in our hearts there is no room for anything else. When we are in our hearts, fear is known, however briefly, to be the illusion that it really is.

This cutting of the connection, like anything that cuts, hurts. Whether it is in a moment of impatience, or a fleeting thought that is less than love, whether it is in an act of trespass – against someone else, something else, against nature – this cutting, this separation which is the territory in which these things and thoughts can take place, is ultimately a separation from and trespass against me. It is a separation from my heart, from who I really am, – from myself, my spirit, from that amazing calling to simply Be Love.

And what I am coming to know is, these moments or times of separation are not bad or some sort of failure, they are simply the mechanisms through which I can then choose to come home. Where I can choose to let go to the trust that love is the prevailing force, surrender to faith that I don’t have to fight and in all the letting go let in that which I am a part of – oh my – what a thing that is. All I have to do is allow myself to love life and shine.

I don’t know a whole lot about autism. I mean, I’ve read Oliver Sacs and seen the movie with Dustin Hoffman, and that’s about it.

This morning I overheard something Rachel was listening to, about an autistic child who has learned how to type, and through typing, reveals a side to herself that is profound and insightful.

In her communications, she says that, at times, it feels like her body will explode, that her senses run on override – she sees and hears cacophonies – and the only way to prevent the explosion is to bang her head/scream/hit…as if she is in a body that she has no control over, this strikingly articulate, endearingly mischievous, thirteen year old girl.

And so, just now, I was thinking. Because there are times when I have felt a sensory opening and my reaction is wholly dependent upon my state of mind. On one hand it can feel like the beauty of the whole universe is alive to me, and at others I am struggling, fighting to keep some anchor of control – like a bad acid trip where all I want is to be ‘normal’, in control again.

Recently I read about ‘controlled’ medicinal use of LSD where patients are given the drug under the supervision of trained experts in situations designed to engender complete feelings of total comfort and safety. Situations where the patients can let go and surrender. In the article, their experiences are described as ‘enlightening’. They suddenly have a sense of who they, arguably, really are. A sense of the greatness of which they are a part.

And so I’ve been wondering, what if autism is like a bad trip of sorts? What if those who experience it could be guided to relax, to trust, to recognize the expanse to which they are privy and navigate the terrain of their perception, not with a view to making it ‘normal’, but with a view to the beauty? What if they were led in meditation? What messages would they have for us then?

Like I said, I don’t claim to know much about autism, I just wonder if it might be a link, a portal of sorts to that which I recognize as the All…and we have become so accustomed to trying to ‘fix’ it, we have lost sight of the gift it might actually be.

In the shower this morning I felt a lump in my breast. God. It’s so intimate, this writing of the word breast.  This unbelievably tender place that is so much of the beingness of being a woman.

Yes. In the shower. Definitely a lump.

And in the ten or so minutes between finding it and writing this now, I have been watching all the possibilities move through me. The first is, what if this is cancer? And with that possibility comes the initial reaction of, really? Do I have to create this in order for me to dive headlong into something that perhaps I’m meant to teach about? Do I have to know the world of cancer up-close and personal? Am I meant to know what it is to jump onto the treadmill of tests and treatments and experience the experience that will surely be draining and defeating and all-consuming. Is this what I must spend my days doing? And what of all the other things that I am on-fire with? What of them? Victimhood? Disempowerment? Sacrifice?

There it is. The possibility of cancer and the expectation of an experience that might possibly come with it, and there, right there, in that expectation, there is a choice. Because who says it has to be that way? Cancer.

And even as I write ‘cancer’ there is an insubstantiality to the word – one that seems to be in its foundation, a insubstantiality upon which have been built the fears and forebodings of what has come to be seen and experienced as a messenger of death. Death, tragedy, children left and lives half-lived.

What if this lump is cancer? What if the stories, the possibilities, the experiences, can be different?

Which they can, can’t they? Because I am being shown, again and again, that my worst fears are without substance. That they are powered and empowered by me. Well, not me exactly, but an old and habitual part of me. And actually, there is something else, something bigger and omnificent that is me and everything else, and it is a something that says, ‘Relax. Be Full. All Is Well’.

So what if cancer isn’t about the familiar pictures of hospitals and chemo and the frantic searches for alternative treatments that might work? What if it’s something else? I don’t know what. I haven’t seen it. But the story must be out there somewhere in the ethers of what is waiting to be created. The new one that tells a tale of these cancers, these bits and pieces of our bodies just waiting to be loved. Loved in ways that they never have been. Because, as long as the body holds shame, as long as some part of our essence believes we are not radiantly beautiful in all that we are, how can these bits and pieces receive the love they believe they don’t deserve? Could it be that cancer is the precursor to knowing and experiencing Love in a whole new way? Fully present. Fully alive. Fully beauty-full. Could this be the story? Could it be one of them? If I am to have experiences and cancer is written into them, these are the kinds of expectations of possibilities that I choose.

Because even those things that seem to have stories written in stone, ‘seem’ is the operative word. It’s not the nothing is ever what it seems, it’s that we can make it whatever we want it to be.

Surely it is no surprise that, this morning, Abraham’s quote led the way:

Expectation indicates the juncture between where you are and where you want to be. Where you want to be is your desire, and where you are is your Set-point or habit of thought. And, somewhere in there, is what we would call expectation. Expectation, whether it is wanted or unwanted, is a powerful point of attraction. Your expectation is always what you believe. But the word expectation does imply more what you are wanting that what you are not wanting. It is a more positive word than it is a negative word. But of course, you could expect negatively – and whatever you expect, you will get!

It is a New year and it’s a happy one because, with so much beauty in the world, how can it be anything else?!

What if you came to realize that all the stories you have ever known or been told, the ones that you have believed for as long as you can remember, were the very things that kept you and your imagination tethered and bound? What if now was the time to let go of everything you have ever thought to be true – about love and romance, good and evil, monsters and angels? What if a boy was involved? An impossible, electrical boy from a story you wrote back when you were nine years old who has now come to rock your reality? What then?

Maybe you’d realize, like Stella Sky, that when the world comes tumbling down you can suddenly see more stars.

It’s official, Stella Sky is in the building!

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Last night I dreamt about Adea. As I re-integrate into being home after dropping in on her and her new life out there in Massachusetts, I am aware of a part of me that still lingers. The part that misses her and wishes to be there, knowing her interests, her hopes, her disappointments, her friends, her life.

And it has gotten me to thinking about something I’ve been thinking about on and off, off and on, for a while. Especially recently. You see, recently I’ve been noticing this thing that happens when something in my life is going or gone. In the face of imminent departure or absence, my propensity to love that particular thing is ever so much more. That which isn’t around me can inspire a longing that moves like a tidal wave through my heart. And so it has caused me to ask, what of that which is here, right now?

Just before I left for Boston, I dropped by a friend’s house and Thumbelina, the oldest little pony in all of New Mexico, is lying on her side and Jeannie is there and she’s crying because Thumbelina isn’t doing well. Not well at all. And suddenly the feeling of what it might be to loose Thumbelina opens me up to all that that little pony is and has been. All the times I’ve heard about that she let girls grow up with her and braid her mane and brush her tail, walking them up the mountain til it was time to come home again. This Thumbelina who I’ve been around and noticed now and then as she stands in various places on various days over there at Jeannie’s.  This Thumbelina who is patient and present and who, at 40-something years old, doesn’t ask for a whole lot, if anything at all.

So on this day when I see her lying there, on her side, and it’s quite something to see a pony lying on its side and unable to stand, I realize how much I’d miss her, and at the same time, I realize how much I have taken her for granted. How many times I may not even have said hello.

So this is what I’ve been thinking about. The propensity I have to overlook that which is around me. And the thing is, I know if Adea lived here, or Lux moved in, very quickly we would be facing the rough edges of our relationships. The proximity brings up all kinds of things. Things like control and judgment and things said and regretted and other things heard and not liked. There is so much of this stuff that can and does come up in the intimacy of being intimate. With my lover, my kids, even my animals. How many times will I mourn my cat Rose once she is gone, feeling sadness, regret even, when there are days I barely notice that she is here and alive, days when I don’t take even a moment, right now?

And the thing is, these animals and lovers and children who are around me can be the ones who challenge me the most and with whom I can experience my relationship to loving in love in a new way. A way that, if I have experience before, I don’t remember. They are the ones bringing out the worst of me and me the worst of them, and rather than turning my back in the blind surety that there are greener pastures somewhere out there, a different lover, a time when children will be grown and gone, etc. what if I loved all of it right now? I mean really loved it. Loved it the same way I can look at the sky and be blown into awe or get keeled over by love for the children who live afar. For through them, Adea and Lux, I can access this heart space, this exploding into love space, anytime. And so it is as if I have been given a standard, a way of being and loving that is surely the me that is Me.

It’s not about loving only those that have been and gone, or longing for something different or getting slammed by the moment of absence of departure, it’s about loving the ones I’m with and not with, all of them, right now. And it could be Rachel, or my kids, or whoever or whatever I am with in each and every moment. Loving the they that is the same as the I, and the they that is so different. Loving wholly and fully in each moment. Loving it all.

Love you my love…

Fire.

That which destroys just as easily as it creates, which cleanses just as easily as it kills. Tasted on the burning lips of lovers and ignited in the souls of the mad and the brilliant, it is the rain that brings the end of worlds and drips from the tongues of those compelled to foretell it, and it is the spark that enlightens the visions of what is yet to be born. Stolen from the gods, it is no small feat, this Fire. This creation.