Arms Open

Time is the Great Engagement we make with life. To attain earth, you must agree to obey Time – you get to return as a tick or a tock & the rhythm of your life is set.

For example, I have six clocks but three mirrors. Only recently, in entering the no-time of lockdown, I note the pressure Time wants to impart. Fortunately, I can withstand all of it. I realize I could do a better job at this if I were to adopt a regimen which rubs very closely to “regime.”

I’m enjoying freedom in a more engaged & altruistic state of self. Prevented from Service to Others, I return to Service to Self. I can be gentle to myself; I can be kind as I would be to a stranger. I can offer alternatives to me just as I would offer choices to another.

I am still reacting to an implant, a blocker, but it is melting down in the new vibration that I shift to. Cosmic shift. I made it through the Matrix & Creation both…this far. Some of my lives were hijacked but I am coordinating more carefully with life, now.

I know the blocker was the price for admission & I knew it coming in. I also knew this lifetime I would grow out of it. Best keep on with it, yeh?

Read, Write, Learn, Repeat

I know I have written up this topic before…not that I could show you where & when in the moment. All’s I know is this exact thought hass occurred to me periodically all my adult life. So I will write about it yet again, let the definitions flow – the ones of how I define things now as compared to / repaired to at other times.

It has taken this long to grow into this me. And she still looks over her shoulder at the other Me’s, wondering if this growing thing is okay. Well, it may have been easier before, but I’m not really sure how much so. Simplistically, each place I was before I needed to be in. Like later, I’ll read this & think it immature & weenie if compared to the place I am then.

I came into this life knowing exactly what I wanted & even more exactly, how to become that. I got sidetracked by so many events, relationships, suffering joy & enjoying suffering. I grew up with metered laughter when I knew what was missing was unmitigated joy. (I go for “relatively jolly” now. }

I was too early groomed for the life my mother lived. It was her best life & she couldn’t think of anything better to imbue in me. She gave me the basics I needed to be myself. What I was trying to remember was overlaid with her tracks. When I followed them, I got to her life.

As a child, you do not abdicate control – you do not really have control as to those around you. My generation (Baby Boomers) was kind of subjective to parental whims & laws, societal “rules” & a scholarly “obedience” that included very little learning.

What a prep course for the 21st Century!

I was, I think, peculiarly malleable. Craving only approval, I was repeatedly crushed in that regard. I still hesitate to send my roots to the center of the earth, just in case I’m not to her liking. When I next check in about this very topic, I expect to be over that.

I can take it.

I most recently am in the process of learning to be easier in my life circumstances, both less driven (by accomplishments) & more driven (to accomplishments.) I am learning the real violence to others is not to try to teach them how I do non-violence, but to let them live out theirs. That can hurt.

Yet this comes from the sure instinct finally fully supported, that I cannot change anyone’s course through direct direction. We must all understand the immanence of self-responsibility. I believe I came her with the intention to recover from all the other lifetimes. This one’s a culmination, folks. I don’t have to come back unless I want to & that’s huge. All these words are in service to the platitude “Live & Let Live.”

I am witness to the pressures of other’s wishes as matched with my self-expectations. This is, however, what refined me to my current humanity.

After reading There is a River by Thomas Surgrue, I demanded of myself to “create no Karma!,” Then I went about pushing Karma forward with my damn nose as what I did not wish to create, I experienced.

Holy Hell!

If I had to define my place right now, I’d say I just might be getting the punchline of the joke life was made for me & others while we were watching TV. Thing is, it’s not until now I’ve been able to simply laugh about it – this releases the connection to it in a delightful way.

My apologies smear the hurt I’ve caused; they don’t erase it. I cannot erase the pain I’ve etched into another’s heart or soul. I can only heal my own.

It’s a marvel, but I’m learning how to be the I AM I came here to be.

This One’s For You, Lover

So, I’m in & out of our relationship like playing “Go In & Out the Windows.” Each time I returned, it was more precarious, tentative, tenuous, & shorter than the last. Yes, just as it seemed I would settle into a routine, I bucked it off, backed out & wore out hinges closing the door.

I believe that you love me. But this is not permitted as evidence anymore. And I know you tried hard, but I’m a Contrarian when it comes to love & cannot do sex by appointment as such. I’m still stupid enough to believe love is holding hands in the car, but we never even went anyplace.

Being turned off in a relationship physically emerges from mental shutdown. We were dangerously abbreviated in conversation. You weren’t interested in looking into what I was talking about. I got boring in explaining my “out there” ideas every time. Research is so simple, conversation so elegant. But not happening on either level between us. After the first rush of teaching, it becomes tiresome to repeat instead of converse. And of course there is very little you can share about your life.

That there was little interest disappointed me deeply. With so little in common, it’s no wonder I felt pushed to where I did not want to respond. Turning on to a person is mostly between the ears & not the legs at this point, tho it surely started out thataway!

With no place to go, we wound up here.

Visions

Easter has been canceled for 2020

A day of renewal, in renunciation of the Dark, the Light Lord’s return. The old is easily left behind in times such as these. Does it need to be remembered or renewed? The new seems possible in the rebirth of all.

Last Easter I wrote a blog about my childhood holidays, about spirituality, family dinners, earthly ramifications of a returning Spring. All have been put into the polisher together to emerge free from rough edges.

In this year’s blog, the Easter Bunny coughs lightly & dons a mask before putting eggs in the basket. These are seriously different circumstances. The immediate & draconian effects of lockdown on population, the economy, the children…oh & so much else… is unknown.

What at first started as a “holiday” from routine became a forced time-out where our faces are hidden & we’re herded into lines & placed 6’ apart in order to stay alive. Now, with the problem tapering into an annually-returning possibility of death, these measures seem stupidly draconian.

Roseanne Bar says this virus is tailored to wipe out the Baby Boomers. I am one, so I listened up. But I still don’t believe it will take me along on its morbid cross-country path. Even Death would be arrested if he stepped out of line! Undoubtedly, this is a wicked scourge upon the land.

But I see it is as a coalition of fears. I am not sure why we fear death at all – not like you can put luggage racks on the hearse & drive to Bolivia to get away from it, yeh? But fear has compressed & compromised our vulnerability to naked exposures. We need to return to a quality of life unmarred by it.

How many today sit with their bucket lists in hand, mourning? Or adding items frantically till ink runs dry in their pens. My Bucket List is right now: no obligations, no restrictions, no lack in my life.

This present time revises my future. In planning that future so tenderly, I notice the sun shines right through it. It’s a glow of green on the horizon, growing in hope, faith, charity & knowing itself to be the most of these forevermore.

I get subliminals now, a montage of the past- this is what I’ve perceived as the life flashing before my eyes. Rumor has it this happens with dying. Little but love lasts forever.

I have known pirates who thought nothing of walking me to the edges of planks blindfolded & prodded by cutlass tips as though I might continue perambulating lazily on the water below. I look to the side & see Priest Lake in Nashville where I hiked. I do a massage & I’m in every spa room I’ve ever worked, with the northern light deepening to dusk. I walk a trail & am on the boardwalk in Ocean City, dolphins bobbing just beyond the waves.

While fun, it’s quite startling to suddenly plug into the past this way. I’m tasting Ledo’s thin crust Pizza, sitting in a sticky booth. I’m sipping coffee in one of a million diners, the cup thicker than my thumbs & heavy to lift. I buy bagels & devour them on a bench, watching strangers, early for an appointment. I walk North Park with its fireworks displays, I stand in the uniform of theatre usher with a smile. I smell Fisher’s Fries. I see the white bones of an island rising from ocean as I cross a desert bridge.

Where does this memory trip rise from? Are my cellular memories releasing, squeezing out my past to make room? In experiencing these, I am treated to the many places of my life where visions matter. I rub my eyes & look again.

Horizons Go Horizontal

Facing Beginnings & Endings

I think it is best to learn how to face & save face with these since they follow me like clock hands searching time.

I am surfeit in my pleasures: bread & butter for breakfast, delayed coffee…Boy Howdy! Belly warm & feet comfy, music to one side & an open window with a breeze to the other.

Where will I be a year from now? I don’t know, I just feel the leverage of life prying me loose. Maybe I can find a writer’s camp to work in…but it all starts here. How will I change? I’ll need to be in a bigger town if I’m going. Or out in the desert far from anything but cactus, hopefully with hot water & indoor plumbing.

What I see once again is possibility opening to bid me enter. I want to celebrate with others & write about it. There is much catching up for writing – my proof of life.

What do I want? To laugh, to be respected, to be relied upon, to care for others who will, in turn, care for me.  Sad to abandon the thought of being loved, left on the side of the rode like a suitcase I can no longer sit on with my thumb out.

These are best guesses in this moment & unreliable. I’m not really sure overall.

From the specific to the general…whole populations are moving. Will there be another Great Resettlement? Will America become an ideal again in terms of all of us leaving for a “better place.”

I am gone again. Time to go smaller & less populous? Or be alone in a city? I find I’m content in my own company on good days. It’s at night when the shadows crowd ‘round & I realize I’m not enough for myself anymore.

I thought I had created a refuge here. Pressing words into sentences is my favorite but cannot be my only pastime.

My finger’s on the trigger. Where is the gun pointed?

Company’s Not Coming

As usual, writing is my lone companion, the golf towel to absorb my tears, the faraway smile fading into Cheshire darkness.

I hate to admit weakness. I am emotionally stronger than the average, so it is a distant place to find where I can let myself be this weak.

I seldom ask, mostly as I don’t want to be refused & a bother or be considered a pest. And mostly, asking does no good since people do not understand that an offer can be a cry for a visit or a time not alone. They figure it’s an offer & they all have lives so it’s easier to just say “No” rather than, “Oh, hey, come over. Let’s sit on the porch & talk.”

I keep setting my walls higher. I’ll die alone & be relieved to do so. It’ll be the fallout of a life unexpected.

I used to think I’d be married & otherwise in a beloved state, a member of a pod. I make myself a desirable friend; but that’s just being loved at a distance.

Maybe I’ll – but I don’t even think I can do this – maybe I’ll just withdraw entirely to myself. No more dinners with others, no more asking for conversation or laughter, no more sharing.

I feel like this unwanted, underfoot, misshaped person. I feel like I’m a burden & a PITA. The way out of this feeling is to keep moving along in relationships, ideas & in writing.

So I sit with my real BFFs: a steno pad, a pen with a new refill & lovely writing point. And hey, fueled by tears.

Sad, isn’t it? Or? Maybe not. Could just be Fate it would have been so different & maybe could have been so except it’s where I’m at. Me & my words, closer than my shadow.

And I wish there were some other way to live my life. And it may change still. I sure do believe in miracles, so standing by for one isn’t a bad way to go, I guess.

If not for me, the life lived here would be enough

If not for silence I would have even less to say.

I might have been a wife, a mother, a lover, a friend.

Instead of this-that-is, a might-have-been of any other one of these.

Words to Write By

Language itself needs to be rehabilitated.

Words need to be instantaneous as thought to be most effective. They insinuate themselves – one word can start someone off on their own [infinite] journey. There is a need for spiritually healing words, nouns, modifiers, verbs, etc.

These were where the first loopholes were made. Language. Recall the difficulty of “un-seeing” something. What about “un-hearing?”  What words whispered into your various systemic extremities, traveling via the spiritual meridians, even energetically? What magnetized us to point this way?  (We need to teach protecting ourselves as well as promoting ourselves. But that’s a class for a later school…)

Language itself needs to be rehabilitated.

Some meanings need to be relegated as unnecessary, in that cyclical way that language has of hanging out for the next sound bite. Overall, a return to meaningfulness that makes sense might streamline some of the hyperbole.

In our eager push to popularity, we use “programmisms” – sayings by clever TV characters so out there we love ‘em. I can’t give you many examples, but maybe a memory? How many jingles could my generation tap right into & singalong tho we haven’t used Ipana in over fifty years? That’s programming, and we never even knew it.

The words have to be once again made over into a spiritual cast as we learn their power on psyche & the connections to self-mastery that we might reclaim & proclaim ours. Words serve as our way to assert being in the world & practicing that assertion whether timely or not.

Refinement & awareness redirect language – sorely needed right now! The good things seem so clichéd while evil seems so creative. As the balance shifts, we know this happens because the language has changed. My mission & focus is to refine the written word to uphold us every one.

With kind eyes,

Carol