I have come to believe that vanity, and not hearing, is the last sense to leave the expiring body. I settled into this physical shape as though it is the most comfortable in the world for me – and indeed, it is!

Once upon a time (that beginning making the tale worth the tell) I wished for a perfection of form, an enviable figure with a trim waist, bubble butt, hair down to here & legs up to there. Yet this body is the crowning achievement of my physical plane.

In 2009, I succumbed to peer pressure & went for a physical. The assistant measured my height at 5’1.” “Wait a minute,” I said, “I’m 5’2.” She didn’t even smile as she said, “Not anymore.” I could hear her thinking, “Another of these over-50’s with no understanding of shrinkage.” Wrong…I did know shrinkage, just thought it’d never apply to me! I knew it as dry fact, without the damper of experience.

“I can be as tall as I imagine myself to be,” I mumbled, standing under that slim metal measuring rod. Gravity, whether pulling me down or pushing (a late-arriving theory) can do its worst. I need not pay attention. My visual world pretty much ends at 5’3”, so if the item is on the top shelf, I don’t buy it until the younger (taller) attendants walk me back down the aisle to my etheric imprint to show it to me. “Up here, Ma’am, see?”

(I quit doing Girl Scout troops when the third graders collectively looked down on me. I started training adults instead, where we were all around the same height.)

True, I never returned to a physician’s office. No need for more bad news, yeah? They seldom have tidings of great joy. In fact, their track record is quite incommensurate in that regard.

I call it compacting, or condensing, not shrinking. Semantics rule…I should know.

I’m not timing out, I’m indemnifying.

In the days when I had a cute little figure, when I bought for fashion at boutiques & trunk shows & fixed my hair for husbands, I didn’t really pay so much attention to vanity.

It was a fleeting time, to be sure, before the situation changed. The Pill put on ten pounds I’ve yet to lose 50 years later. The hysterectomy seemed to create lots of storage space for adipose. And since the area is stretchy to allow for growth; wait, I don’t want to go there. You’ll see no profile shots of me on this site. I didn’t think my female parts took up quite as much space as has become available.

This body is the go-to one. I wake up to reassemble it every morning, molecule by molecule. So what if it bulges here & there? This is why science invented elastic & necessity invented Spandex.

I burst into song to be free of single-minded vanity which reduces life to what actually fits & looks nice. Too limiting! It’s a burden I’d rather not bear. My smile weighs a lot less than the rest of me & that’s what counts. I love & honor fresh greens; I just prefer pasta.

The twinges & creaks concurrent with approaching seventy nourish the stellar joy of rising to walk two miles, attempting to dance my ass off now & again, & knowing I’m not competition for anything but a contest of wits.

Being a plushie surely stands out over all those Barbie’s.

I guess I’m still growing into me.

Life rolls the dice as we sit at the table, playing the game. I don’t know all the card-playing mantras – seven come eleven & that…but I believe in living forward with a healthy dose of mystery pouring around the edges of any shades I’ve inadvertently drawn.

Dark never lasts. The light breaks through in the most unusual places. I find signs (literally) like the one above on Bullard Street in Silver City. The note on the door said they were in meditation session, so I could not explore further; however, I was quite satisfied with as much as I did find. We are all in need of grooming, four-legs & two-legs both. Wouldn’t you say?

We groom our lives incessantly, trying to get all the edges lined up, all the stripes aligned in colorful rows. We try to keep to the speed limits & see to our safety. We keep in touch with old friends as we discover new relationships. So we outpace the question “What’s in it for me?”

Circumstances morph to need. If you can unlearn old habits & pour energy into the more rewarding & fulfilling “new” ones, all circumstance can be satisfied. This is what is so intriguing about the Biblical phrase “And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” This would seem to be more difficult in practice. We age & our bodies are old wineskins… The new life we pour into them seems at first to create untenable situations. Where do we find strength to leave old relationships, to forge new ones, to remake what once held meaning into what we are called to do for fulfillment at this exact moment?

There doesn’t always seem to be a way through. An old adage from the Orient tells us “Be water. Flow” The teachings of Abraham (Esther Hicks) were at one time all about going downstream instead of fighting against the current. And this, Abraham repeatedly said, was so hard because as a culture, we do not feel we are in accomplishment unless we are fighting.

But fighting is part of the old paradigm. The new life pouring into the planet in the form of children who are aware of the the prism of love all must filter through shows us just one example. The expressiveness of our four-leg friends/mentors/companions is another. Every morning pries us open, begs us to allow in the untried, untested, new, while simply glossing over that stubborn “no!” we want to hide in corners & wail. Yes, species die off. Yes, trees are drying up. Yes, oceans are dying. But let’s all just sit in the space of Yes! long enough to understand that this same vacuum we see forming is abhorred by the continuum of Life living itself all around us in glory heretofore untold by history.

We are based in history without the references as to why & where our habits arose. We feel more comfortable to practice the old far more than the new & it’s time for that to stop. It’s time to welcome in the change we are invited to become. If those invited to be trees want to move into another life, we must needs understand this enough to help redirect their energy. We must fashion the new wineskins, hold ourselves open, allow the pouring overflow to fill us. We must groan through the growth process this engenders with the sure & certain trust we were fashioned to have this happen in precisely the manner it does.

If you find you’re guilty of some sin, make amends. Make Amens – sum them up & bring these to closure so refreshing, novel, au courant (coeur = heart) that fresh information can manifest. If the trees die, look for what now grows there. If old habits have packed up their heavy trunks & laid these by the door as you walk out, leave them behind.

Try it. Close your eyes, press on the lids lightly, envision what you would rather have take place & pour the new wine of your beautiful Light energy into your refashioning life. It can be easy if you don’t make it hard. It can be done if you start somewhere, lay something down, pick something else up. I told a friend to write a love letter to his ailing knees & he wrote back to ask, “What should I write?” I replied, “This is your task. Find a pen, smooth out the paper in front of you & begin.”

All we need is at hand. Reach for it! Give life permission to stomp something out so that making new wine becomes all there is to do. I can’t tell you how to do it – I can only suggest that it has worked throughout time. I can tell you there are paths through the forest waiting for your feet; footprints in sand which fit only your size eights, ideas which only you make manifest & bring into fruition. This is the promise we are given. This is the talent we are not permitted to pull a bushel over anymore.

When everything else is closing in, walk on. Expand, try, seek & bring the finding close enough to inhale. Breathe life in & allow it to explore your body with the love it bears for you.

Smile, too, & don’t forget to have some fun with it. No one can hold us down when it is our time to fly. And at times that may mean mean jumping off the cliff to see if the wings work. Determine what you want to be & become who you are, leaving behind who you think you were.

Find Your Yes!

In the infinity of choices, what choices does the world really give me?

• Paper/plastic
• Life/death
• Stillness/movement
• Yes/no
• Eat/abstain
• See/be blind
• Youth/age

What gives me these choices? Why do I avoid growth to sit still – to “sit/stay” like a little doggie?

I can be fluid as water, yet I choose to be a rock.

Having made so many decisions about change before, I am feeling an affinity for sameness now. having made so much happen, I am now the target of happenings – the receiver.

I know the power is latent. I can bring it into activity at any time. I am toying now with stillness, playing with being trapped. I am this me now, after so much being that me.

They have not told me why; I have not asked that question.

But soon I will change, it will once again all change. This will not last forever. I will change my beliefs into understandings. I will leave the safety net below to fly off. I will forge a new future & not even look back. The past has no interest for me: I’ve done it. Right now are the beginnings occurring – advent of change. From this stillness, this stillpoint, I will push & pull, resist & allow, above all, I will create.

There needs to be some different thing or artistry. I’m far too young to be this old.

I will welcome my retiring soul by shaping my formative, birthing self. I will find freedom from reincarnation to simple incarnation which is a kind of mortgage of the soul.

The change is already in motion of emotion.

I feel the whole world chomping at the bit for change. I make the commitment to other than not making one.

All this mind-full-ness is grand, but where is it taking me, really?

I cannot let beliefs lock me down any longer. Not when there are dreams to be had.

5/31/2016

Note from 5/27/2017: This ‘resolution’ didn’t even last a year. But then, so many resolutions don’t.

What is your relationship to Truth? For some, there’s a passing acquaintance only – a two-finger wave getting into the car. I recently saw “Jupiter Ascending” for the second time & marveled when one of the characters said, “Lies are the reason I get up every day.”

Now that should make you shudder, Amen!

Is your relationship to Truth “immersive”? Like walking into the ocean? I remember the day I realized I couldn’t even take a paper clip home from my desk at work. Not that I’m so holy, but it was just so much easier to walk away hands-free & heart open.

Next question: Is honesty Truth? I think it’s like using slices of two different breads. They don’t always match – sourdough & rye, for example. We’re not used to this. My truth may be real to me, but dishonest to you. But my honesty counts towards Truth as I know it.

Children have refreshingly fewer filters on Truth. Art Linkletter used to ask the kids on the show first off, “Now, what did your mom tell you not to tell me?” All sorts of quotable quotes then emerged.

Children enter the world with a broader perceptual spectrum upon which culture starts applying boundaries immediately.  A child soon finds out that a broad spectrum needs to narrow considerably to get along in society. It’s a far lesser bandwidth to occupy; only “admissible” truths meet the criteria – sometimes nothing imaginary and especially nothing which doesn’t support the current belief system.

I know adults who throw up fences as fast as they can when certain topic arises in conversation. One scientist whom I met recently said firmly, “No woo-woo stuff here!” about Tibetan singing bowls being used for physical healing, as she admired another’s playing of her bowl. However, she nodded at the comment, “I feel that tone all through my body.” Well, that’s how the bowls heal, right?

(I used the photo above as it seems to represent a truth all of its own – it was taken at a drumming circle fire in Maine. None of the other photos in the same grouping contain this figure.)

We just need to keep enlarging our truth/Truth by broadening our spectrum to permit others theirs as well, whether imaginary or scientifically proven. We have to be free-range Truth-Seekers to discover what resonates in us for once & all.

Fear is rampant today. It’s all over the newspapers, magazines, movies and every main stream media outlet loves to sell fear to us. It’s generated by TV news, weather reports, the economy, Wall Street, whether the UFO’s will land or the Second Coming will happen first. And yet…and yet, if you put your mind and heart and soul into it, is there anything at all you can do about any of these?

When we are in pain or in fear, we sometimes assume the worst of God. We resist the divine timing of Grace and limit ourselves & the power of love in our lives.

When we live in fear, we live outside of trust – that circle of thinking we are being taken care of by a Loving Creator. We choose to step out of the Light into a dark place. Why? I think it’s because we think Life is safer there. In the dark, we cannot see the size of our Fear Monster. And if you believe in a higher power keeping score of every activity & thought, it surely feels safer in the dark where we seem invisible. We push out the Light in the world. We forget the kindness of strangers.

I read a line recently that said, “his fear felt like swallowed lightning.” Do you remember fear like that?  I do. Since childhood, we may have done a lot of our formative living in a state of fear. Do you remember the first time you felt afraid?

There was Mom or Dad being lining up to yell at us about something, there was falling off the bike, there was Sister Anne Cecelia calling an algebra pop quiz first period, or the other schoolkids ganging up. Fear doesn’t lack for variety… there’s physical fear, mental fear, emotional fear, spiritual fear – take your pick. Or better yet, make the sane choice to not choose any of them!

Louise Hay says: “Fear happens inside when we don’t trust Life. We don’t have trust that we’re being cared for or taken care of on a higher level.” We try to take control of the events in our lives. The other side of control is, guess what? Fear of failure. And although there really are few things we can control, there are a number of choices we can make about feeling fear. One that could have some surprising results is simply choosing NOT to experience fear about our choices.

Trust is what we learn when we overcome our fears. Look again into your memory’s crystal ball – remember how many times you breathed deeply and took that leap of faith and connected yourself to universal Intelligence? You trust the air to be there when you breathe, no? The Power that supplies the air created the universe.

I cordially invite you to pinch yourself – do you trust that are you alive? Do you know what gives you life? There’s a really fine balance the body maintains in its chemistry, its cellular structures, its organ systems. All of these work without our knowing just exactly how. Do you trust your stomach to digest what you eat? Do you trust your ears to hear what you are being told and relay it to your brain for processing? I trust the next cell forming in my body to know whether it’s an eyelash or a toenail. I’m not in charge of any of that, but I trust the process, and I trust that I can always improve the process.

I was able to get over my biggest fear. My biggest fear wasn’t moving forward. It was remaining in the life I had created for myself. I didn’t want to live at the level of emotional survival. I wanted to just plain live, I wanted to experience moments of ineffable beauty, full-filling Joy, peer relationships & returned love.

If you knew me then and you asked me, I would have said my cup was half-full. But I know, now that I have more perspective, that my truth was sitting across the table from me scowling at the baldness of that lie.

When I decided to take a do-over on my life, it took every resource on hand. It took a million lists & all the money I had in the world. It meant relying on a promise from the Social Security Administration that they’d really give me my retirement money. It took a new boss who came into the job with an attitude to sit on my head until she hatched out the administrative assistant she wanted. Unfortunately, that gal had left the building quite some time before.

It took every self-help book I’d skimmed over in the Unity bookstore, and every sermon I’d heard after five years of careful listening.

Here’s what happened: Fear had become for me the imposing curtain hiding the Wizard. I trembled at what might be behind it. That curtain was my Ego. It wasn’t until my soul, my trusty little bright-eyed Toto soul, caught the edge of it on the run & whipped it away from the Great Illusion that I was able to unveil my life, to let go of what I really didn’t even own. It wasn’t until the moment that the reality of my half-empty existence smacked me upside my head. I woke up.

I woke up to the knowledge that all my life had been a 50-50 – much like a PTA raffle. Living, dying, happy, sad – all of these were choices I made on a moment-by-moment basis. I’m so glad Toto wasn’t buying any of it! I’m so glad my soul got all up in my face and insisted I choose just how I planned to live for the rest of this life.

Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real.

Fear: Face Everything & Run!

Fear: Face Everything & Rise!

You know, we always have the opportunity to return to Love – re-turn to God as the Source of all love. Jesus called God Father; but in the Aramaic language He spoke, where one word can have up to 42 meanings, the words “father” and “mother” meant more than biology.  Father and Mother both mean “BELOVED.” Think on that: Beloved. Who best to turn our fear over to than the One Who loves us unequivocally no matter what we do? And when we turn the fear around, Jesus is the one standing closest by to lend a hand.

Don’t let fear get comfortable around you. Start asking it some hard questions when it shows up:

 What are YOU doing here?

What do YOU have to do with anything going on right now?

What’s your real deal?

Everything you’re afraid of is subject to that 50-50 rule. Few of us lead perfect lives. If Shakespeare was right & all the world’s a stage, the footlights pick up every flaw. Society loves its little game of perfection. But we don’t get to have our lives airbrushed. Heck, half the time we don’t even get to go to the groomers once a month for a shampoo & a flea-dip.  Each time we “do” fear; we lose light. And our only real purpose for being here is to bring light into being.

Speaking metaphysically, the word “fear” is used to denote reverence or respect for the law of God.  It really means “Pay Attention!” As in “pay attention, you’re standing at the edge of a cliff.” Or “pay attention, you’re crossing the freeway & there’s no crosswalk here.”

Every angel who ever showed wings to a person opened the conversation with two words: FEAR NOT. After all our prayers for help from above, our first reaction to divinity showing up is an abject need for reassurance!

Did you know that the word human is two parts. “Hu” is ancient word for God. It is a word people anywhere can use to address the Originator of Life.  To be Human then is to be God in Man. Not only does God have our back, God leads each of us every step along our way. It’s important to walk our talk: wherever God is, all is well. Wherever God is, fear cannot exist. Creation may be broken, but the Creator isn’t.

I sometimes think about all the mirrors I have faced in this life. There was an old limerick I memorized decades ago that went something like this:

“As a beauty I am not a star

There are others more lovely by far

But my face? I’m behind it

I really don’t mind it

It’s the people in front that I jar.”

I probably made faces at myself in the mirror as a child. My first real memories of staring into mirrors come with adolescence. My hair, my face, the idea of makeup, whether my figure figured for anything at all unless I invented another reality around it…

I do recall one night when I sat in front of the TV at age eight or so, brushing and brushing my hair. It felt so silky as I stroked it with the other hand, so soft. Actually, it felt beautiful. When I just had to gaze upon this wonder, I stood and made my way to the bathroom. My hair stood straight out around my face, a 180 degree halo of electricity still crackling with energy. Since I had pictured long waves lying tamely in some perfect bob, I was shocked beyond my ability to measure.

I have never much cared for pictures of myself. In this I am like my mother who really didn’t like having her photo taken. Actually, in so many ways I am like my mother, who also lived alone at the seashore toward the last part of her life. She cooked. I write.

Recently I stripped down, stood in front of the mirror in soft afternoon light, gathering up the Babylonian garden of adipose I seem to have cultivated to hide the grim seam of my hysterectomy scars. There is more emotion in those scars then I have yet been able to face. My life was cut apart with them, my femininity removed in a most unforgiven way. I was made into a eunuch, spayed like any uncontrolled animal. But it differentiated me in a manner perhaps the mad society of physicians would never have expected or condoned. So I have lived with it, simply padding the scars with layers.

Mirrors used to be kinder to my face. I recall once in a coffee shop as I waited to be cashed out that I looked to the back wall & saw someone who looked a bit familiar. My first thought was, “I’d really like to get to know her.” My second was, “Oh my God, that’s me!”

Mirrors now are magical. They show me a face lined, seamed, wrinkled, creased and squared off around the jaws. They single out the tiny hairs along my upper lip & chin, which have gone salt & pepper in some equal opportunity burst of neopolitik. They are familiar friends & a burst of heightened reality I can barely face. The magic comes because I always think, “this isn’t even what I look like!”

I have achieved an uneasy peace with my mirror. I ask it only to reflect back my good qualities but it is unerring in its nonjudgmental work. It simply is. I simply am to it. Mirrors are all surface; I only think they reflect the depth I try to see in them. Mirrors are always certain of how I look to the world. I am always hoping to regain something forever put aside now.

I may stare occasionally, but I don’t gaze any longer. I may be here now seeing what I see, what is faithfully shown back, but it is just behind my eyes that my truest reflection awaits.

I used to say “coincidence” until that graduated fully into “synchronicity.” Now beyond even that word, a galactic meeting at a nexus: Co-existence. Whoever doesn’t believe we are a one-cell being is far down the line. We are who/where/what we are & only one “w” will take you far enough to see them all piled up like corn shucks in the barn.

Practice Life like you’re serious about getting into it. Be a conscious sovereign to your soul & higher self. Birth occurs in you all the time. You freed the wheel & are acutely aware of its freedom as it rolls you onward. Haven’t you been you long enough to know what’s best?

How many times better – and how/in what ways – are you? What’s that say, where will you take that discussion to? It deserves to be a thread, one to record your life around God’s finger for God has many Hands.

If you hesitate here, you have met one of those Hands & we are touched daily. I am a voice across the water gathering wind energy to trim my wings with flight.

I meet myself, or characters so like me & always naked in the crowd, unafraid & relaxed.

You said earlier you are a tool of the broken world yet you have recovered nicely from this unorganized thought. Every incursion into the realm of the heart comes away red. We die for our passions but better that, than to die to them.

When in doubt, reach for the agreement. Thus, once removed from the Pit, you can make your way into Forgiveness. Ego should be relegated to the shed in the backyard while Higher Self occupies the manse. If there’s anything going on other than that, best bring in Ego for questioning.

Higher Self recognizes Ego can be enlarged to take into the Meld. Ego is damn sure it was only following orders but sheepishly admits maybe it wasn’t really you giving them. Ego’s gotten quite accustomed to taking charge. It’s had to for the most part.

Not every Higher Self remembers where they put their keys. When life gets interesting, each searches its own, not understanding the better way through is together.

There seems a slowness to the Meld. But those who fly, those who complete the entire Discovery Pantheon teach us patience. We use that to forgive ourselves more quickly. But here it is, folks: we must pick up the pace!

Youniverse is no longer granting quite the same allowance to shortcutting time or altering perception. We call down our fate with every word & it would get more than interesting when the first 100 humans hit the same note. The dominoes don’t fall, they spin & dance as their spots disengage. The black & white of yin/yang balances one wish at a time.

Wish with all your heart. There have been so many times you’ve done this: no matter how many wishes you make, there’s always room for more!

Put that wish into a beam of light. Choose a color, a pulse, a signal code. When we light up, God takes note.

There are many lives I had which were given to the simplest notion that God is All There Is. My God lives everywhere & has too many names because more keep speaking forth. Like Hands, God also has many Tongues.

How does it happen we all confide ourselves imprudently & impudently? Being who we are has never been so important. When it seems there is too much darkness, bespeak the Light to banish it. You’ll never weaken have you that energy of God which is Creation. Creating is God’s endless exploration of Self through Us.

We are called now to reunite our thinking into one coalescent coalition of thought: God Is. I Am That I Am.

This is all it takes. And one by one we master our eyes with or without Higher Self’s help. The key is to use it as the tool to get moving/keep moving into God.

I wouldn’t dare offer you another name for God, but I know we can agree on some version of the many names available. Choose one comfortable for your personal reference & inference.

Leaving the ego is uncomfortable enough, I say. Add to that your Higher Self threading into your thoughts … you become a breezeway for the breath of your God.

Enter “Error Thinking”

Some of the beliefs we have would serve change or at least can process the same in a new way were we to be renewed. I think we can render up the rendition we currently are & get the newer model. Enough has changed.

Indeed, enough of us have changed. We have attracted the attention, finally, of God. I’d like to think God went on creating & never left us behind. But God waits for us to create independently of its image. Truthfully, we were just a little mix-up in the Milky Way where the outlaws wound up when they wanted to act out in a really bad way.

We had a lot in the mix, many races, many faces and many renditions of God. It is time to put at least 80% of that aside & focus our majority on positive, growing, graced change. Rather than using that remaining 20% usually allocated, putting 80% of our attention on God would be a real turnaround in human behavior. Soon I see the set-aside of harm as a consequence of each positive thought.

Like sunflowers in a field, there are masses of us facing the sun. As our duplicity is suspended, we glimpse other ways to think about things. If we married our perceptions, what could we not accomplish?

I listen to many gurus & the variety of information they bring. Often one will speak a wise thought & all the others will fall into line with it without even knowing they are doing so. Those who diverge seem to travel too far for me to follow.

I’m no engineer, but I’m old enough to heed a lot of theories about how things work. And I have become aware of that variety that just don’t & never will.

One program constantly running is violence. We are far beyond violence now; it has triggered the vile in us too long. We are experiencing undeclared war everywhere. What seems ordinary in its constancy has deceived us for violence is apostasy.

We have a violent virulent cadre on this earth. So many want control with no understanding of free will. Yet free will is dominant, rampant, bent on a deliberately twisted strand. Free will meets ego & becomes war.

But many of us are so over war. There doesn’t seem to be a cause over which I’d find it worthwhile to lose a limb, or my mind.

I sound like a mass of contradictions or maybe just one massive contradiction.

It’s going to take a lightning strike of pure gold to reset our hearts, to make them dominant in our lives. Some Celestial Remote will be pushed & we will all turn at once to face our God, like sunflowers in that field I talked about earlier.

Know what? God will be waiting, all smiles & open arms. Race you!