Riding the Light –

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  • Choosing Forgiveness

    Choosing Forgiveness

    This August is a scratchy thing to cuddle with, dull & smelling vaguely of rot.

    I move in & out of its shadows now. I sit uncomfortably in righteousness, no matter how “deserved.” I may take up a cause in all-fired outrage before I lay it back down in sheepish relief.

    Friends march a distant drumbeat, steady, remote, an echo of pulsing stars. At times I read by their light. At times, a cold silence intervenes. I am both instigator & recipient in this…

    Over my shoulder, I see all my friendships have been at a distance. The dance of life changes; that distance lends a glow. Even when I was with now-faraway friends, they had little time to include me. This was only noted in hindsight. Encounters could be close & intense, but all succumbed to time’s delimiter. Was it me watching the clock so closely? Since the scales will not balance well, it’s best I revise, review, release, relearn.

    A friend, for me, can be counting coup after a childhood of isolation. I am only as good in practice as my experiences allow. Early patterns will assert, loud as a coughing fit at a death scene. For a moment, all is Life! Color! Pageant! Then the pennons go limp to lie along the poles in mournful strands.

    I find having few friends acceptable now. And none within reach who understand well what I believe. Where I look for friends, I am likely to find open wounds. I ascribe it to their thoughtlessness for I do not wish to think it of my deliberations. I can decide against being analytical & simply go to sleep to see where the needle points come morning.

    At times, friends show me best how to not be in the world. But this is a world I don’t know how to be in anyway.

    I understand friends, for me, are part of an atomic structure which holds together only because it repels its own components. They mirror my lesser moments in shimmering tin rather than silvered glass. My truest friend is myself, for when I seek outer bindings, I discover thin connection indeed.

    In my cosmos, friends prove a fierce & fragile constant, a note sounded faraway, a Perseid Meteor slashing the throat of night. This is not my lifetime for sharing & baring; I understand so much more now by understanding none too much at all. My soul can be warm & pulsing; it can create music. But the notes are sounded against a toothed edge which cuts with intent to bleed, shaving truth from consequence. I stand stripped of belief, but no more unclothed than I have shredded coverings of others.

    I may always be the mote in God’s eye & God never blinks.

    Leaders protect the pack. They do not mingle. Unapologetic & tearful, I accept the verdict of my heart. I collect the slings & arrows lying at my feet. The stars & scars I bear alone.

  • Nothing Lasts Forever

    Nothing Lasts Forever

    I am caught by the peculiar gravity of life, its sheer & unexpected weight. I am “impressed” by it in the same way a baby duck is imprinted – following whatever has grabbed my interest.

    To plead innocence at this age is to smile at the cosmic joke. Yet I do plead it – not for this-now me, but for the “Innocent” I was. Living longer nets strange ideas in the strands of years.

    One decision can follow another like that duckling thing but lifetimes don’t necessarily hold to the consecutive rule of being lived in a tidy row.

    Nothing is forever but much is for all time. I am equally a liar & a lover. Flip the coin: belief is a single part of the investment I make in life. Investment becomes a vestment for my sacred moments – the ones I really believe in.

    Is this sacred? Perhaps. Blessed, certainly. I want to evolve to the next level – or, to play it up a notch, resolve to evolve. Can resolutions lead to re-soul-ment? Yes, I do believe this.

    As beliefs & patterns fall away, age wears me differently. The shields cannot always be kept after. Without a certain strategy, these don’t recharge & my energy has resettled into unusual patterns. The last shield to lay down has yet to go horizontal & it must for that next level to achieve.

    Age has made me territorial for better or worse. I claim the invisible: the ephemeral qualities of time, space & matter. I claim the insubstantial: grace & true love of life.

    I’m just rambling here. The words appear, raindrops from thoughts clouded with unreason; to be reasonable in chaos is a form of stillness borne of movement. As fear is refined & mined for its mixed assets there are gems to be found. To mineralize life, one must spark fertility. When that cycle slows or is discontinued, more rigid forms express. Thing is, with lifelong familiarity, I can flame them where they land before they burrow in. If I anger, they coalesce in heat, pointing here to a heart, constructing there a wall. They are nonetheless fused to the ruthlessness to which I refine my will.

    Because my train of thought runs alternate tracks from others, I don’t arrive at populated stations. A strange logic elicits strange results.

    This seems enough to say on the topic. I’ll get back to you when I figure it all out.

  • Random Poems: Unknown Source

    Random Poems: Unknown Source

    All the long, nonpareil days of August, I waited

    Walking beaches incessantly

    Combing the tides for word from you

    Only sea-glass emerged

    Not a word formed on foam.

    My hems are mud-clumped threads

    My boots caked in salt

    The flumes of my bonnet blown backward,

    Catching the joyriding wind.

    Not a whole shell is extant,

    Only bits & flakes, a bubble on a wave…

    Still I walk.

    My sisters look to horizons

    Expect me to raise my eyes

    But I am stuck in a story of you

    Where a single, cool, green cylinder

    Rolls to my feet.

    I bend & slick off the water

    I tremble, using my teeth on the cork

    [A faint ‘pop!’]

    The fainter smell of your ink

    The mystery of your yes or no

    Curled like a hermit crab in wine-bottle shelter.

    There is only one today;

    Always only one me

    So fraught with self & simpering love words

    They seek me out front & back

    They drip from me like raindrops down oilcloth

    Run to edges that curl the streams

    I wear a Papa Salt hat, yellow in this sunlit Other Day.

    I don’t expect a Prince a-riding

    I’d prob’ly fall in love with his horse & dash him from saddle,

    Leaving him standing bandyleg-beached

    As Horse & I gallop, splashing, into the sea.


    Time To Rain

    Mercury gone retro brings monsoons

    But since that last hailstorm in June

    Things are quiet.

    I feel like a chess piece out of play

    Cornered by a pike-poxed pawn

    A Queen at bay to the dwarf

    But dwarves are Earth & know the caves

    What better ally to be sent me?

    I throw the ball again to

    See if I can hit the sea

    It’s all downhill from here…


    Dancing On My Daddy’s Shoes

    Tho something I’ve never done, seems somehow dug into my memory

    Like finding a bone among the feathers

    A made-up story about a little girl I never was

    Nor can be this life.

    And so loved anyway

    Still dancing.


    When No Belief Was Left

    We turned back

    The trackless waste devoid of all save Hunger

    Beckoned no more

    In full retreat, we fled, thankfully

    Fragmented among ourselves,

    We slept in the ruins

    The mild nights belied our inner chill

    From all the ice & snarl, we breathed relief.

    Alive again to home & hearth. We were

    The heathens left alive

    As ghosts, alone & insubstantial

    To live among the resting of our lives

    So packed with promise just before the War.

  • The Blush of Being Still

    The Blush of Being Still

    My life has been sectioned off pretty securely. There was being a child, a ‘tween, a teen, etc. But when I thought the chrysalis sucked close to dry, I experienced a rebirth. Every time. The assuredness of God chucking me under the chin.

    I focused in on a quote today. It’s been on my desk panel for months, now. I decided to read it at least once each day going forward. I believe it’s from the movie “Pacific Rim” which I’ve not seen.

    Today, at the edge of our hope, of life at the end of our time, we have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other.

    Today there’s not a man or a woman in here that shall stand alone. Not today.

    Today we face the monsters that are at our door, and bring the fight to them.

    Today we are cancelling the Apocalypse!

    Somewhere, in the mind-altering moments, tiny switches are flipping. Or something like that is happening. Words that brought up powerful reactions are neutralizing. When I remember the story to tell about that word & that feeling, it is no longer of any stir in my life.

    I can feel them switching in others too, as we share thoughts & ideas, discoveries & dreams. To even be speaking of dreams, the wishes culled from THIS rebirth…polar separations dissolve, my “personal poles” come together, in the form of a plug going into a wall. And I’m not afraid of the electricity bill anymore.

    Everyone I speak to is more “themself”, more genuine, more interactive with me than before when I’d see them for a “Hi!” Now each encounter means a deepening of soul in order to respond to where that person is…especially if I feel like I’m watching a first grader. Until the next Teacher finds me so as well. Beginner’s Mind allows my interactions with the world to flourish.

    So, there’s no smart ending to this one. It’s been in ‘drafts’ for days while I figured the rest would come through. But I think it really ends here.

    Loveya,

    Carol

    “Officer Carol” comes out: Tut! You ‘re just getting that?”

  • Journeying to One

    Journeying to One

    We wore fringe like the Buddhists wear bracelets: we became aware, the world danced around us, the lightest breeze lifting our spirits & our connections. Downward to earth, upward to sky, midline for the horizon. We honored the Directions, we knew when to burn sage, and how much. We sometimes walked through great clouds of it when in Ceremony.

    I know all these holy words, trigger words, careful-of-spirit words… like rubbing up against Spirit can be done wrongly. I knew the words for the Iglesia too, didn’t I? I have worshipped in so many places. I have heard the camels crying in the back of the Cantors’ voices.

    I have no real idea how I got through to this life; I have been scrambling to find a place for years. And places were found: little nests to nestle in. And then, that hop to the rim, the peeling away from what is behind to the incandescent world ahead. One final look good-bye & I spread my wings for flight.

    I am voracious of appetite, appealing of sight, aware out to the ends of the fringe, the sensing antennae probing its own night, calling in the breeze to dance. I am not perhaps the woman I was meant to be (whatever that means) or the woman I wanted to be. But, hey, this one’s interesting. I’ll hang here awhile, put my Spirit-Arms around this one & walk here alongside.

    If each generation of Guardian Angel is a future self, I’m all in. You’s are my antennae out into the Cosmos of Order. You each have touched a place I still move toward. I’m getting there, but far too many distractions need to be explored to complete the arrival.

    What Gifts I am given!

    For most times, this feeling has brought about geographic change: but there is no place other than this one to be in for Now. so I’ve set out journeying compass inward, to other levels. I feel the tiny arrow dancing delicately over my organs. With each tic, I am touching other faces of the person whom I purport to be today, knowing these are filaments, not tethers.

    Of course I meet myself coming & going! No wonder I get the tracks mixed up & find myself in the spot I started out from, just in another place. There was only one of me here all this time?

    Yes this takes hold once more. How many times have I read about One?

    Times like these, I feel I am raking around the edges of the path going awa’. I greet the travelers & offer water to the weary. I am wearing soft shoes. I am not the spiritual countermeasure to my own development any more. I am connecting to the upper just a bit more than ever before.

    This move is dimensional. I am systematically unlocking all of the gates. Usually there is ritual with this, & groups entering their energetic support in ceremony. But it’s not me & a memory at play here. If I ask them, they will attend in their hearts, which is our meeting place of ever. In these moments, abbreviated & elongated simultaneously, I must prepare.

    Some friends don’t get onto the inner spiral. Some friends loop out & away from where I am called to be. I hear myself, at times, & I can be giggly-appalled at how I’m dealing with situations. But overall, I’m playing another level of sound, light, frequency, vibration of perception. I like what’s over my inner horizon more than the light limning the sunset desert, tho this captures me well.

    All of it so beautiful!

    I have made a big deal of Spirit – I’ve cloaked it in beads of lucent knowings, I’ve crowned it with my dreams, I’ve set its feet to dancing my music. I thought I was honoring Spirit in these tiny ways…and rightly so. But now I understand that Spirit has been my shadow always with me, always pushing with the same strength I ever pushed. We’ve been In It since the beginning. We will see it through to the end.

    We have permission to live forever.

  • Microcosmic Magic

    Microcosmic Magic

    I am losing height. I refuse to say “shrinking.” I say, instead that I am “condensing.”

    The saying about the teacher appearing when the student is ready & v/v takes on a new depth of character when I impose upon it my idea that an avatar is a teacher. Avatars are icons, a ton of activation lies under one button, one that responds to heat.

    A legend exists powerfully around Eagle & Condor. There is much information available & it is an Old Tale carried forward in all cultures on some level or another. Could this be an equivalent logic for the “lion laid down with a lamb” that we see so familiarly?

    A teacher is now represented by an icon or a logo, activated by touch. When the teachers determine it is time for learning what can only be pursued under the guise of teaching, they start pushing buttons. My lessons need to continue; now they come by offering to teach. This is the time to build on new glory: not rely on old laurels.

    Teachers all. Students all. Who am I to ask for the youniverse to line up just with li’l ole me? Who am I not to do so when I’m assured it IS all about me? Your God & yourself should be at least synonymous, if not twin-headed. Avoid symbiotes here, at all costs. The only worth-ship is Equality. It is said worthship=worthship.

    Last Monday, a friend & I drove to Socorro, taking the old road. We stopped at the Bosque del Apache where I beelined to the gift shop & bought bookmarks of beautiful shots taken in the Bird Sanctuary by a worker. Saturday I found a Mexican bobbler, which I believe, a representation of a condor. And something eerie about that white-painted head. Vultures are the clean-up crew. You may not want to know where its head has been.

    The energetic environment shifts around me as I do minimal rearrangements of what is already here – acquisition of a black n white lamp triggers a scene including my Unity White Stone Ceremonies. I suddenly “see” the shift & make it so. That this is in preparation for my own shifts, I know.

    (A short aside: I picked up a cloth elephant at a yard sale, putting it in my living room. Two days later I realized I had put an elephant in the room…and the day after that, I realized no one had said anything about it. That point made, I gave it to Rain’s granddaughter at the Farmer’s Market yesterday. Now there’s eagle & condor? A language of avatars is coming to age here.

  • First Rung

    First Rung

    The thoughts sometimes gang up on each other, yeh? I catch myself in the  midst of one even as another is waiting offstage, tapping a toe. So many analogies can be drawn: the next wave in the ocean when I’m still tumbling from the last one.

    I live near the Rio Grande, a handy river from wherever you look. Come, drift with me awhile. Hook your arm through mine or maybe catch onto the rope of my innertube… where you going in such a hurry anyway?

    I had two monkeys worth of weeks lately – let your imagination punctuate that. A double trip to Hillsboro, my former neighborhood, close-knit & off-road. Dipping in & out of that energy was enervating to Spirit. Each foot of height in the road lifts all of me together.

    An Aside: My client is an 89-year-old woman celebrating 90 this weekend. The family gave her the “easy job” of selecting the photos for the family collage. But, 89 is 89 & more inclined to sitting with a good radio program…than to sort through thousands of photos. Now I ask you, ‘was that fair’?

    You know, there is a story around everyone, like the tail of a comet passing by. As I learn these, I can tell them well. I’ve written years ago about writing Truth. I have a habit of telling people, go look at my blog, & then if anything happens with them I want to document, guess whut [sic].

    Well, those eddies spun me away from the stream! Are we still threaded together? There is, of course, always more.

    The longer story I love to jaw with friends disappears at times. I am acquiring a reputation as being curt, abrupt with some; especially in a business transaction. But business has blurred in practice, hasn’t it? When not otherwise actively engaged, I turn into “Officer Carol”, my Libran balance kicked in the shins by the singular impoliteness of a worker on her phone in lieu of hired duty.

    These situations rush by me now differently because they no longer rush. Circumstances & situations have slowed down to a manageable pace. I am practicing hard to embody mindfulness – also far past due. It’s arrived with an entourage as well as a flourish.

    So, I’ve designed a line of postcards. Plain white, 4 x 6, unusual fonts, thoughts from mine own mind in writing for all to see. I am calling these “Subtitles” since they are the part of the interaction which runs a stealth program under that mindfulness. Diversions. “Somethings Shiny” to use the proper pluralization.

    Déja vu … My life in two words.

    Do Angels have Tattoos?.

    My roommate said red rocks are just sunburned.

    I need to invite in the audience for this line of cards; most traffic here is after the memory evoked in a photo & we have umpteen terrific photogs in town. My cards are spare, kinda Art Deco pieces, each one a standalone for sending a friend, making a bookmark, propping on the bedlamp… How much will you pay for a relevant thought?

    Meanwhile, I’ll start sending them to my friends all over. How many pictures of them will be taken before they arrive – & after? I can only think in these terms since I believe this line to be captivating & mostly funny.

    Well.

    Hey, thanks – this is my fork right here … see ya next time. Downriver, right?

  • Wolves

    Wolves

    Going up the stairs is so different from coming down.

    The wolves at the door watched, silent, as I left

    Growling as I returned

    My stare equal to the threat.

    There is a way around this

    Yet to be found.

    So I enter the waking day through the Door of Dreams

    Destinations unknown, glowing in the distance.

    œ

    If all dreams come to Truth, and all wishes are granted

    You will come to love me again, or never quit…

    The day for that may choose a future I do not.

    I travel towards Heaven by nightlights, kind deeds, by song lyrics.

    I smell roses – their scent lighter than air.

    I flick through sturdy white promises

    Made on different days.

    I drive a chariot with blind horses

    Whose eyes glow green at night.

    I give no order to gallop:

    The whip is still, more antenna than goad

    A bit of me is still impetuous & unguarded

    Shall I free the harness, or leap?

    œ

    I want you to burst within me like fireworks:

    I contain your color, your fantastic shapes, your dragons with emerald eyes.

    I want you weak as putty in my arms with barely the strength left to hold me there.

    I am the womb that can contain you –

    The Stargate you wish to transform into; fluid with mystery.

    There are no flaws inside of me where only essence reigns

    Where mirrors matter less than a sigh.

    œ

    Somewhere is a life I lived loving someone

    Without giving myself airs; I held a hand; we walked together.

    I slow-danced with one man in a tidy room

    I offered my face for kisses

    As he held me tighter to comply.

    Somewhere we ran together into cold ocean

    From hot beaches

    Laughing at being touched by water

    In places we touched by hand

    Or planned to.

    That somewhere is not my place

    That time is not my now.

    My choices bring me to Silence

    In peace & a kind of purity

    I rest my one wild life.

    œ

  • Montana Mind

    Montana Mind

    However, this is the Gila Wilderness in one teensey spot.

    Dear God,

    Help me remember it all – the strife, the conflict we so no longer need. I think we’ve established that, yeh?

    Let it fade to a shudder of bewilderment, almost amusement, at the future festivals to Remember Old History – or the 5D rendition of it. Let it never be re-enacted.

    Show me how to open my mind/heart to all I experience today. move me into laughter & joy & help me set Anchor there. both

    Help me better understand I am somehow She Who Once Was, with She Who Is now in charge. I accept both with Libran equanimity (tho I mostly ally with the latter.)

    Thank You,

    Love,

    Carol

  • Mindfulness

                                                                                                                                (To GE*)

    I named this journal, Whimsey. (http://www.teues.com)

    This essay is about discovering mindfulness.  Oh, not in the Tibetan way.

    I am reading a book called “Belladonna” by Anne Bishop.  It is the second in a trilogy – but I have missed the first one, as usual.  Second books of series build the plot, layer the pot: the villain darkens, the heroes & heroines journey to find their best weapons & refine them.  In the book, what the characters think manifests in the landscape.  For example, anger will come up somewhere as rocks & stones.  Next comes clearing the garden of rocks & stones.

    I am following the word “mindfulness” around in my head.  Like connective tissue, it wraps every thought & idea.  How can I just be coming to Realization with this? The word has visited before, like a butterfly, noticeable, distinct, unique.  But it seems it has never lighted for long: a quick appearance, a fanning of wings (tasting my energy) & off to the next.

    Today it is hanging on a bit, winking in & out at me.  This is not a ‘gratis’, or pro bono appearance.  I must pay for it with my attention.

    I was able to bring my focus back to what I was doing in the when of doing it.  Wow! This is a huge shift for me.  Putting one foot in front of another while consciously feeling what each movement accomplished in my body as it was being made. 

    I wonder, is the sea conscious of every wave?  Of course.   This is the Sea of Consciousness.   I notice an old joke: The old man fish swims by two younger ones & says, “Enjoy the water!”  The youngers pause for a moment to ask each other, “What’s water?”

    I notice my attention favors the future.  What has been happening in my wake? Have I been knocking folk about like tenpins as I pass – the rush to achieve my future overwhelming my present?  Have I been bathing others in a warmer flow where they may take a deeper breath? Is my landscape sandy beach with prickly sawgrass, or towering misted mountains with meadows afoot?

    As to manifestation…a short tale: there is an aggressive boxer on the next block up.  This morning, his maybe eleven-year-old master held his collar as I passed.  I thanked him, telling him the dog had threatened me in the past to the point where I turned around to take the next block over.  He apologized. 

    I neglected to tell him this dog also jumps the back fence to threaten my way down the alley.

    As I walked the alley home, I mused on whether Boxer would be “out back” & he was.  [Location of Thoughts?]  He leaped the fence growling & in stiff-legged advance.  I used my MOAV** on him, faced him, walked at him on loose legs with a stiff back, shoulders up, handweights bristling.  Boxer backed off, but too reluctantly, this time, more ready to engage than when I threatened him off before. 

    I will not walk in the alley on that block anymore.  Why resist?

    I was lit up with anger, ready to wrangle, on DEEEfense.  “Dog, just walk this way & see where these handweights line up on your short-ear, square head.”

    I understood what I was bringing to myself as I formed the thoughts. Is the dog to blame?

     I was able to let it go by the end of the block, a scant 40’.  I feel tingling again as I write of this, yet I know it is of no profit in this when.  I cannot live today doused in a simmering growl.  I choose to let it go & re-breathe my day.

    I think this might be Mindfulness on approach.  Gaining? Landing?  Thank you, Butterfly.   Please, would you stay for just another moment?  I remember now: it’s the only one I have. 

    • to Gina Emerging **Mother Of All Voices