brand new day love artist dot org

from the vault: osmosis (fig 2)

 

(from the vault: written while studying at the Wigmore Institute, February 2008)

this is the standard i have set for myself

it wasn't always this way.  in the beginning of the True Love Project,

i thought i was so cool

& it was all about seduction.  i thought i was really good at falling in love with people & people seemed to be really into falling in love with me.  it was a natural talent, like having perfect pitch or having the potential to be a ballerina or an olympic swimmer . . not necessarily guaranteeing automatic success, but teetering often on the brink of spontaneous combustion, just waiting for a match to light the forest fire

that kind of love, seduction, is really about control

even if we are madly attracted to someone, even if it feels as if the chemistry between us offers no alternative.  it is about spinning a web to lure the object of your affection.  it is about managing the other, wrangling.  it needn't be malicious or predatory but it is an action towards rather than a being with, and something to be aware of, especially if you are an olympic level seductress.  i learned the hard way.  i still love seduction but i need to be very clear what i am looking for when i engage in it.  be present.  it is astounding how often anger lies behind seduction or any number of other agendas that have nothing to do with the seductee . . . more about that later in the seduction section of the love artist manual (coming very soon)

but anger yes, anger i can discuss here – actually, these days there is hardly a moment where anger is not an appropriate subject.  i don't mean to sound naïve but when i decided to take these three months to live in paradise & mainline wheatgrass & come face to face with my light body, i didn't expect to be wading hip deep in resentments.  i know it's all about the clean colon here at Wigmore & that a clean colon means getting into every last crevice & clearing out every last piece of ancient piece of shit (literally) but i was very optimistic &, i guess, deluded when i thought i came here rather clean to begin with.  i don't know what i was thinking, arriving after a semi-hellish breakup with a raw nerve for a heart (and that was just the top & most present layer, or the first two weeks, of my detox) 

now we are 7 weeks deep in the shit sanctum, where even the brave fear to tread

they say, courage is fear holding on a moment longer

& i'm here for the long haul so I guess i am brave.  at this point i am so far inside the dark cave of my psyche, i'm beginning to think, perhaps foolishly, that the light on the end of the tunnel i'm heading towards is much closer than the one i left from 

we'll see

i started here by saying i thought i was a shitty love artist & i guess that is true, i am looking through the shit for the gold & i left squeamishness aside long ago. i am cranky & moody but i am not afraid, i am in it.  i was worrying too much about what other people thought ~ when you call yourself The Love Artist out loud day in and day out you run the risk (often) of people saying "I just don't see the love" or

"show me."

i've been so angry lately. it's just what's up.  i still show up & i am toiling out here in the love fields. it's easy to love when everybody is smiling and there to serve you, when everyone's bright and shiny and thinks you're bright and shiny too. but really, who wants to show up when it's pouring rain & there's no shelter, when you wake up & every situation that presents itself is one of either intense humility or unyielding boundaries AND you still have the daily practice you committed to in the face of god, of osmosis, compassion & becoming one, you gotta do it cause you gave your word & that is true love and that is true love art

from the vault: osmosis (fig. 1)

(from the vault: written while studying at the Wigmore Institute, February 2008)

 

osmosis: the flow of a solvent by diffusion through a semipermeable membrane from a more concentrated solution to a less concentrated one, until the concentrations are equalized. it is a major factor in regulating the movement into and out of tissues in living organisms

***********************

i haven't been doing a very good job as the love artist, if i am to be totally honest. i know it probably looks good on paper, & i have been working very hard, practicing calling the ether in & moving energy in & out of my heart & getting very still & listening to the ocean & the wheatgrass & low moan of our connective tissue

all night long

but truth be known, i am the bitchiest love artist EVER these days . . .

i have ridiculous standards for my own clarity & state of mind. that is how i got myself into this mess in the first place. i believe in the old cliché that you get what you ask for & ever since i started this whole true love project business, of loving the world one person at a time for one day, one hour, one evening or an afternoon at a time, the world has thrown me more and more complicated situations to test this seemingly easy equation . . . let me tell you, i don't know what you think you might know what it is like to be the love artist, but it is not easy to love everyone, not if you really mean it

what happens for me is, again, the high standards. i do not believe in a

kissy face, on both cheeks, you are so fabulous, let me take care of you or fuck you/seduce you

kind of love . . not that any of that is not love necessarily & not that i don't do any or all of these things on a regular or semi regular basis, but what i am talking about here ~ as my daily love artist practice ~ is:

1) lowering my resistance to any human being to as close to zero as possible (no mean feat, try it)

2) after this resistance is lowered, putting equal value on both of us as separate beings

3) eliminating the barriers between our separate concentrations of molecules so that we become, through osmosis, the same liquid flow of molecules

4) after we become liquid & the same & every molecule between us belongs to both of us then

5) that everything is love

(more soon & thank you)

true love will find you in the end

daniel johnston

 

It's Saturday morning & the calls are rolling in.  People are having a hard time & I would be lying to say I didn't wake up with my heart in my throat, like a feral cat whose vacant building he/she slept in every night was demolished, all of a sudden free & wondering 'where is home?'

"i had such an exhausting day of crying. i woke up crying . . took the kids to school in sunglasses crying . . took a yoga class and sobbed the whole way through, then taught a class also sniffling . . came home to finish reading patti smith's just kids and am still crying. starting to feel cleansed . . don't know what exactly i am crying about but it feels like death . . i feel death is coming . . death is around and although i am not scared . . i hate loosing people . . so that's my strange day lover . . i miss you and long for your presence . . . "  ~ one morning message

As I spoke about a couple of weeks ago, we are in a warp speed of transformation, according to the Mayan calendar.  The 9th Wave began on March 9 & today marks the end of the 1st day ~ what that means is we are rapidly shedding skins, we are being asked to release & surrender what doesn't work.  The problem is we still think it does.  I don't know about you, but it hasn't worked yet, you know, why not just be?

Because it is hard to just be, we don't know how to be.

Tomorrow brings the beginning of the 1st night of the 9th Wave (until April 13th).  In simple terms, the days are activating, initiating change (& how much more change can we take right now, if you look at the changes in the world since March 9) & the nights, well, just like the nights in our lives, the nights are time to rest & integrate.  Rest up my love warriors.

The reading below helped me this morning.  I know I am on an Osho jag, bear with me, it is good stuff, a sweet friend gave me THE BOOK OF SECRETS a couple of seeks ago & although I have had major Osho resistance for years, it is really blowing my mind:

"I say to you, "if there is fear, love cannot be," so you become afraid of fear.  You ask, "How can one get rid of fear?" This is again a fear, & more dangerous than the first one, because the first one was natural; the second one is unnatural . . . The question is not getting rid of anything; the question is only of understanding.  Understand fear, what it is, and don't try to get rid of it, because the moment you start trying to get rid of anything, you are not ready to understand it -- because the mind which thinks to get rid of it is already closed . . .

You come to a point where you know that you are afraid, & you come to understand, "Because of this fear, love cannot happen to me. So okay, what can I do? The fear is there, so only one thing will happen ~ I will not pretend love or I will say to my beloved (AND THAT COULD BE ANY ONE OF US, STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO YOU, RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU ~ the love artist) or my lover that is is because of fear that I am clinging to you.  I will become frank about it; I will not deceive anyone, I will not deceive myself.  I will not pretend that fear is love.  I will say this is simply fear.  Because of fear I cling (to the idea) of love, because of fear I pray.  Because of fear, I remember God. But then I know that is is not prayer, this is not love, this is only fear . . ."

A miracle happens when you accept the truth.  The very acceptance changes you.  When you know that there is nothing but fear in your being, what can you do?

Acceptance of fear opens the heart to love.  This authenticity & this fearlessness to accept the truth, changes you.  And when you don't pretend, don't create a false love, don't create deception around you, don't become a pseudo person, you have become authentic.  In this authenticity, love arises & then, fear disappears, love arises. This is the inner alchemy of how love arises.

Now you can love."

jules

(photo by shayna fox lee)

Drove to Greenfield last night to see Jules & have dinner with her & her posse.  As per the usual with my hard working, hard loving, hard driving, hard playing daughter, she was in "town" (which for her means in the Northeast: her circuit ~ Ptown, Boston, Western Mass, NYC) & Hudson, where I happened to be, was not on her whirlwind tour.  I had to go to her, & it was my pleasure.

If it has not been made abundantly clear, I am insanely in love with my daughters.

Jules & I have always had the most romantic of relationships, from the womb. It is just the way it is. If you don't get this, or my remark seems somehow offensive or inappropriate, well, I really don't care, because it is absolutely true.  It is not that I don't love my other daughters any less, though I am not of the school of being fair (in the moment) about my maternal affections.  Yes, I do have favorite(s) ~ in the moment, they are all my favorites ~ the one in front of me is (most often, unless they are very, very bad . . . ) is my favorite & they all have their very specific niche in my heart.  Those of you who know me, know I am exceedingly flexible, go every way & I am 1000% full-on in love with whatever I give my attention to. 

Oh Mama, thou protest too much.  Just love.

When Jules was very little but old enough to talk, she was laying in bed with me, patting me, snuggling, seriously, & telling me how much she loved me.  I think she was a little sick with a fever.  She told me she was going to live with me forever. Of course.  I said to her, well, someday you are going to fall in love & maybe have a family of your own.  She turned to me and said, do you mean married?  And I said, maybe . . .

She made a face and said, I don't think I want to get married.  And anyway, when I grow up, Eva (our tenant at the time) will be an old lady, she will die & I will move in upstairs with my children & take care of you forever.

This past fall, I was on a very ambitious Love Artist tour & there was the possibility of some actual physical danger.  This is a story for another time, but Jules happened to be with me at this time & without knowing the details ~ if we weren't already bonded in the most ultimate of ways, well, we are now, even more deeply than we knew possible.

When I presented this story to a divine channel of mine, she said, YOU MUST LET HER BE YOUR BODY GUARD.  THIS IS PART OF YOUR KARMIC CONNECTION. JUST REMEMBER TO THANK HER.

I do, all the time, but never enough. Absolutely never, ever, enough.

Thank you Jules, again.

(photo by shayna fox lee)

learning how to pray

This was the way I learned how to pray ~ because I wanted to know.  I liked this feeling: the opening of the heart, so simple & universal but that is the truth. 

I started to learn how to pray when I was a little girl & I learned a little bit here & there, but I really learned how to pray in ceremony.  I remember my first ceremony with the Grandmother in a very simple mild form.  I was sitting, struggling with a relationship, he was sitting next to me, in my heart I was asking for guidance.  I had a moment in the bathroom, where I got on my knees and asked for help: from god, the plant, the circle, whoever would listen ~ to help me, to quiet my heart & show me the truth, to release me from my fears. I re-entered the circle & suddenly my heart softened, just like that. I moved forward into a place that did not feel right (in my mind) or comfortable or the easy way, but of course it was the right movement & the deeper result was that it brought me into more & more ceremony, it opened my path.

I remember another situation, a year & a half later, sitting with a Grandfather road man who was about to hold a ceremony for me & my family.  At this point, I did not realize what it meant to hold a ceremony for myself, I thought I was merely "bringing the ceremony" to this land I loved, these people I cared for, because I had some intuition about this, that they needed this help, this light, not because I had a specific intention for myself. 

The idea for the ceremony had come to me while participating in a Sundance the summer before.  I had eaten some medicine that morning & while I was dancing, I had the vision that I would like to bring the medicine to this land in the desert outside of San Diego, close to the Mexican border, a place where there are many, many "illegal" crossings, where it is common to find shoes, water bottles, discarded clothing all throughout the high desert & where the border patrol comes through daily, sometimes many times a day.  I was frustrated with the same relationship that I had prayed about in the ceremony I described above.  I sat with the roadman & with one of my daughters, after we had cleared the land for the ceremony (the ceremony was to be held beneath the sky with no tipi).  I attempted to get him to give me some advice about my relationship but he was not offering any.  He turned to my daughter & I & said: "This is how it works: People come in with all of their stuff. They feel bad.  The beginning of the ceremony is hard & many people are suffering.  In the middle of the night there is movement & then everyone feels a lot better in the morning." Like that.

When I first started to sit up, I didn't know what I was doing or why I was there, but I knew I had to keep coming back.  At that ceremony in the desert, I sang for the first time, just one song & I lost it several times while singing.  The refinement of my understanding of what was going on in the ceremony came from an internal discipline that I could not have sought for nor could I have had a plan of what I wanted.  In the beginning, I often lost hours in tipis where I missed everything that was happening.  This still happens now, sometimes, when I am find myself in a meeting where things are working on a deeper level, due to (what I think) is a combination of the intent of the ceremony, the people present &, of course, the roadman.  With time, I became so involved in the transformation of energy within each person & the structures/protocol that I became more and more awake.  I think this also had to do with finally allowing myself to sing, which is of course, learning how to pray.

One thing that helps me to pay attention in ceremonies is to take time throughout the night to look at everyone in the circle, to really see them & to meditate that they are each a mirror or extension of myself.  I have learned a lot from this, particularly when I witness people having a hard time: getting well, trying not to get well, hanging back from the circle.  When I leave the tipi in the morning, I make sure to find these people & hold them & let them know I saw their hard work.  Many are surprised to be seen.  Some are still uncomfortable to be seen.  I know this is important.

Before my first grandfather ceremony, I picked up a friend in a cafe.  We sat in my car and listened to a talk by one of the 13 grandmothers on intention in prayer.  It was my companion's first time at any sort of ceremony.  We sat silently in the car and prayed.  For that ceremony & for many following, my big prayer was for no separation & this was when I started my practice of looking at everyone in the circle. I have long felt so much pain in my heart over feeling left out or excluded from life experiences.  I have learned in ceremony that this resides in an attachment to ego & this is what the medicine works on so beautifully, dissolving this separation.

My prayer shifted in another ceremony.  It was the first ceremony that I arrived without a big personal prayer.  This was not because I forgot or because I was not paying attention, it just happened that way. It was a shift into being more in the present moment in ceremony. In this ceremony, nothing existed outside that moment, as if nothing had ever existed before & nothing would come after.  The whole world was in that tipi.  It was at this time that I began praying for my path to be revealed.  There have been times when this seemed like it might be selfish, but I have heard from the medicine that if I am on my path and doing what needs to be done, then the whole world benefits & that then this prayer is a prayer for the world.

Actually this particular way of praying shifted recently, I just remembered.  I was sitting up next to a Dine man that I did not know.  Every time the drum came to him, after he prayed, he would ask me if I wanted him to drum for me.  I always said yes.  He took me much deeper than ever before, with my singing & my focus.  I remembered another road woman telling one of my daughters to keep the rattle close to her heart when she sang and I did this for the first time.  This was the first time (one of the only times thus far) that I felt the total magnetism between my heart, the fire, the song, the drum, the rattle & I felt myself tell the fire that I would take my prayer as far as it needed to go, that I meant this with all of my heart, total commitment.  

A few weeks later I went to another ceremony & had probably the hardest time ever with Grandfather medicine.  I was with a new roadman, someone I knew but had never been to one of his ceremonies.  I felt the fire so hot, I finally had to ask to leave for a moment and fell to my knees outside the tipi, feeling like an animal on all fours and getting well til I saw red.  It was dark and I do not know if this was blood or a vision.  I prayed that night for everyone and for myself in very specific ways, for specific, necessary things and I have been praying that way every since. 

bad momma

Not mentioned in the blog post below (I didn't want to wreck the ambience): when I bent over Nola to give begin her healing, I was carrying a small plate with charcoal & copal in one hand & a hawk wing in the other. The burning embers slid off the plate ~ no jumped off the plate ~ directly onto Nola's right eye (evidence below), luckily only for a moment, when, in it's entirety, the charcoal slid again to the carpet & BURNT A HOLE RIGHT THROUGH IT.  Nola quietly & calmly made her way to the bathroom where she appeared to be fascinated with what might look like a black eye & then laid back down for her healing, bizarrely without complaint . . . just a little chuckle "& for about a hundred dollars, you could get healed too . . "

Which is true.  It seemed to work quite well for her.

 

two ceremonies in a row ~ for the japan in every one of us

Today is the first day of spring.  Last night the full "super" moon was the closest to the earth in 18 or so years.

I spent the last two weekends in a row in deep ceremony, one with big plant spirit medicine, one with only love ~ both equally powerful.

An overwhelming feeling of a slightly pleasurable melancholy stays with me today. I am alone & I am struck by the realization that I am always sad both when I am resisting something & just after that something is gone.

In several grandmother medicine ceremonies in the last couple months I have had the opportunity of staring into something so big it hurts. If you have not experienced this, I don't know if I can explain it.  It is like the moment before being sucked into a vortex that you may possibly not survive, that you foolishly believe you can avoid by not looking at it but that you also know in your heart, you have been waiting for this your whole life, something that "cannot be named," both warning & calling & truth.

Last weekend, just a few days after the earthquake in Japan, I was privileged to attend a circle with a master curandero. I only drank the tiniest bit of medicine.  It didn't matter.  Within what seemed like just a few moments, it was clear that we were all held in a trance that had its origins in the deep movement of the earth.  It hurt in my bones.  This time I chose to look, if I can be so foolish as to think I had a choice, even though I was aware of so much fear.  I cannot fully describe what I saw, YET, STILL, but I want to say here, in front of all of you, that this thing that "could not be named" WAS loving, despite its immensity & its ability for destruction. 

There was a face to this movement that was asking for courage from me.  I did my best. There is more to be said here, when I am able.  But please remember, there is loving counsel available, for all of us, when we are ready to accept it.  I am willing to be ready to accept it.  This is where I am right now.  I pray for help & continue to feel as if I am being pulled through a sieve.  Again it hurts. Something big pouring through something tiny, me & you.

On this past Friday night, I held a small ceremony in my home, a healing ceremony for the people of Japan.  Except for a tobacco offering & some blessed chocolate, there was no plant spirit present.  I had (very last minute) put out a call for prayers & held the intentions of about 50 people from all over the world: mostly from the US ~ Miami, LA, NYC, Boston, Western Mass & upstate NY as well as prayers from the UK, France, Australia . . . . I had opened my home for people to gather there but at the last minute, everyone cancelled, one by one . . .

Before I go on I have to say ~ there is nothing, absolutely nothing I love more than sitting in ceremony with my daughters & singing & praying.

The other thing I want to say here is that I am so excited with my progress in holding sacred space without "medicine" or rather with the only medicine being Love.  I didn't believe it at first, that this could work & by work I meant, having the feeling of entering another realm where forms could be shifted & physical limitation of time & space could be lifted. Of course, I am very respectful of the plant spirits that have become my teachers & I was skeptical that anyone who had experienced the power of these presences would want to come to a ceremony where the only spirit is Love.  Obviously I myself hold this resistance.

I also must say here, that it is Love that is doing this work, not me.  I am merely opening the door.

I thought Nola was going to her dad's on Friday so I was surprised when she asked if I could pick her up at the train.  I had made the promise to everyone that I would be there between 8 & 10 pm, no matter what, so I was more than pleased to have Nola for company.  We worked hard to get everything ready, went ahead & made a big feast for the ceremonial after party, rolled up some cardamon & curry cacao truffles, prepared the room.

I have raised my daughters to believe that everything is always perfect & turns out as it is supposed to. Always.  I also have raised them under the belief, held internally, that I would not show fear when I knew bravery was in order, even when I was very afraid.

I went out for tobacco & when I came back, Nola was all in white, outlining a circle on the floor with white candles.  We began with some readings about the importance of the moon & it's relationship to the coming Uranus/Pluto square. Once we actually entered the circle, we read the names of all who had offered prayers & made the commitment to hold space with us & then we sat for a good long time in the dark, facing each other.

At some point, I spoke aloud a prayer that everyone, whether they were in the US battling an old karmic ego wound or in Japan mourning loved ones & fearing radiation, would realize that there was safety within & that old ideas of security/ what it meant to be held were being dissolved to allow this opportunity for something new to come, something that would not come without our complete surrender & that surrender was forgiveness of the self first & then release, surrender did not mean giving up.

We sang & sang & sang, back & forth to each other, in the dark & from the bottom of our hearts.  I then offered to Nola that she lay on the floor in the middle of the circle after I laid a spine's length of cedar on the floor for her.  In this space I used everything I had within myself to clear her energy fields of blockages & to lay down love in each of these spaces.  In this time & with these actions, we prayed for Japan & for all of you.

After I was finished, I asked Nola to heal me.  She had never done this before.  I gave her a few guidelines:  open & close the circle with the 4 directions, pray for all my guides & ancestors to help me, use your right hand to give me energies, use your left hand to take things away, smudge a lot, especially when removing energy & the most important thing ~ do not think you know what you are doing before, let yourself be surprised, do not throw any sensation away because you think it is not important.

I closed my eyes.  When I felt Nola bend over me & place her hands on either side of my head, I felt the presence, once again, of something so big that I almost felt afraid, almost. I was not afraid because I knew it was Nola, but I still had the same feeling, of something very big being drawn through something very, very tiny.  I realized I was holding my breath.  I consciously began to breath deeply as Nola began to sing, just inches from my face "I love you, all of you, I love you, all of you, I love you, all of you."

You might think this sounds corny in the privacy of your own home but if this was your daughter, you would know in every cell that some big medicine healing was going down in the form of Divine Love.

This is one of my tipi songs, one of the songs I am known to sing every time, like my absolute classic favorite hit single.  Nola sang without pause, over & over & over, even as her voice caught on some tears. She did not waver in her healing space.  She moved her peregrine feather over my body & continued to sing: "There is so much magnificence, in the ocean. The waves are coming in, the waves are coming in. Hallelujah, Hallelujah . . . . " Another one of my top ten.  She was singing my love back to me.  Without stopping.

I felt her tears fall on my face.

This was our prayer for Japan & for the Japan in every one of us.

 

more co-mingling with angels

for seattle boy sacred mantle

(the love artist 1996)

 

sometimes I remember it as if
my body was naked and so was god's.

there are hundreds of designated reincarnations
of spiritual deities around the world.

for seattle boy, scared mantle,
the next great teacher of tibetan buddhists in exile,
born, by grace or by luck, two blocks from a pizza hut,
for the rest of us, the holy & insecure, the need
for an extreme & coded love that will speak to us --

these moments are rarely blissful, more often like a train wreck.

freedom was outside the window
the day I heard the angels come.
it was the end of the world,
and god had risen to the top of the telephone pole.
he held some papers above his head, everyone was breathless
and he said, "where is my littlest apostle?"

my eyes burned as I rose to meet him, hovering first
at his feet and then I looked out at everyone
that thought they knew me.

the body knows the precise spot
on the beach 100 miles away
where someone it loves is waving.
it can feel the hollow shadow
beneath their eye. it knows the clouded leaf
behind the curve of the belly,
the forgotten trees.  it knows something
the size & weight of a small lemon, but smooth,
nutlike, close to the spine --

I am dreaming of a liquid world,
where the guiltless roam translucent,
like say we were in love & i was killed in your arms and then reborn
and many years later we found each other and the alien lover,
born within, would already know your body but I would not on first meeting --

I have a black eye & a white tattoo,
I know you will remember this,
thumbs pressed up inside
the braille of my skull,
a rose tattoo, like the inside of my eye,
a purple fragrant tattoo,
like the fugitive imprint of your hand,

the goodness of that quivering, bruised host --

at home with angels

(The Book of Hours of Mary of Burgundy)

A few weeks ago I had a conversation on the phone with a love artist intern of mine from many years ago.  She had come to live in the crooked little falling down house at the bottom of Columbia Street, the house that I never really lived in, but invited many, many other people to live in & help me keep the true love project on track: Kara, Crystal, Emily, Giorgio . . . . 

Kara is now studying for her Phd in Medieval Art.  I was talking to her about the blue in the various paintings of Madonna & Child & I asked her if she believed (as I did) that people at that time actually saw things like halos & heavenly visitations.  She was not sure, but she did believe that vision is cultural & what one can *see* is connected to what one *knows* to be true.

She brought up a trend, at that time, where patrons had themselves painted in the company &/or supplication of the Madonna or a saint of their choosing.  We discussed the possibility that they actually believed that they had a personal relationship with these deities, more real & beyond one of mere prayer or contemplation. 

This reminded me of when I was a child & believed that God visited me nightly, entering through the tiny window at the foot of my bed.  This visitation was usually, almost always, to remind me that I was special & that there was a certain opportunity waiting for me that would make all the hardship & (seeming) invisibility worth it.

It is hard to remember when exactly these seemingly delusional visitations became very, very real for me.

"What makes this image from the Hours of Mary of Burgundy, dated to the 1480s, so mysterious and compelling is that she is clearly depicted in the foreground with her prayerbook, and in the background we see the Virgin Mary and several women in supplication to her. The woman in the background is sometimes thought to be Mary of Burgundy - that perhaps she is dreaming or imagining her audience with the Divine Mother. Others have suggested that it is a portrait of her own mother in supplication to the Virgin Mary, and that adds another layer of maternal remembrance and devotion. Scholars really do not know who the background figures are meant to represent.

     I think it is interesting that the Virgin Mary is  being guarded, in a way, by the angels that sit around her - almost as a buffer between herself and her human supplicants. A great deal has been written about this image and the book it comes from. It is one of the finest and most well-preserved examples of late-Medieval/early-Modern Burgundian book illumination. Several of the scenes employ a deep, layering of space like this one - which was unusual for earlier medieval book illustration and would have appeared to be fairly innovative.  Gros bisous,  Kara"

what you can do: the earthquake in japan, the mayan calendar & you (pt 2)

 

 

" . . and when you have given up everything to make a friend a cup of tea
and tend her broken heart, stood up against the violation of innocent
children & their fathers & mothers, made conscious choices to live simply
& honor the earth, your steps will be lighter.

    When you have grown still on purpose while everything around you
is asking for chaos, you will find the doors between every room of this interior castle thrown open, the path home to your true love unobstructed after all."

st teresa of avila

 

We are all in a state of extreme discomfort, whether it is the discomfort of tragedy close to home or the tragedy that exists in our hearts when we feel helpless, helpless to help, powerless.  Unfortunately or fortunately we have designed our current information systems so that we can be so much closer together than ever before, news updated as we are reading/watching ~ as mentioned in the previous post, it is impossible to keep up with the information presented, physically, spiritually, emotionally impossible to keep up with what is happening in the world at this moment.

It is important to realize that at this moment in history we MUST stay with ourselves and by this I mean that we must accept our situation, whatever this situation is ~ whether it be homeless & lost & without food in Japan, or secure here in the United States with the potential paralysis of heartbreak.  We must be where we are.  Our strength in unity at this time (and this is what we need on the planet is STRENGTH IN UNITY) will rely on how we conduct ourselves at this important juncture.

It is our resistance to the speed of this time that causes our suffering.  It is our attachment to all that has come before that brings our heartbreak.  I am not discounting the compassion we have, that we feel in every cell in our beings when we see another person suffer.  Yes, this is real.  But like the waves of the tsunami itself, we must courageously release & be present, for ourselves & those around us.  Open, soft hearts.  Present.  No fear, or if you must, stretch into your fear as you would in a yoga pose, into the ache of you, opening, opening.

There is really no saying how these small movements inside of you will affect the planet.  It has been clear from many prophecies, that it is important to remain calm, to remain joyful, to remain creative.

"Remain true to yourself as well as to the beauty revealed.  Retain your personal integrity even in the moment where you are most fully immersed, having plunged deeply and swiftly into the water of experience.  Don’t drown in your imaginings, stay aware of what you are accepting into yourself and why.  You can swim with the river’s current without dissolving into it"  ~ Hillary Barrett

What you can do: 

The practical ~

1.  If you have the means to give money, the Red Cross is always the safest bet.  There are many, many small agencies & individuals who mean well & organize efforts in these states of emergency but it is very, very difficult to administer aid in such deep crisis.  The Red Cross has the most experience in this area & has had very few, if any, integrity issues in the past. Their minimum donation is $10.

2.  A friend of mine in San Francisco with a lot of family in Japan put out a request today for people (not on the West Coast) to purchase any/all Potassium Iodide tablets (you can get these at health food stores, CVS etc, Army/Navy stores, some hardware stores) in order to help protect or at least supplement immune systems exposed to unsafe levels of radiation. Her email is kane.emi@gmail.com & she will be expecting you.

For YOU (& through you):

Here are my personal recommendations to assist in the upgrade of consciousness that is happening at this time & to support those working to assist the planet who are in your social circles ~ KEEP YOUR ENERGY AS LIGHT & FLUID AS POSSIBLE>

1.  Stay centered, continue your exercise & stress reduction practices, eat well, eat light, drink water, sleep, rest, stay strong.  You are needed.  Grounding our bodies to the Earth to help stabilize and strengthen our nervous and psychic systems will help to more comfortably acclimate to these new energies.

2. Do not buy into the fear.  If that means not watching news or reading the paper, or at least limiting that, so be it.  It is ESSENTIAL THAT WE NOT SOLIDIFY FEAR.  While keeping your heart open & soft to those suffering, keep an image in your mind or physically on your person that reminds you that you are a loved & brings a smile.

3.  Witness. Do not attach. Always maintain the witnessing perspective, which allows one to never take anything personally, no matter what is going on.

4. Accept everything just as it is in the moment. We cannot change what has already happen.  Resentment, blame (no matter how warranted) & resistance creates suffering (also solidifies). Our true power lies in how we choose to respond & move with what we are feeling & perceiving.

5. Despite how counterintuitive this may seem, be grateful for this opportunity for healing, be grateful for this opportunity to come together. 

Sending much love to you.

Calleman's article on the Dawn of the Unity Wave, March 9, 2011