I’ve been reading a book by a Cherokee woman that’s quite different from the other Native American books I’ve read. It was written in the 1980’s and has a kind of a New Age flavor to it, which is kind of disconcerting and kind of good at the same time. A lot of what she’s saying connects with what I’ve been experiencing lately, especially about the land and energy.

Last night I kept dreaming on and on about how the position of my body during sleep affects the quality and nature of the dreams I have. This is something I’ve recognized for years, even back when I was a teenager. But I kept dreaming it. There was far more to it than I’m remembering now. I vaguely recall being delighted that these teachers were teaching me this now (what teachers?) and there was some instruction on the chanting of sacred vowels, something I’ve been practicing since reading another Native American book, Touch the Earth, in February. Mostly I chant “O”. That’s the most powerful for me, especially I think because of my mystical experience with it when Di was in labor. Powerful stuff, these sound vibrations!

I first encountered the concept of sacred sound back in 1991, while reading some arcane little book whose title eludes me. It felt so intuitively right, everything the author said about sound, and I knew he was on to something important. When I chant “O” it’s such a pure sound, that even in my deepest voice there’s also a higher tone present, like the sound of someone running their fingers over the edge of a wine glass. Often the human in me is lost. It all becomes pure vibration.

I don’t know what the teachers were teaching me in my dream. I wish I could remember. Lately I’ve had very vague recollections of receiving many teachings during the night, but I can never remember them by day. I guess it doesn’t matter. My dreaming self is likely the most receptive part of me anyway, so I suppose the teachings are being assimilated.

 

I’ve been feeling for years that I’m not meant to have any human teachers in this lifetime, yet I still have teachers. Isn’t that incredible! Clearly were not alone here. Clearly there is a whole universe filled with sentience.

I just had another vague recollection from another recent night of dreaming. Something about or related to that quantum physics reality of two particles staying in sync with each other even on other sides of the universe. There is no separation, I understand that, but there’s more here I can’t put my finger on.

Generally in my life I’ve been feeling a greater sense of oneness lately. There seems to be little separation between the cats, these wonderful marvels, and me. We’re emanations of energy from the same field or ground. We don’t really start or end as individuals because where we merge with the ground there is no separation.

And back to the sleep-position issue. If subtle changes in our position while we sleep have profound effects on us, then location is far more powerful than I ever imagined. Imagine what is happening in our waking day, when we’re not just turning from our left side to our right, or moving an inch or two here and there. We’re moving profound distances, feet and yards and even miles. And re-orienting our bodies, north, south, east, and west countless times.

And when I get in my car and drive all the way up to Boulder County, and two days later drive back, maybe that’s so disorienting to me because it requires too massive and quick a response to changing energies. There’s probably a possibility of deep teachings here, I’m sure. Hard as this back-and-forth lifestyle has been on me, maybe it’s teaching me about energy. I’m learning to feel the subtle differences from place to place. I think I need to make a practice of grounding myself in the energy of each new place as I arrive. It’s so disorienting as it is. I need to make sure I’m connecting.

Our human potential is astounding. The person we can become in response to the energy of just one spot is vastly different than the person we can become just two inches over. I’m sure of that. Place holds potential.

There’s something elusive hiding out on the fringes of my awareness. Not the big insight I’m waiting for, something smaller, but maybe related.

Something about this experience with simplicity. It’s changing me in a way I can’t quite put my finger on. Or, if I can describe it, it would sound so clichéd, because these metaphors have been so overused. Yes, there is a new clarity that simplicity is bringing to my life. But can I describe what I mean by clarity? It goes beyond, way beyond, clear thinking. It’s not a product of the rational brain; rather it’s a spiritual form of sight. It’s a different lens placed over reality, revealing a richness that’s impossible to see in a hectic life. And it’s not that hectic people are just too busy to see with this clarity. It’s not that they could see this way if they took a few weeks off and did nothing. It’s a total paradigm shift that I don’t think is possible without a radical, permanent acceptance of simplicity.

What did anything in that last paragraph just mean? Why does language fail around the most important things? What is it that modern life cuts you off from? What is it that is gained by slowing down and simplifying? Maybe it will be easier to express once I’ve been here longer. I don’t think I’ve fully made the change yet.

There’s some kind of ease I seem to be developing in shifting awareness. To what--how do I describe that? Expanding my awareness, just another overused phrase! Yes, expanding my awareness with just the subtlest little shift. How do I do that and why am I only able to do it now? I couldn’t possibly know how to explain any of it, yet it’s the simplest little thing. I think of all I’ve done is reconnected with the earth and with the sacred. To use yet more clichés, I’ve connected with my sense of kinship with all things. Is there any point in me trying to describe this? The words that are coming out bare no resemblance to what I’m trying to say. Yet it’s so darned simple! I’ve expanded my awareness. OK, we’ll have to leave it at that for now.

I was sitting in a parking lot one day recently when I was in Boulder County. It was around lunchtime and there was traffic zip-zip-zipping by incessantly. I wondered what our ancestors would think if they were with me in the car. All of this frantic rushing about. They would have to think people are going to something very important. Maybe the funeral of a highly revered member of the community. Or an important speech on something vital to the well being of the people. But no, all the rushing about was just to grab a burger or a taco. All of this madness and this ridiculous waste of fossil fuels just to deal with a mid-day meal. And most people alone in their cars, no connection with others, except the transaction at the drive-through window. Meal time reduced from an act of communion to this crazy detached madness!

And I’m always taken aback every time I go up there with the franticness of everyone in their cars. Why are they in such a hurry? Clearly it would be difficult to stay present when you are constantly rushing to the next point. Where is your mind? Not there in the car. Not there in the moment, I’ll tell you that.

That’s why I love the fact that people out here wave to one another when they’re driving. You have to stay present in order to be able to look at and acknowledge the other drivers. You can’t be lost in your own world or mentally rushing ahead to your next destination. Enough sense of community still exists here that we acknowledge each other, genuinely. We see individuals and families passing by us on the roads, not lifeless hunks of metal and rubber.

I’m getting the urge to maybe start writing. I don’t know exactly what, but something having to do with simplicity and my spiritual ideas. I don’t know who I would write for, am I thinking magazine articles, a book, or just more entries in my blog, which no one reads? Or newspaper articles, or other people’s websites? It’s not clear yet, so I’ll just wait and let the urge deepen if it wants to, until it can tell me what I'm meant to do.

I continue to inhabit twin realities these days. They run side by side crisscrossing and intermingling. I’m starting to think I’m haunted, or crazy, or both. Last Saturday it got so intense for a while that I truly began to question my sanity. I kept seeing things that aren’t there. Native American things. Even the letters on the pages of the books I read morph into Native American imagery. Images get layered over even the words in this book.

 

I know how crazy this sounds. Yet, I’m fairly certain I’m not crazy. And in the past week or so, in some of the books I’ve been reading, there have been statements that kind of lead me to believe that I actually might be haunted. Not in a spooky, scary, negative way. Just in a persistent way, to get my attention. By the spirits of Native Americans who died because of the white invasion. I think they think there’s something I can do to raise consciousness among us white folks. I think that’s where this urge to write is coming from.

In one of the books, and I’ll quote it when I find it, the author spoke about how Chief Seattle said hosts of Native American spirits would haunt the streets of the future city (Seattle I guess) trying to trigger maybe a remembrance and a return to balance. And then in another part of the same book, I think (I’ve been reading too many books lately) the author spoke about a prison guard who had witnessed a pipe ceremony. There were two guards, one who did and one who didn’t look at the pipe once it was assembled. Since the pipe is one of their holiest objects, it’s inappropriate for non-natives to look at it. The author spoke of his wish that the man who looked would be haunted from that moment on, not in a malicious way, but just that he would be gripped by a need to learn more, to see the reality of the native experience.

So, somehow I think I’ve got myself haunted. And that’s OK, as long as it doesn’t overwhelm me and send me into true madness. For now, I guess I’ll just wait and see how this develops and what it leads me to do.

Writing would be a good vocation for me. I’m just not very confident in my skills as a writer. Or in the self discipline that would be required. But I do think I have things to say that are worth sharing. So maybe…who knows?

Wish I knew what to write about tonight. I’ve been dying to get a chance to write, not because I have something specific to say, but because I still feel so maddeningly close to a breakthrough of some sort in my thinking. I guess I’m just hoping that the act of writing might help me along somehow.

 

For the past few weeks I’ve kind of felt like I’ve been living in two separate worlds. I keep shifting back and forth. I can’t really explain it, and if I attempt to, I’ll probably just sound psychotic. It’s just these tiny shifts during my day to day activities. Little visionary moments where I see another layer of reality. Everything is subtly morphing and I’m sensing just a deeper, richer, infinitely more complex reality. There’s so much more here, right under our noses than I ever imagined! I wish I could give an example. I will when I catch hold of one well enough to describe it. It all largely has a Native American flavor to it, but as I said in my last entry I believe the Native American spirit is an embodiment of what it is to be human. So maybe what I’m reaching is a deeper more complete embodiment of my human-ness.

Who am I becoming, and what do I do with it? I feel like I need to be doing something, but what? Will the answer ever com?

Hm. I just had a thought. It’s not anything new but it feels maybe a bit more profound tonight because I’m coming to it now just a bit more evolved than I have been before. It’s about changing the world by changing myself. I’ve heard countless New Age people suggest that since the world’s problems are too overwhelming to take on as an individual, that our task is simply to work on our own spiritual development. By doing so we can help to harmonize the world. It has always seemed important to work on the self, but seemed a little absurd to think that my own spiritual evolution could have any significant effect on world issues.

 

But, I’m thinking tonight about what I’ve learned about energy. I think a task for me now is to experiment with energy. I need to learn to resonate with bigger and bigger energy, or higher and higher, really. Right now, I’m humming with the Native American energy held here within the essence of this land. But next, I need to get humming with the land itself, eventually feeling my way into the vibration not merely of Colorado or this region, but finding the frequency of the whole earth and humming with that. That would take deep hard work, but if I can, then I’d become Planet Earth and I assume from the wisdom of that place I may find global answers and be able to influence the global consciousness.

 

Maybe you think I’ve lost my marbles. I suppose this all sounds like some magnificent delusions of grandeur. But I made the vow when I was fifteen that this life be a quest for wisdom, and I know I am firmly on that path!

I need to work with energy, way more deeply than I have ever done.

Again I’m feeling close to some breakthrough in my thinking. I don’t know what yet, but I’m working on it. It has something to do with simplicity, I feel fairly certain. Not only simplicity, but simplicity as a path to being fully human.

 

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and a lot of reading lately on a bunch of interrelated issues: materialism, consumerism, this modern industrial era’s quest for “progress” (whatever that is) and profit, at the expense of the earth and its inhabitants, the voluntary simplicity and back-to-the-land movements, and the Native American outlook. I’ve also been studying the issues of poverty and globalization, which seemed to be wickedly interrelated. And of course, the role of the corporation in the desecration of the earth. I could go on for pages if I wanted to write about my thoughts on each of these issues. The breakthrough I’m sensing will it in all likelihood be a synthesis of all of these thoughts.

 

The Native American stuff has probably been at the forefront of my thoughts. My new realization is that the native peoples embody what it is to be human. Anybody on this earth who sets out on a path to being fully human will eventually arrive at a philosophy of life that is very similar to indigenous peoples’ beliefs. They haven’t lost their way, as we have. They still know and have always known, what is to be human. We white folk have forgotten.

 

My own personal experiences and gropings have led me to this conclusion. Without a teacher, just feeling my way along, I’ve discovered some Truths. It’s so wonderfully affirming to find in Native American writings references to the same Truths as I’ve stumbled across.

 

Most notably are my experiences of the layers of energy in the land, plants, animals and people, and also with my understanding of Power. The native conception that everything is alive may seem quaint and primitive to us modern folks, but it is absolutely real. There is no way for it to be otherwise. I am an emanation of energy, as is everything else. I may have a unique vibration, but it is closely related to the vibrational fields around me and in fact is part of the fields around me. My skin is not a boundary; it does not mark where I end. In as much as I am in alignment with the energy of the land, I am one with it.

 

It’s been wonderful to find similar statements in Native American writings. When Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce said “The earth and myself are of one mind. The measure of the land and the measure of our bodies are the same,”--he meant that literally. In the past such statements wouldn’t really even register in my mind. I would take it as metaphor. But it is absolutely not metaphor. It is a clear, literal description of reality.

 

And I think it was in Vine DeLoria’s writings that I came across his explanation that each geographic locale emanates its own unique energy, and that people are shaped by the land. He said westerners recognize that there are regional identities (like New Englanders, or Southerners) but don’t acknowledge that it is the land that produces the humans. This is knowledge that I felt my way into when I moved to Colorado. I remember walking on the trail around our development in Erie and beginning to feel the unique (and sad) energy of the land for the first time. Well, not for the first time. I’ve always felt the energy; it’s just that it was such a constant presence that it was hard to separate it and identify it. Moving away from Pennsylvania, out of the energy I had always been immersed in, I believe, helped me to identify it for the first time.

I think I’ve said it before, but as we destroy the land we are literally destroying ourselves, or a way of knowing ourselves. There is so much knowledge and so much sacredness out there, it is so vast, but bit by bit we desecrate it. How can we live in such total ignorance?

In order to reconnect, there has to be a return to the land. In cities and suburbs, how will people ever feel their way into this knowledge?

On the drive in to pick Collin up on Wednesday, going down I-76, I was debating whether to take Highway 52 or Highway 7. I decided to let my gut decide, and when I did that, I had an image flash in my mind of a certain stretch of Highway 52, near the sheep farm. So that’s the route I took, and when I got to that particular stretch of road which had flashed in my mind, I was treated with the site of a bald eagle sitting on top of a telephone pole. I think over the years I’ve been slowly forgetting how to listen to my gut instincts and intuitions. I had forgotten how good and right it feels to flow with that kind of knowing. I feel more like I’m one with my environment, not separate, when I go along with those subtle feelings and cues.

I just finished reading two books by Tom Harmer on his experiences with Native American spirituality. I don’t know if I can quite articulate what it is these types of books do for me. I guess they are very affirming in a way, helping me to make sense of experiences I’ve had a long the way, validating my gut feeling that there is a much deeper, truer way of experiencing reality then the way modern cultures sees it. It’s sad how cut off we are from what is true, what shadow beings we have become. How did we lose such a profound way of knowing? Seeing only the surfaces of things as real.

 

Yet I’ve always been in touch with the deeper and truer way of seeing. It persists, even when there’s been nothing in my culture to support it and nurture those perceptions along. Often I’ve grieved for the fact that there is no one in my world to teach me. That I have gifts that need to be developed and no one to show me the way. There are no teachers in our culture, no true teachers, just a bunch of new-age loonies on some sort of ego trip. For years I’ve had the inexplicable feeling that this lifetime I will not have any teachers, not human flesh and blood teachers, that is. Maybe part of the lesson of this lifetime is to discover my power on my own. To reach out to what is greater than the mere human experience and learn how to tap into that for knowledge and power.

 

I love the way the Native Americans talk about power. It is so much an alignment with what I’ve learned about power on my own. The vast majority of humans think of power in a very childlike, material way, as if power is simply the ability and skill to function on the strictly material plane. The person who waves the biggest club, or the most powerful gun, or the biggest fistful of dollars is the one with power. How simplistic! How childish! That kind of power is a farce. Those with that kind of power are actually the most vulnerable among us. They are always at risk. True power does not use the props of the material world, it deals with invisible forces. All that’s required to be a person of power is to align oneself with the powers that be in this universe. If you are in alignment, then power operates through you, shifting the fabric of time and space, making anything possible. It’s more like you change the world by influence rather than by brute force, but it’s more than that too. It’s more than personal influence; we become a vessel for divine power to flow through us. It’s like by honoring the divine we become divine. By acting in harmony with the sacred we are manifestations of the sacred.

I just finished reading a biography of Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600 for heresy. Again it has me thinking about the meaning and purpose of my life. I don’t want to live a meaningless and mediocre life. I want my life to serve some purpose. It doesn’t need to be a grand purpose, just some purpose.

Life is really a play set on the stage of our particular, unique moment in history. Bruno engaged fully with the set he found himself on, with all of its absurdities. He may have been before his time, but he engaged in his world on its own terms, fully accepting the consequences of that, allowing his life to play out in the only way that it could in that moment in history.

The author of the book included a quote by Bruno that talks about living full--not living in mediocre life:

Oh difficulties to be endured, cries the coward, the feather-head, the shuttlecock, the faint-heart. The task is not impossible, though hard. The craven must stand aside. Ordinary, easy tasks are for the commonplace and the herd. Rare, heroic, and divine men overcome the difficulties of the way and force an immortal palm from necessity. You may fail to reach your goals, but run the race nevertheless. Put forth your strength in so high a business. Stride on with your last breath.

 

Giordano Bruno

I just realized when I woke up that we have just passed the winter solstice. I always forget whether it’s the twenty-first for twenty-second, but no matter. What’s interesting is that my spirit chose this week to do this work, which has been so much about death and renewal.

Thursday night, well actually Friday morning right before I woke up, I had a dream. Another woman and I were doing this exercise with death. It’s hard to describe because it makes no sense at all, but there was a clear tank of water we would submerge ourselves in, but each submersion was literal death. So we died every time we submerged ourselves. We each did an experiment of dying for ten seconds and then coming back. There were helpers on hand and as soon as the ten seconds were up they quickly pulled us back up. The other woman decided to go for thirty seconds, which all of the helpers thought was way too long. The instant the thirty seconds was up, the helpers anxiously pulled the woman up. She was all smiles and she said something lightheartedly to chasten them for being so uptight and worried. I knew exactly what she meant. I shared that same radiant kind of knowing that “All is well”. The helpers were stuck in their limited way of seeing.

Good morning. It’s still howling and blustery outside but the snow seems to have stopped. The storm is supposed to move out by noon today. It’s hard to say how much snow we got because it’s all blown about. They were saying sixteen to twenty-six inches for my area and eighteen to twenty-four for Denver. The ground along the side of my house is swept bare, but then I had to push against a snowdrift to open the front door.

Last night I was in a very heightened state of awareness. Reading two books in a row with Native American themes snapped something back open in me. There are certain traditions that I always circle back around to, Native American being one of them. I knew when I stumbled across those books at the library that I was meant to circle back here now.

What is it about their culture that gets me? Last night spontaneously everything in the room kept morphing into Native American objects. I truly felt like I was living in two worlds. There was my embroidered rooster with the triangle points at the bottom lying on top of some fabric. Repeatedly when I glanced that way it became a bead work design on the front of a dress--not of a rooster though--and the fabric underneath became the draping of the rest of the dress. A towel folded in half lengthwise and flung over the bathroom door looks like sweet grass that was knotted at the bottom. The room kept switching back and forth between my room and a Native American.

The other thing was that my ego largely vanished. I was looking back in this journal--I forget what I was trying to find--but everything I wrote about seemed absolutely petty and trivial. I mean, this is all I can manage to make of life, all of these trivial concerns? How have I gotten so caught up in the petty dramas of the ego?

I’m asking big questions these days. Is there a way I can be of service to humanity? Can I surrender my ego and live a life in service to the spiritual? What on earth would that look like? When I think this way I think of folks like Gandhi and Mother Teresa--these large players in this world. Can I so transcend my ego that I could really make a difference on this planet? Is that possible for me in this lifetime? If I can just break through this barrier above me I’d be able to see.

Now night has fallen and it’s day four of this spiritual retreat I had no idea I was going to take. Poor John. He’s being so patient with me when I tell him I need to be alone. This is good for me, so deeply good for me, especially the evenings, sitting here by candlelight.

I don’t know, but each night I keep getting overwhelmed by how perfect the objects in this room are. It is a beautiful space, a very nourishing space for me to do this work. I’m not exactly sure what work I’m doing but at least something seems to be stirring.

I have yet more thoughts floating around on the fringes of my awareness. I feel like I’m close to some dramatic breakthrough or new insight. Very close but not quite there. I feel like it has the potential to be some wild new way-outside-the-box paradigm shift some new way of seeing and being entirely. But there’s a barrier I have to push through to get there.

We’re in the midst of a blizzard so I wasn’t able to get Collin today as scheduled. Most of the roads are shut down so I have another night for quiet contemplation. It’s the perfect atmosphere, with the storm howling, the world outside all white and blustery, and in here it’s warm and quiet and peaceful. A candle’s burning softly and it’s about to get dark.

I’ve had a few little episodes of synchronicity the past few days. I was reading a Lynn Andrews book right after I had written about anxiety in my chest and she began talking about the exact same thin--how the anxiety was protecting her heart. Then yesterday and today I was reading Travels in a Stone Canoe and this one Lakota man said the following: “The material life isn’t worth living. Materialism without spirituality is the curse of this world. It’s our job as human beings to use the material in the service of the spiritual.” Matthew King

I feel like that’s the answer I needed, but what would that look like? It’s quite a stretch to call headboards spiritual. I know that beauty, the creation of beauty, can be a way of using the material world for spiritual good, but a beautiful headboard is just too much of a stretch. I had the thought that if I really need to work with my hands maybe building small altars for people to use in their homes, or even outside in their yards might be fulfilling. Just build beautiful altars and let people decorate with whatever fits their spiritual tradition or speaks to them. But that idea feels kind of contrived. It’s a mental two-plus-twoing, not something I feel in my heart is my path.

My path may be more radical than that if I can just break through this barrier that stands in my way and finally SEE. There’s a higher way of seeing--something much more all-encompassing. I sense it.

I know that the new insight will be a deepening of my thoughts about materialism and the bland dullness of modern life, the superficiality, the way we’ve cut ourselves off from what matters. Somehow, the shift I feel coming on will take into account a much broader account of humanity, going back to our roots, our origins. Who we think we are is just a whisper of who we really are.

I want to continue on with my train of thought from yesterday. It’s weird, but I’m coming back to knowledge I already had and it’s just a bit mind-boggling how I could have let myself forget.

I don’t know if I ever wrote about this when I originally had this insight, so forgive me if I’m repeating old information. But last night I remembered one more thing about my experience of anxiety in my chest. It’s not only a mask to protect my heart, it’s a little death, reminding me that every hardship is an opportunity to die and be reborn again. The insight that I had originally had (I don’t remember now when that was—a few years ago?) was that the feeling of stress in my chest is identical to the beginnings or the first rush of feelings you feel at the moment of death. I seem to always have had a “memory” of death. The moment of death begins with that feeling in the chest, and a wave of hot and cold, and then the feeling extends to the whole body and becomes this weird feeling of atomizing or dissolving, which at the same time is almost a feeling of falling. So, the anxiety is a mini-death and my task is to dissolve through it to a more expansive state of being. To not get stuck in the death throes, but to move through it the way you naturally would upon death.

Last night I dreamed about a mountain lion. I was with another adult, a child, and a small dog and people were after me. We hid in a small wooden shed. Something pawed at the door and then a mountain lion nudged the door open and let herself in. I felt a wave of healthy fear as she walked in and lay down at my side. I knew she would protect me and was a powerful ally. The dream ended a few moments later when the bad guys came, shot off the lock (it now had a lock!) and I had a weird numb feeling in my butt cheek…I didn’t know if I had been sitting funny and it was just asleep, or if one of the bullets had come through the door and lodged in my butt.

The dream reminded me of my experience up in the mountains when Collin was two. After I weaned him I went for my first weekend away without him and did a meditation retreat alone. I had two dreams that both brought me bolt upright in the tent. The first was of a mother bear and her cub passing through camp and moving on. The second was of a mountain lion padding into camp and lying down. I concluded that the dream meant that the mountain lion was my new totem animal for my life here in the West, as the black bear had always been my animal in Pennsylvania (and a frequent visitor in my dreams).

I think the mountain lion came into my dream last night to try to remind me again of forgotten knowledge. What does she represent?

Another way I feel I’m circling back to some same-old, same-old issues is with livelihood. I still feel an awful conflict between my belief in simplicity and treading lightly and not being overly materialistic, and the fact that in my business life what I am doing is making and selling stuff. I know I’ve been here before. I’ve had this discussion with myself in the past and I concluded that as an offspring of the Divine it is simply natural for me to want to create.

But, the conflict lives on in me. Maybe it’s with WHAT I’m creating, but why should any other sort of creation be of more value than what I do? When I sit in my living room and take in all of this man-made stuff, does anything have more value than anything else? Does it have more value the more beautiful it is, or is it more valuable if it exploited fewer resources or people or animals in the making of it? Does its function give it a higher value? I mean, after all, it’s all just stuff! What’s the point? People just mindlessly hoard stuff. How is it meaningful for me to add to that?

The question eating at me is how do I create a meaningful life? Shouldn’t that be my real job, creating a meaningful life, not creating stuff? I know I’ve said before that stuff has the potential to act as a mirror or way to see through the illusion of this world. But really, tell me how a headboard or a pair of pillows is going to enlighten anyone?

How do I create a meaningful life for myself? What is my purpose in this lifetime? I want to make a difference. I want to live more profoundly. How can I be of use in this world?

Probably it’s pointless to go round and round in circles trying to figure out some kind of ideal occupation for myself. Instead I need to find my center again and create a regular spiritual practice. Once I regain my power and further develop it, my path will unfold of its own accord. I remember one thing that I think Carolyn Myss said on her tapes-- something like, maybe your role here is to simply raise the spiritual energy in your neighborhood, maybe your high degree of evolution holds the peace in your neighborhood or raises other people’s level of god consciousness (of course I’m wildly paraphrasing but you get the general idea). Our work here on this planet may be vastly different than what we think it is.

I know I need to work on myself and I need to figure out the answers to my bigger questions.

I’m sitting in the living room writing by candlelight with incense burning and soothing music playing. Tonight is a night for quiet reflecting.

I think this is what used to be called a midlife crisis, this thing I’ve been going through. I remember back in those days when I was reading Jung, he wrote about the midlife issues that arise in one’s thirties. I should try to find his writings on the subject. It might help shed some light on my issues. I told John I had made a decision that on January 1 I would be normal again. He’s never seen me normal since I’ve been going through this crazy phase--the whole time I’ve lived out here. It’s been a long time since I felt normal. And what is normal for me? When I’m normal I’m a powerful spiritual being. I’m a force to be reckoned with. Put to use that force could do a great deal of good somehow, some way in this world. When was the last time I felt that power within me? It’s been years now. I need to come back around to embody that deeper, fuller expression of myself. I’ve become so chronically stressed that I can’t get beyond the feeling of anxiety in my chest to any experience of power. When I used to radiate power it would seem to begin in my chest, but now there’s too much stress in the way. At times, usually when I’m driving up we’re back on I-76, and I reflect on the anxiety in my chest, I get the sense that it’s a façade only. The stressed feeling is only surface deep but it masks this profound grief. I have yet to have a chance to delve into it deeply, but I suspect when and if I do, and if I’m able to resolve it or come to some sort of understanding, my anxiety will vanish. What do I grieve? It seems to be tied to S. and sometimes to Grandpa. The last time I had a night like this and had also lit candles and burned incense I had this sad longing to have either S. or Grandpa just sitting in my green chair, keeping me company with their presence and conversation. At one point the scent of the incense morphed into the scent of Grandpa’s pipe tobacco. He felt so near and yet not nearly close enough. I miss having a deep soul connection with someone, someone who can come and sit in my living room in the flesh and blood.

I’ve realized also recently that I miss dancing. True, at the Dances of Universal Peace I really didn’t feel a connection to most of the people there, but energetically what we did as a whole group was absolutely amazing. I have nothing to raise my energy the way those dances did. Dancing was my spiritual practice. It kept me centered and it helped keep my energy heightened to spiritual plane. Maybe partly why I’ve lost my way is because I lost that way of keeping myself tapped it into Spirit. Even contra dancing raised my energy. Dancing is just spiritual for me, I think. I wish it were possible to start dancing again, but it’s just so impractical living out here when all of the dances are in Denver or Boulder or Fort Collins.

Back to the anxiety thing. I was remembering the time back in 1991 or 1992 when I had the same issue. I remember sitting by that stream and meditating and having a conversation with my chest and how my chest was telling me it was protecting my heart. It seems to be the same thing now. I think the stress just masks a wounded heart and I don’t think I’m just grieving S. and Grandpa, I’m grieving about the events of the past few years, all of the hardships. It seems I could never just stop and grieve each event, to break down and weep for the pain of each thing. So my chest just held it all. If I stopped holding, if I acknowledged it all and let it out, maybe my heart would open again and I’d begin to come back into my power. Cognitively all along I’ve known that “All is well.” I know I am cared for and protected and that no real harm can ever come to me. And yet I fully immerse myself in the drama of my life, reacting as if none of that were true. Why all of the fear, worry, and anxiety when I know no harm can come to me? Why do I engage in it the way I do? The important task for me, if I want to be “normal again”, is to open my heart. Then I can come back into my real power and once I do that then the rest of my life can fall into place. See, right now I’m so lost I can’t begin to see what my life’s purpose is. I want to do something worthwhile but I can’t see what that might be. I hope that once I find my center my way will become clear.

I’ve been having a lot of past life memory flashes in the past week or two and many flashes of memory from my blissful childhood, most of them of our cabin vacations. I think this is all a good sign because these types of flashes haven’t stirred in me much for very long time. Also about a week or two ago there wasn’t a day that passed when some little tidbit of a dream didn’t come true later that day. And in the waking world there are definitely some stirrings inside of me, so maybe there’s some hope yet.

I’m all about simplicity these days. I want to get back to the essence of life. Somewhere in the past few years I’ve lost my center. I want to get it back and I feel like the key to that is to be found in simplicity. I don’t want all the trappings of modern life to obscure the real essence of my life.

I’m making progress, but there’s still much for me to do. Every week when I venture into Boulder County the dichotomy of my two lives is overwhelming. The traffic, the rude drivers, the rampant commercialism, the tract after tract of hideous developments with huge ugly house--it all eats away at my soul. How can people live immersed in all of that constantly and not just go crazy? It would be so much better if I didn’t have to go in there every week. I need to get mediation scheduled with Pete so hopefully we can reach an agreement. I think I also need to find some kind of a regular spiritual practice. Even though I tired of the Dances of Universal Peace after a while, I think that regular spiritual communion with others was really important for me. I don’t know what could replace that out where I am now. I know I would like to develop a regular meditation habit--although I’ve failed that for as long as I’ve been alive. But I also think it’s important for me to participate in some sort of spiritual community. I need to start looking for one. Not necessarily strictly spiritual maybe with an ecological intent to it, I don’t know. I just know I need to realign my life. I used to be so centered and powerful. I’m not being my full self these days.

How have I become so stuck in the past few years? What is this all about? Somewhere along the way I lost my ability to believe in prosperity. It seems like now all I’m able to believe in is scarcity, poverty, hardship and struggle.