DatingGod

Fall Into Yes

In a profound state of surrender today. Woke up this morning and didn't fight or push, not to get up, not to make the kitties get along, not to make sure everyone got their snuggle, including me. Just snuggled, whoever came, let them go when they left, just lay there until the "arise" made itself known.

Then no push to not drink coffee, or to hurry and get the morning things done. Just did things, one after another. Made a huge pot of half decaf coffee, then surrendered when a third of it spilled out onto the counter. Now sun on kitty fur, and a movie and dinner setup with my sister for tomorrow, even though we'd set it up for today, all good, all okay. Letting the novel flow through my mind and heart, let it change, let it find its way. Surrender to The Appetite that lives inside my mind, that flows into Body - to eat gluten free bread today, all day today if that's what happens. Paying bills, so grateful for the money to pay them, grateful for the flow of money in our world, for kitty food and coffee and shelter.

And as I woke up this morning, I felt so profoundly how the mind somehow stops the flow of Yes, with its filter of past, all the stories and angles it tells itself is reality. But there was no judgment around seeing this, only acknowledgment of how this is what's happening. A relaxing into this wall I live on the other side of. 

Ahhh, in writing these words, I feel the fight come back into the heart, that tube of tightness between throat and chest. Is that what does it? Is this what brings the fight back? Acknowledging the presence of the Yes? (Don't write about the Good! Don't jinx it!)

And yet in writing those words, the fight retreats, leaving the presence of acknowledgment of both: this is the Yes, and the possibility of fight is there too. 

I remember a dream from last night. A baby hawk attached itself with claws to my back, right where my heart is. But I didn't fight it, just let it be there, claws sunk deep into me. And in a while, it let go, and I slipped out of my shirt, and with it came the hawk. Released.

No Big Mystical Experience. Just the flow of This. 

Unhappy Endings

Flu-like symptoms for over a week now. Blisters coming and going on my palms, like mutant eczema. All of the cleansing apparatuses of a physical body in high gear. Funky, smelly, ick. Emotional cleansing too. Embarrassing emotional cleansing.

I actually screamed and shook not one but two cats last night. Sure there was a serious, serious willful poop malfunction involved in one, and in the other, a dumped over water glass inches away from an electrical cord hooked up to my computer, but still. It scared the crap out of everyone. And then I spent a half hour dealing with the demon possession of hatred I felt. And then an hour dealing with the shame. But when I faced them all again, with their enormous, frightened eyes, I lay down beside each one in turn, and apologized. And of course they forgave me, licked my cheek, purred, gave me the sparkly eyed love look, then slept on top of me all night en masse, like a multi-feline blanket.

I needed them. It was a rough night. Not physically - I actually had very little physical pain, which was a relief after the past few weeks. But the dreams were intense, woke me three times with energy that lit me up. I don't remember the first one, but the last two? Whoaaaaaaaaaaa.

Around midnight, I woke up with my body, mind, heart lit up with love. Actually, not love, but Love. That Big Love so rarely felt with another human being in a romantic setting, that when it occurs our current culture calls it "soulmate". Wow. I lay there in the dark, seconds away from how he smiled at me, the touch of his skin. The sound of rain clicked on the windows, the torrential downpour that has been constant here on the coast for the past few days. Kitties felt me wake and prrrped, snuggled in more deeply. Wow. Feelings of such Yes, such love, safety. Wow. I drifted back to sleep.

The dream continued, right where it left off.

And slowly began to turn. Into a nightmare. Not a scary nightmare. A sad one. So sad. From soulmate love to merely human love. Then no love at all. I woke up in a kind of shock. And as I lay there in the dark, I heard:

"All of your stories have unhappy endings."

Whoa. Whoaaaaa. Do they? And slowly I began to wind my way backward through all of the friends, lovers, jobs, homes, family, projects, everything, even the master's degree in the assured career. And saw yes, it's true.

I didn't feel any blame toward the people involved or victimy pain at my plight or righteous anger at fate. None of that. Just a quiet acknowledgment that my life has been hope/ dream/ want followed by opportunity/ synchronicity/ magic  followed by hard work/ creativity/ risk taking followed by pain/failure/ending. I couldn't recall a single thing that didn't fit with that.

I didn't know what to do with it, that information, that angle on the truth of my living. Nothing more came. Just that.

Jacinta was sleeping, pressed against my right shoulder. I turned and with my left armed circled her, tucked my hand under her, cradling her face, laying my head on her body, most of my weight supported by my pillow. Usually she didn't like to be touched while she slept. But last night she purred so loud it reverberated through me. And didn't stop. I fell back asleep like that, to the sound of loud rumbling feline Yes.

And woke relaxed. Okay. As if something had lifted. A little space. A little bit of moving room in my consciousness. I got up, made green smoothies, a gallon's worth, enough to last through work, fed kitties, showered, answered emails, got ready to go to work in Hiveworld, another day in Hiveworld.

And I realize: work is the place right now that  solidly, consistantly reminds me Who I Am. When I'm plugged in, being of service to folks who are struggling in their own Battle with No, my own feelings of funk fades. Whether it's with the holistic work or the Hiveworld work, it's the same energy: that vibrant flow of Yes that somehow feels effortless and vital and worth showing up for every single time.

It's okay that I don't have answers to the cleansings that are occurring, either my own or the folks I deal with. That my life has been filled with unhappy endings, or that the folks I'm working with are dealing with unhappy endings of their own. Maybe a few folks are genuinely stopping their stories altogether, but I don't see anymore how we have a choice in that. Either Life stops our story or it doesn't. All we can do is show up to what is showing up in our living. Face it. Do what needs to be done. Even if that action is simply to release the whole pile of goo as if it didn't even exist. 

Ultimately, none of it exists, but if there is a way to force this fact of non-existence into a solid knowingness of it, I certainly don't know how. I only know how to do the next thing, and right now, it's dealing with the stories that cause me and others to embrace toxic things and not let them go. We're all struggling to change our stories, to move them into tales of financial security, meaningful work, vibrant health, Big Love with family, friends, lovers. And that means less Toxic. And maybe Waking Up can happen with our arms full of Toxic, but I doubt it. In my experience, we let things go, one by one, the Toxic and the Love.

Right now, I deal with the Toxic. And I'm grateful for it. Both the experience of how it came to be be, and the experience of sheer freedom as it exits.

Onward. Further. What else to do with a life?

Chocolate Covered Hope

In terrible pain this morning. Woke up with my face more swollen, my respiratory system more congested than in a long time. And so very f*cking tired, and sick, and discouraged. Even though I had the foresight last night, when the signs and symptoms of an allergic reaction started coming on, to load myself up on every single thing I could think of that would help whatever substance I'd ingested make its way out of me quickly, as well as help my poor body with the fallout. Over the course of the three hours before I went to bed I took: 

• A double dose of my western med medication - a small pill that's a derivative of the deadly nightshade plant (also known as devil's cherries or devil's herb, fitting, no?)- which is the only thing that can get my digestive tract to relax, and pain to ease. It also has sucky side effects - extreme thirst and extreme exhaustion, so I only take it infrequently now. 
• A whole dropperful of pure peppermint oil, which also helps soothe stomach pain. 
• A big dose of swiss kriss, an herbal colon cleanser. 
• 2 probiotic capsules
• A glass of water mixed with powdered green superfood, contains digestive enzymes, herbs, etc.
• A butter lettuce and mango smoothie.

And I realized this morning that this is why I don't post much about the thing that is the most impactful movement in my living right now: the actual practical steps of what I'm doing to deal with this health issue. Because it's failure after failure after failure. I try something, research it, invest money and time and effort, and then, plop. I'm down on the ground again, writhing in the dust as I clutch my belly and sob piteous tears of pain, both real and egoic.

It's insane. But it's what an inordinate amount of my days are filled with. 

So as I woke up this morning I remembered what an amazing day I'd had the day before, amazing until around 7pm and the sh*t (allergen) began to hit the fan (my small intestine).

Money is tight, but I'm committed to eating clean, organic food grown as locally as possible. And now that I'm drinking three or four green smoothies a day, I buy a lot of produce. I dropped over a $100, but it was all totally clean, totally nutritious food, and the name of the game these days is get healthy, so I felt dang good about that c note.

I visited a new produce store, Oleander Produce, and although small, it's promising as their whole deal is to purchase from local "transitional organic farms", which means that they haven't been through the five (seven?) year process it takes to be certified yet, but are feeding the soil and tending to the plants much as they always have - with very little pesticides, etc. I left the store loaded up with veggies, and then went to the coop to round out my produce with things Oleander didn't carry or were out of - greens, greens, and greens.

And while at the coop I decided to finally take the plunge and bake something gluten free. I'm not a baker, and the stove in the apartment I rent is horrible, one of its many failings being the oven part is a small convection oven that habitually burns the outside of whatever I cook, leaving the inside undercooked. But I had a recipe for quinoa choc chip cookies from Karina's blog, and I decided I would make the cookies in small batches, to try different things with the oven. And so I spent the cash to get started:

• $4.50 bag of gluten free baking flour (flour made from sorghum, fava bean, etc.)
• $4.75 bag of GF, soy free, dairy free chocolate chips
• $2.69 baking powder - aluminum free
• $2.99 baking soda - natural or organic or processed through the orifaces of angels or something like that
• $12.75 xanthan gum - totally expensive, but without it, GF baking goods won't stick together & crumble like dust ie dust cookies: not so tasty
• $6.00 quinoa flakes - to mix with baking flour
• $1.25 demerara sugar

To make a batch of cookies, I invested $35. Insane yes, which is why I've been putting it off for so long, buying a piece of GF cake from the coop for $4.79 a piece, even though they use soy pan spray and I get sick from it, because the store bought packaged GF stuff SUX SUX SUX, every single $9 for four muffins, $7 for three big cookies one of them. But yesterday I'm on a focused, intense, joyful roll: take care of your sh*t girlfriend, and if you want something sweet, make it yourself so that you know that's it's clean. I vetted every single item, for wheat, for gluten, for soy, and even for dairy. 

I got back to the house, snuggled kitties, then made a healthy late lunch. Quinoa with stir fried veg, GF soy free fish sauce, a shaving of asiago cheese from the coop. Then: the cookies. First batch, burnt but still edible. Second batch, less burnt, more edible. Third batch slightly burnt, but cooked in the center: downright tasty!

But two hours later, hell began make itself known. Whether it was the cookies or the asiago or the fish sauce or who the heck knows, the good time slammed shut. My belly swelled up to a third trimester, pain ripping my back with steely sharp claws. My sinuses flooded with funk, my head pounded. Emotions roiled with No. Yep. Party over.

Which brings me to this morning, laying there in a haze of snot and self-pity, kitties all up and in my stuffs, including Jacinta who'd had a number two malfunction (which if you've got kitties in your home, you know exactly what I'm saying here). And as I lay there for the ten thousandth day in a row, a puddle of sorrow masquerading as a human, I remembered a dream I'd had. It rushed back with vivid intensity:

I'm talking on the phone with the Pioneer Woman (ie famous blogger with best seller cookbook, a memoir coming out soon and destined to be another bestseller, good looking cowboy husband, adoring children, legion of fans). We're chatting and I glance up at something that takes my breath away. It's a full moon so huge, so detailed it fills the sky. Think of the largest full moon you've ever seen. Now quadruple it. And place it squarely in front of you. I reach out to touch it and a flock of birds goes by, a dozen white and grey birds passing over the enormous brilliantly lighted moon. A single bird stops mid-flight, turns and looks at me. He's suspended in the air, right in front of my face, and he's huge, his fierce gaze boring into my eyes, down my brain stem. His snowy white head, the grey stippled body so beautiful, unlike any bird I've ever seen. And then a single cry, so loud, piercing, my hairs stand on end. 

Then he's gone. And I remember that Pioneer Woman is still on the phone. I apologize for the dead air, tell her what happened, and she goes silent, totally weirded out. And I remember that this is what the world of the masses is like, it talks about how much it likes weird, how weird it is itself, how nerdy and geeky and strange it is, really, it says, it is, so odd and different and weird. But how it really isn't. And how it fears and judges anything that isn't flatlander, of the norm, though it says over and over how not normal it is, how it likes the unique. How it says: don't be like everyone else. But how it smacks down anyone who dares to be different. And how it hates magic. How it fears and is horrified by a message, a transmission, from the moon and a gyrfalcon.

The allergic reaction. The dream. The digestive pain. Falcon, food, moon. Pain, tears, No. 

I know that dream is a message, that the moon, the falcon were telling me something. I've spent the entire day researching it, for a clear action to take, a clear picture of it. But really, who knows? 

I can't make this blog anything other than what I feel to write about, whatever the passion du jour is, the pics I happened to snap, the thing I need to tell you about.

I don't know how else to deal with the health issue other than what I'm doing, even though I fail and fail and fail and pay for the failures with decreasing vitality and increasing pain.

I know I'm at a crossroads. I know that I can disrobe out of the remnants of this old me, the me of alcoholism and abuse, of drugs and a blood family of deranged wolves, of rape and fists and abandonment, of trying and fearing and failure, of lost and gone and flee, of guilt and embarrassment and shame, of poverty of purse and heart, of sickness in body and mind, of saying yes when no is what I need, of saying No when Yes is right there shining in front of me.

I'm at a crossroads with no discernible signposts. Just three ways to go, three directions, three paths. And no idea which one to take.

So I wait, much like I have been for so long now, and do my best to interpret the signs, figure out what to eat to stay alive. Alone, just me and four weasels, all of us wounded and a little f*cked up, but still snuggling and finding joy in naps in the sun. Grateful that the crossroads come with wifi, so that I can keep posting. And tomorrow, Monday morning, Hiveworld, whatever comes next . . . 

Ancient Eyes

This morning at 7:30 am, my boss, (the one I spoke with a couple of weeks ago and psychically saw his cancer returning) got into his car to go to work like usual. Two miles from home, he crossed over the median and hit a dump truck head on. The two vehicles hit so hard that my boss' truck door popped off, and since he wasn't wearing a seat belt, he flew from the truck, and was killed, they say, instantly.

Since my Hilarious Coworker and I are outstationed in Hiveworld, the big boss called me to let me know what had happened. His words punched a hole in my heart. And then he utterly broke down and wept, then caught himself, and we spoke a few more words, then hung up. I called my Hilarious Coworker who was at a half-day training at an upstate facility, got her voicemail, then preceded to blow up her phone for a while but finally gave up. She called about an hour later when the messages finally beeped through.

It isn't that I was friends with him, or he with me. He was my coworker, and then with his last promotion, became my boss. He's been supportive with the possible promotions I'm applying for. I brought him books and some research when he was first diagnosed with cancer. He interviewed me and hired me. I saw him nearly everyday for a year, then at least once or twice a week for another year. We made attempts at jokes with one another, and at least attempted to smile at the effort the other made. He was ex-military. I was an ex-card carrying member of the granola nation. He's worked in the office for decades, was one year away from retirement. I was fresh blood brought into the office on the wave of federal stimulus money meant to assist in this current economic meltdown.

For two weeks, there's been death all around. Another spider sister made a home in the exact place that her other sister did last summer. Within a week, another smaller spider joined her, and then an even smaller spider hung up a web, creating an enormous network of webs all over the entrance to my door, but still leaving me enough room for passage. It was magical. But within a day, the smallest spider was dead. The two sisters spread out, one on either side of the door, but then, one morning, both spiders were gone, only a husk of one of them, curled up in on itself by a bench.

The beta fish that my Hilarious Coworker brought in a year ago and I took over its care sometime in the new year, swam sluggishly for a couple of days last week, then went belly up.

The fierce little dog that lives with my landlords, the one I've called The Grey Worm because of his fiery hate of me, how for three years has barked and snapped, growled and lunged whenever I'm near, has lymphoma. It's advanced and cancer treatment won't really do anything other than buy him a few sickly months, so they are letting him go naturally. Now he just lays by the window and watches me come home and walk back to my apartment in silence, his huge black eyes tracking my every move.

As of last night, I'm now officially heading into menopause. No, definitely no babies for this mommychula.

All day long I've been thinking about The Hoon, about how I still don't know where he's gone. I've been feeling that about my boss. Where did he go? After The Hoon died, almost two years ago now, I walked around the apartment for days, days and days, saying over and over: where is he? where did he go? where is The Hoon? There was a hole in my mind but also a hole in reality, where his squishy, fuzzy body and sparkly eyes used to be. And so all day long today I've been asking: where did my boss go? where is he?

I know that the body is still around. But if I were to go and see it, I'd quickly see that he's not there. So where did he go?

Maybe this seems like a simplistic question, but it seems very very important to me. Where?

My Hilarious Coworker tried to talk to me about faith, how faith is when you don't have practical proof of something, but you trust that it's there, trust that God has it taken care of. I just wanted to know where the boss and The Hoon had gone. She said faith made you stop wondering and simply trust that they were taken care of. It didn't ring true to me, but then again, I'm someone for whom faith, whatever remnants remain, doesn't see it as a strong enough coat for heavy storms like the ones we had today filling the sky with lightning and the roads with flooding. Invoking "faith" looks to me like invoking voodooo or the sky god or the ghost of George Carlin.

A week ago, I had a nightmare. I was walking through a town I didn't know very well. A small town. At dusk, the light quickly fading. No streetlamps, no cars on the roads. Just me, walking. Where to? I don't know. Just walking, trying to get somewhere. And then night began falling quickly and as hard as I strained my eyes, I could only see shadows, and then in an instant, I saw nothing, only pitch black, darkest night. I stood there, somewhere in this town I didn't know, alone, in total darkness. Utter darkness. No more light. I struggled and fought to see, trying to will visual purple to kick in more deeply. Nothing. And then, in a flash of a second, I got, let there be light, and in a whoosh of a moment, the world was filled with daylight and I could see every single thing. Everything.

And now with all the death around again, the night time lover has returned, that ever changing Man who visits me while I sleep, is kind, tries to explain things to me (I can't ever remember what, just that he's trying to get me out of the crumbling building, help me navigate the winding woods and streams we're climbing over, the miles of trekking we need to do to get There. Where? I don't know). I know him, he's one of my soulmates, though I don't recall him from this life. He always smells so good, his muscley forearms make me feel joyful and secure. I like his face, and how he smiles at me, gently, with sweet humor. I'm just always so happy to see him, to lean into him, know that he knows what he's doing, but that he also knows me enough to give me some shit, gently, about how I need to put a hitch in my giddyup.

Who knows what any of this means? If anything at all?

I just know that my eyes feel ancient tonight. So utterly full of the grief of the world, of holding this state of No so much of the day. I could have just dropped it, gone into cheerful, or blank, but would that have been true? I watched as my Hilarious Coworker slipped in and out of all three, much more comfortable, accepting of it all than me. Me? I let myself grieve and analyze - why wasn't this bastion of responsibility wearing his seatbelt? why did he cross the median? Then I came home and took two at*ivan which didn't do anything but make my head cottony, leaving my heart untouched and raw.

No answers. Just kitties. And couch. Kingdom. Burn Notice. Then bed. Then maybe, if I'm lucky, another day  . . .

Visitations

For years I've been having bad dreams. Not nightmares. Just generic-human bad dreams, blurry with fear, neglect, abuse, sadness, pointlessness. Dreams of cars breaking down, stuck in snow or mud or going off cliffs, of being left in the middle of a deserted town, of mean faces, of tidal waves, of fences that keep the sharks out finally giving way. The kind of dreams where you wake up in the morning and feel anxious, or dulled, the vapor trails making you dread the coming day.

And then, about six weeks ago, I had a marvelous dream:
This morning, I woke up from a dream that gave me everything that I search for in this life: security, love, understanding, acceptance. I was who I used to be when I was young, and eager, and utterly open, but it was now, and I was me. Yes was all around me, in me. There wasn't anything to fear because everything was taken care of.

And so I lay in bed for a while, simply happy To Be. Then, what else do you do when it's all done and Yes? You do the next thing. So I got up, brushed the teeth, pooperscooped, fed the weasels, ate some fruit, surfed the net, and left the house to run some errands, though, really still in that dreamy half-state of Yes, Yes, Yes . . .

At first, I titled the post "Prince Universe". But then I felt like I wanted to hold a piece of it back, keep it inside of me, private, because it felt like a precious mystery, so rare, and special. So I changed the post title to hide the truth of it. Because the dream was actually about a man that I was in love with, who was in love with me, though I didn't know him in this life, though when I woke from the dream I knew him, of course I knew him, he was my love.

The energy of that dream carried me for days. Then Calhoon began bleeding, and the dreams began coming every night. And the closer he came to death, the more full of love the dreams became.

Do you remember when you were small? Was Disney something absorbed into your heart, beamed back out as utter belief in the power of truth, beauty, dreams, the triumph of good over evil? Did the princesses and princes speak to you of something so total, so full of quantum sparkle and deep cellular magic and all-every-always-Yes that what you most wanted was to be absorbed into their story, their world? People are so quick to say Disney is biased pap, but it speaks to something, speaks to something real, of surrender to something we need to wake up to.

The dreams have felt like that. So clear and clean and gentle. But not the same man. Every night, a different man is there. Even as the dream is essentially the same. We're married or living together or dating or simply in that first bloom of Hot Sweet Dang. We're always in love, always in that space of Yes. There's a sweetness present. He's always one of The Good Guys. I look into his eyes and see love. His hand touches my face and love is there. My heart feels soft, open. I'm smiling, or laughing, or sighing in release.

I've thought of how the dreams might be coming out of how close to death I've been the past month, how the life force asserts itself in balance. But as I've swum this endless channel of grief, of despair, of god awful blankness, I think now that the dreams are keeping me alive somehow.

When I'm at the holistic center, working, everything is okay. I'm plugged into some space of connection. But holistic work is slow, and when I'm not working, when I'm here at the house, I'm dealing with the emptiness of Hooness, of not being able to move his things, and so his insulin is still in the fridge, the syringes still on the counter, his brush by my desk. I make myself write, craft a query letter, do research on agents. I cry in the bathroom. Then put together class handout packets. When I'm out running errands, it hits me like a flash flood, and I'm drowning, driving down the road, because in your car, no one can hear you howl. Then I return the library dvds.

I avoid other people as much as possible. For different reasons, it hurts too much, is too much to carry, too much to bear or hide or face. Some people have just been jerks. Other people have been kind. Both hurt. And so I back away.

One night, I think it was last Thursday night, The Hoon showed up in a dream. He didn't acknowledge that he saw me, just stood on the periphery as I interacted with the latest incarnation of He.

Some nights the dreams don't come. I don't see a pattern to why they come or go. I don't know who they are, or what they mean.

But I'm grateful for them. So dang grateful. It's the one place love can still find me. The one place that's safe.

Visitation: Eagle

Animals are frequently in my dreams and I have a curious way of remembering them. If it is a particularly powerful dream I tend to wake up from it and remember it from the sheer intensity of the abrupt transition from dreaming to sleeping and the message that comes travelling back with me. More often though, I will be going about my day and I will see a picture of a horse or dragonfly and the dream of the night before will re-hydrate in these cascading layers of remembrance.

Last night I dreamt about an eagle. I was high up on a mountain, rocks and fallen trees all around. The eagle was huge, almost as large as I was. He was building a nest, and I was helping, handing him logs and stones which he grasped in his beak and arranged in a bowl shape a few feet away. I knew not to look him directly in the eye, that he would see it as a challenge and he would pluck my eyes out. He would allow me to help him, but I had to remember my place. I did.

Animal Magnetism: Black Bear

I had one of my animal dreams last night. I have them about once a month and they stay with me for hours the next day. This one had an enormous black bear snuggling on my lap. He must have been eight feet tall and everyone was terrified of him and ran. But he seemed so sweet to me, and so I held him and we communed in that way of silently holding an animal, whether furry or less furry and more human, is like a shot of love tequila for the spirit . . .

As usual, I checked out the online animal guide (see button to the left under Animal Guides) and what they said for Bear was:
* Introspection
* Healing
* Solitude
* Change
* Communication with Spirit
* Death and rebirth
* Transformation
* Astral travel
* Creature of dreams, shamans and mystics
* Visionaries
* Defense and revenge
* Wisdom

Of course, it all makes sense to me, but I'd love to hear what you pick up . . .