Whereabouts and a poem

A friend recently commented that I've been quiet here. He'd wondered where I'd gone. My apologies! The truth is that I've been lost in my imagination -- writing. 

I decided a few months ago that it was time to dedicate myself more seriously to my writing than just spontaneous spits and spurts. Since then, I've been running with a group of characters in two different stories -- ideas that came to me in my dreams. It's playful work. I'm really enjoying these characters and the stories they're sharing with me. I plan to one day share them with you in a published format. 

In the meantime -- a poem:

labyrinth

skipping rains

kiss my fingertips as i lean out

and talk to the 

grandmother tree at 11pm.

she calls me "dearie"

and dries my tears with her leaves.

they leave chlorophyll residue on my cheeks

and i tangle myself up in her arthritic branches

to feel earth's heartbeat.

there is no separation.

i sink like alice

into the underworld.

there, a minotaur asks me to walk

the labyrinth with him.

we stroll like old friends

and he tells me the point 

is always to come back to yourself.

in the center i meet a masked man

who tells me he asks.

"asks what?"

"precisely."

there are no answers here.

boreas sweeps up under my feet,

carries me home

to my slumbering self

and to the faeries

that dance on my bed

and whisper riddles in my ears
while i dream.

inside.

outside.

step forward.

turn around.

hold tight.

there's another corner to turn.

turning, turning, spinning.

i get tagged.

"you're it!"

(copyright 2011)

New Website Up and Running

It's official, folks! 

Someone once told me how important it is for each of us to share our gifts with the world. I took this to heart and created a healing arts business dedicated to helping others heal, reconnect to themselves, their dreams, and the world at large. 

Here's my site (still a work in progress):

http://www.bridgebetweentwoworlds.com/index.html

DREAMS -- new blog/website forthcoming

Hi, All.

For the last few years, I've been using this blog as a creative and sometimes personal outlet for musings on the esoteric and metaphysical. It's been a great relief to know that I could come here and share thoughts and creative works with all of you. Even better have been your exchanges, dreams, and stories. It's been such fun! We all grow from those interactions, methinks, which only further convinces me that we're questing through life for that something familiar that we cannot always name.

Since we're pilgrims on a shared path, it makes sense for me to expand this site's original purpose and make it more communal and interactive. I want it to serve and help all of us as we make our way down our respective red roads.

I also want to stay in the flow of what's feeding me these days, which is DREAMS.  There's some big mojo energy there for me and fed, methinks, by my work with a local Jungian. Maybe that energy for dreams is there for you, too. Think about it -- if it's true that we each dream between 5-7 times a night, then that's at least 35 dreams a week that we can sift through to find nuggets of wisdom about our lives. I don't know about you, but I am certainly open to additional insight into my life! The dreamscape, according to some researchers, is one aspect of ourselves which is not affected by the ego. The ego can't touch this terrain, which makes it even more compelling to mine and journey through. 

It's my intention to have a new blog dedicated solely to the topic of dreams up and running within the next two weeks. I plan to include all sorts of resources, articles, links, and techniques to help you remember your dreams, share them, and learn from them. I invite guest writers or those willing to share dreams with the collective community in hope of gaining new insight. What would interest you? What would you like to see? What workshops would help you expand your own personal growth? 


I am INTERESTED!!! Send your thoughts my way! 


So I DREAM!

The Bones of My Mother

athena was born of man

only because her father grew envious

of her mother 

and ate her.

down the esophageal pipe

did metis tumble --

landing in bile,

pregnant with wisdom. 

but some women 

don't disintegrate 

so easily

when swallowed whole by man.

instead

metis nurtured pallas,

gifting her with weapons and verve.

gestation soon gave way to cranium kicks,

giving daddy such a headache

and he had his head split open with an axe--

a creative way to resolve a migraine.

goddess leaped into the world

with a war cry

and purpose,

the product of a botched forgetting.

poor athena.

playmate of boys,

and keeper of athens

and owls.

so comfortable in the world of men
that she forgot her mother's bones,
leaving her father's biology
to dissolve them,

which it did in the 
form of ambrosial gloop 
that the god 
neatly wiped away.

copyright 2011

Who We Really Are...

I've been reading much of Lynn Andrew's work lately--most recently "Star Woman"--and I was struck by the following statement made by Agnes Whistling Elk, one of Lynn's teachers. I loved this passage for its world view and enjoyed the reminder that there are more possibilities for our lives than we allow. Enjoy!

"When you are born, you come from the void. You come from the mystery. You are born out of formlessness from the center of the spiral. You dress yourself with the fine feathers of time and space, and you take on a mind. You think are mind. Your earth walk is a spiraling outward from this center. As you progress, you become more and more earthbound. You take on form through experience and conditioning from your environment. You become encrusted with addictions and what you call time. To stay in form you must develop a mind that is your ego, which again is a function of time" (pp. 65-66).

The passage goes on to share how one can smash this concept of time by dissolving the ego. When the ego has been dissolved, then one can take on the form of other egos and become a shape shifter. And, when that happens, you can become a part of another's dream. For as Agnes later put it, "How do you know that you're not a shape shifter in one form or another? Maybe you simply don't remember what you are dreaming?" (p. 66)

Aho!

 

"IN"lightenment from de Chardin

"Throughout my whole life, during ever minute of it, the world has been gradually lighting up and blazing before my eyes until it has come to surround me, entirely lit up from within."

"The immense hazard and the immense blindness of the world are only an illusion."

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

American Shaman

I just finished reading "American Shaman," which describes the work and life story of Bradford Keeney. This is one of those books that make you pause in the reading of it because there's so much to SOAK UP and ABSORB! In fact, I dog-eared so many pages in my library copy that the smartest idea seems to be to share some of the words with you

"The most common practices currently in use by indigenous healers around the world are:

1. We should be devoting our efforts to honoring the greater mystery in life, rather than to promote understanding

2. Instead of helping people who are upset to calm down, we should encourage them to become more aroused

3. Talk doesn't always help, but dancing, singing, touching, and transcendent prayer are where the action often takes place

4. The role of the helper and healer should include many facets -- as guide, coach, minister, counselor, physician, musician, and trickster

5. Homework, when employed, should involve ordeals, trials, tribulations, and "shamanic tasks," none of which have to make sense to the person

6. People in trouble take themselves far too seriously, and any intervention should take place on a level of play

7. All helping should be a sacred enterprise, in which the spiritual world is integrated into the body, the mind, the soul, and Nature

8. Ultimately, helping and healing are about love; they are about being a part of community (p. xi)

"The history of shamanism is about the dismemberment of self. You must go through your own death. That is one hell of an ordeal, I gotta tell you. I can't imagine anyone deliberately choosing this kind of journey" (p. 48).

"Make me a vessel. Allow me to be useful to this person" (p. 77).

Ways to activate and nourish the sense of mystery:

1.  Introduce more rhythm into your life.

2. Learn to gently (and sometimes wildly) rock your body.

3. Dance, think, and pray in the dark.

4. Bring on the music.

5. Faithfully write down a request for guidance, and carry this invitation with you throughout the day.

6. Bring more absurdity into your daily rituals.

7. Be irreverent with the "why" questions in your life.

8. Remind yourself, constantly, that you will never understand the big things in life (p. 154).

"What Keeney, or any self-respecting shaman, tried to do is get people to abandon their usual ways of doing things so as to create a greater sense of mystery and awe for everyday activities (even for watching a late-night talk show). It is the shaman's (or the therapist's, the teacher's, or the parent's) job to juggle and toss things around in such a way that sacred moments become possible. We don't do this through the usual channels of organizing things for people but through disorganizing them. We must create the possibility of surprise. It can be through a dream, a sudden discovery, or an impulse. The overriding goal is to bring mystery and magic to people's lives" (p. 156).

"As a shaman, I say to people that it is important to enact respect for the deepest parts of our minds and hearts. We need to show and tell the source of our dreams that we take it seriously. We give it the same attention we would anything in the physical world. It's like saying, 'You, my deepest unconscious mind, have spoken and now I am showing you that I listened. Now I will act on your behalf" (pp. 198-99).