Peruvian Banana

Today, I ate a banana from Peru.  I'm in France and the banana came all the way here from Peru.  It was perfectly ripe and beautiful.  I was so struck by the miracle of that that I wept.

I'll admit that I'm in a bit of a vulnerable state.  I'm at the end of a particularly difficult migraine episode.  When that is happening, I can't eat, for the most part.  My body won't take in any food, and there are only a few things that I'm able to get down, a banana being one of them.  I haven't had any, and finally felt good enough to go to the store today and get some.  In the store they stood out to me, like someone had dramatically lit them in special light.  But, no, it was just their own internal light shining through.  Beautiful, yellow, ripe bananas.  I stood there speechless while I took in their gorgeousness before picking a bunch to take home.

I'm not always so emotional about my food, but maybe I should be.  I don't always remember to say grace before eating, but I know it makes a difference to do so.  I am so grateful for all the people who grow and transport and sell the delicious food that reaches me and allows me to support my body with nutrients that sustain my life.

I'm fully aware that the bananas that came to me in France from Peru were grown by some corporate farming entity.  And, I'm grateful to that entity.  I do think that corporate farming has gotten too big and out of control, and I know there's a balance in regard to making it work at its best that we haven't reached yet; and, that said, I'm deeply grateful for the food that's grown for the collective of humanity by corporations that have forgotten the fullness of the sacred service they provide and have let greed take over.

We're in a process of the crumbling of the old paradigm.  What we built wasn't working in the highest good for most of us.  And, new systems and ways of doing things that are better for everyone need to be put into place.  But, we don't necessarily need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Some things will need to be created anew from the ground up.  And, some things can be adapted and improved upon while utilizing what's already there.  Corporate farming needs a big overhaul, but there's probably a middle way that will serve us all the best.  And, I think it's probably a good idea to try to follow a middle way in regard to all the changes that must take place in our world in order for us to come back to a way of living that supports the planet and all life upon her.

Grocery stores are miraculous.  Farmer's markets are miraculous.  I can't thank the people who produce, transport, and sell the food most of us eat enough.  And, I'm also very grateful for all the people who grow their own food.  There's not much that's more essential than food production and transportation.  I look forward to the day when all the food is grown organically, and is plentiful, and we collectively make the decision to feed the whole world.  I look forward to the day when starvation is a thing of the past, when no one on the planet ever has to go hungry.

For now, I'm grateful for my beautiful Peruvian banana and all the food that nourishes me.  Next time you eat something, give a moment of thought to what it took for it to be in your hand, or on your fork, and send out a "thank you" to everyone who had anything to do with it.   

The Gift of Acceptance

I'm reading "The Garden of Evening Mists" by Tan Twan Eng, reommended to me by a friend.  Before that, I read "The Gift of Rain," also by Tan Twan Eng, and also recommended to me by the same friend.  These books have touched me deeply and, through the labyrinth of their words, ordered and organized in their particular pattern, and carrying the energetic transmission of their author, have triggered awarenesses in me that are new and revelatory.

In "The Gift of Rain," a couple of sentences uttered by the character of Aunt Yu Mei, stopped me in my tracks:  "Who can look back and truly say all his memories are happy ones?  To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation."

As all of us do, I have memories that are painful, shameful, and regrettable.  I have judged these events, and the memories of them, and judged myself for actions taken and decisions made and carried out with less than loving intentions.  I have allowed myself to feel like a victim, to feel helpless and hopeless, and to blame others.  I just couldn't stop myself from judging the past, even though I know it to be destructive.  I've been haunted, limited, and paralyzed by certain memories for my whole life.  Those memories, and my perception and judgment of those events, have entrapped me.  My journey into energetic healing was prompted by my desire to free myself from these entrapments.  I grew through it, expanded through it, gained some relief through it, and gained some acceptance of myself through it, but didn't find the freedom through it that I sought.  The wounds lived on, and the physical reflection of those wounds continued.

What it's taken me most of my life to realize is that we never heal, at least in the way I had thought of healing.  Healing doesn't mean we are able to let something go, to release it, or to move on from it.  Healing, as I see it now, means to accept the wound, to give it space, to love it, to honor it, to incorporate it.  Our acceptance of ourselves, and everything that has happened in our lives, all of it, is the key to peace, which I see as healing.  Acceptance is the gateway to gratitude, which leads to peace.

I've struggled with acceptance.  I've struggled with what it is and with how to do it.   There are things in my life that I just couldn't find acceptance for, until I read the sentences uttered by Aunt Yu Mei above.  Somehow, those sentences managed to slide past my resistance and judgment, and acceptance opened up for me through the grace of those words.  Suddenly, I was filled with gratitude for everything in my life without judgment.  The gratitude just came flooding in, unbidden.  And, thankfully, it has not abated.

There is a line from "The Garden of Evening Mists" that struck me, contributing in the same vein as Aunt Yu Mei's sentences from "The Gift of Rain."  A character is remembering a quote from a poem recited to her by a character no longer living, but which has stuck with her for many years, since the moment of the recitation:  "Though the water has stopped flowing, we still hear the whisper of its name."  And, it made me think about how the whispers of our pasts can be so numerous and so loud, that living in the present is not possible.  Our unaccepted wounds, and the memories of them, refuse to be forgotten and pushed away.  They whisper to us so we won't forget them.  They whisper to us asking for acceptance.  They whisper to us asking for space, to be acknowledged for their contribution to who we are in this now.  Until we are ready and able to hear them, really hear them, and acccept them, we remain prisoner to their whisperings.

We think of memory as being linear, but it might be more helpful if we could allow it to be circular.  The shape of our galaxy, and of our energetic beings, is a tube torus.  It's like a big donut, and the energy cycles through it, never ending.  Each and every experience we've had, throughout all creation, gets added into our energetic field, our tube torus.  We are increased and expanded by everything we experience.  As humans, in this 3D frequency we currently inhabit, we tend to judge experiences as good and bad.  We want to hang on to the "good" ones and forget the "bad" ones.  But, without judgment, everything becomes unburdened experience and expansion, contributing to our growth through our acceptance and inclusion of it.  Memory is the way we value what has happened, in the way that grief is the way we value the loss of what we love.  Memory helps us to be grateful for all that has contributed to the creation of us being who we are.

When humans come to the end of their embodiments, they often seem to focus more and more on their pasts.  If you sit with someone at the end of their time here, they often want to reminisce about their life.  It is a great service to them to listen, to really listen.  By their reminiscense, they are honoring their experiences and the shape of their embodiment.  And, by listening, we are able to give them validation and acceptance.  They are passing on their knowledge and their wisdom through the gift of sharing their memories and, by hearing their memories, we are expanded and increased.  We become recepticles for what should not be lost.  We accept and allow their stories to then live in and through us, to contribute to us and to the whole collective.

The scientist, Nassim Haramein, says that it is memory that creates time.  And that, without memory, there is no time.  That might be true.  But, I think memory exists outside of time.  I think our memories, once accepted and incorporated into our being, always exist in the now.  The core and the essence of our being, the part of us that is eternal Life, is forever increased and expanded by our experiences, and the memory of those experiences is the repository of their value and contributes to our wholeness and the upliftment of all creation.

With true acceptance, forgiveness is not an issue.  Through acceptance, forgiveness happens.  It is a by-product of acceptance.  Acceptance overrides judgment, resentment, and blame.  Acceptance frees us and allows the full flow of Life to move through us unencumbered.  Acceptance brings peace and gratitude.  Acceptance brings understanding and compassion.  Acceptance is inclusive, honoring and loving.  Acceptance opens the space for all the split-off parts of us to come home.  Acceptance happens in the now and is the essence of truth.

When one is at a point where one is able to receive a knowing, that knowing will come to us through whatever means necessary and possible.  Grace uses everything to bless us.  Since all Life is sacred, all Life is a vehicle of and for the Divine.  The vehicles for my ability to finally understand and expand into acceptance were two books recommended by a friend.  It is never too late.  We are never past redemption.  We are never lost.  We are never alone.  Peace and grace are always there.  We are never abandoned.  And, we can open into acceptance in an instant.  One tiny shift in perception and we are there.

Quiet Joy

The demon voices in my head have softened over the years.  Their grooves of influence worn deep, they continue to babble, but their effect is of no real consequence anymore.  I’ve ignored them long enough, while allowing them to continue their litany, that they don’t even expect me to listen at this point.  But, babble they must, and babble they do.  Bla, bla, bla…  It’s like white noise in the background.

For years, the voices in my head that drove me forward ruled my existence.  I didn’t know they weren’t me.  I didn’t know they weren’t true.  I didn’t know I could ignore them.  I didn’t know my own voice, or whose voice I would hear if I did ignore the voices.  Or, would I hear a voice at all?  What would life be like if actual choice could happen?  What would life be like if I was free from their influence?

I just finished reading a book by Bryce Courtenay called “The Power of One.”  It’s a novel set in South Africa during and after the second World War.  It’s about a young man growing up in this time, the influences that shaped him, and how he grew into a man and set himself free of the demons of his past that drove him.  It’s a very well-written book and got me to thinking about the demons and voices that have driven me for much of my life.

The current stage of my life is a simple, quiet one.  I have lots of time alone and plenty of time for reflection.  A peace often comes upon me unbidden, I just sit—or, sometimes walk--and commune with the sounds and sights of my surroundings.  I haven’t always been able to be as present with the immediacy of my days.  It is a gift of grace.  This is not my constant state.  I can still get pulled into the effect of things that take me out of presence.  But, I’m better at being present than I used to be, and I notice it more often than I used to, and I’m grateful for it when it happens.

I’m not a formal meditator.  Meditation, for me, is more a communion with Life wherever I am.  But, this kind of surrender has been traditionally more illusive than it’s become in recent years.  Sinking into Life, instead of running in front of it, is much more familiar territory now.  I no longer bear guilt born of pleasure.  I no longer push myself forward out of some need to feel that I am enough or to matter or to be seen.  These things hold no further ability to drive me.

Today was the first day of daylight savings time in the US, although here in Europe, it won’t happen for another couple of weeks.  But, it felt like Spring today.  The temperature was mild and I opened the door to my terrace and sat and read in my loggia.  I could hear the sounds of cars and motorbikes on the street a few blocks away.  I heard the birds singing and talking to each other.  There was a voice talking over a loudspeaker announcing something of which I had no awareness.  There were clouds in the sky and a breeze blowing through the still bare branches of the mulberry tree in the yard below me.  My cat, Sophie, sat curled up beside me, and gratitude for the peace that enveloped my heart filled me.

Joy has been a very illusive experience in my life for a long time, but it is starting to creep in very subtly.  For so long I had some concept of joy that kept me from it.  I now think joy is a result of presence, that it comes from a surrender into life and the gratitude that is a result of that surrender.  This joy is quiet and warm and fills my empty spaces.  It is not something to strive for, or that is the result of anything I might or might not do.  It’s more about my acceptance of life and what it holds.  It’s about a lack of resistance.

There might come a time when I am moved to change the way I live my life or the place in which I live it.  Life is like that.  Change comes.  But, for now, I am grateful for things exactly the way they are.     

"I Am Not Your Negro"

I just saw the film "I Am Not Your Negro" by Raoul Peck.  It is about James Baldwin and Negros in the United States.  It was inspired by James Baldwin's unfinished novel, "Remember This House," which looked at the issue of race in America through the lives and impact of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  It is a brilliant film, and is a knife to the heart.

This film made me realize how much we are the product of the culture in which we are brought up, the lens we are taught to view life through, the values we are entrained to by our families; how imprinted we are in ways both large and small by our surroundings, what we see and what we hear, what we are encouraged toward or discouraged from.  I do not consider myself a racist.  I was brought up in a liberal family, in a city that was racially diverse, to believe that all people are equal.  I still believe that, but I also realize that, as much as I'd like to deny it, racism rears itself within me.  It's subtle and can still be unconscious and, as an adult, I'm more aware of it and more able to recognize and override it, but it's there.

My father held and practiced the most liberal view between my parents.  My mother had racist views that she mostly tried to hide, but instilled within me none the less.  A whispered word here or there.  A warning given.  An action taken.  Children are very observant, and my mother's behavior affected and shaped me, as did my father's.  A certain fear was instilled, erroneous perspectives handed down, ways of being taught.  I'm a combination of my father's acceptance and liberalism, and my mother's fear and closet racism.

I'm an adopted child and am descended from the Native American Southern Cheyenne tribe.  The pure Native American blood was a few generations back, but my mother at one point admitted to me that she had worried that I would look "like an Indian" when I grew up.  She was afraid that my skin would turn too brown, that my eyes would darken, that my nose would become too prominent, that any number of things she deemed "Indian" would make themselves obvious in my appearance.  How strange to tell your child these things.  How strange to burden a young mind with these types of distinctions.  These concerns from my mother in terms of what I looked like, and therefore how I reflected upon her and who she was, were only the tip of the iceberg in terms of inappropriate things she decided to share with me as I was growing up.  I've often looked back and wondered what she might have been thinking when making the choice to so negatively impact me.  But, I've come to think that it wasn't a conscious decision on her part to inflict damage.  It was just who she was and she didn't realize that some restraint and discretion in terms of what she told me might have been prudent.

There are images in "I Am Not Your Negro" that are painful to see.  I was born in 1950.  I remember what was going on racially in the fifties and sixties.  Memories of injustice and violence will always be with me.  But, it's not all in the past.  The film helps us realize that, as much as we'd like to think we're farther along than we are in terms of racism, it is still very much alive.  The backlash of those who were so threatened by the election of a black President of the United States is being felt right now.  President Obama and President Trump are two ends of the spectrum.  The conservative pendulum has swung back with a vengeance.

The United States is a country built on slavery, racism, greed and genocide.  These are things that can not be denied.  We all carry this legacy in our very DNA.  We've been shaped by it and continue to be shaped by it.  And, in large part, it continues because there is such denial in our culture about these influences.  Awareness is the first step toward change.  And, in order to change the racial, power-over-others, mentality that pervades the United States, we must become aware that it's operating and how it impacts everything.  None of us are innocent.  We're all responsible for the culture of our country.  We're all complicit in how our culture is shaped by what we allow and what we don't, by what we condone and what we punish, by what we encourage and what we discourage.  Each and every one of us must look within and root out the causes of our own contributions to our continuing racist, power-over-others society.

The question James Baldwin says that each of us must ask ourselves is, "Why do we need niggers?"  What does it say about us and our society that it was built on such inequality, such disregard for our fellow humans, such a lack of respect for Life itself?  How did it ever become acceptable for one human to own another?  What makes it possible for one human to perpetrate violence upon another and excuse it due to a difference of skin color...or sexual orientation, or religion, or economic status, or gender, or any number of issues?  The list is long.  Why must we put ourselves above anyone for any reason in order to make ourselves feel better?  Why do we have such a difficult time with those who are different than we are, on any level?  Why is it so hard to accommodate a difference of opinion, or way of life?  What is the fear that makes us want a homogeneous society?  These are some of the questions that are in front of us.  How are we to go forward as a country?  What values are important to us?  Who are we as Americans?  What is it we want for ourselves?

James Baldwin moved to France and lived in Paris for many years.  In the film, he says that by doing so he was able to eliminate the terror of racial violence that he lived with every day on the streets of the United States.  He says that he didn't miss the United States at all.  But, what he did miss was his family, and black culture itself.  And, he was ultimately drawn back to the United States because he felt it was his destiny to be a witness to and document the stories and issues of the racism of the society out of which he came.

I live in France now; not for the same reasons that James Baldwin did.  But, I do understand the freedom from racial violence he experienced while he was here, even though I am not black and can't even begin to know the level of fear he did.  But, when violence is present, it affects people of all races and persuasions.  It is absolutely true that violence to any one of us is violence to all of us.  In a society where violence is as prevalent as it is in the United States, everyone lives in fear.  For some that fear runs deeper than for others.  For some that fear is denied.  But, it is present, and it affects all levels of life.

The United States is in crisis.  Many of our traditional values are at risk; values that have been held so dear they've been written into our Constitution.  Much of what shapes our identity as Americans is in question.  Our present trajectory, which continues to be based in racism, violence and greed, will only create our ultimate destruction; and, due to our global impact, the possible destruction of our planet.  I'm not being dramatic.  According to many scientists of varying disciplines, we have already crossed the threshold of destruction from which there is no return.  But, I remain an optimist.  I still believe in miracles.  I still think it's possible to turn it around.  We just have to decide to do it.  We have to decide what is really important.  We have to decide that our planet and our values are worth what it will take to initiate and sustain the change necessary to pull ourselves back from the brink of destruction and learn to accept each other and work together for the common good.

We are at a choice point that is writ large for each and every one of us.  Racism and violence and a fear of diversity are pieces of the pie.  We've pushed ourselves into a corner where the decisions we make now will not only affect the generations that will come after us, but the very life of the planet herself.  I'm not sure why humans need a crisis in order to change, but here we are.  This is no time to deny or hide or think things can either go on the way they are or go back to what they once were.  No.  This is a time for awareness, responsibility, creativity and change.

The old ways are dying.  New ways are being born.  Old patterns of power, greed and destruction are leaving as those who hold them die and take them off the planet.  Children who are wired for this change are being born and bringing with them new solutions to old problems.  Our society seems to be doing a very good job of trying to suppress the difference and the brilliance of these children, but it is a losing battle because the new Life will prevail upon the old.  There is a lot to be done, and a short time in which to do it, but I remain convinced it's possible.  Humans love the last-minute save.  We love the drama of pulling it all back from the edge.  Well, we've created a doozy for ourselves this time, and the clock is ticking, but I'm convinced we're going to make it.

If you have not seen "I Am Not Your Negro" I would highly recommend watching it.  It's a wonderful, intelligent and thought-provoking work.  It will move you and touch you and challenge you.  Allow yourself to open to all that it triggers within you.  Thanks Raoul Peck.  And, thanks James Baldwin, for all you were and are...wherever you are.  You're still reaching through and teaching us and lifting us up.  On wings of angels, Brother!    

 

Grief

My tears flow freely this day.  It is a gray and rainy day here.  My friend just lost her beloved dog after many close years together.  It has touched my heart and triggered my own sadness and some needed grieving.

Grief and sadness have been my constant companions in this life.  I was born with this shade of gray that has always colored everything, inherited from my mother in whose sadness I gestated.  I used to think that this overlay was something that I could work through, or release, or transform, or transmute, but I no longer think that.  I now realize that it just is what it is.  It gives me an empathy, a compassion, a deep sensitivity that I might not have otherwise.  It has shaped me and informed me and grown me in ways both large and small.

It's an interesting choice to come in and live a life through the lens of sadness and grief.  But, how else to know these feelings intimately?  How else to understand their impact?  How else to have the measure of joy and happiness, than in contrast to sadness and grief?  I have fought the sadness and grief for most of my life, but today I surrender to them.  I let them truly have their way with me.  I let them move and fill me.

What does it mean to be fully human?  I've come to feel that it means fully embracing all the experiences, all the feelings, all the sadness and grief as well as the joy and happiness, all the disappointments and frustrations as well as the victories and successes, it is love and loss, it is the full gamut of gifts that Life can bring and lay at our doorstep.  It might seem counter intuitive to welcome in the sadness and grief, the pain, but life is not complete without it.  When embraced, there is an exquisite sweetness to sadness, grief and pain.  In not denying them, we can open to their gifts.  Gifts of remembrance, of lessons learned, of regret and remorse, of deepening, of expanding, of understanding, of letting go.

I grieve the loss of all those I have loved who are no longer with me, human and otherwise.  I grieve the loss of opportunities not taken.  I grieve decisions made from ignorance and fear.  I grieve mistakes that can not be made right.  I grieve the times my heart was closed and could not be pried open.  I grieve the loss of my country and all that I thought it to be.  I grieve cold-heartedness and cruelty.  I grieve stoicism and endurance that suppress the authenticity of experience and dull its intensity.  I grieve resistance and denial to what is true.  There is so much that deserves to be grieved.  And, it is only in opening the dreaded floodgates to what can feel like overpowering grief, that it is able to have its space and move through and bring its gift of understanding, cleansing and release.

I have no answers this day, only the empty relief of allowed grief.  My system feels spent and oddly quiet.  There is a kind of peace that is starting to extend itself.  I find solace in watching the wind blow the trees out my window, and the birds flying freely within it.  The soft gray light of the afternoon is soothing.  The warmth of the room I sit in cradles me.  The bells tolling in the distance comfort me.  I'm relieved that this day has been given over to what is moving through me.  I'm grateful that nothing calls me to it this day but this grief.  I'm grateful for no distractions.  I'm grateful that I've grown large enough to contain what lives in me and makes me who I am.  I'm grateful for the gift of this day.  I'm grateful for the tears that continue to flow unabated.

More Than Enough

This liminal space between Christmas and New Year feels like a gap in time.  Like I'm between worlds.  If you're aware of numerology, you probably know that 2016 was a "9" year, which means an ending.  And, 2017 is a "1" year, which is a new beginning.  But, it doesn't feel like a normal ending and beginning, it feels like more than that, it has a deeper gravitas to it; not so much like the end of another year, but the end of an era.

I'm feeling some sadness for what has gone, for what will never be the same again, for what is irretrievable; and, some excitement for what's coming, the unknown, the unforeseeable.  I'm grateful for this week of quiet interlude in which to rest and reflect.  Uzes is very tranquil and fewer than usual amounts of people walk the streets.  Most of the restaurants and lots of the shops are closed now.  It's cold and clear and the wind is blowing.  The trees are bare and everything seems like its hibernating.  This is the Uzes I love.

The older I get, the more I love the winter.  When I was young, I loved the sun, the heat and the activity of summer.  Fall has always been my most favorite time of year, but summer held great resonance.  Now, it's fall and winter that speak to me the most.  I enjoy the cold, in a way I didn't when I was younger.  I like the internal nature of winter.  The starkness of it.  The essential bareness.  There is a rhythm of life and seasons that I'm connecting into here that I've been missing for a long, long time.  Modern life, in all its relentlessness, can blind us to the natural rhythms of life.  To find those rhythms, to feel them and flow with them is a great gift.

This move to a new country has required a certain amount of focus and study...new language, new ways of doing things, new people, new everything...and, this much newness takes a lot of energy.  This week I have no classes or anything that has to be done, which is a wonderful relief.  I've spent time with friends and allowed myself to just sit and enjoy the open space of not having to do anything or be anywhere.  I've started to focus some energy in a new direction in terms of my living space.  For those of you who know me well, to say that it feels like time to move again will come as no surprise.  It hasn't been my plan, and it still might not happen, but I'm looking.  After a year in my current space, as much as I love it, things have been revealed that either need to be addressed and amended, or a move needs to happen.  I'm not sure which it will be yet, but looking at some other housing options has been interesting.  I'll stay in Uzes, but am looking for quieter and cooler.

I love to bake.  It's a very relaxing and soothing thing to do.  I just took the last few chocolate snowball cookies out of the oven to cool and the apartment smells delicious.  Laundry is going through its cycles in the washing/drying machine, the sound of which is punctuating the afternoon.  I'm looking forward to cleaning the floor...yes, looking forward to it...weird, I know.  There are days I can't think about the floor, but today I'm looking forward to interacting with it.  Today, I'm feeling grateful to this floor that supports me so beautifully in my life here, and I want it to be clean and shining.  The dust bunnies try to hide themselves in the corners, but they aren't safe for long.

The soft light of mid-winter angles in the windows and shines patterns of brightness on the wall where no art but the art of life makes it mark.  For the first time in many years, my walls remain blank white canvases.  The open space of them invites contemplation and rest.  Sophie, my most beloved cat companion, sleeps on her warm electrical pad that I've recently bought her and slipped into her favorite cat bed on the sofa.  She's barely been off of it since it arrived.  It's so satisfying to give someone a gift they enjoy so much, cat or human.  Today is one of those days when I'm very aware of the simple richness of my life.  Today is a day when gratitude has taken over and pushed everything else aside.  Today my heart is at peace.  Today I'm aware that all is well.  Today the absolute brilliance of Life in all its forms shines upon me, and it's good.  It's enough.  It's more than enough.  

The Power of Art

One never knows the vehicle that will transport one to another awareness, or deeper awareness, or release, or transcendental moment.  Tonight, for me, it was a book called "A Sudden Light" by Garth Stein.

I was in the process of reading when I suddenly felt free.  Free, as in unhinged from the normal strictures of my being.  Free from efforting, or trying to be anything, or accomplish anything, or heal anything.  Just free.  I'm in the residual energy of this moment of striking clarity, and so I'm struggling a bit for words.  Because this moment was outside of words.  It was as if the title of the book became a reality for me.  In this moment, in this light, everything was okay.  All the anxiety slipped away.  All the concerns, all the thoughts, all the veils let go.  Everything opened up into this deep expansiveness.  I had no limits.  I was everything and I was nothing.  I just was.

It was like some gear shifted into place and the lock clicked open...in one second.  And, all I was doing was reading.  Yet, I don't want to discount what I was reading or its power.  The character in the book was having a transcendent moment, and it's as if the book transmitted that moment to me.  I have read other books that are transmissions of energy and/or information, although it's more unusual for this type of transmission to be embedded into a novel.  But, that's just it.  We never know where the keys are.  You decide to read a book and your reality changes.  Such is the power of art.  In this case, the art of writing that is so connected, so deeply felt, so authentic, that it has the ability to touch you and change you at a cellular level.

Another work of art that has changed me recently, releasing me from a wound so deep I thought I might never be free of it, is a painting that I've been in relationship with for most of the last year.  When I first saw it, it pierced my heart and brought me to tears.  The vibrant life it held reminded me of the life I had stifled within myself for so long.  I'd go in to the gallery to visit it, even before I bought it, and was always reduced to tears when I saw it.  After I bought it, when I'd go in to make a payment on it, because I'd put it on layaway, and the gallery owner would offer to bring it out to show it to me, I often would turn her down because I knew I would be reduced to tearful incoherence.

While the painting was waiting for me, a friend who reminded me of the person in my past who I felt had inflicted the wound I was unable to resolve, triggered an awareness within me that allowed me to forgive that person.  And, that allowed me to forgive myself for blaming them for something that wasn't their fault, but that had pushed me into a limitation of my own making that had lasted for years.  A pain that had been so all-encompassing that it had shaped my life, suddenly opened up and lifted off.  I was free.  And, the person I had held responsible for my pain and perceived loss for decades was free as well.

After this long-time pain moved through, I no longer cried when I saw my painting.  It no longer pushed me into my pain, because the pain was no longer there.  Now, when I look at my painting, it only gives me joy.  It makes me happy.  When I see the life in it, I feel the life in me.  And, I'm grateful to the painting, and to the artist who painted it, and to all art everywhere.

We're going through a global transformation that will push us to the limit of our endurance.  But, it's an alchemy we must be forged through.  We are in the birth canal, using all our strength to push ourselves into a new way of being.  And, we're going to be in this process for a while, so we're going to have to get used to the pressure.  We're literally reshaping our reality and creating a new world.  No small task, but this is what we came for.  And, one of the things that will help us through it is art.

Art reminds us that there is beauty when we've lost sight of it.  Art lifts us up and helps us see the best that Life has to offer.  Art lets us express the deepest parts of ourselves in ways that heal not only the artist, but the ones who receive the art as well.  Art crosses all boundaries.  It pays no attention to nations or races or religions or to any of the things that separate us.  Art brings us together, opens our hearts and connects us in ways that nothing else can.  It's amazing the power that a song or piece of music has to transport us and inspire us.  Sometimes, all it takes is a look at a photograph or a painting to lift us out of despair.  A few lines of a poem or a good book can touch our soul.

I'm grateful for every person who continues to create art and express themselves in a way that lifts us all up.  I'm grateful that artists are able to imagine and create in ways that are able to set us all free.  I'm grateful that artists can see into the essence of things and bring them into being in the world in a way that benefits us all.  I'm grateful to every person who lives their life as a connected whole, whose life is art itself.  Each and every person who is able to live life in this way is an inspiration to all of us and lifts us all up by their example.

I know there's a lot going on in the world right now that is hard to make sense of.  But, there is also beauty and kindness and compassion and understanding.  There is love.  And, there is love incarnate, which is art, however it shows up...in a person, in a painting, in a song, in a book, in a dance, in a look, in a touch, in a leaf, in a snowflake, in a wave.  The ways of love and art are endless.  Love and art are always expressing.  And, all we have to do is open to receive and perceive them.

My heart has been breaking over and over and over, day after day after day recently.  It has been pummeled and cracked and worn away and smashed into mush.  But, maybe that's what I needed to be able to open it, to be able to let the hardened parts of it be chipped away, to be able to feel the pain that has kept it closed for too long.  An open heart, and the inherent vulnerability that comes with it, is not comfortable when one is used to numerous layers of hardened protection.  But, for Life to be able to flow through us unobstructed, the protection has to go at some point.  Life has been brutally cracking me open lately, and I'm on my knees in gratitude.  Sometimes it's "A Sudden Light," and sometimes it's a long-time-coming light, but however the light comes to us is exactly the way we need it.  Hallelujah.