Blocks of color, the pink and orange sang. All play, experiments.

I am falling so in love with Linda Marie. Oh, how I love the soul that I am, the way I express myself, my movement or stillness in the world. I AM LOVE. Three simple words that are changing my life as I live them. If I am love, then it follows that I deserve to be loved. That every tenderness, every bit of softness and downy comfort, is mine to be claimed. Love is beauty…I claim that. Love is truth…..I am that. Love is freedom…..I move in that flame. Love is compassion…..my heart is a well. Love is fierce…..I carry a sword. Love is a field……I hold that. Love is strong……I can hold the earth.

Last night, a dear friend called me as she awoke from a dream to tell me that I appeared to her, holding the earth in my hand. I was showing it to her and saying, “It is so much more beautiful than we thought!” She responded, “I want that!” I replied, “You are on it, baby!” We laughed at this and knew it to be true, we are holding the earth, we are on the earth, we are the earth! All of it is true.

Another echo of this feeling came through yesterday from Nicky Hamid, a dear, wise man who adopted me as his daughter when I was in New Zealand. He wrote: “Nothing special to do, or to release. Just watching and knowing, knowing and sensing, living and dreaming, waking and sleeping, breathing and smiling, laughing and crying. It is all good, it is all in the Divine flow. No more story to entertain the mind. All is new, all is You.”

Playing

I so agree with Nicky. I have listened to a few things by spiritual teachers lately that felt so shaming to me. They were espousing some of the following: one must meditate for at least an hour or two a day, one must know the names of your guides to be on the path, the way is hard and takes lots of practice, the switch from our current reality to a higher one is a process that takes a certain amount of time, like years, one must be making money if one is to be fulfilling one’s purpose.  I reject all of this. It is not my truth.  I have held the vision that all can change in a blink of an eye. We can awaken in a second, the veils falling from our eyes. If that can happen for one, it can happen for all. I do not do formal meditation. I spent too many lifetimes in cloisters and abbeys, intoning mantras and inhabiting the silence. I do love silence, mantras, chanting, toning……all of it is a part of me. My writing and art do not earn money but the joy I feel when doing them is a note that informs and quickens the all. Any of these can take me in to myself. I allow it to find me. I am open to it in every moment and I allow it all to take me there with a breath, with the current of the day, through a violet sprouting in a sea of green lawn, flashing its brilliant color, through the flames dancing in my early morning fire, through the laughter shared with another. It is so simple. It is my intent to walk in that love in every moment. To feel the love and radiate it. I do not have to plan or structure it. I allow myself to flow into greater expressions of myself. This is a natural process, as this year of the snake is here to teach us.  We expand and shed our skins over and over. We are wired for ever expanding expressions of ourselves. Change is the only constant, growth a given.

The way the sun caught the orange truck and illuminated it, brought me to me.

We have been implanted with the belief that we are flawed. It is the original sin concept that is so embedded in our society’s consciousness. That we are a beast of burden that needs to be thrashed and prodded lest we fall off the path. That we are in constant need of fixing. We do it with our bodies, our minds, our hearts…..no gain, no pain mentality that has spawned thousands of books and programs. Work hard! Don’t be lazy. Eat right and let us tell you what that is. Get up early, be productive, the early bird gets the worm. LIve up to your potential! On and on we are bombarded with the message that we are not enough. We have bought into the belief that we need constant monitoring or we will become slothful. Maybe it is time to be slothful!  Our language reflects this: “I had a lazy day”, implying that we were not productive yet that time was of great value. Do we really think that if we let go, we would all revert to a baser nature?  I do not believe this. We might sleep for a month….and that might be just what is needed to allow the body to begin to find its natural rhythm.

I recently began to look through old journals and my heart cried out for all the self inflicted pain I endured. Lists after list of do more, be this, get this done. Eat healthy, exercise daily, pray and chant upon arising, send a thank you note there, push a child to do this, stop someone else from doing that, tell another what is right or wrong about their behavior…….feeling a need to control my exterior world to feel safe inside.  Believing that I had the ability to control anything outside myself. Believing that I needed to change to be worthy of love. Living the belief that I could only be loved if I was producing, caring, giving in every moment. So much energy expended!  Yet, I did not know myself as love.

The wonder of clouds and light.

When it all stops, we are left in the stillness of our own being. In that space,  I have discovered that I am love.   If I could take all the shoulds away from folks, all the striving, all the beating up of oneself, all the judging self or others, I would do so in a heartbeat. To breathe free in the love that we all are. To allow love to move us, direct us, teach us. To trust implicitly that our body will choose what it needs to be nourished, that it will move in the way that maintains vibrant health, that our spirit will flow its desires out in a way that expresses our gifts, that by taking the best care of me, I am caring for all others.

Jackie Kennedy is said to have commented that had she known that she was to die of cancer, she would have eaten dessert more often and done fewer sit ups. She felt she had sacrificed for an extended lifeline that did not materialize. Can we trust ourselves to do what is right for us in each moment instead of living so as not to die? We will all die, it is a part of the shedding of the skin that the snake teaches. In truth, we die many times throughout this lifetime. I have shed a couple of skins in the past fortnight, dying to old ways of thought and being. I now embrace death for the expansion it brings.

I am the tenderest of beings. A tiny babe like a young shoot making its way above ground. I am protective of me. I allow only loving thoughts of me to be sounded in me. I discern what feeds me and what no longer serves. I am quick to embrace one and let the other go. I spend much of my time in stillness and silence as it helps me grow in this moment.  I look in the mirror when I brush my teeth and smile at the beauty that I am. I observe what I am lead to, what captures my attention in the moment. When I feel too many threads shooting out, bringing a feeling of confusion, I breathe deep and sit in myself. I go within and allow all to be. Peace returns. The next  moment arises and flows. I have no agenda for a day. If there is a task to be done, I note it, trusting that my higher self will take care of it when the timing is right. The more I trust this process, the more fluidly it works. Stress departs, there is only now and now and now. Each now taken in joy, with the allness of me. When my being desires rest but not sleep, I turn to a book or a movie, to allow one part engagement while another part drifts on the wind.

Perhaps it is time for the love challenge, to care for ourselves as though a newborn babe. Let only what feeds you today to enter in. Let love dance you in the brilliance of your flame. Allow yourself to move as you feel inspired. Be the love that you are. I see you and know you as love. Do you dare claim that reflection of yourself?