The Karmic Debt and the Shipbuilders Splinter

good morning relatives
welcome to the new year

its been an exciting one so far, we didn't win the raffle, GMa Margaret got suspended from the International Council of GMa's for not being who they wanted her to be, I got suspended from a couple of GMa relationships for the same thing, my cat threw up, its super cold, the cowboys lost any chance for a playoff birth again, I finally found inside of me a painful thing that was preventing me from standing steady and kindly and pulled it out yea! and the book about Lame Deer is coming along slowly but surely, and the days are longer each day!

I for one want to say first off this year that I am grateful so very very grateful for spell check.

so relatives how do we deal with disappointment?  how do we deal with the tough times? with someone who does not turn out to be who we wanted when we wanted it the most?  what do we do with a relationship when the person we had a big old fantasy about turns out to be someone they value more than what we want?

well that is a good question

I think it depends on if we want to go forward into this spanking new year the same as we were, rigid in our fantasies and our dogma    dog ma   LOL , or not.  if of course we do the same we get the same result. if we do different with the same ingredient then we get the same result. if we do different with different ingredient then we get different result.  better i guess depends on something beyond the scope of this blog but not I think beyond the scope of the heart.  The best thing about any of it is we get to choose

GE and I were talking about all the force of the prayer and the vibration of all the websites and chanting and songs and books and work and fantasy and effort and blood and sweat poured out into the ether by us humans asking for change  asking for BIG change  not just little doodad change  like in your pocket but real change  change that shifts everything
we were talking about how when the spirits look down at us and inside and through us that where they see that change and that shift can happen (especially in the way that we have asked for it which is NOW) they see the shortest and most effective place to make that shift is inside of us  in our hardest most rigid spot.  in the blind spot.  in the spot that we protect because if we don't  protect it. we think we are going to die or that who we have been will all come unravelled. They see that that one change  in the spot that we hide with ego and fear and tears and avoidance and blame and running running running,   in that spot , the if we do that one little thing different in that spot thing,  if we take the chance  take the risk.  be brave go for the gold give up our fear to them.  They will change us and make the shift and it will all change.

i wrote a poem at the circle intensive training session last may  the facilitators asked us to work as if what we were trying to learn and become today the deep change that would be the harvest for three hundred years ( or maybe it was three thousand or maybe 30,000?) from now in the grandmothers council.  I looked into the center fire and saw that fire before us and this is the poem  that came to me

Time
For a new direction
Dogma stands rigid
Holding the bones
That blank space
Animates

Fire
Consumes all that its fed
Reducing old growth into One
Ashes of lives gathered with care
Hands that steadily work
Make soap

Water
Rinsing and roaring
Through the crevasse falls to the canyon
Pools in well worn hollows eventually
Trickling down into the
Cracks

Air
Changing with breath
Mixes with water inhale exhale
Deep in the cracks losing heat
Condensing to solid
Ice

Earth
Moving from the pressure
Down along the fault line plates
Shifting away from ice's clear reflection
the surface gives way to
Change


........

our bones can become too rigid  and when the spirits ask us to move suddenly in a direction that is out of our focus but clearly in theirs
we get thrown to the ground and our rigid bones break
our hair grow too long and gets stuck to the ground
trapping us in our comfortable parameters  keeping us from playing with the children who laugh and run and see possibilities in the grass that we can no longer bend over to smell
the blank space around us can be beauty like a window that lets the air in allowing us to see the handiwork of others or something we have to fill until all light is blocked or shadowed with our design not able to withstand the uncertainty of not knowing what can or could happen in that blank space
animation of anger and fear is illusion that can be wiped away as easy as tears with a soft cloth or laughter
opening the heart to possibilities that never existed till the cracks in our concrete shells break down with the trickle of loves tiny flow like water seeping into the foundation freezing and moving the templates of our who we thought we were out of alignment making space for a new idea and a new blossom to form and if I am still standing then have I been harmed at all or just  had the dirt of my past shaken off me the dead wood trimmed away. Am I included in the garden for the new season rather than composted by careless hands and an inexperienced heart?


If we are the kind of people who try to bend the wood of the another with our tears so that it molds to our framework like a ship builder that makes a skeleton frame and then warps the wood with water so that it can be nailed in place to ultimately make a craft that will offer no resistance to the water   to the flow  and that can be easily steered by the helms master  if we are that kind of builder then we seek out the best pieces for our own use and if they crack when we force them even with gentle persuasion or the soft lure of a beautiful vision if they crack and split because the soul of their grain was not planted to be bent or forced into servitude or the fantasy of another no matter how beautiful it is,  if they crack and split and strike out at us with the force of the built in safety net of the breaking point then what do we do with them  do we discard them? did you discard me when i didn't fit your design and cracked under the pressure of your force? did you realize that your vision so soft and true for you was a force to me that was unbearable?  That I was not made to be the ship that sailed you to spiritual safety.

I learned a great lesson about force last year  about pressure that I placed against myself in one spot because I was holding the design of an-others vision rather than my own too close to my grain. when my wood cracked the explosion of force leveled the one I was trying to please. I followed that crack in me down the grain into the spot made weak by the memory of a child that was beaten one too many times and broken over and over with loss. I found her and the point of illusion in side of me that made me unsure of who I was and I dug her out of the uncertainty and the fear. I pulled her to the surface and sat with her letting her breathe. Letting her calm down. Grateful that a child will heal quickly and cleanly if the wound is tended immediately by loving experienced hands.The splinter that I took out was with tweezers guided by hands that finally knew that I love me and can and will and do. By my hands  I finally understood that I will be the master. I Am the Master. There will be no more searching and no more doubt and no more fear about not being loved.Now she is free to be and build what those blueprints instruct her to do.  I will sit by her fire and guard her and never again allow fear to move her off center into pain or the illusion of pleasing an-others design to persuade me to abandon my post.

When I was a kid I had no problem throwing off others designs on me because my blueprints were so fresh they were so vibrant.  I had no scars  As I tried to find my way through our house and home I got bumped and bruised and cut.   I grew up in a house where ships were built only one way  and the master of the shop used every tool available to beat, twist, warp and mold us the young trees into that acceptable design that would go with the flow.  I resisted. Splinters of fear and pain lodged in me. Over the years I did my best to pull them out and heal the wounds and let the scars fade. I thought successfully so.  But last year I found a splinter of fear inside of me that that old shipbuilder placed deep down near my core. A splinter that was still capable of causing me to do harm. "No one will ever love you as much as I do," was driven into me. I let it rob me all these years of the knowledge that I could and did love me even more than they. I also tried to replace that shipbuilder with another, thinking if I could find a better master I would eliminate the pain.  As a doctor and a woods walker I have lots of experience with splinters.  Just like the one in me caused me to do, a being will shift the force and action of their whole frame and effort to avoid the single point of pain that splinter can cause. the problem with that shift is that even if we are on the right path and the right track our actions our movements with our words will be off and ultimately those actions will fail not because they are on the wrong path but because they are off center just by the width of a splinter.

some folks laugh when I talk about this  and they say lighten up and why be so perfect  well its not about being perfect to me  its about causing harm  and when we talk about changing the world relatives  we are talking about splitting atoms aren't we?  and if they are split the wrong way,.... well ask those in Hiroshima how that feels.

therefore we must understand that these splinters the avoidance of the pain they cause compounded through time can cause great harm can cause us to be off by one atom and thus flatten a city.  When we are concerned first with the splinter and adjust our stance, no matter how subtle that shift is or how dramatic  it will move us to an improper approach and it will cause us to be off in our action in our doing     that splinter will be the first thing we are thinking about  and depending on how deep it is and how early in our lives it was planted we may be as I was until this last year oblivious to how it moves us off center  to how it  underlies even our best and most true work and causes us to do harm.  not intentionally but out of fear  out of pain out of avoidance out of seeking approval  that first thought however fleeting or unconscious is about avoiding that splinter before we do our work and that shift to avoid that pain causes us to to not be complete and there fore destructive in our action even though our hearts are true and our seeing is true and our intention is true   we are not   and cities get flattened

that is human     that is being    this is part of the work    finding and following the draining tract of our action and inaction and getting to the core the root of what causes us to miss the mark   what is the tiny underlying buried thought that changes the direction and aim of our love and causes us to harm each other?  its not that we have these splinters that is the rub. its that when we find out that we do and are looking back at the devastation we must at that moment be more concerned with the splinter than the wreckage. As odd as that may seem, that splinter may take years to fester and burst out into our lives in a visible way and when it does if we don't follow it home immediately and evict it then we will lose track of it and it will lie in wait for however long it takes to fester and devastate again.  This relatives is how our years repeat themselves  this is how we are unable to create true change. that is what creates the karmic debt of the shipbuilders splinter.

when I am presented as a dr with a patient that has a persistent draining tract depending on how long it has been there i can see but cant be distracted by the accumulative compounding damage that the avoidance and festering of the splinter has caused.  the only way to find the nidus of a splinter and dig it out and resolve the pain and the secondary damage is to have the courage and the focus and the wherewithal to follow the tract through the healthy tissue cutting and searching until you get to the point  and debride every bit of it out  every tiny flake has to come out as well as the scar so that the patient can return to a healthy state.  it takes a bold and unwavering surgeon and owner to do this properly.  In veterinary medicine we use major drugs and or full anesthesia to dig out these kind of splinters.  I am sure that many of you have seen the movie where the arrow or the bullet is dug out. the patient bites down on a stick, and is held down by friends until the work is finished. Lots of whisky is consumed by all before during and after! well when we have emotional splinters we can as many of us have done dig them out on our own or with professional help or even if we are lucky during or after a relationship clash with each other. If we are committed and steadfast to our purpose we can follow the draining tract of the latest injury right down to the nidus. It is there every time  because without the nidus the damage wouldn't have happened and if it is not totally removed it will happen again.  Just like an experienced surgeon, crime scene investigator or tracker we can follow that vibration all the way back down to the heart or the nidus or the splinter and if we are brave and can hold still in our own ( in my case) compounded fear, if we can hold still and hold our mirror up to it we can see it  and we can dig it out.   it really sucks that healthy tissue has to be damaged to get this splinter out   and it really sucks that the time to do it is right when every thing has gotten to the worst possible point and is open and bleeding and painful and nasty. it sucks

I took an oath as a human being, not just as a doctor, to do no harm.  That is what is at the core inside of me of honing my spiritual sword  in developing discernment   true discernment from having come from a place where I was beat to crap over and over and had so many splinters that it was amazing that i lived let alone did not get twisted inside and become a disease myself    and I don't say that as an excuse  but as a fact    I have had to find and pick out a lot of splinters  unfortunately I've also flattened people and cities. it super sucks to be me but rather than throw me out with the bath water,  I prefer to think that I'm just a great example of what can be done rather than a pitiful case. or a guilt ridden tragic hero, pity is no good and I never wanted it  it never made sense to me   I want to heal   every thing and not do more harm so that others can see that it can be done  so that others can also heal  so that when our friends ask us to hold them down and it hurts us terribly to do so as they thrash around in their anguish until that bullet or splinter or piece of glass is removed  we understand how valuable it is to get that bullet out.  We have the strength from love and experience to be brave enough to endure the pain of getting the past out of our system.  lets be brave relatives lets hold the fire so that they have courage to be brave for themselves so that they can get out of the past and heal   lets create a new future

way underneath inside of me was a splinter that the shipbuilder placed when i was young  and  it festered in me all these years but finally I have followed its draining tract ( although I have gotten close to it at other times ) down to the nidus inside of me and finally dug it out  

I got it  because you held me down     because you demanded that I show up  because you believed in me

wow  now I have been practicing better skills   steadfastness that comes from being able to have a steady unmovable stance that does not avoid the splinter first  

so
GMa
GMas
Sisters
Brothers
Relatives

if i hurt you because I was using poor skills based on avoidance of pain in me rather than holding true and fast to the soft kind clear heart of the fire

I am very sorry

I honor you for holding me still
I honor you for being the one and ones that held me down with love even though my struggle damaged you  you held me until the nidus was found

I know that it was great love and great commitment and great care that held for so long in such an terrible event  but it was necessary and I honor you for it

so wether it is karmic debt  or just love being applied where it was needed

I thank you for me

Now I am ready to help hold you while you pull the thorn that my pain discovered in you my friend

Love demands that we turn the garden over even as I know you all are   and as we plant I look forward to seeing your smiling face arrive ready to pull the weeds from the new growth

in unmovable love
mb