the unlikely Gardener

Good Morning Relatives

I woke up today with a cheerful sense about me so I thought I had better sit down and write this blog before my cheerfulness carried me so far into the day that writing disappeared altogether

good morning  how are you   good  that's excellent  me as well   although not so much that other thing

lol
how interesting that we are all trapped by the idea that we are a work in progress   somehow in my small brain that is still trying to grow up  grow into the human being that I am capable of, I have just in the past couple of weeks stumbled across the idea that I'm undone  not undone like raveled, an old sweater or hat caught by a thread and pulled into nothing ness, but like  a grain of wheat thinking it was ripe is ground into flour, and flour thinking it is finished once enriched is sifted and added to a batter, which when baked will become a cake, which when cooled and iced is a work of art or love, and when eaten becomes joy, pleasure, fat or fiber, and then branching into a memory as well as the bacterial food for the future seed of wheat.  am I a work in progress ? or am I complete but still emerging, one form into another, transitioning not from imperfection or immaturity into accomplished or failed entity but a beautiful creature who wholly embodies each of her forms, moving from one complete thing that in dying, in releasing that which was good but is no longer useful, is reborn into something that is brand new

my old life died and I didn't want it to,  then I thought I was either going to have to die or rot in the presence of my past, or attempt to overcome it by once again rising against the tide, but the answer was more simple than any of those rather depressing things  

its hard for me to lead you where I have been relatives  because my trail will not match yours  but this morning it became important for me to share with you that what I have gone through is a complete decomposition of my life yet out of that compost the seed of me has erupted   and it is simple and clear and free from many painful self judgments that would have held me back and choked me out  and kept me from rising up to break through into a world that is so much less dark than the one I came from
ha!
I am hoping that  you will see if you make it through this blog of today that like a seed that has pushed through the spring soil contains way too much DNA and Chi to present the pretty picture to the unpersevering eye, I have come at last into the idea of a world is cheerful to me   which is saying something!   and I hope that in seeing that it is cheerful for you as well    share my cup !

remember the golden snitch Dumbledore gave Harry  a reminder of perseverance and skill  "I open at the close" well I found that I was undone because the seed casing of my old life just fell off, and like a new sprout I am bursting with freedom and potential!  it has been a very long time, since if ever, that I have felt like I was just now beginning my life,  how cool is that. to burst out of the past and begin again knowing that so much is ahead of me

very cheerful about it
so I decided to share a bit of it with you today

so the seed casing that popped off,   the past   the trap   the perception that binds us and causes us to suffer unknowingly  until we recognize the chains and shortly thereafter if we don't give in to the fear, the pressure, the entrapment that they imply,  we will find a way to break them and they will fall away.  trust the pressure that builds inside the seed casing that becomes unbearable in the dark just before the new life breaks out and into a world that did not exist in the tiny little seed casing lying inert in its tidy little package
oh and no matter how tempting it is to fight at the casing, or to poison yourself, die, or hurt or blame another for this pain, this pressure, this darkness   don't do it   don't give in to the pressure
live in it, seek life, trust what pushes you against your seed casing, just exist fully in its presence. remember that pressure works both ways    what holds us cannot contain us if we continue towards our selves
but don't fight it!
so
back to my own undone ness  

I found out that all this time I thought that my finished self was the only valuable self   that being accomplished being complete enlightened saved graduated  or what have you, was the only way that I could be here.  and I am here  in this world along with all of you,  and none of us wants to be standing about like ghosts amongst each other do we?  we don't want to be lifeless, or be trash, or be broken and discarded do we  
no we, I do not  

you know relatives  we, I ,  I can't really say we because I don't know about you or others for sure but I figure I'm not the only one to discover myself in the dark of the light and its really important to be inclusive rather than exclusive don't you think? I do think we are all in this together

anyhow I - we  we think something, we think Normal, until that thought that arises from our innate life driving premise pokes a hole in our Normal thought world and a different light shines in    we think we are in the light until that different light shines in and reveals the shadows of our own self incarceration   or is that incarnation
either way what I see is that

we hold ourselves back
we hold ourselves prisoner
we hold these truths to be self evident

I've done that !  

I've moved through my life on a premise, several really, that as it turns out were premises that at first protected me and then as I developed became my jailers rather than protectors things that held me back rather than together

its is one thing for people to say  don't be hard on yourself  we don't have to be perfect  etc etc etc
and I have heard those words in one form or another most of my adult life
yet all of my time in school in church as a doctor etc at work everyone wanted me to do my best   how would a client feel if they knew I was a doctor who was only trying to be a passable veterinarian? hmmm how would it feel to be a partner who only was half assed? hmmm   or a dog owner who was not willing to pick up the poop that comes from companionship? hmmmm  nasty

not very good

but all this training all this effort all this focus on the right thing, the best effort, 110%,  had a hidden effect on my and my own psyche
somewhere in my selfness I came to believe that if I was not accomplished, finite', done, graduated, totally altogether then I was faulty, I was not valuable, I was measured and found wanting, I was capable of doing more harm than good

I thought I did not have value if I was a work in progress   and believe it or not what I discovered under that work in progress idea that I recently turned over ….  again….  is that when i said I was a work in progress before today what I realize now that I was saying was that I wanted a hall pass.  I wanted forgiveness for not being finished. for causing harm by existing by moving by bouncing off or your life and the lives of others because I wasn't yet done

you see the driving force behind the perfection quest and the holding pattern once achievement was accomplished was the underlying commitment to first do no harm and the experiential memory or data that I have done plenty of harm by not knowing or by exploring dark in the light.  I have felt harm inflicted on me by others, intentional and non and don't like it.  I didn't want to be hurt any more.  I have seen what my harm ad or inadvertent has done to others and I didn't want to repeat it  or cause any more  
so I stood still when I thought I was accomplished  and when that armor would crack as it does in the real world!  I would hold up my work in progress badge and do my best to tiptoe as fast as I could through the mind-feild of experience and learning and theory discovered then applied until i could reach the shores of completeness once again and once again not be a danger to myself or my fellow life beings.  

crazy isn't it?

how to find the balance between greed and generosity  
between kindness and manipulation
between right and wrong, black and white
life and death

how do we stay out of the grey areas when our minds and hearts and our souls are capable of seeing all of the colors, all of the nuances, all of the choices and the patterns and we keep thinking we have a handle on the good life, the safe life, the life that feels like life but isn't dangerous.  how small that world becomes when fear becomes our motivating factor because all of the things that kept us safe are suddenly and irrevocably gone.
how devastating it is when danger will robinson! is put in the pudding and your the one who is the cook but you can't bring yourself to follow the recipe any more

I fell a year and seven months ago and then again four months ago

I'm no longer physically capable of being the person I worked so hard to become   its been a shock

when life stripped away all that I had that made me value me because it in my opinion made me safe for and in the world   I wasn't sure what to do and haven't been sure of much because all the things that I thought were so necessary I wasn't able to organize and wield and keep steady any longer  and I didn't want to put them down because they were all I knew

and I got scared  scared I would choose to leave when I knew it was not my time to go  scared I would be crushed again or scared I would choose something infinitely worse  something black something irrecoverable

I felt pressure to figure it out,  that the world I knew would leave me behind if I didn't figure it out you know the big "IT"  and all I could see was that my "working progress badge" was expiring faster than I could get myself back on that horse I used to ride so confidently  

you see our world moves really quickly now  its like everyone has A.D.D    don't people realize that all that tv in the background trained us to think in 15 second increments?  and that if we could not discover our own travesty, find the culprits, vanish the dark lord, and have our happy ending in less that 37 minutes, or 13 episodes, then our show is cancelled  or our channel switched?

how crazy is that that we do not acknowledge what trains us. the master who is behind what is the whip driving us over the cliff that we so conveniently for them interpret as our own desire to leap off into the nirvana of self inactualization?  the only answer to what was driving me to self destruct after my life so almost completely died had to be either that I believed I was worthless for some underlying reason that I didn't realize I was holding dear, or life really was ended for me. kaput done, fodder.
somehow after trying on kaput, fodder, for more days than I care to recount, I came to the thought that I must believe something about me or this world or my life etc……. ad nauseum,  that was a lie
dude
that is more likely than being camel fodder     how many times have we found out that we thought something that wasn't real was real and staked our lives, our relationships, our everything on that lie?  hmmmmmmmmm

so behind the curtain  of me   after I fell and crushed my self  twice  
I found that I was afraid
afraid of being hurt    afraid of hurting others   afraid my value was lost because all of the sudden my capacity was in my mind diminished lost broken

but I don't want to be broken
I don't want to have a disability
I don't want to lose my value

and I am not talking about not valuing others who are differently abled Im talking about me inside of me the me who I have known for 55 years who could do just about anything she wanted and who worked really really hard for a long time to become proficient at something she was really good at that made a really big difference  I didn't want to lose her    me    because what I saw: the world I believed in without realizing I was supporting and creating my own prison, my own system that only valued perfection because I thought like a naive little lamb following the shepherd of the authority and social construct that I agreed to mold me, that if I was a broken toy I belonged in the trash ,   and what I saw was that I was broken   irrevocably broken if my identity was defined by the world I believed in.

[the alternative thought that surfaced (and was confusing and not a good fit for me i.e. not true for me but persistently floating about the debris of options presenting themselves as life savers in the sea I found my self in the sea that I thought was the only pool to swim in until I didn't think this) of being a discarded broken thing was to be a thing that was destructive, maximally to any and all who I perceived were dangerous to the world as well, which is dangerous but evidently a popular thought was that if I took them out since I was going anyway then I actually was doing the world a favor] sound familiar?  its really crazy this world we all grew up in  and the broken ness isn't just me or a few others  its lots and lots more to come so its important to look death in the eye ( or the voldemort of our own existence) and name it  face it and then stop giving in to it  stop giving it power over us  

you see the only power I had in this world that I used to live in, power that I worked really hard to warrant and maintain, now all that was gone  the me  my chance  my work  the safety net was gone

is gone

and this person who enjoyed doing her best, who enjoyed figuring things out and applying them and changing life, lives, as a doctor as a friend, as a traveling companion, or a ceremony participant
this person is no longer capable of all of that physical and financial support that helped create the safety net that I lived in  this person that I depended on to keep me and you safe if not happy was not the same person any more  and all that safety in a world that definitely is not safe was gone and i didn't know what to do

and I sat  and held back  and stood still until I realized that I needed help turning over the garden,  composting who I was or rather who I had been
and I asked for help
because the alternative was to be violent
and that was not ok
with me

so i did
ask for help

and I got it
from an unlikely gardener who showed up invited

just a person   with a different perspective   someone who sees something different in the mirror than I do
and we wrestled a bit over the mirror and how to hold it or look at it and neither of us liked how the other wasn't convenient for the fast track, and it was always sneakingly suspiciously tempting to not go back or to throw in the towel,  but we persevered in our dance and in the end turned up something that when like a weed or a spent annual from years past pulled out of my garden, poked a hole in my world

and that was how the light got in
through the hole

and all that experience and training and stability and life that I was and had and did thinking it was permanent and dependable and would hold me and you in good stead became not garbage or failure
not a world in transition or a world that needed to be restored
it all fell away into the past
it became a foundation
evidence that all the things about me that were and are valuable have nothing to do with actually being a doctor, only with being able to become one
that recognizing the world is dangerous or someone is not of the best intention! really! that again! didn't mean I was subject to their illusion of control, or evil, or whatever so that I could honor their right to live to exist to wage evil and run amok to their hearts content.
the world is dangerous but only if I let danger define my world  and even when I so clearly meet up with those who intend harm on the road down the lane and across the sea that does not mean that I am not safe just because they are not  I don't owe them my life just because they have one at the same time and space that I do
hmmmm   get it?  more than one idea at one time   wheat, oats, rye, same field   dogs cats mice same house   same time  same space different worlds

I can move about  I have the skills  I have the heart  the intention  I have the flexibility
I can stand still,   I can pause,    I can breathe,   I can sing,   I can hum,   I can laugh,   I can see,   I can be silent, or not,  I can contribute,  I can think,  I can apply   I can love probably better than I ever could because I don't believe any longer that I have to be finished  that I have to be accomplished that I have to be perfect to have value or to be safe for you or for me   I don't have to compromise because neither you nor I have to be held to one idea one thing to have value or to live or share or not

you see all that doing that fell down around me tells me that I have wherewithal   and I am the good person I wanted to be  and I will find my way   as I did before    and it won't look like it used to   and I am differently abled physically and financially but now that is not a bad thing but just a thing

so I don't need a hall pass relatives  
Im not a work in progress  
lol
Im not working any more

get it!

thanx for being my friends  for being my relatives  for being you   I think we matter not that we become the same thing or even similar but simply ourselves
love ya
mean it
mb

the ripple effect

Good Morning Relatives

I want to talk about motion  
I want to think about motion and how it distracts us from seeing ourselves as we are  how it gives us the false promise of security  how it holds violence as a sacred core inside of our hearts

Think of throwing a rock into a pool    more often than not I watch the ripples rather than the rock
 I  focus on the waters motion rather than the idea of the rock sinking to the bottom immediately lost from thought or awareness

because of the motion of the water my attention has already moved on from the rock and its silent sinking presence forever changing the landscape of the bottom of the lake  displacing water from its resting place over time hardening into a stone mountain buried beneath the water that distracts from the leviathan growing beneath the eye catching surface

today I want to think about the rock
and the arm that threw it
I want to think about why and what I am that I would cast a stone

I dreamed last night that I was out amongst a crowd of people whom I did not know and they took my shirt off and were looking at my tattoos and writing on my skin and pushing me with their curiosity and when I was conscious enough to wake within that onslaught my response was to threaten them, to threaten them with extreme violence to make them stop and in the face of their disbelief I was resolute and along came one who did know me and reassured the others that I would indeed harm them in the extreme if they continued violating me yet when I tried to act on my violent intention it was as it has always been in the dreamtime completely ineffectual.
which left all of us in sort of an interesting conundrum.

dreams are funny that way    very valuable   very honest  sometimes too honest eh?

so I thought back to Lame Deer, and the fire, and the man who tried to kill me there and I thought about how it was that I responded with no resistance to him and how he finally came face to face with himself and left me out of the equation

somewhere in my own equation I have not left out violence
and that for me is unacceptable
so
get out the thinking cap, the coffee, take the dogs on a walk first thing and find a robins egg broken open on this beautiful spring day
its time to break open me and look inside at what it is that I have given birth to and what kind of birth I want to give tomorrow
and so I came in the house and looked at the eye of the fifth wind and saw what I could see

part of what I woke up thinking is that when someone pushes and the one they push against does not push back but moves where ever the pusher pushes them, then the position of the first changes.  the pusher moves.  their position progresses because there is resistance.  the feeling of power of control is conceived to originate outside of themselves  between or about themselves and that upon which they are pushing.  there is resistance because there is motion there is movement between the two which leads to judgment or evaluation by the pusher who then may change the pushing according to the desire that originated the push, the results of which may or may not satisfy   and therefore the motion of the resistance that gives way to the push, which is usually seen as non-violent is in fact an action or response that can only serve to escalate the desire of the original push and thus is also a contributor to violence.


then I was thinking about how standing without pushing back and without being moved not even in the mind or breath is not resistance   it is nothing ness that is not solid but not moveable  it is standing, sitting, existing with no engagement or transfer or interaction in any way with the push or the pusher
think of the water not reacting to the stone thrown into its midst
over and over, stone, water, nothing
stone, water, nothing
stone, water, nothing
stone, water
stone, water
stone

 I was thinking how when someone pushes at that type of person then what they end up seeing  eventually, because there is no movement other than the pusher themselves, is themselves

the stone

the arm that wants to throw it

the want behind the toss

the desire attached to the ripple effect

and that is it isn't it?  

the desire attached to the ripple effect  

and thus the mountain of stones at the bottom of the water of our clarity
waiting for us to retrieve them and look into the hardness that they lend to our hearts and our lives
hardness that protects only as long as it creates usefully distractive motion in and amongst all that is around us
the ripple effect that focuses the eye away from the stone
the nidus of that which is rock hard at the bottom of a push

and when I see my own hardness in the light of no resistance, I am not sure what to do with it
yet

when i looked last night into the water of my own clarity I saw that I was willing to be violent to protect myself, specifically to keep strangers from touching me without my permission

where did that come from?  
why do I feel the need to use violence to ensure that I am not harmed, not touched without permission?
why do I think that strangers want to touch me?
why do I associate touch with fear?
why does curiosity give permission to act without permission?
why are we all responsible for each others conundrums?

curiosity is something that I reserve for anything that does not pertain to another human being

for this I have been accused of being uncaring when in fact it is simply an adaptation designed to ensure survival and also to somehow restore all the respect that I have witnessed loss of

how can I go about being out and about and not be assaulted by the touch of the curious
if the water of my life is still while rocks are cast over and over into its unmoving surface, am I risking isolation or mirroring respect
still my thoughts are not still

I have to return to the rock  the nidus  the samscara to the motion  to the bottom of the well

what I found at the bottom of my well is fear
and that fear does not want me to let go of its hardness even though I can mentally understand that it is a shell that is already broken  
and I do not want to let it go because I do not know what to put in its place
how is it that water has a memory?
how is it that our connections carry such traumas
who did I believe when I learned that violence is successful?
there is no violence in the dreamtime that is successful and yet I see that I have clung to it as if it was a life raft in a drowning sea

I must have grown up in a sea that was awash with fear
fear that swamped the boat over and over drowning all of us in violence

who will do the work? climb the mountain and learn to stop casting stones  to stop pushing each other to end violence and no longer be caught in the casting grip of fear?

I will   because I am worth it  I always was
and without a seamless sea I cannot hope to be a safe shore for you or any other
and that is the thing that I was born knowing
that we are all worth it
and fear is not necessary
but it scared everyone, my fearlessness, my joy, and then because they were scared, they became violent and scared me, and in turn I believed that fear was important, that violence was the cure, and somehow inside of me was the disease

interesting isn't it?

I have brought that fear back to the shore, releasing it from its hardness, myself from its familiarity, its false promise laid it to rest

the view is worth it

love
mb

shelter from the storm

Good Morning Relatives

its an amazing day here in Pipestone  the grass had a thick frost on it when we went out this morning  now the sun is out and everything is all sparkly and wet!  its the day to plant the tomatoes and the basil and the squash I think  

I had the best dream last night   I don't remember much of it LOL but what I do remember is that it was a different kind of dream than I used to have  
you know how dreams can be puzzles  they can be full of stress  fear  negativity or conflict  or like never ending journeys?

sometimes its like life goes on and on in the dreamtime and we never get to the part where we are absolutely sure we are winning    well last nights dream was different than that

yippeee!  I dreamed that I made it   not sure where it is  its only right here right now after all   but I can tell I changed about how I am about me  I know that there have been many times that I have come to an ah-ha moment and shared these with you in the bloggy  and perhaps you as I do am wondering why do I need so many ah-ha moments to make myself kinder to open myself up to love and care to myself (trust me if I cannot do this for me relatives there is no way in hell that I can do it for you , think about it)  so again and again reworking remaking me. uncovering that which is a better fit  kind of like taking an entire life to write the symphony of Mary  LOL  there are many notes and many layers of sound that make up a human being after all  and when most of our music has been written long before we were awake and educated (enlightened) enough to write or rewrite our own notes there is perhaps much to be reworked  and that is ok.

my mental therapy coach asked me this week to pay attention to whether or not I was critical of myself   to pay attention and see if I was being hard on me for not being able to live up to the Normals that float around in my head   come on you know what I mean   we all have them as much as we would like to think we have elevated or enlightened ourselves out of them they are there  in mine for sure   that does not mean that when we stumble across them that we have to dance with them

we can say hello good morning  hmm not interested and then replace those thoughts with something that is unconditional   its important that we replace them you see  not with a different bar, a different measuring stick, but with no stick.  replace them with trust. replace them with compassion.

when I was a kid my folks were at least my dad was super religious  he was a late convert  to chrisitanity and went into it with a vigor  I think he somehow came to believe that he needed something to commit to outside of himself or different than he saw himself to keep himself in check  he didn't feel he could stay in check on his own  what ever that means, it must have meant for him that if left to his own devices he would choose selfishly and in doing so condemn his loved ones to hell.

 for all of his accomplishments he doubted who he was  what he didn't understand was that depending on a form or an outside structure still required that he do the work  that he saddle up and ride the pony that he thought was valuable. No matter what the pony, he still had to ride it.  He had to be disciplined to this set of rules that he saw outside of himself. something that he had to take on that had as it s cornerstone that he was faulty.

but he wasn't faulty, or he couldn't have ridden the pony. you see?  he wasn't faulty or he would not have chosen such a long and distasteful road of self debasement to save himself and those he loved.  he may have had to learn how to go about his life and make choices,  he may have had to come to understand the consequences of his choices, as we all do. He may have had to decide if it was worth it to lie or cheat or not, but the unfortunate thing is that he somehow began to believe that those choices of left or right, good or evil, did not originate with him, they were always simply available.  but he believed that because he could perceive left or right, that he was flawed to begin with and because he was flawed he had to be beaten with a stick to stay on the straight and narrow.

and his own god forgive him he then began to see his children as flawed and began to beat us with that same stick because he saw in us that which he feared the most in himself.  he saw in us that we were born with an intelligent vigor.

and as we grew up he saw that we were born with ideas that did not bow down to the yoke that he had placed around his own neck.  we were free, and he was not.

the only way that a trapped human being can live with a trap that they believe in with all their soul is if all the other humans are also caught in it. but I didn't see life as a trap. I didn't believe in his hell.

The long and short of it is that I was both born with an idea, a conviction of how it seemed to me that things were supposed to go, a willingness to shift myself and everything else to align things to that completeness (which is how I viewed it) and a lack of attachment to the fact that there was a process a transition in unscrambling everything.   however being raised in a home and social structure that saw my birth in to a scrambled mess as wrong, as the result of sin, everything about that transition even to the point of admitting it was needed was seen as bad, as flawed, as an admission of being a sinner meant that if I did not go along with what they believed, then I was a threat to them.  how can a parent deal with a child that not only doesn't see them or itself as bad, but that was born with the wherewithal to question from the get go that crazy reality?

little did I know that all this was going on, not only for myself and my family, but for many many others as well.

 I wasn't bad and neither was anyone else   we weren't born into sin or made of it  we were just born into an unknown that could be rearranged, realigned, put together so that for each and everyone of us those pieces of opportunity made sense and made what we saw and understood to be valuable, to be a beautiful noise.  what an amazing thing to be born into a puzzle that can be so changeable  to malleable to an individual perspective   pretty amazing

I'm not here to pound on my dad or on any religion or idea that is different than my own.  I am not interested in debunking a myth so that right and wrong and blame or fault can be assigned and wrung out for the drops of blood that they would produce

I don't think that matters at all    going back  blaming   but it provides a perspective of how I and perhaps we got here  and how it is that I and perhaps we will recognize that we are not looping back over the trail and falling again into an old idea that like a barn sour horse leads only back to the pastures of judgment

we all have the right to seek comfort even when it means we go back again and again to the shelter that perhaps kept us out of the storm of changeability and opportunity and unknown that the world persists in being  and sometimes we learn in venturing out, and in running back to our old safety, time and again, we finally learn that we can venture out and not be destroyed by the storm that we perceive this life to sometimes be.  once we understand that we can venture out and keep going even when the storm comes around from time to time to rearrange everything so that we can see a new thing after it subsides, at some point we can learn that we are ok  that we can do this thing, we can survive in the wilderness of life's changeability.

then perhaps we can really begin to see who we are   to learn that we can make it in a place where fear lives along side hope, where generosity is neighbor to avarice, where kindness is growing in the shadow of monstrous cruelty.   things exist all around us as they are until they do not  they have value and opportunity in us until they do not

all my life I have wanted to be safe and to freely move about the world making what beautiful things I saw into tangible livable experience   and for most of my life I have lived in fear of this world because I was taught to fear it  I was taught to fear myself  to doubt myself  to believe that divine perfection was the only defense against what I came to believe like my father was inherently faulty in myself   it has only been since my body and my productivity have faltered so horribly that I have truly had to come face to face with whether or not I believe myself to be negative.  To be a sinner, to be bad or dangerous, or cancerous; negative in any way.  

and I find that when I thought about what my mental therapy coach asked me to consider, that I am judging me. silently persistently in the core of my being finding me wanting and thus full of self loathing

then relatives I found that I did, I was doing this thing, and I was suffering for it.

and when I shined my light on this thing that tormented me and thus you relatives   (because how can I treat you other than I treat me)  I found that it was false and saw it as something that could not stand when held to the light of my own self

in the dreamtime I broke through this old shadow and found the me that I have always been waiting for me.  eager to be embraced like a long lost companion who I have finally found in the woods

when I saw this in the dreamtime and embraced me I felt my heart fill with light and joy  I felt my body let go of its negativity  and I rested in the simple trust that I am, however I am, perfectly fine.

my shoulder is not magically strong or healed but it is no longer full of fear and pain,  my house is not magically clean but it is cleanable and no longer a bad house because it has dirt from dog feet and unswept cat hair clinging to chair legs,  my financial footprint is still tiny but it is mine. it is ok.

so many teachings I have not understood   they went in my ear, my head, and bounced off of the stone of fear that was placed like a gravestone in the ground of my childhood.  I don't remember when I gave in to the force that wanted me to see me as negative, as needing to be saved  but I can tell you this relatives I didn't need to be saved until I agreed to acquiesce to the idea that I was unsaveable, unlovable.   and I remember making the choice to swallow that bitter pill so that I could if possible be closer to, be loved by, be valued by those with whom I grew up. those who were my core of safety, my first loves. my family.

I chose to trust them even when the me that knew better did not.  I gave my life first to their fear and judgement so that I could follow their path to forgiveness and somehow along the way be loved by them  

but they could not love me  because they did not love them selves
they could not forgive me when i chose their negativity so that I could be like them and thus be liked because they did and do not forgive themselves

that sucks

so how is it that we are born again?  by throwing off that which was first and always false

and by not teaching our children that they are bad so that we can pay someone or some thing or some system to save them

who introduces bad or wrong or not as an identity?  we do

stop it

Love's Circus Du Stance

Good morning Relatives

we had an ice/snow/hail storm this morning early.  when the dogs and I went out for morning ablutions the ground was covered in tiny little round ice balls that from my height looked like snow. they were / are clear and very very cold   amazing how beautiful the morning can be and how energizing the ice can be when it is so small and elegant.

I've had a lot of dreams lately  lots of transitions in the night   struggles in the dreamtime often reflect the deeper or long past previous actions and inactions that when taken or avoided resulted in the circumstance of today   changing the past in the dreamtime changes the reality of todays circumstance

Lately I have been dreaming of compassion  of love that persists  and I think that is important

that we persist in love   above all it is important

what is love?

my own definition of love has changed  evolved throughout my life   which is a good thing

love was at first a thing  a destination  something that one qualified for or was awarded if one was good, appropriate, the right person in the right time or place, an ever after that once granted would never change or diminish

then love became a gift  something to do, something to give or to figure out and grant or take away  perhaps an emotional commodity?  and in becoming a commodity it became something that could be broken
because it could be broken or trampled on or so I thought at one time I was given the idea that love needed to be secured within my self in a safe place so that those with whom I felt this inclination this commitment and this action and inaction oriented emotional attachment could not harm it or tarnish it or change it or break it
so I removed love from the place in me where it could be touched by the outside world

what I found out after long years of this was that in doing so I had also removed it from where I could touch it or feel it
and so I began to doubt that I had love or could love at all or ever would again

and then along came the past and its ever marching into the present and bringing with it an outside love that I thought would never be part of my life  a distant love that is untouchable and unreachable like the princess who lives in a tower surrounded by poisonous thorns this child that I never thought I would in this life ever be concerned with showed up in my life's awareness and she is in a desperate lonely terrifying place  a place where the prison she is soon to be incarcerated by will be a haven compared to the home from which she came a home that was part of the home I left long ago
a disastrous home that is deadly and has been for generations to a line a long line of women who have been infected with a malevolent negativity that destroyed them and their families generation after generation
and this child came from that long family line that female line of negativity that like a genetic virus decimated those who were born with its mark upon their heart? their soul? their mentation.

this female child was marked and raised in this deadly way and when she went out into the world she immediately fell prey to the consequences of the actions that her sickness drove her to persue in the the common world.

what I saw when her circumstance was made known to me was a child who was all these negative things but also a child who is also lonely, terrified, and ignorant of love  of true love  of life that is kind or even or plain

what I found was that inside of me was a love for her that disrupted the cage I placed love into long ago not out of care for its preciousness but out of fear for myself did I close away that which felt love and moved me to act on it and to let it change and grow and crumble and diversify
all out of fear for self

something inside of me refused to not stand for this child even though it will never be that I will or would want to be a part of her life  nor do I desire to fix change or ameliorate her circumstance because that would only put me between her and herself her own realization or opportunity to find her way

inside of me I found that I had the courage the ability to go back to the time when our family was broken by this virus  this entity that brought with it such negativity and in going back to that time and place I put back the line that was disrupted by this thing and then took hold of it as it returned or arrived for the first time to embody the generations of women who would be susceptible to its attachment
taking hold of it at first I wanted to destroy it but it was indestructible as all things are actually  yet as long as I held it it could not infect others or harm them so I sought within me the why of my own desire to harm it and found that what I wanted was simply that it not harm us
I simply wanted it to not harm us so instead of achieving that through death I chose to achieve it by standing freely as a no  by choosing for the generations of my female relatives a no to its attachment
yet also at the same time giving it the right to go to its own home
because all things come from somewhere
all things are home in the place where they belong
and I believe our universe, our A-U-M option is so much more than what I can or will ever perceive and if in this place I am then there is a place where it also is
and so I sent it to go home
because what I found was that it was as caught in its attachment as we were and that attachment created pain, fear, negativity that was deadly to us
and so it came to me that this thing was as trapped as we had been by something that it got caught in and in releasing it and in setting a boundary for us and for it it was freed to find its way safely forward even as we can
it may take an instant or eons for it to find its way home but I know that it can
it may take years or only one timely encounter for my niece to find her way in this world of consequence that has arisen out of her circumstance but what I believe is that she can choose freely now
and for that ability to choose freely I stand for her with love in my heart, mind and soul
for that I am able to love her as she is or chooses to be without it having any attachment or condition or breakableness inside of or outside of me

I realize I have been seeking a way to love without harm either to myself or to others in my life
perhaps I have found it  It seems to me so that whatever love was to me as a child or young adult or grown up it has finally made its way out of the mud of ignorance and is now able to blossom into the light

it feels finally to me like something that is beyond a powerful thing, idea, concept or perspective.  it is something that can simply be all that I am

its nice
thank you relatives for helping me
take good care
mb

Lady Liberty

Good Morning Relatives

its a perfect spring morning today here in Pipestone.  It is sunny and crisp like a honey crisp apple.  there are clouds in the sky that are gathering for a pow-wow. Their drums are tuning up for the afternoon dance.

I've been having quite the time here in the transition of the year   I miss being able to hop on my motorcycle and go out and greet the spring transition from that perspective. I taught myself to make iced coffee in what is called the Japanese style of icing it immediately as it comes out of the filter so that the taste is protected by cold.  It is like flash-freezing sort of, only not that cold.  It is really good and instead of coffee going to waste, taste wise, because it cooled off before I drank it, or it cooking to death on a heater, I just stick the container in the fridge until I am ready to have some more, later.

Living here has been a process of learning what is essential, what is worth spending resources on, what is wasteful and or more satisfying.  My life like that of many others has changed so much from a few years ago.  Now when I see ads for target, or shopko, or walgreens or best buy I wonder how much stuff they think we can keep purchasing, storing, buying and discarding before we are satiated by the refuse of want.

Pipestone is late to the harvest. It is an isolated town where the mortgage crash is just now happening, where the less than idle rich are finding that their power and the power that they promised their children maybe isn't so respected or feared after all.  Their world is just beginning to wobble and crumble as the people here are turning over like an old garden that will eventually compost itself through neglect and lack of sustainability in its planting. the pockets that they have picked for so long are now so empty and so turned out that the implosion of the lack of economy will consume them if we simply stand by and let the inevitability of what they created come to full term.

I am heartened by the sure propensity of greed and gluttony to over graze its own pastures until faced with the exhausting nothingness of repetitive spending, consuming, and discarding the captive human being will some day raise their head from the feast of famine that our society is now chained to and realize that something vital is missing from their diet.

I trust the children, the young adults, the middle aged warriors, the mature philosophers, the elder peace keepers to stand together on the shore of humanity and open the gates of our future with the love and vision that they have held despite the drag of the under tow of humanity in its rush for the black fridays, and the Mac Mansions, the power, and the drug dangled fantasy of a perpetual personal high spent as the chains of debt and poverty bury them deeper and deeper beneath the wave of the past.  I am sure that the market will kill itself with redundancy. That the consumer will outgrow the desire for that which is on the end of a stick because they will have seen, held, tasted, and worn it all.  There is one thing that comforts me about the children of today and that is that they are bored.  I believe they will continue to be bored until they either die of it, or kill each other off, or get up and go out and seek that which sustains a different kind of life.  a life that is an original opportunity not because it is the most costly or the most exclusive, but because it is not reproducible.

every day I have a choice to cut away the past from my day  to stand or sit in the fear and judgement of inability or to pick up stand up and do even a small amount with the ability that I have. the tide of despair laps at my heels as I drag myself from the ocean of the past and all of its judgments, losses, broken perspectives, and eminent willingness to drown me in its fantasy of helplessness rather than support the spark of my life.

that is what tells me Relatives, that wherever whomever whatever that or those are that tug at me are not of me, nor do they have my wellbeing as part of their interest. They have no care, when they consume me or I consume myself for their wellbeing, that my life is forfeit.
why feed that which has no care for your own life?
why stand for one minute under the yoke of that which will grind you up for grist to feed its perpetuance rather than lose its own existence?

do not give of yourself to that which in your day feeds or supports fear, judgement, death of self, or takes the life of either you or your neighbor.

this is not about being selfish in our choices but in being together as one.  we are not the same but we are together in the necessity of our freedom from blindness about our circumstance.  Our circumstance has changed here in our country.  we have changed. we have been pushed under the wave of commercial and credit and the profiteers of war machinery's oppression until we are almost drowned from the futures that were traded on the backs of our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, children and even those who are not yet born.

we have become the refugees that our country once offered respite from as they stepped on her shores less than three hundred years ago.

― Emma Lazarus tags: quote-on-the-statue-of-liberty, statue-of-liberty          

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

where are we to go?  

do we stand by and let the garden fail?  do we stand up for ourselves and that which can be done?  it is and always has been tough to be both a philosopher and an activist as well as a peacekeeper.  the conflict that must be shed like a too worn garment that rather than comfort chafes as it slides once more over the skin of my limbs.  

will we be the golden door?  will we have the stamina to lift the lamp?  not of false promise, or of power mongering securities , or of religious right, or of war waged against those whose resources our great consumerism wants to suck dry.   

change comes through small efforts applied over and over 

do not buy what is pushed at us through a sale flyer   coupons that drive your food consumption especially those that are tied to gas savings are ways that the great money mongers are driving you to your death, to your lack of freedom and choice. 

if you sell your freedom for a 5 cent or 50cent coupon then you are linking your nutrition to oil consumption

rather  how about support a garden?  how about support a local food source,  how about choosing what you would really like to eat rather than what is "available" or made available by the grocers who pick and choose for you long before you ever arrive at the store.  

have you ever wondered why with all the global ability our groceries are so narrowly focused?  why is it that we either buy products mass produced by the big four or mass produced as generic substitutes?  why is it that fresh, small, free market is less than it ever has been?  

it is because of the coupon, the gas percentage, the willingness of ourselves to be led to slaughter by the acceptance of the presentation of profit at the stores in which we shop.  stores used to be markets that presented the local harvest  then it became regional and finally national but as it grew it became tailored for profit and tailored to train us the consumer to accept the trade, the narrowness 

do you realize that we spend more for coke and for bottled water per gallon than on gasoline?  do you realize that if as a city, as a county, as a state, or a nation we stopped driving for a week, if we did not buy gas for a week, or even two weeks, if we trained ourselves to really conserve gas consumption  to walk  we would have the ability to control gas prices, oil focused transportation and all that it sustains  like war 

do you realize that we can change the cost of cell phone and internet and cable by not using it for only a few hours   by declining to re-up to the programs that empty our pockets even as we work and work to earn money that we cannot ever hope to hold in our hands for long enough to even make a joyful choice as to its fruition in our daily lives and the lives of those we love? 

we have the ability to become our own Lady Liberty    

we have the ability to talk to ourselves, our partners, our children, our neighbors and to take action small and steady and grow it until it becomes the force of those who will not be held hostage any longer by the weekly ads, the gas percentage coupons, the buy ten for ten cheap nutrition less body and mind numbing empty calorie debris that is on sale this week at the local store. 

there is no doubt in my mind that our country is going to collapse.  what I raise my fist for, what I hold up as a light is that there are those who will choose not to seek the golden door as if it was the golden calf and sell out their children and their neighbors to grasp its temporary glory, but who will seek to hold that door, to open and sustain the structure that will and can stand tall, that will rise from the mud of this countries past failure, and become the land of freedom that we have a choice to create 

or not 

mb