“Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you would be perfectly comfortable. Bobby Bragan

Time for a deep breath, a moment of integration, no longer exists between the end of one churning and the beginning of the next. Last night I realized that the next piece to unfold was already in the pipeline even though the current one is still quite present in its tenderness. They are lined up like chess pieces ready to be moved or perhaps a domino awaiting sufficient angle to tip and collide into the next.

The powerful unfolding that is present fits far better in the discomfort category than one of peace and inspiration. Maybe I missed the fork in the road that said, “Enlightenment This Way”, and blundered down the path more traveled. Sometime in the far and distant past, I recall thinking that life would get easier as more and more of the ego unraveled.  Now I know that comfort is overrated. Comfort only means that the ego is firmly in control.

Step into my world, the world of juxtaposed and warring energies and the recognition that nothing, and I do mean nothing, I believed to be true, was in fact, accurate. Even the basics – childhood memories, ideas about my relationships with husbands and children, thoughts about bosses and peers – were experienced through distorted filters, and hence must be accepted as mere fabrication. I openly admit that I do not know anyone, not even my own self and that comes with a bit of anxiety and … an immense relief.

So much is coming back, things that I believed processed and done – childhood hurts, imprints and impressions of which this mind was totally unaware. I knew that something in my early days didn’t feel right. There was an energy that knotted my stomach and yet, it was far enough from consciousness that I could not remember any details. It felt very old. I had heard people talk about ‘in utero’ experiences but I couldn’t remember anything before kindergarten. I held a belief that others could access realms I couldn’t or that maybe they were kidding themselves and creating fantasies in their minds.

During meditation that old belief dropped away and I realized the belief itself was the preventative principle. As soon as the belief dropped a picture of the day I was born appeared and with it, my father’s reaction to the birth of a daughter. Whether it was expressed out loud or held simmering within him, it imprinted on the tiny receptive newborn. I was not welcome. I was not enough to bring joy to my father. All of my attempts throughout Dad’s life to gain his approval came into focus. As long as I held the imprint of ‘not enough’ I could never accept approval. Every event, every comment, every look had been seen through distortion.

A picture book of my life flipped open in front of me and I realized that I didn’t know who my sisters, my boyfriends, my friends and partners really were. All that I knew was biased through the filter. The slate was literally wiped clean. After a while I realized that I could play with the filters, like an optometrist fitting glasses. I could lift the filter and see my life clearly or look through the filter and consciously see the distortion.  I was no longer at its effect. My demon ‘not-enough’ was seen to be smoke and mirrors.

For a long time now I have deluded myself into believing that I resided in the present moment. I didn’t. I lived in a world of my creation and I hadn’t been the kindest of creators. I have tasted the true present moment or at the least, what appears at to be true at this level of insight. The truth can’t be pinned down. It must be free to expand and grow, to tutor us and to set us free.  Being alive isn’t about being comfortable. It is about being courageous enough to look truth in the eye and to let it transform us. The discomfort is a sign that we are on the right path.

May truth unfold in its perfection and show us that only the mind believes in impossibility. Anything is possible, even discovering hidden treasures of our very distant past.

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.” C.S. Lewis

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” John F. Kennedy

God has always lived as human. You, exactly as you are, are the Divine Expression of God. You don’t have to change one thing. Relax into your inheritance and settle into this moment’s expression of God. It is possible to live in a world where we stand in awe of each other, where we don’t assimilate in the melting pot of conformity, or face exhaustion censoring the true expression clamoring to ring clearly through us.  This becomes reality, as clear as our face in a mirror, when we appreciate this startling truth – God is everywhere. God is everyone.  Nothing but God is.

Three years ago I began volunteering at the state’s medium security prison.  Speaking about my work there I said, “I teach meditation to the men.” From the first day it was obvious though, that while I did bring something of importance, they were in fact teaching me. Last week I attended a volunteer appreciation dinner. The evening was delightful. The food was entirely paid for and prepared by the inmates. The meal was delicious but my heart was fed by the twelve men, men whom many wouldn’t see as this Divine Presence, who articulately and heart-fully shared their appreciation for the volunteers who had impressed God upon their lives.

I listened in awe as one by one each man took the microphone and expressed his gratitude in an openly, shamelessly. The beauty inside each man and the beauty inside the walls of the prison touched me deeply. The words were beautiful. It didn’t matter whether the volunteer being honored was Muslim, an Evangelical, Buddhist, a Russian or Hispanic Christian, Jewish, Native American, Catholic or simply practitioners of yoga or meditation. It was clear that each preference, and the men who chose to devote their hearts to that path, were perfectly matched. My heart opened in a new respect for this incredible unfolding of God. What had previously appeared as paths of insurmountable differences were simply unique expressions of God, perfect in the wide-ranging variety. Through the diversity everyone’s needs were met; no one’s heart was left untended.

Sitting there it dawned on me that I had a bird’s eye view to a miracle. Here, in one room, were all the world’s religions.  People were smiling. The joy and bottomless appreciation was palpable. The barriers that commonly separate had fallen down and shattered into the nothingness they are. That bright and sacred evening, two hundred prison inmates and religious volunteers from every persuasion showed the world how to live.

The door clanged shut behind me as the evening concluded, the men waving across the impassable distance, and I proceeded towards the guard shack.  A woman walking next to me mentioned an inmate from her group, a man I didn’t know. He’d heard about two children who had witnessed their father beat their mother to death and felt duty-bound to raise funds for counseling for the kids. He knew, all too well, how the trauma could have long-lasting effects, up to and including a life behind bars if they didn’t get help. Raise funds he did. Due to his compassion, a powerful letter writing campaign, and many partnerships, a check for twelve thousand dollars was sent to ‘The Dougie Center’ in Portland, Oregon for the children’s therapeutic care.

This inmate recently stood in front of the parole board, not for release but to determine whether or not he was worthy of being rehabilitated. If deemed competent he would receive education and opportunities leading to eventual parole. If not, he would remain one of the lost souls with no hope of societal redemption. The woman, a hint of anger in her voice, told me the parole board had recently decided that he would not be rehabilitated.

Standing there in the guard house, feeling the pain of being believed so unworthy, my heart collapsed. The words struck something profound, a deep-rooted human fear of being unlovable, and I began to shake, reverberating at the core. As quickly as the shaking began, it ended. In five seconds, something vital had shifted in me. Instinctively I knew that something had cleared within the collective consciousness and for the inmate, the man I had never met. This man had value. His story healed me.  Each of us holds this amazing potential to heal all others as we are willing to stand in one another’s shoes. Stand in awe. God is present.

No one of us is useless. No one of us is so lost as to be unworthy of being found. Our own potential grows as we embrace each person. We acknowledge our native genius as we cherish the participation and well-being of others. Gayle Gregory, Workplace Evolution.

The moth unwitting rushes on the fire,

Through ignorance the fish devours the bait,

We men know well the foes that lie in wait,

Yet cannot shun the meshes of desire.

BHARTRHARI, “Against the Love of Beauty”

Desire is not bad. It has no need to be transformed, surrendered, or denied. It is God speaking, expressing creatively, the ongoing breath of vibrant aliveness. The notion that desire should be chained and restrained, that it should not be allowed to flow freely, is a rejection of This That We Are. Stopping up desire impedes the flow of our abundant inheritance, the inheritance that is ours as sons and daughters of God – not servants, but children – not beggars, but rightful heirs. Everything that God is and has is ours. This is a founding principle for everyday, ordinary life  not merely a  concept or hope for a better life once this one ends.

My spiritual path has been the path of surrender. Whenever a desire or need arose, whether it was for financial support or simply the need to feel important, if the desire was for a ‘me’, I surrendered it. I noticed it, felt its energy, and let it pass. In order to climb the ladder to God, I believed I must leave this world behind.

Over time, as spiritual understanding grew, I began to see how ingeniously I could hide personal desires within what, on the surface, appeared as the greater good.  So, in my zeal to ascend, I learned to fine-tune and fine tune again, allowing nothing impure to move from desire into creation. With vigilance the sense of self expanded and fewer and fewer things caught and caused commotion. I gained access to mind-boggling insights and elevated frequencies, and yet, there was always a resounding return to the world of duality.

Money flowed out with more oomph than it flowed in and I listened and surrendered. Surely, when enough was given back, when I was clean enough, abundance would begin to flow. Even during meditation when I asked, “Do I have to lose it all?” God replied, “No. Just let go of caring if you do.” So I sat back, did the work, waited to pass the test, and be admitted into the flow.

Such grace there is when the unrelenting and great unfolding clears practiced behaviors away. During a conversation with a Friend, I saw that desire is the breath of God, the movement of Creative Force into the World. As it flows through us, in whole understanding of God’s good manifesting, it is born into physical form as naturally as an opening bud becomes a flower.

When desire arises if we censor or deny it rather than listening for the pure ideal within the desire, we create a dam, as solid as reinforced concrete. An energetic and physical barrier blocks the desire from manifesting and in its wake, the tenacious illusion that we are separated from Life’s flow is validated. If though, feeling or sensing the desire, we listen quietly and dive into the ideal hidden within, understanding the intent and purpose of the yearning, no blocks are created or envisioned and in the desire’s perfect timing, it manifests.

The abundant flow is present at all times. It is never out of reach. It is that which is always present within us. Clearly see the beliefs and thoughts behind the need to censor and the energetic force field falls away. The dam breaks and the full flow of creative power – Life – is unleashed into the physical expression of our experience.

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“… for the merely gradual and imperfect unfolding of the power of the God-consciousness is one of the necessary conditions of the human stage of existence.” Friedrich Schleiermacher

Consciousness is unfolding and it’s unfolding with pinpoint precision. Even as I hang onto crystallized beliefs, unaware of my protected stance, movement abounds, wriggling through me in waves, bringing to light every ploy preventing me from being right here, right now. What grace. How could I ever become aware of ‘those things I don’t know that I don’t know’ if it weren’t for this great unfolding?

My last insight felt at first, like I was standing too near an explosion and had been unfortunate enough to survive. I had been kidding myself, telling myself that I was doing ‘the work’. For some time now I have been turning and facing my fears, exploring whatever showed up in my present moment. The past five years Ken’s health has provided an infinite amount of practice material. When he was diagnosed with cancer, after the initial surge of anger, I dove in. The diagnosis, radiation treatments, surgeries, unending trips to the doctor, Ken’s ups and downs, and my emotional fears and physical terrors, the possibility of his death, the idea of living without him were all fodder for the path. Damn it! I was doing the work.

The insight practically knocked me out of my seat. The mind is so brilliant and mine had taken ownership of the practice. It recognized something I hadn’t. I was meeting my fears, not to meet what was real and true in my life, but in order to release them, to transform them, to change the fears and my life experience into something better. And, if I was really good and woke-up completely, perhaps I could even save the man I loved.

When I first discovered the power of meeting my fears, my willingness to do the work was rewarded with a profound sense of release and expansion. The release appeared to come from meeting the fear and not needing to hold it at bay any longer. The expansion was a neat bonus, like God’s pat on the back saying, “You’re doing good; keep it up!” Having used the tool many times, all with the same wonderful results, this mind devised a way to quickly leap-frog past the direct experience right into the result. I had managed to skip over my experience in ignorant denial of what was real and true emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually. As understanding unfolded I felt the weight of all that I had denied. My body, mind and spirit had paid a high price.

What began innocently, stumbling into the presence of authentic experience, had been hijacked by the trickster mind and turned into a results driven tool. When it shifted from earnest practice to mental hi-jinks I don’t know, but it had to fall apart eventually because it missed the entire point. The moment it became a practice, rather than being genuinely present to life, I had succumbed to the mirage. The idea of a practice, by its very nature, includes within it the idea of something that needs to be practiced upon. The fact that I needed to practice, to transform my experience, said that my experience was inadequate and unworthy, that there was something here besides the One Power, besides Oneness, something other than Divine Spirit – something that at the least, was equally powerful to and in competition with Love.

We practice until the great unfolding pins us to this moment, unmovable under the Bodhi Tree, nailed to the cross and powerless to move into the future or backwards into the past.  As we stand rooted in this moment, the veils fall, first slipping away slowly and then like a landslide from the torrential downpour, leaving behind nothing but a sense of relief and this God-filled miraculous moment. Consciousness is unfolding for each and every one of us. Isn’t it magnificent?

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“How could anyone ever tell you, you were anything less than beautiful? How could anyone ever tell you, you were less than whole? How could anyone fail to notice that your loving is a miracle? How deeply you’re connected to my soul.”  Lyrics by Libby Roderick

What if you didn’t need anything? What if everything you believe to be missing is already right here? What if you are already a most remarkable, creative, beautiful and powerful force? What if the purpose of your search was to make you pliable enough to accept this truth? What if you surrendered your sense of lack and your hopes for something better and settled deeply into your experience of life, trusting it to hold only abundance, health, wholeness and harmony? What would that mean to you? How would that feel deep within your bones?

The mystics who embody the Whole Truth, mostly the lesser known amongst the names lining my bookshelves, have been clear in their uniform message. “Stop! You are what you’ve been looking for.” Their answer is simple and requires a simple response. Stop. Guess this mind and body had years of habit to undo, what I have come to call research, because I read it innumerable times and yet it still didn’t stick. Stopping wasn’t in my vocabulary. I still had many miles to go wrapped within the notion of needing to be transformed.

After this morning’s meditation a dear friend said, “I am so aware right now that I am in pre-school.” I laughed out loud, “Not only pre-school but pre-school on a remedial planet.” We exchanged telling glances and smiled broadly. It is beyond understanding when the desire to transform our lives, to get somewhere, to become something stops, and we understand how fortunate we are to be here, how blessed we are by each other.

I am not insane. I do see our world and its physical appearance. I have no immunity to the pain and suffering in our world. I live amidst cancer and unanswerable aches, at the heart of sleeplessness and the possibility of loss. The hopelessness of poverty, the doggedness of fear’s message, the searing wounds as relationships rip apart are not lost on me. Throngs of people are leaving this planet now and there is a sense of destiny closing in.  I not only see it, I feel it – intensely, utterly. No place to run and hide exists for me any longer, for if offered, I could not accept.

Recognizing these words as the words of a consummate beginner, a burgeoning appreciation of this moment and everything within it, relaxes the idea of a separate me and simultaneously expands Knowledge of Oneness. With what I now call God – Divine Word embedded as human form, as the multiplicity of plants and animals, as the ample, robust earth and the fullness of our magnificent sky … Oneness, God as All That Is – the idea of separation, the idea that there is anything wrong with my experience of life is inaccurate. There is nothing other than Oneness. There is not two-ness. There is nothing other than God.  There is only this moment and whatever it holds. And, it is filled with Creative Juice pouring through every one of us.

“The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him — that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.” Swami Vivekananda

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“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” Albert Einstein

With spirit’s relentless support, ego’s grip loosened and unraveling began in earnest.  Humbled once again and streaming tears, a great fullness poured through. In its wake innocence reappeared. The impulse to defend my heavily fortified role of wise-one was absent. That role protected me from exposure, from being judged incompetent. And, as the protective armor disintegrated, taking with it my self-defense, a grave burden lifted from my shoulders and my heart. There was simply freedom.

Truth is a Holy word. Such words hold incredible authority. They can confirm our magnificence and the radiance of God’s creation. Wrongly employed though, they devastate, intensifying separation, distancing us from the healing power of each other’s love. What seed lies within words to unleash such power? Innocent letters strung together form utterances; the meaning a product of culture, solidified by each of us with our compliance.

Ego hides under the pretext of Truth. It says, “This is Truth. This is not negotiable.” As I discovered, labeling something as Truth – capital ‘T’ Truth – was a crafty way to camouflage ego’s lie. The deftness with which I disguised it was brilliant – such creativity should be admired – aside from the fact it was a blatant counterfeit. It was a forged Monet hanging in the Louvre museum, placed perfectly along-side the master’s perfection with nothing amiss to decry the deception.

That part of me who was scrambling to remain in control had hidden itself from view, knowing that once seen, a thorough disassembling would begin. Ego is tricky. It uses words to reinforce its hold, scoots out the back door and sidles in a basement window. A little game of hide ‘n seek and ego’s dominion is secured. To that part of me devoted to seeing every scrap of belief, every protected nook and cranny, the devious game was indiscernible.

It appeared as if one of my partners was totally off-base, unable to grow and evolve, locked permanently inside a backward stance. We had been holding opposite polarities for some time. The discomfort and lack of contact with a person I once held dear should have been a colossal clue. It wasn’t until I heard myself say, “I can’t compromise. I can’t let go of not-knowing; it is a key to God; it’s how knowledge is accessed, a critical component of spiritual growth,” that I realized I had stumbled and fallen. As I listened to another partner say, “Can you hold both not-knowing and knowing as Truth?” I realized just how far off center I was.

I had reduced Truth to a concept, to something that could be tightly held and understood. In doing so, I had severed my connection to God’s perfect design, to the grace of divinely inspired insights and awareness, and to the unrestrained ascent into Love. I had allied with mind’s incomplete version of truth, and, in doing so, disconnected from God’s boundless Truth. God didn’t leave me. I left God. With my judgment I missed the merger with the Divine, that miraculous potential innate to each of us.

Sharing my insights and heart in unembarrassed vulnerability, the polarities evaporated and potential reemerged. And now – gentle mercy, attentive to the game, hiding places exposed, and the burden of identity to heavy to carry any longer. I smile. I giggle. I love.  www.pure-possiblity.org; 503.313.1260

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill. Buddha

By: Gayle Gregory

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.  Anais Nin

Have you ever seen a ghost? I have. It wasn’t at all what one might expect – not a sprite and certainly not a howling demon. What could have been a startling experience revealed a surreal ordinariness that added new understanding to what it means to be alive. Watching not one, but many ghost-like presences, I felt as if I had passed through the veil of one world into another dimension.

It began as a normal day, well as normal as my world gets. I returned home from a delicious spiritual retreat New Year’s Day. I had been gone for a week, frolicking in the essence of ten amazing beings. To say I was open would be putting it mildly. As I looked into the refrigerator it was quickly obvious that a trip to the store was in order if I wanted to eat anything resembling real food. I jumped in the car with my sweetheart and off to the grocery we went.

As we walked through the aisles, the energy in the store seemed off. It wasn’t the building as much as the people. They were practically in slow motion. The shoppers seemed pixilated, fractured – just like the energy. I mentioned it to Ken and asked what he noticed. He smiled and said, “They aren’t really here, are they?” The word ghosts came in a rush of understanding.  While the store was full of people, no one was there. They were all inside their heads, wishing they were somewhere else, or much the same, absolutely absent, just going through the motions. They weren’t present, and I realized, they also weren’t quite alive.

As the word ghosts settled into awareness I saw the many levels on which we exist visually. The color continuum seemed to range from a one-dimensional, grayish, washed-out tone to a high-definition techni-color well beyond anything I had ever witnessed. As we stir from the dream, or nightmare, we awaken from a black and white existence into full color aliveness.

Have you seen a ghost? Perchance a more important question is, “Are you a ghost?” Are you going through the motions, but not really here? Would you rather be somewhere else, living a different life? I thought I was here. My heart was open. I was connected to God. Information flowed through my veins and appeared when I needed it.  A sense of peace and freedom accompanied me. Connecting to others had become easy and unforced.  And, yet I learned, I wasn’t here, at least not entirely.

Many upon the spiritual path are connected to Divine presence and have begun bringing that presence to earth, embodying the light. Last night after watching a B grade sci-fi movie I was compelled to sit down and meditate. In the act of sitting, before my seat hit the cushion, all of what I deemed impossible flowed out of my awareness and as effortlessly reentered the eternal flow.  As I sat, wholly entered into this body, anchored physically in form – here, and committed to this moment –  now, the plump acceptance of this holy instant flowed into this body and like a strong wind, swept through, exiting through the empty space that had been my back only moments before.

In that moment I knew anything was possible, that impossibility existed only within the confines of an errant mind. I am on board the tail of a mind-blowing comet and riding for all its worth, reveling in the mystery teachings of here and now. So simple, yet so profound!

Today is your day to dance lightly with life.
Sing wild songs of adventure.
Invite rainbows & butterflies out to play.
Soar your spirit and unfurl your joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

In order to discover new lands, one must be willing to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. — Andre Gide

With each passing day it is simpler to stand in the middle of the tsunami pouring through my life and the lives of so many. Less effort and less apparent choice is required. Standing here, right in the middle of whatever shows up, is more natural than it was yesterday. The moment I realized there was actually no way to step out of the wave, that struggling to break free sucked me deeper into the powerful undertow, the battle ceased. Now I understand what it means to be alive on purpose.

As I walked these many years upon my spiritual path, my head filled with storied visions, beautifully inspired by the many authors whose writing still fill my bookshelves. Each book added to my burgeoning picture of freedom – what it would look like, how I would feel when I had at last made it. Over time, my creative mind joined the fray, fashioning its own version, compiled from bits and pieces of the teachings I had listened to and the words I had read. With each new insight, or morsel of knowing, my translation of truth rearranged itself, sometimes ever so slightly, other times with an enormous, incisive bang, to accommodate the new intelligence. This, it appeared, was evolution in action.

Last week my constantly evolving picture was blown to bits, leaving nothing to rearrange. The love of my teacher showed its true grit as the remaining fragments of words and concepts shattered and then dissolved into nothingness. The only thing left behind with any teeth was the reality of now. Crystalline clarity permeated this awareness, not so much in thought as in understanding. Whatever is true and real right in this moment, regardless of how mind views it, is the wave of NOW. Unqualified acceptance of this moment, even when it holds death, suffering, frustration, doubt or angst, places one indelibly in the middle of the divinely timeless moment. This is what it means to be alive on purpose – intentionally, deliberately – to be who we really are, rather than who we hope to be somewhere in the future.

Prior to this insight and unknowingly to me, a secret escape route existed in the back of my mind. When things got too tough, I slipped into God, hiding in His lap. It felt good and right. It appeased the mind’s gods of safety and security. God was this amazing energetic presence I dove into, something still outside of me. Safety and danger co-existed as did God and everything else.

Riding the wave of NOW, all that disappeared. There was no longer heaven and earth, me and you, God and the godless. There was only this preciousness flowing through me.

This presence answers the longing of our hearts. It is the next natural step into the commitment that pulls us forward on the spiritual path. If you are reading this article you have already said, “YES” at the level of Soul to this disappearing act. Now it is time to bring that YES here, for you to be grounded in this present moment and to embody your purpose, your reason for being on the planet right now. This is the grace of unconditional Love and absolute forgiveness — of entering into the flow of Life Force — and passing through the veil into the reflection-less state. Anything is possible for the next evolution of humankind. This promise is yours. This and so much more is possible for you right now. Open your heart and know this Truth.

We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery. ~ H. G. Wells

A friend’s recent inquiry prompted me to question how well I really knew my mother. We all have beliefs about our parents that ultimately, regardless of how well phrased, come down to our sense of being loved. My friend asked if mother had gone through a mid-life crisis. It was difficult to answer. Mom is always so calm, so quiet, so not in crisis. She doesn’t express herself openly. As I thought about it I realized how very different I am and wondered if mother’s lack of expression, what appeared to be a lack of love, had propelled me upon my path of self-discovery and radical self-expression.  

No one escapes life’s ups and downs, so mother couldn’t have either. Looking at her though, it appeared that she did. Even when Dad died, she carried on; she didn’t cry. This steely woman was my model for how life is lived. She internalized life, so much so that it was, and still is, hard for me to see what is really going on. Realizing now, that my understanding of mother is vastly incomplete, I question how well my sons know me. We know our version, the interpretations that validate our beliefs. We don’t, nor can we, truly know another. Absorbed in understanding ourselves, we rarely see the truth surrounding other’s lives.

Only recently did I come to learn that mother was born without tear ducts and is unable to cry. Hearing those words broke my heart and opened me to a new understanding – that I didn’t know her at all. I couldn’t imagine not being able to release the pent-up frustration and emotions that inevitably accompany life. When at last I understood, it explained so much.

You would think if you were unable to cry you would learn to jump up and down or scream and yell – anything to shake off the tight, constricted energy of loss. She didn’t. Perhaps that is why she holds her Bible close. Those skills would be helpful now. She is about to lose her leg from the knee down. There’s no medical explanation. The veins carrying the blood to her calf and foot just quit working. She doesn’t cry or scream. She hasn’t a physical outlet, no way to dissolve the energy of tragedy. There must be a million screams residing within her.   

As a child watching my parents, I unconsciously made decisions about who I would be, about what I would copy and what I would change. Those unspoken agreements were foundational for the pact I made with myself to honor self-expression. We each do this. Our pacts vary, but they are pacts none-the-less. Honest, self-aware expression, what I now call radical honesty, grew in importance over time, until it became the key tenet of my life.

Gratitude is thick and rich for this reflection on mother’s life. It has given me new appreciation of her challenges and choices, and a greater understanding of how her life experiences now flow within me. Yes, they flow in apparently different directions. Yet, they flow from the same origination point, the same human experience. When we look only at our personal experience, rather than the magnificently divine and so much bigger picture, we miss connecting to the mystery of what is actually stirring here. So much more is happening than we realize and it’s rarely what we think. Anything is already possible; marvels of growth and expansion are taking place. Gifts are offered to each of us this day. Will you see them? Will you seize them?

Your comments are welcome and appreciated.

When we are willing to love

For the past two years I made the pilgrimage to the Sisters, Oregon Folk Festival. It’s a pilgrimage because it offers more than fabulous musicianship. It offers mind-blowing, concept cleansing, knee-dropping spirituality when we open to finding its presence.

One entertainer, Ellis, caught my eye this year. Standing alone on the stage with her guitar, Ellis offers a unique sound, one-of-a-kind songwriting and a heart as big as the festival. There were few who saw her that didn’t fall in love. It was her infectious smile, unregulated laughter and insightful words (words uncommon for one of her young years) that claimed my attention. She had a way of cutting right to the core of the human condition and making us laugh uproariously as she took us into her world.

During a break between songs she gently spoke of searching for a way out, and that what we really search for is a way in. As I listened, I thought back to my original reason for starting down the spiritual path. I thought I was searching for a way out – a way to silence the voices in my mind constantly tending to my short-comings. That, to me, was a pilgrimage worth its weight in gold. Were I to be victorious I knew life would look like heaven on earth, the Promised Land – worth any price I had to pay. In triumph, I would be adequate and worthy.

I didn’t know then that I really searched for a way ‘in’, a way to include more, relate more, to love more … to be fully here, participating, expressing, and connecting with all those I wanted so badly to leave in my dust. Had I known then, what I know now, I couldn’t have entered the path so innocently or been so willing to engage my dragons and demons. Looking back, it may have been a blessing to not know.

Although … knowing what I searched for might have helped me move more quickly and brought the real pot of gold into clearer view. Had I realized that loving more was the Holy Grail, the key to joy and self-love, surely I would have dropped my defenses and unabashedly embraced life. Had I, I would have discovered that anything is possible when we are present and willing to love. All the tightness and knots of life are because we choose ourselves – our ways, beliefs, needs – instead of choosing love, instead of being present this moment’s reality.

Perhaps though, it is our search to find a way out that hones us and breaks us open enough to accept love’s possibility. Had someone told me to just love I would have deemed them crazy. What? Love those who hurt me? I wouldn’t have been able to hear Ellis’s words were it not for countless dances with my now darling demons.

Our search for a way out is a wondrous teacher. It perfects us with each dead-end, until the pilgrim ceases. Along the way it shaped us into the face of acceptance, adoration, compassion, and deep abiding love. A friend dropped me a note the other day. In it she wrote, “… and yet the richness that pours through you now comes from the depths as well as the heights.” Her note captures the essence of the spiritual quest and the possibility that awaits us all. Anything is possible – even finding ourselves absolutely adequate and worthy.

Ellis: The only truth is what we do with right now.

Gayle: Will we choose love?

Your comments are appreciated.

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