blog

My Life Has Become Unbloggable

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 21:14:16 +0100

I haven’t been blogging. Some of you have kindly called that to my attention--for which I thank you and take your query as a compliment. It’s actually rude, I think, to simply stop blogging. Kind of like disappearing a cast member on a long-running show. Hey, at least have the decency to kill them off so we know how to feel! So as one for whom rudeness is unacceptable, I feel compelled to let you know why my Evolving Journey has not been crossing paths with yours.

I assure you my silence is not due to blogger’s block, as that would imply I’d run out of good material. Ask my mother, who claims I talked before I walked: I have yet to run out of material. It’s more like the experience they describe in AA: “my life has become unmanageable.” Except in my case, “my life has become unbloggable.” A divinely strategized series of inner and outer events has launched me on what I can only describe as a “magical, mystery tour,” of Beatilian proportions. Though, in truth, it would be more accurate to say that the tour which has “taken me away” is a mystical one….full of enchantment and grace, as well as undulating loss, death and rebirth.

So not necessarily blog material…at least right now. My best sense is that I have entered a hiatus that does not offer me the energy to blog or write newsletters on any regular basis. For those of you familiar with astrological language, I am inundated with 12th House energy (the realm beyond physical reality) and Neptune/Pisces energy (the sign and planet associated with the 12th). If I did an astrology reading for anyone else with a plethora of these energies, I would be suggesting and supporting exactly what I am doing…letting go of certain forms and opening up to a new vision and a greater reality. In short, following the energy. And so I am.

Even so, this is hard for me to do. I take seriously my commitment to communicate with those who have “signed up” for the journey with me via my blog and newsletter. But as you know, the essence of what I share in those missiles is about trusting your own evolution, trusting your guidance and your gut. Trusting that which you have reason to believe is the voice of your soul. I am a far better reflection of those principles by living them than attempting to go against them in the name of responsibility. My first responsibility, always, is to my own evolution.

Right now my own evolution calls me to continue deepening my astrological practice; journal about my current passage; spend quality time in conscious relating by phone, email and in person; connect people with each other (happening to an extraordinary degree); travel by spiritual design; evolve myself in the context of partnership; nurture my grandchildren and the child in me; and above all else, surrender to the most profound spiritual unfolding of my life.

So as I lay down this form for the time being, I invite you to reflect: Is there a choice you are making, or one you need to make, that reflects the truth of your evolution? If so, I would love to hear what that is.

In Hawaii they say, “A Hui Hou” in parting. When I first heard it, I asked what it meant, and this beautiful Hula dancer smiled, gestured to indicate she was rendering a loose translation, and said, “Til we meet again.” I love that because it not only assumes we will meet again, but on an evolutionary path, assumes that in the meantime, we will continue to be connected in spirit.

A Hui Hou with Love and Gratitude for Your Support of My Journey,
Maridel

It Hasn't Happened Yet!

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 01:46:38 +0100

A few years ago the Governor of California announced that he was going to cut state workers’ wages to the federal minimum. Whoa, Whammy and What?!? My friend, Sandi, was one of those people at the potentially piercing end of this skewer—with not only herself, but a family to help support. Instantly, her co-workers railed against the State of Unfair Affairs--obsessed with protest and fear--yet they had enough wits about them to notice that Sandi didn’t seem to be disturbed.

“Aren’t you upset?” they queried.
“No. It hasn’t happened yet.”
“But it’s going to! Aren’t you afraid?”
“No. He said the same thing last year and it didn’t happen.”
“But he’s serious this time!”
“I’m sure he was serious last time too, but it didn’t happen.”
“But how can you be so calm?”
“Why waste energy on something that hasn’t happened?”

In this particular case, the Governor hit a solid wall called “The State Controller” who refused to comply. The matter sauntered off to court and has for now become a non-issue.

I often think of Sandi's reply when I’m tempted to worry, obsess, or mindfully regress about things that haven’t happened yet. Why miss what IS happening? I ask myself. Because I’ve noticed that when I place my attention on something that isn’t happening, I automatically take it off what is. I’m trading the moment I have for one I hope will never come--and creating tension and stress in the process. So I’m wondering if it’s possible to become our own governors when it comes to a potential threat. Do we have the authority to decree, “Something that hasn’t happened yet has no power over me!” And in fact, how can it have any power other than what our mentally invented futures feed it?

One late night many years ago, I got a call from my daughter-in-law telling me that my grandson was showing signs of the flu that had recently taken the lives of some young children. Though I trusted my children’s diligence, I hung up feeling panic-stricken, telling myself I wouldn’t be able to sleep. And then I realized that nothing bad had actually happened. Perhaps the origin of angst was my mind, revving up the fear engine. I then noticed that my stomach—the place that typically registers true alarm--was perfectly calm. I sided with my gut, turned over, and slept soundly all night. By the next day, baby was fine.

Of course, sometimes IT does happen. The pay cut goes sailing through, the funny sound in the car turns out not to be funny, and the lab results are less than relieving. Even so, anticipatory worry with its string of “what ifs” and attending mindmares, only serves to weaken our reserves for the challenge at hand should it, in fact, arise. So why not live life in the meantime, present to the one moment we have for sure: this one.

What in your life "hasn't happened yet"? How are you handling it?

Together on the Evolving Journey,
Maridel

Coming Home? Or Going Home?

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 19:01:37 +0100

I ask you: What’s the difference between “coming home” and “going home?” I’ve been twisting this around in my brain for awhile, the way one braids and re-braids tumbling locks without ever getting it quite right. For more normal people, this is a reason to just brush it out (or off) and go on with real life. But for people like me, it’s a reason to blog. The question in question arose because I realized that when I head to Hawai’i I feel like I am “coming home,” but when I head back to the Mainland, I feel like I am “going home.” Hmmm…

Of course I understand the difference perfectly from a geographical perspective -- don't need a discourse from a PhD in English for that. When you are heading home and talking to a person who is not in that intended locale, you say, "Yeah, I'm at the airport drinking my extra hot vanilla latte and glad to be going home." But if fifteen minutes later, you call the person who is sitting right where you're headed, and say, "Yeah, I'm just about finished my vanilla latte" (no longer extra hot), "and glad to be coming home."'

But this isn't a geograhical question I've posed. It's a matter of the heart. Over and over in my years of island gallivanting, I’ve heard it said about that first experience of Hawaii: “I felt like I’d come home.” No one ever says, “I felt like I’d gone home.” And yet, a few weeks later, they do “go home” to Brooklyn, Boston or Burbank, and may or may not ever return to the island that evoked such a profound state of heart. And it's also true that many, like my friend, Bentley Kalaway (who cashed in her return-trip plane ticket thirty years ago) never leave--never "go home" because they realize they are already home.

Having written that, a clue is emerging that unbeknownst to me, I planted in the first paragraph. I said, I feel like I’m "coming" home to Hawaii, but when I return to the Mainland, I feel like I am "going" home. It’s the word “feel” that is the reveal. I get it now.

In Hawaii, I have easy access to more of myself. I dream more, am more keenly attuned to nature, more available to my soul and my senses, more willing to take risks. It’s about coming home, not to a place, but to an expanded experience of who I am. Right now I’m thinking about Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who rocked the Ted Talks world with her account of what she calls her “stroke of insight” –the tale of a devastating stroke that woke her up to her true nature--and the nature of all of us humans. Ten years after the fact, and fully recovered, she speaks with heart-rending passion about how expansive she became as she hung between worlds--a vision that has never left her.

So without the stroke--and thus in a less dramatic and all-consuming way--I come home to that greater truth of myself while in the altered state of Hawaii. And when I go home, I am packing along as much of that expansiveness as my heart will hold, emboldened to infuse my days with it, to put it into palpable practice, and to live it in my work, my relationships, and my solitude. I go home steeped in the surging power of the Spirit of Aloha, knowing that one day, it will be be my home...regardless of where I am.

Do you "come home" to a place in this world that is outside your daily living? How does it expand your experience of who you are?

The Journey Is Always Better Together,
Maridel

Separated at Birth?

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 07:52:33 +0100

If I’ve been on your Social Media radar lately, you know that I just had a week-long reunion with my so-called “childhood friend.” Actually that was a convenient phrase for online usage, though not really the truth. I met Loui when my Dad took a pastorate in Muncie, Indiana with The Church of the Nazarene in 1956. Her name was Louanna then, and she was four years my senior – my brother’s pal. Because our parents were also friends, I spent a fair amount of time in her home over the nine years we knew each other. And because we went to church three times a week (every week) and sometimes more, we knew each other in that pseudo-intimate way that habitual, shared space can create. I admired Louanna’s fluency at the piano, and her lovely, sensual voice blending in trio with her parents. But what stayed with me through the years, tucked away like a nearly forgotten jewel, was her humor—her gift of saying something delightful and pithy, as a beguiling smile played at her lips, head tilted slightly. But Louanna and I were never really friends.

Then last January, the bulk of our lives having passed without each other’s knowledge, I received an email from Loui Cronholm—no one I knew. She was writing to request an astrology reading and said she had read my books. She spoke with particular eloquence about the impact of my mother’s memoir, “Houses of My Consciousness – Waking From Religion to Spirit.” With curiosity peaked, I wrote back. As synchronicity would have it, my mother was visiting when her next email arrived, revealing her identity. “Mom, “I said, my voice already shaking, “I just got an email from Louanna Brown. She’s read our book!” When you write a memoir for those you pray will deeply relate to your journey, you never imagine the reader as a heartbeat from that past.

Months of lengthy, compelling emails ensued. By the time I stood at the United gate in Kona, my eyes were tearing again and again with gratitude for such an impossible moment. Loui and I had grown up hearing about people meeting “on the other side,” and now here we were—about to be reunited in our own Hawaii Heaven.

The nature of our week together is a tale far too overflowing to be contained within the walls of a blog. But here’s a piece of it that both intrigued and astonished as the week unfolded:We greeted each other wearing the same hair style and carrying almost identical purses. Having e-convened about diet beforehand, we already knew our trip to the grocery store would be easy. We also knew that we were both writers, had both moved from Indiana to California (hers was a direct “flight,” mine had a couple of short stopovers). But as the days unfurled, so did the parallels. We both had two boys (she a girl as well), and each of us had one boy that was a professional drummer. That same son on either side was also a guitarist and a singer-songwriter—which meant we had both been privy to the odd and distinct pleasure of being a long-term “Band Mom.” (Ever hear two women in their sixties avidly discussing their sons’ band names?) Some days we walked out of our respective rooms wearing the same color scheme and/or style. And give me a break! Let loose in the used book store, we wore out the phrase “Me too!” Not to mention the parallel universe of favorite flicks that we had no time to watch. And about that sense of humor I remembered in the adolescent Louanna? It's not only alive and well in Loui, but plays off mine like ping-pong champs in heat.

Born four years apart, we clearly weren’t separated at birth—yet we were having the kind of experience so often reported by those who were. Ours, we came to realize, was another kind of separation: a moving apart before the truth of our souls was born in us. We went separate ways before we had any idea that our own spiritual paths ran far, far outside the religion into which we had been born—the very religion that brought us together. My mother has sometimes used a phrase, “the last for which the first was made.” That’s Loui and me. We came together all those years ago for a reason…a reason that is just now revealing itself.

And for that, as Loui would say, “We are grateful, we are blessed.”

Are you aware of the soul at work or play in you, creating experiences that you couldn’t have imagined…in yourself or with others?

The Journey Is Always Better Together,
Maridel

I Have Everything I Need Right Here, Right Now (Revisited)

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 05:03:21 +0100

Could it really, truly be that we have everything we need right here, right now? If we look? If we are open to it? If we trust that we do? It’s a philosophy that I’ve been experimenting with for the last few years. And if you’ve been sloshing along with this blog for awhile, you may recall the incident last year when I put this claim to the test. My friend, Sandi and I, had little more than a day to erect a storage space in her back yard—with no pre-existing foundation. (If you want the back story, check out Moving to Maui #6 (“I Have Everything I Need Right Here, Right Now.”)

Last night, by comical comparison, the phrase applied to my dinner. Ordinarily I do quite well feeding myself, but last night I got caught with my plate empty. I’d had a long, soulful day. Hadn’t officially dressed although what I was wearing would pass for “clothes” in Hawai’i. It was almost seven o’clock and my hunger level had surpassed the salad solution about an hour back. Yet, not having gone to the market as planned, salad was all I had on hand. Well, that and popcorn. But I so wanted something satisfying, healthy and yummy! If wasn’t a gluten-free, mostly organic, non-processed kind of gal, I could have created a feast from the unopened frozen pork a previous condo guest had left behind, accompanied by Rice-a-Roni. Polished off with a Krusteaz cinnamon crumb cake! Expiration date unknown.

I surfed the web looking for nearby take-out and came up empty. It seemed the fish tacos I was craving were all ensconced on a platter that looked like it would feed three of me. Besides, the honest truth was I just didn’t want to go out. You know the feeling? I knew I could, but not one inner self was voting in its favor. I’d already looked in pantry twice, the frig four times, and the freezer three—but on the last frosty pass, I’d noted half a bottle of healthy “tomato and basil” spaghetti sauce there. (Oh, I’d left that there myself three months ago.) A hearty Italian meal suddenly sounded so good! Earlier, I’d found spaghetti noodles, but they were, of course, powerfully glutenized. The phrase “I have everything I need right here, right now” suddenly came to mind. Why not look in that pantry one more time? There I spotted a zip lock with assorted pastas in it and a familiar blue bag caught my eye. Could it be? Trader Joe’s brown rice noodles? It was! (No doubt I’d left them too on a previous visit.) My excitement was momentarily stalled by the thought of what else might be in that bag besides the brown rice fusilli. But nothing was moving. Oh wait! Didn’t I see parmesan in the freezer too? (Also previously mine.) I began to boil, thaw and dance. Now the salad was inspired: romaine mingled with kale, topped by jicama, avocado, fig and roasted pecans.

It tasted fantastic! No freezer burn, no stale aftertaste, no culinary remorse. I had to take a picture for my blog! (This is the madness of blogging, friends.) I could barely wait to eat my happy meal, but wanted a reminder of yet another time when it was true: I had everything I needed right here, right now. And the fact that I had been the source of my own provision simply whipped up a helping of delight for dessert.

The Journey Is Always Better Together,
Maridel

Thanks to the Humble Blog

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 04:17:49 +0100

Last year I moved to Maui against all odds and in the face of almost everyone’s shock, including my own. (The exception was my mutually-adopted daughter, Donna, who said, “Of course you are!”) It was a radical move after living in California since I was twenty-four, arriving there as as ten-day-old mama to my firstborn. My children had grown up in Sacramento and so had I. Through the years, I'd enthusiastically considered this city not only my home, but the base of my spiritual roots. Even when romance took me down the highway of love to Fresno, I could only stay away a few years. But then one fateful night, after signing up for training with a Maui-based company, I got a call on that “inner phone line.” I didn’t tell a soul, but I knew I'd been called to reside on the vuluptous body of Mother Maui.

Once it was time to set things in motion, there was a staggering amount to consider, decide, and get rid of! But bloggers have a secret aid in such extreme circumstances. Overcome? Overwrought? Take a deep breath…and blog!! “Moving to Maui” ran for eight months thirty-two issues before Life stationed me in a new locale: back to the Mainland to live near my Portlandian children and grandchildren. Not fully understanding, but nevertheless trusting, this redirection, I moved to Newberg, Oregon—thirty miles west of Portland. My blog was renamed. My blog focus retrained. I would always stay connected to my Maui circle, but I was no longer moving, living or breathing there. Felt like the end of the blogstory.

But as they say in Hawai’i “Nothing is as it seems.”

A couple of weeks ago, I received two emails just a few days apart. The first woman’s name was that of one of my dearest friends. The other woman’s was that of my daughter-in-love. One was based in Portland. The other lived on the rural outskirts of Sacramento. They had each found my blog, “Moving to Maui,” and were asking for the same thing: any emotional support I could give them to find the courage to move to a place to which they felt called.

You’d have to have a hardy belief in “co-incidence” to imagine that nothing was going on here. Fortunately, I am not endowed with that particular distraction. So I started corresponding with both women: in fact, arranging to meet with each. (So happens I’m scheduled to visit Sac this summer.) It also happens that I was in Paia, Maui one day last week en route to the Big Island. Meeting three friends at the magical outdoor Café Des Amis, I pulled out the emails and shared portions with these reps from my Maui tribe. Would they be willing to welcome and support these women if they moved to Maui? I think the resounding “Yes!” jolted a few nearby patrons from their culinary reverie, but I just grinned.

Are these two women of different ages and stages of life meant to move to Maui? Am I a liaison for offering them a place in the circle that so lovingly enfolded me? Are they to be connected to one another in their shared calling? Will my relationship with them, and theirs with me, significantly change our lives? No answers or a need for them, but I do have this: the certainty that when we send our true selves out into cybersphere through the medium of a blog, we never know whose lives we will touch, connect with, or deeply affect--including the life of our own soul. As one of the women wrote to me, "I'm amazed at the miracle of tecnology and that we could even be having this conversation."
Thanks to the humble blog.

Have you had any experiences of unexpected connections or unlikely communications as a result of your blog?

A Hui Hou ~til we meet again,
Maridel

Reclaiming an Unlived Spring

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:11:50 +0100

The sun found Portland today long after it was due, showing up as if right on cue like a celebrity late to her own gala sans apology. My granddaughter, Abby, a bona fide nature nymph, could not be contained. Her well-being had been compromised by the lack of spring and outdoors she flew, beckoning me to join her. Nothing to do but scoop but the eight-month old baby, grab a blanket, and head for the front lawn. We settled in semi-shade for the sake of Garen’s bald head, yet close enough to Abby to be part of her alter-world: a place fashioned from low-bent branches and a secret cubby behind a bursting rhody bush. The two pugs, Yoda and Chewy, sat pining on the other side of the fence, forlorn as if they’d been banned forever from heaven. The baby rolled, grinned up into the sky, grabbed handfuls of grass and body-danced when I balanced him on his feet. The season may have come late for the rest of us, but this was his first spring and its tardiness was none of his concern. His squealing ode to joy was proof of that.

As I lay on the blanket with life spinning around me—the rumble of garbage trucks, the whirr of a weed-whacker next door, the grind of a lawnmower down the street, and the occasional whine of the dogs, I was transported back to a place I’ve never been. I was no longer a grandmother tending her progeny, but a young mother circa 1975…carefree, laughing, delighting in her children and the day. I wasn’t re-living this woman, but rather, experiencing her for the first time. For I wasn’t that mother to my own young boys—caught up as I was in my ambition to matter, pummeled by the hail of old emotional pain, and driven to divest myself of a stifling religion. All of these investments would, in time, serve my children well. But it did not serve them on fine spring days when all they wanted was my complete attention, my devoted presence.

This sudden flash from an unlived past could have been rent with remorse; but blessedly, it wasn’t. My regrets have been journaled, shared, and for the most part, laid to rest. I was a girl struggling to become a woman I could admire, and doing my best with what I had and didn’t have. So instead of regret, sheer happiness arose. What an unexpected gift! The Universe was giving me back a precious moment…as a young mother sitting on the sunny grass with nothing to distract her from the adoration of her children. And in that lucid place, I could see these magnificent beings just as they are…and just as they were.

What could I do but wipe away a smiling tear of gratitude?

On the path of our own evolution, sometimes we receive opportunities we thought were lost forever and have a chance to reclaim them. Have you had this experience in any of your relationships? In any other areas of life?

Together on the Evolving Journey,
Maridel

The Rumor Is True

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 03:18:35 +0100

“Have you heard that Maridel gets her dental work done in Hawai’i?” From such queries rumors are spun. So before you hear that I’m jetting off to Sweden for a blood test or to Italy for a pap smear, here’s the truth: I am going to The Big Island to be crowned (literally) the Queen of Molars Gone Bad. (I have a layover on Maui. Should I get a pedi there?)

But here’s the irony of all this: my upcoming dental getaway isn’t a reflection of affluence. In fact, if I were wealthy enough to get my “crowns done” in Hawaii, I certainly wouldn’t spend it getting my crowns done in Hawaii! But while living in Maui last year (moving there for employment), a molar crown unmoored from its dock without notice. How rude! Fortunately for me (the dentally uninsured), I was offered very reasonable coverage. So when I visited The Big Island in March (for a long-planned vacation with my friend, Sandi), I dropped by the sister office there for an X and a scrub. Only to find out that the new crown and its old enamel neighbor had “open margins” – which sounds like a generous attribute to me, but makes dentists’ brows furrow unattractively. On that trip, I wouldn’t be on the island long enough to undertake the cure. So it was either a) go home and repay for a replacement crown or b)return to Hawai’i and get it replaced at no charge—along with an insured rate for its ailing pal.

Anything to think about there?
Other than, “Do I have enough frequent flyer miles?”
Summoning up the last of those miles, and arranging to stay in my sister and brother-in-law’s condo, I head off for a three-week stay in paradise, albeit with dental excursions on the side. So while “the rumor” is true—something else is more true. Dentistry is not the purpose of this visit. Dentistry is the catalyst. The Universe, I’ve repeatedly noticed, will do whatever it takes to get one’s booty and soul in the right place at the right time. Against my wishes to save my flyer miles for next winter when the Northwest winds blow, I have been called to come fly the friendly skies of Spirit…now.

I love this space where the direction is clear, the plans are in place, but the mystery has yet to unfold. I do trust that it will be timely to be with my friend, Jackie, whose Mom passed away since I saw her there in March. I do suspect that my friend, Jill, and I will be taking a significant soul conversation, begun on my last visit, to a new level. And I do rejoice that my friend, Loui, with whom I have reconnected via email after forty-six years apart, will be joining me there for a week—our attempts to do so on the Mainland failing. But what I don’t know is the deeper reason for being there right now…a reason evidently so important that the Universe would unabashedly use my fallen crowns as the means to that end.

It’s the kind of revelation that won’t yield to speculation…it has to be lived. So off I go...

Have you had an experience of “external circumstances” that obviously had a deeper agenda? Did you see it coming? Or realize it after the fact?

Together on the Evolving Journey,
Maridel

Online Dating Lesson

Mon, 30 May 2011 17:38:50 +0100

I’m happy. I’m single. I’m happy I’m single. (Get ready, the “but” isn’t far behind—or instead, let’s make that an “and.”) AND after an adult lifetime of long-term partnerships, there’s a part of me that asks, “Is there someone else out there?” Or, more importantly, “Is there someone in there—someone inside me who is willing to enrich and complicate my current level of contentment?” I have to admit that despite that satisfaction, I’ve been attracted to the course, “Calling In The One,” a program that works from the inside out to draw ideal partners together. Yet most days, I entertain this possibility like a guest who dropped in for tea and “just can’t stay.”

So what happened last night? Why, recovering from a virus and tired from the late hour, did I go on an online dating site for the first time in my life? And sit up way past my prime filling out a profile? Truth is, I was enjoying the edgy experience of straddling honesty while keeping a grip on giving myself the benefit of the doubt. On a scale of one to ten how controlling, sexy, helpful am I really? How much does height, hygiene or humor matter? How far am I willing to go? (in miles). Neophyte that I am, I wasn’t expecting my answers to spawn such immediate results! I had only filled out 43% of my profile when the polls started showing early returns! I had seven matches! Seven men were quasi-close enough to my values, virtues and “must-haves” that their profiles lined up like suitors standing at the door.

I eliminated one instantly on age – weren't men of my Dad's generation outside my elected parameters? But as any half-awake woman would do, I read the other six. Amusing, entertaining, enjoyable—except for one. One, and only one, was not just a match on cyber-paper, but in my heart. He sounded like the kind of single man I might meet at a workshop and instantly wonder if he was the workshop—my reason for being there. Now as much as you and I would both enjoy it, I’m not going to divulge the content of his sharing or the nature of our match for even in the odd otherworld of online dating, privacy is private. Suffice it to say, however, that unless he ultimately proved to one big wad of false advertising, this man and I appeared to be spiritually, psychologically, professionally and hormonally matched…with particulars that rose way above the water line of co-incidence.

I sent him a note. It was short, genuine and honest. It smacked neither of stalking, fawning or desperation. I was amazed I could do all this without signing up for membership. And then alternately confused when my note didn’t appear to have been sent—perhaps because I hadn’t signed up? This morning, I saw that someone had reviewed my profile. It appeared to be him, but I couldn’t be sure as the invitation TO JOIN kept popping up like a two-year old pup in heat, disrupting my view—and then “someone has reviewed your profile” was gone. As near as I can tell, he looked, but didn’t respond. This sent the gossip girls in my head into frenetic conjecture:

“Maybe it’s because she’s a year older and only one inch shorter.”
“Or because she used the word ‘consciousness’ one too many times.
“Or ‘astrology.’
“Or maybe he didn’t take her seriously because she hadn’t joined yet.”
“Or thought her message was too much too soon.”

This brooding rumination went on half the morning before, right in the middle of their java-riddled rant, I laughed.
“Girls,” I said, nuzzling my way in-between them, “Twelve hours ago I didn’t know this man existed. I was happy. I was single – and happy to be single, remember?”
They stared at me like children appalled that you just turned off their cartoons.
The quiet was heavenly.

The next day, I discovered, that no, you can’t send a message before joining, which meant The Man hadn't received my communique and very likely hadn't even seen my profile. Once again I stood in amazement at the presumptousness of my mind to seize a possibility and then feed it the empty carbs of its own little stories--tales that neither nourish nor satisfy. How easy to let the mind take over an idea and hold it hostage in its own limited world as if it were an urgent problem to be fixed or a vexing puzzle to be solved.

Do you recognize this phenomenon of seizing a possibility and then spinning useless stories about it? Is it happening right now? How do you catch yourself and come back to the moment?

Together on the Evolving Journey,
Maridel

The Center of Your Own Universe

Thu, 19 May 2011 05:19:27 +0100

You never know when it will wash over, under or around you…that delicious swell of feeling like you are at the center of your own universe. I recall leaving the house one fall day in my early twenties, driving away through a palate of golds and reds, to run some errands. Suddenly, there it was: the feeling of being at the epicenter of my life for no definable or particular reason. It must have been the first time as the vibrancy of those few seconds still visits me after forty years.

More recently, I was sitting in the audience for my grandson’s school musical. We were being treated to a prelude by the fifth and sixth grade band (or is it “praylude”?). I was sitting by my son who was feeding his seven-month old babe. To my other side, my granddaughter squirmed with anticipation on her mother’s lap. The bright, uneven music was achingly reminiscent of concerts gone by--when the man beside me was a boy intently, if not enthusiastically, playing his flute. And suddenly, that almost uncontainable wave welled up inside me, cradling me right there in the center of my universe…the feeling that there is absolutely nowhere else to be.

I wonder if it’s a feeling that can be cultivated…

A couple of days ago, I was lying on my granddaughter’s bed, laughing and talking about belly buttons. As she set forth her own explanation of “innies” and “outies” with the kind of glee reserved for five-year-old girls, I absorbed her presence so keenly, so completely, that for an instant, she was all that existed.

The Universe has offered me a miraculous gift going back thirty years: wherever I live, there is a towering, magnificent tree out the window. Sitting now in my sweet rented condo, my upstairs sliding glass doors are filled with huge, leafy hands—the upper part of a two-story tree so close I can touch it from my deck. Many days, as my eyes drift from my computer, this bark and green bouquet is presented to me anew, as if it had just been delivered. And when I stop and connect its life to mine, I inadvertently sigh and everything else falls away.

Sometimes I wake up in the night, extricating myself from a hot dream lover or too-hot covers—or both. But once in awhile, I awake simply remembering I am me, and instead of reaching for the next embrace of sleep, let myself be held, just for a moment, by my own life—as if it’s the dearest friend I’ll ever know.

I’m beginning to see that there are moments when we can linger just long enough to feel the pulse of our own universe and find ourselves at its heartbeat. Maybe it’s just another way of “being present.” Or perhaps the more present we are, the more available this experience becomes. I only know that for me, there is no other quite like it.

When have you experienced being at the center or your own universe?

Together on the Evolving Journey,
Maridel