I've Moved

I can now be found at www.destinationthejourney.com

See you there.

Family Peace

There is an adage that my husband likes to repeat from time to time in regards to the family. "You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, you can even pick your friend's nose...but you can't pick your family." I am guessing we all experience "stuff" with our families. The longer I live the more I realize that the old Leave it to Beaver nuclear display of functionality, normalcy, really doesn't exist. I am sure Ward Cleaver had issues, maybe he was a closet alcoholic. And Mrs. Cleaver, I am sure she had a touch of OCD (I mean there wasn't anything out of place in her house, ever). Beaver.....we didn't get to see Beaver grow up, so we have no idea what actually happened to him. It seems that our only insight into any sort of aberrant behavior was Eddie Haskell, who was probably the normal one among them all, because he didn't try to pretend he was anything other than he was. He wasn't trying to uphold some ideal of what he "should"be.

Why is any of this relevant? Well, I am presently engaged in what I like to refer to as "Peace Talks" with my beloved sister. We love the dickens out of each other, but over the years, something has been lost in translation and we have reached an impasse. A place where things need to be talked about and dealt with and understood. Not a bad place. In fact it is actually a good place. A fertile place for growth and understanding for both of us. If we had been merely friends and not sisters, it is possible that we might have let the relationship go, because, quite frankly, its hard work to reach a place of understanding. And its human nature NOT to want to do that kind of hard work. 

And that is what the family is for. Of course the family is also a place where we derive our love, our support, our roots, they are the ones who bear witness to the passage of our lives, who help us feel some sort of relevance, but it is also where we arrive to work out our issues. It's not random, happenstance, that you showed up in your family. It was necessitated by the life lessons that you needed to work out this time around. I know quite a few people who say it doesn't matter how evolved they feel they may have become in their own lives, when they get together with the family, they revert back to the behaviors of that eleven year-old. Family stuff is old and deep. It doesn't get any deeper than that. So, I thank my sister for helping me learn more about myself, as uncomfortable as it feels at times, because I am clear that my purpose here is a path of evolution, in the spiritual sense, above and beyond anything else.

And it becomes quite easy to see how difficult it will be to achieve world peace. If it is difficult for two people who grew up in the same culture under the same roof to get along, it almost seems impossible that the human family will ever achieve peace. I mentioned a quote in a previous post that I love by Albert Einstein: "Problems cannot be solved by the same level of consciousness that created them." It is apparent that we are all going to have to evolve if peace, individual, familial, and on a global scale, is ever going to be a reality. And this evolution is a difficult path, because it means confronting the egoic structures that were laid in place very early on. And that ego, that wild wild ego...

"You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, you can even pick your friend's nose", but in the end, thank god "you can't pick your family."

Have Faith In the Process

There is this beautiful garden you wish to make happen in your backyard. You can see it: the wild pink asters, the yellow gladiolas, the purple delphinium, red poppies; a little further down the basil, rosemary, and lavender, green and bountiful. You can actually close your eyes and know what it will feel like to stand in the middle of it on a late summer afternoon and not want to be anywhere else.

But then you actually look around your back yard and there is nothing but grass. Till the yard, and do it lovingly. And when it is time, throw in the seeds with care. Stand back and let the rains come and the sun shine, and let some unfolding process that we cannot really even begin to understand (even though science may say it does perfectly), take shape. Stand by, and water when water is needed, and weed when the weeds are in the way, and be patient.

And do not think, when your garden is not producing when you deem it should produce, that you should go till another plot and start over. Stand by, and eventually the little seedlings will arise, and eventually they will turn to flowers, to herbs, and maybe one kind doesn't take to the soil as you thought it would, and thus you are left no choice but to plant a different flower in its place. And your garden might look different than you thought it would when you started. 

If there is truth in you that it was your heart's desire to plant the garden, and tend carefully to it, and if you build the fence around it so the deer and the rabbits cannot eat it, then the wealth and abundance of it will certainly be yours. There can be no other way. 

And if its your heart's desire to have the garden, and the seed has come to fruition in you, waste no time. For there is none to be wasted. 

On "The Rally to Stop Iran"

The last few Sundays as I read the NYTimes, I stumbled over an almost full page ad for the "Rally To Stop Iran." It is to take place tomorrow, Monday September 22nd, rain or shine. Its put on by the 'National Coalition to Stop Iran Now'. I don't know who these people are, but I feel moved to say a few things in response to this ad, and to those supporting this rally. 

In this ad they accuse the government of Ahmadinejad of widespread torture. Let us not forget Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and widespread accounts of abuse, torture, sodomy, homicide, and water-boarding. The ad states that "barbaric sentences are handed down", and uses for those examples stoning to death, amputation, and flogging. Let us not forget the 521 Americans executed since 2000 under the death penalty. Is there a difference in the terror felt by one about to be stoned to death and one about to have a lethal chemical injected into his vein, or be wrought with electrical current until his heart stops? The ad reports that Ahmadinejad's government "arrests journalists, scholars, women's righ activists, and minority groups." Recently, at an anti-RNC rally, Amy Goodman, a renowned investigative journalist and host of Democracy Now, was aggressively arrested and charged with rioting, along with the producers of the show, even though news gathering (not a rowdy disruptive event) is constitutionally protected. You can watch the arrest live on youtube. The ad goes on to say that Iran is "ready to rule the world." From where I am sitting, it seems that the leaders of my country already think that they "rule the world."

Albert Einstein said, brilliantly, that "problems cannot be solved by the same level of consciousness that created them." This finger pointing, this calling of names (i.e. terrorist), this threat of sanctions and imminent military action, is fighting fire with fire. If you wish to put out a fire, you have to stop throwing fuel on top of it. It's not rocket science. You have to get beyond the ego (which, by the way, is responsible for this quagmire of an international crisis that we are in), and sit down and come up with solutions, viable solutions. How can we look Iran in the eye and ask them to stop enriching uranium and processing plutonium, when we are moving forward in partnership and approval of India's nuclear program? Am I the only one who doesn't get this? India's nuclear program will be entirely civilian in nature, and Iran's is intended to destroy us. India is our ally, Iran our archenemy. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so is the definition of the word terrorist.

Rumi said "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing or rightdoing there is a field, I'll meet you there." This is not a place that can be had with the intellect. To get there, we have to evolve there. Unless those making our policies are willing to reach the humanity in each other, are willing to sit down around the round table and come to real solutions, this problem cannot be solved. This is not us against them. We are all in this together.

A Little on Writing

I thought I might say a few things about writing today since that is, after all, what I am doing here. And one might ask, who made you the expert? Well, I am not the expert, nor do I pretend to be. I just know that I am a writer by virtue of having to write. It is no longer an option to do it or not do it. I am being driven by something greater than myself to put words to paper, and thus I do (of course that driving force could be insanity or some need for self-aggrandization, but that is beside the point).

I am not a writer because I have an MFA. I am not a writer because I am paid to write. I am a writer because for some reason I am driven from the inside out to take what inspires me about this life and put the thoughts or moments into words on paper. It started out as a hobby. I began writing poetry from a very early age, some of it good, some of it not good. I won't subject you to the words and thoughts that came out of me in 1986. As time went on I felt moved to create books of poetry for my family and my friends. And in the back of my mind I had the thought that one day I would publish a book.

Well, a life-altering illness happened to me in early 2007. It knocked me off of my feet, shook my world, and left me not knowing if I would ever walk again. Things changed for me. Priorities shifted. Out of that experience came the experiential knowledge that life really is very short. And no longer am I able to just cruise along not doing what I am absolutely passionate doing. So, I changed it up a bit. I have gone part-time at the hospital where I work, and the rest of the time I write. I started out writing a memoir about my experience (which I am by the way still working on: Learning How to Walk in India), and my goal was to publish this book.

What has happened over time however is that this desire to publish a book has blossomed into me just wanting to write-about everything that moves me, if I ever actually publish that book is secondary. I have heard it said you should write because you love to write, not because you expect to get published. People, be real. Of course if you are spending hours at a desk, cutting out on your personal engagements and time when you could be actually making money, in order to write, there is a passion for it. Otherwise you wouldn't do it. 

Would you ever say to the entrepreneur with the MBA, "well, you should start this businesss because you love it and not because you want to make money off of it." No. You wouldn't. If the entrepreneur doesn't love what he is doing, it'll be obvious, and the business won't succeed. But I don't think any of us writers are ONLY writing for the love of it, without the hopes of someday getting published, and if you are, then I commend you. If I had a trust fund, maybe I would, but that is not the case. And we all have to put food on the table, so really examine this notion of "write because you love to, and only for that reason." Write because you love to write, because you are moved to do so, and be my guest to hope like hell that one day someone will pay you for it.

9/19/08

I'm lying on the table today at  the Community Acupuncture Center in Boulder. I hear the Indian tabla and sitar doing a melodic dance with the sound of water lapping a shore. I wonder where the water is. I can hear crickets. Its not a still pond. The water laps, rhythmically. I am on a pebbled shore and I can see the underside of the small waves that crash onto the crushed pebbles, one after the other. I sense someone beside me, to my right, on the shore. Besides the crickets and the waves, it is still.

The needles are in and I am left to my own devices. I thought about bringing a book, but then I thought better of it. This is precious time. I have a finite number of breaths. I bring my awareness to the inside of my body, to sensations arising and passing away. I try and stay there. My mind wanders.

I have been irritable with Dan this week. Is it a cold that has been ravaging my body for the last seven days? Is it my period? He is the man I am crazy about, the one I married, the one I cherish. And I've been a little mean to him. Generally he doesn't react to me when I do this, so he is the perfect mirror for me. My words, my defenses, hang out there in the air with nowhere to go. I am forced to own them.

Back to my body, to sensations rising and passing. I can feel electrical current in my left lower leg- the acupuncture working. The day begins to fade out- the traffic, the noise, work- and I am tuning into something much deeper. There is space. And the more I'm there the more I feel. And in that space I am able to let go. I forget irritation. 

Its that space that I need.